MOOC: Multilingual Education

3.1. Multilingualism in society: language environments

Week 3 Part 1 will help you:

to recognise and understand the signs of language environment around us with its different aspects (visual, audial, digital);
and to get acquainted with the different kinds of language statuses, which may affect language functions and determine its dominance or marginalization.

To reach these goals you are expected to:

watch the introductory video that helps to understand different aspects of language environment;
read the text for more precise explanations and clarifying definitions;
check your knowledge and understanding with the drag-and-drop activity.

Video

Language environments

Reading

Language environments and status. Definitions and clarifications.

While language contacts and multilingualism has existed as long as there has been communication, trade, conquest, travel, education, and globalisation with increased mobility of people and meanings, today’s intensified processes unavoidably lead to more and, some authors claim, different multilingualism in the world. Because of increased mobility, more and more people are growing up in families with parents or caretakers who speak different languages. In-family agreement on the choice of language(s) is a family language policy. Their choice may coincide or not with the dominant language of the society in which they live in.

In addition to human mobility, meanings also travel much faster these days and information and communication technology makes it fairly easy. Ultimately, our life environments have changed and with them also language environments as they involve more languages– one or more languages at home, one or two languages of instruction and many languages as subjects at school, one or more languages at work, one language to follow domestic news, another for scanning updates from friends or enjoying the latest episode from global media service provider. Not to mention multimodality of communication and different scripts or written symbols in which language are reproduced.

Societal or collective multilingualism includes three main components:

Language environment or sociolinguistic context comprising all language-related activities and language products or media content, among others online news, bestselling books at airport stores, downloadable music, Netflix movies, etc.;
Various communities of practice (family, different ethno-linguistic groups, but also transnationals, global nomads) functioning in multilingualism and simultaneously (re)constructing it, and
Language-related norms or functions embedded in language domains such as home, school, church, workplace; or adhered to activities in governance, socialisation, mediation of information by authority, tradition, common, national or international law or any other social contract.

In multilingual societies, a common language can be chosen territorially, domain-wise or agreed on based on previous linguistic encounters or experience. The territorial principle means that one language is given a de jure or de facto status over others, meaning in that specific territory that specific language is agreed as the main language of communication, for example in Swiss cantons. In case we do not know exactly which language is agreed in the specific territory or institution or community, one may make educated guess based on different clues (what language is commonly spoken in this country or region) or previous knowledge about the functional domain of the language. For example, when approaching someone in university, English seems a reasonable choice given the internationalisation of universities worldwide. This would be educated guess based on domain-wise use of language (university being a domain); or people may know that Arabic is used in the mosque, or again, to discuss an IT issue people code switch to English.

Sociolinguistic context also includes linguistic landscapes (known as LL) – that is any display or exposure of language(s) in public spaces for various functional and symbolic purposes (Shohamy & Gorter 2009). LL may include audial and graphic signs, both material and virtual elements. Audial signs include all sounds that are registered by human hearing system and are meaningful to us. Voices and sounds, which we do not understand, are not meaningful for us and can be classified as noise and not audial signs. Graphic signs include all graphically reproduced information (incl. images) we are able to read and understand. An ability to interpret symbols is created in the process of socialisation. Family up-bringing and school has a major role in acquiring literacy, including graphic symbol literacy. There are various graphic signs: symbols, different alphabets and scripts, images such as traffic and road signs, ads, graphic algorithms of any kind that are part of a given language. Different moving objects such as cars with texts and graphic elements or people who wear T-shirts with messages display various symbols and images and are also part of linguistic landscapes.

Virtual linguistic landscape reflects technical progress and new technological solutions: computers and smartphones for individual purposes, and screens, speaker systems and electronic billboards for public information). Such graphic signs are quite different from traditional text and voice representations – their messages are temporary hypertext and pop-up messages, search engines, artificial Intelligence-based Q&A, speech synthesis and other language ecological products.

All those components make up environments furnished with signs which in turn have invested with meanings. This rather complex sociolinguistic context or environment people either passively record through hearing and reading, or actively interact with in our daily routines.

People have varying understandings of functions and status languages may have. Edwards (1996: 703-704) distinguishes language prestige based on historical record, language function based on its current use, and language status referring to its potential. Language prestige, function and status can be discerned in societal level only, not on individual level. They indicate power relations between languages and their speakers within as well as between various societies. Language status shows how much value speakers assign to their language and how strongly their identities are based on the language.

According to Edwards (1996) a language may have the following statuses:

Its linguistic status refers to how extensively the literary norm is elaborated, by whom, how large are lexical extensions and what is the scope of standardisation. To this is linked cultural status of a languages, which is is associated with cultural products, language of science and technology as well as language of education.

Demographic status refers to the numerical strength of a specific language – the more it has speakers the stronger its demographic status. It also refers to the spread of literacy (how many people are able to write in a language) and production (how much a language is used in different domains and functions), i.e. the more language products a language has the more it is economically dominant.

Legal status indicates how wide legal protection a language has. The legal status depends on how strong is the political system that provides the legal protection.

Language status can be modified by changing its functions within certain limits, but it can also change due to the influence of other external factors. A language status can become more dominant and important for the community concerned, or vice versa, ousted to marginality.

In the next part of this week we will have a closer look at the language functions and status at the state level in multilingual states and societies.

Activity

Now, check your understanding. Drag and drop the expressions to the correct definitions.