Learning language regimes: Children's representations of minority language education

Minority language education initiatives often aim to resist dominant language regimes and to raise the social status of migrant or autochthonous minorities. We consider how participating children experience these alternative language regimes by analysing drawings made by children in two minority education settings—a Slovene‐German bilingual school in Austria and an Isthmus Zapotec (Indigenous) language and art workshop in Mexico. We examine how children's drawings represent language regimes in the social spaces they inhabit. Considering these drawings in relation to ethnographic observations and interviews with educators, we illustrate differences between how the social spaces are planned by educators and how they are represented and experienced by learners. Generally speaking, the children in our studies depict flexible, multilingual experiences and spaces, in contrast to the educators’ agendas of separating or emphasizing languages for pedagogical purposes. Mexican children's perception of themselves as participants in fluid language regimes, and Austrian children's increasing appropriation of multilingual space over time through both (school‐like) routines and (fun) exceptions can inform the efforts of minority language educators.     

Orderly mixing and accommodation in South African codeswitching

'Mixed Language,' a characteristic pattern of language use among African township residents in South Africa, may well include words or full constituents from several languages. However, from both a structural and a social perspective, such speech has a systematic nature. In reference to grammatical structure, within any CP (projection of COMP) showing codeswitching, only one language (the Matrix Language) provides the grammatical frame in the data studied. Also, while speakers from different educational levels engage in codeswitching with similar frequencies, the types of codeswitched constitutents they prefer are different. In reference to the social use of language, we argue that specific patterns of codeswitching indicate how language is both an index of identity and a tool of communication in South Africa. In the codeswitching patterns they use, speakers exhibit strong loyalty to their own first languages. Yet, because they recognize that codeswitching facilitates communication with members of other ethnic groups, they use a number of codeswitching strategies as a means of accommodating to their addressees and simultaneously as a means of projecting multiple identities for themselves.     

What makes a Gael? Identity,language and ancestry in the Scottish Gàidhealtachd

Scholars know far less about ‘national identity’ than ‘nations’ and ‘nationalism’. The authors argue that the concept is sociologically important and briefly discuss its relationship with language. They examine empirically how people living in the Gàidhealtachd, the area of Scotland associated with Gaelic language and culture, whether they are Gaelic speakers or not, whether incomers or not, go about their territorial identity business. The article shows how respondents’ Gaelic identity relates to their British and Scottish identity; how people living in the Gàidhealtachd assess putative claims to a Gaelic identity based variously on language, residence and ancestry; and how they see the balance between ‘cultural’ and ‘political’ elements in Gaelic. The authors argue that to study ‘what makes a Gael?’ highlights the key role territorial identity plays in connecting social structure to social action, and also that identity provides a set of meanings and understandings through which people experience social structure and feel empowered to act.     

“Oh,you've got such a strong accent”: Language Identity Intersecting with Professional Identity in the Human Services in Australia

Language operates as a form of differentially valued cultural capital that is an influential factor in educational and employment outcomes. English in particular represents a valuable form of linguistic capital in both the broader world market and many regional and local contexts. This article, focusing on one group of professionals, draws on an exploratory study carried out with overseas‐born bilingual social workers residing in Australia, who reflect on how their language identities intersect with their professional identities in the human services workplace. Although most informants identified tangible benefits associated with being bilingual, especially in terms of working with a diverse clientele, they were equally aware of how being categorized as a ‘non‐native’ speaker of English could diminish their professional credibility and thwart their chances of upward mobility in the workplace. In this regard, this article highlights inconsistencies in how difference is valued in the human services workplace, implicating a more covert process of linguistic othering.     

Exploring Infant Gesture and Joint Attention as Related Constructs and as Predictors of Later Language

In infancy, use of gesture and the ability to engage in joint attention with others both predict later language development. Conceptually, gesture and joint attention abilities may reflect a similar underlying social‐communicative skill. However, these abilities are often studied separately. Despite the fact that gesture is often used in episodes of joint attention, little is known about the degree to which measures of gesture use and joint attention ability are associated with one another or how they similarly, or differentially, predict children's language abilities. Participants in this study were 53 infants. At 12 months, multiple measures of infants’ gesture use were gleaned from a free–play interaction with a parent. Infants’ responding to and initiating joint attention were measured via the Early Social‐Communicative Scales (Mundy et al., 2003). Infants’ expressive and receptive language was measured at 24 months with the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (Mullen, 1995). A factor analysis including gesture and joint attention measures indicated that at 12 months, joint attention, particularly responding to joint attention, reflects a similar underlying construct with infant gesture use, yet they uniquely predict later language ability.     

Feeling special: Language in the lives of Polish people

In this article I use findings from an ESRC funded project on language and identity in the narratives of Polish people to challenge a narrow approach to language in debates about integration. I argue that decisions about learning languages are influenced by wider concerns of self and other identification rather then simply being issues of instrumental need. I show how research participants viewed speaking Polish as an important part of being Polish, that is, of their identity. They recognised that changing the language they spoke involved questioning the way they presented themselves and how they related to others. I discuss how language was used to differentiate between ‘us’ and ‘others’, including in terms of values and the ways in which these perceptions of difference influenced social interactions.     

Social relationships and shifting languages in Northern Thailand1

This paper explores how speakers’ understandings of the conduct of social relationships mediate changing and socially distinctive syncretic language practices in a Northern Thai community. Although a shift away from vernacular (Kam Muang) speech styles to Standard Thai was emblematically tied to young and urban speakers in nostalgic discourses, syncretic speech styles and metalinguistic discourses also reflected local and socially positioned understandings of institutional roles and social relationships. I argue that scholars of language change and shift should foreground the mediating role of social relationships in speakers’ uses and understandings of their communicative repertoires across multiple timescales.     

Patterns of linguistic variation among Glaswegian adolescent males1

This article presents the results of an ethnographically informed sociolinguistic investigation of Glaswegian Vernacular and examines the intersection between language and identity using data collected from a group of working‐class adolescent males, over the course of three years, from a high school in the south side of Glasgow, Scotland, called Banister Academy. Through the fine‐grained acoustic analysis of the phonetic variable cat (equivalent to the trap/bath/palm set, Johnston 1997 ), coupled with ethnographic observations, this article shows how patterns of variation are related to Community of Practice membership, how the members of the Communities of Practice in Banister Academy use linguistic and social resources to differentiate themselves from one another, and how certain patterns of variation acquire social meaning within the peer‐group. This article contributes to the under‐researched area of adolescent male language use and offers one of the first ethnographically supported accounts of linguistic variation in Glasgow.     

Sociological Introspection and Emotional Experience

Although social constructionists now study emotions, they neglect what emotion feels like and how it is experienced. This paper argues that social constructionists can and should study how private and social experience are fused in felt emotions. Resurrecting introspection (conscious awareness of awareness or self-examination) as a systematic sociological technique will allow social constructionists to examine emotion as a product of the individual processing of meaning as well as socially shared cognitions. Examining introspection as a sociological process, this paper argues that introspection can generate interpretive materials from self and others useful for understanding the lived experience of emotions. Findings from four studies–one, self-introspective, and the other three, interactive introspective examinations with co-investigators–provide information about the subjective part of emotion. They demonstrate the advantages of introspection in dealing with the complex, ambiguous, and processual nature of emotional experience.     

‘It is hard at school,but I do my best to cope.’: the educational experience of multilingual immigrant youth in high school

ABSTRACT

This study explored how 60 trilingual immigrant youth interpret and make sense of their educational experiences in Israeli schools. Conceptualizing the language knowledge of multilingual individuals as one unitary system, the study is based on the assumption that a fuller understanding of students’ educational experiences can be obtained by examining their written expression about school experiences in the three languages at their disposal: Russian (L1), Hebrew (L2) and English (L3), which were elicited via letter writing tasks. A total of 180 letters (60 letters in each language) were analysed through qualitative content analyses revealing five interrelated themes depicting immigrant youths’ scholastic studies as a complex multifaceted experience intertwined with issues of language, culture, identity, and social struggles. The findings provide insights into how the language repertoire of immigrant youth is powerfully linked to their sense of self, educational circumstances, and acculturation.     

Does it get better? LGBTQ social work students and experiences with harmful discourse

Although the field of social work is grounded in social justice, the social work educational experience, including classrooms, may not live up to this value, especially for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students. Using a qualitative phenomenological approach, this study examined the experiences of harmful discourse in social work classrooms for LGBTQ students. Findings indicate that students experienced being misgendered, tokenized, and erased through cis-/heteronormative language and classroom teachings. Although social work is guided by frameworks of social justice, microaggressions and discrimination may be vaguely glossed over, if addressed at all. This study highlights the gap between the values social work teaches and how social work education is delivered.     

Language,culture and access to mathematics: a case of one remote Aboriginal community

For many students, coming to learn mathematics is as much about the pedagogical relay through which concepts are conveyed as it is about the mathematics per se. This relay comprises social, cultural and linguistic norms as well as the mathematical discourse. In this study, I outline the practices of one remote school and how the teaching practices scaffold Indigenous learners whose home language is different from the language of instruction (Standard Australian English) as they come to learn mathematics. Through various strategies, teachers have created positive learning environments that celebrate the home languages of the students while supporting the transition into Standard Australian English and the discourse of mathematics.     

Language shift and the family: Questions from the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora1

Fishman's Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS) emphasizes the family in maintaining the heritage languages of immigrant communities. This study uses interview data from Sri Lankan Tamil communities in the U.S.A., U.K., and Canada to explain how families account for the rapid loss of Tamil in the diaspora. It shows how the positive valuation of English since British colonization, the need to make up for past deprivations because of caste, religious, and gender inequality, the pressure for migrants to join the social mainstream, and the need to resolve intergenerational tensions influence the family to forego language maintenance goals. The findings encourage us to situate the family in macro‐social institutions, power, and history in order to understand the prospects for language maintenance. The article provides an inside view of the Sri Lankan Tamil migrant families to explain how they resolve the tensions of valuing cultural identity and yet disregarding heritage language proficiency.     

Deconstructing language practices: discursive constructions of children in Individual Education Plan resource documents

Although Individual Education Plan (IEP) resource documents in Ontario, Canada aim to assist children in achieving their special educational goals, a point of disjuncture exists between the documents’ intentions and children’s actual experiences. Addressing this issue is crucial in preventing inequity and fostering educational development and social well-being for children. We employ critical discourse analysis informed by disability theory to deconstruct the language practices used to conceptualize children in IEP resource documents. Our purpose is to question the underlying assumptions regarding representations of children and illuminate the potentially harmful consequences of such conceptions. We expose the presence of both neutral and harmful language practices and consider how such language may shape the way the documents translate from policy to practice. This study offers a model through which the language of other special education documents can be critically evaluated and proposes potential avenues for creating documents that avoid disabling children further.     

Attitudes,accounts and impact assessment

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the sociological study of environmental issues. One area in which this is evident is in the application of social scientific methods in social impact assessment (SIA): the study of the anticipated social impact of proposed changes to the environment. This paper addresses one aspect of the debate about appropriate methods for SIA; whether, and how, to include the expressed views and perceptions of those who will be affected. It is argued first that although SIA ostensibly deals with the social effects of projects there is a tendency for assessments to avoid any detailed consideration of the ways in which people are affected. Instead there is an emphasis upon technical and economic considerations. When assessments do attempt to incorporate the perceptions of local people they typically do so through some form of attitude research. However if language is viewed as a form of social action rather than as a detached commentary on reality there are radical implications for the methods traditionally used in SIA to gauge people's views and attitudes. I conclude by outlining an alternative to the traditional practice of viewing peoples' accounts as a repository of their attitudes, arguing that they might be more profitably used to explore how social impacts are socially constructed.     

Reading self‐help literature in Russia: governmentality,psychology and subjectivity

Self‐help has become a booming business over the past decades and an increasingly visible part of popular media culture worldwide. The paper analyzes the arrival and effects of this cultural technology in post‐Soviet Russia after more than seventy years of socialism. It examines how Russians are engaging with popular psychology self‐help as a technology of the self and how they are making it meaningful in their lives. Drawing on a set of one‐to‐one and focus group interviews conducted with self‐help readers, it examines how these individuals negotiate the new ethics and the normative models of personhood put forward by the self‐help genre. It argues that popular psychology has offered a new language for making sense of the self and the social world, and highlights how the readers critically engage with the normalizing power of popular psychology by drawing on a number of local historically sedimented discourses.     

Mobility and Privilege Within Queer Studies and University

In this essay, the author considers how classist divisions present within queer studies may well be exacerbated by the institutionalization of queer studies within university. In particular, she examines the class privilege that attends both queer theory's and university's deployment of travel metaphors. In both cases, the language of travel is the potentially empowering language of intellectual agility and social mobility. Importantly, though, both queer theorists' and university administrators' employment of travel metaphors often serves to reaffirm cultural hegemony, specifically to sustain rather than to examine and combat social oppression. This sad irony is particularly apparent when one compares university representations of commuter and residential students. Thus, the question that faces universities is how to keep queer studies critically queer so that universities can recognize and address the various forms or models of social mobility that are present on their campuses, commuter as well as residential.     

Ideas in action: some reflections concerning teaching language skills to social work students

In recent years, there has been a decline in language skills among the younger population in Sweden. Within several different academic programs, it has been observed that students arriving at the universities do not have the skills needed to make use of what is taught. This raises a number of problems, especially within social work education, because language skills, both written and oral, are important tools for practicing social work. This article presents a way of meeting this challenge and improving the students’ skills by including them in discussions on how to write academically as part of teaching method called language guidance. The students reflect upon their own and other students’ texts, and discuss how they can be improved with regard to spelling, grammar, paragraphing, and clarity. Overall, the resources devoted to improving students’ language skills have resulted in improvements in the essays the student write later on in their education.     

Young people’s leisure patterns: testing social age,social gender,and linguistic capital hypotheses

We analysed young people’s leisure activities in order to identify their leisure habitus, discover how they combined activities into leisure patterns, and examine how leisure patterns were socially structured. We argue that the effects of age, gender, and language on how young people’s leisure patterns are structured are mediated by social class. We found that leisure practices could be classified in terms of three habitus: the frequent leisure habitus, the cultural activity habitus, and the social vs. entertainment habitus. The different combinations of these three leisure habitus by young people resulted in four patterns which we refer to as social, omnivorous, entertainment, and religious leisure patterns. The association of leisure patterns with indicators of social position suggests that, as predicted by our theoretical framework, age, gender, and language effects are diminished once we take into account the mediating role of social class. Young people’s leisure practices are therefore socially differentiated, with young immigrants forming a vulnerable group that should be the particular focus of youth leisure policies.