Julie Byrd Clark

Heterogeneity and a Sociolinguistics of Multilingualism: Reconfiguring French Language Pedagogy

This article focuses on the current state of the field of French language pedagogy (FLP) and education in Canada. The author provides a brief history of French as a Second Language (FSL) education and Official bilingualism in Canada to demonstrate the social, historical, political and ideological dimensions that have shaped (and continue to shape) ways of thinking about FLP. In relation to the state of current research, this article highlights some of the contributions sociolinguistic research brings to contemporary thinking about multilingualism as it relates to FLP, by examining what the author refers to as the sociolinguistics of multilingualism. This approach considers the social construction of bi/multilingualism and the everyday practices of multilinguals in diverse contexts, in relation to policy, theory, and professional practice. With the growing number of multilingual students from diverse backgrounds participating in FSL teacher and language education programs, there is a critical need to (re)shape pedagogies that reflect the complex linguistic repertoires and social practices of youth with multiple, heterogeneous identities in today’s classrooms: diversity within Canada’s linguistic duality. From this vein, the author argues for a multidimensional, reflexive, and interdisciplinary approach for FLP and official bilingual education: one that values heterogeneity; as well as fosters a deeper engagement with the teaching (and learning) of languages, namely French.

So why do you want to teach French? Representations of multilingualism and language investment through a reflexive critical sociolinguistic ethnography

In this paper, I demonstrate how four self-identified multi-generational Italian Canadian youth socially construct their identities and invest in language learning while participating in a French teacher education programme in Toronto, Canada. In doing so, I draw upon critical ethnography and discourse analysis, using multiple field methods to highlight the different conceptions of what being Canadian, multilingual and multicultural means to these youths and the ways in which they position themselves vis-à-vis the acquisition of French as official language. I furthermore illustrate how some of their lived social and linguistic practices problematise social categories and labels. This work acknowledges the creation of social spaces for overlapping identities, which could possibly challenge the status quo, crossing both societal and social borders in Canada and beyond.In this paper, I demonstrate how four self-identified multi-generational Italian Canadian youth socially construct their identities and invest in language learning while participating in a French teacher education programme in Toronto, Canada. In doing so, I draw upon critical ethnography and discourse analysis, using multiple field methods to highlight the different conceptions of what being Canadian, multilingual and multicultural means to these youths and the ways in which they position themselves vis-a-vis the acquisition of French as official language. I furthermore illustrate how some of their lived social and linguistic practices problematise social categories and labels. This work acknowledges the creation of social spaces for overlapping identities, which could possibly challenge the status quo, crossing both societal and social borders in Canada and beyond.

Introduction: Journeys of integration between multiple worlds: reconceptualising multilingualism through complex transnational spaces

Within the last decade, there have been multiple discourses and positionings on multilingualism and processes of globalisation (e.g. language as a commodity, language death, linguistic standardisation, language and citizenship, language and superdiveristy). This interdisciplinary selection of papers (drawing upon social theory, linguistic anthropology, postcolonial studies, applied linguistics, history and social psychological approaches) consisting of scholars from both Western Europe (Hambye; Stratilaki) and Canada (da Silva, Lamoureux; Richards) focuses on the challenges, negotiations and opportunities regarding the social, linguistic and economic integration of linguistic minorities living in multilingual, democratic societies (Belgium, Canada, France and Germany). This special issue arose from a symposium that I organised on ‘Multilingualism in complex transnational spaces’ at the Sociolinguistics Symposium 18 (SS 18) which took place at Southampton, UK, in early September 2010. The papers presented in this issue are thus extended, developed versions of the SS 18 presentations. This collection of articles makes a particular contribution to the study of multilingualism and to the journal’s readership, as it examines how languages or certain representations of languages become both symbolic and significant resources for individuals living between worlds with transnational (and/or multiple) identities. Each article, while unique, shares a common focus on the multi-dimensional complexity of integration which involves struggles and persistence through many constraints and which renders critical reconceptualisations of language and identity. In exploring these variegated meanings of multilingualism, we can begin to understand not only how and why certain social processes come about but also, and more importantly, the critical need for policies to reflect the ever-increasing heterogeneity and diversity in language education as well as citizenship, rather than categorising individuals and languages as socially imagined homogeneous entities (Byrd Clark, 2007, 2009; Heller & Labrie, 2003; Rampton, 1995; Rizvi, 2009). While all of the papers in this issue employ ethnographic methods and focus on the significance of the social value of multilingualism in a globalised world, drawing upon Pierre Bourdieu’s work, particularly on his theorisation of social action and its structuring, this special issue provides for the first time in one volume the merging of ongoing debates in Applied Linguistics around critical conceptualisations of multilingualism and identity: a poststructuralist critical sociolinguistic materialist approach (da Silva; Hambye & Richards) following Heller (2007, 2011) who builds upon Bourdieu’s economics of linguistic exchanges; a meterolingualism or language as local practice approach offered by Pennycook (2010), looking at the lived realities of individuals today, with the possibility of liberation from the sensitive language International Journal of Multilingualism Vol. 9, No. 2, May 2012, 132 137