It is the aim of this workshop to highlight the intersection between linguistic diversity (as language proficiency, language practices and language ideologies) and social inclusion (employment, education, health, information etc.) in Australia. According to the recently released 2011 census, Australia is an increasingly linguistically diverse society with almost a quarter of the population speaking one out of more than 300 home languages other than English.
Linguistic diversity is highly relevant to social inclusion as the languages someone speaks (or not) influence which jobs they can get, which information they can access and who they can socialize with. However, there is currently a gap in the knowledge between the sociologies of inclusion and language.
This is a remarkable state of affairs given the fact that the question how language serves to reproduce social inequality was actually a foundational concern of the modern discipline of sociolinguistics and is associated with the work of most of the founding fathers of the field, Joshua Fishman, John Gumperz, Dell Hymes, Bill Labov, and, in Australia, Michael Clyne. As these men passed away, retired or directed their efforts elsewhere, the field, in keeping with the zeitgeist, took a post-modern turn in the 1990s and ‘identity’ in particular emerged as the central category to replace ‘inequality’ (Collins, 2009). This situation has recently started to change (e.g., Piller, 2011; Piller, 2012; Piller, forthcoming; Piller and Cho, in press; Piller & Takahashi, 2011a; b; in press). Even so, the remarkable fact remains that ‘social inclusion’ has rarely been used as the central lens through which an understanding of linguistic diversity has been attempted. The workshop will serve to disseminate existing work and broaden the conversation in contemporary Australia.
Broadly speaking, the situation described above for linguistics is mirrored in sociology. There, too, we find that ‘language’ was central to the work of at least two of the major theorists of social reproduction, Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu. However, today, even such eminent theorists of social justice as Barry (2005) largely ignore the linguistic dimension of social reproduction and policy makers in social inclusion around the world almost consistently ignore language. If they do consider language as mediating social inclusion, assumptions about language learning tend to be naïve and simplistic, prescribing linguistic assimilation and reducing it to a simple matter of individual responsibility.
In sum, it is the key aim of this workshop to build on foundational interdisciplinary work exploring the intersection between language and inequality in a new era of global social transformations and with specific attention to the Australian national context. The overall aim of the workshop is to put the intersection of linguistic diversity and social justice on the map, both as the central challenge for a sociolinguistics of mobility for the 21st century and as a central policy challenge for Australia, as it is for all other internationalizing and globalizing societies. Bridging the gap between the sociologies of language and inclusion is essential to inform language policies that serve the common good.