Figure 1: Multilingual sign in Abu Dhabi with power disparities indicated through order and size of text

In the critically acclaimed Barbie movie, released in cinemas in mid-2023, Barbie and Ken depart from their fictional utopia of Barbie Land for the ‘real world’ of California, USA. When they arrive, they are very much outsiders observing their environment with new eyes.

It does not take long for a strong message to sink in: their new urban landscape reflects power dynamics between groups of people.

White men dominate, from appearing on banknotes, being carved into mountains, and holding the lion’s share of high-powered and lucrative positions. Ken thus believes it will be easy for him to find a job as he fits the profile of ‘the powerful’ based on race and gender alone. Barbie, on the other hand, finds her identity as a strong, independent, and ambitious woman suddenly out of sync with her surroundings and social interactions. Their reflexive positioning, or the way they view their own identities, shifts according to interactive positioning, or the way they are viewed by others, which in turn is influenced by societal norms and the social construction of reality.

Gender hierarchies parallel linguistic hierarchies

Upon leaving my local independent cinema in the Cotswold town of Chipping Norton on a rainy July day, I contemplated, in particular, one of the many strong messages embedded in the movie. This was the direct interconnectedness of semiotic landscapes, symbolic power, and identities. While the movie focused on challenging the dominance of the patriarchy in society, as a sociolinguist, the parallels with language hierarchies leapt out, particularly in relation to the omnipresence of English, or linguistic imperialism, in many global contexts.

Figure 2: Inclusion of Musqueam on signage at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

In a similar way to Barbie and Ken’s experience of gendered power dynamics being all-encompassing, in multilingual settings, the languages we see in public places not only impact language ideologies and linguistic hierarchies but also affect levels of belonging in a space. In linguistically diverse cities across the globe such as Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) or Vancouver, Canada, official language(s) and English as a global language tend to dominate. While there may be attempts to ‘welcome’ speakers of other languages, such attempts often fall short of true inclusion. For example, greetings in as many languages as will fit onto a sign can often be seen outside tourist attractions and money exchange stores. However, meaningful and balanced multilingualism on signage in public spaces is less common.

English on top

While select second or third languages are strategically included in ‘sticky places’ or spaces which evoke feelings of cultural belonging such as ethnic grocery stores, cafes and restaurants, or where linguistic minorities gather, such multilingual signage is often skewed in favour of dominant languages such as English.

Linguistic hierarchies, in this sense, not only relate to lack of second or third languages but also the order of languages, size, and amount of text. For example, the inclusion of bilingual Indigenous language / English books in Canadian stores is a positive move toward representation and decolonization but at present these books represent a tiny portion of stock sold in stores and they are usually displayed as a special feature.

Figure 3: Dominance of English on signage at an EMI university in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

In Abu Dhabi, the inclusion of three languages for a social distancing sign related to the COVID pandemic also sends a message about linguistic hierarchies by placing English at the top, Arabic second, and Filipino (in smaller print) at the bottom (Figure 1). Here power disparities which relate to language and social position (many nannies in the UAE are from the Philippines, whereas the English and Arabic text is directed at parents) can be seen in the linguistic landscape in terms of ordering and size of text.

Language hierarchies in education-scapes

Particularly in English-medium education in multilingual university settings, which are on the rise globally, English-only or English-dominated signage and language objects tend to overshadow not only instruction but also education-scapes, or the linguistic and semiotic landscapes of educational settings. To take Canadian universities as an example, efforts to include Indigenous languages in education-scapes have been made from the east coast to the west coast, in Cape Breton and Vancouver (Figure 2).

Such initiatives are important in terms of decolonizing education-scapes. However, the representation of languages on many Canadian campuses, which host linguistically diverse student populations, is heavily weighted in favour of monolingual English practices. In the Arab Gulf cities of Abu Dhabi, UAE and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, English-medium universities, bilingual (English/ Arabic) signage shares space with many monolingual (English only) signs, sending out a message about the symbolic power of English in these settings (Figure 3). Even when the target readers’ first language is Arabic, as in the case of signs about Islamic dress codes (Figure 3), the chosen language for the text is still English.

Looking at multilingual signage with new eyes

If we imagine that ‘new eyes’ were viewing these global multilingual cities, what message would be received? Similar to Barbie and Ken’s perception of patriarchal dominance and power in California, English-dominated landscapes send out a message about which languages, and speakers, are valued or devalued in a space. In this sense, issues of access, inclusion and belonging, not only relate to gender and race, but also language use and linguistic identities. As Nicholas (2023) states, a main take away from the Barbie movie is that ‘hierarchy and rigid gender benefits nobody’. Through a language lens, greater thought and planning needs to be given to ensuring neither metaphorical ‘Barbies’ nor ‘Kens’ feel excluded, under-represented, or devalued in the real world’s linguistic and semiotic landscapes.

Mis dos voces (Image credit: Rayon Verde)

Imagine this: you go out to a fast-food restaurant and order a burger. While you wait for your order to be filled, you anxiously hope that the server will get your order right and that the food in the bag will be exactly what you wanted. Sometimes, that is what happens, and you feel a great sense of accomplishment and gratitude. Other times, you get the extra hot sauce that burns your tongue and the chicken that your child refuses to eat. When that happens, you experience a sense of shame and guilt. Not even for a second do you entertain the thought of returning the incorrect order and asking for a substitute.

Sounds strange? Well, this is not someone with an anxiety disorder or a social phobia but an immigrant who does not (yet) speak the language of their new country (well). It is the story of one of the three Colombian and Mexican immigrant women in Canada featured in Mis Dos Voces (My Two Voices).

To read on, head to the Berlinale Forum website.

Figure 1: Bilingual Squamish and English placard in West Vancouver’s Park Royal shopping village

As the Covid-19 pandemic heads toward its third year, with the Omicron variant in full swing, there is an ongoing need to reflect on language practices in multilingual contexts.

During my spring/summer 2021 research sabbatical in my West Vancouver home, I observed signs of the pandemic in every public space. As a sociolinguist, my ‘process of noticing’ centered around ‘language in use’ and social context. While the representation of multilingualism in globalized spaces is important to explore in ordinary times, Covid-induced disruptions to habituated social practices and familiarized communication patterns have shone a spotlight on linguistic diversity, access, inclusion, and social justice.

The City of Worlds – linguistic diversity in West Vancouver

Figure 2: Bilingual (English and Persian) bakery sign with monolingual (English) Covid-19 signs

Metro Vancouver, in which West Vancouver is one of its 21 municipalities, has many nicknames such as ‘Hollywood North’, ‘Lotusland’, ‘Raincouver’, ‘City of Glass’ and ‘City of Worlds’. The latter is perhaps the most apt owing not only to the area’s geographical diversity but also its highly multicultural and multilingual ecology. In West Vancouver, 41 percent of its population are immigrants. The two most commonly spoken languages other than English are Chinese and Persian with approximately 34 percent of recent immigrants to West Vancouver coming from China and 22 percent coming from Iran.

While English dominates West Vancouver’s linguistic landscape, languages other than English can also be seen, particularly in ‘sticky places’ or spaces which evoke feelings of cultural belonging and emotions such as ethnic grocery stores, cafes, or clubs. Bilingual signs in Canada’s two official languages, French and English, are also commonly seen in Federal spaces such as post offices or in national parks.

Initiatives to revitalize indigenous languages such as Squamish/Skwxwú7mesh have led to further representation of linguistic diversity on some street signs and on placards (Figure 1).

Linguistic diversity on Covid signage lagging behind

Despite the presence of languages other than English on a variety of non-Covid signage, when observing the proliferation of Covid signage in the pandemic’s second year, linguistic diversity was notably limited. For example, Covid signage in a Persian bakery (Figure 2) is monolingual (English only) despite the fact that non-Covid signage is bilingual (English and Persian).

Figure 3: Monolingual (English only) municipality-produced Covid-19 sign

In public spaces such as Ambleside Park, which runs parallel to West Vancouver’s seawall, municipality-produced Covid signage is in English only, with the use of local wildlife incorporated into signs, as seen by the eagle’s wingspan symbolizing the required two-meter social distancing rules (Figure 3). The use of wildlife to localize Covid social distancing signage has also been found in other areas of North America such as bear images in North Vancouver, ravens in the Yukon, and alligators in Florida. While such signage promotes inclusion of other living beings in the community, extensions to other languages are not evident.

Bilingual and trilingual Covid signs are rare, and consist of either Federal government-produced English/French signage such as the sign in transit on a Canada Post/Poste Canada van (Figure 4) or parts of English signs having been translated by community members as in library signage.

Figure 4: Bilingual (English and French) sign on a Canada Post/Poste Canada van

Even though only part of the large English Covid poster in the West Vancouver Memorial Library has been translated into Chinese and Persian (Figure 5), this translation effort stands out as important not only for accessing information in languages other than English but also for reinforcing spaces of belonging for linguistic minorities. To develop this practice further, the full poster could be translated rather than only the top part and attention could be given to making the languages on bilingual or trilingual signage equal in size and prominence. While some of the symbols used on the English poster communicate the message effectively without the need for words, other symbols are more ambiguous.

The right to write: Covid-19 care and resistance

More common than bilingual or trilingual Covid signs in West Vancouver are handmade artifacts indirectly related to Covid, containing symbols together with English slogans, known as ‘language objects’. While people in many places around the world displayed pictures of rainbows and hearts in their windows or on front doors, West Vancouverites tended to create signs of care, solidarity and hope in public spaces rather than in private homes. Slogans such as ‘smile’, ‘love’, ‘you’re the best’ appeared on objects in the environment, like stones or trees. The ‘language objects’ in Figure 6 serve no informational or utilitarian purpose, rather they portray messages of care, hope, positivity and solidarity during difficult times.

Figure 5: Trilingual signage (English, Chinese, and Persian) at the West Vancouver Memorial Library

Such language objects were monolingual (English only) with symbols such as hearts and smiles.

Another way in which the public interacted with the linguistic landscape of West Vancouver, was through grassroots homemade signs in the form of monolingual (English only) posters taped to trees, lamp posts or walls in public places. Such posters tended to voice political or philosophical viewpoints on the pandemic, as seen in Figure 7.

Concerns for freedom were expressed openly by ‘talking back to the linguistic landscape’, whereby residents felt they had the ‘right to write’ in public spaces. Such voices of resistance to Covid-related safety measures and restrictions seen in the West Vancouver linguistic landscape stood in sharp contrast the Covid linguistic landscapes in Abu Dhabi (where I had spent the first year of the pandemic) in which signs of resistance to Covid safety rules were notably absent.

Toward Covid signage accurately reflecting multilingual ecologies

Figure 6: Language objects in Ambleside Park showing care, positivity, and solidarity

In studies conducted during the onset of the pandemic in 2020, lack of access to information in minority languages was reported in a wide variety of international contexts. Those not proficient in the dominant language of a given context were often found to be excluded from receiving safety information in public spaces.

During the onset of the pandemic, the immediate need for swift assemblance of safety signage led sign-makers to use the linguistic resources they had at hand, often resulting in English being the default choice. However, a year later, Covid signage remains heavily skewed in favor of monolingual signage in dominant languages such as English, in the case of West Vancouver. Only federal Covid signs are bilingual (English and French), and there appear to be few efforts by community members to translate English Covid signs into commonly spoken languages.

Figure 7: Monolingual (English only) grassroots sign voicing resistance to Covid-19 restrictions

For inclusivity goals to be better met, language on signage needs to match languages spoken in specific speech communities. Especially during a crisis, the importance of addressing the mismatch between the language chosen for public communication and the language repertoires of the target audience is amplified with regard to safety as well as a sense of belonging and value during difficult times.

Lessons learned from the pandemic’s first two years include the need for language on Covid signage to accurately reflect multilingual ecologies in highly diverse contexts for greater safety, care, and inclusion, especially amidst current Omicron concerns.

More on Covid-19 crisis communication

Keep up with all our Covid-19 crisis communication coverage on the Language on the Move Covid-19 archives.

Dr Fadila Boutouchent during her guest lecture at Macquarie University

When she was in kindergarten, my oldest daughter came home one day talking about “our soldiers” who “went to war for us“. It was the Anzac Day history lesson, a day which commemorates Australia’s involvement in World War 1 and the loss of life which resulted. However, just who was that “us” supposed to be?

My daughter has past and present relatives from the (former) Austro-Hungarian, British and Ottoman empires. As is true of most Australians, during WW1 my daughter’s ancestors would have actually been on both sides of the battle. This made me particularly uncomfortable with the idea of pitching a unified “us” against “them”.

As a parent, I expect my school to utilize a curriculum which is inclusive, not exclusionary and divisive. In fact, most of the time, they do. This was the only time I could recall that our school had tapped into this way of thinking about culture and belonging.

Educational curricula are powerful sites for the construction of national identity.

How does that work in a diverse society? What happens to newcomers who may not fit the dominant imagined identity? How can schools fullfil their obligation to meet the needs of students of diverse backgrounds while still attempting to instill a shared sense of identity and belonging?

The research of Dr. Fadila Boutouchent (University of Regina, Canada) addresses these important and fascinating questions and asks how immigrant parents perceive their children’s education, particularly in Francophone schools, which have as a central role the maintenance and construction of a Canadian Francophone identity. As part of the Lectures in Linguistic Diversity series at Macquarie University, Dr. Boutouchent presented her research on these schools in the small city of Moncton in New Brunswick, Canada.

New Brunswick is a province with a bilingual language policy, which means that citizens have the right to access services in either French or English. In addition, New Brunswick prioritizes French-speaking immigrants, in order to maintain its Francophone community.

In the Canadian context, research into immigrant students has tended to focus on Anglophone schools which are in the majority, have more experience with and are better resourced to manage the needs of diverse students. In contrast, little is known about the experience of migrant children in Francophone educational contexts, which are managed by the Francophone community.

Bilingual welcome sign at the entrance to Moncton city (Source: Wikipedia)

So how do recent migrant families fit into this picture? Dr. Boutouchent and her team sought to understand how immigrant families perceive their children’s education before and after their arrival in Moncton, and how they are involved in their social and educational integration.

The researchers interviewed 14 parents of families who had migrated from Africa or the Caribbean between 3-10 years prior and whose children were enrolled in Francophone schools. They found that there were some key issues for immigrant parents across the group.

The first was that immigrant parents felt they were not informed about the school system before arriving in Moncton. In particular, they did not know about the existence of Francophone schools. This group of parents was mostly highly educated and had very high expectations of their children’s educational success. Although they had trusted that the school would be good quality because it was in a developed country, some were disappointed, and one mother even said she would have liked to teach her daughter at home if she had been able to.

These issues of quality were at times compounded by language. The local variety of French is quite distinct. The Acadian French identity is historically very strong, and is marked by an accent which may be difficult for newcomers. This is similar to my own research on adult migrants in linguistic intermarriage who reported that they had unexpected problems with the Australian English accent on arrival.

The Chiac slogan “Right Fiers!” (“Right proud!”) has caused controversy (Source: cbc.ca)

We know from the previous lectures in the series that children’s willingness to speak different languages changes over time and that schooling is a key time for the formation of language habits. A particular challenge for immigrant children in Moncton is constituted by the fact that local youths speak a variety called Chiac, a mixture of French and English. Francophone migrants raised with standard French found Chiac incomprehensible and alienating.

One participant reported that her son began to stay inside during break times because he could not understand or speak to his fellow students.

If you can’t speak to other kids, how can you feel like you belong?

Parents also reported that their children experienced bullying and racism, and that the schools were not always well-equipped to manage the needs of refugee children who were not at the same educational level as their peers. They also regarded the lack of inclusive, multi-ethnic content in the curriculum as a problem.

There are no easy answers as to how to balance the educational and linguistic needs of newcomers with those of old-timers, but a good first step is to listen to the voices of those who are living the encounter. Small cities, like small schools, have the advantage that the distances between people and institutions are smaller, making both problems and solutions more visible. This also means that change is potentially easier to implement.

Dr. Boutouchent finished her lecture by making the case that Moncton is a site where Francophone schools could become “spaces for intercultural communication and nourish a culture of understanding and acceptance”. That sounds like a goal which all schools and parents could agree on.

Reference:

Benimmas, A., Boutouchent, F., & Kamano, L. (2017). Relationship Between School and Immigrant Families in French-Language Minority Communities in Moncton, New Brunswick: Parents’ Perceptions of Their Children’s Integration. In G. Tibe Bonifacio & J. L. Drolet (Eds.), Canadian Perspectives on Immigration in Small Cities (pp. 235-253). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Condemned to consume

My migration newsfeed in the past few weeks has been dominated by news about the Syrian refugee crisis and the various European and international responses. But there have also been two other noteworthy migration news: one relates to the changing face of immigration to Canada as increasingly highly educated migrants are admitted and the other relates to revelations that the Australian 7-Eleven convenience stores systematically exploit international students and other temporary visa holders.

How do these various news hang together?

“Traditional” immigration countries such as Australia and Canada have a relatively small refugee intake in comparison to their various work migration schemes. While the former dominate the news, the latter dominate the numbers. According to ABS data, the net immigration to Australia, in the financial year 2013-14, for instance, was over 212,000 people; humanitarian entrants accounted for only around six percent of these. So, maybe unusually internationally, Australia accepts far more “economic migrants” than “refugees.”

The rationale for this selection is that skilled and well-educated migrants, who fill labour shortages, are good for the economy; while refugees are a “burden” on the economy. One of the many complexities that this dichotomy overlooks is, of course, that refugees are often likely to be skilled and well-educated, too.

Let’s ignore that detail for the moment and ask whether migrants’ skills and education necessarily lead to social inclusion.

Social inclusion is a notoriously difficult concept to define. Despite frequent references to social inclusion in contemporary national and international policies, there is actually a notable lack of consensus as to what constitutes social inclusion. Most commentators see the promotion of economic well-being as constituting the core of social inclusion. However, the contributors to two recent collections devoted to “Linguistic Diversity and Social Inclusion” that I (co)edited for the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism and the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics found it necessary to go beyond the economic core meaning of social inclusion to also include a wider meaning of social inclusion as a sense of community participation and belonging. The contributors showed that inclusion is a multifaceted phenomenon and linguistically diverse populations may well be included on one level but excluded on another.

Recent research with Soviet Jewish migrants to Germany offers a highly pertinent discussion. The researcher, Sveta Roberman, undertook a year-long ethnographic project to examine the migration and settlement experiences of this group. She developed the concept of “inclusive exclusion” in response to the following observation:

I kept sensing a peculiar atmosphere, intangible and hard to describe, that pervades the lives of many, an aura of dissatisfaction and restlessness that borders on—or has become—apathy and resignation, articulated in an often-expressed sentiment: “We are kind of existing here, not really living.” (Roberman 2015, p. 744)

It’s an observation that resonates with a lot of the research into the language learning and settlement experiences of adult migrants conducted with very different origin groups by my students and myself here in Australia.

The people Roberman conducted her research with are Jewish migrants from the former Soviet Union, mostly from Russia and Ukraine, who settled in Germany in the 1990s and early 2000s. About 220,000 Soviet Jews were admitted during that period. For the re-unified Germany, accepting substantial numbers of Jewish migrants was yet another step on the long road of atonement for the Holocaust. It was hoped that these migrants would contribute to a revival of Jewish cultural and religious life in Germany.

“Germany of all places?!” (Source: Jewish Museum Frankfurt)

Around 80% of these migrants were tertiary-educated and had established professional careers in the Soviet Union. Most of them were secular and, because “Jew” was an ethnic and not a religious category in the Soviet Union, only about a third of these migrants ended up joining Jewish religious communities in Germany. In fact, in contrast to Soviet Jews migrating to Israel or the USA, those coming to Germany were probably least motivated by ideological reasons. Roberman’s participants did not hesitate to explain that they had migrated for economic reasons, in search of a better life.

This context seems ideal to examine the social inclusion of migrants: a highly-educated migrant group, a high degree of cultural similarity between migrants and hosts, and public desire on the part of the destination society to embrace this particular migrant group.

A migration fairy-tale? Not quite.

In the way social inclusion is usually conceived as economic participation and cultural recognition, Roberman’s participants had little to complain:

When speaking about their encounters with the host country, my interviewees were not troubled by their economic situation; they felt secure and protected in that sphere of their lives. Neither did they complain about the lack of possibilities for the articulation of their Russian or Jewish identities: the former could be practiced at the range of Russian cultural centers, clubs, and libraries, while the latter could be actualized and maintained within Jewish communal centers and organizations. Even the constraint they faced in political participation, because many immigrants lacked full citizenship, was hardly an issue for my interviewees. (Roberman 2015, p. 747)

Migration had enabled the participants to partake of Western economic affluence, they had received significant, though not always full, legal and political citizenship rights, and, as a group, cultural recognition.

So what was missing? Access to regular, stable and meaningful employment.

Participants who, at the time of migration, were in their mid-30s or older found it extremely difficult to find employment commensurate with their education, skills and experience. This was not for lack of trying. Participants were deeply influenced by the Soviet work ethos and extremely resourceful in their attempts to find work. The German state also helped with the provision of language and training courses and a suite of short-term work and internship programs designed to help migrants transition into full-time regular employment.

Except they didn’t.

The usual intangible barriers of accent, non-recognition of overseas qualifications, lack of local experience, etc. that we have often discussed here on Language on the Move applied in this case, too. Age discrimination was another factor. Middle-aged participants in the study ended up trying to secure stable employment for years. During that time they were supported by welfare and a range of casual short-term jobs, including state-sponsored employment schemes.

Olga, a qualified and experienced teacher, for instance, arrived in Germany when she was 40 years old. Her qualifications were not recognized and she was involved in various re-training schemes. She also held various casual jobs as an attendant in an aged-care home and as a social worker. When she turned 50 without having achieved regular standard employment, she was officially “removed” from the labour market and declared an “early retiree.”

Being unable to find regular employment meant that the participants struggled to construct a coherent life-story and to see meaning in their migration, as was the case for Olga:

I was sitting in her apartment as she tried to compose a coherent narrative of the 10-year period of her life in Germany. But that seemed to be an unachievable task: the flow of her life narrative stopped at the point of emigration. What followed were fragmented facts that she resisted bringing together into a meaningful story, seeing little achievement or sense in her 10-year migration experience. (Roberman 2015, p. 752)

Another participant, Mark, who had been a cameraman in Kiev and was 53 years old when he arrived in Germany had given up looking for work after six years and lived on welfare. He said, “Once I had some objectives in life, I aspired to something, I had some plans, […] Today, I wake up in the morning, and I have one and the same question to ask myself: what do I do today?” (quoted in Roberman 2015, p. 754).

Sveta Roberman, Sweet Burdens (SUNY Press, 2015)

Like others in his situation, he filled his life with surfing the internet, watching TV, attending doctor’s appointments and, above all, shopping. Some developed elaborate routes to stretch out daily grocery shopping, others threw themselves into the pursuit of specials and sales. While these activities fill time, in the long run they breed a deep sense of isolation and loneliness. Being an anonymous shopper trapped them in the position of social strangers.

At one level, consumption spaces are some of the least discriminatory spaces imaginable; one participant made this point with regard to language proficiency:

One does not need language in the supermarket. The system is itself interested to sell you the thing, and the system finds its way to do it; they succeed in selling it to you in any way. It does not matter what language you speak. (quoted in Roberman 2015, p. 756)

At the same time, this participant makes the point that consumption spaces are spaces of extreme dislocation. In the supermarket or shopping mall it does not matter who you are. In fact, it does not even matter that you are there. Being reduced to filling their time with consumption resulted in a sharp feeling of невостребованность: “uselessness,” “redundancy,” like unclaimed luggage. One participant compared her situation to that of cows who are allowed to graze on lush green pastures but nobody bothers to come and milk them.

In short, participants were free to consume: they had achieved a comfortable and economically secure existence through their migration. However, their access to resources of real value – stable and meaningful work – was constrained. In this context, the freedom to consume condemned them to consume. Consumption did not result in a sense of dignity and self-worth, it did not allow them to forge coherent positive life-stories and it did not provide them with a sense of belonging. While included economically, legally and culturally, their participation is ultimately constrained – a condition Roberman calls “exclusive inclusion.”

Our economic system is characterised by overproduction and there is the regular need to dispose of surplus goods. Consequently, even relatively poor members of affluent consumer societies, such as Roberman’s irregularly employed and/or welfare-dependent interviewees, are readily included in the sphere of consumption. By contrast, stable and regular employment is in short supply. Exclusion from this scare and valuable resource continues to be a powerful way to reproduce social hierarchies. Disadvantaged groups of local people may be similarly excluded but migrants are particularly vulnerable on post-industrial labour markets and to the unemployment, underemployment and exploitation that go for “flexibility.” As Roberman (2015, p. 759f.) concludes:

Exclusive inclusion is a much more civilized, camouflaged form of exclusion. It seems to be mild. But, in spite of its apparent mildness, exclusive inclusion, which limits access to social resources of real value and to participation in the arenas of social recognition and belonging, is no less destructive in the ways it undermines the excluded individual’s world, threatens humanness, and strains the social fabric as a whole.

References

Piller, I. (2014). Linguistic Diversity and Social Inclusion in Australia. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 37(3), 190-197.

Piller, I., & Takahashi, K. (2011). Linguistic Diversity and Social Inclusion. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14(4), 371 – 381.

Roberman, S. (2015). Not to Be Hungry Is Not Enough: An Insight Into Contours of Inclusion and Exclusion in Affluent Western Societies Sociological Forum, 30 (3), 743-763 DOI: 10.1111/socf.12190

Further reading

Zwanzig Jahre Jüdische Zuwanderung nach Deutschland. (2009, 2009-09-22). Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland.

Ferguson, A., & Toft, K. (2015, 2015-09-02). 7-Eleven: The Price of Convenience. ABC Four Corners.

Goldmann, A., & Krauss, M. (2015, 2015-01-21). Weniger Jüdische Zuwanderer im Jahr 2013. Jüdische Allgemeine.

Ortiz, A. (2015, 2015-09-08). Increasingly Mobile and Educated: The Future of Canadian Immigration. World Education News and Reviews.

Shcherbatova, S., & Plessentin, U. (2013, 2013-11-18). Zuwanderung und Selbstfindung: Die Jüdischen Gemeinden im Wiedervereinten Deutschland. Heinrich Böll Stiftung: Migrationspolitisches Portal.

Sveta Roberman recently also published a book about the larger study, which, if the Google preview is anything to go by, is even more fascinating:

Roberman, S. (2015). Sweet Burdens: Welfare and Communality among Russian Jews in Germany. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Linguistic diversity in Sydney (Source: Sydney Morning Herald)

The media in Anglophone countries regularly engage in a bit of a bragfest about the linguistic diversity of their cities. In Sydney, where I live, the local paper only recently boasted: ‘From Afrikaans to Telugu, Hebrew to Wu, the depth and diversity of languages in Sydney rivals some of the world’s largest cities.’ Not to be outdone, Melbourne – Sydney’s eternal rival for urban preeminence in Australia – quickly followed suit and declared itself ‘justifiably proud of its linguistic diversity’ because ‘more languages are spoken in Melbourne than there are countries in the world.’ These two Australian cities are not alone in their rivalry over the greater number of languages spoken in their communities. Across the Pacific, Canadian media, too, tally the linguistic diversity of Canadian cities and find ‘Toronto leading the pack in language diversity, followed by Vancouver and Montreal.’ Similarly, the media of Canada’s southern neighbor suggest that US cities, too, compete in some kind of multilingualism championship: ‘New York remains the most multilingual city in the country, with 47% of its massive population speaking at least two languages.’ Continuing our journey east across the Atlantic, British media play the same game and we learn that Manchester has been ‘revealed as most linguistically diverse city in western Europe’ while London is celebrated as the ‘multilingual capital of the world.’

Strangely, while media texts such as these regularly brag about the extent of urban multilingualism, another set of media texts can be found simultaneously that bemoans the language deficit in Anglophone countries. Here we learn that the populations of Anglophone countries are lacking the multilingual skills of the rest of the world and will therefore be left behind when it comes to the global economic opportunities of the future. There is concern that students are not studying foreign languages in school and that, as a result, they will miss out on job opportunities at home and abroad. Additionally, lack of foreign language capabilities is presented as diminishing opportunities for international trade, limiting global political influence and threatening national security. The situation seems to be so dire that employers have to leave positions unfilled, secret services are missing out on crucial information and policy makers simply throw up their hands in despair and fund students to study abroad even if they have no knowledge of the language in their destination nor any intention of studying it while there.

Reading depressing news such as these one has to wonder how they can be squared with upbeat language news circulating in the media at the same time. How can the cities of Anglophone nations be hothouses of linguistic diversity where large numbers of languages are spoken by the population at the same time that there is a widespread linguistic deficit?!

The answer to this conundrum lies in the fact that commentators and politicians bemoaning the fact that Americans, Australians or Britons do not know languages other than English have a very different segment of the population in mind than those commentators who note their multilingualism.

Clive Holes, a professor of Arabic at Oxford University, explains the differential visibility of language skills with reference to Arabic in the UK: there are few students who study Arabic at university – a language for which there is high demand both in the private and public sector – and those who do are mostly middle-class students, who have no previous experience with Arabic. The kind of language they study is ‘Arabic university style,’ a variety that is focused on written texts and a standard form that is quite different from the varieties of Arabic spoken across the Arab world.

At the same time, Britain is also home to a large number of people who learnt to speak Arabic in the family. 159,290 residents of England and Wales identified Arabic as their main language in the 2011 census. According to Professor Holes these people have ‘more useable language skills’ than those who study Arabic at university without a background in the language. Even so, those who have Arabic as their main language are being overlooked for Arabic-language jobs: ‘They are an incredibly valuable national resource that we are failing totally to use.’

The existence of an apparent language deficit in contexts of so-called linguistic super-diversity points, yet again, to the fact that some language skills are more equal than others. When it comes to bragging about linguistic diversity and the number of languages spoken in a place, we are happy to count ‘diverse populations;’ but when it comes to the economic opportunities of multilingualism, these same ‘diverse populations’ become invisible all of a sudden.

Multilingual Hyderabad (Source: Wikimedia)

It is by now widely known that bilingualism delays the onset of dementia. What is less widely known is the fact that this knowledge is almost exclusively derived from Canadian research conducted by Ellen Bialystok and her team (e.g., Bialystock et al., 2007). The data for these studies come from comparing monolingual English-speaking native-born Canadian dementia sufferers with their bilingual counterparts. The bilinguals are all migrants to Canada who had learned English during adolescence or young adulthood and come from a variety of first-language backgrounds with Central and Eastern Europeans predominating.

This data base raises an obvious problem: is it bilingualism that delays the onset of dementia or is it the fact of migration or other confounding variables?

Research published in Neurology last week addresses exactly this bias in a study of the relationship between bilingualism and onset of dementia in a non-migrant population in India. The researchers, Alladi et al., investigated age at onset of dementia in a group of more than 600 dementia sufferers in Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh. Hyderabad constitutes a highly diverse linguistic environment: the official languages of Andhra Pradesh are Telugu and Urdu; English and Hindi are widely spoken due to their official status on the national level; other languages with significant numbers of speakers include Tamil, Marathi and Kannada.

Bi- and multilingualism are indigenous to Hyderabad – as they are to most of India – and bi- and multilinguals do not systematically differ from monolinguals on migration status or other variables.

In this cohort, the researchers found that the onset of dementia in the bilingual population was delayed by 4.5 years (a finding very similar to the 4.3 years found by Bialystok et al. in Canada).

A variable that often correlates with bilingualism in these studies is education and here Alladi et al. are also breaking new ground by including an illiterate cohort. Among illiterates (defined as people without any formal education), the protective effect of bilingualism was even greater: the onset of dementia in bilingual illiterates was 6 years later than in their monolingual counterparts.

Why does speaking more than one language have these protective effects? Having to switch between languages on a regular basis enhances “executive control:” making frequent linguistic choices – activating one language and suppressing another – is a form of practicing cognitive multitasking. Like other forms of cognitive practice – participating in continuing education, undertaking stimulating intellectual activities, engaging in physical exercise – bilingualism thus contributes to an individual’s “cognitive reserve” and wards off the effects of aging a bit longer.

Confirmation that bilingualism delays the onset of dementia in a different bilingual population than the one studied to date is good news for bilinguals.

Even more importantly, the study by Alladi et al. makes a significant contribution to bilingualism research by extending the evidence base to a population with a very different sociolinguistic profile from the one that predominates in the literature. Even so, psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic approaches to bilingualism still have a long way to go before they will truly meet.

The gap between the psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics of bilingualism is nicely illustrated by another of Alladi et al.’s findings: in the Hyderabad sample, the protective effect of bilingualism does not increase with speaking more than two languages, i.e. from the perspective of the delayed onset of dementia, trilingualism or quadrilingualism do not offer any more benefits than bilingualism. This finding is in contrast to another Canadian study (Chertkow et al., 2010). Those researchers found – similarly to Bialystok et al. – that the onset of dementia was delayed in bilingual immigrants to Canada and in French-speaking Canadians. However, they did not find that bilingualism was similarly beneficial for English-speaking Canadians. In fact, in that study the onset of dementia was later in monolingual English-speaking Canadians than in bilingual English-speaking Canadians. For language learning and use to have a protective effect for English-speaking Canadians, they needed to be at least trilingual. Chertkow et al. concluded that bilingualism was sometimes beneficial in delaying the onset of dementia but multilingualism was always beneficial.

Alladi et al. draw on sociolinguistics, specifically language ideologies, to explain their differential findings:

In places in which an official dominant language coexists with a number of minority languages, it can be reasonably assumed that the amount of language switching between languages is proportional to the number of languages spoken: the more languages people know, the more occasion they will have to switch between them. In the strongly trilingual environment of Hyderabad with Telugu, [Urdu] and English being used extensively and interchangeably in both formal and informal environments, with high levels of code switching and mixing, it could be speculated that those speaking 2 languages have already reached a maximum level of switching and the knowledge of additional languages will not be able to increase it. Such an interpretation would be supported by the view that neural mechanisms underlying cognitive control demands in bilingual communities with high levels of code switching are different from bilingual communities with practice in avoiding language switching or mixing. (Alladi et al., 213, pp. 4f.)

One of the frustrating aspects of much psycholinguistic research addressing the cognitive advantages – or otherwise – of bi- and multilingualism lies in the fact that the findings of different researchers frequently conflict. As long as bi- and multilingualism are taken as unitary phenomena inherent in the individual, this will always be the case. Not only do we need to extend the evidence base to include different linguistic, cultural and national contexts, we also need to bring psycho- and sociolinguistic research together to get a better understanding of what “bilingualism” might actually mean in a particular context. Alladi et al. have taken a most welcome step in the right direction.

References

Alladi S, Bak TH, Duggirala V, Surampudi B, Shailaja M, Shukla AK, Chaudhuri JR, & Kaul S (2013). Bilingualism delays age at onset of dementia, independent of education and immigration status. Neurology PMID: 24198291
Bialystok E, Craik FI, & Freedman M (2007). Bilingualism as a protection against the onset of symptoms of dementia. Neuropsychologia, 45 (2), 459-64 PMID: 17125807
Chertkow H, Whitehead V, Phillips N, Wolfson C, Atherton J, & Bergman H (2010). Multilingualism (but not always bilingualism) delays the onset of Alzheimer disease: evidence from a bilingual community. Alzheimer disease and associated disorders, 24 (2), 118-25 PMID: 20505429

همکار ما در کراچی، محمد علی خان، مرا از وجود کتابی که به نظر بسیار جذاب می‌رسد آگاه کرده است، کتابی با عنوان «ظلم زبان در آموزش» نوشتۀ زبیده مصطفی و منتشرشده توسط اوشبا بوکس. با اینکه خیلی دوست دارم کتاب را بخوانم، سعی در سفارش دادن آن به آزمونِ راستی‌آزماییِ جهانی شدن بدل شد: مأموریت غیرممکن! به همین خاطر مجبورم خود را با خلاصه‌ای از کتاب که در وب‌نوشت نویسندۀ آن موجود است راضی کنم. ظاهراً بحث اصلی کتاب این است که گزینش زبان برای آموزش و پرورش در پاکستان، چه آن زبان زبانِ مادری باشد، چه زبان ملی و چه انگلیسی، بار ایدئولوژیک دارد و اگر نگوییم اصلاً، چندان به ملاحظات آموزشی مربوط نیست. بدین ترتیب، گزینش‌های زبان در آموزش و پرورش پاکستان به مانعی بر راه بهبود آموزش بدل شده‌اند.

بی آنکه کتاب را خوانده باشم و بی آنکه بافت جامعۀ پاکستان را به‌خوبی بشناسم، می‌توانم ادعا کنم که استدلال پیش‌گفته به نظرم بسیار ملموس می‌آید. من و همکارم، کیمیه تاکاهاشی، که اخیراً شمارۀ ویژۀ مجلۀ بین‌المللی آموزش دوزبانه و دوزبانگی، که به گونه‌گونی زبانی و پذیرش اجتماعی اختصاص یافته، را مشترکاً ویراستاری کردیم، در مدت انجام کار بارها از ستمی که بر اثر انتخاب‌های اجباری زبان در بافت‌های چندزبانه روا داشته می‌شود، در شگفت شدیم. بدین ترتیب، شمارۀ ویژۀ ما در حالی به پایان رسید که بیش از آن که دربرگیرندۀ مواردی از پذیرش اجتماعی باشد، حاوی طرد اجتماعی بود و نهایتاً اینکه پذیرنده‌ترین فضاها، آنهایی بودند که کمترین جزم‌اندیشی زبانی را بروز می‌دادند.

پذیرنده‌تر از هر فضای اجتماعی توصیف‌شدۀ دیگری در کُلّ صفحات آن شمارۀ ویژه، کلیسایی تبشیری در کانادا بود که عمدتاً در اختیار مهاجران چینی قرار داشت. آن گونه که پژوهشگر، هوامی هان، بافت آنجا را شرح می‌دهد، انتخاب زبان اصولاً مسأله‌ای محسوب نمی‌شد. در شرایطی که در سایر بافت‌های اجتماعی، آن گونه که از پژوهش‌های انجام‌شده در سراسر جهان بر می‌آید، مهاجران به علت آشنایی اندک با گونۀ زبانی قدرتمند که اکیداً نیز توصیه می‌شود خود را محکوم به سکوت می‌بینند، اعضاء کلیسای نامبرده در مواجهه با مسألۀ انتخاب زبان بسیار عملگرا رفتار می‌کردند. فرض بر این بود که انتخاب زبان در برابر هدف اصلی، که همانا خدمت به خداوند بود، امری بود ثانویه و فعالیت‌های کلیسا که پذیرندۀ زبان‌های گوناگون بودند، تا جایی که هدف مشترک مد نظر باشد، شامل رمزگردانی می‌شدند و همۀ گونه‌های زبانی را مجاز میشمردند. اعضاء کلیسا هر یک، نه بر اساس قابلیت‌های زبانی، بلکه بر اساس این واقعیت که مسیحی خوبی بود در سخن گفتن سهمی می‌یافت. تمامی فعالیت‌های کلیسا بر اساس یک ایدئولوژی زبانی عملگرا شکل گرفته بودند که در آن اهداف مشترک یعنی روحانیت مسیحی و خدمت به خداوند اهمیت می‌یافتند و همین امر باعث می‌شد تازه‌واردان علاوه بر اینکه حس پذیرفته شدن داشته باشند، فرصت‌های خوبی نیز برای بهبود زبان‌آموزیشان به دست آورند.

کلیسای توصیف‌شده توسط هان، به مانند مورد دیگری از ایدئولوژی‌های زبانی در یک محیط اجتماعی پذیرندۀ دیگر یعنی کتابخانۀ مرکزی وین (که پیش‌تر در وبگاه زبان در حرکت بدان پرداختیم)، نشان می‌دهد که می‌توان از ظلم زبانی در محیط‌های چندزبانه پرهیز کرد. مسأله این است که جامعۀ مدنی چگونه می‌تواند به مانند کلیسای نامبرده که مسیحیت را برجسته می‌ساخت، اهداف مشترک را بر ایدئولوژی‌های زبانیِ دست‌وپاگیر رجحان دهد.

Reference

Han, Huamei (2011). Social inclusion through multilingual ideologies, policies and practices: a case study of a minority church International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14 (4), 383-398

Condemned to silence

Our contributor in Karachi, Md. Ali Khan, has alerted me to what seems to be a fascinating book: The Tyranny of Language in Education by Zubeida Mustafa published by Ushba Books. I’d love to read the book but trying to order it here in Australia has been a reality check on globalization: mission impossible! So, I’ve had to content myself with the summary of the book that is available on the author’s blog. The book’s central argument seems to be that language choice in education in Pakistan – be it the choice of the mother tongue, the national language, or English – is ideologically laden and not primarily, or not at all, driven by educational considerations. Language choices in education have thus become an obstacle to improving education in Pakistan.

Without having read the book and without knowing the Pakistan context well, the argument certainly makes a lot of sense to me. Having just co-edited a special issue of the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism devoted to “Linguistic Diversity and Social Inclusion,” my co-editor, Kimie Takahashi, and I were continuously struck by the tyranny exerted by prescriptive language choices in multilingual contexts. As such, our special issue ended up documenting more exclusion than inclusion. And the most inclusive spaces were those that were linguistically least dogmatic.

By far the most inclusive space described in the pages of that special issue is an evangelical church in Canada catering mostly to Chinese migrants. As the researcher, Huamei Han, describes it, language choice was a non-issue in that context. Where migrants in other contexts, well-documented in research from around the globe, often find themselves condemned to silence because of their lack of familiarity with a narrowly prescribed “power code,” the members of that church are extremely pragmatic when it comes to language choice. Based on the assumption that language choice is secondary to the overall aim of serving god, the church’s inclusive linguistic practices include ample code-switching and the legitimization of all codes as long as they serve the common purpose. Fellows were assigned speaking roles not on the basis of their proficiency but on the basis of the fact that they were good Christians. All these practices which draw on a language ideology of pragmatism where it is not language that matters but the common goals of Christian ministry and service made newcomers not only feel included but also provided them with valuable practice opportunities that supported their language learning, too.

Similarly to the language ideologies operating in another highly inclusive space we’ve featured on Language-on-the-Move before, the Central Library in Vienna, the church described by Han demonstrates that it is possible to escape the tyranny of language in linguistically diverse contexts. The question is how civil society can prioritize common causes over a focus on restrictive language ideologies in a way that is similar to the prioritisation of Christianity in this church?

Han, Huamei (2011). Social inclusion through multilingual ideologies, policies and practices: a case study of a minority church International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14 (4), 383-398

Commemorative stamp, German Federal Post, 1989: 300 years French School Berlin

I’ve been teaching about bilingualism for more than a decade and when I speak about bilingual education and dual-immersion programs I draw on examples from Canada and the USA. These are the examples that fill the literature and the textbooks. I’d bet that a survey of university classes dealing with bilingual education would find that English-French dual-immersion programs in Canada and English-Spanish dual-immersion programs in the USA emerge as the paradigmatic cases of bilingual education that we present to our students.

An article in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism reminds us how myopic this view is:

A PhD literature review in the field of two-way immersion (TWI) education revealed that German TWI programs are hardly ever mentioned in English-language publications. (Meier, 2010, p. 419)

As the author goes on to show this is not because such programs are rare but because even scholars in the field of bilingualism are a bit blinder on the non-English eye. I have to admit that I myself had never before even heard of the Französisches Gymnasium/Collège Français, which has been providing bilingual education in French and German in Berlin since 1689. That’s right, for over 320 years! Originally founded to serve Berlin’s Huguenot refugee population, the school has, with a short break in the final year of World War II, been operating uninterruptedly ever since.

When I wrote about the English translation of a speech by German Chancellor Merkel last week, I had occasion to reflect on the control the English-language hegemony exerts over our ways of seeing in journalism. It’s a bit harder to face the fact that the same kind of hegemony operates even in a scholarly field explicitly dedicated to bi- and multilingualism.

Meier’s article shows that the Französisches Gymnasium/Collège Français is just one of many dual-immersion programs in Germany in a wide range of languages. That we know so little about those programs is not only a result of English-language hegemony but also of the ideologies of those groups in German society who control the information that gets seen and read internationally. The dominant groups in German society share a monolingual mindset and homogeneous views of the nation which help to obscure the fact that, for instance, in 2007 24% of all children born in Germany had at least one non-German parent (official statistics quoted by Meier, 2010, p. 427) and that at least some of these will head for one of the country’s many bilingual education programs.

Yoshio Sugimoto (2010, p. 14f.) explains the process beautifully with reference to international views of Japan:

Numerically small but ideologically dominant, core subcultural groups are the most noticeable to foreigners and are capable of presenting themselves to the outside world as representatives of Japanese culture.

Such a core subcultural group in Germany consists of ethnic Germans who cling to the myth of a homogeneous and monolingual nation. As Meier shows with reference to bilingual education, the reality is much more complex and diverse. It is fascinating, too! However, the inconvenient truth is that as bilingualism scholars we are actually colluding with the ideologically dominant if we fail to put diversity at the heart of our work – and that should routinely include reading the non-English-language literature, too!

Meier, G. (2010). Two-way immersion education in Germany: bridging the linguistic gap International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 13 (4), 419-437 DOI: 10.1080/13670050903418793
Sugimoto, Yoshio (2010). An Introduction to Japanese Society Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

The deskilling of skilled migrants is not unique to Australia but also a feature of Canada’s skilled migration program. In a recent article, “Survival Employment,” Gillian Creese and Brandy Wiebe look beyond the statistics of migrant un- and underemployment. The researchers interviewed 61 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in Vancouver to uncover their experiences of re-entering the labor market post-migration. Most of their interviewees were tertiary-educated, most of them came from Anglophone countries and had been educated in English, and most of them had pre-migration professional experience. And they had one more thing in common: post-migration, they were mostly long-term underemployed:

Their educational credentials and experience in Africa went unrecognized; their ‘‘African-English’’ accents posed additional barriers to many types of employment; and their additional Canadian education often failed to translate into the expected occupational rewards. (p. 9)

Deskilling plays out differently for men and women because the labor market is not only racialized but also gendered. Men don’t have their qualifications and experience recognized but there are still jobs for them in the production sector and other blue collar work. Women’s qualifications and experiences aren’t recognized, either, but, unlike their male counterparts, they don’t even have access to blue collar work (which is reserved for men – personally, I’ve never seen a female taxi driver other than on TV …). At the same time, they don’t have access to the lower rungs of the feminized Canadian labor market such as retail and service work, either, because they don’t “look and sound right” for customer-service. All that is left to the women is cleaning work and some light manufacturing. Consequently, they invested more heavily into continuing education, usually at a lower level than warranted by existing credentials and experience, and following the gendered advice of settlement agencies, which pushed them into care work.

What is the point of having a skilled migration program if the labor market works to transform people who entered the country as “skilled migrants” into “uneducated Africans” once they are landed immigrants?! One of the interviewees, Lwanzo from Zimbabwe, sums up her experience of education and migration in this way:

When you are coming here, they say they cannot accept people who are not educated. They are accepting people who are educated, and when they come here, they treat them like uneducated people. What’s the use? Why not take people who are not educated then, if what you want are janitors, you know. Bring people who are janitors then, who’ll do that job gladly. Because I know people from home wouldn’t go to school if they came here to work as janitors. Janitors would do that job very gladly. But I’ll not do that happily. I will not do it happily. I’ll complain, you know. (p. 12)

The human capital assumptions underlying skilled migration are obviously flawed if job openings are mostly in unskilled areas and skilled migrants need to be deskilled in order to participate in the labor market. Creese and Wiebe further demonstrate that the neo-liberal reduction of government agencies to little more than “job clubs and resume services” also serves to push migrants immediately into “survival work” – as against the focus of an earlier era on building bridges to adequate post-migration employment. Finally, as I have also argued repeatedly (e.g., here and here), using “accent” and “local experience” as pretexts for exclusion from desirable employment has become the new face of racism without racists. Ultimately, while there may well be no individual people who can be accused of bad faith, these factors conspire to turn skilled migration in many cases into a broken promise. As a result, the interviewees in this study lost not only economically in terms of low wages, insecurity and unemployment but also in terms of their dignity and respect.

Creese, G., & Wiebe, B. (2009). ‘Survival Employment’: Gender and Deskilling among African Immigrants in Canada International Migration DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2435.2009.00531.x