Australia in Asia (Source: unitingworld.org.au)

Since starting a PhD in February in a different field to my previous work, I’ve been running a weekly alert with the words “language” and “Australia” to see what was around. That’s when I discovered a key theme in linguistics in public discourse in Australia, and that is the need for “Asia literacy”.

“Australia must boost Asian language learning!”

Almost every week since February there has been an article, mostly in an Australian media source but also, as in the heading above, from the country’s Asian neighbours in Indonesia and India, lamenting Australia’s declining enrolments in Asian languages. Other headlines read: “Australia needs to break out of language cocoon”, “Loss of Indonesian expertise poses security risk” , “Australia lagging in learning a second language”, “Foreign Affairs staff have a French accent”, “Australia should send Hindi-speaking diplomats to India: Expert”,  “Asian literacy critical to children” , “In the right place but lost for words”. This media attention is the result of the commission and imminent release of the Australian Government’s White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century. Furthermore, significant political figures such as the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and his deputy Julie Bishop have made their commitment to Asian language learning public in the last twelve months (“Asian Language Should be Mandatory for Australian Schoolchildren Julie Bishop Says”, “Abbott Accuses Government of Playing Class War Card”).

The same old story

But on closer inspection it seems that this theme is not new. In his book The Politics of Language in Australia Ozolins notes that Asian literacy was first considered a problem by the Australian Ambassador to Japan, Alan Watt, in the 1950s. He was clearly before his time as it was not until the 1990s that the then Labour government committed to Asian languages in the form of the National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian Schools (NALSAS) program. This was then discontinued by the Howard government two years before the funding was supposed to run out. The Rudd/Gillard government reinvented the program as the National Asian Languages and Studies in Schools Scheme (NALSS) from 2008 to 20012. Both programs focused on four ‘strategic’ languages, namely Mandarin, Indonesian, Korean and Japanese, and the rationale for choosing these languages came directly from figures from the Department of Trade, rather than from numbers of speakers in the community.

Who are the Australians who need to learn Asian languages?

So it seems that suggesting Australians learn another language, and particularly an Asian language, in order to increase our job skills (note the continued focus on the diplomatic service in the headlines above) has a lot of currency in our public discourse today and indeed over the last sixty years. But who are the imagined language learners here? When the numbers of students studying Mandarin is referred to in the debate, there is often reference to the fact that many of them come from a Chinese ethnic background, as though this dilutes the strength of the numbers (e.g., “Australians Falling Behind in Asian Language Education”). Can it be that these young people, whose “ethnic” background should in no way lead us to assume any knowledge of Mandarin, given the diversity of languages in China as well as the diversity of language practices in migrant homes , do not “count” as normal Australians in the debate?

“Ethnic” Asians do not count

Indeed, despite the fact that NALSAS and its successor mention drawing on the considerable population of speakers of the four strategic languages as potential language learners, as Susana Eisenchlas  and others have pointed out here on Language on the Move, often this group is seen as a problem for language learning. When Ms Bishop is quoted as saying “It would be a brilliant form of soft diplomacy if we had a large body of people in Australia who were able to speak an Asian language,” my immediate response is that, “Actually, we do! … but they are clearly not the Australians you have in mind!”

Rather than acknowledging the linguistic diversity in Australia (as evidenced by the 2011 census results), this imagined group of learners are homogenous in their English-speaking  (Anglo-Celtic?) Australianness . Rather than seeing it as a tale of failure to provide bilingual education for a diverse population, the comments on imagined learners in the Asian literacy debate construct a world of learning which is uni-directional; from the Australian classroom outwards to the world of foreign diplomacy. And rather than building on and supporting the use of these four languages (and others) in many thousands of Australian families, this approach values these skills so little they are not even a salient part of the debate. For those who genuinely believe in more language education in Australia, we must start by acknowledging, appreciating and supporting the diversity of potential language learners themselves, rather than harking back to a mythical White monoculture which masks our true diversity.

Mother Language Day in East Timor

International Mother Language Day is celebrated annually to promote linguistic and cultural diversity. In East Timor, Mother Language Day 2011 provided the perfect opportunity to launch a new national education policy document promoting the use of children’s mother tongues in the classroom.

Let me begin with a thumbnail sketch of the language situation: The East Timorese Constitution of 2002 declares Portuguese and Tetum to be the co-official languages with Indonesian and English as working languages. The indigenous languages are declared national languages but they have no official status. The reasons for this decision lie in the colonial history of East Timor. It was a Portuguese colony for over 400 years and Indonesia occupied the territory in 1975 at the moment of decolonisation from Portugal. Hence, these two exogenous languages have well established roots in East Timor. A growing number of East Timorese also speak English, the language of tourism, trade, the United Nations and the aid industry, present in the country since the exit of the Indonesians in 1999. Tetum was originally a contact language which came to symbolise national identity during the Indonesian occupation, especially after the Indonesian colonisers banned the use of Portuguese. Beneath this layer of dominant languages adopted by the state lies a complex network of some 30 indigenous language varieties.

This is the broader linguistic context in which the new national education policy is embedded. Along with other international advisers from Australia and Europe, I was invited to provide advice on the formulation of the new policy.

Until now, East Timorese teachers have been expected to use Portuguese as the language of instruction along with Tetum as a pedagogic aide. Although Tetum is spoken widely as a first or second language, it is not known in all parts of the country. Moreover, few teachers are confident in Portuguese and it is mainly affluent, urban, middle class families that know this language. One consequence of this policy is that many children have been expected to learn in a language they do not understand or use, and they have not been achieving the desired literacy results. Grade repetition and school dropout are also alarmingly high. Literacy amongst East Timorese primary-age school children is so low that the Ministry of Education is now considering the use of local languages for teaching in pre-primary and primary schools to help children acquire the basic foundations for literacy development in their first language and to address some of the reasons for the high rate of school dropout.

The new policy direction is an exciting and brave initiative. Relatively few independent countries of the South have broken the norm of adopting the former colonial language as the medium of instruction or succeeded in breaking the vicious cycle of subtractive bilingualism and low educational achievement leading in turn to continued low literacy levels. The policy document sets out guidelines for using home languages for initial instruction with the gradual introduction of Tetum and Portuguese and the later addition of Indonesian and English while maintaining the home languages in the system for as long as possible.

In another posting here on Language on the Move, the blogger, Md. Ali Khan, passionately argues that in situations of extreme poverty and low human development it is a luxury for foreign advisors to talk of maintaining children’s first languages. I understand his scepticism about foreign advisers who promote idealistic notions in situations they themselves do not have to live, let alone educate their children. However, I believe advisers have much to offer provided they share their knowledge in an equitable, ethical way. There is increasing evidence showing that children whose first languages are well developed acquire literacy skills in both first and additional languages more easily. There is also evidence that children taught in the languages they know best develop their numeracy skills better than those who are not. This evidence is now coming from countries of the South as well as from the North. Literate and numerate citizens are better equipped to participate in the public life and the political affairs of their country. A literate population has better access to information about health, nutrition and maintaining wellbeing. When children learn in languages they know, they are more likely to remain in school and parents are often more willing to send their children to school. Strong multilingualism and literacy offer a way to break the cycle of underachievement and low education levels, offering a way out of poverty and a pathway towards active citizenship.

At the policy document launch I presented a seminar on the features and benefits of mother tongue-based multilingual education.  My main message was that by using and valorising children’s home languages and cultures in the classroom, teachers can promote social inclusion and contribute to peaceful nation building. If the policy document is passed by the Council of Ministers, the stage will be set for children to acquire early literacy in the languages of the home. East Timor took its first steps toward achieving mother tongue-based multilingual education on this historic Mother Language Day, 2011. I am proud to have played a small part in it.

Intriguing as those numbers are – who can resist pouring over a score-board? – they actually hide the multilingual practices of social networking as much as they reveal it! The numbers are evidence of a multilingual world but they suggest a multilingual world of discrete languages. The count itself is based on users’ language settings. As a Facebook user, you can set your language to only one language at a time. Mine is set to English because that’s the default setting for someone based in Australia and I couldn’t be bothered to change it. However, the language of your settings doesn’t actually say much about the languages in which you actually interact. My news feed regularly includes updates not only in English but also العربية, Boarisch, 中文, Nederlands, 日本語, Deutsch, Bahasa Indonesia, 한국의, Português, فارسی, Español, Schwyzerdütsch, Français, Tagalog and Türk. If you become a fan, you will find that the Facebook wall of Language-on-the-Move is pretty multilingual, too

When I write on Facebook myself, I like to follow urban etiquette and use formulae (“Congratulations,” “Thank you,” “Well done,” “Way to go” etc.) in the preferred language of my addressee. Sometimes that language choice is conventional (“native language” of the interlocutor), often it isn’t.

I love the comfortable language mixing I engage in on Facebook. It is good fun. However, it is more than that. It also challenges conventional notions of multilingualism as a combination of two or more monolingualisms. Where sociolinguists of multilingualism have started to question the language ideological strategy which tries to overcome the monolingual mindset by enumerating languages (see Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010, for a useful overview), Facebookers practice diversity – a diversity that is not a matter of quantity but a matter of quality!

Oh, and if you were wondering whether I can actually read all the languages I listed above as appearing in my Facebook news feed, the answer is, “I wish!” However, you don’t have to be a multilingual wunderkind to enjoy Multilingualism 2.0! Google Chrome offers a nice little extension, Social Translate:

The Social Translate chrome extension automatically translates event streams and friends’ comments on social network sites.  A user selects a primary language in the Options settings panel.  Then when the user visits a social network site such as Facebook or Twitter, the Social Translate extension will use Google Translate to detect the language of the event stream (or comments) and then translate the text to the user’s primary language.  The extension displays the Social Translate icon beside the translated text.  Click the icon that appears in the navigation bar to see the text in the original language.

Event streams or comments in the primary language should not be translated.  A user can also set multiple secondary languages in the Options settings.  Event streams or comments in these languages will also not be translated.  This is useful for users that read multiple languages and who would like to be able to see non-translated content that is posted in other languages.

Otsuji, E., & Pennycook, A. (2010). Metrolingualism: fixity, fluidity and language in flux International Journal of Multilingualism, 7 (3), 240-254 DOI: 10.1080/14790710903414331