In this episode, Brynn and Dr. Cho discuss Dr. Cho’s new book, Multilingual Practices and Monolingual Mindsets: Critical Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Health Care Interpreting. With a novel approach, which sees interpreting as social activities infused with power, Dr. Cho’s research and this book have captured the dynamics of cultural, linguistic, and ethnic power relations in diverse sociolinguistic contexts.

For more Language on the Move resources related to this topic, see Reducing Barriers to Language Assistance in Hospital, Life in a New Language, Linguistic Inclusion in Public Health Communications, and Interpreting service provision is good value for money.

If you liked this episode, be sure to say hello to Brynn and Language on the Move on Bluesky! Support us by subscribing to the Language on the Move Podcast on your podcast app of choice, leaving a 5-star review, and recommending the Language on the Move Podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

A lack of legal literacy can affect migrants – and indeed anyone – across all aspects of social life. This can include everything from signing a contract with an electricity provider, through earning a living, to having a safe and dignified marriage.

Legal professionals suggest that recent migrants may be special targets of a range of scams and exploitation because they are more likely to lack legal literacy, may lack information about available assistance, or may not be capable of accessing those services even when they do know about them.

However, this is not due simply to a lack of inclination to learn about the law. Rather, the development of legal literacy is dependent on the accessibility of information and education. For those with limited or no English, this naturally requires the provision of resources in other languages and accessible formats, in locations where their target audiences can find them.

While the various government and non-government bodies tasked with providing information about the law have already taken a range of measures to make their resources more accessible to non-English speakers and readers, barriers persist. These barriers can even influence the form of exploitation people face. For example, a lawyer I interviewed in my most recent project shared the story of a man who had migrated to Australia in the late 1990s and became trapped in a highly exploitative work arrangement:

you see the signs from the very beginning. Like, he didn’t have an accountant, he’ll use [his employer’s] accountant. And that accountant played around with his papers. They put him in a house on top of the shop. They denied him English lessons. So, till this day, I speak to him in Arabic, even though my Arabic’s not perfect.

In this scenario, it was only when the man’s workplace injuries became so severe that he insisted on seeing a doctor that he was eventually able to learn about his rights and access legal assistance. Among other measures, his exploiters intentionally limited his English language acquisition opportunities as a form of abusive control, to prevent him learning of his rights and seeking help.

This only reinforces the importance of providing resources in a range of languages, and clearly demonstrates the inappropriateness of claims that individual migrants are responsible for learning English as a prerequisite to accessing full inclusion in society and protection of the law.

Unfortunately, his case is far from being an exception. News reports uncover myriad examples, from international students underpaid with justifications that their limited English meant they weren’t good enough for minimum wage, to asylum seekers threatened with deportation if they didn’t comply with forced labour arrangements.

The complex and interconnected barriers recent migrants, especially those with temporary visas, often face means holistic responses are needed for them to access their rights. However ultimately, seeking justice still hinges on them first having knowledge about what those rights are and the processes and resources available to have them enforced. This is not possible unless relevant information is available in a language and format accessible to them.

The landing page

While service providers and regulatory bodies appear aware of this issue and have taken steps to address it, less is known about how accessible the resources and mechanisms are in practice (Victoria Law Foundation 2016). Further, beyond these formal offerings, less still is known about how migrants with limited English actually learn about Australian law and how it applies in their lives.

The Legal Aid bodies in each Australian state are tasked with providing a range of legal services. This includes providing free legal assistance and advice to some individuals, based on need. However another of their statutory functions is what is commonly called Community Legal Education and Information (CLEI) (e.g. Legal Aid Commission Act 1979 (NSW), section 10(2)(j),(k),(m)). This means that they are required to develop and disseminate informational resources and training to help increase the community’s legal literacy.

This is considered a crucial component to ensuring the whole community, and particularly recent migrants and those with limited or no English, can access justice, but we do not yet have a comprehensive picture of what is currently on offer, nor how well it works for these particular groups. Therefore, the peak body of the Australian legal profession has called for research to address the gaps in evidence to ensure migrants’ linguistic and other forms of diversity are understood and incorporated into efforts to improve community legal literacy (Law Council of Australia 2018).

The internet is a popular starting point for individuals looking for all types of information and existing studies on multilingual communications on the websites for government schools and multiple government service providers suggest that much work remains done to ensure that multilingual government communications are both complete and accessible for their target audiences. Therefore, in May, to start exploring the legal literacy resources available for non-English speakers, I undertook a pilot audit of Legal Aid NSW’s website.

The website

Information about Apprehended Violence Orders in Spanish

Legal Aid NSW offers a range of CLEI, with varying accessibility for non-English speakers and readers. As someone with English literacy, the landing page immediately presents me with a promising ‘My problem is about’ section. This part of the website helpfully guides readers step-by-step, in accessible plain language and appealing format, across a wide range of legal issues, e.g. ‘My job’, ‘Disasters’, ‘My rights as’ and ‘Visas and immigration’. Another section provides lay definitions of legal terms. These reflect an evident broader commitment to enhancing the accessibility of the site as a whole. However, these two sections are only available in English. Similarly, face-to-face and online legal education courses are advertised, but all current offerings appear to be in English only.

Another section provides a large collection of resources, like posters and pamphlets, organized across various topics, providing information about legal issues and available services. Some are provided in languages other than English (LOTEs). However, again, non-English speakers have significantly less access. Of the total 233 resources identified, only 40 are available in more than one language. Even then, most only include a few common LOTEs, e.g. Arabic (37), Chinese (36), Vietnamese (29), Dari/Farsi (16). Further, LOTEs are included inconsistently, e.g. Women’s Domestic Violence Court Advocacy information is offered in 13 languages, including several not used in any other resource. In contrast, all resources in the Disasters, Covid-19, Prisoners, and Young People topics are in English only. All resources are written texts (some with images), meaning only those with literacy can access them, a barrier for some refugees, for example, even in their first language (see e.g. Ba Akhlagh & Mehana 2024). Finally, when LOTE versions exist, it appears they cannot be located without English language literacy: the search function seems to operate only with English key words, and the resources are sorted and labelled in English.

One section of the website is more broadly navigable in many LOTEs. The ‘Ways to get help’ section provides information on how to access legal assistance and is available in 31 languages.  However again, there are inconsistencies between languages, e.g. the Spanish version largely replicates the original, with a full overview and four subsections covering contacts, legal advice, help at court, and applying for legal aid. In contrast, others, like Italian and Pashto, have no overview and only two subsections. Others have only an overview and no subsections. Some links lead readers back to English-only content, and website navigation menus remain in English even when on LOTE pages.

Where to from here?

Existing reviews and scholarship emphasise intersectional considerations when examining and addressing barriers to justice. For example, providing multilingual resources in written form only will not reach people who lack literacy or have low or no vision. Telephone information services and audio resources may be inaccessible for migrants who are deaf or hard of hearing (Smith-Khan 2022). Living in a regional area decreases access to language supports more readily available in urban centres, increasing the importance of LOTE resources. Similarly, not all LOTES are equal: speakers of ‘emerging’ community languages (e.g. recently arrived refugee communities) often have less language support, and issues with correctly identifying and categorising minority dialects and languages can lead to unsuitable translation and interpreting (Victorian Law Foundation 2016, pp 8-9; Tillman 2023).

Spanish word search

These considerations must inform the design and prioritization of resources in particular languages. For instance, while it seems logical to offer resources in commonly spoken LOTEs, speakers of these languages often have a higher level of English proficiency than speakers of emerging languages, who may often also face additional vulnerabilities (Grey & Severin 2021, 2022).

This brief pilot has obviously only uncovered what is publicly available via a website: qualitative research is needed to understand how service providers like Legal Aid NSW develop their resources and how legal, policy, and practical considerations influence their choices. At the same time, research could also provide insight into migrants’ decision-making. By better understanding how recent arrivals and people with limited English find out about the law, research could provide valuable evidence to policymakers and service providers to continue to make community legal literacy efforts more universally accessible.

References

Ba Akhlagh, S & Mehana, M. ‘Challenges and opportunities in designing culturally appropriate resources to support refugee families’ (2024) 8(1) Linking Research to the Practice of Education 2.
Grey, A & Severin A, ‘An audit of NSW legislation and policy on the government’s public communications in languages other than English’ (2021) 30(1) Griffith Law Review 122.
——— ‘Building towards best practice for governments’ public communication in LOTEs’ (2022)31(1) Griffith Law Review 25
Smith-Khan, L. ‘Inclusive processes for refugees with disabilities’ in Rioux et al(eds), Handbook of Disability (Springer Nature, 2022)
Tillman, M ‘Ezidi refugees in Armidale say gap in language […]service impacts health care (2023) ABC https://tinyurl.com/2vz3x8s9
Victoria Law Foundation, Legal information in languages other than English (2016) https://tinyurl.com/3nr5vndb

Join us on Thursday, December 14, at Macquarie University for a workshop to explore Linguistic Inclusion Today.

The aim of the workshop is to take stock of the state of linguistic inclusion in Australia, as we see ever-increasing linguistic diversity clashing with the continued monolingual hegemony of English. Following our CfP, we have put together an exciting program of keynote lectures and panels focusing on multilingual practices and policies in families, schools, healthcare settings, and government.

The workshop includes a special symposium focusing on the situation of languages in Australian Higher Education. Languages programs at Australian universities operate under the ever-looming threat of cuts to small programs, a threat that has gained new currency due to the rise of automated translation and generative AI.

The symposium “Languages in Australian Higher Education” can be attended as part of the full-day workshop or as a standalone option. For background reading on declining language learning opportunities in Australian higher education, see this new article by Svetlana Printcev over at SBS.

Program

9:00-9:15 Welcome
9:15-10:15 Keynote: Alexandra Grey, Linguistic Inclusion and Good Governance in Multilingual Australia (Chair: Yixi Isabella Qiu) (view abstract)
10:15-10:30 Break
10:30-12:00 Panel, Multilingualism in Australian Families (Chair: Hanna Torsh) (view abstracts)

• Speaker 1: Priyanka Bose, Conceptualisation of family and language practice in family language policy research on migrants
• Speaker 2: Sithembinkosi Dube, Bringing emerging African languages into the social inclusion agenda
• Speaker 3: Undarmaa Munkhbayar, Heritage Language Maintenance in the Mongolian Community in Australia
• Speaker 4: Emily Pacheco, Sign language maintenance among children of migrant Deaf adults in the diaspora
• Speaker 5: Muhammad Iqwan Sanjani, Constructing transnational family language policy through translanguaging

12:00-1:00 Lunch
1:00-2:00 Keynote: Trang Nguyen, Language Policy and Individual Voices: Introducing “Individual Language Policy” (Chair: Jinhyun Cho) (view abstract)
2:00-2:15 Break
2:15-3:45 Panel, Language Polices for Inclusion in the 21^st Century (Chair: Loy Lising) (view abstracts)

• Speaker 6: Jie Zhang, Between vulnerability and agency: crisis communication with Deaf communities in Wuhan during the Covid pandemic
• Speaker 7: Brynn Quick, How are language barriers bridged in hospitals?
• Speaker 8: Natalie Skinner, Cultural and linguistic diversity in children with a disability affecting their communication
• Speaker 9: Yixi (Isabella) Qiu, Navigating epistemic injustice
• Speaker 10: Tazin Abdullah, Citizen science: inclusive practices in data collection

3:45-4:00 Break
4:00-5:30 Symposium, Languages in Australian Higher Education

• Keynote: Jasna Novak Milic, Language Preservation and Identity: The Story of Croatian Studies in Australia (view abstract)
• Chair: Ingrid Piller
• Discussants: Antonia Rubino, Mark Matic, Jane Hanley
• Zoom host: Agnes Bodis

5:30-7:30 Reception

Registration

Attendance is free but spaces are strictly limited so register asap to avoid disappointment.

There are three attendance options:

• Full day (register here) [sold out]
• Only symposium, Languages in Australian Higher Education, and Reception (register here) [sold out]
• Virtual attendance at only symposium, Languages in Australian Higher Education (register here)

Abstracts, Keynotes

Dr Alexandra Grey, UTS, Linguistic Inclusion and Good Governance in Multilingual Australia

This presentation reports on my 2018-2021 investigation into ‘Good Governance in Multilingual Urban Australia’. That project included three studies: an audit of NSW legislation and policy that does (not) provide a framework for decision-making and standards of multilingual government communications (undertaken with A Severin); a case study of such communication outputs from the NSW government, across portfolios (undertaken with A Severin); and a case study of multilingualism in public Covid-19 communications from NSW and Commonwealth governments.

The Covid case study also includes an analytic review of international human rights about language and health, as well as the commentary of international organizations as to how to take a rights-based approach to pandemic communications in order to fulfill certain international law obligations upon Australia (and other nations). That review found new expectations emerging that governments’ multilingual health communications be not merely partially available, but rather produced without (unreasonable) linguistic discrimination; with minority communities’ involvement at preparatory stages; strategic planning; and an eye to effectiveness. In explaining what more effective communication could entail, I advocate assessing government communications’ Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability and Adaptability — that is, the ‘Four As’ recognized by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and crisis communications scholars.

In this keynote at Macquarie University’s Workshop on conceptual and methodological challenges in linguistic inclusion, I will explain my interdisciplinary methodology, present the key findings of each of these three studies, and draw them together by inquiring whether developments in governments’ public communications during the pandemic have given Australia any lasting improvements in the linguistic and social inclusion. The research leads to a novel suggestion for 3 Rs of response to recurrent problems in governments reaching, and including, linguistically diverse publics: (further) Research; Redesigning online communications; and Rights-based Regulation (or Standard Setting). I will end with a reflection on the path ahead for researchers by noting how three studies have each also given rise to an awareness of ‘dead-ends’ and a need for government-partnered research in this space.

Dr Trang Nguyen, Melbourne University, Language Policy and Individual Voices: Introducing “Individual Language Policy”

Language policy often refers to regulations and rules made by governmental or institutional bodies to determine and influence the use of languages in a society or community. Such a common understanding of the term may lead to an impression among the public and authorities that language policy making should be the task of officials and governors rather than ordinary people, thus potentially creating conceptual challenges in incorporating individual voices into the policy making process. Recognising that there is also a language policy at an individual level, which is a critical part of higher-layer language policies and a link of the complex language policy circle, may contribute to addressing these conceptual challenges.

In this talk, I will introduce the concept “individual language policy” which I built in reference to a combination of language policy theories in an attempt to attract attention to such a language policy at an individual level. I suggest that individual language policy is a kind of implicit policy that individuals discursively define and apply to themselves in their daily language behaviours under the influence of external forces and higher-level language policies in the environments where they are living. Individual language policy comprises three main components: practised language policy (guiding language practices), perceived language policy (informing language beliefs), and negotiated language policy (directing language management) (Nguyen, 2022). Individual language policy does not stand independent of other-level language policies, but can be considered as the first step on the path to the outcomes of the top-down policies (Grin, 2003). In our advocacy for policy change towards language inclusion and justice, we should, therefore, emphasise the importance of individual language speakers and their individual language policy, as “it is at the individual level that the success or failure of a language policy is finally revealed” (Spolsky, 2022, p.x).

Dr Jasna Novak Milić, Macquarie University, Language Preservation and Identity: The Story of Croatian Studies in Australia

Among the approximately 200,000 Croats believed to reside in Australia, a significant majority have undergone assimilation, with English often serving as their primary functional language. When the largest wave of Croatian immigrants arrived in Australia during the 1960s and 1970s, the struggle for linguistic identity accompanied them. This struggle led to the recognition of the Croatian language in Australia as early as 1979, well before the declaration of Croatian independence in 1991. Subsequently, ethnic schools were established, and in the 1980s, Croatian language courses were introduced at the high school level. In 1983, Macquarie University launched the study of Croatian language and culture, a program through which several thousand students have passed over its four decades of existence. Initially funded by the Croatian community in Australia, this program began receiving financial support from the government of the Republic of Croatia about two decades ago. This support reflects the recognition of the program’s significance in preserving the language and community identity. However, within the predominantly monolingual mindset, the future of Croatian Studies in Australia faces renewed uncertainty.

Abstracts, Multilingualism in Australian Families

Priyanka Bose, UNSW, Conceptualisation of family and language practice in family language policy research on migrants

Family language policy (FLP) is increasingly recognised as a distinct domain of language policy concerned with the family as an arena of language policy formulation and implementation. While FLP is a relatively new research area, its conceptualisation of family and language practice requires re-examination due to social changes and technological developments, including the expansion of digital communication within families and the rise of globally dispersed families, a product of global migration and transnationalism. In this systematic review of migrant FLP research, we investigate how the notions of family and language practice are conceptualised in research. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, we identified a total of 163 articles for analysis. Our analysis reveals that the majority of studies were conducted in nuclear families, i.e., those consisting of a father, a mother, and one or more children. Studies also tend to conceptualise the family as fixed and physically located in one place. Paradoxically, around half of the studies acknowledge the presence of geographically dispersed family relations, but this does not necessarily affect their conceptualisation of what comprises a family. Language practice was conceptualised as physical and face-to-face communication in 51% of instances, with only 11% incorporating an analysis of digital communications. Based on our review, we recommend that FLP researchers researching migrant families reconceptualise the family as geographically dispersed and language practice as digital and multimodal when necessary. Such a reconceptualisation will help researchers understand the hitherto underexamined contributions of dispersed family members and multimodal digital
communications in migrant FLP.

Sithembinkosi Dube, MQ/UNSW, Bringing emerging African languages into the social inclusion agenda

When compared to other English-speaking nations, Australia is regarded as a leader in the provision of community language services (Edwards, 2004). Since the initial establishment of ethnic language schools, the government understood that community languages are critical for the equitable delivery of major community services (health, justice & social services). However, the current structures and policies for community language schools are blind to the smaller communities with emerging languages, thus undermining the social inclusion agenda (Piller & Takahashi, 2011). This talk will highlight how LangDentity, an online Shona-Ndebele Community school, is overcoming these hurdles to maintain Zimbabwean heritage languages.

Undarmaa Munkhbayar, MQ, Heritage Language Maintenance in the Mongolian Community in Australia

Maintaining heritage languages is of paramount importance to immigrants all over the world as the language is not just a communication tool. It carries our culture, tradition, belief, and identity. Australia is ideologically monolingual, yet factually multilingual and numerous minority languages exist here. Based on a small interview study with Mongolian families in Sydney, it was found that English is the main language of Mongolian children and parents struggle to support the heritage language. Sending children to Mongolian language community schools, opting for Mongolian language in the home, investing in extra tutoring sessions, joint reading, and perusing video contents can facilitate the preservation of Mongolian into the second generation.

Emily Pacheco, MQ, Sign language maintenance among children of migrant Deaf adults in the diaspora

About 90% of Deaf parents’ children are born hearing. Culturally, these individuals identify as Codas: Children of Deaf Adult(s). The linguistic practices of Codas have been minimally explored in sociolinguistics research. An aspect of this research is child language brokering (CLB), from which sign language brokering (SLB) emerged. This project aims to draw from these two concepts to investigate the experiences of children of migrant Deaf adults (Comdas). Through a scoping review and semi-structured interviews, data will be collected and later analysed through thematic analysis. By uncovering the experiences Comdas have towards SLB, this project hopes to highlight an often-overlooked population of sign language users in heritage language maintenance research.

Muhammad Iqwan Sanjani, UNSW, Constructing transnational family language policy through translanguaging

This study investigates the roles of home and school in constructing translanguaging spaces among Indonesian transnational families in Australia using an ecological approach to language policy. Data were collected from recordings of naturally occurring conversations, interviews, and diaries, and also interviews with teachers who teach the children of participant families. Preliminary evidence suggests that translanguaging serves as a means for transnational families to fight for epistemic inclusion in a context where monolingualism is prevalent and where their perspectives are often disregarded.

Abstracts, Language Polices for Inclusion in the 21^st Century

Jie Zhang, ZUEL/MQ, Between vulnerability and agency: crisis communication with Deaf communities in Wuhan during the Covid pandemic

Previous studies have demonstrated that deaf people are an underserved vulnerable community before, during, and after emergencies. At the same time, deaf people can also mobilize their agency to produce linguistically and culturally appropriate information and services to deaf communities in the absence of accessible crisis communication provided by the government, and even participate in crisis management. Adopting a community-based participatory approach to research, the study involves researchers and community members as equal partners in the research process. Drawing on in-depth interviews, this study describes the needs of and barriers faced by deaf people during the 76-day lockdown after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in Wuhan in 2020 as perceived by a group of deaf volunteers, and how the deaf volunteers collaborated with the Wuhan Deaf Association, other civil groups, community workers, volunteers, medical staff, and psychological consultant to respond to deaf people’s needs. The study shows that challenges faced by deaf people include barriers to accessing information and aids, barriers to communication with stakeholders, as well as compound disadvantages caused by communication barriers. Deaf volunteers, apart from providing emergency services tailored to specific needs of deaf communities, helped empower ‘vulnerable’ deaf people in emergency responses and resilience building, and effectively raised the awareness of accessible communication among stakeholders and the public. The study demonstrates the critical role of deaf volunteers, who are highly motivated, fully aware of the needs of deaf people, well-networked both within the deaf community and with the broader community, in providing a bridge between stakeholders and deaf communities. Therefore, the study calls for a shift from a top-down emergency management approach in which emergency management organizations provide special services for deaf people to a participatory and inclusive approach that actively involves deaf people in designing and implementing plans tailored to specific needs of deaf communities in emergency settings.

Brynn Quick, MQ, How are language barriers bridged in hospitals?

This presentation explores how hospitals communicate multilingually to bridge language barriers experienced by linguistic minority patients by asking how hospital staff assess a linguistic minority patient’s language proficiency and identify the need for a multilingual communication strategy. It also examines the language support strategies that hospitals use to communicate with these patients. This is done through a systematic literature review of 50 studies. The findings show that current literature most often examines spoken language barriers bridged through interpreters. The problems identified with consistent interpreting service provision relate to time constraints and inconsistencies in procedures related to assessing a patient’s linguistic proficiency.

Natalie Skinner, MQ, Cultural and linguistic diversity in children with a disability affecting their communication

Communication disability is not typically included in discussion and research around linguistic inclusion. For children with a disability affecting their communication, there is a significant lack of research on cultural and linguistic diversity that can be used to guide the development and delivery of speech pathology services. Services incorporate language technologies, including Alternative and Augmentative Communication systems, that facilitate social participation. Interviews were conducted with 23 speech pathologists across Australia, exploring provision of appropriate services for children with a communication disability, in families who speak a language other than English. While cultural and linguistic diversity is acknowledged and valued, English is pervasive in services and associated resources.

Yixi (Isabella) Qiu, Fudan U/UNSW, Navigating epistemic injustice

Informed by the perspective of “epistemic (in)justice” and “epistemic agency”, this study explored how multilingual teachers and students negotiate a more epistemologically effective and equal access to knowledge negotiation in an EMI program in a Chinese university. A variety of data were collected in the study, including lesson recordings, multilingual notes, reflective journals, and stimulated recalls, to understand how the transnational teachers and students as epistemic agents negotiate disciplinary concepts and engage in knowledge co-construction to express silenced voices, countering epistemic oppression and enhancing participation.

Tazin Abdullah, MQ, Citizen science: inclusive practices in data collection

The field of sociolinguistics has seen an emerging method of data collection known as Citizen Science (CS), whereby members of the public are enlisted to collect data. The utilization of CS allows for large volumes of data collection and enables researchers to tap into the diverse sociolinguistic knowledge of the participants. This paper discusses the innovative use of CS in a Linguistic Landscape study, in which specific groups of participants were engaged to take photographs of signs that were used for analysis. The study notes how the utilization of CS acknowledges diversity and offers an approach to build inclusivity into sociolinguistc methodologies.

***

(Image credit: Cruickshank et al, 2021, NSW Community Languages Report)

“What stops Australia from doing something like Sweden has done to promote multilingualism? Is it too hard to implement mother tongue instruction in the education system of Australia?”

These questions about language education planning in Australia (where I was born and grew up) and Sweden (where I became a researcher and now live and work) were asked during an online conversation I got involved with after a conference (#ICCHLE21) organized by the Sydney Institute for Community Languages Education (Sydney University). As the questions relate directly to the topic of my Phd research, they engaged me, to say the least!

Multilingualism is a fact of life

In our globalized world, many people speak languages in addition to the official language(s) of the country they live in. Different terms , for example “home language” “heritage language” even “native language”, are used in different contexts to describe these languages and the forms of education that may exist to promote their development.

(Image credit: Cruickshank et al, 2021, NSW Community Languages Report)

In Sweden they are labelled “mother tongues”, and education to promote their development is called Mother Tongue Instruction (hereafter MTI). In Australia the term “community language” is well-established, but terms “first” and “background” language are also used, specifically in the Australian National Curriculum. There are a range of different approaches to the study of community, first, or background languages in Australia.

Is Sweden really better at promoting multilingualism?

So why did the person who asked the questions above think that the Swedish model of MTI might be better for promoting multilingualism in Australia than the range of approaches that currently exist? In my thesis I argued that organizational, ideological and classroom factors impact on the opportunities for the development of multilingualism that the different models offered. Unpacking the organizational and ideological factors can help answer the questions.

How does Mother Tongue Instruction (MTI) in Sweden work?

In Sweden, since the Home Language Reform in 1977, students from primary to upper-secondary school have been entitled to apply for MTI in any language other than Swedish that they speak at home. If the student has basic proficiency in the language, more than five students in the local area apply for it and a teacher is available, the school is required to organize MTI in that language.

(Image credit: Cruickshank et al, 2021, NSW Community Languages Report)

National funding for MTI is administered by local municipalities, who collaborate with schools in the organization of MTI and who employ many of the 6,183 mother tongue teachers who work in Swedish schools. While teacher education is not mandatory for MTI teachers, there are a range of teacher education programmes and professional development courses offered at universities throughout the country that prepare and support MTI teachers for their work.

MTI has a syllabus, and grades in the subject at the end of lower-secondary school can boost the scores that give students eligibility to upper-secondary school programmes. During the academic year 2020-2021, 150 languages were taught through MTI in Swedish schools.

Mother tongue instruction (MTI) within a strong policy framework

Sweden’s system, offering MTI through the national school system, is relatively unique. Although other countries may have some form of support for the maintenance and development of languages other than the national languages, there is no other country where the right to study mother tongues that are different from the national languages, is offered such strong legal protection.

Community language schools in Australia

Education in first, background or community languages in Australia is organized quite differently. It is possible to study five languages as background or first languages through the school system. Education in the other 295 or so languages spoken in Australia is organized through the community language school network.

(Image credit: Cruickshank et al, 2021, NSW Community Languages Report)

Community language schools have existed in Australia since 1857 and are located in most large cities and some smaller towns throughout the country. Each state has a different approach to organizing community language education. See for example how different the systems in the Victorian School of Languages is from Queensland. New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania have their own systems as well.

While many community language teachers have tertiary qualification, not infrequently in education, they often receive only symbolic payment or work voluntarily. Most community language schools hold lessons on weekends or after school hours, and it is not always possible for all students at community language schools to gain certification or formal recognition of their community language studies.

Community language schools are disconnected from mainstream schooling

Education in community languages in Australia thus usually takes place outside the mainstream school system, is concentrated in larger cities, run by volunteers and not always recognized by the formal education system. These organizational factors can impact negatively on equality of access (for bilinguals living in remote regions) and on student motivation.

It all comes down to language ideologies and policy frameworks

So how do ideological factors impact on the promotion of multilingualism in Sweden and Australia? Language ideologies are not about truth but rather are “beliefs, feelings and conceptions about language that are socially shared and relate language and society in a dialectical fashion” (Piller, 2015). Language ideologies are thus socially situated and dynamic.

Sweden underwent a political and social transformation in the 1970s, throwing off anything associated with the “old assimilationist Sweden” and embracing the vision of “the new Sweden” (modern and pluralistic). It has been argued that it is partly because these ideas were so powerful at a community and political levels that an educational reform as radical as The Home Language Reform, a reform that politicians from every party were committed to, was possible (Hyltenstam & Milani, 2012).

(Image credit: Cruickshank et al, 2021, NSW Community Languages Report)

Collaborations between researchers, activists, social scientists, and officials were instrumental in transforming attitudes in Sweden concerning the value of education in all languages (Wickström, 2015). As Sweden’s policies on mother tongue instruction have traditionally been influenced more by the academic field than the political field, it is clear that language ideologies held by policymakers in Sweden have been influenced by researchers, community members and collaborations between them, leading to the Home Language Reform of 1977 and the establishment of mother tongue instruction.

Australia’s monolingual mindset remains a barrier

In Australia, a major hindrance to funding and giving equal access to the study of a wider range of languages other than English is a very particular set of beliefs about language that researchers have called, the monolingual mindset. This is a deep-rooted, widespread belief that “Standard Australian English” is the most important language and that being monolingual is common and expected.

There is a lot of research that discusses the negative impact of the monolingual mindset on language learning and use and multilingual identity in Australia. However, policy makers do not appear to have engaged with this research, or if they have, they have not had the political means to enact legislation that would make the study of community languages more widely accessible.

Two diverse societies with different approaches to multilingualism

Although Sweden today is not socially or ideologically the same place as it was in the 1970s and there is no longer unanimous support in the Swedish parliament for MTI, the number of students who study the subject has increased steadily since its introduction. Almost one-third of the student population (Table 8A) in the compulsory school was eligible for the subject in the 2020/2021 academic year. MTI thus remains an important, elective subject in the Swedish curriculum, part of a national and systematic approach to language education.

Australia is also home to many people who speak languages in addition to English. The person who asked the questions at the beginning of this blogpost and many researchers as well believe that a national, systemic approach to education in community languages would benefit these individuals, their families, and the Australian community.

So what is stopping Australia from doing something like Sweden then? To answer this, I ask another question: Are Australian policymakers ready to listen to and collaborate with their multilingual citizens and researchers? Until they are, an Australian version of the Home Language Reform is still a way off.

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.

(Image credit: Markus Spiske via Unsplash)

Parental engagement is a critical aspect of student achievement

When we think about student achievement, we typically think about student qualities: how smart a student is, how hard-working, or how personable. What we tend to overlook is the role parents play in their children’s school success. However, parental engagement is critical to student outcomes: parents choose a school or program for their child, they socialize their children into ways of interacting with institutions and their representatives, and they lobby for the needs of their children.

Obviously, different parents have different levels of capacity to engage with their children’s education. As a rule of thumb, middle-class parents are good at engaging with schools and this can secure significant advantages for their children. By contrast, working-class parents often face barriers to engaging with their children’s education.

Language as a barrier to parent engagement

The role of class in parent engagement is well-known, thanks to the work of US sociologists such as Shirley Brice-Heath, Annette Lareau, or Jessica Calarco.

But what about language proficiency?

For children, limited proficiency in the language of the school is a leading cause of educational disadvantage. Children who face the double burden of having to learn new content while learning a new language are bound to struggle, particularly when their double burden is not recognized, and they are compared to peers who are fully proficient in the language and ‘only’ need to learn new content.

Parents who are learners of the school language face the same challenge: being an engaged parent if you are struggling with the language of the school is extra difficult.

Given what we know about the advantages of parental engagement, language thus becomes a social justice issue: parent exclusion from full and equitable participation in their child’s schooling may negatively impact their child’s educational achievement, and have lifelong consequences for their social advancement.

How do schools bridge the language barrier?

Parents with limited proficiency in the language of the school constitute a substantial group in many societies. In some schools they make up the majority of parents.

Can a parent with low literacy in English readily find the enrollment form in their language?

What do schools do to level the playing field for these parents and their children?

That’s what my colleagues Ana Sofia Bruzon, Hanna Torsh, and I wanted to find in a recent research project investigating how enrollment information is communicated to new parents on the websites of some of Sydney’s most linguistically diverse primary schools. The findings of our research have just been published in Language and Education – the article is open access so feel free to click through to the journal!

Schools present themselves as monolingual

One of our key findings is that the school websites and their enrollment information is resolutely monolingual. Languages other than English simply do not seem to exist and they are absent from the websites. Other languages are simply not there – neither for communicative purposes (there is no information available in another language) nor for symbolic purposes (there are no phatic words such as greetings in another language).

We had selected only schools with above-average enrollment of children from non-English-speaking backgrounds. In some of the schools in our sample, the percentage of non-English-speaking backgrounds was as high as 98%. Even so, there is no linguistic trace of this diversity on the school websites.

We argue that this absence of languages other than English shuts out parents with limited proficiency in English from the moment of enrollment; in other words, even from before their child actually starts school.

Translated materials follow a monolingual information architecture

Most of the websites we examined provided the Google Translate plug-in and all had links to translated forms available on the Department of Education website.

This certainly demonstrates an effort to include parents with limited proficiency in English.

Unfortunately, a not-negligible level of English language proficiency is needed to access those translations: you need to know to watch out for English words such as “language,” “translation” or “translated version;” you need to know the name of your language in English and in the Latin alphabet; and you need to be familiar with the conventional sort order of the Latin alphabet.

All of this requires a level of English literacy that renders the translated documents inaccessible for those who need them most.

How can enrollment information be made more linguistically inclusive?

Based on our study we suggest that more attention needs to be paid to linguistically inclusive design.

Specifically, schools should provide a central hub for information in each of the school’s most frequently used languages. This is highly practical as different schools cater to different clusters of languages and 3-5 languages in addition to English will cover the vast majority of languages used in a school’s catchment area.

Such a hub page could explain what further language-specific resources are available and how they can be accessed.

Placing a link to such language-specific pages on the home page and in the flow-through navigation bars in the language-specific name (and script, if applicable) would also add a multilingual dimension to the overall website that makes visible the fact of a school’s linguistic diversity.

In short, such hub pages in languages other than English would address both the information gap and the recognition gap. And it would allow parents with limited proficiency in English to get a foot in the door from day 1 of their child’s schooling.

Read the full research article

Piller, I., Bruzon, A. S., & Torsh, H. (2021). Monolingual school websites as barriers to parent engagement. Language and Education, 1-18. doi:10.1080/09500782.2021.2010744 (open access)

Additionally, multilingual crisis communication has been the focus of the research projects conducted by Master of Applied Linguistics students at Macquarie University as part of their “Literacies” unit. We close the year by sharing some of their findings.

Here, Monica Neve explores the language requirements of registering a business as “COVID Safe” in New South Wales (NSW).

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(Image credit: NSW Government)

As restrictions rapidly increased during the beginning of Sydney’s lockdown in March 2020, the small yoga studio, which I had been attending for a number of years, closed its doors. Not just for the period of lockdown, but for good. Without students attending class and with no rent reduction in sight, the studio owner could no longer keep the business afloat. However, in June, with restrictions easing, a new yoga teacher took a leap of faith and reopened the studio.

When it reopened, the studio was identified as “COVID Safe” and sported the NSW “COVID Safe” logo that has by now become a ubiquitous sight in the business precincts of NSW.

For my research project, I wanted to discover how a business becomes “COVID Safe” and whether all businesses have an equal chance of being registered as COVID safe.

What is “COVID Safe”?

Under NSW Public Health Orders, COVID Safe registration is mandatory for hospitality venues (including cafes, bars and restaurants), gyms, and places of public worship. Penalties of up to $55,000 apply for businesses failing to comply.

Non-mandatory registration is encouraged for all other businesses.

The COVID-safe logo

COVID Safe registration requires the creation of a COVID safety plan in which businesses explain how hygiene and safety measures are being implemented on their premises. Once registered, businesses receive a digital COVID Safe logo for use on online platforms, as well as COVID Safe hygiene posters for display.

Language and literacy skills of NSW business owners

About a third of Australian small businesses are owned by migrants who speak a language other than English, according to the Migrant Small Business Report published by the insurer CGU.

While the English language proficiency of this cohort is unknown, it is reasonable to assume that some members of this group are among those 4% of the Australian population – or 800,000 to one million people – who do not speak English well or at all (Piller, 2020a).

It is also safe to assume that a number of business owners have low levels of literacy, as about 13.7% of the Australian adult population – or approximately 2.3 million people – possess literacy levels that equate to only elementary level schooling (OECD, 2012).

Seen against this background, COVID Safe registration for businesses in NSW is also a language and literacy hurdle, for some larger than others.

Registration as COVID safe business

To gain insight into the registration process, I followed all the steps on the website (stopping just short of the final step of application submission) and developed a COVID safety plan for an imaginary business, “Monica’s Café.” I also interviewed a small business owner who had undertaken registration.

Initially, registration seems relatively straight forward. It involves providing details of the business and developing a COVID safety plan related to wellbeing of staff and customers, physical distancing, hygiene and cleaning, and record keeping.

Sample COVID safety plans are available in English as well as Arabic, Simplified Mandarin, Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese.

However, things get more complicated once you actually have to fill out the safety plan form.

Before you do, you need to work your way through the regulatory language surrounding registration, as in the following excerpt from the introductory COVID Safe registration statement:

“COVID-19 Safety Plans are comprehensive checklists designed by NSW Health and approved by the Chief Health Officer. The plans provide clear directions on how businesses and organisations should fulfil their obligations under Public Health Orders to minimise risk of transmission of COVID-19 on their premises.”

(Image credit: NSW Government)

Multisyllabic vocabulary such as comprehensive, obligations, transmission and premises, and long sentences demand a high level of English language proficiency. This is confirmed by the Flesch reading ease measure of 15, meaning this excerpt requires the reading skills of a university graduate.

The excerpt above is an example of regulatory language used in official health communication. This register – or type of language – is particularly difficult to understand for those with low levels of English language proficiency (Grey, 2020a; Grey, 2020b).

The difficulty of the overall guidelines and instructions renders the relative ease of the actual registration form void.

How can COVID safe registration be improved without compromising safety?

I suggest that the process of COVID-safe registration could be simplified and made more accessible to a readership with varying levels of English language proficiency and literacy through the implementation of the following improvements:

• Provision of simple, plain English and high-quality, comprehensive multilingual information
• Provision of English and multilingual safety plan blueprints that are easy to locate

More importantly, I suggest that communicating COVID safety online is not enough.

Providing alternative communication channels

In its current form, COVID Safe registration does not necessarily guarantee compliance. To achieve that, inspections of premises are needed.

Inspections would offer a good way of tailoring COVID safety to local needs, not only practically but also linguistically.

Inspections could be undertaken by multilingual officers. Inspections in language other than English (LOTE) would provide an opportunity to convey personalised LOTE advice relevant to a particular business. They would be a practical implementation of an approach that values NSW’s linguistic diversity as a resource.

References

Grey, A. (2020a, June 1). How to improve Australia’s public health messaging about Covid-19. Language on the Move.
Grey, A. (2020b). How do you find public health information in a language other than English. Submission to the Australian Senate’s Select Committee on COVID-19’s inquiry into the Australian Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Piller, I. (2020a, October 13). More on crisis communication in multilingual Australia. Language on the Move.

Additionally, multilingual crisis communication has been the focus of the research projects conducted by Master of Applied Linguistics students at Macquarie University as part of their “Literacies” unit. We close the year by sharing some of their findings.

Here, Peter O’Keefe uses media sources to explore the public health communication strategies employed during Melbourne’s COVID-19 outbreak in Brimbank, a highly linguistically diverse suburb and, at the time, a COVID-19 hot spot.

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A drive-in Covid-19 testing site in Melbourne (Image credit: Bloomberg; Photographer: Carla Gottgens)

Melbourne is a city that takes pride in being one of the most cosmopolitan in the world. Like the rest of Australia, it is home to many migrant communities and in some local government areas like Brimbank, the number of migrants exceeds that of those born in Australia. It seems then rather unfair that in this time of emergency, communicating vital information to residents who rely on a language other than English for day-to-day life has come in an ad hoc fashion. This piecemeal approach to public health communication has resulted in a delay that could arguably be claimed responsible for it becoming a “hotspot” for COVID-19 infections this past winter. I will argue that failure to communicate effectively about vital pandemic information leads to distrust; and distrust in the government not only fuels conspiracy theories but undermines social cohesion at a time when we need everyone to stand together.

Crisis communication in linguistically diverse societies

There is no doubt, COVID-19 has laid bare failure in policy for emergency communication delivered in minority languages by governments all over the world. Delivering pandemic information in linguistically diverse countries is a serious challenge and Australia is not alone in this regard. What is clear, though, is that some countries, most notably China, have taken the challenge a little more seriously and acted with greater speed in addressing it. From the outset of the New Corona Virus crisis in Hubei province, expert linguists were called upon to aid with not only dissemination of information but also with patient-doctor interaction in what is now known as ground zero for the COVID-19 pandemic (Li et al 2020).

Poor translation quality undermines trust

Compare this with the response in Australia, in particular in Brimbank. Although there were top-down efforts to deliver translations of pandemic information in various community languages, these were seemingly symbolic rather than serving a practical purpose.

All of these translations appear to have been simply machine done. The Japanese translation I examined contained pragmatic and discursive errors along with curious word choices.

Would the government seriously consider communicating with other governments in the world using Google Translate? Using poor translations is a sign of disrespect.

Deploying monolingual door knockers undermines trust

Perhaps in an effort to address the issue of communicating with non-internet users, the Victorian government dispatched door knockers to deliver in-person information about testing in hot spot suburbs. The private company to which this task was outsourced, employed poorly trained staff without proficiency in the main non-English languages of the area, whose communications reportedly caused further confusion.

Main languages spoken in Brimbank, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data

Migrants cop the blame for public communication failures

This communication breakdown may also have contributed to stigmatizing migrants as unwilling to participate in the public health effort and get tested.

The chief health officer of Victoria at one point declared that conspiracy theories circulated by migrants on social media were perhaps “partially responsible” for people believing that COVID-19 wasn’t real. However, there actually was no evidence that anyone refused a COVID-19 test on the grounds of not believing that COVID-19 was real.

What is sadly ironic about this claim is that conspiracy theories rely on people’s distrust of government to be believed. Lack of effective communication with the community especially in times of emergency creates distrust, so surely the government must accept some responsibility for any conspiracy theories that may have been circulating.

COVID-19 crisis communication is a test of social cohesion

In this post I have attempted to argue that emergency pandemic communication is more than merely conveying information. It serves a purpose to also persuade and comfort. If it can be effective in comforting, then this will build trust. This is necessary to ultimately persuade people to change their behaviors in a spirit of cooperation. The Victorian government’s actions in this area have had the opposite effect.

Just as COVID-19 has exposed the injustices and inequities across societies, it has also shown the different levels of social cohesion in various countries around the world. It takes a team effort to beat a pandemic, where all members of the community stand together regardless of their language, their political and cultural beliefs, or their level of literacy.

Reference

Li,Y., Rao, G., Zhang, J., and Li, J. (2020). Conceptualizing national emergency language competence. Multilingua, 39(5): 617–623.

Exterior of a pub at an intersection in the shopping hub of Burwood, a highly diverse suburb of Sydney

Editor’s note: Do public health messages about the Covid-19 pandemic match the linguistic profile of Australia’s population? In this latest contribution to our series of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis, Dr Alexandra Grey, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Sydney Law School, shares her submission to the Australian Senate’s Select Committee on COVID-19’s inquiry into the Australian Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The call for contributions to the series continues to be open.

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My submission is based on my current, still ongoing research project, ‘Good Governance in Multilingual Urban Australia’. This submission addresses the important question: How do you access COVID-19-related public health information in Australia in languages other than English (LOTEs)? It is based on preliminary results of my current study and provides recommendations about better reaching the linguistically diverse Australian public with official public health communications. 

The Committee will decide which submissions to put on the public record. However, Language on the Move is making a copy of mine available here, because we believe it will be beneficial to draw attention to, discuss and even debate these recommendations. Please read the submission (11 pages plus images) or simply my 6 recommendations, which you can find on page 3, and share your perspectives in the comments below.

The submission identifies these key problems with Australia’s official COVID-19 public health communications in LOTEs, which emerge from the study:

• There are barriers to the accessibility of official public health information for those in the community who are not confident reading/able to read the English-medium public health communications on display in their local areas or available (albeit often buried) on government websites
• State and federal governments have left it to local councils to provide LOTE-medium public health communications in public areas, without any requirement on local councils to actually take up this task, and with varying outcomes even in areas with similar multilingual profiles
• There is an under-utilization of the LOTE-medium public health posters which the NSW and federal governments have specifically produced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic
• Government health agencies’ Twitter feeds have not cultivated LOTE readerships before or during the pandemic and do not appear to be engaging the LOTE-using public; these feeds are haphazard, infrequent and unreliable in their LOTE tweeting as well as in their references to LOTE resources.

Amongst various possible ways of addressing these problems, my recommendations focus on:

• Research: improving the efficacy of both physical and online official LOTE public health communications by increasing the collection and analysis of appropriate data
• Redesigning online communications: improving the efficacy of online official LOTE public health communications through simple, practical changes to government websites and tweets, including increased and consistent use of LOTEs and their scripts
• Standard setting: improving both the quality and the reliability of LOTE public health communications across government agencies through legal requirements, at federal and state levels, for government bodies to plan for, execute and monitor the effective dissemination in LOTEs of official public health information, at least during times of emergency/pandemic, with associated best practice guidelines to be developed and implemented across government. I anticipate that this last will be the most controversial, but potentially also the most impactful.

Read the submission here.

Acknowledgement

I’d like to acknowledge Dr Allie Severin and Dr Hanna Torsh for their help with data collection in this project, and the Language-on-the-Move Reading Group for insightful discussions of language aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Language challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic

Visit here for our full coverage of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis.

The Twitter thread below offers a quick teaser for each episode. Indulge yourself, head over to the Earshot website, download the 5 episodes, and enjoy 2.5 hours of linguistic bliss!

In Episode 1, you will learn about the global #language hierarchy, and discover why a #multilingual person may not be able to say "take a shower" in all their #languages https://t.co/JfTzWUyqDV

— Language on the Move (@Lg_on_the_Move) December 23, 2019

Part 3 takes us to #Armenian–#English #bilingual Galstaun College, an #Arabic community school, and to a frustrated #Japanese teacher in a Sydney public school … and you will begin to understand why #language #education in Australia is such a disasterhttps://t.co/L5OL2d3yG6

— Language on the Move (@Lg_on_the_Move) December 23, 2019

And in Episode 5 @birdpham and @masakofukuisyd finally figure out that #English is a #migrant #language, too …

Ultimately, #multilingualism is not about #languages but about creating more inclusive societieshttps://t.co/DY5u9MzLvH

— Language on the Move (@Lg_on_the_Move) December 23, 2019

Building the Danish boar fence (Image credit: NDR)

Fences are popular these days: not only in the US with its border-wall-to-Mexico saga but also in Denmark, which recently started to build a fence to ‘secure’ is border to Germany. The official reason for the Danish fence is to keep out wild boars who might be crossing into Denmark from Germany. Its efficiency is highly contested … Although not directly related to issues of language, there are striking parallels between the swine fence and what I, a linguistic ethnographer with 15 years of experience in the area of multilingualism and linguistic diversity, have witnessed, researched and documented in Danish schools.

With the notable exception of English, Denmark is a country strongly beholden to the norm of monolingualism. That is, there is a wide-spread understanding that the normative situation is such that everybody speaks one language. In our case, this language is Danish. Monolingualism may seem paradoxical in Denmark, a country with only 5.7 million inhabitants, which is located in close proximity to countries such as Sweden, Norway, Germany and Poland, and which depends on international trade and exchange. As a result, Denmark is home to people from a wide variety of backgrounds, and in terms of human mobility, efficient fences are even more of an illusion than a realistic substitute for policy. Yet, for the political establishment such insights seem hard to reach and to integrate with an increasingly strong focus on the idea of the nation.

The norm of monolingualism affects many citizens with a linguistic repertoire which includes resources associated with multiple languages. Despite this diversity, the monolingual norm is produced and reproduced in various ways and in many societal domains, but particularly in education. Accordingly, it is not uncommon to witness statements such as the following: “In Denmark we speak Danish. You have the right to learn all the languages you want, but it needs to take place in your spare time.” (Inger Støjberg, now Minister for Children, Gender Equality, Integration and Social affairs; the statement was made in 2012, when she was a member of the opposition). In the quote, “Danish” is used in three different meanings: as the first language of the majority population; as the official language of Denmark; and as the most important language taught in schools. The point argued for was that the state had no responsibility towards minority children’s mother tongue education.

In fact, there is only one educational setting where so-called immigrant languages are legitimate: Mother Tongue (MT) education. MT education is located within the regular school system but outside compulsory education  (for details on MT education in Denmark, see Salö et al. 2018). In my team’s research with MT classrooms in and around Copenhagen we found that MT education is still filtered through the lens of Danish monolingualism as MT education is almost exclusively viewed with regard to its effects on Danish.

The official aim of MT education is to ensure students’ linguistic competences in the language regarded as their mother tongue, and their cultural and societal competences with respect to what is formulated as their “country of origin”. Furthermore, MT education is supposed to foster metalinguistic development, enable general participation in school and society in the “host country,” i.e., Denmark, and encourage a global perspective on language and culture (Ministry of Education 2009: 3).

In terms of public opinion (as articulated in letters to the editor, editorials, interviews with politicians, and even academics), there is a general consensus to focus on MT education in terms of its effect on Danish. This aligns with the quote above. As everyone holds that in Denmark we speak Danish, the teaching of those other languages that are associated with immigrants needs to be justified with reference to Danish. This understanding of MT education is widely shared among both supporters and opponents.

The rationale for MT education according to the Danish Ministry of Education

Yet, such effects of positive transfer were never in focus in the classrooms we followed, nor were they part of regular assessment. In fact, MT classes are entirely marginalized. They are ‘fenced’ in relation to general education, and have no relation to whatever else goes on in schools. None of the mainstream teachers or school authorities seem interested in MT education classes. This makes it completely mysterious how the “effect on Danish” should ever come about. To us, there seemed to be more obvious ways to evaluate the relevance of such educational initiatives. For instance, in terms of the classes’ effects on the students’ Arabic, Persian, Polish, or Turkish competences.

Another point is that MT classrooms include participants from a range of backgrounds, a range of relations to the supposed country of origin, and to the language taught. Consequently, one cannot expect consensus about what constitutes ‘good’ or ‘bad’ language, or more or less ‘appropriate’ language (Karrebæk & Ghandchi, 2015).

In the Persian MT classrooms we followed, for example, children came from families who were political, religious, or other types of refugees, who were supporters of the current Iranian government, or who had no explicit political stance and had moved to Denmark for job opportunities or family reasons. In recognition of this diversity, the teacher aimed to create an “ideology free” space. This would enable all students to meet, regardless of their backgrounds. Yet, one way of doing this was to exclude anything that could be associated with the current Iranian government, and even with Arabic language and culture. The use of Arabic loanwords often caused controversy in the classroom. This approach made sourcing educational materials difficult because the teacher refused to use any materials that included pictures of women in hijab. Such images, he felt, would compromise his “ideology free” classroom. On the other hand, the traumas of refugee children went unrecognized. They largely remained unspoken and if they were articulated, they were ignored and suppressed. This created awkward situations and made it difficult for some children to find themselves reflected in the classes.

In the Turkish MT classroom, the diversity among the participants created other difficulties. In this class, the most striking difference concerned the teacher. He was of Kurdish origin and his Turkish language included features that revealed this background. In general, there are strong negative associations with Kurdish-Turkish, and we saw children, and a few parents, voice this in more or less direct ways (Karrebæk & Nergiz, 2019). The teacher, however, had few options to find another job, and we doubt that anybody had thought about how an internal Turkish conflict would play out in a Copenhagen MT classroom, and how this could or should have been handled by the employing authorities.

My work with linguistic diversity in education has shown how immigrants are evaluated and valorized in relation to their Danish competences; how languages other than Danish are, by and large, ignored, devalued and suppressed by the authorities; and how children growing up in this linguistically narrow-minded atmosphere struggle to integrate their mother tongues into an attractive public identity. This is not to say that these outcomes are planned or even desired by Danish authorities. Rather, they result from a severely limited imagination when it comes to multilingualism and cultural diversity. The discursive means to imagine cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity differently are currently lacking. After all, “in Denmark we speak Danish”. These beliefs and attitudes create a difficult work climate for MT teachers as they have to stay in fenced-in areas in a national setting very unfavorable to the use of immigrant languages. They curtail a good educational climate and obstruct any constructive engagement with MT education.

Nobody really seems to care what goes on in MT education because it is understood as being of little relevance and value – to society at large and ultimately to the children themselves. MT classes were fenced off from the children’s regular schooling experiences. Arguably, this neglect even paved the way for  “importing” conflicts from elsewhere.

In short, the orientation to standard Danish and monolingualism leads to marginalization of some children, alienation of others, poor learning conditions, and lots of missed learning opportunities, a linguistically poor society, and a society haunted by globalization and a world which it tries to keep out with a fence.

References:

Karrebæk, M.S. & Ö. Nergiz (2019). Language ideologies, the soft g, and parody in the Turkish mother tongue classroom. Multilingua https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2018-0086

Karrebæk, M.S. & N. Ghandchi (2015). ‘Pure’ Farsi and political sensitivities: Language and ideologies in Farsi complementary language classrooms in Denmark. Journal of Sociolinguistics 19(1): 62-90.

Sahlö, L., C. Hedman, N. Ganuza & M.S. Karrebæk (2018). Mother tongue instruction in Sweden and Denmark: Language policy, cross-field effects, and linguistic exchange rates. Language Policy 17(4), 591-616

Here’s That Awkward Video Of Scott Morrison Saying “Ni Hao” To A Korean Voter: Scott Morrison is being skewered on social media after he greeted a Korean-Australian voter with “ni hao” hello in Mandarin while campaigning in Strathfield, Sydney. excerpthttps://t.co/4ttITsJXwM pic.twitter.com/WOpPjZWh4l

— lynlinking (@lynlinking) April 13, 2019

Chinese warning against illegal parking in Sydney apartment building

Australia today is a de facto multilingual society. According to 2016 census data, 22.2% of Australians speak a language other than English (LOTE) at home. In the major cities the number of multilinguals is much higher (38.2% in Sydney; 34.9% in Melbourne).

Mandarin is the most frequently spoken LOTE and is the home language of 2.5% of the Australian population (4.7% in Sydney). This means that no LOTE strongly predominates nationally although this may differ across localities. In Strathfield, the Sydney suburb where the ministerial gaffe occurred, Korean is spoken by 10.9% of residents and thus slightly ahead of Mandarin with 10.6%.

That politicians would try to reach these diverse groups is not surprising. However, a gauche attempt to greet an Asian-looking person in Chinese exposes the gap between our predominantly white Anglo monolingual politicians and the diverse population they are supposed to represent.

Multilingual warning against trolley dumping in Sydney apartment complex

Multilingualism in Australia is largely restricted to the immigrant population and their children. This means that proficiency in a LOTE is, by and large, also a marker of an ethnic identity that is not Anglo/white.

The Anglo/white population has been struggling to come to terms with this reality. For the longest time, the key strategy has been to simply ignore LOTEs and carry on as if Australia were a monolingual English-speaking society – the infamous monolingual mindset. However, our multilingual reality has become increasingly difficult to ignore, and as a result we see more and more efforts at multilingual communication.

The problem with these multilingual communications is that the LOTE speaker is not imagined as a conversation partner but as a dupe. “Greet them in their language and they will be pleased”, “Provide campaign posters in their language and they’ll vote for me”, seems to be the thinking.

The red lines are the visual equivalent of shouting at Chinese residents to do their laundry properly

In short, most of the time when Anglo-Australians use a LOTE, they do not imagine interacting with another complex person but talking at some uni-dimensional simpleton. These multilingual practices do not engage but otherize.

That multilingual practices can exclude just as much as they can include is most apparent in multilingual prohibition signs. When prohibitions are stated in more than one language in an otherwise largely monolingual space, these prohibitions position LOTE speakers as trespassers and interlopers who cannot be relied upon to do the right thing. Signage stating bathroom etiquette is one such example.

Chinese-English signs placed over toilets during open houses (when a house that is for sale is open for inspection by potential buyers) are another. I find it difficult to imagine that toilet use during open houses is such a problem that it requires intervention with a specifically designed sign. The sign in all probability serves less to deter inappropriate toilet use than to disseminate its implicit message: that Chinese customers have questionable hygiene. Multilingual prohibition signs related to illegal parking, illegal use of shopping trolleys, or illegal use of washing lines all invite the same conclusion: Chinese residents are offenders against the norms of everyday interaction.

Open house toilet sign

LOTE use, and specifically the use of Asian languages, predominantly Chinese, in the public space in Australia – in cases where it emanates from outside the LOTE community – is the latest incarnation of the fear of Asians that has been inscribed into Australian culture ever since it became a British outpost far away from Europe but close to Asia.

Australia’s fear of Asia manifested itself most explicitly in the “White Australia” policy, which excluded Asian immigrants for most of the 20^th century. While a racist immigration policy has given way to a non-discriminatory immigration policy for almost half a century now and most immigrants today come from Asia, Anglo-Australia is still struggling to come to terms with the reality that Australia is an Asian country geographically and is increasingly becoming an Asian country demographically.

Another open house toilet sign

But what do these realities mean for our diverse society? The linguistic evidence at present suggests that “Australian” and “Asian” continue to be imagined as mutually exclusive categories. But our collective embarrassment at this state of affairs is palpable, and change is in the air.

Related content

• Diversity made invisible in 2010 federal Australian election [yeah, we’ve been blogging this long …]
• Monolingual mindset in the lucky country
• Multilingual prohibitions
• Toiletology
• The monolingual mindset goes to war
• Banal multilingualism
• Banal cosmopolitanism

The national language is the mother tongue of the vast majority of citizens in most European states (Source: Josu Amezaga, MQ Lecture, 22-11-2017)

Last week, Professor Josu Amezaga from the University of the Basque Country, Spain, visited Macquarie University to speak about minority languages: what they are and why they should be given space in the ongoing conversation about linguistic diversity.

Participating in this seminar was a timely opportunity as I embark on my PhD journey. I realized that it is one thing to read books and theses arguing about different forms of linguistic inequalities and yet another to engage in an academic debate. Coming from the Philippines, which is home to 187 languages, according to Ethnologue, I went into this seminar hoping to better understand the value – or lack of value – of these belittled languages.

Focusing on European languages, Professor Amezaga traced the historical roots of the monolingual paradigm to the French Revolution. The one-language-one-nation ideology that became prominent during that period saw some 28 French languages relegated to the position of patois or minority languages. The French revolutionaries were keen to ensure that all citizens shared a common language. Instead of considering bilingualism or a lingua franca—as is the case in the Philippines—they went about eliminating all competitors of French. This hostile policy towards minority languages was set out in Abbé Grégoire’s 1794 treatise entitled “Rapport sur la nécessité et les moyens d’anéantir les patois et d’universaliser la langue française” (“Report on the necessity and means of annihilating the dialects and of making the French Language universal”).

This shows that minority languages are not necessarily the languages of a numerical minority. Rather they are languages that are subject to active processes of minoritization. While the term “minority language” suggests having small numbers of speakers, the term “minoritized language” is more accurate as it draws our attention to processes of language subordination and to the unequal power relationships that often pertain between “minority” and “majority”.

By contrast, citizens of the Philippines have many different mother tongues (Source: http://www.csun.edu/~lan56728/majorlanguages.htm)

In Europe, processes of linguistic suppression were so successful that by the second half of the 20^th century most European nations were highly monolingual, with the vast majority of citizens speaking the national language as their sole mother tongue. However, globalization and migration of recent decades have thrown this high level of state-engineered monolingualism into disarray.

Many European states have reacted to this “linguistic threat” with new efforts at renationalization, as can be seen in the introduction of language testing for citizenship. Between 1998 and 2015, the number of European states requiring a language test from prospective citizens rose from 6 to 25.

Interestingly, this push to test the language proficiency of immigrants further helps to cement the minoritized position of indigenous minority languages: language testing in France, for instance, is done in French rather than in Basque, despite the fact that the latter is today recognized as an official regional minority language of France.

At the same time, globalization and migration have also pushed language ideologies in the opposite direction, contesting the monolingual one-nation-one-language ideology and giving new legitimacy to minoritized languages. Professor Amezaga showed striking evidence of this trend with TV signals: while around 1,000 TV signals from English-speaking countries reach non-English-speaking territories, 900 signals in languages other than English reach the US. The former is evidence that the media are agents of linguistic homogenization and the latter is evidence that the media are agents of linguistic diversification.

Professor Amezaga’s guest lecture focused on minoritized languages in Europe and the global North more generally. Reflecting on how these insights relate to my home country, the Philippines, it may seem that in this highly multilingual country processes of linguistic homogenization have not been an issue. However, that would be misleading. Our own version of the one-language-one-nation ideology could be called “two-languages-one-nation ideology”: English and Filipino are positioned side-by-side as an essential aspect of the bilingual identity of Filipinos. As a result, the Philippines’ other languages are similarly subject to minoritization.

Furthermore, the challenge posed by globalization and migration to the linguistic status quo of the Philippines does not come from immigration but emigration. Going overseas, primarily for work, has become a viable and even desirable option for many Filipinos, who perceive international labor opportunities as an economic panacea. Consequently, over 10 million Filipinos are estimated to be working or living overseas today. This number is nearly 300% more than the first wave of Filipino migrants in the 1970s, when the overseas employment program was launched. With Filipino migrants now gaining more ground as “workers of the world,” it is worth examining the language component of occupations where they are employed to see how their linguistic repertoire – borne out of a two-languages-one-nation ideology and differential valuing of minority languages – intersects with the language ideologies of destination societies.

Reference

The slides from Professor Amezaga’s lecture are available for download here.

Map of European languages (Source: SB Language Maps)

Invitation to public seminar about “Minority Languages” at Macquarie University

What: Minority languages: what are we talking about? And why are we talking about it now?
When: Wednesday, November 22, 12:00-2:00pm
Where: Macquarie University Y3A 211 Tute Rm (10HA)
Who: Professor Josu Amezaga, University of the Basque Country

Abstract: Minority (or minoritized) languages can be defined as languages historically excluded from the nation-state. Following the French Revolution, which imposed the need of a common and unique language on the French state, many countries applied the “one-language-one-nation” pattern and, in the process, minoritized numerous languages. In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, many countries almost seemed to have reached this monolingual ideal. However, in recent decades major changes in mediated communications together with growing migration flows have called this state of affairs into question as minority languages – both “old” and “new” – reassert themselves. At the same time, the reemergence of linguistic diversity has provoked state reactions in the form of new re-nationalization policies focused around language.

In my presentation I will first explain what minoritization of languages means. Then I will show how changes in communication and migration flows have affected the linguistic landscape of Western societies. The focus will be on commonalities and points of difference between regional and immigrant minority languages. Finally, I will discuss why minority languages should be addressed not only as a matter of cultural heritage but also a need for the future. This will lead me to close with some questions about the monolingual paradigm.

Bio blurb: Josu Amezaga is Professor in the Department of Audio-Visual Communication and Advertising at the University of the Basque Country, Spain. After completing his Ph.D. in Sociology about Basque culture, he started researching Basque language and media, from where he moved to a more comprehensive view of minority languages in media and as identity tools. This interest has led him to immigrant languages, as yet another type of minority languages. Currently, he is a visiting professor at Charles Sturt University.

Fliers for Persian community events (Persian Library Parramatta, Nov 2010)

Editor’s note: In the second instalment in our series “Explorations in Language Shaming”, Dr Shiva Motaghi-Tabari examines children’s attitudes towards the perception of home languages other than English in Australia highlighting that home-language use may often be associated with a sense of embarrassment.

***

Home-language (HL) maintenance as a concern for many migrant families has recently gained prominence. Much of the research has focused mainly on the role of parents and HL educators in child HL learning processes, while the role of children in this effect remained almost invisible. In my doctoral research on “Bidirectional Language Learning in Migrant Families”, I demonstrated that children’s language attitudes, which in turn are influenced by language ideologies and wider social structures, can have significant impacts on their HL maintenance.

In fact, the broad impetus for my research germinated from my own observation of my child’s language learning and use, and my engagements with other parents in a similar situation since we came to Australia in 2008. Like many migrant parents coming from a non-English-speaking background, maintaining my child’s HL has been a concern in our new home in Australia. When we first came, my daughter was around seven years old. At the time, she knew some English, as we had sent her to language schools since she was four years old back in Iran. After arrival, I observed how quickly her English language, particularly her conversational skills, were progressing. As her English language progressed, I began to wonder if it might not be a good idea to use some English at home. After all, her father and I also needed to improve our English communication skills …

At the same time, we did not wish to put our daughter’s Persian at risk. Her Persian maintenance was not only important to us, but it was also a promise to her grandparents who relentlessly reminded us of the importance of preserving their grandchild’s Persian language. For this very reason, we also sent her to a Persian Saturday School in Sydney so that she would become literate in the language.

In our search for effective ways of managing the two languages, Persian and English, we heard many parents’ stories of success or failure related to their HL maintenance. For some of the parents, despite their investments of time and money, they found it challenging to get their children to learn and use their HL. Some of them blamed the Community Language School teachers for not being able to teach the HL properly, and some of them blamed themselves for not spending enough time to practice the language with their children. Some of them also seemed confused as they had been advised by their children’s mainstream teachers to speak English with their children.

Eventually, these observations shaped my interest in doing further research in the area, and that’s how my PhD research ‘Bidirectional Language Learning in Migrant Families’ came into existence. That my research struck a chord is obvious from the fact that it won the 2017 Michael Clyne Prize. The Michael Clyne Prize is awarded annually by the Australian Linguistics Society for the best postgraduate research thesis in immigrant bilingualism and language contact.

‘Bidirectionality’ in parent-child interactions is a notion that I have borrowed from family studies and extended to the field of second language learning. In a bidirectional model, the process of socialisation of a child into a set of language and cultural rules involves not only a parent-to-child direction of influence but also a child-to-parent direction. Central to the bidirectional model is the concept of agency. Agency in this framework means “considering individuals as actors with the ability to make sense of the environment, initiate change, and make choices” (Kuczynski, 2003, p. 9). The core assumption in this framework is that both parents and children as active agents interpret and thereby reconstruct social messages (Kuczynski, Parkin, & Pitman, 2014, p. 138). This means that, in the field of language learning, children, like adults, adopt a certain way of thinking about languages based on the language ideologies they encounter in their daily lives. Based on these social perceptions, they make choices about what languages to learn and use. Therefore, to find more effective ways of HL maintenance, it is essential to bring children’s language attitudes and practices to the forefront alongside parents’ language attitudes and investments, and HL teachers and their teaching methods.

Despite parents’ wishes and efforts, children often show a disinclination to learn and use the home language, the language of their family, relatives and loved ones. Instead, they often tend to prefer English, as one of my child participants said: ‘I mostly speak Iranian, but I prefer English’. Reasons for this preference that the children gave to me included the following: ‘Because Persian is so hard’ or ‘it is Australia!’

It is true that for many children, their limited HL skills could make it difficult for them to communicate in that language. However, the same child who felt that Persian was too hard also made the comment ‘it is Australia!’ This adds another dimension to children’s choice of English as their preferred language. In effect, in a process of linguistic and cultural mainstreaming through the educational system and social practices, the dominant language and culture are inscribed as legitimate while other languages are devalued. In circumstances where communicative norms are constituted into a homogenised form, it comes as no surprise that children who do care about belonging and acceptance, internalise and reproduce the underlying message that ‘to be an Australian, one must speak English’. For them, using their HL may be perceived as a marker of lack of belonging or difference, and ultimately, making them feel a sense of shame and embarrassment over different forms of language other than what is seen as ‘normal’, as in this example:

Child participant: I get embarrassed [laughs] to speak Persian.
Shiva: Why is that?
Child participant: Because I don’t want anybody to think I’m weird.

Under circumstances where children  feel that they may be viewed as ‘weird’ if they use their home language, it is obvious that they may not show much interest in practising that language; and so, they exert their agency in different ways to use their preferred language despite their parents’ wishes, as is evident from the following conversation I had with two children:

Shiva: Then you are asked at home to speak in Persian?
Child participant 1: Yeah.
Child participant 2: A lot.
Child participant 1: Yeah.
Child participant 2: A lot.
[Both laugh] Shiva: And then you don’t?
Both [giggling] No! [more laughter] Shiva: No?
Child participant 1: maybe for one second, but then after that [laughs]

In sum, raising a child bilingually can be a difficult task when the onus is only on the family, particularly in a context where the value of the HL is not tangible for the children and is not acknowledged by the wider society. So, before any language instructions can be successful, children need to truly feel and understand the importance of preserving their home language alongside learning the English language. To achieve this, it is essential that families, community languages schools and mainstream schools come together around the same positive message: English is not the only language of Australia and bilingualism is cool and worth encouraging.

References

Kuczynski, L. (2003). Beyond Bidirectionality: Bilateral Conceptual Frameworks for Understanding Dynamics in Parent-Child Relations. In L. Kuczynski (Ed.), Handbook of dynamics in parent-child relations (pp. 3-24). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Kuczynski, L., Parkin, C. M., & Pitman, R. (2014). Socialization as Dynamic Process: A Dialectical, Transactional Perspective. In J. E. Grusec & P. D. Hastings (Eds.), Handbook of socialization: theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 135-157). New York; London: The Guilford Press.

Motaghi-Tabari, S. (2016). Bidirectional Language Learning in Migrant Families. (PhD), Macquarie University. Available from http://languageonthemove.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Thesis_Shiva_Motaghi-Tabari_BidirectionalLanguageLearning.pdf

In early August, Stephen Miller, advisor to the US president, got involved in a heated confrontation with a reporter from CNN following the announcement of a new immigration-reform bill. The ‘Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy’ or RAISE Act, which is being supported by the White House, seeks to replace the current immigration system with a merit-based one, and in so doing prioritizes people with, among other things, a high level of English-language proficiency. The reporter, Jim Acosta, asked Miller how the bill squared with the ideals of the poem engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty – ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses’ – and particularly, whether the stipulation about English proficiency was a means of ‘trying to engineer the racial and ethnic flow of people into this country’. Did it not have the effect of favouring people from Great Britain and Australia, while excluding others? Miller’s short-tempered response was to accuse Acosta of promoting the needs of immigrants above those of hard-working Americans, and in so doing, harbouring a ‘cosmopolitan bias’.

It’s this notion of ‘cosmopolitan bias’ which tells us almost as much about the politics of diversity in contemporary society as the policies which explicitly support a monocultural view of the nation do. The provision about language proficiency in the RAISE Act is part of the apparatus of a very standard national language ideology – the idea that (in this case) English is a fundamental part of the country’s cultural-political identity, and that linguistic diversity stands opposed to the integrity of this identity. Its inclusion in the act should come as no surprise given the ‘English only’ stance that Trump has previously voiced. For example, during the primaries he scolded his rival Jeb Bush for code-switching, insisting that ‘This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish’.

But what’s of equal interest is how the broader discourse of diversity is also being framed in these comments. The word ‘cosmopolitan’ when used here by Miller is a near synonym of the right’s other go-to insult, ‘elite’, and an antonym of ‘nationalist’. The political idea of cosmopolitanism is of humankind existing as a single community with shared moral values, in which people from different backgrounds (including different nation-states) can co-exist based on mutual respect, and despite different cultural, political or religious backgrounds. As such it stands in opposition to a belief in the primacy of the traditions and ideals of the nation. In the cosmopolitan equation, shared values are a stronger bond than the arbitrariness of shared inhabitancy of a nation.

This is clearly anathema to nationalists, for whom love of country and its citizens is paramount, and for whom the president is the a priori figurehead for this, and thus deserving of an unquestioning loyalty. ‘Cosmopolitan’, on the other hand, implies an inbuilt scepticism of this ideal, and by extension, for the nationalists, a lack of patriotism.

According to Jeff Greenfield in Politico, one of the reasons why ‘cosmopolitan’ is a particularly loaded term in this context is that it was ‘key to an attempt by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to purge the culture of dissident voices’. Cosmopolitanism and diversity for Stalin were synonymous with criticism, and for this reason seen as a direct threat to his power. Greenfield sees the traces of a similar undercurrent in Trump’s message. The “American First” mantra is a way for his administration to enforce its own ideology while at the same time labelling any dissent as anti-patriotic. By this logic, simply speaking a ‘foreign’ language can be categorised as an act of dissent.

And it’s here that the ‘bias’ element of Stephen Miller’s term comes in. There’s an interesting rhetorical sleight-of-hand in the way he’s structuring his argument. In effect, by complaining of bias, what he’s doing is trying to appropriate the concept of diversity for his own side. He’s accusing his opponents of themselves taking a closed view of issues; suggesting that it’s journalists such as Acosta who are intolerant of different opinions, and are in effect the ones arguing for a monoculture. And the monoculture they’re arguing for is cosmopolitanism.

This is a common strategy amongst the alt-right. For example, James Damore, who was recently fired by Google for his sexist critique of the company’s diversity policies, subtitled his memo ‘How bias clouds our thinking about diversity and inclusion’. He’s since gone on to complain of the way that today’s mainstream culture ‘tries to silence any dissenting views’. His rather convoluted argument is that mainstream culture is fine with diversity as long as it’s the sort of diversity that it itself promotes; but that diverse views such as his (which, as it happens, are an attack on this mainstream notion of diversity) are censored – thus proving that there’s a hypocritical bias in the culture!

In many ways it’s a similar pattern to what happened in the ‘fake news’ debate. In that case, initial concerns about how media (both social and traditional) was sifting out the experience of diversity in society (by creating ‘filter bubbles’), and thus preventing people from being exposed to a broad range of opinions and values, got hijacked by assertions of bias in the ‘mainstream’ media from the Trump camp. ‘Fake news’ went, within a few months, from being the phenomenon of how the circulation of fabricated stories and highly-partisan opinions get circulated in society, to a blanket insult for anything the president and his supporters disagreed with.

The singular national language ideology is, of course, vastly out of line with the reality of the linguistic identity of the US. For a start, over 50 million people in the US now speak Spanish – which means it has more Spanish speakers than Spain. And, as research into multilingualism across the globe has been highlighting in recent years, the norm in all societies is variety, diversity and a mixed use of resources – so much so that many sociolinguists are advocating a change in the vocabulary we use to describe people’s language practices, so that the idea of discrete national languages no longer operates as the default.

But the concept of ‘diversity’ that’s being demonised in the discourse from Miller and associates is not just a diversity of cultural values and practices (symbolised, in the argument with Acosta, by language). It’s also a diversity of opinions and perspectives. And demonising this thus becomes a way of re-categorizing open debate as dissent. A way of undermining the importance of critical thinking in favour of an obedient devotion to ex cathedra assertion.