Volume Conclusion
From Precis
Claire Kramsch, Danielle Lévy, Geneviève Zarate
As this plurilingual and pluricultural project draws to a close, we must now address both the limits and possibilities of the Handbook, clarify what we mean by a “plurilingual and pluricultural language didactics”, recapitulate the questions and debates that have emerged over the course of our discussions and open the way for placing this work on the Web.
Contents |
Limits and possibilities
As most of the researchers brought together in this project draw on sociological and anthropological readings of social phenomena, the approach that we recommend emphasizes the social, cultural and political dimensions of language didactics. The reflection focuses on language teaching and learning in educational settings but it also discovers or constructs new sites of lifelong learning through voluntary mobility or obligatory migration to European countries, America or Australia to meet economic, political and scientific needs. In these circumstances, learning and teaching are inevitably influenced by the geopolitical and identity conflicts, geographical displacement, societal evolutions, and social and cultural representations conveyed by learners/speakers/actors in the varied contexts in which they use languages. Teaching and learning are closely tied to the academic, professional, national and international institutions that manage and finance national language policies. They are also tied to the supranational organizations, which, for centuries, have established and controlled the practices and models of language didactics.
The primacy we give to social phenomena is deliberate. Language learning, that was hostage first to literature, then to theoretical linguistics, became isolated from the social and cultural realities that surround us. Hence the turn to sociology and anthropology to illuminate aspects of language learning neglected up to now . 1) But social linguistics in all of its forms (psycho- and sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, educational linguistics, ecological linguistics and textual linguistics) as well as cognitive science obviously have a lot to bring to the field. Moreover, a theory of language learning and teaching cannot exist without literary stylistics and discourse and conversation analysis, or without the structural, semiotic and pragmatic readings of written and spoken texts. One must also keep in mind the contributions made to language instruction by pedagogical theory and methods. Using the social and cultural perspective presented here as a point of departure, the Handbook now invites its readers to open the discussion on the multiplex relations among the cognitive, the linguistic and the anthropological within an expanded conception of language didactics. The on-line version of the Handbook extends this discussion.
The Handbook on-line. A site http://precis.berkeley.edu and networks
The on-line Handbook, which can be found at http://precis.berkeley.edu, is an interactive website which functions as a multimedia complement to the macro- and micro-entries published in the hard copy edition. It is coordinated by the Berkeley Language Center at the University of California at Berkeley under the direction of Richard Kern, in cooperation with Geneviève Zarate, Danielle Lévy and Claire Kramsch. It is composed of different electronic media (videos, photos, images, databases and other appendices) connected to the chapters of the Handbook as well as links between concepts, examples and bibliographical references that transect multiple macro- and micro-entries. This hypertextual organization enables the user to access themes and notions in an associative manner which compensates for the hierarchical structure of the macro- and micro-entries of the paper edition of the work. Thus the site remains open to other entries. One may also find there: —an index of keywords familiar to instructors and researchers, which enables them to skim through the work, touching on its various points of reference —the original version of micro-entries written in languages other than French, which were translated for the print version —supplementary micro-entries (among others, those which could not be retained due to publishing constraints) and the possibility of adding others —a forum in which the reader can dialogue with authors and other readers on the themes addressed in the Handbook. The contributions, written in multiple languages, attest to the fact that a plurilingual and pluricultural language didactics cannot be conceived in one language alone
From language didactics to a didactics of plurilingualism/pluriculturalism
Where does language didactics end? Where does a didactics of plurilingualism/pluriculturalism begin?
Language didactics traditionally concerns the teaching of one foreign language to individuals considered to have only one native language (L1). The instruction of the target language (L2), seen chronologically as a second language, takes the native language more or less into account according to the chosen methodology, be it contrastive, comparative or communicative. Until now language didactics has hardly been plurilingual, as it has developed out of monolingual presuppositions (cf. Introductions of Chapter 1 and Chapter 7).
A didactics of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism is a means of teaching not only a foreign language to those who do not speak it, but of diversifying and relativizing such traditional notions as L1 and L2, native and non-native speaker, mono-, bi- and plurilingual individuals, national languages and cultures, universal language, standard language, spoken and written language, as so many social and historical constructs. In order to teach any standard language, a didactics of plurilingualism must situate that language in its historical plurality and in relation to the politics of its diffusion over the centuries. Chapter 8 offers a good example of this. Such a didactics insists on the cultural diversity and historical relativity that exist within a single national culture, whether it be the target or the source culture.
A didactics of linguistic and cultural plurality must also teach languages in their relation to various contexts: the individual and his/her private sphere(Chapter 2), social structures and the public sphere (Chapter 4), ideological constraints (Chapter 6) and political constraints (Chapter 7) in both linguistic and non-linguistic environments (Chapter 5). In the case of foreign language instruction at academic institutions, such a contextualization enables the learner to analyze and interpret contemporary cultural events through the target language and the “cultural memory” that it mediates (Chapter 7). In the case of second language instruction in school settings or in adult education, such a contextualization demands that the instructor capitalize on the linguistic and cultural diversity of the students, renounce the exclusive use of the target language as language of instruction, and that she turn the linguistic diversity of the class into a pedagogical asset.
Ultimately, a didactics of plurilingualism can be sustained only through the systematic training of teachers. Most language teachers in institutional settings have been trained within a literary or linguistic tradition that favors either a grammar/ translation or a communicative approach within a monolingual L2 context. A didactics of plurilingualism, like the one sketched out in this Handbook, challenges this exclusively literary or linguistic focus and explores the uses of L1 in L2 learning environments.
From a didactics of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism to a plurilingual and pluricultural didactics.
Compared to a didactics of plurilingualism, a plurilingual and pluricultural didactics proposes an altogether different way of viewing language and language learning. Language is no longer an object whose structures, spelling, pronunciation, and use are normalized by the Academy, codified in dictionaries, standardized by the media, controlled by academic institutions. The preeminence of the native speaker is called into question (Chapter 4), and parole in the Saussurean sense – i.e., the use and appropriation of language by any subject or group constructed within the pedagogical interaction, including the instructor, takes precedence over the standardized linguistic system itself. This parole is plural: spoken, shaped, constructed and modified by multitudes of native and non-native interlocutors and cultures that are themselves diversified, changing, hybrid and constantly renewed. Parole–the bearer of social and cultural representations, themselves linked to realms of memory that are more or less distant across time and space–becomes a privileged space that has to be explored not only under its referential aspects, but in all its sociolinguistic, pragmatic and discursive dimensions.
Traditional schooling, founded on the concept of homogenous written languages, has up to now considered language instruction to be the acquisition of knowledge and know-how (e.g., how to learn, how to do, how to appreciate, how to categorize, how to interpret…). But as soon as one speaks of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism, one calls into question not just a unified and homogenous linguistic system, but the notion of a homogenous speech community as well; one must speak of what Bakhtin called heteroglossia, i.e., diversity, change, mobility and potential conflict (Chapters 2 and 3). The challenge is precisely to rethink the acquisition of knowledge and know-how in a multilingual perspective that runs counter to the monolingual and universalist perspective generally imposed by educational institutions. This doesn’t mean we should no longer teach facts of knowledge or communicative practices, but, rather, that we should make students aware of how facts and practices are contingent upon language and the other symbolic systems through which they are expressed and transmitted.(2) For, plurilingualism also means multimodality of expression and communication. In its multiple configurations, plurilingualism includes the verbal, but also the para-verbal, the non-verbal, the visual and the virtual forms of expression (Chapter 5), which must all be taken into account by the instructor.
Questions and discussions
The Handbook constitutes a preliminary attempt to map out the interdisciplinary topographies of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism, as they have been reflected upon by an interdisciplinary team of researchers and educators. Having staked a terrain of varied epistemologies in an international context, with researchers who often think in a variety of languages, the Handbook raises many questions that may serve to enrich subsequent research. Here are some of the questions that accompanied us throughout our discussions:
How is the field of language didactics construed in Europe, North America, Australia and Asia? For example, what are the scientific contributions of research when “didactique des langues” is called Sprachlehr- und lernforschung, glottodidattica, applied linguistics, foreign language methodology, second language acquisition? What institutional support is given to these different domains of research? What is their symbolic prestige in the academic hierarchy of different countries? These domains are often linked to the needs of instructors of major world languages and of those who teach minor languages and the culture of minority communities. How are these needs linked to the economic and political interests of the institutions that employ these instructors? As Alain Touraine asks: how does one both avoid the domination of markets and the tyranny of communities?
Any ecological perspective, whether it be in linguistics, sociology or applied linguistics, stands to be reproached for a lack of social and political engagement. In the name of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism, does one not welcome the abolition of borders between languages and cultures, the indifference to norms and conventions that regulate the use of languages in a given society? How does one position oneself vis-à-vis the imperatives of social justice which are often at the origin of the efforts made by those who subscribe to a plurilingual and pluricultural point of view?
What is the nature of the action posited by the expression speaker/actor (Chapter 1)? Most of the authors in this Handbook presuppose a relationship between speech-act and social action, between a language and the cultural memory of its speakers. What is the nature of this relationship? Does a plurilingual didactics strive to change the social representations of the learners, and if so, how do these modified representations lead to action? How does one put in place a plurilingual didactics without transforming language courses into courses on sociology, cultural anthropology or history (Chapter 8)?
In a plurilingual didactics, the relationship between language and culture is no longer founded on the equation one language = one culture. To what extent must one teach the social and cultural representations of one given group of native speakers, especially if the very notion of native speaker has become problematic (cf. Chapter 4)?
A multilingual pedagogy is founded on the systematic exploitation of grammatical, lexical, stylistic, pragmatic and modal variation in the use of the target language and in its contact with other languages spoken by the students. The notional-functional approach was a contrastive bilingual pedagogy that considered L1/L2 primarily as written languages; the communicative approach is mostly a monolingual pedagogy in the L2 as a spoken language. Recent research shows that the multiple languages likely to be present in any given foreign language classroom have attracted attention and are now being exploited, and that linguistic variations of the target language are being systematically explored with students (Chapters 6 and 7).
But how does one implement a plurilingual didactics without privileging unrestrained code-switching and a relaxing of the norms that structure the use of every language? If a plurilingual individual is not the sum of multiple monolinguals, how does one train instructors of a particular language to exploit the plurilingualism present in their class? Code-switching, seen as an imperfection or a deficit, is often banned from the classroom, even when it appears to be a means for students to harness their linguistic resources. In these times when globalization, the Internet and globalized media are making languages, cultures and means of expression more and more hybrid, we must re-examine our conventionally monolingual foreign language pedagogies. The website of this Handbook is an opportunity to pursue these discussions between researchers and teachers.
Translator’s notes
1) Even though the social turn in second language acquisition research since the 1970’s has produced more socially and culturally aware teaching methodologies (e.g., functional-notional, communicative, and intercultural communicative approaches), they have been predicated most of the time on a rational, harmonious view of human relations, motivated by the unproblematic desire to communicate and to trade with one another. They have not dealt systematically with the unequal distribution of material resources and symbolic power, the politics of identity, and the human costs of the economic uncertainties brought about by globalization.
2) Such an awareness of the contingent nature of language and culture is urgently needed as the use of computer mediated communication is quickly becoming the favored mode of instruction in foreign language education and very little research has been done on how it is affecting the nature of the knowledge (both savoir and savoir faire) acquired.
