The monolingual paradigm

In chapter one, I introduced the monolingual paradigm broadly as a web of intersecting discourses that promote essentialist views of language, culture, and the self and that perpetuate monolingualism as the chief referential framework in educational institutions and beyond. In

this section, I will look at these points more closely, and outline how they have come under scrutiny in Applied Linguistics research.

According to Canagarajah (2013, p. 20), the paradigm circulates (at least) the following interrelated main ideas:

• Language = Community = Place. • 1 language = 1 identity.

• Language as a self-standing system.

• Languages as pure and separated from each other.

• The locus of language as cognition rather than social context [...]

• Communication as based on grammar rather than practice, and form isolated from its ecological embeddedness.

One of the main challenges in grasping what is meant by monolingual paradigm is that the views encompassed therein are commonly taken for granted not only in research, but also in society at large. The idea that language is a self-contained system, for instance, seems so obvious that it does not easily show up as a view (among alternative views); it seems to be an irrevocable natural reality. Scholarship suggests, however, that the views listed above are not objective realities but have rather emerged historically in Western Europe from different kinds of developments, including (but not limited to) political dynamics, technical innovations, philosophical movements, and ideological processes (Yildiz, 2012, Makoni & Pennycook, 2007, Irvine & Gal 2000; Gogolin, 1994; for a brief overview of the rise of the monolingual paradigm, see Canagarajah, 2013). It is only by making an effort to identify particular historical conditions and processes that have brought these views into being that they become discernible as one particular way of looking at language, culture, and the self – more precisely, these views are ways of constructing reality that serve(d) the interests of particular historical projects in a given place and time.

The notion of monolingualism itself emerged at the confluence of political, philosophical, and cultural changes in Europe, notably across the eighteenth century,7 _coming to replace previously unquestioned practices of living and writing in multiple languages (Yildiz, 2012, p. 6). Most prominently, its emergence has been linked to the rise of nationalism, which was marked by concerted efforts to promote a ‘common’ national language that would ensure and symbolize cohesion within the borders of the nation-state, unlike pre- modern forms of political organization (see May, 2012). While empires, for instance, were “quite happy for the most part to leave unmolested the plethora of cultures and languages subsumed within them” (May, 2012, p. 6; see also Piccardo, 2018), the political order within the nation-state model involved processes of legitimation and institutionalization of a chosen national language (May, 2012).8 _{It is important to understand that monolingualism is, as such,}

much more than a simple quantitative term designating the presence of just one language. Instead, it constitutes a key structuring principle that organizes the entire range of modern social life from the construction of individuals [...] to the formation of disciplines and institutions, as well as of imagined collectives such as cultures and nations. According to this paradigm, individuals and social formations are imagined to possess one ‘true’ language only, their ‘mother tongue,’ and through this possession to be organically linked to an exclusive, clearly demarcated ethnicity, culture, and nation. (Yildiz, 2012, p. 2)

As a legacy of nation-building processes, educational systems have not only been grounded on this structuring principle, but have played a significant role in maintaining it, notably by “implementing standard languages while repressing other varieties, codes, or languages” (Busch, 2011, p. 545). The historical emergence and naturalization of the

7 _{The rise of monolingualism had its roots in earlier developments such as the standardization of language through}

the translation of the bible, the invention of printing, and the publication of dictionaries, while “[t]his movement reached its highest point in the nineteenth century with the final definition of nation-states and their nationalistic ideology” (Piccardo, 2014, p. 191)

8 _{According to May (2012), legitimation refers to “the formal recognition accorded to the language by the nation-}

state” (p. 6). Institutionalization, then, refers to “the process by which the language comes to be accepted, or ‘taken for granted’ in a wide range of social, cultural and linguistic domains or contexts, both formal and

monolingual paradigm in educational institutions has been thoroughly analyzed, for instance, in Ingrid Gogolin’s (1994) seminal monograph. Drawing on Bourdieu’s (1979) notion of

habitus, she provides an elaborate account of how the German educational system came to

acquire a “monolingual habitus,” as the school system originated and developed across the 19th and 20th _{century, and how in consequence, German schools are ill-prepared to serve the needs} of students in a linguistically diverse immigration society. She rigorously traces how philosophical and political movements (e.g. the rise of nationalism in the early 19th _{century or} of national socialism in the 20th _{century) have shaped a monolingual orientation that promotes} the central position of German as a (standardized) national language in the German school system, noting how this monolingual orientation became all the more entrenched as the process of its formation itself fell into oblivion.

It is beyond the scope of this chapter to provide a comprehensive overview of the developments that have led to the rise of the monolingual paradigm, or to discuss how ideas underpinning the paradigm became popularized, naturalized, and normative over time in specific contexts. What is important for the current purpose is to hold onto the point that common sense understandings of language, culture, and identity rely on the above-mentioned (and further, related) ideas, and that these, in turn, perpetuate what I will refer to as “monolingual normativity” in this dissertation – the tendency to posit monolingualism as a norm-setting principle, particularly in the context of language teaching and learning.

As indicated above, the views underpinning the monolingual paradigm have come under particular scrutiny within a so-called “social turn” (Block, 2003) and, more recently, the “multilingual turn” (Conteh & Meier, 2014; May, 2014) occurring across different areas of Applied Linguistics. In broad strokes, developments subsumed under the term social turn are

rooted in the ambition to question and expand the conceptual and epistemological foundations of the discipline, notably by giving increased attention to the socio-cultural dimension of language learning and language use. Resonating with the monolingual paradigm, historically dominant approaches in SLA have relied on a structuralist view of language as an abstract, autonomous system, in which language is isolated from other domains such as culture, individuals, and politics (Canagarajah, 2013, p. 23). The hallmark of the so-called social turn, then, has been the aim to reconceptualize SLA “as a more theoretically and methodologically balanced enterprise that endeavours to explore in more equal measures and, where possible, in integrated ways, both the social and cognitive dimensions of [second/foreign language] use and acquisition” (Firth & Wagner, 1997, p. 286). Proponents of this perspective have stressed the need to examine the implications of viewing language as social practice rather than relying exclusively on the Chomskyan view of language as an enclosed system of abstract structures residing in an idealized speaker-listener’s mind9 _{(Canagarajah, 2013; Kasper & Wagner, 2011;} Talmy & Duff, 2011; Canagarajah, 2007; Pennycook, 2004; Block, 2003; Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000; Firth & Wagner, 1998, 1997; Hall, 1997; Liddicoat, 1997). As elaborated by Pennycook (2010), “To look at language as practice is to view language as an activity rather than a structure, as something we do rather than a system we draw on, as a material part of social and cultural life rather than an abstract entity” (Pennycook, 2010, p. 2). This attentional shift towards the ongoing process by which people act through language in sensitivity to the local demands for social action in a particular context is reflected in the wide adoption of the term

9 _{Noam Chomsky’s (1965) focus is on language as a single system of abstract structures located in the mind of an}

“ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech community” (p. 3). In postulating that the human capacity for language is hard-wired in the brain and that all languages have a universal grammar stemming from human’s innate dispositions, Chomsky’s perspective has been instrumental in promoting a view of language as an abstract structural system that foregrounds individual cognition over social contexts of interaction (see

languaging (Swain, 2009), which refers to “the process of making meaning and shaping

knowledge and experience through language” (p. 98). The ensuing emphasis on active meaning making in interaction also brings into focus that the meanings carried by language are never fixed. Words change their meanings across context and time, depending on who uses them and to what end. Rather than conceiving of language as a system of signs with agreed-upon fixed meanings, as postulated in structural linguistics, proposals put forth in the spirit of the social turn have brought to attention that meanings are always temporary and contestable. Viewed from this angle, language is a site of conflict and struggle for power, and a site of social and personal change (Weedon, 1997; Norton Peirce, 1995), as I will elaborate in the next section.

Following the calls for socially attuned approaches to language learning and teaching that were put forth in the 1990s, research has branched out into a number of directions,10 _three interrelated strands of which are particularly relevant to my purposes: a) research venturing into the complex dynamics that characterize the links between language (learning) and people’s sense of who they are, b) the critical discussion of the native speaker concept and its role in language education, and c) the re-examination of language learning and multilingual practice in light of increasing linguistic and cultural diversity. I will consider each in turn, showing how the monolingual paradigm has been challenged within these realms of interest, as I gradually stake out key points that shape my understanding of multilingual subjectivity.

10 _{For example, a range of conceptual frameworks have been adopted to highlight the complex dynamics that}