Multilingualism has of course existed throughout human history. However, recent studies argue that contemporary multilingualism is distinct from multilingualism in the past (Aronin and Singleton (2008: 1). The contemporary period that is considered here, according to Singleton, Fishman, Aronin, and Laoire (2013: 3), is the period that sociologists and philosophers refer to as the ‗postmodern or globalization era‘. Other authors, such as Best and Keller (1997), Dickens and Fontana (2015) and Watson and Gibson (1995), suggest that the postmodern era is distinct in that there are changes in peoples‘ perceptions about themselves and about others and a general change in the way in which people view the world. Together with these new perceptions of self and others, there is also increased mobility of people across
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the globe and an emergence of new technologies which have led to new experiences. These changes, together with the social, economic and political changes that are taking place, all have implications for the people affected by them.
According to Marcus and Fischer (1986: 8), postmodernism highlights ―crisis of representation‖ which to some may mean an era that presents both new challenges and opportunities; yet to others, it is just an end to history as it was known and a transition to another period of time. This transition is what Best and Keller (1997: viii) refer to as ―the postmodern turn, an era in which the world is viewed and interpreted differently as a result of the changes that are continuously taking place‖. However, although scholars have tried explain the term ―postmodernism‖, Best and Keller (1997: 4) maintain that ―there is no single explanation for the emergence of postmodernism and the belief that we are in the ‗time of the posts‘‖. Nevertheless, despite the absence of a concrete and clear explanation of what postmodernism means and entails, it is clear that there are changes that have taken place and continue to take place; one such change is the increase in the number of multilingual societies that are becoming more prevalent than monolingual societies. The other change is the increase in interest in the study of multilingualism.
Before the postmodern era, multilingualism existed, but was not discussed as intensely as currently, especially in the case of Western societies. For instance, in Switzerland, there are four official languages, namely German, Italian, Romansch and French. In Belgium, there are French and Flemish speakers; in Canada, there are English and French (Edwards, 2002: 33- 34). This has been the case for centuries, and has been reported before. However, in many cases, societal multilingualism (discussed in section 3.4) existed in these contexts. With increasing migrations and globalization, the need to learn more than one language (so individual multilingualism) is on the rise more than it was before. The same observation made above by Edwards (2002) can be made in the case of Africa, namely that many languages were spoken in a single country. For instance, in Uganda and Kenya, several languages were spoken in the past and are still spoken, thus both countries can definitely be said to be highly multilingual (Kibui, 2014; Ladefoged, 1971). However, the difference is that the magnitude of movement of people does not compare to what is happening currently. Thus, with the increased movements of people from one place to another for social, economic and political reasons, the present era has seen the rise of multilingualism in various parts of the world, including in Africa. This, coupled with the aftermath of colonisation, has seen most African
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states becoming increasingly more multilingual than they were before as observed by authors such as Ennaji (2005), Prah and Brock-Utne (2009) and Prah (2010).
Singleton et al. (2013) note that currently, unlike in the past, the social, political and economic lives of the speakers of the different languages is affected by multilingualism – sometimes directly, and at other times indirectly. Thus, multilingualism cannot be separated from the daily activities of the speakers of the various languages, and speakers use different languages as the situation demands. This trend is unlike multilingualism before the postmodern era where factors like ethnicity and religion affected people‘s daily lives and multilingualism was merely supplementary. According to Singleton et al. (2013), the speakers of the single language that existed in a community identified themselves as members of that language group and spoke the same language. However, with the current increased language diversity and mobility of people, speakers of different languages need to constantly negotiate linguistic identities to suit the different situations that they find themselves in (Singleton et al., 2013).
Franceschini (2009) and Edwards (2002) do not completely agree with Singleton et al.'s (2013) description of multilingualism as ―new‖, because what is described is actually not new: Africa and Europe have been multilingual for many centuries. Rather what is new is the research world‘s recent interest in this phenomenon in Europe because of the current social conditions of migration. What is currently occurring is a shift in focus from studying one language in isolation to studying the reality of multilingualism in Europe. This does not mean that the phenomenon of multilingualism did not exist in history (Trotter, 2000; Tsitsipis, 2006). Several languages were in contact with each other and there was always a need to communicate with other language groups, as Franceschini (2009: 30) observes. Through the changes that multilingualism has undergone over time, it has developed into one of the most salient features of postmodern human society as a whole, but also of some specific language communities (Singleton et al., 2013).
As I positioned my research within the postmodernist framework, I now discuss definitions of ―multilingualism‖. I give various definitions of multilingualism, but I focus mainly on those pertaining to the kinds of multilingualism that exist in the two communities under study.
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