ICIS Newsletter - December 2018 (Plain Text Version)
|
||
|
In this issue: |
ARTICLES LINGUA FRANCA ENGLISH THROUGH SPACE AND TIME: A SELF-REFLECTIVE ACCOUNT
Applying the framework of space and scale (Blommaert, Collins, & Slembrouk, 2005) to my use of English as a lingua franca (ELF), I show in this self-reflective account that the effective use of our linguistic repertoire is highly dependent on context and space and that each particular space brings with it various levels of linguistic and cultural hierarchy exercising influence on language use and identity forming. After considering my development and use of ELF in a European context, I look at my experiences with ELF as a Western nonnative speaker (NNS) and English teacher in Japan, and then I discuss ELF and multilingualism in relation to the MA TESOL programme at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. This article calls on TESOL practitioners to critically reflect on how ELF and multilingualism relate to their own contexts and encourages the creation of communities of practice acknowledging a variety of linguistic repertoires and seeking positive identity forming. Developing ELF Within a Truncated Multilingual Repertoire: Europe As a Dutch native growing up in the Netherlands, I studied a variety of foreign languages, which have greatly contributed to shaping my linguistic repertoire and paved the way to becoming a multilingual speaker. Even before I started studying English in school, I had realized the practicality and value of being able to use ELF, which may be broadly defined as “English intended for communication mainly between non-native users” (Sifakis, 2007, p. 356). This stood in sharp contrast with the way I perceived other foreign languages, namely German and French: two school subjects with no direct practical application. Consequently, a wide gap between my linguistic competence in English and in German and French had started to develop. Although I have developed native levels of communicative competence in both Dutch and English, my limited communicative competence in German, French, and Japanese have rendered my multilingualism truncated, “organized topically, on the basis of domains or specific activities” (Blommaert et al., 2005, p. 199). At the age of 16, ELF had become an essential part of my truncated multilingual repertoire. The acceptance of ELF by the Dutch is attributed to its general popularity, which, according to Booij (2001), is due to the following: 1) The Dutch do not consider English to be owned by a particular country, 2) they are very open toward the Anglo-Saxon culture, and 3) they realize their dependence on international trade for which knowledge of foreign languages is a prerequisite. My early acceptance of ELF as a practical tool of empowerment and my subconscious rejection of German and French may be explained by the fact that, “ELF is…defined functionally by its use in intercultural communication rather than formally by its reference to native speaker norms” (Hülmbauer, Böhringer, & Seidlhofer, 2008, p. 27). This is not to say, however, that ELF, as I experienced it then, was completely, “…bereft of collective cultural capital…usable neither for identity marking, nor for a positive (‘integrative’) disposition toward an L2 group, nor for a desire to become similar to valued members of this L2 group…” (House, 2003, p. 560). To me, the use of ELF was one of the ways to express what I thought it meant to be Dutch: internationally oriented, linguistically competent, progressive, and accepting of different cultures and values. It was a tool to express my ideal identity. Although not necessarily associated with native speaker (NS) norms, to me, ELF had clear connections to the freedom associated with American and British pop culture. As such, I wanted very much to be a part of this exciting international world represented by ELF. Displaying my ability to communicate in this world language also allowed me, depending on the time and place, to make a “hierarchical shift, a case of ‘upscaling from a local-individual to a translocal, institutional and transnational order” (Blommaert et al., 2005, p. 205). Europe: Case Study This upscaling, as I experienced it, may be best illustrated with an example from my childhood. Every year, I would go to France on vacation with my family. I would use my limited French to speak to the local youth while hanging out on the beach. When my French friends and I met other Dutch people, I would switch to ELF to communicate with them, expecting my French friends to do the same. Although I felt badly for them that they were not able to do that, I also remember feeling somewhat superior to them because they did not have the skill to switch languages. As a result, I ended up judging my French friends as having “no language,” based on the Dutch “criteria of a language regime [ELF] valid in a particular [inter]national order” (Blommaert et al., 2005, p. 213). We may question, then, the validity of Firth’s (1996, p. 240 as cited in House, 2003, p. 557) definition of ELF as a “contact language between persons who share neither a common native tongue nor a common national culture, and for whom English is the chosen foreign language for communication” in that it is common and perfectly acceptable for Dutch people to use ELF even when speaking among themselves in the presence of other nationalities. As such, Hülmbauer, Böhringer, and Seidlhofer’s (2008, p. 26) description of ELF as, “a phenomenon which is a part of the linguistic repertoire utilized on a daily basis by a large number of plurilingual individuals in Europe” strikes me as more relevant here. Moving Spaces and Scales: Japan After I moved from the Netherlands to Japan to work as an English language teacher, I soon found out how my French friends may have felt about being judged as linguistically inferior. As much as my knowledge of ELF had empowered me in a European context, the teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) industry in Japan did not seem to appreciate such “a repertoire of different communicative instruments” (House, 2003, p. 559). The now widely accepted idea that “successful bilinguals with intercultural insights and knowledge should serve as pedagogical models in English as an International Language (EIL) rather than the monolingual native speaker” (Alptekin, 2000, p. 63) seemed not to have penetrated the TEFL industry in Japan. As a result, just as I had judged my French friends as not having language (i.e., lacking access to a higher scale linguistic good) on that particular beach in France, I constantly found myself being judged because I did not have the right nationality (i.e., lacking access to a higher scale cultural good) in the context of Japanese TEFL (Blommaert et al., 2005, p. 202). This shows that although House’s statement (2003, p. 557) that ELF is “no longer ‘owned’ by its native speakers, and there is a strong tendency towards more rapid ‘de-owning’” holds true for the situation in the Netherlands, it in no way applies to Japan. Many Japanese still consider English to belong to the North American English NS, who serves as the single most important, and often unattainable, role model. Despite that not having a passport from an English-speaking country made it challenging to find steady employment as an English teacher in Japan, I soon found out that, as a Caucasian with a slight North American accent, I could easily pass for an NS. Although passing for an NS is often perceived as an act of deceit and fraudulent gain, Piller (2002) makes a clear distinction between passing as a form of identity forming and passing as performance. In the latter, Piller (2002, p. 198) argues, “no deceit is involved” as “in initial encounters, expert L2 users impose a passing performance upon themselves as a test of their abilities.” To me, the distinction between passing as identity forming and performance has become somewhat blurred over the years teaching English in Japan as an NNS of European descent. I will illustrate this by describing my experience working as an English teacher in Japan. Japan: Case Study When I was in the teacher’s room in between classes, I often felt pressure not to make grammatical mistakes as it would remind my NS colleagues of my nonnativeness. Every time I thought I had made a mistake, I would consider it another confirmation that I was an impostor, out of place with no right to be there. My preoccupation with this made it difficult to open up to people and be myself. Despite the fact that most of my colleagues had told me how good my English was and that they did not care about my nationality, I could not help but feel that they thought I did not belong there and may even pose a threat to their positions as NSs. When I was first hired, one of my NS colleagues implied to me that management had lowered the recruitment standards by hiring an NNS. One of my supervisors told me that I should never reveal to my students that I was an NNS. These instances had a strong impact on my identity as I sometimes felt I was living a lie. The above account illustrates how advanced L2 speakers…may find themselves in situations in which they are forced to resort to deceit in order to access some of the privileges associated with native speaker status, particularly of English, as the language which currently has the strongest symbolic currency (Bourdieau, 1991) internationally (Piller, 2002, p. 199–200). Although my ELF skills proved a valuable asset in that they allowed me to pass for an NS and secure employment as an English teacher in Japan, the feeling of having no language (i.e., my nonnativeness) negatively impacted on my self-confidence and made me question my identity as an English speaker (Blommaert et al., 2005). MA TESOL as a Community of Practice: United Kingdom So far, I have illustrated that my use of ELF as part of my multilingual repertoire is not an individual attribute, but should rather be seen as something which is either enabled or disabled by the environment (Blommaert et al., 2005). In this last section, I briefly discuss ELF and multilingualism in light of the MA TESOL course at the University of Manchester. Accommodating and encouraging ELF and multilingualism in various ways, the setting of the MA TESOL course facilitates the creation of a group of people sharing a specific craft and working toward similar goals. Such a group of like-minded individuals may be described as a temporary community of practice (Busch, 2012) and lies at the heart of both ELF and multilingualism (Blommaert et al., 2005: Busch, 2012; Canagarajah, 2007; House, 2003; Hülmbauer et al., 2008). Though a community of speech (Gumperz, 1964) is often associated with the shared language variety of its members, a community of practice, as succinctly described by Hülmbauer et al. (2008), “is no longer created by a common language variety, but rather the language variety is created by the community” (p. 28). This argument strongly resonates with Benor’s (2010) ethnolinguistic repertoire, which allows for a much needed move away from “classify[ing] individuals as speakers or non-speakers of a particular language variety” (p. 176). The majority of the 2013–2014 cohort of postgraduate students in the MA TESOL course at the University of Manchester were multilingual NNSs from different ethnic backgrounds and with different religions who used ELF not only as a pragmatic tool, but also as a way to express their identities. Through ELF, a sense of mutual respect, equality, and “nonjudgmentalness” is established. That many of the lecturers on the course are also multilingual speakers further contributes to creating a community of practice in which “the primary input [and output] is not coming from NSs but from a group of speakers who can be characterised as sharing a multilingual habitus and multilingual communicative competence” (House, 2003, p. 571). Although it may be argued that the micro act of enrolling in a U.K. MA TESOL course with its inherent high scale symbolic capital (Blommaert et al., 2005) may contribute to the sustainment of macro power inequalities in the world of TESOL, I also believe that the participation in such a multicultural community of practice offers many opportunities. First, similar to the two case studies and reflection presented in this paper, participants may be able to reflect on their own experiences of how their linguistic repertoires are influenced by the space they inhabit. Also, participants may be better positioned to help their students develop their multilingual repertoires into tools of empowerment and positive identity forming, ultimately enabling students to create communities of practices of their own. Conclusion This self-reflective account has illustrated how a successful operation of one’s linguistic repertoire is dependent on dimensions of space and scale (Blommaert et al., 2005). While certain spaces allow us to express or develop our identities through our multilingualism, other contexts may be less accommodating to our linguistic repertoires and may exert detrimental effects on our self-image, identity forming, and judgement of others. As TESOL practitioners, regardless of our nationality, mother tongue, linguistic repertoire, or ethnicity, critical reflection on our own experiences with ELF and multilingualism may allow us to help students take full advantage of their linguistic repertoires. References Alptekin, C. (2002). Towards intercultural communication competence in ELT. ELT Journal, 56(1), 57–64. Benor, S. B. (2010). Ethnolinguistic repertoire: Shifting the analytical focus in language and ethnicity. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 14(2), 159–183. Blommaert, J., Collins, J., & Slembrouk, S. (2005). Spaces of multilingualism. Language and Communication, 25(3), 197–216. Booij, G. (2001). English as the lingua franca of Europe: A Dutch perspective. Lingua e Stile, 36, 351–361. Busch, B. (2012). The linguistic repertoire revisited. Applied Linguistics, 33(5), 503–523. Canagarajah, S. (2007). Lingua franca English, multilingual communities, and language acquisition. The Modern Language Journal, 91, 923–939. Gumperz, J. J. (1964). Linguistic and social interaction in two communities. American Anthropologist, 66(6), 137–153. House, J. (2003). English as a lingua franca: A threat to multilingualism? Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7(4), 556–578. Hülmbauer, C., Böhringer, H., & Seidlhofer, B. (2008). Introducing English as a lingua franca (ELF): Precursor and partner in intercultural communication. Synergies Europe, 3, 25–36. Piller, I. (2002). Passing for a native speaker: Identity and success in second language learning. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 6(2), 179–206. Sifakis, N. (2007). The education of teachers of English as a lingua franca: A transformative perspective. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 17(3), 355–375. Willem de Goei, MA,is an EFL instructor and teacher trainer. His interests include intercultural communication, teacher education, and the integration of ICT in language instruction. For the past 10 years, he has taught English at various higher education institutions in Thailand, Japan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Ghana. |
|