26.5545, Review: Anthropological Ling; Lang Acq; Socioling: Gerachty, Conacher (2014)

[The LINGUIST List via LINGUIST]

LINGUIST List: Vol-26-5545. Mon Dec 14 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.5545, Review: Anthropological Ling; Lang Acq; Socioling: Gerachty, Conacher (2014)

Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Anthony Aristar, Helen Aristar-Dry, Sara Couture)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************

                LINGUIST List has 25th birthday!

                 Thank you all for your support!

            2015 end of year and holiday season fund drive:

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
              http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

      Thank you for your continuous support of The LINGUIST List!
               We wish you all a Happy New Year 2016!

Editor for this issue: Sara  Couture <sara at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2015 12:57:05
From: Leila Khabbazi-Oskouei [leilakhabbazi_o at yahoo.co.uk]
Subject: Intercultural Contact, Language Learning and Migration

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36047797


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-4109.html

EDITOR: Barbara  Gerachty
EDITOR: Jean E Conacher
TITLE: Intercultural Contact, Language Learning and Migration
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Leila Khabbazi-Oskouei, University of East Anglia

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

The book ‘Intercultural Contact, Language Learning and Migration’ edited by
Barbara Geraghty and Jean E. Conacher consists of three parts, which focus on
migration and language contact, language learning and cultural contact and
migration and contact. Each part is preceded by an introduction discussing the
key themes across the individual chapters. The volume opens with the editors’
introduction, in which they outline the scope of the book and sketch the
contents of the contributions. The main purpose of the book is exploring what
happens to both languages and their users when cultures come into contact. The
contributions in the book explore different cultural manifestations of aspects
of language and cultural contact brought about by migration. 

Part 1 entitled “Migration and Language Contact” contains three chapters. Each
chapter in this section focuses on potentially large population movements. The
opening chapter by Bernard Spolsky entitled “Migration and language
management: The Jewish experience”, provides a historical analysis of the
Jewish experience of migration and language management, asserting that,while
migration may bring change to people’s lives, “the nature of that change will
be decided by the degree of linguistic and cultural contact which ensues” (p.
12). Illustrating with cases from Jewish experience, Spolsky concludes, “it is
migration which weakens the immigrant language, but assimilation and social
integration which lead to the adoption of the new one” (p. 36). 

Vera Regan and Evelina Debaene in their article entitled “Linguistic vitality
and the Polish community in France” take a comparative approach while
analyzing the two distinct instances of Polish migration to France: the
Solidarity migration of the 1980s and the post-EU-accession migration from
2004 onwards. In their interview-based study, they address the issue of
migration, second language acquisition and the transmission of migrants’ first
language to their children. Drawing on two sources of data, one from Polish
‘officialdom’ in France, and the other from ‘non-official’ migrants, the
authors picture Polish peoples’ lives in France and their language practices.
The authors conclude that these Polish migrants, while wishing to invest in a
high-status European language of international communication, also cherish
their heritage language.  

In the third chapter entitled ‘Language Planners’ Cultural positioning
Strategies in Joint Negotiation of Meaning’, Patrick Studer explores
EU-internal debates about multiculturalism policy from a micro-discursive
perspective. The data in this study are drawn from interviews which encourage
language planners at the supranational level to engage reflectively with the
official documentation projecting the EU’s public commitment to language and
cultural diversity. The writer attempts to shed light on the tensions between
public policy and individual experience of multilingual communication. Studer
suggests that informal language planning is strongly guided by the
cultural-ideological background of the planners and more attention needs to be
paid to bottom-up micro-level language-planning processes.

In Part 2, entitled ‘Language Learning: Communicating in the Contact Zone’,
the authors examine language learning in the context of contact, migration and
technological change. The contributors in this part examine various types of
language acquisition and the development of intercultural competence in
informal and higher educational institutions. The opening chapter by Fie
Velghe and Jan Blommaert is entitled ‘Emergent New Literacies and the Mobile
Phone: Informal Language Learning, Voice and Identity in a South African
Township’. The writers approach literacy as a complex of social and cultural
practices rather than the mere acquisition of ‘technical’ reading and writing
skills (p. 90). The article looks at the informal learning strategies women in
Wesbank, an economically marginalized community near Cape Town, engage in,
trying “to make ‘themselves understood by others’ and to gain voice in new
communicative environment – created by the uptake of mobile phones and the
access to instant chat messaging and the internet more generally” (p. 91). In
their study, the writers use semi-structured face-to-face interviews, group
interviews and analysis of text messages. The writers believe that device
literacy and acquisition of textspeak are not less effective because of being
informal. 

The second chapter in Part 2 by Agnieszka Skrzypek, Romana Kopečková, Barbara
Bidzińska and David Singleton is entitled ‘Language and Culture: Attitudes
towards, and Perceptions of, English L2 Acquisition among Adult Polish
Migrants in Ireland’. It examines ethnolinguistic vitality (ELV), motivation
to learn English and the maintenance of Polish in Dublin in the Polish migrant
community in Ireland after EU enlargement in 2004. The researchers use surveys
to gather data on attitude and motivation and proficiency tests to test their
English language proficiency level. The results suggest that migrants try to
balance acquisition of English with successful maintenance of Polish language
and culture. 

In Chapter 6 entitled ‘Face-to-Face Tandem Language Learning: Evidence of
Intercultural Learning in a Zone of Proximal Development for Intercultural
Competence’, Fionnuala Kennedy and Áine Furlong conduct a qualitative analysis
of learner reports in order to study the effects of intercultural
communication instruction on face-to-face tandem partnership as well as
evidence of learning within the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) with
reference to a mixed-nationality group of third-level students. Tandem
language learning refers to two partners of different native languages
agreeing to meet at regular intervals for language exchange with the aim of
learning each other’s language and exchanging personal, cultural and
linguistic information (p. 132). The study shows the importance of
person-to-person interaction between learners in the development of
consciousness through mediation and interpersonal relations. 

In the final chapter of Part 2, Aleksandra Sudhershan discusses the use of an
electronic addition to the European Language Portfolio, which provides
opportunities for intercultural self-assessment, and the role it plays in
helping learners to become autonomous ‘intercultural speakers’.  The aim of
the article entitled ‘E-Portfolio Self-Assessment of Intercultural
Communicative Competence: Helping Language Learners to Become Autonomous
Intercultural Speakers’ is to investigate how international students can be
supported in a multicultural foreign-language classroom in the development of
autonomy in intercultural language learning. The research is based on field
notes from class observations, focus-group data, one-to-one interviews and
documentation. The author believes that “being an intercultural speaker’
requires taking responsibility for the development of one’s own intercultural
competence” (p. 161).

In Part 3 of the volume ‘Migration and Contact: Community and Individual
Experience’, which consists of three articles, the contributors show “how
exploring individual and community narrative through reflection, life story
and song can provide us with a deeper understanding of the experiences of
those living in intercultural contact, language learning and migration” (p.
14). Each of the articles focuses on the unique experience of an individual or
a community with the aim of encouraging the reader to engage with broader
issues. In the opening chapter entitled ‘Heteroglossic Becoming: Listening to,
and Learning from, Our Multiple Voices’, Julie Choi draws on a range of
textual and visual evidence in order to show how social interaction brings “a
constant (re)positioning of the self’ (p. 168). Choi rejects the
assimilationist model of migration and intercultural contact and argues that
an individual chooses the elements of linguistic and cultural identities they
use and shapes those identities as they interpret them. Reflecting on some
incidents from different settings as a foreigner performing in Tokyo, Choi
shows her desire to represent herself as a speaker of Japanese who wishes to
be seen as a competent, resourceful speaker who draws on knowledge of her
other languages (p. 174). The co-author, David Nunan, examines some of the
methodological issues in autoethnographic research. He believes that, and
although in this study the traditional distinction between data and analysis
can become difficult to sustain, Choi has been successful in adopting an
approach that melds the story as lived by participants with the story as lived
by the researcher (p. 186).

In the second chapter of Part 3, Núria Borrull examines the form and function
of «La Nova Cançó» (Catalan New Song) during and since the Franco period in
Catalonia. The author in the article entitled ‘The Catalan «Nova Cançó»:
Resistance and Identity Through Song’, demonstrates “how community narrative,
expressed through music and song, can have a powerful political influence in
developing and sustaining a group identity within an autochtonous community
under threat” (p. 168).  The author maintains that Catalan song which is a
cultural phenomenon and has played a significant role in protesting against
the dictatorship, has had little resonance outside Catalonia, both in the
academic world and the central media in Spain. In support of Stokes (1994),
Borrull maintains “music is socially meaningful because when a particular
genre is taken as a symbol of identity it is also used to create boundaries
and maintain distinctions and, therefore, ‘dominant groups oppose the
construction of difference when it confronts their interest’” (p. 203).

The final chapter is by Irmina van Niele and is entitled ‘Wandering Words:
Reflections on Ambivalent Cultural Belonging and the Creative Potential of
Linguistic Multiplicity’. Niele engages reflexively with her own life as an
intercontinental migrant. Having migrated from Netherlands to Australia, van
Niele explores the range of emotions she experiences while negotiating the
intercultural contact zone in both countries. Having been living in linguistic
multiplicities, the writer gains the potential to move through languages and
understand differences in ways of thinking by being open to possibilities and
relating more widely to the world.

The volume ends with a concluding chapter by the editors summarizing the
achievements of the book in line with the recent developments in intercultural
studies.

EVALUATION

As the title of the book suggests, this volume explores the diversity and
tension caused by population movement and technological and social
transformation. The book has been successful in advocating the advantages of
being open to different influences, research cultures and methodologies in
intercultural studies. The articles in the book explore varieties of issues
concerning language contact. While the first part of the book explores
large-scale migration and language contact and the effects of the decisions
made by individuals, groups and institutions within the intercultural contact
zone, the second part investigates how language learners can be supported in
diverse ways and diverse settings. Interestingly, Part 3 of the volume turns
to narratives that individuals and communities tell of themselves. This part
emphasizes the importance of narrative and (auto)ethnographic studies opening
up the opportunities for individuals, whether migrant, language learner or
researcher, to express their identity.  

REFERENCES

Stokes, M. (ed.) (1994), Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical
Construction of Place. Oxford and New York: Berg.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

I finished my PhD in language and linguistics at the University of East Anglia/UK in Dec. 2011. The title of my thesis is 'Interactional Variation in English and Persian: A Comparative Analysis of Metadsicourse Features in Magazine Editorials'. It focuses on comparing and contrasting the use of interactional devices in English and Persian, and discussing the similarities and differences in the light of the cultural expectations and political settings in some British and Iranian news magazine editorials. My thesis-driven articles have been published in the journals of Pragmatics and Iranian Studies. I am interested in the following subject areas: intercultural communication, the expression of interactional metadiscourse in the media, particularly the press, patterns of cross-cultural variation in British and Iranian discourse.




------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
          2015 end of year and holiday season fund drive:
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
            http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
 


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-26-5545	
----------------------------------------------------------