28.986, Review: Anthro Ling; Socioling: King, Carson (2016)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-986. Thu Feb 23 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.986, Review: Anthro Ling; Socioling: King, Carson (2016)

Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Helen Aristar-Dry, Robert Coté,
                                   Michael Czerniakowski)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Editor for this issue: Clare Harshey <clare at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2017 16:06:02
From: Joshua DeClerck [jdeclerck at albany.edu]
Subject: The Multilingual City

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36186997


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-603.html

EDITOR: Lid  King
EDITOR: Lorna  Carson
TITLE: The Multilingual City
SUBTITLE: Vitality, Conflict and Change
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2016

REVIEWER: Joshua M DeClerck, State University of New York at Albany

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY: 

The focus of “The Multilingual City: Vitality, Conflict and Change,” edited by
Lid King and Lorna Carson, is on international cities where multilingual
situations develop, as well as the outcomes/effects produced by these
situations. The authors focus on the LUCIDE (Language in Urban Communities:
Integration and Diversity for Europe) cities of Europe, Canada and Australia.
These cities include; Athens, Dublin, Hamburg, Limassol, London, Madrid,
Melbourne, Montreal, Osijek, Oslo, Ottawa, Rome, Sofia, Strasbourg, Toronto,
Utrecht, Vancouver and Varna (King and Carson ix). The authors analyze how
these situations of contact between languages affect the society, the culture
and the people in these areas.

INTRODUCTION: Introduction: ‘Multilingualism is Lived Here’ by Lorna Carson
and Lid King

In this section the authors describe the city, as well as why and how the city
lends itself to multilingual situations, especially in modern societies. The
city is described as a form of societal structuring from ancient times that,
conceptually, has not changed over time. The authors, in this book, are doing
a sociology of language study on the multilingual situations in different
cities across Europe, where they closely analyze the effects of language
contact and language policy on multilingual peoples, as well as the effects of
the language contact on the culture and societal make-up of urban areas. The
five areas of focus used to study this are: the public sphere, education,
economic life, the private lives of citizens and urban spaces (also referred
to as the ‘cityscape’). There were two phases of data collection, in each of
which data was collecteddifferently. In the first phase, secondary data was
collected through the use of surveys, while in the second phase data was
collected through semi-directed interviews. These interviews covered
perceptions that the participant has about languages in their cities (the
visibility of multilingualism in their cities, challenges in creating and
managing multilingualism in a city and difficulties faced by individual city
dwellers). Finally, the authors discuss multilingualism with respect to
individuals, activists, civic institutions and governments (local and
national) and how they interact/promote the development and implementation of
multilingualism in the city. The authors make a distinction between
multilingual and plurilingual, following the distinction made by the Council
of Europe, where “multilingual” applies to societies (aka groups) whereas
“plurilingualism” applies only to individuals who speak more than one
language. 

CHAPTER 1: The Vitality of Urban Multilingualism by Itesh Sachdev and Sarah
Cartwright

According to the authors of this section, Itesh Sachdev and Sarah Cartwright,
there is a historic preference for monolingualism and since the 18th century
there has been the strong attitude of “one language: one nation” that has
continued into the present (21st century) (King and Carson 18). This chapter
reviews how each city has attained its multilingual/plurilingual situation.
The authors divide it up based on the following four broad categories,
established by the final LUCIDE conference: 1 - Multilingual Historicities
(Rome, Utretch and Varna), 2 – Cities Built on Immigration (Madrid, Hamburg,
London, Melbourne, Toronto and Vancouver), 3 - Cities New to Multilingualism
(Athens, Sofia, Oslo and Dublin), Border and 
4 - Bilingual Cities (Limassol, Osijek, Strasbourg, Ottawa and Montreal). To
end the section, the authors talk about the vitality of multilingualism in the
LUCIDE cities with respect to demographic, status, and institutional
support/control factors. 

CHAPTER 2: The Sights and Sounds of the Multilingual City by Lorna Carson

In this section, Lorna Carson talks about physical evidence of
multilingualism/plurilingualism. She splits it into two main categories,
indexical or incidental, indexical being meaningful multilingual signage or
written multilingualism where incidental is less salient to the interlocutor.
Examples of indexical multilingualism would be signage that is in a museum or
common place in multiple languages (51). An example given by Carson of
incidental multilingualism would be a vending machine in Bulgaria that still
has the instructions in English, where people don’t pay any attention to the
English because it doesn’t serve a meaningful purpose. Carson addresses the
issue of multilingualism and how the visual aspect does not lend itself to the
multilingual individuals in their cities that don’t speak the ‘main’ language
of the city. “For instance, one respondent describes how, ‘In a mainline
London station, a notice read: If you need an interpreter, go to platform
8’(London City Report, 2014: 64)”(57). Carson analyzes the multilingual
situations in Hamburg, Strasbourg and Dublin with respect to visual
multilingualism, which demonstrates differences in their contexts (where there
are temporary and permanent circumstances that brought the inhabitants of each
city together). Addressed further are three  categories of visible features of
multilingualism: English language usage, Monolingual signs and Languages on
the edges. All three of these types of multilingualism are present in the
three cities analyzed by Carson. The section also reviews aural forms of
multilingualism with respect to Television and radio broadcasting, as well as
Multiethnolects, where physical communication between individuals is analyzed
as well as a more passive communication (broadcasted). Carson concludes the
section with the fact that “even small and symbolic instances contribute to
enhanced language vitality and send out positive signals to local residents
that their languages are worthy to be used, to be maintained, and to be
learned”(83). 

CHAPTER 3: Urban Multilingualism: Bond or Barrier? by Maria Stoicheva

In Maria Stoicheva’s chapter, linguistic identity and perceptions are
discussed by citizens in multilingual cities. The respondents are participants
in the LUCIDE City Reports and they discuss what it means to be a multilingual
city. Some of the participants describe their cities as such while others
compare their city to more stereotypical multilingual cities such as New York.
The author discusses how to decide whether or not a language is prevalent in
determining the multilingual status of a city and explains that there are
multiple factors in this decision. The major factors, according to the author
and some of the respondents, are the population of the speakers of the
language, whether or not the language is used in daily life (private and/or
public sectors), how citizens of the city perceive the language and its
speakers, transmission of the language, and whether or not there are efforts
to maintain the language (such as bilingual education, cultural/education
festivities or use of the language in governmental documents). Stoicheva ends
the chapter by stating that all these factors make it difficult for local
officials and agencies to make decisions regarding language policy and
cultural awareness. 

CHAPTER 4: Language Policies and the Politics of Urban Multilingualism by
Peter Skrandies

Peter Skrandies discusses language policy and politics of urban
multilingualism in the city as a whole, as opposed to Stoicheva’s chapter on
individuals. This chapter analyzes the perspectives of individuals towards the
policies that their cities implement for immigrants that speak languages other
than the majority language. Through this analysis, the author demonstrates
that the minority languages are respected by the people of the cities and that
the people feel there should be more support by the government of these
populations. Finally, Skrandies asserts that the national and local
governments don’t share the same opinions when it comes to minority languages
and that there needs to be more correlation between the two and more support
for these populations. 

CHAPTER 5: Languages at School: A Challenge for Multilingual Cities by David
Little

This chapter, by David Little, discusses minority languages in the context of
schooling with respect to the LUCIDE cities. In this chapter, the author talks
about successful schooling and how there are bilingual programs that have been
moderately successful. The bilingual programs that Little discusses are the
programs where the languages are used to teach different subject areas (for
instance using French in a math class but Spanish in a science class – in a
bilingual program in Madrid). Little also discusses the drawbacks of these
types of programs, however, in that students may only acquire a limited
knowledge of a language used for a single subject and fail to acquire
knowledge of the language in more social contexts. Little suggests that the
most successful way to implement these programs is to have some heritage
speakers/native speakers in classes with new learners so that both groups of
speakers benefit from social interactions and learn how to use the language
outside an academic context. 

CHAPTER 6: Multilingual Cities and the Future: Vitality or Decline? by Lid
King

Lid King analyzes the future of multilingual cities and whether or not they
are on the rise or decline. In this chapter, King ascertains that the
multilingual cities are indeed on the rise with some cities projected to have
increased their populations by millions by the year 2050. King further states
that the nature of the city is constantly changing, as mentioned in previous
chapters, and that this nature allows the city to become either more accepting
of their linguistic richness or more intolerant. According to King, the
attitude that cities currently have towards multilingualism is a lot more
tolerant than that of past generations. King continues by stating that
although this is true, it is still possible for intolerance to spread and
become dominant. King finally states that as humans, we need to take it upon
ourselves to make sure that we are tolerant and to make sure our cities become
environments that nurture, not harm, their citizens and their ways of life.

EVALUATION:

This work’s strength comes from the data that is analyzed, which is diverse
and allows for a strong comparative analysis. The data comes from multiple
cities in different countries and different continents, incorporating
different languages and different contact situations. Each city that was
analyzed has its own unique contact situation, its own policies for handling
the minority languages and its own national policies and mindsets. All of
these factors  also influence the public opinion on minority languages in the
cities. The authors approach these linguistic areas of interest from different
perspectives, primarily from the anthropological and psychological side of
linguistics. The analysis is mostly a qualitative analysis with some
statistics given on demographics and language policies. Self reporting in this
book is good for the qualitative approach in order to get perspectives and
opinions from the speakers. This book takes into account different aspects of
daily life in which plurilingualism is prominent. These range from public
opinion, to educational policies, to public policies, to signage, to economics
and lastly to public media (such as radio, television, music, etc.). The
anthropological approach to these linguistic situations allows for a more
detailed analysis and suggestions on ways that public policy can help nurture
and spread the knowledge of these minority groups (their languages and their
cultures) in their respective communities. 

The analysis could be developed more, through a more quantitative approach,
and by adopting  a more sociolinguistic perspective in discussing the data.
Accounting for language contact quantitatively would allow us to see what
people actually do while in public. It is always difficult to rely on self
reporting as people, for the most part, are unaware of what they do
linguistically. In this work, the authors are not so much concerned with the
self reporting of the participant’s own linguistic analysis as they are with
their self reporting on their perspectives on linguistic policies and minority
languages in their cities. Future work can look at the individual more
closely, such as in public situations, to see what their linguistic usage
entails in order to see if the participants use the minority language(s) and
which context(s) allow for participants to freely use these languages. Future
work in this area could also look into how national policies can adapt to
better accommodate the multilingual city. Finally, future work could look more
into language contact between European languages (such as English and French)
with aboriginal languages (in Australia) and Native American languages (in
Canada). There was little discussion on this very interesting topic and it
would be interesting to see more data on these situations (such as public
opinions and how these languages [specifically the aboriginal] are dealt with
in education). 

This book meets its goals of providing a qualitative analysis from an
anthropological linguistics perspective. The authors provide a comparison
across three different continents, multiple countries and hundreds of
different languages. Each chapter accounts for different aspects (mostly
social) of the plurilingualism in the LUCIDE cities. Through the social
aspects that are highlighted, the authors discuss solutions to current
problems and praise the successful efforts that are already in place. Each
chapter also provides insight as to how the world (meaning individuals in the
multilingual city, as well as groups and local and national governments) can
improve the situation of plurilingualism and promote the growth of these
minority languages. The last chapter focuses primarily on the future of these
multilingual situations and cities, and  the author of this chapter, Lid King,
believes these situations will only grow in number as more and more people
migrate globally and as cities become more populated. 

Students from anthropology, linguistics (specifically anthropological
linguistics, sociolinguistics and maybe contact linguistics) and public policy
classes would benefit from this book. This is a good source of qualitative
studies and provides a good example on how to go about qualitative research in
linguistics. Also, this work is good for students that are interested in
plurilingualism in European cities and settings with contact between
Indo-european languages and languages from Africa, Asia and other
Indo-european languages. There is little discussion on contact between
European languages and the aboriginal languages of Australia or the Native
American languages of Canada. However, students looking for a more
quantitative analysis will find that this work does not provide relevant
numeric data on  contact between languages in these cities (either
interpersonal or intrapersonal), just demographic data.

This book is one of the first that looks at the LUCIDE city reports and
connects it with work done by others. This work connects different aspects of
linguistic study in a cohesive way, as each chapter explores different topics
brought up during the LUCIDE city reports, such as public opinion on
plurilingualism and public policy on minority languages in education. Finally,
 all the chapters cohere well.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Joshua DeClerck is currently a Spanish Linguistics PhD student at SUNY Albany.
He currently teaches introductory level Spanish classes and holds a BA in
Spanish Linguistics, French Studies and Italian Studies from SUNY Albany, as
well as a MA in Spanish Linguistics from SUNY Albany. His research interests
include Contact Linguistics, Romance Linguistics, SLA and Phonology. More
specifically, Romance SLA and contact between Romance languages.





----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-28-986	
----------------------------------------------------------