34.1273, Review: Language Documentation; Philosophy of Language: Monsen, Steien (eds.) (2022)

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Subject: 34.1273, Review: Language Documentation; Philosophy of Language: Monsen, Steien (eds.) (2022)

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Date: 19-Apr-2023
From: Daniel Walter [daniel.walter at emory.edu]
Subject: Language Learning and Forced Migration



Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/33.3367

TITLE: Language Learning and Forced Migration
SERIES TITLE: Second Language Acquisition
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: Daniel Walter

SUMMARY

In Language Learning and Forced Migration, the goal, as indicated by
the editors, is the creation and advancement of a new research agenda
within the field of second language acquisition (SLA), namely the
learning of second/additional languages by forced migrants. The
editors, along with the authors of the individual chapters, highlight
the need for a distinct focus on language learning by forced migrants,
as much of the work in SLA focuses on foreign/second language students
and work migrants. The editors argue that the pressures and dynamics
of language learning by forced migrants would lead to a better
understanding of language learning by all learners. In addition, work
on the language learning of forced migrants brings into focus
real-life issues that are not always captured while working with other
types of language learners.

As a first step towards establishing this research agenda, this book
adopts a multidisciplinary approach, where each contributing author
brings their own research methods and language learning theories to
bare on singular group of language learners, sharing much of the same
data and analyzing these data according to their own research
paradigms. The language learners in question are 12 refugees from the
Democratic Republic of the Congo that were resettled through a UN
program in Uganda to Norway. The data collected for the various
chapters comes from longitudinal observational and interview data.

After the foreword and introductory chapter, the book is divided into
two parts. In the first part, ‘Emic Perspectives and Learning
Contexts’, chapters 2-6 detail the way in which these forced migrants
engaged (or did not engage) with their new environment, and the
perspectives that these learners, as well as their teachers and other
community members, had throughout their first two years after
resettlement in Norway. In the second part, ‘Language Practices,
Knowledge and Learning’, chapters 7-12 take a heavier focus on
linguistics and language learning, including both Norwegian and
English as second languages. The editors end with a concluding chapter
that summarizes the findings and renews their call for a research
agenda focused on language learning, and its related issues, of forced
migrants. The individual chapters are summarized below.

In chapter one, ‘Introduction: Language Learning and Forced
Migration’, the editors Guri Bordal Steien and Marte Monsen preface
the two major parts of the book by outlining the impetus for the
volume. They begin with a discussion of the importance that a research
agenda focused on forced migration can have on the field of SLA in
general, and how looking at the language learning of forced migrants
requires multi- or trans-disciplinary approaches to emphasize the
unique social and cultural factors that influence language learning
for such individuals and groups. They then move to outline how
transnational and national refugee policies affect the specifics of
which groups of people can and do move where, which influence the
ultimate multilingual and multicultural realities of the migrants once
they arrive in their host country. Then, the authors outline the
overarching project, the “KongNor Project”, from which all of the
participants for this study were recruited. Within this subsection on
the KongNor Project, the authors detail demographic information from
the 12 participants who were the focus of all data elicitation for
this book. They also outline the types of data collected and the
methods of collection, as well as the limitations that go along with
them. This chapter ends with an outline of the two, previous mentioned
parts of the book with details about the specific chapters therein.

Chapter two, ‘Women, Children, Dogs, Flowers and Men: Constructions of
Norway and Investment in Norwegian Language Learning”, is the first
chapter in part one of the book, which focuses on emic perspectives
and learning contexts. This chapter, also written by the editors,
takes the conceptualization of investment in language learning
(Norton, 2013) to task within the context of forced migration and uses
an ethnographic approach. The major question of this chapter is how
the construction of national cultures, values, and practices affect
the forced migrants’ investment in learning the language of their host
country. The data for this chapter come from classroom observations
focusing on cultural representations of Norway that are either shown
to migrants via learning artifacts like textbooks or described in
class by teachers, both before departure and after arrival. The
chapter then moves its focus to an individual migrant to show how
investment for this individual, and his wife, changed over time, with
the basic finding that this individual’s encounters with Norwegian
culture over his first two years decreased his initial high investment
and interest in learning Norwegian as a second language, while the
experiences of his wife increased her investment in learning
Norwegian.

In chapter three, ‘‘In Uganda, We Collected Them in the Streets’: On
(the Absence of) the Street as a Language Learning Space,’ Guri Bordal
Steien introduces the importance of interactive, social spaces as
locus’ for learning and the impact that the absence of these spaces
can have on the language learning and societal integration of forced
migrants. The major contrast in this chapter is the way in which
additional languages were learned by the migrants. On one hand, there
was little formal training for many of the languages spoken by the
migrants. They learned them through their daily interactions with
speakers of those languages in order to complete meaningful tasks. On
the other hand, these migrants are learning Norwegian primarily in the
classroom, and they do not have, or at least feel that they do not
have many public spaces in which to pick up Norwegian in a similar way
to the other additional languages they learned prior to their
resettlement. This chapter emphasizes the role that social spaces play
in the informal language learning and multilingual competencies of the
refugees and the ways in which these spaces are absent for many
resettled immigrants.

In chapter four, ‘Scripts and Texts as Technologies of Refugee
Governmentality in the Norwegian Introduction Programme’, Verónica
Pájaro explores how the scripted language of intake interviews affects
the construction of individualized plans for the forced migrants from
the NorKong Project. On one hand, scripts serve to standardize the
intake process so that administrative and governmental bodies can see
commonality across individuals. However, the procedural nature of
working from a script can also hamper migrants’ abilities to express
their needs and optimize their individual learning plans. In addition,
these intake-interviews are also meant to help inform migrants about
their options and provide opportunities to goal-set. However,
discrepancies appeared between what migrants originally planned for
and what was actually allowable based on the amount of education they
brought with them and the requirements of the Norwegian state. The
intake-interviews, as scripted interactions, did not allow migrants to
negotiate their positions, and they revealed in later interviews that
they were often left either confused or disappointed after the
intake-interviews.

In chapter five, ‘‘Because I Was the Only One Who Dared’: Approaches
to Multilingual Repertoires in Adult Language Training’, Marte Monsen
and Marianne Eek outline the ideological alignment of teaching
approaches adopted by three different adult language training centers
in Norway. The authors classify the approaches on a continuum from
those with a monolingual bias towards those that are more multilingual
and then use this framework to discuss the teaching they observed,
along with interview data, from schools in Fjordbotn, Østby, and
Rørøy. Here, the authors are not trying to justify which approach is
better for language development, but seek to assess the impact of
these approaches on the daily lives of migrants. The authors argue
that programs with a more monolingual bias sometimes do not allow
migrants to express fully the issues they are having, while programs
with a more multilingual bend allow migrants to incorporate their full
selves as multilinguals into the learning process. This is the
contrast seen between Fjordbotn and Østby, respectively. The learning
in Rørøy is a special case, as, unlike the other two cities with
larger language centers, there is no trained language instructor for
the migrants. Therefore teaching was undertaken by someone with no
formal training. The authors then work to tie these observations to
the language learning outcomes of the refugees, arguing for a
multilingual, if not at least dialogic, approach for teaching forced
migrants who can see their other languages as resources for future
learning and legitimate means of expressing their wants and needs.

Chapter six, ‘Resettling Literacies: The Case of Sarah and Simon’, by
Marte Monsen closes out the first part of this book. The chapter
focuses on the particular learning experiences of two migrants, the
ones located in Rørøy from chapter five, as it relates to their
literacy skill development. The author begins with a discussion of the
problems related to classifying individuals as ‘illiterate’ by showing
how all individuals come to use literacy skills in one way or another
through the development of Grassroots literacy (Blommaert, 2008). They
then  move on to analyses of the two migrants Sarah and Simon, as well
as their learning environment and teacher. The researcher then
contrasts Sarah’s investment and eventual literacy development with
Simon’s, who does not show the same growth, despite being in the same
environment.

Chapter seven, ‘Syllable Structures in English Speech Produced by
Multilingual Speakers with Histories of Mobility’, by Ida Syversten is
the first chapter in part two, which shifts the focus more towards
linguistics and language learning aspects of the focal group of forced
migrants. This chapter focuses on English as a second language for the
forced migrants in the NorKong Project. The research takes a
cross-linguistic approach with an interest in how transfer effects
from the learners’ L1s and other L2s affect their pronunciation of L2
English. The author points to several strategies of the migrants to
avoid closed syllables and complex clusters, which often do not appear
in the other languages they speak, including a number of Bantu
languages, as well as African varieties of French. In their
conclusion, the authors argue for a more ecological understanding of
multilingual pronunciation that moves away from “Northern” conceptions
of L1 versus L2 and societal versus individual monolingualism.

In chapter eight, ‘Word Order in Additional Language English Spoken by
Multilinguals’, Sylvi Rørvik also explores the NorKong group’s
English, this time with a focus on word order. As with chapter seven,
this chapter also begins with an overview of relevant language
influences for these individuals, including Bantu languages and
Ugandan English, as they contrast with “Standard English.” The author
focuses primarily on left-dislocation, which is a feature of many
Bantu languages, but not as common in Standard English. They then
analyze the occurrences of left-dislocation for functional purposes in
these individuals’ speech. They then point to future studies that
could identify whether this pattern of left-dislocation is something
that these migrants might transfer to L2 Norwegian.

In chapter nine, ‘‘The Sound of Asking a Question’: Metalanguage and
Crosslinguistic Awareness in Adults Learning Norwegian as an
Additional Language’, Gunhild Tveit Randen introduces the topics of
metalinguistic awareness and metacognition. The author discusses the
important distinction between metacognition using formal terminology
and a more lay-person way of describing language, where the former may
be lacking in individuals like those from the NorKong Project who have
less formal language education. They take interview data from three
individuals to explore their use of metalanguage and crosslinguistic
awareness. Based on their findings, which indicate that each of these
migrants see their previous language knowledge as a resource for
learning Norwegian as an L2, they argue that pedagogical practices for
such multilingual users should scaffold previously acquired linguistic
knowledge and multilingual competencies to enhance metalinguistic
awareness in migrant L2 learning.

In chapter ten, ‘Syntactic Complexity in Early Adult Additional
Language Norwegian’, Bård Uri Jensen looks at the development of
syntactic complexity, as measured in utterance and t-unit length,
clausal complexity, subordination, and phrasal complexity for two
participants in the NorKong Project. The researcher uses
transcriptions of oral data to map complexity along these measures
over time. The results indicate an increase of overall L2 Norwegian
syntactic complexity for one of the participants, but not the other.
The author then discusses possible reasons for the differences in
syntactic complexity development for these two learners.

In chapter eleven, ‘A Year Goes By: A Longitudinal Study of
Verb-Locative Constructions in Additional Language Norwegian’ by Marte
Nordanger investigates Verb-Locative (VL) development in oral
interviews between one of the NorKong researchers and two of the study
participants. Drawing on Tomasello’s (2000) verb island hypothesis,
they take the theoretical stance that the development of these VL
constructions is lexically grounded, i.e. increased use of VL
structures will be verb dependent, not general. They show this to be
true for these learners, as words like “go” in Norwegian gain
increasing breadth of use and function, while other verbs, like
“drive” do not seem to. The author takes this as evidence for the
word-specific development of VL constructions from formulaic sequences
and that the affordances of some verbs in contrast to the constraints
on other verbs in usage case some verbs to be the catalyst for
increasing diversity in usage while others remain in context-specific,
formulaic sequences.

Chapter twelve, ‘Pragmatic Development in Four Congolese Refugees’
Norwegian: Response to Topic Initial Elicitors and Topic Proffers’, by
Paulina Horbowicz, concludes the second part of the book. The author
is interested in the changes in NorKong participants pragmatic
competencies regarding topic initial elicitors and proffers using
Conversation Analysis (CA). They use data from four NorKong
participants’ conversations with one of the project researchers. While
generalizations about development are difficult to infer, as with CA,
each conversation is located in a fixed context, the authors note that
in initial conversations, all of the participants’ react to topic
initial elicitors and proffers with a repetition sequence. Later,
according to the author, growing aural comprehension allows
participants to engage with topic initial elicitors and proffers
without a repetition phase. In doing so, the participants are able to
either reject or accept the topics proposed in a more straight-forward
manner. The authors point to the importance of real-life conversation
for language learning, as the development of conversational pragmatic
skills is tied to growing proficiency, as well as the appropriate ways
of accepting and rejecting topics of conversation.

In the concluding chapter, Chapter thirteen, ‘Conclusion: Towards a
Research Agenda on Language Learning and Forced Migration’, the
editors renew their call for a focused research agenda in SLA for
forced migrants. They do so while reviewing the call for a
multilingual turn (e.g. May, 2013) in SLA, stating that such a turn
can only take place if the realities of a broader pool of learners,
including forced migrants, is involved. They also discuss the
multidisciplinary approach to the book, which they believe is
important to capture the vast complexity involved in studying language
learning in forced migration. The authors end with a discussion of the
limitations of this book, as well as a call for future research to
expand their proposed agenda.


EVALUATION

In this edited volume, the editors bring together a wide array of
perspectives and methodologies on a single group of forced migrants
involved in learning Norwegian as a second/additional language. The
volume should be lauded for its effort as an initial foray into
understanding the conditions, contexts, experiences, and learning
trajectories of forced migrants who are faced with the difficult task
of learning another language for very different purposes than most of
the learners we have studied and have been the focal point in SLA.
>From the various chapters, especially those in the first part of the
book, it is clear that the social and economic pressures place
different demands on forced migrants as compared to work-migrants,
people studying abroad, or those learning a second/foreign language in
a classroom setting. This book provides well-researched and vivid
descriptions of the lives of these learners and how these external
factors impact their stance toward learning Norwegian as a
second/additional language. If SLA is truly interested in taking the
‘multilingual turn’ serious, the factors that distinguish the
experiences of forced migrants from other groups of learners needs to
be further explored and seen as core to the overall understanding of
second/additional language learning, not a peripheral phenomenon.

Recognizing that this is an initial attempt to establish a research
agenda for language learning by forced migrants, there are still a few
areas that I wish were more well developed in this book. First, as the
editors recognize, the book takes a multidisciplinary approach, and
explicitly say that it is not a transdisciplinary approach. This means
that all the chapters are organized around the approach adopted by the
individual author(s) and they do not do much in the way of “talking”
to one another. The editors do some work to summarize the findings and
approaches under the auspices of their proposed research agenda, but I
feel a more complete synthesis is missing. In future editions of this
volume, an expanded conclusion that takes a more focused approach to
synthesizing findings across methods, data, and theories would help
tie the individual chapters together.

Second, I would have liked to see a heavier focus on language learning
outcomes in L2 Norwegian. In reading the book, bits and pieces of the
overall language development trajectories for the participants come to
light, but we do not get a general picture of their development over
time to use Norwegian in everyday life, nor do we get a sense of
whether they are able to accomplish the goals they set out with their
intake-interviewers upon first arrival. A chapter that includes data
from their performance in their courses and progress towards their
goals would also help tie together the chapters that take specific
aspects of this development into focus.

Despite these critiques, this book provides a model for future
researchers who are interested in engaging with themes related to
language learning and forced migration. The breadth of the chapter
themes highlights the complexity involved in studying such a
population, and in itself highlights the importance for a focused
research agenda on the language learning of forced migrants.
Meaningful effort and contributions in this area, like this volume,
provide a fuller understanding of the contextual and individual
factors relevant for language learning. This volume could act as a
catalyst for future research in this much needed, and unfortunately
much neglected area of SLA.


REFERENCES

Blommaert, J. (2008). Grassroots Literacy: Writing, Identity and Voice
in Central Africa. Abingdon: Routledge.

May, S. (2013). Introducing the ‘multilingual turn’. In S. May (ed.)
The Multilingual Turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL, and Bilingual
Education (pp. 1-6). Abingdon: Routledge.

Norton, B. (2013). Identity and Language Learning: Extending the
Conversation (2nd edn). Briston: Multilingual Matters.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Daniel Walter is an Assistant Professor of German and Linguistics in
the Humanities Division of Emory University’s Oxford College. His
research interests include second language acquisition (SLA), with a
focus on second language morphosyntax, second language grammatical
gender, and German as a second/foreign language. His current project
focuses on learning German as an L2 by forced migrants to Hamburg,
Germany from the Syrian civil war and Russian-Ukraine war.



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