16.1593, Review: Multilingualism/Socioling: Extra & Yagmur (2004)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-1593. Wed May 18 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.1593, Review: Multilingualism/Socioling: Extra & Yagmur (2004)

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1)
Date: 18-May-2005
From: Sebastian Rasinger < S.Rasinger at sussex.ac.uk >
Subject: Urban Multilingualism in Europe 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 21:49:23
From: Sebastian Rasinger < S.Rasinger at sussex.ac.uk >
Subject: Urban Multilingualism in Europe 
 

EDITORS: Extra, Guus; Yagmur, Kutlay
TITLE: Urban Multilingualism in Europe
SUBTITLE: Immigrant Minority Languages at Home and School
SERIES: Multilingual Matters 130
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters 
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-2498.html


Sebastian M. Rasinger, Department of Linguistics and English Language, 
University of Sussex

SYNOPSIS

With immigration becoming an increasing issue in European politics, so 
does, inevitably, the issue of bilingualism. In particular with respect to 
social and cultural integration of migrants into the host society, the 
aspect of language proficiency plays an increasing role on political 
parties' agendas and in social policies alike. 

Extra and Ya?mur's book provides a profound overview of multilingualism 
throughout Europe, and considers both theoretical approaches and actual 
case-studies. The volume is divided into three parts: Part one approaches 
the theme from a multidisciplinary point of view and provides an overview 
of four perspectives relevant for the study of multilingualism

Chapter 2 addresses phenomenological issues, focusing on the difficulties 
in defining central terms of the topic. In particular, the chapter focuses 
on the notions of ethnic identity and its relation to language.  

The third chapter focuses on demographic issues, in particular the 
difficulty of categorisation of speakers according to their ethnic origin, 
nationality, or language; a problem underlying most forms of censuses 
which include information about languages and speakers. 

Chapter four addresses the issue of language rights in both Europe and the 
rest of the world is summarised; and last, in chapter 5 educational 
perspectives are outlined. 

The remaining two parts are based on results from the Multilingual Cities 
Project (henceforth MCP), a international project under the auspices of 
the European Cultural Foundation; part two summarizes results of six 
sociolinguistic case-studies of six multilingual cities, written by 
various authors. Methodologically, the project is based on renown work on 
language vitality, such as Giles et al. (1977) and subsequent studies. 

Lilian Nygren-Junkin provides an overview of the MCP in Gothenburg. In 
particular, Nygren-Junkin focuses on the use of languages from the former 
Yugoslavia in Swedish schools. Sabine Bühler-Otten and Sara Fürstenau's 
chapter on multilingualism in Hamburg considers primarily the status of so-
called 'Aussiedler' ('out-settlers') - people from Eastern European states 
with German ancestry, who were granted German citizenship. 

Rather than focusing on a particular group (or language), Rian Aarts, Guus 
Extra and Kutlay Yagmur's chapter on The Hague takes a multicultural 
approach, and focuses on a survey investigating patens' need for home 
language instruction for their parents. 

Marc Verlot and Kaat Delrue's chapter on Brussels does not only consider 
the Dutch/French bilinguality of the city, but also provides an analysis 
of emergence of minority languages in Brussels. Case studies on Turkish 
and Polish are used as examples. Similarly, Mehmet-Ali Akinci and Jan Jaap 
De Ruiter provide an overview of the language situation in primary and 
secondary schools in Lyon.  

In the final chapter of part 2, Peter Broeder and Laura Mijares provide a 
cross-linguistic study of the eight most frequently spoken minority (or 
immigrant) languages in Madrid. Interestingly, unlike in the other five 
cities, Broeder and Mijares found that in Madrid many immigrant children 
(and parents) originate from countries where Spanish is also the 
mainstream language. 

The third part provides a cross-national outline of the language profiles 
of the languages used in the 6 cities under investigation in course of the 
Multilingual Cities Project. This final part mainly consists of 
statistical data and brief summaries of the main findings for the six 
participating cities and for 20 languages. 

EVALUATION

It seems unlikely that a single volume could possibly address a complex 
issue such as urban multilingualism at great depth in a single volume; how 
could one possibly consider theoretical, methodological and political 
aspects, while simultaneously provide sufficient data to illustrate the 
depth of the topic in satisfactory detail?  Although it does in fact not 
provide in-depth analyses, the volume provides an excellent overview on 
the topic, and comprises both theoretical approaches and actual case 
studies alike. This makes the volume useful as both a source for work on 
European multilingualism and multilingualism in general. The three parts 
of the book nicely complement each other, while, simultaneously, each 
part, or each chapter even, could stand for itself. Nevertheless, one must 
not forget that each chapter provides a summary of the issues discussed, 
rather than an in-depth discussion. However, the extensive reference 
section provided for each chapter (as opposed to a useless list at the end 
of the volume) allows to quickly finding relevant studies to refer to.

A rather surprising aspect in this volume is the omission of examples from 
the United Kingdom. While numerous research has focused on multilingualism 
and minority languages in the British Isles -  The 1983 Linguistic 
Minorities Project, Edwards' study on Black English (1986) and her 
extensive research on multilingual classrooms, Alladina and Edwards volume 
on multilingualism in Britain (1991), Sebba's work on London Jamaican 
(1993), and Rampton's 1995 study on interaction amongst minority 
adolescents, to name but a few -  the inclusion of an up-to-date study of 
one of the main urban centres in the United Kingdom, with their ethnically 
and linguistically diverse demographic structure, would have been a 
significant advantage, in particular with respect to the increasing 
awareness of British social and educational policy makers of these issues.

The almost excessive use of tables and graphs in part three may be 
overwhelming for readers less familiar with the interpretation of 
statistical data in general. In fact, even the statistically versed reader 
needs time to fully understand the data provided. However, despite this, 
this part provides an extremely valuable source for numerical data. In 
fact, this part in itself can function as a first point of references for 
information of language use, and speaker numbers in the six cities under 
investigation. 

REFERENCES

Alladina, Safder, and Edwards, Viv. 1991. Multilingualism in the British 
Isles.vol. 2: Africa, Asia and the Middle East: Longman linguistics 
library. London: Longman.

Edwards, Viv. 1986. Language in a Black Community. Clevedon: Multilingual 
Matters.

Giles, H., Bourhis, R.Y. and Taylor, D.M. 1977. Towards a Theory of 
Language in Ethnic Group Relations. Language, Ethnicity and Intergroup 
Relations, ed. by Howard Giles. London: Academic Press.

Rampton, Ben. 1995. Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents. 
London: Longman.

Sebba, Mark. 1993. London Jamaican: Language Systems in Interaction. 
London: Longman. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Sebastian M. Rasinger is teaching linguistics and English language at 
Roehampton University, and at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom. 
His primary research interests include second language acquisition and 
urban multilingualism. He has a particular interest in the Bangladeshi 
community in East London, on which he has based his PhD research.





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