32.1391, Review: Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics; Psycholinguistics; Sociolinguistics: Montanari, Quay (2019)

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Subject: 32.1391, Review: Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics; Psycholinguistics; Sociolinguistics: Montanari, Quay (2019)

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Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2021 17:03:23
From: Alicia Pousada [alicia.pousada.mejuto at gmail.com]
Subject: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Multilingualism

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36640077


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-4591.html

EDITOR: Simona  Montanari
EDITOR: Suzanne  Quay
TITLE: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Multilingualism
SUBTITLE: The Fundamentals
SERIES TITLE: Language Contact and Bilingualism [LCB]
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2019

REVIEWER: Alicia Pousada, University of Puerto Rico

SUMMARY
 
Multilingualism is often taken to be merely an extension of bilingualism, or
it is used as a superordinate category that includes bilingualism within it.
The basic premise of the volume under review is that multilingualism is
widespread and “normal” among many human speech communities and constitutes a
field worthy of research in its own right, distinct from but related to
bilingualism. This stance is reminiscent of the earlier work of Stavans and
Hoffman (2015), which stresses that the complexity of language behavior in
multilingual speech communities far surpasses that of bilingualism and
requires that theoretical and empirical attention be paid to its diversity and
variability.

The hardcover volume (also available in electronic format on Kindle) is
divided into four major parts which allow readers to go directly to the themes
within multilingualism that most interest them. These parts progress from the
broadest to the most specific of concerns.  Part I addresses the historical,
political, economic and educational aspects of societal multilingualism in
North Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, and North America. Part II examines
language use (diglossia, codeswitching, receptive multilingualism, and
signing) in particular speech communities. Part III lays out what is known
about individual multilingualism, ranging from acquisition to attrition in
both family and school settings. Part IV scrutinizes the differences between
bilingualism and multilingualism in terms of schooling, cross-linguistic
interaction, linguistic awareness, and cognitive benefits. The four parts are
bracketed by an introduction that sets the general parameters of the volume
and a conclusion that considers future lines of research written by editors
Simona Montanari and Suzanne Quay. The book closes with very useful indexes of
key words, languages, and countries to aid the reader in zeroing in on
specific information of concern.

The volume is the product of a stellar group of scholars. Both editors have an
extensive publication history in the field of multilingualism, including
numerous articles and several books. Most notably, Suzanne Quay co-edited
(with Margaret Deuchar) a book titled Bilingual acquisition: Theoretical
implications of a case study (2000). Simona Montanari co-edited (with Elena
Nicoladis) Bilingualism across the lifespan: Factors moderating language
proficiency (2016),  a volume in which she and Suzanne Quay co-authored an
article on early childhood bilingual acquisition. The authors of the
individual chapters of the volume include well-known figures in the field like
Bee Chin Ng and Loraine Obler,  as well as newer voices, and provide
culturally and linguistically diverse perspectives on global multilingualism.

The 16 chapters contained in the volume draw upon empirical research to reveal
the complex linguistic and societal variables involved in multilingualism and
make a strong case for the study of multilingualism as a discipline in its own
right with significant things to say about human language capacity. The
chapters also go a long way toward contesting colonialistic ideological
postures toward language which give preferential treatment to monolingualism
and “nativeness”. They additionally provide extensive evidence of the hegemony
of majority languages (particularly English) in the rearing and schooling of
multilingual children in different countries at this point in time.

In Part I (Societal multilingualism: Historical, political, economic and
educational forces in different world regions), there are four chapters.  Ch.
2: Multilingualism, language varieties and ideology in North Africa by Ahmed
Ech-Charfi shows how colonialism in North Africa led to the development of
extensive functional multilingualism among the populace, a common situation in
post-colonial Africa. Ch. 3: Multilingualism in Southeast Asia: The
post-colonial language stories of Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore, written
by Bee Chin Ng and Francesco Cavallaro, compares three cases of Southeast
Asian colonialism and demonstrates how ideologies of internationalization can
make a non-indigenous language like Mandarin Chinese or English the official
language and lingua franca of an ethnically diverse country.  Ch. 4:
Multilingualism in Europe, crafted by Lennart Bartelheimer, Britta Hufeisen,
and Simona Montanari, reports on the complex multilingual situation in Europe,
the key roles that unification, globalization, and immigration from poorer to
richer countries have played in creating the need for language policies,
programs, institutions, and research, and the implications of multilingualism
for national and transnational identity. Immigration is also revealed to be a
key causal factor in the extensive plurilingualism of the United States and
Canada, as Ch. 5: Multilingualism in North America by Wayne E. Wright and
Virak Chan documents via ample graphs and tables. The 185 languages spoken in
Canada and the more than 350 languages utilized in the U.S. are the result of
intricate historical and demographic interactions among multiple
ethnolinguistic groups (including indigenous peoples).

The four chapters of Part II (Language use in multilingual communities)
examine specific manifestations of multilingualism. Ch. 6: Diglossia in
multilingual communities by John Maher considers the functional distribution
of languages in Ireland, Finland, India, and Japan and calls into question
traditional views of diglossia. He calls for a model that takes into account
“the complexity of diglossic relations which do not fit neatly into the
classic H and L categories but which overlap, going back and forth, depending
on the cultural context, social pressure, and even the personal selections of
speakers at a particular time and place” (p. 109). The need for more flexible
approaches to situations in which speakers select among their languages for
specific functions also emerges in Ch. 7: Codeswitching in multilingual
communities by Anat Stavans and Ronit Porat, which considers the alternation
among codes in both oral and digital modalities. The authors consider that
structural analysis of the alternating languages as separate entities is
inherently limited and embrace instead the broader, more dynamic notion of
“translanguaging”.  This fluid use of multilingual practices in oral and
written discourse allows speakers to negotiate complex social identities and
enhance their linguistic repertories in response to their communicative needs.

Ch. 8: Receptive multilingualism by Charlotte Gooskens discusses what happens
when multilinguals have only receptive skills in one or more of their
languages. It focuses primarily on Europe (in particular, the Scandinavian
countries) and on communities that share mutually intelligible languages, thus
reducing the need for productive and reciprocal multilingualism. Gooskens also
takes a look at the asymmetrical multilingual communication typical of many
immigrant families, in which children speak the newly assimilated language(s)
of the host society, while their parents express themselves in their ancestral
language(s). Ch. 9: Multilingualism in Signing Communities, the work of
Deborah Chen Pichler, Wanette Reynolds, and Jeffrey Levi Palmer, considers the
often-ignored multilingual and multimodal community of hearing children of
Deaf adults (also known as CODAs) who learn sign language(s) from birth along
with the oral and written language varieties employed in their local
environments and “code-blend” or articulate signed and spoken messages
simultaneously. The authors additionally shed light on the phenomenon of
“cross-signing,” which arises when Deaf individuals of different locales do
not share a sign language but utilize an improvised gestural mode to bridge
the communication gap. This brings to mind the creation of pidgins in language
contact situations around the world.

Part III (Individual multilingualism: From development to loss) contains four
chapters. Ch.10: Fostering multilingualism in childhood, penned by Suzanne
Quay and Sarah Chevalier, reviews the different ways of promoting early
multilingualism in home and school settings and demonstrates how languages can
be rapidly learned and forgotten by children due to myriad internal and
external factors. This chapter, like the following one, emphasizes the agency
of children in navigating their various language learning environments and
explains how children can serve simultaneously as mediators of both language
maintenance and language shift. Ch. 11: Family language practices in
multilingual transcultural families, produced by Elizabeth Lanza and Kristin
Vold Lexander, describes how culturally mixed families establish their own
language policies, create communities of practice among themselves, and
promote multilingualism and “virtual intimacy” through digital media, a
behavioral pattern of considerable relevance in these socially distanced
pandemic times. Ch. 12: Multilingualism through schooling, authored by
Xiao-lei Wang, looks at the role of formal education in fostering
multilingualism. It shows how schools can increase a child’s linguistic
repertoire to varying degrees, especially with regard to the language of
academic advancement; however, they may also create the conditions for the
loss of home languages as children become aware of the differing levels of
prestige among their languages. Finally Ch. 13: Language attrition in
multilinguals, produced by Ulriker Jessner and Manon Megens, applies the
Dynamic Model of Multilingualism to examine how multilinguals lose facility in
one or more of their languages due to changes in the interaction of said
languages or in the amount of exposure to each. With the increasing tendency
for languages of wider communication to undermine (and even eradicate) smaller
varieties (Crystal, 2002), it is vital that we understand thoroughly the
process of language attrition and how it can lead to language shift or even
language death.

Part IV (Differences between bilingualism and multilingualism) is made up of
four chapters. Ch. 14: Facilitated language learning in multilinguals by
Simona Montanari considers the often discussed idea that “when learning a new
language, multilinguals are typically better than learners who have only had
experience with one language” (p. 299).  The chapter provides an excellent
review of recent behavioral and neurophysiological research on the
phonological, morphological, syntactic, discursive, and cognitive effects of
being bilingual or multilingual upon language perception and learning and
points to decided advantages over being monolingual. Ch. 15: Cross-linguistic
interaction and multilingual awareness by Elisabeth Allgäuer-Hackl and Ulrike
Jessner explores how languages interact with one another in the multilingual
brain in a dynamic process that progressively alters the cognitive system and
develops new properties. The authors advocate a holistic approach to
multilingualism that considers both linguistic and metacognitive processes.
Ch. 16: Multilingualism and cognitive benefits in aging, contributed by Dorit
Segal, Gitit Kavé, Mira Goral and Tamar H. Gollan, presents the ways in which
knowing several languages deters cognitive decline in old age. This is a topic
of great interest today that has been studied in depth by neurolinguist Ellen
Bialystok and her team (Bialystok, Craik, & Luk, 2012). Ch. 17: Multilingual
language processing and the multilingual brain produced by Iris M. Strangmann,
Stanley Chen, and Loraine K. Obler utilizes data drawn from neuroimaging
studies of the functioning of the multilingual brain. It reviews research on
the many factors involved in how multilingualism is represented and processed
in the brain, as well as studies of the neural structures and processes that
allow multilinguals to control their multiple languages.

EVALUATION

The most appropriate targets for the book are graduate students and scholars
in language-related fields who seek to enhance their comprehension of the
multiple facets of multilingualism and heteroglossic language ideology. The
volume is probably best utilized as a supplementary source for a graduate
course on multilingualism or a good review of recent literature in the field
for scholars writing grants or wishing to support applied research involving
multilingualism (e.g., language planning and policy-making). It makes a
satisfying companion volume to Stavans & Hoffmann (2015).

The primary merits of the book stem from its multidisciplinarity, since it
presents studies from far-ranging fields, including sociolinguistics,
psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, education, and neurolinguistics. The
comprehensive nature of multilingualism demands such an approach. Another
contribution of the volume is that it brings attention to certain groups that
have been understudied (e.g., Deaf, CODA, and elderly multilinguals). In
addition, the volume presents both models for studying multilingualism as well
as case studies, combining theoretical and applied approaches to the field.
Finally, it provides ample evidence of the transformative effect of
multilingualism and multilingual literacy upon both individuals and social
groups, something that needs to be taken into account in the planning of
language resources.

The shortcomings of this book (shared by many others due to space constraints)
lie mainly in the geographical zones covered. It is unfortunate that the
volume does not examine speech communities in Mexico, South and Central
America, the Caribbean, or Oceania (Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia and
Polynesia) since these are regions in which there is considerable
multilingualism as well as strong pressures toward language shift and death.
Perhaps a second volume can address some of these ignored areas of the world.
The editors recognize this limitation: “Only by expanding the geography of
multilingual studies can we indeed truly break away from the Euro-centric
monolingual ideology that has framed studies of multilingualism so far” (p.
399).  They also acknowledge that most studies of multilingualism involve
middle and upper class individuals and point to the pressing need to broaden
research to include speakers of lower social classes.

REFERENCES

Bialystok, E, Craik. F. I., & Luk, G. (2012). Bilingualism: Consequences for
mind and brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences,16(4), 240–250.

Crystal, D. (2002). Language death. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Deuchar, M., & Quay, S.  (2000). Bilingual acquisition: Theoretical
implications of a case study. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Nicoladis, E., & Montanari, S. (Eds.). (2016).  Bilingualism across the
lifespan: Factors moderating language proficiency. Washington, D.C.: American
Psychological Association.

Quay, S., & Montanari, S. (2016). Early bilingualism: From differentiation to
the impact of family language practices. In Nicoladis & Montanari (2016), pp. 
23–42. 

Stavans, A., & Hoffmann, C. (2015). Multilingualism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dr. ALicia Pousada (PhD 1984, U. Penn.) is a linguistics professor recently
retired from the English Department of the College of Humanities of the
University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras. Her primary research and teaching
interests are: language policy and planning, bilingualism, language awareness,
language acquisition, language and gender, literacy, and teaching English as
an additional language.





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