Abstract ID: 315
Part of Session 145: Conflicts in the city, cities in conflict? (Other abstracts in this session)
Authors: Horner, Kristine (1); Weber, Jean-Jacques (2)
Submitted by: Horner, Kristine (University of Sheffield, United Kingdom)
In this presentation, we discuss language in education policy in Luxembourg, a small state situated at the Romano-Germanic border in Western Europe. Due to its smallness, issues of cultural and economic survival have been at the centre of Luxembourgish narratives of national identity. The country is officially trilingual (Luxembourgish, German and French), with Luxembourgish widely used as a spoken medium of communication. Because of the close linguistic relatedness between Luxembourgish and German, basic literacy skills have been taught via standard German in state schools. However, enormous demographic changes have taken place since the 1970s, with an influx primarily of Portuguese-speaking immigrants as well as speakers of other Romance languages. As a result, the school population in many of today’s primary classrooms, especially in Luxembourg city, consists of a majority of children whose home languages include Romance (rather than Germanic) language varieties.
We first discuss how, as a reaction to the popular view of multilingualism as problematic or even bad, an academic view of multilingualism as unconditionally good has spread widely and is at times promulgated somewhat uncritically. We then show that this view relies upon untheorized concepts of ‘language’ and ‘multilingualism’, and that it has led to rather problematic distinctions such as the distinction – or continuum – between more or less multilingual schools (e.g. Cenoz 2008). We argue that a much more useful distinction is that between fixed and flexible multilingual education (Blackledge and Creese 2010; Weber and Horner 2012).
We briefly trace the historical development of the Luxembourgish education system and, in light of this, analyse a recent language ideological debate about the possible implementation of a two-track literacy programme in a primary school in Luxembourg city, with one track offering literacy through German (the existing system) and the other literacy through French. The proposal, which was put forward by a group of teachers in Luxembourg city, would have had the effect of introducing greater flexibility into the system and hence facilitating the educational success of a much wider range of students. However, it was rejected by the Ministry of Education, and we will show how the Ministry drew upon the discourse of cultural survival and the ‘multilingualism is always good’ ideology as a way of justifying their decision.
References:
Blackledge, A. and Creese, A. (2010) Multilingualism: A Critical Perspective. London: Continuum
Cenoz, J. (2008) Achievements and challenges in bilingual and multilingual education in the Basque Country. AILA Review 21: 13-30
Weber, J.J. and Horner, K. (2012) Introducing Multilingualism: A Social Approach. Abingdon: Routledge