Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 577

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

Re-negotiating ideologies of bilingualism on the margins of education

Authors: Selleck, Charlotte Louise Rachel
Submitted by: Selleck, Charlotte Louise Rachel (Cardiff University, United Kingdom)

This study forms part of an ethnographic project investigating the interplay of linguistic practices, linguistic representations, language ideologies and social inclusion between students at two contrasting secondary schools in an area of West-Wales. The schools are categorised by the local education authority as a ‘bilingual’ school and as an ‘English-medium’ school. In reality, the ‘bilingual’ school functions as a monolingual Welsh-school; a monolingual zone in order to produce bilinguals (Heller 2006:17). I broadly adopt the dichotomy presented by Blackledge and Creese (2010) – that of ‘flexible’ and ‘separate’ bilingualism (with the former referring to the English-medium school).

The current study seeks to expand upon the remits of educational ethnography to consider sites on the margins of education, ‘liminal moments’ which fall ‘outside of dominant social structure’ (Rampton 1995:20). The study focuses on a youth-club as a point of convergence, drawing pupils from both schools. It seeks to establish how interaction at the youth-club betrays different values and ideologies, among broadly the same students who featured in the within-school data. It is a space within which the language ideologies of the two contrasting schools are re-negotiated; it is possible to examine how adolescents attempt to resist or affirm the ideologies ‘that threatened to dominate their everyday experience’ (Rampton 1995:20).

Through participant observation, ‘key informants’ were identified. Students’ everyday routines were captured using portable recording devices and microphones. There are two main axes on which the data set can be understood, ‘school vs. recreational’ and ‘global vs. local’.

The youth-club, broadly acts as a temporal border-zone between school and home (e.g. homework is completed). Whilst school is not the over-riding normative institution, the youth-club is quasi-institutional in that vestiges of school identities persist, in the wearing of uniforms and in the use of linguistic category labels. The youth-club is subject to its own norms, e.g. popular culture activities are fully legitimised. We see students behaving in ways that are more attuned to recreational norms, including norms of talk. The relatively infrequent free choice of Welsh marks a significant renegotiation, particularly for students from the ‘bilingual’ school.

The data allows for a nuanced understanding of the global-local interface, which informs the construction of youth identities. The youth-club encourages students to engage with a wider and potentially global popular culture (English is encountered daily through audio-visual mass-media and other forms of popular culture) but without losing touch with their local identities and connections. Within this complex bilingual context, the negotiation between global and local is inflected by language choice. Additionally, students have to negotiate their relationships with the nationalist-ideologies that often characterise Welsh-medium schooling, but also with more global-ideologies, mainly mediated by English.

This study adds to our knowledge about English-medium/bilingual education in Wales. It has implications for language education policy and social inclusion/exclusion. Additionally, it will help us better understand ‘multilingual’ Wales.

Blackledge, A. and Creese, A. (2010) Multilingualism. A Critical Perspective. London: Continuum.

Heller, M. (2006) Linguistic Minorities and Modernity. London: Continuum.

Rampton, B. (1995) Crossing, Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents. London: Longman.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Re-negotiating ideologies of bilingualism on the margins of education