Multilingualism - Background information
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There are many misconceptions about bi-multilingualism. Use the next few visual supports to engage with families and other practitioners that may hold certain folk ideas about what being bi-multilingual entails or how one can do bi-multilingualism the 'right way'
Understanding the role of power in descriptions of multilingualism
Proficiency is not quantifiable. “Proficiencies” in speaking and understanding are a product of standardized tests – meaning they are “constructed” and biased assumptions about individuals’ abilities.
Preference to ways, modalities, and varieties of language is contextual. The need or needs for the language/s, which are also contextual, drive the perceived comfort to communicate (e.g., if only use English to follow commands during bath time, those are the contexts and purposes of relevance for that language in that community)
During in-depth evaluations - or when have access to caregivers or families/ communities - you can explore these 'needs' and 'contexts' via this Interview and Observation Table
The standard (or native) language user is an ideal. Judgments about the knowledge of bi-multilingual communicators are tied to centering of an idealized communicator (or good/average communicator) and way of communicating (e.g., studies that describe bi-lingual children from the idea of “quality of language input” or “language gaps”)
Perceptions of a communicators’ intelligibility and degree of accentedness are socially constructed. These judgments come from deficit views about racialization and ability, and they are independent of age of linguistic exposure, sequence of language learning, frequency of language use, and exposure to different valued varieties (e.g., academic language)
Multilingual Communicators: A Dynamic Definition
Have unitary and unified linguistic repertoires
Unitary and unified linguistic repertoires - means their languages and everything that makes up their communicative skillset including spoken and gestural, multimodal, and symbolic -- also called semiotic – features are all accessed together, don't compete, don't need to be inhibited or kept separate.
One can be both, bi-multilingual and non-speaking.
Implement creativity through their languaging
Evolve their language practices to fit their environments, co-communicators, modalities, and purposes
Code-Switching
Code-Switching
It is used to refer to how bilinguals can activate and inhibit languages they “know well” for social or cognitive purposes. As such, considers that a bilingual keeps languages separate from e/other, and allow for guest appearances of the language not in use at any point
Believes that bi-multilinguals operate on a continuum between a monolingual and a bilingual mode, and that in the bilingual mode the codes can switch. The switch implies “between” systems.
Believed to be useful as a “gap filling strategy” when knowledge is not well-developed but this reduces the switching to be less intentional (e.g., kids code-switch because they don’t know all the words, OR adults code switch because they can’t retrieve a form or content)
Tends to be focused on the spoken domain (though it has also been researched in signed languages)
Translanguaging
Translanguaging
It is used to refer to how bilingual people integrate their linguistic resources — without regard to named or nation-state language (e.g., English, Spanish, Mandarin, AAE, ASL) to make meaning and communicate.
Expects no separation between “named” language features like phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary. The trans- prefix communicates the ways that multilingual people’s language practices in fact “go beyond” use of state-endorsed named language systems (García & Li Wei, 2014, p. 42; LiWei, 2011).
It is not just something bilinguals do when they feel they are missing a word/ phrase or have gaps in knowledge in a monolingual environment because languages are all in one repertoire, and does not require “perfect production or proficient knowledge”
Incorporates the idea of languaging – incorporates multiple modalities, symbols, gestures all included as components of a linguistic repertoire
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