Handbook of Multilingualism and Multiculturalism Handbook of Multilingualism and Multiculturalism Editors: Geneviève ZARATE Danielle LÉVY Claire KRAMSCH Copyright © 2010 Éditions des Archives Contemporaines, Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from the publishers. Éditions des archives contemporaines 41, rue Barrault 75013 Paris (France) Phone: +33 (0)1 45 81 56 33 www.archivescontemporaines.com ISBN: 9782813000392 FOREWORD The three coordinators of the present volume, Claire Kramsch, Danielle Levy and Geneviève Zarate have worked in close collaboration throughout the whole project. All three have solicited contributions from doctoral students and colleagues and are grateful for the financial support given by their respective institutions. Claire Kramsch drew on the resources of the Berkeley Language Center to organize an interdisciplinary seminar at UC Berkeley in February 2005. Danielle Levy engaged the Italian University Association for the Teaching of French, DoRiF-Universita, and the Center for Research and Documentation in the Teaching of French at Italian universities in the organization of a research seminar in Macerata, Italy in July 2006. Other colleagues have also contributed their scientific contacts for this project, in particular Aline Gohard-Radenkovic, who hosted a working group meeting of our research team at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, and Marie Christine Kok- Escalle who rallied the members of the International Society for the History of French as a Second Language (SHIFLES) for this project. While Claire Kramsch, Danielle Levy and Geneviève Zarate were principal investigators of the research project, Geneviève Zarate was editor-in-chief of the present volume. The authors’multilingual and multicultural biographies are available at the following address: http://precis.berkeley.edu General introduction Claire KRAMSCH University of California, Berkeley Danièle LÉVY University of Macerata, Italy Geneviève ZARATE National Institute of Oriental Languages (INALCO), PLIDAM, Paris, France Translated by David DIVITA, University of California, Berkeley A DEFINITION OF PLURALITY This handbook is organized around linguistic and cultural plurality1. Following Bourdieu (1977), it defines language as an “instrument of action (or of power)” and aims to reconstruct the complexity of social and linguistic practices that constitute our relationship to the foreign. Plurality here is not defined as the mere coexistence of various languages, but rather as a specific social activity characterized by the circulation of values across borders, the negotiation of identities, and the inversions– indeed, the inventions–of meaning that are often masked by the shared illusion of successful communication. Plurality is approached in this book: —as a complex aggregate, rather than as the simplified object of a communicatively oriented language pedagogy primarily concerned with intelligibility2 —as a coherent system of relationships whose description cannot be reduced to a series of mechanical operations2 —as a socio-historical construct, observable from many simultaneous, spatio-temporal points of view, such as that of everyday interactions or that of institutions whose symbolic force cannot be accounted for from one point of view alone 1 The French concept of ‘plurality’ has different political connotations than the Angloamerican term ‘diversity’. While ‘diversity’ is the ideal of a neo-liberal democracy, ‘plurality’ is the ideal of a republican society committed to the tenets of the French Revolution. 4 | General introduction AN INTERNATIONALIZED SPACE The field of language didactics (LD) is undergoing transformation2. For more than ten years, Europe has constituted a specific geopolitical entity, less and less reducible to the sum of the countries that compose it. The role played by languages in the political, economic and social architecture of this conglomeration can be inferred from a number of texts that call for a common vision of linguistic and cultural diversity. The European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages (Council of Europe , 1992), the definition of European citizens’ linguistic competence based on the mastery of three European languages (Livre blanc. Enseigner et apprendre. Vers la société cognitive. European Commission, 1995), the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2001) all attest to the role of languages as an official component of European identity. Even if European countries have not all participated in this common project at the same pace, a new model of LD has nevertheless been put in place–the European model. This model has modified the relations between languages and the linguistic, cultural and geographic landscapes with which they are associated, and has directly affected the perception of international space held by each nation-state. While the fall of the Berlin Wall has modified the geopolitical nature of relationships between European states, their languages and citizens, a new international economic order has ushered in a globalized vision of economic exchanges that is imposing new social and linguistic imperatives. These new imperatives are calling for new ways of conceptualizing the learning of foreign languages. In the future, as the French economist Jacques Attali stated recently, “travel will become a major part of a university education and professional development: one will constantly have to exhibit the qualities of a traveler in order to remain “employable” (…) In total, twenty-five years from now, around fifty million people will live outside of their country of origin or their parents’ country of origin” (Attali 2006). This vision of the future invites a concomitant reconsideration of the history of linguistic exchanges in the countries of Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Many of these countries did not wait for today’s globalization to become multilingual and multicultural. Military conquests, religious or ideological proselytism, slavery, colonialism, cultural and commercial exchanges and their own multilingual tribal practices have long diversified their societies. But language teachers trained in metropolitan centers are not necessarily 2 Some French terms, untranslatable into English, have been left in their literal translations. In particular, the term didactique des langues, translated by Gisele Holtzer (2000 :174) as « language didactics » (LD) and defined as « foreign language teaching » overlaps but is not quite equivalent to terms like foreign language (FL) education, methodology, pedagogy, second language acquisition (SLA) or applied linguistics. The research field of language didactics is epistemologically and culturally linked to the teaching of French as a Foreign Language (Fle), in the same manner as SLA and applied linguistics are closely linked to the teaching of English as a Second Language, and Fremdsprachendidaktik is associated with the teaching of German as a Second Language (DaF). LD focuses on the teaching of foreign languages in instructional settings and in that respect it overlaps with FL education, FL methodology and FL pedagogy. But it is also concerned with the acquisition of foreign languages in non-instructional settings, e.g., work, travel, leisure, study and any venue in which issues of language, power and identity come into play. In that respect its concerns are close to those of Anglo-Saxon applied linguistics. General introduction | 5 prepared for the globalized space of tomorrow. Teacher trainers themselves need to adjust to the rapid and radical changes brought about by globalization and train young teachers accordingly. Efforts in Europe to put into place a translingual and transcultural awareness common to all languages are headed in precisely this direction. They advocate making connections between L1 and L2 pedagogies (Roulet 1980), sensitizing learners to metalinguistic activity or language awareness (Hawkins 1987; James & Garrett 1991), and raising the interest of children in early language instruction (Candelier 2003; Perregaux 1994; Moore 2006). All these initiatives strive to make the public conscious of the discourses and social representations linked to language use in multilingual contexts. The concepts of methodological competencies (Écouter pour comprendre, CRAPEL, Université de Nancy 2) and intercomprehension between related languages, focused on the development of reading and listening comprehension in linguistically related languages, have shown their instructional efficiency in the intercomprehension of Romance languages (the EuRom4 method, the Galatea and Galanet programs, the Euromania methods), and between Romance and Germanic languages (the ICE, InterCompréhension Européenne and EuroCom programs). The Handbook deals with various facets of the debate on multilingualism and multiculturalism3, and discusses observable situations both within and outside Europe, but it does not prescribe any solutions. Rather, as a collection of current points of view, it makes every effort to leave reflection open. Every featured reflection, divided into chapters, is extended by a “Counterpoint” that, through the intervention of an author from outside the chapter, seeks to initiate dialogue, echo back the positions of the chapter coordinators, put into perspective the possibilities proposed,