We all know our schools; we grew up in their classrooms and, to a large extent, are a product of them. Nevertheless, once that stage of our education is over, we are not allowed to relive it; instead we can only slip through the doorway to sit down at a desk and watch what happens. The appeal of all educational ethnographies, including the one presented by Adrian Blackledge and Angela Creese in Multilingualism, resides to a large extent in this potential to allow us, from the standpoint of our past experience, to discover current schools and classrooms, and to do so in the (sometimes cacophonous) voices of their protagonists. In the present case, these voices, moreover, mobilize resources in languages other than English, the predominant tongue with which they become enmeshed. Multilingualism presents a sociolinguistic study of four interlocking case studies in four English cities, opening up a research site that for many readers might be a novel one—that of complementary schools (voluntary schools held outside of regular school hours, created for teaching the language and culture of origin). The authors studied eight such schools.
After an initial chapter dedicated to presenting the background to the research and the organization of this book, Chs. 2 and 3 present the theoretical framework and the research methods employed. Ch. 2 reviews previous research into multilingualism and its presence in schools and complementary schools. Throughout this chapter, the authors claim that the object of study is not the “language,” and not even multilingualism, but linguistic or multilingual practices. And as these practices must be performed by agents, the analysis must not only acknowledge the agent role of speakers, but be focused on the linguistic resources mobilized by social agents in the meaning-making process. Thus Multilingualism makes a further contribution to a sociolinguistic approach to linguistic practices, in line with the works of Monica Heller, Ben Rampton, Jan Blommaert, and Alistair Pennycook, among others. And it makes an important addition to this approach by incorporating significant concepts identified by Mikhail Bakhtin, in particular those of ideology as a social practice, polyphony, heteroglossia, and the carnivalesque. Bakhtin's influence is apparent both in the definition of the study object and in the analysis of linguistic practices.
The authors share Bakhtin's vision of language as the means whereby ideologies are articulated, and the aim of their book is, specifically, to explore this articulation. From this perspective, linguistic practices are always subject to and shaped by language ideologies, and language ideologies in turn are constantly subject to and shaped by linguistic practices. Thus, the book sets out to explore how linguistic practices and ideologies are intertwined, and its analysis focuses on two ideologies of such practices in particular: (i) the reification of standard versions of minority languages and literacies and of national identities, and (ii) the eclectic, often fragmented, and inclusive practices and ideologies that young people and adults use to make meaning. Both ideologies can only be understood in relation to the monolingual ideology of the majority in England, which considers minority language a private matter or even a threat to national unity. On various occasions, the authors refer to the omnipresence of this monolingual ideology, to the pressure it exerts on other ideologies involved in this field, and to the effects it has on those who impart and on those who receive the teaching of the languages and cultures of origin. Nevertheless, this ideology moves out of focus when the authors' attention shifts toward the ideologies emerging in opposition or as alternatives.
One of the limitations noted in this theoretical framework, and which is revelatory of the authors' own theoretical position, is the fact that in their review of prior research into complementary schools, the only studies considered are those carried out in English-speaking countries (the US, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom). As a result, it seems that the language of the host country is granted special importance in our understanding of these institutions. An alternative might have been to reflect upon the evolution of these programs within the framework of EU linguistic policies, or those of other European countries (e.g. Germany), and to have taken into account how the different models for the integration of cultural diversity in the host country, or the social position of the different minorities, influence the educational focus of these schools and, thus, their teaching practices (see Euryduce 2001 for an overview of these programs in the EU). Indeed, when these schools depend on bilateral agreements between the host and the origin country, as is the case in many EU countries, their main aim is to teach the nationalism of the homeland, while when they are organized by the host country, a possible aim could be to prepare migrants descendants' to return to the homeland countries. In contrast, fostering community ties and meeting the needs of ethnic minority children and their communities seem to be the main aims when schools are governed by migrants' associations and grassroots movements. In consequence, an investigation of how the organization of these institutions is related to linguistic and migratory policies, as well as to other social factors, would have enabled an analysis not only of how these practices shape and are shaped by ideologies, but also of how these practices are shaped by the socio-institutional order in which they are embedded (Giddens Reference Giddens1984).
Within this theoretical frame, Ch. 3 highlights the role of linguistic ethnography as an effective way to approach multilingualism as situated linguistic practice. In this case, ethnography is seen not as a singular research journey, but as a collaborative effort, in which a team of researchers engage in the study of multiple sites. Ch. 4 describes how this team ethnography, coordinated by Angela Creese, was conducted by four pairs of multilingual researchers with different social and cultural backgrounds. The pairings were as follows: Adrian Blackledge and Shahela Hamid observed the two schools in the Bengali case study (in Birmingham); Li Wei and Chao-Jung Wu, the two schools in the Chinese case study (in Manchester); Arvind Bhatt and Peter Martin, in the two Guajarati schools (in Leichester); and finally, Vally Lytra, and Dilek Yağcıoğlu-Ali, who was later replaced by Taşkın Baraç, in the Turkish case study (in London). The use of vignettes in this chapter is an outstanding example of methodological reflexivity, which made it possible to illustrate the different positions negotiated by researchers in schools, and shows how the researchers' linguistic resources enabled differing degrees of access to the participants and processes. This chapter also addresses the difficult role played by the coordinator, who is an essential figure, but at the same time, a potential generator of interferences in the schools and with the researchers. The book is richly informed by the voices, experiences, knowledge, and findings of this diverse team, and Adrian Blackledge and Angela Creese manage to make the joint research effort a success. By means of a comparative perspective in the remaining chapters, the authors highlight important regularities in the schools regarding educational and linguistic practices, and also participants' positioning (a similar approach was taken in Martín Rojo Reference Martín Rojo2010).
Chs. 5–11 present the results of the analysis. Here, as in the definition of the study aims, an excellent application is made of Bakhtin's notions, and the book makes a notable contribution to a better understanding of the articulation between linguistic practices and ideologies, and successfully illustrates these points of articulation. I shall pay particular attention to the latter in this discussion of the various chapters. In Ch. 5, Blackledge and Creese analyse the production of linguistic ideologies in linguistic practices. Linguistic ideologies are revealed to be an ongoing product and a producer of social practices, while the coexistence of two different forms of bilingualism is attested in complementary schools. An ideology of “separate bilingualism” (Heller Reference Heller2006:83), which advocates language “separation,” allows the teacher to articulate resources to counter the hegemonic accounts of nation, culture, and language in mainstream institutions, but also to reproduce an essentialist view of the minority nation, culture, and language. By contrast, the simultaneous use of heterogeneous linguistic resources—termed heteroglossia in Bakhtin's terms (Reference Bakhtin, Emerson and Holquist1986; Bailey Reference Bailey and Heller2007) or translanguaging in García's terms (2007:xiii)—produces an ideology of flexible bilingualism, which in turn plays a significant role in challenging the essentialist and simplified views that have tied nations, language, and cultures.
Ch. 6 examines students' practices in informal discourses in language-learning classrooms. This analysis not only shows how students make use of a “carnavalesque language” to introduce new voices and subvert traditions and authority, but also illustrates the dialogical nature of the meaning-making process. In this respect, Bakhtin's concept of polyphony contributes to the analysis of how participants evoke other voices and languages across group borders in very creative ways in order to represent themselves and others. These creative discourses open up spaces of freedom and provide alternatives to the rigor of imposed identities and fixed ways of constructing nations and ethnic groups.
Ch. 7 discusses the use of traditional folk tales in language and also in home nationalism teaching, and how students react to this. In this case, teachers open different ways of negotiation when students join in with elements of the school's preferred literacy practices, but reject other elements. Students also mobilize resources from different languages and literacies to recontextualize traditional stories in current times and local spaces, and to perform a flexible, ambiguous positioning of identities. As Blackledge and Creese show in Ch. 8, students' attitudes to heritage language, culture, and nationalism teaching, sometimes participating and sometimes offering resistance, mainly through their multilingual practices, constituted a response to their place in the world as transnational citizens living in cosmopolitan cities and urban late modernity.
In Ch. 9, the authors study how minority nationalisms are constructed, showing, specifically, that one of the main goals of these classes is, indeed, the teaching of the “nationalism of the homeland.” Blackledge and Creese show very clearly the paradoxical effects of the movements of linguistic and cultural revitalization, which open up spaces of resistance but also impose on individuals and groups the obligation of becoming icons of traditional cultures. It also shows how nation-based categories and languages were always nation-building myths, and if they are failing it is as a result of the current phase of globalization and of migration processes. The hybrid, intersectional, and fluid nature of identities emerges, in contrast to univocal, essentializing models, and against their imposition. However, complementary schools provide young people with the linguistic resources they need for their multilingual practices, to escape from the tension between “homogenization” and “difference,” between “universalization” and “exoticization,” and from this perspective, these schools' work would be successful. Ch. 10 shows how teachers in some of these schools adopt a flexible, bilingual approach to language teaching and learning. Finally, in Ch. 11, a new understanding of multilingualism is achieved as a feature of transnational experience and practice.
In all the chapters of analysis, the articulation of ideologies and practices is illustrated by means of examples taken from some schools rather than others. The reasons underlying this choice, however, are not made explicit. In consequence, the schools appear to be interchangeable, and some characteristics are overlooked, such as the greater or lesser participation of immigrants' associations or of their homeland governments. One question that does come to mind on reaching the end of this excellent book is whether the more or less open responses of the teachers to their students' attempts to resist a homeland identity, or the fact that the teachers opted for a flexible pedagogy, might be related to the greater or lesser involvement by the homelands in the organization of these classes. The same could be said with respect to attempts made to resist the imposition of a hegemonic identity, the intensity of which could be rooted in participants' everyday experiences, and in the social position of these communities and their languages in the host country. A tentative answer to these questions would have enabled a better understanding of how these processes of negotiation between teachers and students are shaped by the socio-institutional dimension in which they are embedded.
