Towards a plurilingual habitus: engendering interlinguality in urban spaces

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the potential of the multilingual city to create spaces in which monolingual hegemonies may be challenged, inclusive, intercultural values may be nurtured, and plurilingualism may be valorized. Following a contextualisation of linguistic diversity in theories of globalisation and superdiversity, the chapter addresses discourses of deficit and power, arguing that the problematisation of multilingualism and pathologisation of plurilingualism reflect a monolingual habitus. Bringing about a shift towards a plurilingual habitus requires a Deep Approach, as it involves a critical revaluing of deep-seated dispositions. It suggests that the city offers spaces, which can engender interlinguality, a construct that includes interculturality, criticality and a commitment to creative and flexible use of other languages in shared, pluralistic spaces. It then proposes critical, participatory and ethnographic research in three multidimensional spaces: the urban school and a potential interlingual curriculum; networks, lobbying for inclusive policy and organising celebratory events in public spaces; and grassroots-level local spaces, some created by linguistic communities to exercise agency and maintain their languages and cultures, and some emerging as linguistically hybrid spaces for convivial encounter.

Collective autonomy and multilingual spaces in super-diverse urban contexts

“…This chapter has argued that linguistically super-diverse cities offer spaces, in which local language communities can and do challenge the monolingual hegemony through processes which can be understood as collectively autonomous, in the sense that the communities reflect critically on their situation within the broader monolingual context and adjust their local environment to suit their desires. In such spaces local citizens can produce not only plurilingual places, where it is perceived as normal for many languages to be used, but interlingual places, where hybrid linguistic practices facilitate and reflect a willingness to see all languages as a resource for all (Lamb 2015). Through their everyday practices, as well as through the creation of complementary forms of education in language and culture, such communities are autonomously ensuring that their languages continue to be used, learnt and maintained.…”

“…These groups may be small or large, newly arrived or resident for generations, transnational and/or translocal, and are characteristic of Vertovec's (2007) 'super-diversity', a 'diversification of diversity' (Rampton et al 2015). One aspect of this relates to what could be called linguistic super-diversity (Lamb 2015), which, though not a new phenomenon in many parts of the world, has led to the transformation of many urban contexts in Europe and elsewhere. The UK, for example, is becoming increasingly multilingual, and not only in cities.…”

“…Changing such dispositions is therefore a challenge, but the multilingual city offers possibilities for such change (Lamb 2015). We argue that this implies changes in the education and everyday experiences of everyone, both formally in educational spaces and informally in public spaces, which must valorise, make visible and normalise the presence of the languages of our communities and develop a 'plurilingual habitus' through the production of interlingual shared spaces (for an exploration of the concept of 'interlinguality' see Lamb 2015).…”

“…The limitations of this intervention, however, lead us to examine the potential of building on the emerging linguistically hybrid practices in local informal urban spaces. We propose that the engagement of communities in participatory and activist research may enable them to further develop their collective autonomy in ways that are critical and that involve them in designing local and translocal, informal and formal, everyday urban spaces that are intercultural and interlingual and reach beyond their local communities (Lamb 2015).…”

Linguistic Diversity in the English-Medium Instruction Classroom in Nepal: Challenge or Chance

“…Multilingual classrooms can engender interlinguality (Lamb, 2015), which involves openness to flexible use of other languages in everyday life, as well as criticality, interculturality and multilingual entanglement (Williams & Stroud, 2013) and which can challenge the "monolingual habitus" (Gogolin,2002) -set of assumptions built on the fundamental myth of uniformity of language and culture (Benson, 2013). In this context, English language teachers need "to understand the importance of representing the language knowledge of pupils in the classroom and to embrace this linguistic diversity as a learning resource for all classmates" (Calvo, 2017).…”