Monolingualism Reproduction: Examining Language Ideology, Linguistic Violence, and Systemic Racism in and out of School

• In Event: Deconstructing Intersectional Racism in Language and Literacy Education: What’s in It for the Newcomer Student?

Abstract

As immigration expands worldwide, there is an increasing number of children who are linguistically and culturally diverse in schools. However, in many multilingual societies, particularly within Canada and the U.S., younger generations from immigrant families tend toward a preference for mainstream language use over their first (or heritage) languages, leading to generational first language loss (Marif, 2022; Rumbaut & Massey, 2013; Skapinker 2021). A widely reported language development pattern among multilingual children is that their mainstream language proficiency surpasses their home language ability after their entry into school, and many eventually become monolingual in the mainstream language after only a few years of formal education (e.g., Fillmore, 1991; Pease-Alvarez, 2002). Becoming monolingual, however, is not a linear process, but a complex cycle of reproduction among various stakeholders, who may consciously or unconsciously perpetuate the ideology that newcomers should be linguistically and culturally assimilated into the mainstream society. For marginalized groups, the reproduced “monolingual habitus”(Gogolin, 2002) hinders “the full development and recognition of linguistic repertoires” (Becker, 2021, p. 18). This form of linguistic violence further reproduces social inequality and racial discrimination (Archakis et al., 2018; Kircher and Kutlu, 2023).
Drawing on theories of language ideologies (Flores & Rosa, 2015), social reproduction (Bourdieu, 1984), and social space (Lefebvre, 1992), this case study (Yin, 2017) examined 20 low-SES multilingual newcomer children’s language experiences across three spaces: a mainstream school, an affiliated after-school reading program, and the home. Data sources included semi-structured interviews with the 20 children, 13 parents, nine teachers of mainstream and ESL classes, and 10 volunteer university students who participated in the afterschool reading program, and documented data collection, fieldnotes, and participant observations. Thematical analyses (Miles et al., 2020) indicate that the stakeholders --including the teachers, volunteers, and parents-- shared similar “monolingual habitus” towards sustaining children’s bilingual practices. However, their beliefs varied from valuing bilingualism in an abstract sense, to perceiving home languages as being obstacles, or mere tools, for English learning. Corresponding to these monoglossic beliefs, monolingual ideologies were systemically reproduced across different spaces – the after-school program, the mainstream classrooms in the school, and the home – where English was chosen as the dominant or exclusive language for literacy and communication.
Specifically, in the formal classroom space, while English was employed as the sole language of instruction and for academic tasks, home languages were used solely with newcomers as a transitional tool for learning English. In the afterschool program space, English use was assumed to be the norm by bilingual volunteers, having internalized monolingual ideologies from their own schooling experiences and their families’ migration experiences. In the home space, diglossia was prevalent in most families, where home languages for oral communication was used among adults, and English was used for literacy activities with children. At the centre of the three social spaces, the students were in the process of becoming English monolinguals and subjected to concerted linguistic violence. Hence, the researchers call for more attention to multilingualism as a resource and right in both formal and informal learning settings.

Authors

• Guofang Li, University of British Columbia

• Henny Yeung, Simon Fraser University

• Jonathan Feitosa, University of British Columbia

• Ziwen Mei, University of British Columbia

• Sonoka Inomoto, University of British Columbia