"Being Bilingual Will Open Doors for Them": French Immersion Educators' Neoliberal Ideologies on Bilingualism

• In Event: Connecting the Dots: Language Ideologies, Educational (In)Equities, and Multilingual Realities in North America

Abstract

Background & Objectives
New Brunswick, Canada’s only officially bilingual province (English/French), established its Official Languages Act (OLA) in 1969. The OLA was created as part of a larger “equality for all” initiative that included linguistic equity for the historically minoritized Francophones through a language-as-right ideology (Stanley, 1984; Ruíz, 1984). It was presented to Anglophones, however, as creating access to English/French bilingualism for capital through a neoliberal language-as-resource ideology (Authors, 2022). Paradoxically, the policy’s structure of bilingual parallelism has mitigated the fuller potential of equity between the two linguistic communities. There are two educational sectors with strict admission policies separating the two communities: Francophone and Anglophone, with French and English as medium of instruction respectively and the alternate official language learned as second language. One-way French immersion (FI) is a popular option within Anglophone schools, and because of the program’s intensity, it could aim to develop Anglophone students’ understanding of Francophones’ historical minoritization, creating opportunities for intercultural development (Byram, 1997) and potentially disrupting neoliberal ideologies. The program, however, focuses principally on skills-based language acquisition (Authors, 2020). In this context of paradox, we wondered about the perspective of educators, the interface between policy and practice. Which language ideologies may be evidenced in the discourse of FI teachers and administrators vis-à-vis the notion of bilingualism and its purposes?

Data Sources & Methods
In this presentation, we examine nine FI administrators’ and 17 teachers’ discourse in data collected during semi-structured interviews in 2015 held in Southeastern New Brunswick. We conducted discourse analysis (Gee, 2014) through four rounds of coding, resulting in six dominant and nine sub codes.

Results & Scholarly Significance
Our analysis indicates that neoliberal ideologies of bilingualism for capital permeate the educators’ discourse: a) a privileging of an instrumental and competence-based rather than social view of bilingualism enacted in communities of practice; and b) students’ identity development as bi/multilinguals is not mentioned. We propose, then, that: a) there should be pre- and in-service teacher training on developing students’ identities as bi/multilingual speakers; b) linguistic identity development should be explicitly included in FI program objectives; and c) opportunities should be created for students to engage in local Francophone communities. These, we believe, are tangible ways to promote linguistic equity in the face of neoliberal ideologies in language education.

Authors

• Kelle L. Marshall, Pepperdine University
  Presenting Author

• Wendy D. Bokhorst-Heng, Crandall University
  Presenting Author