Multilingual Living Also by Charlotte Burck GENDER AND FAMILY THERAPY (with Gwyn Daniel) GENDER, POWER AND RELATIONSHIPS (co-edited with Bebe Speed) Multilingual Living Explorations of Language and Subjectivity Charlotte Burck © Charlotte Burck ZOOS Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted * save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-0-230-55433-7 ISBN 978-0-230-50867-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230508675 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Burck, Charlotte, 1948- Multilingualliving: explorations of language and subjectivity I Charlotte Burck. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-230-55433-7 (cloth) 1. Multilingualism. 2. Multilingualism-Research. I. Title. P115.B87 2004 306.44'6-dcZZ 2004053757 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 OS Transferred to digital printing 2005 Contents Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 Structure of the book 2 1 Researching Multilingualism and Multilingual Identities 9 Children's language acquisition 10 Language, thought and experience 12 Supporting children's bilingualism and multilingualism 13 Effects on children of speaking several languages 15 First and subsequent languages 16 Contextual factors and language use 18 Migration, gender, generation and language 19 Racialized identities, ethnicities, culture, class and language 21 Narrative, discursive practices and identity 23 Biculturalism and transculturalism 25 Positioning in and between several languages 26 Language signified as carrier of identity 27 Bilingualism as an interactional resource 28 Researching bilingual/multilingual speakers' views 30 Summary and conclusion 30 2 The Research Framework 32 Research questions 33 Epistemology and research framework 34 Conducting the research interviews 35 Research participants 36 Transcription 37 A synthesized approach to analysis 41 3 Childhoods in Several Languages 46 Growing up in multilingual colonial contexts 46 Growing up in bilingual/trilingual contexts 54 Growing up with a minoritized language 56 v vi Multilingual Living Fleeing from one's country of origin 66 Concluding discussion 73 4 Adulthoods in Several Languages: Constructions of Self and of Language 76 Constructing oneself anew 76 Inarticulacy 79 Performance 80 Coming to own a language 84 A sense of doubleness 85 Constructions of language 91 Concluding discussion 99 5 Language Identities and Power Relationships: Strategies of Hybridization 101 Racialization processes and language speaking 101 Second-language communications and misunderstandings lOS Strategies of hybridization 108 Concluding discussion 121 6 Language Use and Family Relationships 122 Language and power in family relationships 122 Parenting and language use 131 Using language to claim identity and alliances in families 148 Complexities of speaking several languages within families 156 7 Positioning the Researcher 158 Personal contexts and researcher hypotheses 159 Co-constructing the research accounts 161 Constructions of new meanings 163 Similarities and differences in the research relationship 164 Evaluative aspects of the research interview 165 Self-reflexivity throughout the research process 166 Recursive influences of the research and personal context 166 8 Concluding Discussion 169 Living with multiplicity 171 Constructions of self 173 Doubleness as trope 175 Performing linguistic identities and owning language 177 Languages and family relationships 179 Contents vii Contextual resources 181 Relationship to language and place 182 Advantages of speaking several languages 184 Implications for individuals, families and professionals 187 Concluding implications 192 Appendixes 1 Protocol for Research Interview 194 2 Transcription Notations 197 References 198 Index 213 Acknowledgements This book owes a great deal to Ann Phoenix and Margaret Wetherell, whose intellectual rigour, interest, and generosity have profoundly informed my thinking during the research on which this book is based. A number of friends have most generously supported me during the research and writing, especially Gwyn Daniel, Avi Shlaim, Sara Barratt, Judy Hildebrand, Christine Peters, Marilyn Leask, Nick Kettle, Elaine Bander, Gerrilyn Smith, B. Loader and Elsa Jones. This book is dedicated to the research participants who have been so interested and willing to discuss these issues with me, and to my son, Ben Dalton, who offered support and sensitive consultation at key moments, and whom, regretfully, I did not bring up multilingually. viii Introduction Why should it be important to research and write of issues of living in several languages? Over half of the world's population are thought to be either bilingual or multilingual (Grosjean 1982). Sometimes it is difficult to keep hold of this fact while looking through some of the British and North American linguistics literature where negative connotations about bilingualism were prevalent until thirty years ago, and which continue to exert a considerable degree of influence. Many writers, Pinker (1994) and Abley (2003) among others, are urgently drawing to our attention that we are in danger of losing 90 per cent of the estimated 5,500 languages in the world in the next hundred years. There is also growing evidence that loss of language involves not only loss of cultural knowledge and histories, but also loss of biodiversity, because of invaluable environmental knowledge embedded in language (Maffi 2000). This is fuelling efforts to find ways to maintain languages and to disrupt language loss. Speaking several languages is valued very differently in different soci- eties. In Britain, despite the fact that London is the most linguistically diverse city in the world (Baker and Mohieldeen 2000; TES 2003), there is more antipathy towards other languages than elsewhere in Europe (Zeldin 1997), and there is considerable pressure for those who speak other languages to assimilate by speaking English. This context poses enormous challenges to individuals and families who want to continue to live in several languages. This book explores the ways in which bilingual and multilingual indi- viduals living in Britain experience and use their languages, and their perceived effects. It is based on a research study which has aimed to contribute to our knowledge of bilingualism and multilingualism and whose focus has been to invite individuals to be reflective about their