Defining and investigating monolingualism

Sols vol 23 2008

ISSN 1750-8649 (print) ISSN 1750-8657 (online)

Sociolinguistic Studies

L O N D O N

doi 101558solsv2i3311 311ndash330 copy2008 equinox publishing

Article

Defining and investigating monolingualism

Elizabeth M Ellis

AbstractSome may find it strange to see a special journal issue on monolingualism After all is it not bilinguals and multilinguals who present the more interesting questions It certainly seems so for research has concentrated on their linguistic psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic make-up The implication of this is that monolingualism is the norm and that bilingualism and multilingualism constitute abnormal states which merit investigation even though this idea sits oddly with the belief of most linguists that the majority of the worldrsquos population is bi- or multilingual and that therefore monolingualism may be the exception rather than the norm There is little systematic investigation of monolingualism Romaine pointed out in 1995 that she would find it strange to see a book with the title lsquoMonolingualismrsquo This special issue of Sociolinguis-tic Studies carries just such a title and the papers it includes represent an attempt to explore the phenomenon of monolingualism from a number of different perspectives In this introduction I will outline why a simple definition of monolingualism is neither easy to establish nor useful and also why it is important to come to an understanding of it as a particular kind of lsquolingualismrsquo (Cruz Ferreira pc) I then review ways in which monolingualism has been represented thus far in the literature outline some possible research questions and end by introducing the contributions to this volume

Keywords monolingualism language ideology bilingualism language repertoire language biography

Affiliation

University of New England Armidale Australia

Correspondence School of Behavioural Cognitive and Social Sciences University of New England Armidale NSW 2351 Australia

email lizellisuneeduau

312 Sociolinguistic Studies

1 Does monolingualism exist

How should we begin to think about monolingualism as a topic for investiga-tion A first step might be to define what we mean by the term and here we run into a similar problem to that of defining bilingualism Dictionary definitions are too simplistic for our purposes eg

lsquomonolingualrsquo

(adj) lsquosaid of a personcommunity with only one languagersquo also unilingualrsquo (Crystal 1987 425)

(n) lsquo1 a person who knows and uses only one language 2 a person who has an active knowledge of only one language though perhaps a passive knowledge of othersrsquo Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (Richards and Schmidt 2002)

We immediately encounter the familiar problem of defining what we mean by lsquoa languagersquo lsquoknowing a languagersquo and a lsquo[speech] communityrsquo Is a person who can speak a standard variety and a regional variety still a monolingual How different does the regional variety have to be before we think of this person as bidialectal or bilingual What about social dialects What about those who know a few words of another language or (as above) have a passive (receptive) knowledge of one or more others Recent work exposing the slipperiness of the concept of the lsquonative speakerrsquo (Davies 2003 Llurda 2005) shows us among other things that a personrsquos command of their own native or first language is highly variable both between people and within an individualrsquos own repertoire Rothman (this volume) shows how monolinguals have access to different grammars comprising different styles within their single language It quickly becomes clear that no single definition of a monolingual can be useful for all purposes and in all contexts In investigating differences between monolingual and bilingual teachers of English as a second language (Ellis 2003) I found Hamers and Blancrsquos (2000 6) broad and inclusive definition of bilinguality useful in suggesting where the division might lie

Bilinguality is the psychological state of an individual who has access to more than one linguistic code as a means of social communication the degree of access will vary along a number of dimensions which are psy-chological cognitive psycholinguistic social psychological sociological sociolinguistic sociocultural and linguistic

This definition to my mind avoids most of the pitfalls of earlier definitions which became tangled in questions of proficiency ownership productive and receptive bilingualism and differing levels of oracy and literacy Their wording

Defining and investigating monolingualism 313

of lsquohave access torsquo can include any or all of speaking understanding reading writing signing as well as active and receptive modes lsquoLinguistic codersquo can include language regional and social dialect variety and even divergent styles while lsquosocial communicationrsquo emphasises use within a social context language use from a functional and socially situated perspective

While we must recognise the futility of searching for a single measure for any lsquolingualismrsquo ndash a pursuit we wisely abandoned some time ago where bilinguals are concerned ndash in order to investigate monolingualism and its effects we need some sort of a common understanding of what it is Working from the above definition an individual is monolingual who does not have access to more than one linguistic code as a means of social communication Using this as a working definition means of course that we must see monolingualsrsquo language proficiency too as located on a continuum ranging from the skills of someone who can say lsquobuenos diasrsquo or lsquoselamat pagirsquo or lsquogood morningrsquo in their L2 to those of someone who has studied one or more languages but falls short of being able to communicate in them in any effective way We need also to recognise that monolingualsrsquo limited repertoire can vary according to a number of dimensions just as do those of bilinguals age of acquisition manner of acquisition frequency of use emotional attachment or affiliation (Rampton 1990) level of proficiency viewed as a dynamic process over time (including attrition and re-establishment) domains of use and patterns of medium selec-tion (Torras and Gafaranga 2002) There are similar problems with defining the native speaker with Davies (2003) claiming that ultimately it is a matter of confidence and identity whether one claims native-speaker status However Medgyes who wishes to retain the distinction between native and non-native speaker argues that from a practical perspective we know who is one and who isnrsquot lsquoIn short [Robert] Kaplan is a native speaker of English and I am notrsquo (Medgyes 1999 178) Similarly people themselves tend to know whether they are monolingual or not (The same is not true for bilingualism since the old definitions of native-speaker-like proficiency in two languages persist among non-linguists many L2 speakers are reluctant to claim the title lsquobilingualrsquo which is a good argument for adopting Cookrsquos term an lsquoL2 userrsquo (Cook 1999))

In other words we can admit that there are theoretical problems with defin-ing a sociolinguistic concept (native speaker monolingualism) and admit that they are multidimensional concepts about which we need to think in new ways while still claiming that for practical purposes the concepts exist and perhaps need to exist until we find better ways of thinking about and researching them

If we agree that monolingualism exists and can be at least tentatively defined the more interesting question becomes ndash what are its effects on individuals speech communities and larger societies In attempting to map


how this question might be asked and how it might be turned into a research agenda I reviewed the available literature which mentioned monolingualism and identified three major representations (described more fully in Ellis 2006a)

The first representation is that which I have called the lsquounmarked casersquo or the norm against which bilingualism and multilingualism are set as the exception and this is often claimed to be a common feature of powerful and dominant societies (Edwards 1994) The second representation is found among those who teach and promote the learning of foreign languages and this one presents monolingualism as a limitation on cognitive communicative social and vocational potential a missed opportunity The third view of monolingualism is more critical viewing it as an unexamined and dangerous phenomenon which has profoundly negative effects on the development and application of social and educational policy There is currently no serious literature which argues for monolingualism or which claims that speaking more than one language is harmful or undesirable There are however certainly attempts to argue that children will suffer if their education takes place in more than one language (see for example the US English-Only movement (Crawford 2000) and Ruizrsquos (1994) contention that lsquobilingualrsquo has become a synonym for lsquoeducationally disadvantagedrsquo)

2 Monolingualism as the unmarked case

By describing monolingualism as the lsquounmarked casersquo I have suggested (Ellis 2006a) that this is the view of those who see it as the default form of human language repertoire Markedness as a linguistic concept refers to properties of a language which are more or less frequent versatile andor morphologically indicated (Ellis 1994 420) hence in English the article form lsquoarsquo is unmarked while lsquoanrsquo is marked being less frequent and only occurring before vowel-initial nouns As a sociolinguistic concept markedness can be used to describe for example aspects of gendered language such as the generic lsquohersquo (Holmes 2001) where the male is the unmarked or lsquonormalrsquo human and the female is the marked or exceptional case Before the advent of todayrsquos more inclusive public language it was common to read in English language newspapers such phrases as lsquothree people one a woman were injured hellip rsquo The fact that the female population of the world outnumbers the male has no bearing on the notion that the female is the marked gender and in this invented but formerly commonplace example the male is constructed as the prototypical human This is an example of what Fairclough (1989) calls the lsquonaturalisation of a discourse typersquo meaning the building up of a socially normalised way of thinking and talking about something to the point where it is seen as obvious common sense and the only natural way to view the phenomenon So too the fact that most


of the worldrsquos population is multilingual (Hamers and Blanc 2000 Dewaele et al 2003) does not prevent the construction of monolingualism as the norm

This lsquonaturalizationrsquo of monolingualism explains why there is little literature which describes or examines it the dearth of books to which Romaine refers (1995) There is however a wealth of attestation from well-published linguists that monolingualism is indeed regarded as the default form in linguistics sociolinguistics and applied linguistics Pennycook (1994) argued that the spread of English is often regarded by monolingual English speakers as lsquonatural neutral and beneficialrsquo Christ (1997 221) maintains that populations of devel-oped countries whose language is a language of international communication lsquolive with the impression that their own language is the normal case which speakers of other languages must adjust torsquo Gogolin (1994) in her examination of multilingual schools in Germany terms this view a lsquomonolingual habitusrsquo drawing on Bourdieursquos (1977) notion of lsquohabitusrsquo as strategic practice structured by a social environment

Within the field of Second Language Acquisition there has been increasing recognition of the inadequacy of the traditional assumption of monolingualism as the starting point for additional language acquisition (Kachru 1994 Sridhar 1994 Auer 2007) Ortega (2007 2008) refers to the lsquoprejuicio monolinguumle en ASLrsquo [the monolingual prejudice in SLA] and call on linguists to lsquoembrace a bilingual turnrsquo in SLA Research in third and subsequent language acquisition and a dynamic model of multilingualism (Jessner 1999 Herdina and Jessner 2002) is challenging this assumption of monolingualism as the baseline but there is still a long way to go to establish multilingual norms of language use appropriate assessment tasks for multilinguals and research designs which incorporate multilingual repertoires (Ortega 2007)

Research in linguistic anthropology has identified lsquomonoglot standardizationrsquo in the USA (Silverstein 1996) seeing in this an expression of a desired unity and uniformity of the nation-state Blommaert (2004) draws on history and social science to argue that a single language is an important premise for modernity assisted by print capitalism (Anderson 1991) Piller (2001) and Eades et al (2003) draw on such arguments to examine how ideologies of national and linguistic identity in both Germany and Australia result in practices in assessing citizen-ship eligibility for refugees and migrants which are not compatible with what we know about multilingual realities Piller (2001 272) points out in relation to language testing for naturalization purposes in Germany that it is assumed that any monolingual native speaker can judge the proficiency of a second language speaker Similarly Eadesrsquo (2003 115) work with Aboriginal interpret-ers in Australia leads her to conclude that the legal system generally assumes monolingualism so that where interpreters are used the official transcript records only the English utterances denying legal status to other languages used


by court participants and rendering their bilingualism invisible Angermeyer (this volume) looks at court interpreting practices in the New York small claims court and concludes that they reflect an expectation that participants will be monolingual or be prepared to act as if they are monolingual

Observations and critiques such as these in addition to our knowledge of the functioning of multilingual societies elsewhere suggest that the normal-ity of monolingualism is indeed a construction or a lsquomonolingual ideologyrsquo (Blackledge 2000)

3 Monolingualism as a limitation of potential

The second major representation of monolingualism is as a lack of skills or a limitation of human potential (Ellis 2006a) This view comes from those who promote language learning in schools and universities and from lan-guage policy scholars who advocate for the importance of additional language learning and the maintenance of community or heritage languages (Clyne 1991 2005) Monolingualism from this perspective means missing out on the benefits which L2 knowledge and use can confer through growing up bilingual or through formal learning of an L2 Here I draw on policy literature from Australia since this is the locus of my research and since despite being ostensibly a lsquomultilingual countryrsquo Australia has a poor record both in the learning of other languages by English speakers and in the maintaining and fostering of immigrant languages (For an in-depth discussion of both of these see Clyne (this volume) and Clynersquos large body of earlier work) There have been numerous Australian policy statements over the last few decades (ALSALAA 1981 Lo Bianco 1987 DEET 1991 MLTAQ 2002 MCEETYA 2005) which have included arguments for the benefits conferred by learning and using a second language Language study is credited with assisting cognitive processes as it constitutes an lsquointellectual stimulusrsquo and includes lsquonew ways of thinking and learning and organising knowledgersquo (ALSALAA 1981 24) Such statements are certainly not confined to the Australian context but are echoed in the international literature Language learning can lsquohellip help learners to understand that there are alternative ways of conceiving and labelling the physical universe helliprsquo (Gibbons 1994 3) Bilingual children show greater cognitive flexibility and creativity in problem-solving (Lambert and Tucker 1972) Language learning provides an lsquoanalytic and communicative skill that enhances learning in other fieldsrsquo (Baldauf 1993 125) Byram (1999 93) maintains that other languages lsquoprovide access to different bodies of knowledge which are unavailable to the monolingual speakerrsquo Learning other languages involves processes of lsquometa-phorizationrsquo (Kramsch 1996) and lsquohypothesis forming and testingrsquo (Corder 1981) Hawkins (1999) conceived of the lsquoapprenticeshiprsquo aspect meaning that


learning one language makes it easier to learn others since one acquires skills through comparing language systems and developing learning strategies

Advocates for language learning emphasise the pleasure which can be derived from L2 learning and use Clyne (2003) terms this lsquointrinsic motivationrsquo Hawkins (1999 134) calls it lsquothe sheer exhilaration of the journey into a foreign language and a foreign culture for its own sakersquo while Kramsch describes it lyrically

[multilinguals]hellip take intensive physical pleasure in acquiring a language thrill in trespassing on someone elsersquos territoryhellip multilingual speakers create new discourse communities whose aerial existence monolingual speakers hardly suspect (Kramsch 1997 365)

The literature which researches and defends the benefits of having two lan-guages either through second language study or growing up bilingual is substantial and this is but a brief summary It claims intellectual cultural social emotional and economic benefits for both individuals and society The argument goes that none of these benefits are available to the monolingual but there are two qualifications to be made First if monolingualism is best regarded as a continuum from total monolingualism up to the a point just short of being an lsquoL2 userrsquo then some of the above benefits may accrue to a monolingual with some language study or expertise Second several authors are at pains to point out that language learning does not inevitably confer all of these benefits (particularly in regard to claims of lsquocultural sensitivityrsquo) but it certainly provides potential for them (Liddicoat 2002 Lambert 1999)

Other authors explicitly examine the disadvantages of monolingualism a slightly different perspective from that of those who laud the benefits of language learning but proceeding from the same worldview that language learning is a good thing to be encouraged by governments and education systems and to fail to engage in it constitutes an opportunity foregone Some maintain that those who speak only one language are disadvantaged in the global job market and in business (Kirkpatrick 2000 Mughan 1999 Peel 2001 Djiteacute 1994) Crozet and Liddicoat (1999) doubt the ability of monolingual speakers to become truly interculturally competent since they lack access to other culturesrsquo norms and worldview as represented through language Peel (2001 14) laments the narrowness of perspective of monolingual English-speakers in an increasingly multilingual world arguing that if they do not understand how languages work and how they differ they will never understand other peoples beyond a super-ficial level He calls a monoglot world lsquoa world of terrifying blandnessrsquo stripped of the subtlety and negotiation involved in multilingual communication

The stance of those who advocate for the learning of additional languages and for the preservation and maintenance of heritage and indigenous languages is largely benign they bemoan the lack of resources dedicated to languages


in countries such as Britain the USA and Australia but as announced by a bumper sticker produced by the Australian national association of language teachers some years ago they believe that lsquoMonolingualism is curablersquo Those whose views are reported in the next section take a much more critical and sinister view of monolingualism

4 Monolingualism as a pathological and dangerous worldview

The third representation of monolingualism appearing in the literature is as a dangerous and pathological state rather than the norm (the first representation) or a simple absence of skills (the second) These authors argue that the accept-ance of monolingualism reflects the hegemony of particular political and social interests with major consequences for social and educational policy

Of these authors Skutnabb-Kangas (1996 2000a 2000b) gives the most detailed justification for such a view She lists four common myths that mono-lingualism is normal desirable sufficient for communication and inevitable at both a societal and individual level She outlines the arguments for each of these and then proceeds to refute each in turn (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000a 2000b) She argues that monolingualism at a societal level is a social construction which has been used to marginalise various groups of people (those who do not speak the dominant language or who speak varieties which are not socially valued) and that at an individual level it is the result of misguided educational policies and linguicism In other words the monolingual individual is so because he or she has suffered from lack of opportunity to learn (or maintain) a second language through discriminatory policies and practices Ultimately she maintains lsquoLike cholera or leprosy monolingualism is an illness which should be eradicated as soon as possiblersquo (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000a 185) Oller (1997) employs the dis-course of disability to suggest that monolinguals suffer from a kind of language blindness Seeing the world only through one language or dialect means that they are unaware of how language shapes and reflects both thought and social structures He terms this condition lsquomonoglottosisrsquo and explains it as

hellipa general unawareness of the languages or dialects that must be called upon to make sense of the surface-forms of speech or other signs that enable communities to share abstract meanings hellip Monoglottosis is a special blindness towards the general dependence of all sign-users on such conventions in some particular languagedialect (Oller 1997 469)

In his view the result of lsquomonolingual blindnessrsquo on the part of the test-makers and test administrators has been to wrongly lsquodiagnosersquo bilingual and minority children as lsquolearning deficientrsquo lsquoretardedrsquo or lsquosemi-lingualrsquo (Oller 1997) Valdeacutes and Figueroa (1994) argue a similar case conducting a careful and systematic


review of the assumptions and logic behind educational testing and concluding that these are informed by the view that monolingual language proficiency is the norm and that bilinguals can be tested using the same approaches and instruments That not much has changed since they wrote this is evidenced by Ortega (2008) calling for linguists to develop new constructs new empirical baselines and new research designs to avoid what she calls the lsquomonolingual prejudicersquo

Other terms used to frame monolingualism as a sickness or a dysfunc-tion are lsquomonolingual myopiarsquo (Smolicz 1995) lsquomonolingual reductionismrsquo lsquomonolingual stupidityrsquo and lsquomonolingual naiumlvetyrsquo (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000a) These are controversial and partisan terms and such views have been roundly criticised (eg Handsfield 2002) but those who use them argue that the stakes in educational and social policy are high Misunderstanding the nature of bilingualism and of the needs of bilingual children can result in the denial of very real life opportunities to large parts of the population (Snow and Hakuta 1992) Lo Bianco (1999) analyses an Australian parliamentary transcript which shows that the Minister for Education does not grasp what lsquobilingualrsquo means and constantly reframes lsquobilingual educationrsquo in the Northern Territory as a kind of English literacy methodology for Aboriginal minorities In the wake of the abolition of bilingual education for speakers of Aboriginal languages it is difficult to see this ignorance as anything but deeply concerning Lo Bianco attempts to locate such ignorant views in the language experiences or lack of them of Australian parliamentarians (Lo Bianco 2007) finding that the occurrence of second language skills amongst them was low and that those who did have bilingual skills gave a much more sympathetic hearing to a private membersrsquo bill concerning the strengthening of support for foreign community and indigenous languages Clyne (this volume) describes the derision with which the incoming Australian Prime Ministerrsquos fluency in Mandarin was greeted in Parliament seeing this as evidence of the dominant lsquomonolingual mindsetrsquo defined as lsquoseeing everything in terms of a single languagersquo

Phillipson (1992) in his analysis of the development of the English Language Teaching (ELT) profession over the last century argued that it has privileged both the native speaker (who is not expected to be other than monolingual) and a monolingual (ie English-only) methodology He claims that lsquo[a] monolingual methodology is organically linked with linguicist disregard of dominated languages concepts and ways of thinking It is highly functional in inducing a colonized consciousnessrsquo (Phillipson 1992 187) Skutnabb-Kangas (2000a 38) continues this theme claiming that teachers need lsquofirst-hand experience of having learned and [of] using a second or a foreign languagehellip [a] bilingual or multilingual native speaker is thus better able to understand what the learners experience than a monolingual onersquo My own research bears


out this proposition that other things being equal a teacher who is an L2 user has greater linguistic sociocultural and empathetic resources to draw on in English language teaching than does a monolingual teacher (Ellis 2002 2003 2004a 2004b) and that the profession as a whole in Australia is characterized by a monolingual view of English language learning (Ellis 2007)

Such authors claim then that monolingual perspectives dominate in educa-tional testing in curriculum development and in how literacy is defined taught and tested Monolingual worldviews of language and dialect infect policies and processes of determining the origin of refugees (Eades et al 2003) and this can mean the difference between citizenship and statelessness freedom and detention life and death These are not small stakes

Monolingualism then is deserving of study as a phenomenon in its own right rather than simply as the invisible and unexamined corollary of bimultilingualism Systematic documentation and analysis of the existence and effects of monolingualism might contribute to the awareness of the sources of silent but powerful opposition to societal and individual multilingualism and to possibilities for resisting it

Heller (2007 2) argues for a social view of bilingualism wherein language is seen as

hellip a set of resources which circulate in unequal ways in social networks and discursive spaces and whose meaning and value are socially con-structed within the constraints of social organizational processes under specific historical conditions

So too we need to see monolingualism as socially and discursively constructed and study it accordingly

5 Towards a research agenda

In calling for papers for this collection the following questions were suggested as starting points

bullHow can monolingualism be defined Is it a continuum in the same way as bilingualism

bullWhat is a lsquomonolingual mindsetrsquo

bullHow can we move beyond assertion to conduct research on the effects of a monolingual mindset on individuals families communities and public policy

bullWhat is the impact of monolingualism on social and educational policy in selected sites


bullWhat can be done to increase public awareness of the effects of monolin-gual perspectives

bullWhat interdisciplinary perspectives are necessary to investigate monolin-gualism if like bilingualism we see it as social as well as linguistic

bullHow can we investigate and critique monolingualism as a phenomenon while avoiding vilifying individual monolinguals

bullHow can linguists work as activists to resist monolingual discourses

We do not pretend to have addressed all of these but the papers here are an important beginning in defining a research agenda which might include but not be limited to these questions

We might aim to conduct more studies of the language background of those who hold key or influential positions in public policy and education as have Lo Bianco (2007) with politicians and Ellis (2004b) with ESL teachers Ellis linked the language background of teachers to their professional beliefs about language teaching drawing on well-established theories of teacher cognition (for a comprehensive overview of teacher cognition theory see Borg 2006) Ellisrsquo study found a close link between personal language learning experience and teachersrsquo sophisticated understandings of bi- and multilingual language use By contrast the conceptions held by monolingual teachers of the nature of language language use and language teaching were less rich and less well-developed than those of teachers who had language experience (Ellis 2006b) Coulmasrsquo thoughts on the relative paucity of monolingualsrsquo understanding of language accord with these findings In his discussion of English monolingual-ism in scientific communication he maintains that

Monolinguals are much more at the mercy of their language than those of us who have more than one at our command Also monolinguals are seldom aware of the limitations of their vocabulary whereas we remark on a daily basis that a certain word doesnrsquot match the concept we want to express or that a lexical differentiation in one language has no direct counterpart in another hellip Monolinguals often find it more difficult to understand that hellip forms are variable and that language and thought are two pairs of shoes (Coulmas 20076)

The role of language learning experience in constructing professional cogni-tions is relatively unexplored in fields outside teaching There is cope for much more research using methods derived from cognitive linguistics and sociolin-guistics into how beliefs and practices are affected by language background among politicians and policy makers health professionals and bureaucrats diplomats lawyers judges police and prison staff those professions whose


work brings them into contact with or directly influences multilinguals on a daily basis

We might also make use of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1995) to analyse the kinds of public discourse in both spoken and written texts which demonstrates and encourages the view of monolingualism as the norm Our aim should not be to vilify individual monolinguals at any point but to build a principled argument for the acceptance of bi-and multilingualism as a natural and desirable state and as a normal realization of human language potential We should reject position 1 Monolingualism as the unmarked case adopt the educative and benign arguments of position 2 Monolingualism as a limita-tion of potential and develop further the critical perspectives of position 3 Monolingualism as a pathological and dangerous worldview

6 This collection

The articles in this collection address the phenomenon of monolingualism in the areas of education language policy film and the law contributed by authors from Australia New Zealand South Korea the US and Canada The question has been asked by a reviewer who must remain anonymous ndash is it only English monolingualism which is the problem That question cannot be fully answered here but there is evidence from Parkrsquos paper that monolingual ideologies exist in other languages and ample evidence from other countries of nation states imposing monolingual policy on multilingual realities such as in Spain during the Franco era Yet the fact that English is so widely used as a lingua franca and a global language certainly means that English monolingualism is a large part of the problem as discussed here by Clyne Liddicoat and Crichton Petrucci and Planchenault The editorial team pondered whether publishing a collection such as this in English might be a contradiction in terms and we are open to such an accusation The editorial team is all multilingual however and one of the aims of the journal (formerly Estudios de Sociolinguumliacutestica) is that it offers a bridge between sociolinguistic research in the Spanish and Latino-American world and in the English-speaking world There follows a brief description of the focus of each of the papers

Joseph Sung-Yul Park in Two processes of reproducing monolingualism in South Korea draws on work in language ideology to explore the sociolinguistic situation in South Korea a country which is often claimed to be one of the most linguistically homogenous in the world Park shows how this impression of homogeneity realised via an idealisation of monolingualism in Korean exists despite the widespread learning and use of English in education business and the media He argues that maintaining the image of a monolingual speech community in the face of the increasing prevalence of English in a number


of domains requires complex language ideological work which explains away this prevalence through a process of erasure (Irvine and Gal 2000) The two processes he examines in detail are externalisation which views English as un-Korean incompatible with Korean national identity and self-deprecation a view that Koreans are unable to acquire English to a high degree of com-municative competence This claim from South Korea echoes others from Australia and Britain In both of these countries the belief appears to exist that their English-speaking citizens are unable to learn other languages as pointed out in a joint statement by the Australian Linguistic Society and the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia

[i]t appears to be widely believed in Australia that foreign languages are essentially unlearnable to normal people and that Australians have a special innate anti-talent for learning them (ALSALAA 1981 15)

and the following statement by Edwards (1994)

hellip in the modern world English and American monolinguals for example often complain that they have no aptitude for foreign language learning (Edwards 1994 60)

Since there is no research evidence to suggest that individuals in any given speech community find it harder than those in any other to acquire a second language we must conclude that such beliefs are based on entrenched societal ideologies rather than empirical evidence

The term lsquomonolingual mindsetrsquo was coined by Michael Clyne (Clyne 2004) defined as lsquoseeing everything in terms of a single languagersquo including seeing monolingualism as the norm seeing plurilingualism as deviant not under-standing the links between skills in one language and others and reflecting this thinking in policy (Clyne this volume) Clyne here in The monolingual mindset as an impediment to the development of plurilingual potential in Australia draws on his enormous research experience in Australian societal multilingualism to show how this monolingual mindset has negative consequences both for the maintenance of immigrant languages beyond the first generation and for the development of a population which has skills in languages of global significance He outlines several fallacies which arise from the monolingual mindset such as the lsquounfair advantagersquo supposedly enjoyed by school students with a home background in the language they are studying and the sufficiency of global English

In the domain of higher education Liddicoat and Crichton in The monolin-gual framing of international education in Australia examine the institutional discourses around the phenomenon of the lsquointernationalisationrsquo of Australian universities Over the past two decades Australian universities have become


increasingly financially reliant on fee-paying international students the majority of whom come from China India and South-East Asian countries lsquoInternationalisationrsquo as the authors explain is understood as recruitment of students from other countries the setting up of student exchanges between Australia and other countries and internationalisation of the curriculum However they argue that the potential for plurilingualism and intercultural communication beyond a superficial level are compromised by a failure to recognise that lsquoknowledge and disciplinary practices are linguistically and cul-turally contextedrsquo (Liddicoat and Crichton this volume) Hence the linguistic and other academic experiences of students are marginalised or ignored the curriculum pays no more than lip service to other cultural traditions and a monolingual and monocultural homogeneity is paraded as diversity

Angermeyerrsquos paper Creating monolingualism in the multilingual courtroom takes us to the legal domain where he looks at linguistic practices in the New York City small claims court Drawing on a data set of 40 recorded arbitration hearings he shows how normal bilingual code-switching is actively discour-aged and how bilingual speakers are prevented from using the full range of their language repertoire Those who do speak some English are prevented from using it when an interpreter has been engaged and yet are accused of deceit when they refrain from using any of the English they know Angermeyer uses data from courtroom interactions in Spanish Russian Haitian Creole Polish and English to show how the court perpetuates a monolingual bias and forces bilingual participants to act as if they were monolinguals He further shows how participantsrsquo language choice becomes a key factor in the assessment of their credibility and reliability as plaintiffs or as witnesses a serious problem in an adversarial legal system

The next two papers by Petrucci and Planchenault tackle the ways in which other languages are represented in American and British film and television The products of the American motion picture industry are the most widely distributed in the world and hence the beliefs and cultural practices they illustrate have the potential to be highly influential that much is uncontrover-sial Petrucci in Portraying language diversity through a monolingual lens on the unbalanced representation of Spanish and English in a corpus of American films shows how Hollywoodrsquos screenwriters and directors proceed from a monolingual perspective in that they limit the possibilities for enacting normal bilingual language use on screen require the audience to suspend their disbelief regarding protagonistsrsquo choice of code and subtly laud English speakers who master other languages while treating Spanish bilingualsrsquo mastery of English as unremarkable He does this by examining the portrayal of the Spanish language and of Spanish speakers in a corpus of ten films While acknowledging that filmmakers should have artistic licence to choose the linguistic vehicle for a nar-


rative he argues that through persistently ignoring or misrepresenting normal sociolinguistic diversity they shortchange their audiences and contribute to the perception that English monolingualism is the norm

Planchenault continues this theme in lsquoWho can tell mon amirsquo Representations of bilingualism for a majority monolingual audience taking as her subject matter the British televised adaptation of Agatha Christiersquos Poirot on ITV and the por-trayal of the French language and of the Belgian identity of the main character Hercule Poirot She argues that recurrent lexical and syntactical forms in both English and French contribute to create a complicity between the makers of the series and the audience constructing French speakers as exotic unusual and idiosyncratic As with the corpus examined by Petrucci the representation of the other language is such that English monolingual speakers are not challenged by its use are not put to the inconvenience of subtitles and are confirmed in what Edwards (1994 60) calls their

linguistic smugness reflecting a deeply-held conviction that after all those hellip lsquoothersrsquo who do not already know English will have to accommo-date in a world made increasingly safe for Anglophones

Finally Rothman returns us to a consideration of what monolingualism is and how it functions as an ideology in Linguistic epistemology and the notion of monolingualism He maintains that although we lack a clear definition of monolingualism it has been taken as the norm in both linguistic and sociolin-guistic inquiry and he considers forces of globalization and the hegemony of English-speaking world powers as the sources of this position He points out that acceptance of multilingualism in pluralist societies has been hampered by the lack of normative assessments for bi- or multilinguals Finally he discusses the proposition that no-one is truly monolingual since even those who speak one lsquolanguagersquo have access to different varieties registers and styles He illus-trates this point firstly with linguistic data from American English showing that native speakers have access to different grammars regarding the use of the subjunctive in English which they employ as appropriate in different registers Secondly he uses an example from Brazilian Portuguese (BP) to show a similar possession of two grammars in this case of inflected and uninflected infinitives as a characteristic of BP monolinguals

The seed for this collection was sown in 2002 at the Second International Symposium on Bilingualism in Vigo Spain where I first met Xoaacuten Paulo Rodriacuteguez Yaacutentildeez and we have remained in contact since then I thank him and his Co-Editor Fernando Ramallo most warmly for giving me the opportunity to put this volume together and for their kind assistance and encouragement over its conception and development I thank the authors for their willingness to be part of this fairly unusual venture and for their patience with the selection and


review process I am particularly grateful to the many anonymous reviewers whose suggestions have strengthened the papers and who good-naturedly fitted the work of reviewing into their busy professional lives Responsibility for any remaining editing errors or omissions is of course mine I sincerely hope that you find the collection as interesting to read as I did to edit

References

ALSALAA Australian Linguistics SocietyApplied Linguistics Association of Australia (1981) Languages in a core curriculum A set of statements from the profession Babel 17 2ndash3

Anderson B (1991) Imagined Communities London Verso

Auer P (2007) The monolingual bias in bilingualism research or Why bilingual talk is (still) a challenge for linguistics In M Heller (ed) Bilingualism A social approach 319ndash339 Basingstoke Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan

Baldauf R B (1993) Fostering bilingualism and national development through school second language study Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 14(1amp2) 121ndash134

Blackledge A (2000) Monolingual ideologies in multilingual states Language hegemony and social justice in Western liberal democracies Estudios de Sociolingűistica 1(2) 25ndash45

Blommaert J (2004) Language policy and national identity In T Ricento (ed) An Introduction to Language Planning London Blackwell

Bourdieu P (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice London Cambridge University Press

Borg S (2006) Teacher Cognition and Language Education Research and practice London Continuum

Byram M (1999) Questions of identity in foreign language learning In J Lo Bianco A J Liddicoat and C Crozet (eds) Striving for the Third Place Intercultural competence through language education 91ndash100 Melbourne Language Australia

Clyne M (1991) Community Languages The Australian experience Melbourne Cambridge University Press

Clyne M (2003) Towards a more language-centred approach to plurilingualism In J M Dewaele A Housen and L Wei (eds) Bilingualism Beyond basic principles Festchrift in Honour of Hugo Baetens Beardsmore 43ndash55 Clevedon Multilingual Matters

Clyne M (2004) Trapped in a monolingual mindset Prime Focus 37 40ndash42

Clyne M (2005) Australiarsquos Language Potential Sydney UNSW Press

Christ H (1997) Language policy in teacher education In R Wodak and D Corson (eds) Encyclopaedia of Language and Education Volume 1 Language Policy and Political Issues in Education 219ndash227 Dordrecht Kluwer Academic Publishers

Cook V (1999) Going beyond the native speaker in language teaching TESOL Quarterly 33(2) 185ndash209


Corder S P (1981) Error Analysis and Interlanguage Oxford Oxford University Press

Coulmas F (ed) (2007) English monolingualism in scientific communication and progress in science good or bad AILA Review Linguistic Inequality in Scientific Communication Today 20 5ndash13

Crawford J (2000) At War with Diversity US language policy in an age of anxiety Clevedon Multilingual Matters

Crozet C and A J Liddicoat (1999) The challenge of intercultural language teaching In J Lo Bianco A J Liddicoat and C Crozet (eds) Striving for the Third Place Intercultural Competence through Language Education 103ndash112 Melbourne Language Australia

Cruz Ferreira M (2008) personal communication

Crystal D (1987) The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Davies A (2003) The Native Speaker Myth and reality Clevedon Multilingual Matters

DEET (Department of Employment Education and Training) (1991) Australiarsquos Language The Australian language and literacy policy Companion volume to the policy information paper Canberra Australian Government Publishing Service

Dewaele JndashM Housen A et al (eds) (2003) Bilingualism Beyond basic principles Festschrift in Honour of Hugo Baetens Beardsmore Clevedon Multilingual Matters

Djite P G (1994) From Language Policy to Language Planning An overview of languages other than English in Australian education Canberra National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia Ltd

Eades D (2003) Participation of second language and second dialect speakers in the legal system Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 23 113ndash133

Eades D Fraser H Siegel J McNamara T and Baker B (2003) Linguistic identifica-tion in the determination of nationality A preliminary report Language Policy 2(2) 179ndash199

Edwards J (1994) Multilingualism London Routledge

Ellis L (2002) Teaching from experience A new perspective on the nonndashnative teacher in adult ESL Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 25(1) 71ndash107

Ellis E (2003) Bilingualism among Teachers of ESL A study of second language learning experience as a contributor to the professional knowledge and beliefs of teachers of ESL to adults Unpublished PhD thesis Griffith University Brisbane Available through Australian Digital Thesis Project at httpwww4 gu edu au 8080adtndashrootpublicadtndashQGU20040618 172404

Ellis E M (2004a) The invisible multilingual teacher International Journal of Multilingualism 1(2) 90ndash108

Ellis L (2004b) Language background and professional competencies in teaching ESOL English Australia Journal 21(2) 55ndash71

Ellis E M (2006a) Monolingualism The unmarked case Estudios de Sociolinguumlistica 7(2) 173ndash196

Ellis E M (2006b) Language learning experience as a contributor to ESL teacher cogni-tion TESLndashEJ 10(1) Available online at httpwwwndashwriting berkeley eduTESLndashEJ


Ellis E M (2007) Discourses of L1 and bilingual teaching in adult ESL TESOL in Context 16(2) 5ndash11

Ellis R (1994) The Study of Second Language Acquisition Oxford Oxford University Press

Fairclough N (1989) Language and Power Harlow Essex Longman

Fairclough N (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis Harlow Essex Longman

Gogolin I (1994) Der monolinguale Habitus der multilingualen Schule New York Waxman Munster

Gibbons J (1994) Depth or breadth Some issues in LOTE teaching Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 17(1) 1ndash22

Hamers J F and Blanc M H A (2000) Bilinguality and Bilingualism (Second edition) Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Handsfield L J (2002) Teacher agency and double agents Reconceptualizing linguistic genocide in education Review of SkutnabbndashKangas T 2000 Linguistic Genocide in Education or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights Harvard Educational Review 72(4) 542ndash560

Hawkins E W (1999) Foreign language study and language awareness Language Awareness 8(3 amp 4) 124ndash142

Heller M (2007) Bilingualism as ideology and practice In M Heller (ed) Bilingualism A social approach 1ndash22 Basingstoke Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan

Herdina P and Jessner U (2002) A Dynamic Model of Multilingualism Clevedon Multilingual Matters

Holmes J (2001) An Introduction to Sociolinguistics Harlow Essex Longman

Irvine J T and Gal S (2000) Language ideology and linguistic differentiation In P V Kroskrity (ed) Regimes of Language Ideologies Polities and Identities 3ndash83 Santa Fe School of American Research Press

Jessner U (1999) Metalinguistic awareness in multilinguals Cognitive aspects of third language learning Language Awareness 8(3 amp 4) 201ndash209

Kachru Y (1994) Monolingual bias in SLA research TESOL Quarterly 28(4) 795ndash800

Kirkpatrick A (2000) The disadvantaged monolingual Why English alone is not enough Australian Language Matters 8(3) 5ndash7

Kramsch C (1996) Metaphoric Imagination and Crossndashcultural Understanding The Congress of the International Association for Applied Linguistics (AILA) Jyvaumlskylauml Finland

Kramsch C (1997) The privilege of the nonndashnative speaker Publication of the Modern Language Association of America 112 359ndash369

Lambert R (1999) Language and intercultural competence In J L Lo Bianco A J and C Crozet (eds) Striving for the Third Place Intercultural competence through language education Melbourne Language Australia

Lambert W E and Tucker G R (1972) Bilingual Education of Children The St Lambert experiment Rowley Mass Newbury House


Liddicoat A (2002) Some future challenges for languages in Australia Babel 37(2) 29ndash31

Llurda E (ed) (2005) NonndashNative Language Teachers Perceptions Challenges and Contributions to the Profession New York Springer

Lo Bianco J (1987) National Policy on Languages Canberra Australian Government Publishing Service

Lo Bianco J (1999) Policy words Talking bilingual education and ESL into English literacy Prospect 14(2) 40ndash51

Lo Bianco J (2007) Our (not so) polyglot pollies Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 30(2) 1ndash17

MCEETYA (Ministerial Council on Employment Education and Training and Youth Affairs) (2005) National Statement and Plan on Languages Education in Australian Schools Canberra

Medgyes P (1999) Language training A neglected area in teacher education In G Braine (ed) Nonndashnative Educators in English Language Teaching Mahwah NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc Publishers

MLTAQ (Modern Language Teachers Association of Queensland) (2002) Submission to the Review of the Commonwealth Languages Other Than English in Schools Programme Online Accessed at httpwww mltaq asn auindexold html 24th September 2008

Mughan T (1999) Intercultural competence for foreign languages students in higher education Language Learning Journal 20 59ndash65

Oller J W (1997) Monoglottosis Whatrsquos wrong with the idea of the IQ meritocracy and its racy cousins Applied Linguistics 18(4) 467ndash507

Ortega L (2007) Conocimiento y multicompetencia Dos retos contemporaacuteneos para el estudio de ASL Plenary address 25th International AESLA Congress (Asociacioacuten espantildeola de linguumliacutestica aplicada) Murcia Spain

Ortega L (2008) Contemporary challenges for SLA Theories IGSE distinguished lecture series International Graduate School of English Seoul South Korea Retrieved from httpwww2 hawaii edu~lortegaOrtega2008IGSE ppt on 9 September 2008

Peel Q (2001) The monotony of monoglots Language Learning Journal 23 13ndash14

Pennycook A (1994) The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language Harlow Essex Longman

Phillipson R (1992) Linguistic Imperialism Oxford Oxford University Press

Piller I (2001) Naturalization language testing and its basis in ideologies of national identity and citizenship The International Journal of Bilingualism 5(3) 259ndash277

Rampton M B H (1990) Displacing the native speaker ELT Journal 44(2) 97ndash101

Richards J C and Schmidt R (2002) Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (Third edition) Harlow Essex Longman

Romaine S (1995) Bilingualism (Second edition) Oxford Blackwell

Ruiz R (19931994) Language policy and planning in the United States Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 14 111ndash125


Silverstein M (1996) Monoglot standardization and metaphors of linguistic hegemony In D Brennes and R Macaulay (eds) The Matrix of Linguistic Anthropology Boulder CO Westview Press

SkutnabbndashKangas T (1996) Educational language choice ndash multilingual diversity or monolingual reductionism In M Hellinger and U Ammon (eds) Contrastive Sociolinguistics 175ndash204 Berlin New York Mouton de Gruyter

SkutnabbndashKangas T (2000a) Linguistic Genocide in Education ndash Or worldwide diversity and human rights Mahwah NJ Lawrence Erlbaum

SkutnabbndashKangas T (2000b) Linguistic human rights and teachers of English In J K Hall and W G Eggington (eds) The Sociopolitics of English Language Teaching 22ndash44 Clevedon Multilingual Matters

Smolicz J J (1995) Language ndash a bridge or a barrier Languages and education in Australia from an intercultural perspective Multilingua 14(2) 151ndash182

Snow C E and Hakuta K (1992) The costs of monolingualism In J Crawford (ed) Language Loyalties A source book on the Official English controversy 384ndash394 Chicago University of Chicago

Sridhar S N (1994) A reality check for SLA theories TESOL Quarterly 28(4) 800ndash805

Torras M C and Gafaranga J (2002) Social identities and language alternation in nonndashformal institutional bilingual talk Trilingual service encounters in Barcelona Language in Society 31 527ndash548

Valdeacutes G and Figueroa R A (1994) Bilingualism and Testing A special case of bias Norwood NJ Ablex


1 Does monolingualism exist

How should we begin to think about monolingualism as a topic for investiga-tion A first step might be to define what we mean by the term and here we run into a similar problem to that of defining bilingualism Dictionary definitions are too simplistic for our purposes eg

lsquomonolingualrsquo

(adj) lsquosaid of a personcommunity with only one languagersquo also unilingualrsquo (Crystal 1987 425)

(n) lsquo1 a person who knows and uses only one language 2 a person who has an active knowledge of only one language though perhaps a passive knowledge of othersrsquo Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (Richards and Schmidt 2002)

We immediately encounter the familiar problem of defining what we mean by lsquoa languagersquo lsquoknowing a languagersquo and a lsquo[speech] communityrsquo Is a person who can speak a standard variety and a regional variety still a monolingual How different does the regional variety have to be before we think of this person as bidialectal or bilingual What about social dialects What about those who know a few words of another language or (as above) have a passive (receptive) knowledge of one or more others Recent work exposing the slipperiness of the concept of the lsquonative speakerrsquo (Davies 2003 Llurda 2005) shows us among other things that a personrsquos command of their own native or first language is highly variable both between people and within an individualrsquos own repertoire Rothman (this volume) shows how monolinguals have access to different grammars comprising different styles within their single language It quickly becomes clear that no single definition of a monolingual can be useful for all purposes and in all contexts In investigating differences between monolingual and bilingual teachers of English as a second language (Ellis 2003) I found Hamers and Blancrsquos (2000 6) broad and inclusive definition of bilinguality useful in suggesting where the division might lie

Bilinguality is the psychological state of an individual who has access to more than one linguistic code as a means of social communication the degree of access will vary along a number of dimensions which are psy-chological cognitive psycholinguistic social psychological sociological sociolinguistic sociocultural and linguistic

This definition to my mind avoids most of the pitfalls of earlier definitions which became tangled in questions of proficiency ownership productive and receptive bilingualism and differing levels of oracy and literacy Their wording
































































6 This collection























References























































































































































6 This collection























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References
























































































Defining and investigating monolingualism

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Transcript of Defining and investigating monolingualism