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Procedía - Social and Behavioral Sciences 212 (2015) 80 - 84
MULTIMODAL COMMUNICATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY: PROFESSIONAL AND ACADEMIC CHALLENGES. 33rd Conference of the Spanish Association of Applied Linguistics (AESLA), XXXIII AESLA CONFERENCE, 16-18 April 2015, Madrid, Spain
Bilingual Commodification in La Mancha: From Language Policies
To Classroom Practices
Alicia Fernández Barrera
Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Avda. Camilo José Cela s/n, Ciudad Real, 13071, Spain
Abstract
This presentation focuses on the emergent discourses about bilingual commodification (Heller, 2010) in the current "boom" era of the Bilingual Programmes. These situated discourses dealing with "bilingualism" have been analysed among a group of students attending a prestigious religious semi-private "bi-trilingual" school in Castilla-La Mancha, where the social actors co-construct those discourses through interactions (Gumperz 1982). From a critical discourse analysis perspective (Fairclough, 1995) and a critical interpretive approach (Tollefson, 2002), this linguistic ethnography analyses bilingual education in Castilla-La Mancha region as well as the links between the classroom social practice, the linguistic policies and wider social and ideological processes of globalization and neoliberalism in late modernity.
© 2015 The Authors.Publishedby Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.Org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of the XXXIII AESLA CONFERENCE Keywords: bilingualism; commodification; language policies; linguistic ethnography
1. Introduction
This article discusses the emergent categorizations of bi-multilingual students and the concept of "bilingualism" in Castilla-La Mancha region in the current era of the spread of English as a global language and the proliferation of discourses about the commodification of English in late modernity (Düchene & Heller, 2012), characterized by the increasing mobility of English language learners in Europe and high competitiveness in the linguistic market.
The aim of this study is to account for the status of English language learners by addressing their participation in a primarily bilingual Spanish/English programme (hereafter "BP"), but which is constructed as tri/multilingual
Corresponding author: alicia.fbarrera@uclm.es
1877-0428 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.Org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of the XXXIII AESLA CONFERENCE doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.11.302
due to the additional inclusion of French.
Data comes from fieldwork carried out at San Marcos School, a semi-private educational centre in the capital city of one of the five provinces of Castilla-La Mancha region where social accounts of bi-trilingual students are socialized through the linguistic appropriations of the different social actors - bilingual students, teachers and the BP coordinator - involved in the constructions of bilingualism, the bilingual programme and the bilingual student.
2. Theoretical background
This study first takes into account how the global spread of English under "the economic ideology of neoliberalism", which "naturalizes the use of English as the language of global competitiveness" (Piller & Cho, 2013, p. 24), is appropriated by a group of students attending the Spanish/English bilingual programme at San Marcos school. The analysis focuses on those appropriations related to the ideology of English commodification, that is, the value assigned to English as a marketable skill to compete in the neoliberal job market.
In addition, the point of departure of this research also analyses how local practices at school (re)produce social and cultural dominant discourses embedded in wider social processes that legitimate language policies (Rampton, 2006). This "bottom-up" approach accounts for linguistic ideologies (re)constructed in interaction by different stakeholders at San Marcos School (mainly students, teachers and the BP coordinator), and how social categorizations of bilingual students, the bilingual programme and the bilingual teacher are approached through linguistic ethnography. It is by "zooming in" on everyday interactions in educational settings that we interpret and reproduce the relationship between the institutional regime and the local practices in which social actors are involved.
3. Fieldwork: San Marcos School
San Marcos is currently considered the most prestigious semi-private school in the aforementioned city in La Mancha. This school has traditionally enjoyed a great reputation, by its current Multilingualism Programme, thus receiving more than 1,300 students each year. The school is located in a traditional humble, working-class neighbourhood close to the city centre. After two decades of new workers settlement and socioeconomic changes, this neighbourhood has been divided into two opposite areas: the humble zone and the growing sophisticated one.
This religious school has kept boasting about its top-quality educational system and teaching staff, as well as the strong sense of belonging to a "family" based on the Christian dogma. Besides, these students have been generally labelled as "posh" and "rich kids" due to the high socioeconomic level of their family background.
Nowadays, within the frame of Globalization and English as the lingua franca and strict language requirements to access university studies, some private and semi-private schools are implementing new language teaching methods. In fact, the BEDA programme (Bilingual English Development and Assessment), founded and shared by the whole religious community of private and semi-private schools (excluding Catalonia and the Basque Country), has been a remarkable and unique characteristic of those educational centres. This programme consists of increasing the quality and quantity of the English teaching, teaching staff training and both teacher and student assessment.
This particular school in Castilla-La Mancha aims to promote foreign language learning by teaching different subjects in English and/or French, out-of-school language activities (English, French and German), students exchange (France and Ireland) and summer camps.
4. Data: Ongoing
Data comes from an ongoing linguistic ethnography conducted at San Marcos School. The analysis is based on a set of situated discourses elicited in focus group interviews with local students from the 3rd of ESO about their bimultilingual experiences both inside and outside the school.
This data consists of classroom observations from the 1st year of ESO (Compulsory Secondary Education) to the 4th . The subjects implied in this research are Science, Maths, Citizenship, Geography in French, Technology, English and Physics. Two other sources are the linguistic profile questionnaires carried out in every year of ESO and focus groups discussions, particularly in the 3rd year of ESO, 2nd of Bachillerato and the 1st year of English Studies at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM). Particular attention has been paid to several informal
conversations and interviews with different teachers - including the BP coordinator. This data has been analysed within the frame of some institutional documents which establish the linguistic policy and legal bases of the BP: the Plurilingual Plan (in Castilla-La Mancha) and the BEDA programme.
5. Analysis
The main focus of analysis in this article are the different situated accounts of bilingualism as well as the emergent discourses regarding the bilingual programme, the bilingual student and the bilingual teacher. For the analysis of these discourses, the interactional sociolinguistic approach by Gumperz (1982) has been taken into account combined with a discourse analysis perspective (Creese, 2008) and the latest research on language as social practice (Blommaert & Rampton 2011, Márquez Reiter & Martín Rojo 2014).
The data analysed is based on focus group discussions carried out in three different classrooms/groups: the 3rd year of ESO (group B), 2nd year of Bachillerato (senior students) and 1st-year-university students (UCLM). The three of them could be considered as a continuum of their bilingual education trajectory as they mature and become more conscious of the aforementioned bilingualism accounts. Apart from that, several interviews with teachers have been analysed, including the BP coordinator and classroom observations (both in English and French).
5.1. Accounts of Bilingualism
With reference to bilingualism, for most students from the 3rd of ESO and 2nd of Bachillerato, the concept "bilingualism" implies speaking more than one language almost perfectly, and they also find it useful to travel abroad. The majority felt better when talking in a different language and they truly believed that the fact of speaking more than one language made it easier to find a job and have a better future, as one student (3rd ESO) states: "[...] it will be better for our future, because every day English and other languages are more useful in our lives. [.] If you don't know English, it's bad for you". This excerpt emphasizes the "moral value" of English widely spread in contemporary society as being a beneficial skill for all students.
On the other hand, they were aware of the generational changes in terms of bilingual education and the fact of considering themselves bilingual, since they were absolutely convinced that they were "more bilingual than ten years ago". Nevertheless, one of the main differences between the discourses of students in the of 3rd of ESO and those in the 2nd of Bachillerato is that the latter do not consider themselves bilingual compared to other European countries, which shows a more mature language awareness due to their exchange experiences. Following the generational trajectory, 1st-year-university students claimed that they would become bilingual after graduating.
In all these emergent accounts, English is constructed as a linguistic monolith that can be learnt over time with practice and "global English" is widely considered as the pathway to a better job in the future.
5.2. The Bilingual Programme
Regarding the BP, both stakeholders in San Marcos evaluated it very positively. It was constructed as an emblem of distinction and elitism that characterized this school as different from the rest, particularly because of the student exchange trips organized by the teachers. However, some 2nd of Bachillerato students noticed some lack of English content teaching in the BP, as the following excerpt from a focus group discussion with 2nd of Bachillerato students reveals:
Ana: also it wasn't completely bilingual it was just a part of the subject so and the thing is to make a subject completely bilingual no?
María: I think the teachers shouldn't speak in Spanish [...]
Ana: I would have preferred to do a whole subject in English and than having two subjects bilingual but
half Spanish half English [Focus Group Discussion: 2nd Bachillerato]
This critical view of the English content instruction disagrees with the one held by the BP teachers, for whom
content knowledge is prioritised over language learning. Students are not therefore penalized by their linguistic mistakes, which makes them feel more confident and encouraged to use as much English as possible when taking their exams.
5.3. The Bilingual Teacher
As for the accounts of the bilingual teacher, most of them were satisfied with their teaching performance and they also stated that "it is worse to press them to express themselves in English; it is more important for them to know the content" [interview with the BP coordinator]. Besides, they understand CLIL as "giving them the freedom to learn the contents" [the Physics teacher in the 4th of ESO] and then integrating English with the use of some extra materials in English and some key words. This is how BP teachers in San Marcos conceive "bilingualism", that is, as an extra/optional communicative tool by which concepts are transferred and which they can "put on" or "put off" depending on whether the message is fully transmitted and understood by students or not.
5.4. Bilingual Students
Bilingual students were also constructed very positively in teachers' discourses, as they evaluated these pupils as brilliant students or "the best ones". The following excerpt shows how these bilingual students are stereotyped and labelled by their teachers:
I teach Science to bilingual groups and non-bilingual ones, and you have to "pull them forward", because, you know,
bilingualism selects the good students and, to put it bluntly, the worst are left behind.
[Interview with the Science teacher].
This could be considered the dominant discourse about what counts as "bilingual" and the social distinctions constructed by the dichotomy "bilingual/non-bilingual students", which seems to separate the students with a better academic profile from those who are not so good at school. Nevertheless, those students with an outstanding academic profile in the bilingual group tend to consider themselves "bilingual", as they have spent one or two years abroad (with their parents' economic support). These students claim that they are bilingual just by the fact that they can listen to music or chat with friends online in English. Overall, it seems that the bilingual/non-bilingual distinction is rooted in how much family support these students receive in terms of their "bilingual" education rather than in the students' actual language skills, which are likely to depend on the extra "input" they obtain outside school.
6. Conclusion
This initial fieldwork shows that the value of English as lingua franca and as the "pathway" to compete in the neoliberal job market emerges through the narratives of the stakeholders at the BP in this school. Thus, belonging to the BP in this school implies being in the best position to win the "rat race" in which students are socially involved to achieve a better job in the future. That is how San Marcos is constructed as an elitist school where bilingualism "naturally" selects brilliant students, who are however critical of the effectiveness of the content language instruction (especially 2nd of Bachillerato students).
It is through linguistic ethnography that local practices and situated discourses about bilingualism and bilingual identity are socially (re)constructed against the backdrop of wider social and ideological processes, in which language policies play a fundamental role in the current implementation of BP's such as the one at San Marcos School.
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