The Study Group on Language at the United Nations on Thursday & Friday, May 10-11, 2018 Back to the PROGRAM or download it as a PDF file
in cooperation with
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Birkbeck, University of London
invites you to a symposium on
Multilingualism in International Organizations
and International Co-operation
at the Church Center, 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017
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SYMPOSIUM - ABSTRACTS AND BIOGRAPHIES
Thursday, May 10
Keynote Address: Michele Gazzola, (University of Leipzig)
What are the Economic Effects of Language Regimes?: The case of the World Intellectual Property Organisation and the European Patent Office.
Patents are a type of intellectual property (IP) rights that are promoted, delivered and protected by different national and international organisations. The language policy of such organisations can entail different effects that must be evaluated. The choice of the official and procedural languages of a patent office, for example, can cause inequalities to develop between the costs borne by inventors for access to IP protection; translation policy can affect the distribution and the spread of patent information among inventors; ultimately, language policy can affect innovation outcomes and firms’ international competitiveness. Despite this, the role of multilingualism in IP policies has remained relatively under explored in the literature and few systematic attempts have been made to characterise (let alone to evaluate) language policies of IP organisations as having the possibility to affect the effectiveness of the innovation processes, and to generate winners and losers. This presentation addresses the question of the allocative and distributive effects of the language policy in IP organisations in general, and then it discusses the case of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), which is part of the UN system, and of the European Patent Office (EPO). These two organisations provide an appropriate context for comparative analyses. There are ten official languages (or “languages of publication”) of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), administered by WIPO, namely, Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. The language regime of the EPO includes only three official languages, that is, English, French and German. A comparison between different language policies shows under which conditions more multilingualism can be at the same time more cost-effective and more fair than monolingualism.
Michele Gazzola is research fellow at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Leipzig, Germany, and invited research fellow at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Research Group "Economics and Language"). He is currently working on a research project on language policy, mobility and inclusion in the European Union (project "MIME"). His research areas include language policy and planning, the economics of languages, policy analysis and evaluation. He has been external consultant for the European Parliament, the Swiss Confederation, the autonomous Province of Trento in Italy (IPRASE), the University of Florence, and the European Centre for minority issues (Flensburg, Germany).
Session 1: Language Rights & Responsibilities
John Edwards (St Francis Xavier University and Dalhousie University)
Language Claims & Language Rights
Discussions of multilingualism within and across settings – particularly where minority groups are involved – generally touch upon issues of ethics, justice and rights in the most cursory way (if, indeed, at all). More frequent is a rather glib invocation of ‘rights’, accompanied perhaps by a mention of some linguistics declaration or other. Arguments then proceed, apparently on the basis that the existence of, and the consequent force behind, language rights can be assumed as real. There is no doubt that language rights are important, as are the principles from which they emerge, but matters of such centrality, matters that underpin multilingual perceptions and procedures, cannot simply rest upon the view that their existence is obvious and therefore need not be investigated. To be more specific: a right that is claimed but is not enforceable is not a strong pillar for either social or linguistic action. So, this talk is built around the clarification of a simple point: claims are not the same thing as rights.
John Edwards is a Senior Research Professor at St Francis Xavier University, Adjunct Professor at Dalhousie University, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is interested in the dynamics of group identity, with particular reference to language in both its communicative and symbolic aspects. He is the editor of the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, and of the Multilingual Matters book series. His own recent books include Minority Languages and Group Identity (2010), Multilingualism (2012) and Sociolinguistics: A Very Short Introduction (2013). He is also the author of many articles, chapters and reviews.
Timothy Reagan (University of Maine)
Sign Language Multilingualism: The Forgotten Language Diversity in Disempowered Communities
In spite of the virtual universal recognition by linguists of the legitimacy of the many sign languages of Deaf communities in the world, this recognition has had little impact on the lives of Deaf people themselves. Whatever efforts have been made to empower indigenous peoples – economically, educationally, politically, or ideologically – the Deaf have been largely ignored in such efforts. The case will be offered here for the legitimacy of Deaf people as members of cultural communities, relying on distinctive sign languages as their vernacular languages. Further, it will be suggested that any concern with issues of linguistic and cultural human rights, must take the special rights of Deaf people into account. Finally, examples for the case of the disempowerment of the Deaf will be drawn from numerous settings around world, and arguments will be offered for the relevance of these cases with respect to such issues as linguistic inclusive (and exclusive) in multilingual settings, the necessary role and place for interpretation in the case of the Deaf, issues of linguistic and cultural human rights, and the challenges presented by sign languages in formulations of discussions of linguistic equity in complex multilingual settings.
Timothy Reagan, the Dean of the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Maine, has held senior faculty and administrative positions at a number of universities, including the University of Connecticut, the University of the Witwatersrand, Central Connecticut State University, Roger Williams University, Gallaudet University, and Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan. His primary areas of research are applied and educational linguistics, education policy and comparative education. Prof. Reagan is the author of a dozen books, as well as the author of more than 150 journal articles and book chapters, and his work has appeared in such international journals as Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, Educational Foundations, Educational Policy, Educational Theory, Foreign Language Annals, Harvard Educational Review, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Language Policy, Language Problems and Language Planning, Multicultural Education, Sign Language Studies, and Semiotica.
Emmanuel Asonye (University of Mexico), Ezinne Emma-Asonye (University of Mexico), Queenette Okwaraji (University of Rochester) and Khadijah Asili (Vizionz-Sankofa)
Linguistic Diversity and the Language Rights of the Underprivileged Population in Africa and America: Towards an Inclusive Society in 2030
UNESCO has reaffirmed her commitment to linguistic diversity and multilingualism as an inevitable piece in realising UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs), and the “global citizenship education”, promoting “intercultural connections and better way of living together”. This paper discusses the linguistic rights of Deaf in Africa, the case of Nigeria, and African Refugees in Albuquerque, United States, and the need to observe those rights towards achieving an inclusive and sustainable economic development of the immediate communities and the society. Data discussed in this paper were collected during community service outreaches in Nigeria by Save the Deaf and Endangered Languages Initiative (S-DELI), and Vizionz-Sankofa in Albuquerque, through interviews, surveys, and video recordings. S-DELI is a research-based organization documenting the indigenous Nigeria Sign Language and the Deaf population, while Vizionz-Sankofa is a community-based organization advocating for African Refugees in Albuquerque through linguistic literacy and community development programs. Deaf stigmatization is triggered by absence of indigenous signed language for deaf education and Early Intervention Program in Nigeria, while linguistic barrier is the bane of non-English speaking African Refugees in America (Asonye & Asili, 2018). This paper therefore advocates for linguistic inclusion of the above two populations in line with the UN 2030 SDGs.
Emmanuel Asonye is a Postdoc Research Scholar with Linguistics Department, University of New Mexico, the Founder of Save the Deaf and Endangered Languages Initiative, an NGO documenting Nigerian Sign Language, the Research Director of Vizionz Sankofa, an NGO advocating for the African Refugees in Albuquerque. His works center on Language of the Underprivileged.
Ezinne Emma-Asonye is a PhD student of Educational Linguistics, University of New Mexico, and the Co-Founder of Save the Deaf and Endangered Languages Initiative. Her research interest includes language development of children with disabilities in a multicultural setting. Ezinne has done many collaborative studies with Emmanuel Asonye towards documenting Nigerian Sign Language.
Queenette Okwaraji is a Master’s student at Linguistics Department, University of Rochester, a research team member of Save the Deaf and Endangered Languages Initiative, and an emerging linguist. She has been involved in the data collection exercise towards the documentation of Nigerian Sign Language, upon which her studies are centered.
Khadijah Asili is the Founder of Vizionz Sankofa, a community-based organization providing Linguistic Literacy and STEM programs for the African Refugees in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As a former employee of New Mexico Workforce Connection, Khadijah decided to quit her job to advocate for the African Refugee population in the United States.
Session 2: Language Rights & Responsibilities (continued)
Nirvana Bhatia (Linguistic Rights Specialist)
The Paper Chase: A Review of the UN’s Recent Language-Rights Legislation.
In 2017, the United Nations quietly released a “practical guide” on the language rights of linguistic minorities. The document built on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (1992), the OSCE’s Oslo Recommendations (1998), UNESCO’s Three Principles framework, and several other policy recommendations. It also came directly on the heels of the Donostia Protocol to Ensure Language Rights (2016), and echoed much of the same rhetoric: in order to protect linguistic minorities, concrete steps must be taken in areas as basic as name registration, primary-school education, and administrative services. Aside from the novelly systematic way in which the practical guide addresses the intersection of language and fundamental human rights, it is primarily noteworthy for the following suggestion: “there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to implementing language rights in all the world’s hugely diverse national contexts.” In light of such a nebulous statement, this presentation will dissect the UN’s strategy on linguistic rights -- particularly as we embark on the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages and the formal review of Sustainable Development Goals 4, 10, and 16.
Nirvana Bhatia is a linguistic rights specialist who concentrates primarily on identity politics, SDGs/international development, and minority-language speakers within EU member and candidate countries. She holds an advanced degree in International Human Rights, and was formerly a Fulbright Scholar to Latvia. Connect with her on Twitter @wordnirvana.
Maneeratana Sawasdiwat Na Ayutthaya (President of ASEAN Center for Multilingualism, Translation & Interpretation)
Multilingualism, Translation and Interpretation in the ASEAN Community
Asia is the biggest continent in terms of size, population and multi-lingualism-culturalism. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was established with ten ASEAN member countries in 1967 (www.asean.org) on the three-pillar aims ‘to accelerate economic growth, maintain political stability and conserve socio-cultural identities’. Committed to one community and one lingua franca, the ASEAN charter of 2007, whose article 34 declares that ‘the working language of ASEAN shall be English’ overlooks the diverse individualism of each member nation and the multilingual global economy that require multilingual, translation and interpretation platform to facilitate and bridge communication and the socio-economic divide. The attempt to develop a single working language has not yet attained its goal since English proficiency is still a major problem in ASEAN countries even in Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines, where English has been used since the colonization. English proficiency in ASEAN has to reach a standard of the working language in order to fulfil ASEAN’s three principal aims. As an example, less than 10% of Thai can effectively use English as a tool to access information and a pass to socio-economic. Both English and mother tongue proficiencies in Thailand have been ranked very low and this has had a great impact on its overall development including insufficient quality translation and interpretation. The ASEAN Single Window and the Single Market and their networks whose economic values may account more than 50% of the total world market will not be leveraged and reach their full potential if ASEAN cannot bridge the language divide. Most importantly the language gap will keep widening as technology continues to disrupt ASEAN societies in line with the recently proposed fourth ASEAN pillar, the ‘digital economy’. Multi/high-dimensional-lingualism attempts have been proposed to the ASEAN community in the hope that the language issues will be given the serious attention and action that they so urgently require.
Maneeratana Sawasdiwat Na Ayutthaya has a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) in Languages (English, French and Spanish) from Thailand, Ph.D. and post doctorate programs on Linguistics and Literature from the U.S. She is Chair of National Language Policy: Translation, Interpretation and Sign Language Interpreting, and president and founding member of the Association of Asian Translation Industry (AATI) and ASEAN Center for Multilingualism, Translation and Interpretation (ASEAN MTI). She is committee member of ASTM International F2575 (translation/interpretation). Her publications include studies and research on multilingualism, translation, interpretation, localization, education, IT, Arts and Culture. She has organized several conferences, translation and interpreting training sessions for ASEAN and abroad.
Session 3: The International Criminal Court
Leigh Swigart (Brandeis University)
English at the International Criminal Court: Working Language or Default Language?
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is an institution characterized by multilingualism at all levels. Not only do staff members themselves hail from diverse language communities, but the “situation languages” involved in ICC investigations, trial proceedings, victims’ services and outreach activities bring many more languages into the institutional mix. As a number of those are categorized as “languages of lesser diffusion,” ICC language professionals must often use innovative strategies to ensure both fair trial rights and efficient service provision. The working language policy of the ICC, on the other hand, is quite ordinary – all staff members must be proficient in at least one of the working languages, English or French. And like many other international institutions, it is clear that English dominates over French to a large degree. This paper is based on the findings of an ongoing ethnographic project that explores how the ICC pursues multilingual justice. Interviews with staff members across the ICC suggest a number of drawbacks associated with the sidelining of the French language within the Court, both practical and conceptual. The paper will feature the perspectives of francophone staff while drawing on scholarly literature about both psycholinguistics and the contemporary role of English on the global stage.
Leigh Swigart is Director of the Programs in International Justice and Society at the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life, Brandeis University. A linguistic anthropologist by training, Swigart oversees the Brandeis Institute for International Judges, Ad Hoc Tribunals Oral History Project, and other activities and programs in the field of international justice. She is the co-author of The International Judge: An Introduction to the Men and Women Who Decide the World’s Cases (2007). Her academic work and publications have focused on the challenges of language and cultural diversity in international criminal courts and tribunals; language use in post-colonial Africa; and African immigration and refugee resettlement in the United States.
Beatrice Owiti (Kenya Methodist University)
Interpretation and Translation in the International Criminal Court
In the International Criminal Court, Interpretation takes place in the courtroom as well as in the field where investigators search for information from victims as well as from witnesses. A number of cases brought to the International Criminal Court (ICC) have involved individuals from the African continent e.g. the case of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo from the DRC. The official languages of the UN used at the ICC and are: Arabic, English, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish. None of these languages are closely related to the indigenous African languages. This may result in difficulties of interpretation from and into the African languages. My curiosity about differences in languages and the resultant challenges faced by interpreters led me to carry out a research on courtroom interpretation from Dholuo to English in Kenya. The research was carried out from 2012-2016. In my presentation, I will describe the findings of my research which indicate that the resultant interpretation has distortion of meaning, creation of obscurity and vagueness, etc.
Beatrice Owiti holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Huddersfield. She has a special interest in Interpretation from and into African languages. She is currently a lecturer at the Kenya Methodist University. Her PhD research was on Courtroom Interpretation. Her current research interests are in interpretation at the International Criminal Court and the study of Sheng.
FRIDAY, MAY 11
Session 4: Language Policy & Linguistic Diversity
Lisa McEntee-Atalianis (Birkbeck, University of London), Michele Gazzola (University of Leipzig) and Torsten Templin (Humboldt University, Berlin)
Measuring Diversity in Multilingual Communication
Economic and pragmatic considerations in the choice of working languages within an organisation often lead to restrictive language policies and practices. Such policies take scant account of the diverse and rich linguistic competence of their organisational membership, and they often assume that communication within an organisation can be effective only in one or a few languages. Further, few organisations have the capacity or ability to assess the level of competence in all the languages belonging to the linguistic repertoire of their employees/membership. This paper will report on new indices developed to measure linguistic diversity in multilingual organisations. Existing published indices (based on Greenberg 1956) characterise the degree of linguistic diversity in a context on the basis of the first language of individuals but fail to distinguish between active and receptive language skills. Initially we present two indices to measure the degree of diversity aimed at providing multilingual communication (through translation) in multilingual organisations. Secondly, we discuss the development of new measures which account for the likelihood that people working in a multilingual organisation with limited opportunities for interpretation can effectively communicate not only through one common language but through also utilising members’ active and receptive competence in more than one language. The study discusses some applications of the indices for the study of the language policy of multilingual organisations such as the UN and EU and for socio-economic consequences of linguistic diversity.
Lisa McEntee-Atalianis is Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and Communication at Birkbeck, University of London and has published in various fields: Language Pathology (Aphasia); Sign Language/Deaf Studies and Sociolinguistics. In recent years her scholarship has focused on two areas: issues of identity at micro and macro-discursive/linguistic levels (as evidenced in her forthcoming book ‘Identity in Applied Linguistics Research’, Bloomsbury Academic) and intergovernmental organizational language planning, policy and practice. She has undertaken an ethnolinguistic and sociolinguistic investigation of the International Maritime Organisation (United Nations, London) and published on matters of language planning, policy and practice at the UN.
Michele Gazzola is research fellow in Philology at the University of Leipzig, Germany (see bio above).
Torsten Templin is a research assistant at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. In 2012 he graduated in Mathematics. Since 2014 he is part of the EU financed MIME project (Mobility and Inclusion in a Multilingual Europe) and works on modeling the dynamics of language use and language policy evaluation. His research interests include language economics, applied mathematics and optimal control theory.
Francis Hult (Lund University, Sweden)
Parallel Language Use: A Nordic Solution for Multilingual Organisations?
Since the 1990s, Swedish language planners have been concerned with protecting the status of Swedish from the encroachment of English in domains like education, media, and industry. The concept of “parallel language use” emerged from initiatives to secure the position of Swedish while acknowledging a need for English with respect to internationalization. The fundamental premise is that if properly managed, Swedish and English can be used side-by-side in specific domains (Josephson, 2005). Over the past twenty-five years, the concept has continued to evolve. It has been taken up across the Nordic region, particularly for university settings where there is tension between national and international interests and thereby among Scandinavian languages, English, and other languages in research and teaching. Parallel language use is meant to reduce these tensions by fostering structured linguistic equilibrium. In this talk, I draw upon language planning documents (e.g., Nordic Group for Parallel Language Use, 2017) to explicate principles of parallel language use and empirical research (e.g., Bolton & Kuteeva, 2012; Hult & Källkvist, 2016) to review how it has been applied in university language policies. Against this backdrop, I consider the challenges and possibilities for parallel language use as a language planning strategy for multilingual organizations.
Francis M. Hult is an associate professor at the Lund University Centre for Languages and Literature in Sweden. He has been a senior visiting researcher at the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning and a Ferguson Fellow at the Centre for Applied Linguistics. His books include Research Methods in Language Policy and Planning (with Johnson; Wiley, 2015) and Language Policy and Language Acquisition Planning (with Siiner and Kupisch; Springer, 2018).
Session 5: Language Policy & Linguistic Diversity (continued)
Dorte Lønsmann (Copenhagen Business School) & Janus Mortensen (University of Copenhagen)
English only? A critical examination of the ‘natural’ status of English as a corporate language
Today many workplaces transcend national, sociocultural and linguistic boundaries. As a response to the linguistic diversity which characterizes such workplaces, many private companies choose to establish formal language policies. In Northern Europe, such language policies often amount to nominating English as ‘the corporate language’. In this paper, we suggest that the predominance of such ‘English-only’ policies is premised on a particular language ideological worldview in which English appears as the ‘natural’ language for international cooperation. We argue that the assumptions underlying this worldview – as well as its implications – are in need of critical attention and denaturalisation through careful sociolinguistic examination. The argument is based on an ethnographically informed analysis of language policy documents and interviews with language policy makers in a Danish multinational company which nominated English as its corporate language in 2012. By investigating the language ideological underpinnings of the policy-making process, and by exploring the potential of the language policy to function as a means of exerting power beyond the domain of language, we show how the language policy is premised on particular hegemonic (language) ideologies and how it has the potential to legitimize certain groups of employees while marginalising others.
Dorte Lønsmann is Associate Professor at the Department of Management, Society and Communication at Copenhagen Business School, working within the fields of anthropological linguistics and sociolinguistics. Her research focuses on multilingualism in the workplace, based on ethnographic studies of transnational workplaces in Denmark, with a particular focus on language socialization.
Janus Mortensen is Associate Professor of language policy at the Centre for Internationalization and Parallel Language Use at Copenhagen University. His current research interests include the formation of social and linguistic norms in transient social configurations and the interface between language ideology and policy in the context of university internationalization.
Spencer Hazel (Newcastle University), Katherine Kappa and Kamilla Kraft (University of Copenhagen)
Language Policing in International Organisations – Explicit and Embedded Orientations to Language Repertoires and their Impact on Professional Identity
International organisations are faced with conflicting priorities in their management of communication within their multilingual workforce. On the one hand, the adoption of a single language as workplace lingua franca can facilitate communication across an organization. At the same time, such a policy can privilege some of the workforce while linguistically disempowering others, both in terms of professional identity as well as the employees’ performance. On the basis of analyses of video-recordings of professional practices at various internationalised organisations, including international arts collaborations, multinational business, construction sites and NGO work, we observe that where a particular language policy may not be explicitly discussed between members, it can still be present implicitly, embedded in how participants micro-manage their interactions. In other words, members display orientations to perceived deviance towards members of the workplace whose language repertoires do not tally with expectations pertaining to the institutional positions they hold. The paper argues for greater attention to be paid to language practices in international organizations, as one way into developing more nuanced understandings of the linguistic considerations implicated in how professional identities are brought about, affirmed or contested.
Spencer Hazel is Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and Communication at Newcastle University. He conducts research on collaborative practice in internationalised and multilingual workplace settings, adopting a multimodal interaction analytic approach. He is co-investigator on the Danish Research Council-funded Transient Multilingual Communities project (TMC).
Katherine Kappa is PhD fellow in the TMC project, conducting interdisciplinary research in grassroots organisations and NGOs, with a focus on situated practices/interactions and the wider institutional frameworks in which these are embedded. She has a particular interest in questions related to knowledge, identity, and normativity in institutional settings.
Kamilla Kraft is Postdoctoral researcher in the TMC project. Her research focuses on processes of labour migration and multilingualism within the secondary sector of the economy, primarily construction sites in Norway and Denmark. Kraft studies how language and communication both regulate and are regulated by work within transient and globalising labour markets.
Session 6: Interpretation & Translation
Mirna Soares Andrade (Inter-American Defense College)
Multilingualism and Language Services at the Inter-American Defense College
Multilingualism characterizes the Inter-American Defense College (IADC). For a year at a time, more than 60 military, law enforcement officers and civilians from several countries debate defense and security topics in a graduate-level academic program. The exchange in four languages – English, French, Portuguese and Spanish – is made possible by a team of six interpreters and two translators.
As an international academic institution operating under the auspices of the Organization of American States, the IADC promotes Inter-American engagement and cooperation. Upon graduating, officers and civil servants return to their countries and assume high-level government positions, multiplying across the Americas the work started in Washington, D.C.
Its hybrid nature – academic, international, military and civilian – implies that many “languages” are spoken at the IADC, a challenge for the institution and linguists, who need to be proficient in official languages and knowledgeable enough to interpret interactions involving specialists in defense, security and geopolitics in a diplomatic and academic environment.
Providing simultaneous interpretation to nationals of 15 or more countries guarantees linguistic inclusiveness and assures that every voice is heard in the pursuit of solutions for shared problems. The success of the IADC’s mission relies on embracing multilingualism and assuring linguistic equity and equality.
Mirna Soares Andrade is a staff interpreter at the Inter-American Defense College. She has been a translator and interpreter for over two decades, and since 2010 has been working in the Inter-American system, in institutions such as the Organization of American States, where she was an in-house translator, and the Pan-American Health Organization and the Inter-American Development Bank, as an independent contractor. Mirna holds a master’s degree in Language Studies from PUC-Rio (Brazil) and teaches Portuguese translation courses at the Graduate Studies in Interpreting and Translation at the University of Maryland.
Shana Pughe Dean (Tone Translate)
Creating Opportunity and Understanding in a Multicultural World on the Move: Refugee Resettlement Agencies
Our presentation will discuss how a refugee resettlement agency created language departments for interpretation and translation to serve the needs of the community and advocate for language rights while concomitantly dealing with the challenges of providing appropriate cultural and linguistic support for services within the agency. We will discuss how the language departments at the agency focus on language and multilingualism as an asset. Both the interpretation department and the translation department tone, hire former refugees, some recently arrived, to assist them in self-sufficiency or to open a career path they did not know was possible. The discussion about tone will also highlight the need for more public-to-public collaboration (similar to the concept of B2B in the business world) and public private partnerships particularly with language organizations and companies. Tone, the translation department, believes there could be unique partnerships between local non-profits, language
companies and international organizations to hire multilingual staff such as migrants, refugees, and individuals receiving development assistance. Tone also supports language rights as a principle, working in several languages of limited diffusion spoken by refugee populations.
TONE is a socially conscious organization committed to facilitating understanding and creating opportunity in a multicultural world on the move. Our roots are grounded in over 35 years of working with resettled refugees, immigrant communities, and other non-native English speaking populations.In 2002 the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees (MVRCR) formed an interpretation and translation department in response to community service providers requesting language support. This effort was part of MVRCR's renewed mission to enhance programs for refugees, non-refugee immigrants, and the community. The Refugee Center is committed to building community with many cultures - www.mvrcr.org. TONE was born out of the history of MVRCR and shares the same values. We are focused on dignity for the people we serve, for the community organizations we support, and for the individuals we employ. We represent a chance to begin again, to have choice, freedom of expression, and a voice. As a division of MVRCR, TONE operates as a not-for-profit organization. Fees generated by the services TONE provides help support the resettlement, integration of, and language access for, newly arrived refugee families.
Contact: Shana Pughe Dean, Translation Manager
Session 6: Multilingual Education
Carol Benson (Teachers College, Columbia University)
The Importance of a Multilingual Habitus when Assessing Literacy Skills in Educational Development.
In educational development, technical assistance from the global North has often had an underlying “monolingual habitus” (Gogolin, 2002), an ideology favoring a single language. As a consequence, learners’ own languages (or L1s) are not always viewed as viable for developing literacy skills and learning academic content, but rather as a means to proficiency in a dominant language. International assessments like the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) have not always considered whether learners are being tested in languages they understand, nor whether their languages are assessed appropriately. Such issues have negative backwash effects on pedagogical decision-making for multilingual learners. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of having a “multilingual habitus” when teaching and assessing in low-income contexts. Specifically, I analyze the results of two pilot administrations of a free writing assessment with Indigenous learners in grades 2 and 3 in Cambodia, some taught multilingually and some taught only in Khmer, the dominant language. The data reveal useful diagnostic information about orthography and grammar, indicate where interlinguistic transfer is occurring, and have positive backwash effects on teaching and learning for multilingual learners.
Carol Benson, Associate Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, is engaged in educational language issues internationally, focusing on L1-based multilingual education. She is currently co-editing (with Kimmo Kosonen) a second volume to follow up on Language Issues in Comparative Education: Inclusive teaching and learning in non-dominant languages and cultures (Sense Publishers, 2013). In her work and life Benson speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Swedish.
Maung Nyeu (Harvard University)
Multilingual Education– an Essential Cornerstone for Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in a Globalizing World
Our globalizing world demands a broader set of linguistic and cultural competencies from individuals than ever before, and while inclusion and diversity represents a potential enhancement, our educational systems are facing huge challenges. What does this all mean for education policy and multilingual practices worldwide? Does a multilingual education better prepare our young to participate in today's world? Does learning one or several new languages lead to better understanding of other cultures? These questions are explored within a specific context of multilingual education in Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh. The findings from this study suggest that multilingual education combined with classroom discussion with peers has the potential for enhancing cultural awareness, appreciation for diversity, and moral and civic education, among students from various ethnic, cultural, and religious groups.
Maung Nyeu is a doctoral candidate at Harvard University whose research explores the role of multilingual education in cultural understanding, inclusion, and diversity. He is a contributing author of books published by OECD, and has authored multilingual and culturally relevant children’s books and picture dictionaries. His work has been featured on BBC, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard South Asia Institute, Smithsonian Institution, and National Geographic Society. He is an Indigenous person from Bangladesh and fluent speaker of multiple languages including Marma, Chakma, Bangla, and English.
Erina Iwasaki (Teachers College, Columbia University)
Reframing Multilingualism in Terms of Opportunity
While the United Nations are promoting the Sustainable Development Goals as a concerted common and global effort, language issues are absent from this global framework, when language is a central element of social life and language learning is a crucial element to the realization of the SDGs. This conceptual paper questions the absence of multilingualism in this global discourse and argues that even an international organization like the United Nations, which is a priori favorable to multilingualism, may also be affected by a “monolingual habitus” (Gogolin, 2002), a limiting belief, which views multilingualism as a problem or a challenge. Instead, this paper argues for the adoption of a “multilingual habitus” (Benson, 2014), a broader belief, which reframes multilingualism in terms of opportunity – an opportunity for humanity to learn from one another and respect the voice of everyone. It will explain how learning to value all languages equally is the gateway to achieve mutual understanding, cooperation, just actions and peace, which are central values of the United Nations.
Erina Iwasaki is a doctoral fellow in Comparative and International Education with a concentration in philosophy and a student of Professor Carol Benson at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research interest lies in multilingual education and she is working to create a mulitilingual curricular framework that can bridge the global and the local contexts.
Ari Sherris (Texas & A & M University-Kingsville, Texas) & Joy Kreeft Peyton (Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, D.C.)
The Power of Multilingualism and Multiliteracy for Languages and Groups
Literacy and literacy instruction in an indigenous language, together with a world language, accomplish four goals. They potentially (1) increase the number of languages an individual can read and write; (2) increase the number of individuals who can read and write (MacSwan et al., 2017); (3) reduce or mediate marginalizing social forces in society and raise the linguistic capital of marginalized languages (Bourdieu, 1977); (4) and affirm, respect, and welcome potential family, clan, and community involvement in institutions and schooling (e.g., storytelling; talk about the community, country, livelihood, and vocations). We argue that these goals promote and affirm sustainable, balanced multilingualism and multiliteracy, which potentially increase participation (number of participants and diversity of ethno-lingual groups) in civil society, government, and business; within and across communities, international organizations, and nation-states. We will illustrate these patterns with examples and issues from international collaborations funded by the World Bank and USAID.
Ari Sherris is an Associate Professor of Bilingual Education at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. He holds a PhD in Second Language Development and an MA in Applied Linguistics. His research focuses on Safaliba and Salish Ql'ispe language and education. He is co-editor with Elisabeth Piirainen of Language Endangerment: Disappearing Metaphors and Shifting Conceptualization (John Benjamins, 2015).
Joy Kreeft Peyton is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC. She holds a PhD in Sociolinguistics from Georgetown University. Her professional activities focus on the power of heritage/community languages in the lives of individuals, the vitality of communities, and professional engagement. She is co-editor of Heritage Languages in America: Preserving a National Resource and Handbook of Heritage, Community, and Native American Languages in the United States: Research, Educational Practice, and Policy.
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The Study Group gratefully acknowledges the financial support of:
- Birkbeck, University of London
- The Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington DC, and
- The Esperantic Studies Foundation
without which this symposium would not be possible.