From language choice to mode choice: how artefacts impact on language use and meaning making in a bilingual classroom

Abstract

This paper investigates the interplay of languages and artefacts as resources for meaning making in bilingual education. While previous research on classroom interaction concentrated on either code switching or multimodality, here, I integrate both perspectives and propose a framework for the study of multimodal interaction embedded in a multilingual environment. The paper draws on research in a German–Italian two-way-immersion classroom in Frankfurt, Germany. The focus of the analysis is on objects and their role in shaping language practices and social interaction. The analysis sheds light on two dimensions of a biliteracy teaching and learning event that centres on objects brought to class by learners: first, it shows how the presence of objects intersects with the conventionalised language choice practices of this classroom. Second, it looks at how interactions around objects alter habitual ways of using languages for both the purpose of teaching and for identifying people, material culture and bodies of knowledge. To conclude I argue that interactions around learner-centred objects can modify pedagogical practice and thereby challenge monolingualising language ideologies. Rather than reifying monolithic identities, social roles and bodies of knowledge, learner-centred objects invite the creation of semiotic spaces in which the multiple life worlds of multilingual learners can thrive.

Keywords:

• bilingual education
• two-way immersion
• Italian
• German
• multilingual classroom interaction
• multimodality and semiosis

Notes

1. Italians are the third largest migrant community in the Rhine-Main area. With its origins in the massive labour migration to West Germany in the 1950–1970s, the Italian community is much more diversified these days in terms of geographical origin, social class and professional occupation. Children of bilingual Italian-German background in the project reflect this diversity. Parents from German-Italian mixed marriages founded an association for a bilingual school in 1996 which was instrumental in putting the bilingual programme in place. The Italian state pays for the Italian teachers and thereby assures the possibility of team teaching.

2. For further information about this programme, please visit: www.bili2011.com (Budach, 2011).

3. A full transcript of the original data is available online at www.tandfonline.com/rlae, as a supplemental file. Due to word length restrictions, only the English translation can be provided in this text.

4. Transcription conventions:

*U: we’ll do it as usual

original passage in German

*A: what does that mean in Italian

original passage in Italian

*[holds up a paper flashcard]

metalinguistic comment; or comment for contextualization

* zaino

original in Italian retained in transcription

* Schulranzen

original in German retained in transcription

*short pause

*longer pause