Multilingual interaction and construction of knowledge in higher education

ABSTRACT

This article aims at a better understanding of the role played by multilingualism and language in general in the process of scientific knowledge construction. By analysing various cases of multilingual communication in different universities and subjects (marketing, physics, law), we propose to focus on two parameters: the language regime and the participation regime. Language regime is envisaged through different modes: language contrast (languages referred to for developing some topics in the subject) vs. language alternation (languages used as a medium of communication). An additional dimension is related to the fact that multilingualism occurs not only in oral interaction but also in writing. Participation regime is approached through the general opposition of monomanagement (teaching-oriented) and multimanagement (learning-oriented). In multilingual settings, generating a major process of negotiation is likely to stimulate the use of different languages and even to contrast languages in order to elicit some content issues. At the end of the article, we introduce the notion of didactic regime, which represents the way participants articulate language/multilingual resources and (more or less) collaborative formats in order to build up the subject knowledge. Such a regime might be decided through negotiation, proposed by the teacher or imposed by the institution.

KEYWORDS:

• Multilingual language acquisition
• bilingual education
• classroom discourse
• codeswitching
• metalinguistic competence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Laurent Gajo is full professor of linguistics at the University of Geneva, where he is the Head of the École de Langue et de Civilisation Françaises (ELCF). He is a specialist of bilingual education, language policy, multilingualism in education and multilingualism in science. Between 2008 and 2013, he directed the Geneva/Lausanne team of the European project DYLAN (Language Dynamics and Management of Diversity, integrated project FP6 028702) and participated in the final publication “Exploring the Dynamics of Multilingualism” (John Benjamins). More recently, he has carried out a research on the role of multilingualism in the assessment of science (“Les pratiques d’évaluation des projets de recherche á l’épreuve de la diversité des langues”, dir. Laurent Gajo and Frédéric Darbellay, grant of the Swiss National Scientific Foundation).

Anne-Claude Berthoud is honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Lausanne. She is a specialist of verbal interaction, acquisition and multilingualism, and more recently of multilingualism in science. She is honory member of the European Language Council and chair of the Working Group « Languages and science ». She coordinated the European project DYLAN (Language Dynamics and Management of Diversity, integrated project FP6 028702) and was co-editor of the final publication “Exploring the Dynamics of Multilingualism” (John Benjamins). She is also author of several papers on “Multilingualism and construction of knowledge”.

ORCID

Laurent Gajo http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-930X

Notes

1 This is a practical term to cover the three situations, all characterized by the use of a L2 for teaching activities. Nevertheless, even in the first situation (see case 1 below), where the content is completely taught in English, bilingualism seems to be considered in the teaching strategies.

2 This contribution is partly based on the following article: Müller et al. (2012).

3 Which is why we prefer the term alternation, which can be used at different levels of analysis, whereas code-switching refers only to the micro-level.

4 This diagram is inspired by Lüdi and Py (2013), but doesn’t integrate the ‘endolingual/exolingual’ dimension, which will be the focus of the final discussion of this article.

5 A traditional lecture can be intended as a lecture delivered in the local language by a native speaker of that language. Two other cases obviously exist: a guest professor delivering a lecture in his or her own language (that language being a L2 for the students); a local professor using a L2 as a non-native speaker. The latter is more likely to activate an exolingual mode of teaching (see below). This is the reason why we conceive such a situation as bilingual teaching.

6 The data were collected within the Dylan project (Language dynamics and management of diversity): integrated project funded under FP6 of the European Union; see Berthoud, Grin, and Lüdi (2013).

7 This illustrates an intermediate position between quadrants I and II, which is most frequently not the case in programmes using English as a L2, because many professors neither know or take the local language into consideration.

8 Studying law in Switzerland requires developing a minimal degree of bilingualism. That is the reason why Swiss universities generally offer some law seminars in another official language or at least a provision in that language. But this language policy does not involve the whole institution and can be implemented in different ways by teachers.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Sixth Framework Programme [grant number 028702].