Plurilingual speech as legitimate and efficient communication strategy

ABSTRACT

This paper is grounded in the evolution of our reflection on the relationship between plurilingualism, plurilingual speech and language learning. That is, it refers to research on the construction of plurilingual repertoires, over a period of more than thirty years, as documented in Lüdi and Py (1986 [2009]. “To Be or Not to Be … a Plurilingual Speaker.” International Journal of Multilingualism 6 (2): 154–167; [2013]. Etre bilingue. 4e édition ajoutée d’une postface. New York: Lang) and Lüdi et al. ([2016]. Managing Plurilingual and Intercultural Practices in the Workplace. The Case of Multilingual Switzerland. Amsterdam: John Benjamins), among others. The emphasis is placed on language use (languaging) instead of on language systems (language), based on the premise that plurilingual competences emerge from interaction where the status of translinguistic markers is mutually negotiated. In this context, the question of the adequacy of ‘additive’ or ‘integrated’ conceptions of plurilingualism constitutes an important theoretical challenge.

KEYWORDS:

• Plurilingualism
• language learning
• repertoires
• languaging
• plurilingual competences

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Georges Lüdi is a professor emeritus for French Linguistics at Basel University. His research interests include linguistic aspects of migration, multilingualism, second language teaching and learning, workplace communication, educational language policy. He has published widely in all of these areas. He has participated in many international research projects related to various forms of (emergent) multilingualism and language contact using both qualitative as well as quantitative methods. He was deputy coordinator of the European DYLAN project.

Notes

1 For Auer (1999) the difference between code-switching and language mixing might precisely lay in the discursive exploitation of separate codes in the former case.

2 In a speaker-centered psychological view, one could argue that the term ‘strategy’ necessarily implies that a person recognizes a problem and consciously and intentionally chooses a way to overcome it (along with Faerch and Kasper's definition: "potentially conscious plans for solving what to an individual presents itself as a problem in reaching a particular communicative goal’ [1983, 36]). In the interactional perspective adopted here, the focus is instead on the role of both interlocutors in a mutual attempt to agree on meaning (Tarone 1980, 420), the (potential) consciousness and intentionality giving way to public manifestation.

3 See written examples of a similar extreme plurilingual-exolingual mode in advertisements for the airlines Vueling ("Flying hoy means más frecuencia") and Swiss (‘volare to vingt-deux new destinations in ganz Europe’).

4 Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008) have appropriated the term ‘soft assembly’ to refer by analogy to the process whereby learners use their language resources in order to respond in an intentional way to the communicative pressures presented by their interlocutors. In the case of L2 learners, their language resources include not only what they know and can do in the L2, but their L1 patterns (e.g. manifest in relexification) and from other languages varieties that they speak, and their non-verbal behaviour. They cobble these together in a real-time response according to the context.