Monoglossic echoes in multilingual spaces: language narratives from a Vietnamese community language school in Australia

ABSTRACT

This article reports on language narratives in the ecology of a Vietnamese community language school (VCLS) in Australia. The study takes a dialogical perspective, where the stories about language that informants in the research setting tell are understood to shape and be shaped by the contexts in which they are told. Systematic analysis of deictics, reported speech and evaluative indexicals in stories told during 19 interviews with 34 students, teachers and administrators (20 hours 53 mins) was conducted to investigate how informants talk about language and language use and how this impacts on the language learning environment in that context. The results show how narratives both echo and contest ideas about language and language planning in the wider context. The narrative of separate multilingualism echoes monolingual views of language, advocating separate spaces for the use and development of different languages. In contrast, the narrative of flexible multilingualism frames multilingual practices as a natural part of daily life and at the VCLS, but constrained in other spaces. The study illustrates the gap between multilingual practices and monolingual ideologies and approaches to language education. It contributes to the literature calling for revised approaches to language education planning and multilingualism in Australia.

KEYWORDS:

• Multilingual practices
• monolingual ideologies
• language ecology
• community language school
• Vietnamese
• Australia

View correction statement:

Correction to: Reath Warren, Monoglossic echoes in multilingual spaces: language narratives from a Vietnamese community language school in Australia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Anne Reath Warren is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Language Education, Stockholm University. Her research interests include multilingual education, translanguaging, language planning and policy.

Notes

1 The state government department of education calls these “ethnic schooling establishments,” where language “training” is given by “instructors,” underlining the fact that formal language education qualifications are not required to teach there. I acknowledge this terminology, but to simplify the reading of this article, I call my research site a “CL school” and the people who work there “teachers.”

2 Eight students in the VCLS in this study were preparing to take external examinations.

3 There were 20 students in attendance in the grade 9 class and 11 in the grade 12 class at the time of the interviews.

4 The research is part of Ph.D. project conducted through Stockholm University, Sweden. All participants were given information about the project and those interviewed (or their parents) signed informed consent forms. Pseudonyms are used throughout.

5 In all transcripts short pauses are marked by periods (.), questions by question marks (?), emphatic speech is presented using capital letters, expressive sounds are represented onomatopoetically, reported speech is placed within quotation marks and overlapping speech is indicated by indented lines and opening square brackets. Contextual information or pseudonyms used to preserve anonymity are given in square brackets. No sentence initial capitalization is given.