‘I don’t want to be pushed into an islamic school’: biography and raciolinguistic ideologies in education

ABSTRACT

This article argues for the significance of biographical theory in research on raciolinguistic ideologies in education. It accounts for biographies as a basis for the study of the ways in which students conceive the languages, social spaces and power relations which shape processes of inclusion and exclusion. Taking anti-Muslim discourses in Austria as a point of departure, this article introduces raciolinguistics as a way to theorize the co-naturalization of language and race in education. It then delineates the use of biographies to contextualize understandings of the significance of language across the life course. In the empirical part, I analyze the biographical narration of a university student who wears a headscarf. I focus on her experiences with the specific relationship between anti-Muslim racism and language in different stages of her life. The final part of the article discusses how biographical research can contribute to a broader understanding of raciolinguistic power relations in education.

KEYWORDS:

• Raciolinguistic ideologies
• anti-Muslim racism
• language ideologies
• language biographies
• biographical theory
• teacher education

Introduction

Over the last two decades, migration has moved to the center of political debates in Austria, and there has been a considerable shift to the right in the political landscape. This shift is characterized by the normalization of a view of minoritized individuals and groups both as a threat to internal security and as a burden to the social state and the educational system (Wodak 2018, 324). Far right movements and political parties depict the idealized ‘gendered and racialized national body’ (Rheindorf and Wodak 2019) as compromised by an ‘other’, which embodies an ‘archaic culture’ (Ajanovic, Mayer, and Sauer 2018, 649). The representation of the ‘others’ who are mainly individuals and groups labeled as ‘Muslims’ is shaped by a juxtaposition of ethnicity and gender, wherein male Muslims are deemed dangerous (Scheibelhofer 2012) and female Muslims are seen as victims of ‘their’ culture (Inowlocki and Lutz 2000). At the heart of discourses around Muslim girls and women there have been debates about the headscarf as a symbol of oppression (Sauer 2009).

Not surprisingly, these discourses have had several effects in education: Refugees in Austria are obliged to attend ‘value courses’ as part of German language training. The Austrian Integration Fund (Österreichischer Integrationsfonds) combines language education with ‘value education’, thus assuming that individuals with non-European citizenship do not share the same values as Austrian citizens (Heinemann 2017, 178), especially when they are from predominantly Muslim countries. In addition to the 2017 ‘Integration Act’ which banned the wearing of the full-face veil in public, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) presented a list of demands for new laws, one of them concerning a ban of headscarves in public offices, schools and universities (Ajanovic, Mayer, and Sauer 2018). Aside from these immediate legal effects, empirical studies have revealed that anti-Muslim discourses also affect how teachers labelled as ‘Muslims’ are perceived. More concretely, such teachers are constructed as a threat to educational systems (Karakaşoğlu and Wojciechowicz 2017) and are confronted with assumptions about the incompatibility of wearing of a headscarf and holding a teaching position, especially as a German teacher (Knappik, Dirim, and Döll 2013). This is due to the fact that raciolinguistic ideologies underlie the notion of ‘language as a key to integration’ (Gatt 2013), a mantra which has dominated discourses on language policies in Austria and has led to the instrumentalization of language for identity politics (De Cillia and Dorostkar 2013, 158).

The article at hand analyzes the biographical narrative of a student who wears a headscarf and who, at the time of data collection, was enrolled in a teacher training program for German teachers at an Austrian university. It is part of a sample of 12 biographical-narrative interviews with minoritized university students which lasted between 1.5 and 3 hours.

The following research questions guided the analysis: (1) What raciolinguistic power relations do students experience, especially in institutions of education? (2) How does the institutionalized knowledge about language(s) interact with the biographical knowledge of the students? (3) How are the professional aspirations of students endangered by language ideologies, and which strategies do they develop to modify and resist them?

Theoretical background – connecting raciolinguistics and biographical theory

This article draws from two central theoretical frameworks: raciolinguistics (Alim, Rickford, and Ball 2016; Flores and Rosa 2015) and biographical theory (Dausien and Alheit 2019; West et al. 2009). In this section, I contextualize the study at the nexus of these concepts in order to show how biographical research can enhance our understanding of raciolinguistic ideologies in education.

Raciolinguistics as a way to theorize the co-naturalization of language and race in education

Language ideologies are social constructs based on assumptions about the value and power of linguistic forms and discursive practices. They do not simply refer to dimensions of linguistic structure and use, but are imbued with political and moral significance. Moreover, they reflect the interests of the social groups which bear them and are part of strategies for maintaining social power and domination (Irvine and Gal 2000; Kroskrity 2010; Woolard and Schieffelin 1994). Educational institutions are also places in which power is reproduced, and studies of multilingualism have revealed how language ideologies that underlie educational policies conflict with the reality of students’ linguistic and identity practices (Farr and Song 2011). Researchers have noted the issue of conflicting language ideologies of teachers (Palmer 2011) and examined the extent to which critical awareness towards language ideologies deals with the inequalities perpetuated by the prevailing ideologies (Siegel 2006).

In recent years, a growing body of literature has been concerned with the systematic analysis of the co-construction of language and race in education (Alim, Rickford, and Ball 2016; Rosa and Flores 2017; Valdés 2015). More specifically, researchers have shown that raciolinguistic ideologies ‘conflate certain racialized bodies with linguistic deficiency unrelated to any objective linguistic practices’ (Flores and Rosa 2015). Moreover, they have revealed that assessments of racialized individuals’ language use ‘often invoke broader ideas about the (in)competence and (il)legitimacy of entire racialized groups’ (Rosa 2016). Thus, the same language practices are framed and monitored in different ways, depending on the social status and the racialization of the bodies of speakers (Flores, Lewis, and Phuong 2018; Flores and Rosa 2015). Building on Inoue’s concept of the listening subject (Inoue 2006), Flores and Rosa shift the analytical interest from the speaking to the listening subject. They argue that constructions of linguistic categories in which learners are placed are not based on discrete linguistic practices, but produced by white listening subjects (Flores and Rosa 2015, 157). Analyzing the co-construction of language and race across different national contexts, researchers have been able to describe manifold facets of the marginalization of differently racialized individuals and groups in education (Ennser-Kananen, Jäntti, and Leppänen 2017; Reyes 2016; Sung 2018). Using a wide range of theoretical and empirical concepts, they also approached possibilities of resistance to marginalization (Rampton 2001).

For the study at hand, research on language ideologies in teacher education is especially relevant. It documents how aspiring teachers and their educators construct the relation between language and race and how their co-constructions become relevant both for students’ professional aspirations and opportunities and their views on language in education (Briceño, Rodriguez-Mojica, and Muñoz-Muñoz 2018; Ek, Sánchez, and Quijada Cerecer 2013; Nguyen 2012). As it is not only language learners, but also language teachers who are (non)native speakered (Aneja 2016) through different social and institutional processes, it is necessary to analyze how they deal with raciolinguistic ideologies. However, aspiring teachers are socialized within raciolinguistic spaces long before they enter higher education. The concept of raciolinguistic socialization (Chaparro 2019) has been developed to understand the impact that connections between language and race can have on socialization processes and academic trajectories of children and youth.

The focus of this article is on the specific relationship between anti-Muslim racism and language. After an analysis of the co-construction of religion and language and its effects on professional development in education, the concept of raciolinguistic socialization will be critically addressed and applied. The aim is to develop the concept further by using ‘biography’ as a theoretical concept for the analysis of socialization processes (Dausien 2018) and accounts for biographical research in order to enhance the overall understanding of raciolinguistics in education.

Biography as a theoretical key concept for the investigation of language across the life course

Since its beginnings in the 1920s, biographical research has contributed to considerable cross-disciplinary research. Theoretically, ‘biography’ is conceived as a social format of self-construction and as a process of sense-making which emerged through the modernization of Europe (Hahn 2000). In his model of the institutionalization of the life course, Kohli refers to the evolution of an institutional program that regulates one’s movement through life ‘both in terms of a sequence of positions and in terms of a set of biographical orientations by which to organize one’s experiences and plans’ (Kohli 2007, 255). From his perspective, the normative life course is based on wage labor and is divided into three periods: preparation, ‘activity’, and retirement (Kohli 2007, 255).

These considerations are also significant for educational contexts in which biography-generating norms such as the age structure of educational pathways and the coupling of education titles with social career paths come into play (Dausien, Rothe, and Schwendowius 2016b). On the one hand, institutions structure and standardize life paths (Dausien, Rothe, and Schwendowius 2016a), and, on the other, they represent a discursive framework that both sets the limits of what can be narrated and forms the framework in relation to which stories can be told. This way, institutions provide a ‘grammar’ for biographical self-construction, but not in a determining way. Rather, individuals make sense of institutionalized orders of interaction and power relations and can be seen as active agents in engineering their own educational processes (Dausien and Alheit 2019, 14). They invest ‘biographical work’ (Fischer-Rosenthal 2000), a practice of orienting temporal processes in one’s own life and surroundings, and make use of their ‘biographicity’ (Alheit 2010), a creative potential that allows them to shape both their experiences and different biographical and institutionalized forms of knowledge in creative ways, allowing for the creation of a ‘biographical sense’ (Alheit and Dausien 2018). In addition, they acquire ‘biographical knowledge’, a form of knowledge that is acquired through the combination of various experiences during the life course and which is seen as a prerequisite for the formation of new experiences and new knowledge (Rothe 2017). The need for biographical self-reflection is provoked by experiences of contingency and by events and actions that call for classification and normalization. Crises, contradictions, inconsistencies and gaps are imposed on individuals and they force the subject to respond (Kohli 1987, 433). To cope with crises, it is necessary to reflexively organize one’s own experiences in such a way that biographical continuity, consistency and identity can be ensured, while allowing new perspectives to be generated (Alheit and Dausien 2018). This kind of performance through which the subject encounters new biographical situations that order and create meaning is called biographization (Fabel-Lamla 2006, 83).

Since biographies transcend the particularity of individual cases and focus on ‘the embeddedness of the biographical account in social macro-structures’ (Apitzsch and Inowlocki 2000), biographical research is not about isolated individuals or their views, but about subject-context-relations (Dausien 2002). Therefore, it is an ideal approach for understanding how individuals deal with situations and make sense of their experiences in racialized and otherwise hierarchically organized societies.

Biographical approaches have been widely used to understand processes and conditions of educational inequality, focusing on different categories of social differentiation, such as migration (Schwendowius and Thoma 2016) and gender (Merrill 1999). Using biographical accounts as data, researchers have been able to show how processes of inclusion or exclusion are produced in educational institutions and how dimensions of belonging shift across the life course. In addition, they have analyzed how social and institutional circumstances shape the acquisition of knowledge and intellectual curiosity. Such research has examined the links between personal and professional identity of educators and how teachers construct their professional identity against the backdrop of their biographical experiences (Schwendowius 2015). Furthermore, scholars working in this field have revealed how language biographies are constructed in postcolonial and post-apartheid settings and how individuals experience and subvert language ideologies (Busch 2006; Thoma 2018).

Finally, ‘biography’ is a useful means through which it is possible to reconstruct processes of socialization. First, it allows the reconsideration of how actions and interpretations of subjects are interwoven with the structures of the social world (Fischer and Kohli 1987). Second, the temporal dimension of biography allows for the reconstruction of the sequential and often non-linear structure of the life course in which past, future and present are intertwined in the perspectives of the subjects. Third, the linking of biographical events manifests itself as a reflexive process in autobiographical representations. Both self-interpretations on the part of subjects and their non-reflected experiences guide their future actions (Dausien 2018).

Methodology and methods

Methodologically, the previous theoretical insights are closely linked to the method of biographical research developed by Schütze (1983, 1984), in which research participants are asked to tell their whole life story. This particular methodology for the study of life stories was chosen because it allows us to understand: 1) the process of the creation, reproduction and transformation of social phenomena; 2) both the courses of action and the meanings actors assigned to their experiences at different times in their life (Rosenthal 2004). However, life stories are not narrated into a vacuum. Rather, we orient our narratives towards stories that serve as patterns and sometimes as models worth imitating (Dausien and Kluchert 2018).

The findings are based on the analysis of 12 biographical interviews¹ with minoritized students, who, at the time of data collection, were enrolled in German studies programs in Austria and were pursuing careers as teachers of German. German Studies programs are a particularly interesting field of research because in these programs German is not only the language of communication and instruction, but also the object of research. Against the background of language ideologies which presume a natural connection between language, speakers and territory, my assumption was that the national language may be connected to how life trajectories of students and their future profession are imagined.

Different methods of analysis in biographical research share the principle of abduction and a theory-building approach (Dausien 2006), taking individual and collective single cases as a point of departure (Riemann 2005; Rustin 2000). In line with interpretative social research, the claim of generalization in biographical research is not based on statistical, but on theoretical representativity (Hermanns 1992).

Since biographies consist of stratifications of experiences organized in a sequential order, the narratives have to be examined in light of important transitions or turning points in one’s life course, such as migration, educational transitions, changes at work or shifts in important relationships (Schütze 1983). Thus, researchers gain access to biographical process structures. These structures differ in the degree of intentionality and of agency the biographers ascribe to them for the relative period in their life (Schütze 1984, 95).²

Biographical case reconstruction was combined with positioning analysis (Deppermann 2015). This analytical concept allows one to analyze how the characters are relationally positioned within reported events, how narrators position themselves towards an audience, for instance as participants in research, and how narrators position themselves vis-à-vis dominant discourses (Bamberg and Georgakopoulou 2008). Furthermore, positioning processes are closely linked to the ways in which language ideologies position narrators and to the ways in which research subjects take up or resist these positionings (Pavlenko 2001, 139). In addition, positioning analysis complements and interrelates ideally with biographical analysis because it is opposed to static and essentialist views of identity and allows researchers to analyze how identities develop over longer periods.

Combining these analytic approaches is ideal for research on social inequality because it allows for a conceptualization of individuals as neither objects of social conditions nor as entirely ‘free’ actors. Furthermore, this combination facilitates an analysis of the multiple facets of positionings across time by analyzing narrators’ movement between positionings in the narrative and vis-à-vis the interviewer.

Against the background of anti-Muslim discourses outlined in the introduction, a Muslim student’s biographical narrative was chosen for the empirical part of this study. Although the students in the sample have various experiences with language ideologies, students who wear headscarves face the most perceptible barriers in their university and upon entry into their new careers as teachers. This makes an analysis of their stories particularly fruitful in understanding the significance of biography in how raciolinguistic ideologies operate.

Günnur Duman’s biographical narration

Contact with Günnur Duman³ was initially made by a colleague who teaches at a department of German Studies. After a short conversation by e-mail, I told Günnur more about my research interest over the phone. She immediately agreed to an interview and invited me to her home. The apartment where she lived with her husband and her two-year-old sun, was in a major city in Austria in a working-class neighborhood shaped by migration where she was born and grew up. The following section starts with an overview of main biographical stations in Günnur’s life. It then provides an analysis of excerpts of her biographical narration which enable an understanding of the raciolinguistic contexts in which she was raised and the way in which she relates to them and makes sense of her experiences. The central topic in Günnur’s biographical narration is her desire to be accepted as a legitimate member of Austrian society and to be a German teacher.

Main biographical stations in Günnur Duman’s life

Günnur Duman grew up with three younger siblings and her parents who both migrated from Turkey. Her father works as a butcher and meat supplier, while her mother has been very active in the Islamic community in the neighborhood where she taught in a mosque during Günnur’s childhood and attracted attention for her unorthodox teaching methods. Günnur’s childhood was shaped by a strong relationship to religion. Aside from regular visits to mosque together with her father, her grandmother introduced her to literacy at an early age while reading and reciting parts of the Koran together.

After primary school she attended a Gymnasium, the more prestigious of two different secondary school tracks in Austria, and attended a commercial academy afterwards. Upon graduation, all her friends and schoolmates took up commercial jobs or started studying economics. Günnur ruled out both options and took up her mother’s suggestion to build on her experience with tutoring younger students and to enroll for a teacher training program. She chose to study German and history as subjects. During her third study year, her son was born. At the time of the interview, Günnur was 25 years old and about to complete her studies.

Raciolinguistic contexts during childhood

Günnur starts her biographical narration by focusing on her strong ties to the neighborhood where she grew up and still lives, thus constructing herself as ‘rooted’ in Austria and in the city. In her narration, she assigns her mother a key role in having shaped her linguistic repertoire. During the reconstruction of her language acquisition process, she mentions that she had some knowledge of German already before entering kindergarten. She continues:

[…] aber ich weiß, dass immer, wenn wir rausgegangen sind, also in der Öffentlichkeit, in der Straßenbahn etcetera, daa hat meine Mutter immer Deutsch mit mir gesprochen. Und das is das WEISS ich. Und (1) ich kann mich sogar erinnern, einmal hat sie gesagt, hat sie mein Papa erzählt: ‘Und die Günnur, die is so gscheit. Wenn wir draußen sind, redet sie immer auf Deutsch mit mir, und wenn wir wieder zu Hause sind, dann redet sie, aso oder wenn wir mi_ also unter Türkischsprachigen sind auf Türkisch’. (1) Aso i anscheinend hab ich das von meiner Mutter übernommen dieses ‘O.K. jetzt sind wir draußen auf Deutsch’, wobei ich das jetzt ganz anders betrachte, und das auch versuche (1) ABZULEGEN, weil ich das nicht in Ordnung finde, warum ich jetzt unbedingt, nur weil ich in der Öffentlichkeit bin, Deutsch redn muss, ich kann viele Sprachen und ich werde die Sprache sprechen, die ich sprechen möchte. (9/38-10/2)

[…] but I know that whenever we went out, in public, in the tram et cetera, my mother would speak German to me. And that I KNOW. And (1) I can even remember, once she said, my dad told her: ‘And Günnur, she is so clever. When we’re outside, she always talks German to me, and when we’re back home, or when we’re among Turkish speakers, she talks in Turkish’. Apparently I have picked up from my mother this ‘O.K. now we are outside, in German’, whereby I now look at it quite differently, and also try to (1) GET RID OF IT, because I don’t think it’s okay, why do I have to speak German now unconditionally, just because I am in public, I can speak many languages and I will speak the language I want to speak. (9/38-10/2)⁴

This passage can be read as an example of how language works within processes of biographization. Günnur emphasizes that she has been used to communicating in German in a very natural way since her early childhood. Moreover, her report implies that intergenerational communication also occurred – at least in public – in German, which retrospectively places her familial communication close to the communication of ‘natives’.

Interestingly, the family does not use any of the different practices which transcend the use of distinct languages, such as crossing (Rampton 2005) or translanguaging (Creese and Blackledge 2010; García and Lin 2017). Rather, the passage reveals that the family had established a bilingual practice, creating two linguistic spaces: While Turkish was restricted to home, German was assigned to the public space, which shows an adaptation to the dominant language in Austria and contributes to ‘the silent reality’ (McNamara 2011, 439) of immigrant multilingualism. Günnur’s account can also be interpreted as an attempt to oppose homogenizing discourses on ‘guest workers’ (Alpagu 2019; Pásztor 2016) in which this group is generally portrayed as lacking German skills, and in which the Turkish language is usually associated with working-class immigrants.

According to the father, the daughter’s intelligence is exemplified by mimicking her mother’s practice of switching languages. The unspoken conventions about the use of languages in public illustrate how closely the dominance of German in Austria and the language use of minoritized people living there are linked and the extent to which speakers are aware of the prestige of different languages and the social status of their speakers. Although the family lives in a part of the city where Turkish is very commonly spoken, German is the language intended for the public, and Turkish is relegated to the private sphere. Günnur argues that as a child she ‘adopted’ this language choice and that she ‘now’ looks at it in a different way. It is unclear when exactly this ‘now’ began, but she has dealt with critical theories of language and postcolonial theory in her studies. It is possible that her relationship to language use has changed because of her academic engagement with these perspectives on language. In any case, the passage ends with her announcement that she will no longer take others into consideration in her choice of language in the future, and that she wants to create linguistic spaces in a self-determined way. Besides giving insights on raciolinguistic socialization, this passage reveals how raciolinguistic ideologies are embedded in an individual’s biography and how the individual’s perspectives on these ideologies have changed during her life course.

Experiences with German and religion at school

In her biographical narration, Günnur mentions the schools she attended only briefly and progresses quickly to the present time. During the reconstruction of her pathway to the study program of German, she includes a flashback to her school time in which she notes the significance of German to her biography, thus also legitimizing her choice of studies:

Deutsch war immer schon mein Lieblingsfach, das Fach, in dem ich IMMER gut war, und das war immer so etwas Besonderes weil die Lehrer auch immer gesagt haben ja du als, ja, quasi, Schülerin mit Migrationshintergrund, du solltest gar nicht so gut sein und du bist die beste also in der Klasse besser als wie Schüler und Schülerinnen mit Deutsch als Erstsprache und ich hab immer so eine gute Beziehung zu meinen Deutschlehrerinnen gehabt also im Gymnasium auch in der Handelsakademie, sie warn immer von mir, beGEISTert DASS ich eben das so gut kann und mitmach. (2/10-17)

German has always been my favourite subject, the subject in which I was ALWAYS good, and that was always something so special because the teachers also always said ‘Yes you as a, yes, student with a migration background, you shouldn’t be so good at all and you’re the best in class, better than students with German as their first language’ and I’ve always had such a good relationship with my German teachers, so in secondary school and in the commercial academy as well, they always were EXCITED about me THAT I can do that so well. (2/10-17)

In this account, Günnur further elaborates her relationship to German language learning and in doing so demonstrates how biographization involves the reiteration or rewriting of lived experience. The frequently used adverb ‘always’ refers to a continuity in the biographical connection with German, which can be seen both on the emotional level (‘my favourite subject’) and on the level of good school performance (‘ALWAYS good’). In addition, a biographical continuity is constructed in the relationship with teachers whom Günnur retrospectively regards as witnesses of her linguistic abilities and achievements. Thus, Günnur constructs both her passion for German as a subject in school, her academic performance in the language and her good relationships with her German teachers as a constant in her educational biography.

However, she also experienced situations of othering in which her migration background was connected with deficit-oriented expectations about her academic language skills. More specifically, she points out that being ‘the best in class’ was a surprise for others, as was being ‘better than students with German as their first language.’ Both examples show that the starting point of praise for her German was in fact a negative assumption based on raciolinguistic ideologies.

After this flashback, Günnur’s narration progresses towards her forthcoming transition into the teaching profession. Again, she goes back to her school time and recalls:

Es war auch so dass ich ahm mir überlegt hab immer schon in der Schule ahm, so die Entscheidung ein Kopftuch zu tragen oder nicht, das war für mich immer so ‘Ja ich möchte, aber, wie werden meine Freunde drauf reagieren’ hab ich so … also das war wirklich ambivalent (1) ich hab, das schon IMMER gewollt ich hab bin aus einer also meine Familie würd ich eher als religiös bezeichnen also Religion ist ein Thema bei uns in der Familie, und, es war aber nie ein Zwang da, ich wollte sogar schon nach der Volksschule hab ich (immer?) (einmal?) zu meiner Mama gesagt ‘Mama wie wär’s wenn ich am ersten Schultag äh im Gymnasium ein Kopftuch trage’ und meine Mutter hat dann gemeint ‘Aber du bist noch ah du bist noch ein Kind und das ist eher was für Erwachsene du musst einmal darüber nachdenken dir im Klaren sein was es bedeutet’. (2/24-34)

It was like, that I always considered uhm in school uhm, so the decision to wear a headscarf or not, that was for me always so ‘Yes I would like, but, how will my friends react to it?’ I have … that was really ambivalent (1) I have ALWAYS wanted that I am from a, so, my family, I would rather consider it religious […], and, but there was never a compulsion, I even wanted already after elementary school, I (always?) (once?) said to my mama, I said ‘Mama, what about wearing a headscarf on the first day of school uh in high school?’ and my mother meant ‘But you’re still ah you’re still a child and that’s more something for adults, you have to think about it first, to be aware of what it means’. (2/24-34)

This account introduces another aspect that contributes to the layering of Günnur’s experiences. Here, Günnur constructs her wish for a headscarf as one without a starting point (‘I have ALWAYS wanted that’). In the reconstruction of her decision process she refers both to her own concerns about possible negative reactions from her friends and to her mother’s advice not to wear a headscarf. Her remark about the non-compulsive religious socialization she went through must be interpreted against the background of anti-Muslim discourses. Günnur continues reporting on her decision process which lasted until the end of high school. Before each educational transition she approached her mother with her wish to wear a headscarf, and each time her mother dissuaded her from wearing it, presenting different arguments, such as age or the ability to reflect independently, and stating that wearing a headscarf is just one part of the religion. All in all, Günnur describes her mother as having ‘slowed down this euphoric mood’ (2/39). The passage ends as follows:

und dann (1) hab ich wirklich lange Zeit gehabt darüber nachzudenken und ich hab gewusst nach der nach der nach der Matura. Das möcht ich. Zwischendurch hatt ich wirklich, immer wieder so ja mit dem Gedanken gespielt, aber ich hab mir gedacht ja wie werden meine Freunde reagieren und meine Lehrer und alle werden mich fragen und dieses IMAGE alle werden glauben ich wurde dazu gezwungen obwohl das gar nicht stimmt und ich müsste mich vor allen rechtfertigen und ich werd mich ärgern und ich bin eh immer, ich war auch eine sehr freche Schülerin immer im Clinch und immer in Streit mit den Lehrern und dann das FEHLT mir grade noch und dann hab ichs, einfach, wollt ich das nach nach der Schule machen einfach nach der Matura. (2/43-3/1)

and then (1) I really had a long time to think about it and I knew, after the one, after the […] school-leaving exam. I would like that. In between I really, always toyed with the idea, but I thought to myself how my friends would react and my teachers, and everyone would ask me, and this IMAGE, everyone would think I was forced to do it although it’s not true at all, and I would have to justify myself in front of everyone, and I will get angry and I am always, I was also a very cheeky student always in trouble and always in quarrels with the teachers and then that’s just what I’m MISSING and then I have simply, I wanted to do that after school just after graduating from high school. (2/43-3/1)

In this account, Günnur counteracts ideas of a compulsion to wear a headscarf. In addition, she states that a headscarf is not a ‘natural’ characteristic of a Muslim woman and delineates the biographical decision-making process as a long-drawn-out one that was negotiated together with confidants and was heavily influenced by her school environment and by social discourses. Furthermore, she contradicts common notions of the oppressed Muslim girl (Riegel 2004) by pointing out that she had always been ‘cheeky’ and ‘in quarrel’ with teachers. The Matura exam was anticipated as a central biographical turning point after which it would have been possible to fulfill her dream of wearing a headscarf. However, her enthusiasm was diminished as soon as she decided to start with a teacher education program:

Alle haben mir dann gsagt ‘Ja du machst Lehramt aber mit Kopftuch wer wird dich dann da unterrichten lassen?’ Und da hab ich mir immer wieder gedacht auch so wie UNÜBERLEGT ich dieses Studium angefangen hab und diesen Faktor gar nicht berücksichtigt hab und dann hab ich mir immer wieder ja, gesagt ja, was in der Zukunft ist kann ich jetzt noch nicht wissen ich werd mich nicht von irgendwelchen ähm GERÜCHTEN aufhalten lassen das zu machen was mir gefällt. (3/2-8)

Everybody would tell me ‘Yes you do teacher education but with headscarf. Who will let you teach?’ And then I thought again and again how BLIND I had been when I started this study program not considering this factor and then I said to myself again and again I can not know now what lies in the future. And I won’t block myself because of some RUMORS from doing what I like. (3/2-8)

In the rhetorical question posed to Günnur it becomes clear that the chance to be a teacher underlies heteronomous conditions and that she has limited options. In addition, the discourses which shape the belief that the headscarf is incompatible with teaching and that Muslim teachers are a threat for the educational system (Karakaşoğlu and Wojciechowicz 2017) are assumed to be well-known, both in the narrated time and in the interview because they are not explained. In her retrospective account about the decision for the study program, Günnur downgrades the arguments and concerns of others, calling them ‘rumors’. The account also shows her willingness to have her own experiences as a strategy to cope with the societal marginalization of women who wear a headscarf.

Raciolinguistic ideologies at the university

During Günnur’s university studies, the concerns appear to be justified: Both in public spaces and at the university, Günnur has many experiences with othering, especially when it comes to beliefs about a ‘natural’ connection between the headscarf and language. In her narration, she refers to ‘phrases’ and ‘buzzwords’ that she hears from colleagues and reports them as follows:

‘Du bist so modern. Du bist so so aufgeschlossen. Du sprichst so gut Deutsch. Wie kommt’s eigentlich, dass du Deutsch studierst?’ (22/43-44) ‘Wie kommt es eigentlich, dass du Deutsch studiert hast, ah es ist es überhaupt aso ich nehm amal an, dass Deutsch nicht deine Muttersprache is’. (23/11-13)

‘You are so modern. You are so open-minded. You speak German so well. How did it come about that you are studying German?’ (22/43-44) ‘How did it come about that you’ve studied German, I assume that German is not your mother tongue’. (23/11-13)

The reported examples of typical interactions are structured by assumptions of normality in terms of biography and mother tongue. In these dialogue fragments, a deviation from a monocultural and monolingual biography is assumed. This departure from a biographical norm opens the space for spontaneous biographical conversations (Dausien and Mecheril 2006, 165). More concretely, it allows Günnur’s colleagues to question her choice of the study program and its relationship to her biography. In these investigations, Günnur is confronted with normative concepts of educational biographies (Dausien, Ortner, and Thoma 2015). Following these concepts, students who are imagined as ‘non-natives’, are not expected to study German at the university level.

In addition, the statements of surprise about Günnur’s German competence are closely related to assumptions about character traits that can be explained with anti-Muslim stereotypes in which Muslims are collectively depicted as premodern and close-minded. Overall, these interview excerpts are examples of a considerable structural mistrust leveled against her which happens when she has to justify her decision to study German, when her university teachers or colleagues don’t rely in her knowledge and when they undermine her teaching abilities.

However, during her university studies, Günnur has become familiar with critical pedagogy and has started to rethink her position in the Austrian migration society. About her future she says:

Und, aber, ich möcht mich jetzt auch nicht also zum Beispiel aufs islamische Gymnasium abdrängen lassen, das ist nicht, weil ich das do_, ich könnt mir schon vorstellen, dort zu unterrichten zum Beispiel, aber ich möchte nicht dort unterrichten, weil ich an einer ANDEREN Schule nicht, aufgrund des Kopftuchs nicht, willkommen, bin. Weil, es ist ja was Anderes, wenn ich mich aus FREIEN Stücken, aber ich würd lieber aso mein Traum wär an einer GANZ NORMALEN Schule der Stadt A-Stadt zu arbeiten und einfach auch einmal zu zeigen (2) dass, dass (1) dieses Multikulturelle im Klassenraum kann ruhig auch im Lehrerzimmer sein. Und ich hoffe, dass ich eine Schule finde, wo (1) ja ich, akzeptiert werde (lacht) aber (1) ich werd, ich werd’s sch(unverständlich). Ich kann mir noch nichts Genaueres drunter vorstellen. (24/29-38)

I don’t want to be pushed into an Islamic school. I can imagine teaching there, for instance, but I don’t want to teach there because I am not accepted in ANOTHER school because of my headscarf. Because, it is a different issue, if I, from my own FREE will … but I would rather, let’s say, my dream is to teach in a COMPLETELY NORMAL school in city A and to show that this multicultural thing in the classroom, this can also be reality in the teachers’ room. And I hope to find a school where I (1) yes, am accepted (laughing), but (1) I will, I will s_ (incomprehensible). I still don’t have an accurate idea. (24/29-38)

On the one hand, this account shows that Günnur’s position remains unclear and unsure. She states that she does not want to be pushed out of the unmarked field of a ‘normal’ school, which means a Christian or non-denominational school, into the marked field of an Islamic school. The account also indicates her awareness that school locations are not only linked to different school cultures, actors and curricula, but that access to religiously unmarked schools is bound to the religious unmarkedness of teachers and that her future as a teacher depends from the acceptance of members of the majority. On the other hand, her dream to teach at a ‘completely normal’ school, is also connected to her desire to increase the visibility of social heterogeneity in the teachers’ room. Saying this, she makes demands on her belonging to a ‘normal’ school and positions herself as an actor in the Austrian educational system.

Challenging raciolinguistic ideologies in transgenerational communication

While Günnur finds little support for her career aspirations at the university, she uses private spaces for a critical examination of raciolinguistic ideologies. She compares her language acquisition with that of her son at several points in the interview and refers to her own past and her son’s present possibilities for language acquisition. She assesses her own skills in Turkish as much weaker than those in German, and she would like to offer her son a better education in both languages. Since bilingual education is a topic that gives her personal biography meaning, she would like to focus on it in her diploma thesis. At the same time, she has joined a toddler group with her son where she realized that parents with other languages use these languages in a self-conscious manner. About her reflection on these differences in language use she says:

‘Deine Sprache wird nur zu Hause gesprochen, wieso traun sich die Mütter, die Spanisch sprechen, da ganz locker und easy […]?’ Und ich hab lang darüber nachgedacht, und dann hab ich gmerkt, dass ich mich da qua_ eigentlich selber reguliere. Und das mach ich jetzt NICHT. Es ist mir egal, wo ich bin. Ich red so wie ich reden will und ich mische dann auch Türkisch und Deutsch und ich sag das so, wie ich das sagen will, weil (1) ich da jetzt nicht (1) meinem Sohn das eben UNbewusst und INdirekt vermitteln möchte die deutsche Sprache ist eine BESSERE oder eine HOCHWERTIGERE, eine ANGESEHENERE. (13/20-29)

‘Your language is only spoken at home, why do the mothers who speak Spanish dare to be so easy and relaxed […]?’ And I thought about it for a long time, and then I noticed that I am actually regulating myself there. And I’m NOT doing that now. I do not care where I am. I talk the way I want to talk and I also mix Turkish and German and I say it the way I want to say it because (1) I don’t want to (1) UNconsciously and INdirectly convey this to my son – that the German language is a BETTER or a more HIGH-QUALITY, a more RESPECTED language. (13/20-29)

In the monologue at the beginning of this account, the ‘narrated self’ reflects on her own linguistic practices, comparing them to those of other mothers. In her reflection, Turkish – in contrast to Spanish – is not named as a language and is also performatively rendered invisible. In describing her own linguistic practices, the narrator uses the passive voice, making herself invisible as an actor who makes decisions about language use. The description of the other mothers’ use of language can be read as an indication that the question of language choice and, more specifically, the use of Turkish, is not at all ‘easy and relaxed’ for Günnur. However, her use of the active form of the verb ‘regulate’ clarifies her position as someone who is subject to social conventions but is an active agent in making choices. She emphasizes that she has changed her choice of language and that she uses both discrete languages as well as forms of translanguaging, making full use of her linguistic flexibility. She justifies this self-confident form of language use by rejecting a language hierarchy in which German is ranked higher than Turkish, thus using translanguaging as a political act (Flores 2014). The emphasis on the negative prefixes in the adjectives ‘unconsciously’ and ‘indirectly’ may indicate that she attaches importance to such unconscious and indirect mediation processes or that she was unaware of them over a long period of time.

Overall, this account shows that the biographical narrative exceeds the narrator’s life in two significant ways. While the beginning of the biographical narrative included the linguistic repertoire of the parents as a framework into which Günnur’s own story is woven, the circle closes at this point by laying the foundation for less restricted language practices for the next generation. The account also refers to the continuous biographical work that Günnur performs in finding a way to deal with raciolinguistic ideologies. The fact that Günnur chooses bilingual education for the subject of her master’s thesis reveals how important it is to her to connect her biographical knowledge with her academic pursuits.

Summarizing remarks on Günnur Duman’s biographical narration

In Günnur’s biographical narrative, the desire to belong to Austria stays at the center. This wish is expressed in her desire to work as a teacher of the national language at a ‘normal’, religiously unmarked, school. However, her plans are frequently challenged because of her social positioning as ‘migrant’, ‘Muslim’ and ‘non-native speaker’. These three elements of a deficit-oriented attribution logic play a role in her biography at different points: In her pre-school raciolinguistic socialization, she ‘learns’ linguistic adaptation to the dominant language in Austria. The success of this adaptation is crowned with ambivalent success at school: the praise that Günnur receives as a student labelled ‘with migration background’, is based on raciolinguistic ideas of a natural link between ethnic and linguistic otherness. Religion, more specifically, dominant ideas about Muslim students and about the headscarf, played a central role throughout her school years. Her account of this time reveals that anti-Muslim discourses significantly restricted her decision to wear a headscarf. However, she constructs her long-lasting decision process as a self-chosen one, albeit negotiated with and against a council of confidants, especially her mother.

While it is true that during her school time, language and religion were significant lines of differentiation that both affected her educational process, her description of her time at university reveals specific facets of the co-construction and co-naturalization of linguistic and religious otherness. When Günnur starts wearing the headscarf and studying German, the headscarf appears as a specific risk regarding both her legitimate belonging to the study program of German and her future transition into the teaching profession and into a religiously unmarked school. The analysis shows that during her studies, Günnur acquired theoretical knowledge not only about language, but also about processes of exclusion based on gendered raciolinguistic ideologies. She has thus achieved some literacy of power (Macedo 2018) which allows her to challenge raciolinguistic ideologies, as she opposes the biographical norms opposed on her with her biographical knowledge and her biographical aspirations. The narrative also shows that the narrator has distanced herself from her social starting position and reflexively refers to the circumstances of her development and to various meaningful points in her educational biography.

Conclusion

In this article, I have shown that biographical research is an ideal analytical tool for contributing to a more nuanced understanding of raciolinguistic ideologies in education.

The single case study reveals that in educational institutions shaped by language ideologies, biographical arguments become relevant in different ways. Assumptions about the normative life course (Dausien and Mecheril 2006) force minoritized students to justify their decision to study the national language at a university level. This can lead to frequent biographical conversations and investigations in which raciolinguistic fantasies are expressed, and in which the students’ biographies are understood in relation to the study programs they attend. Under these conditions, the development and maintenance of one’s professional ambition as a future teacher requires continuous biographical work (Fischer-Rosenthal 2000) in which the meaning of one’s own past and future are negotiated within the raciolinguistic social and educational context.

Moreover, the data analyzed has shown complex forms of the biographization (Fabel-Lamla 2006) of language. The narrative anchoring of the national language in the early phases of childhood in the biographical narration is a way of establishing a sense of belonging to the dominant society and of showing biographical continuity in relation to the dominant language. The data also shows how biographical narratives allow us to systematically examine how the experiences of individuals build on one another in a raciolinguistically structured world and how narrators position themselves within and against this world. Following the temporal logic of the biographical narrative, it is possible to reconstruct how people (re)produce, contest and transform raciolinguistic ideologies and how they make sense of their experiences at different times in their lives.

A biographical perspective on raciolinguistic ideologies offers the possibility to better understand connections between situational/context-specific and biographical dimensions of language ideologies. Future research in this area could further explore how educational institutions ‘produce’ normative life courses and in which ways such production is connected to raciolinguistic ideologies. In addition, future research could more critically examine the place that institutionalized forms of knowledge about language have in the production of biographies, and how biographical narratives disrupt dominant discourses. Moreover, it would be useful to further investigate the kinds of linguistic resources that are activated in the process of coping with stressful or traumatic experiences related to linguistic ideologies (Busch 2017) as well as the specific potentials of biography as a form of resistance in migration societies that make it possible and necessary to transform constructions of normative life courses and to expand the spectrum of ‘possible biographies’ (Dausien and Mecheril 2006, 173).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Parts of this data are published in Thoma 2018.

2. Schütze identified four different biographical process structures: biographical action schemes, biographical trajectories, institutional expectation patterns, and biographical metamorphoses.

3. All personal names, places and institutions were anonymized.

4. The digits refer to the page and lines in the transcript.