The Multilingual City: Vitality, Conflict and Change
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The Multilingual City: Vitality, Conflict and Change
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783094776 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Channel View Publications |
| Publication date: | 01/26/2016 |
| Pages: | 240 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.15(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Lorna Carson is Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics and Director of the Trinity Centre for Asian Studies at Trinity College Dublin. Her teaching and research focuses on multilingualism with a particular emphasis on understanding the language classroom. She is President of the Irish Association for Applied Linguistics (IRAAL).
Read an Excerpt
The Multilingual City
Vitality, Conflict and Change
By Lid King, Lorna Carson
Multilingual Matters
Copyright © 2016 Lid King, Lorna Carson and the authors of individual chaptersAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78309-477-6
CHAPTER 1
The Vitality of Urban Multilingualism
Itesh Sachdev and Sarah Cartwright
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. [...] And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Book of Genesis, Chapter 11, Verses 1, 5–9 (King James Translation)
The Biblical Babel myth is frequently used to illustrate the historical desirability of monolingualism and conversely the confusions caused by the existence of many languages. In fact, as Blanc (2008) argued in using the quotation above, multilingualism (and plurilingualism) were widely accepted and enriching aspects of ancient societies. Indeed there is a large amount of research suggesting that not only is the vitality of multilingualism high in the ever-expanding urban centres of the world today (Edwards, 1994), but that multilingualism has been normative for millennia (Adams, 2003; Blanc, 2008; Mullen & James, 2012).
In recent years we have become used to a rather different, celebratory discourse countering the 'monolingual conservatism' of the past, with increasing references to the large number of languages spoken in urban localities as an important resource:
200 languages: Manchester revealed as most linguistically diverse city in western Europe. (Brown, 2013)
Home to around 800 different languages, New York is a delight for linguists. (Turin, 2012)
In fact, although useful for headlines, the overall number of languages spoken is a somewhat blunt measure of the vitality of multilingualism in urban contexts. A more systematic and nuanced characterisation is attempted in this chapter by introducing the notion of the vitality of urban multilingualism (VUM). It is defined as the degree to which multilingualism and plurilingualism are able to thrive and flourish in an urban conglomeration. Based on the notion of ethnolinguistic vitality (Giles et al., 1977; Sachdev & Bourhis, 1993; Sachdev et al., 2012) and considered under factors of demography, status and institutional support (and control), the vitality of urban multilingualism may serve as a useful heuristic to frame data obtained from the LUCIDE cities in Europe, Australia and Canada.
This chapter charts evidence for the vitality of multilingualism in antiquity to the relatively recent 18th-century 'one language: one nation' ideology that has left such a lasting legacy into the 21st century. The second section provides an introduction to the LUCIDE cities as portrayed by the City Reports and is followed by an analysis of vitality under the subheadings of demography, status and institutional support and control. The chapter concludes with some notes, including a reminder about the intergroup nature of multilingual communication in modern urban contexts.
From Antiquity to the 21st Century
Turning once more to the Babel myth, Blanc (2008) began his essay on multilingualism in the Ancient Near East with the reference to the City of Babel, where multiple languages were introduced and dispersed from the tower city of monolingualism: the vitality of urban multilingualism in antiquity. The existence of multilingualism has been attributed to intergroup contact, interaction, co-existence and conflict leading to integration, assimilation and/or exclusion in societies. Contacts between those who spoke different languages from varied social, cultural, religious, ethnic and economic backgrounds and aspirations, coupled with trade and commerce, exchanges (cultural, educational and diplomatic), migration and exogamy, invasion and colonisation, have all been described as contributors to the vitality of multilingualism in ancient times.
Having credited the Sumerians with the invention of irrigation, urbanisation, and writing, Blanc (2008) discusses evidence for multilingualism found on a variety of materials including tablets (clay, stone), obelisks, rock faces, copper, coins, papyrus and parchment. He charts the evolution of ancient multilingualism over several thousand years in Europe and the Middle East from the Proto-Elamite period of the 3rd millennium bc through Egyptian, Sumerian, Persian and Aramaic, up to the Hellenistic Greek (bc 331–323) and Roman periods. He correlates the rise and fall of empires, commerce and trade with material evidence for multilingualism in ancient Greek, Egyptian and Roman times, including languages such as Hebrew, Aramaic, Egyptian, Lycian, Greek and Latin. For instance, he cites the Rosetta Stone, written in two languages and three scripts, as evidence for multilingualism during the Ptolemaic period, and refers to the emergence of a class of bilingual officials needed to mediate between the local Egyptian-speaking population and the Greek-speaking administration and immigrants.
Archival evidence in material written form arguably underestimates the degree, function and spread of spoken multilingualism although there are some edicts as well as liturgical and epistolary correspondence that are closer to spoken forms. According to Blanc:
On rather rare occasions we catch a glimpse of the spoken language, even of pronunciation, as in the Book of Judges (12:6), where the Gileadites challenged their Ephremite enemies to say the pass-word 'shibboleth', which they could only pronounce 'sibboleth'. 42,000 of them failed to pass the first phonetic test in recorded history and were put to death. (Blanc, 2008: 3)
Rochette (2011) provides a detailed account of Latin in the Roman Empire. Internal governmental communications from the Emperor and other official documents were in Latin. It was also the language of the army (until the beginning of the 7th century), although, unlike in the Hellenistic period (Billows, 2005), the Romans did not aim to impose their language. In the eastern Roman Empire, laws and official documents were regularly translated into Greek from Latin. Latin–Greek bilingualism has been noted among Roman and Greek intellectual elites and both languages were in active use by government officials and the Church during the 5th century. From the 6th century, Greek culture was studied in the West almost exclusively through Latin translation.
Bilingualism and trilingualism were probably common among educated people and others (e.g. army officers) in regions where languages other than Latin or Greek were spoken, such as the western (Gaulish, Brittonic), eastern (Aramaic), northern (Germanic) and southern (Punic, Coptic) parts of the empire. A remarkable piece of multilingual evidence discovered in northeast England on a 2nd-century epitaph has the inscription written in Aramaic and Latin-in-Honorific-Greek style, to 'Regina' – a name that could be either Latin or Celtic (Mullen & James, 2012).
Given that cultures within the Roman Empire were largely oral, evidence for elite and literate multilingualism provides only a small part of the picture concerning the actual vitality of multilingualism across the vast empire. In the western part, Latin in spoken form ('Vulgar Latin') began to dominate Celtic and other languages over time as local populations adopted it. As the empire grew, considerable political power was transferred to the regions from the centre. Following the spectacular fall of the western Roman Empire in the 4th to 5th centuries, and the ongoing transfer of political power away from the centre, Latinate/Romance language varieties such as Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian and Romansch emerged in their local multilingual contexts. The main exception to this seems to be Basque. Elite bilingualism preserved Latin as the international language of learning, intellectual progress and literature up to the 17th century in western Europe, and for the Roman Catholic Church to the present day.
The empowerment of vernaculars in Europe facilitated by the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in 1439 and the diversification of the linguistic and cultural landscapes of Europe has a long, often violent history, leading to the beginnings of nation states from the 15th to the 17th centuries. Until the turn of the 19th century, however, a dominant form of political entity in much of Europe was the multi-ethnic and multilingual monarchic empires such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. These empires were ruled by one ethnic (often dynastic ) group, but were generally characterised by ethnic, religious and linguistic tolerance. Much of the administration of the Ottoman Empire, for example, was in the hands of the Greek-speaking Phanariots (Stavrianos, 1958: 270). The 18th and 19th centuries were particularly important in Western nation- state formation, beginning with the French Revolution in 1789 which not only led to the creation of the modern French state but also catalysed nationalism across Europe, often in conflict with the great empires and eventually leading to the unification of Germany and Italy in the 19th century. In the 20th century, this process continued after WWI across central and Eastern Europe and more recently with the formation of several nation states in the Balkans following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
Nationalist rhetoric and policy, consonant with Herder's 18th-century 'one language-one nation' philosophy, has left a strong and lasting legacy of ideological monolingualism in Europe and elsewhere (Blackledge, 2000). Anderson (1983) suggests that the construction of nations ('imagined communities') in the 19th and early 20th centuries, in combination with the emergence of capitalism, led to linguistic hegemonies: 'Thus English elbowed Gaelic out of Ireland, French pushed aside Breton, and Castilian marginalised Catalan' (Anderson, 1983: 78). This 'monolingual conservatism' (Redder, 2013) promoted by dominant groups and elite minorities has posed the greatest challenge to the languages of indigenous, regional, local and immigrant minorities worldwide. Following two World Wars and subsequently the end of the Cold War in the 20th century, Edwards (1994) reports that the vast majority of countries (up to 75%) still recognise only one language for legal and official purposes, even though there exist several thousand languages across almost 200 countries in the world. Moreover, where several languages are officially recognised, one is usually dominant, carrying 'disproportionate amounts of social, economic and political power' (Edwards, 1994: 2).
It is important to note that in Canada and Australia (home to some of the LUCIDE cities), multilingualism was also the norm among indigenous peoples before colonisation (Elwell, 1982; Sachdev, 1995). Colonisation promoted systematic and vigorous eradication of indigenous cultures and languages, and many languages have died or are in precarious stages of endangerment in Canada and Australia (Austin & Sallabank, 2011; see also LUCIDE City Reports from Canada and Australia). From the middle of the 20th century, with the exception of the Cold War and the conflict in the Balkans, relative post-World War peace has reigned in Europe with unprecedented levels of cooperation in economic and social security combined with rapid technological advance. The postwar influence of the Soviet Union in promoting 'Russification' in culture and language (Kreindler, 1982) in countries allied to it was considerable, but there were also opposing tendencies – especially in the 1920s and 1930s – towards 'indigenisation' and 'institutionalised multi-nationalism' (Martin, 2001) which were important in the creation of terminology banks, dictionaries and textbooks for minority languages, thus promoting multilingual vitality.
The end of the Cold War augmented globalisation processes which were already in motion in the latter part of the 20th century. Central to these processes are increased mobility and the exchange of ideas, people and capital facilitated by revolutionary advances in communication technology, taking place across an ever wider set of national borders and affecting especially urban agglomerations. They are further catalysed by the loosening of rules for movement across EU countries. The increase in intergroup contact and urban living is deemed inexorable and worldwide, with predictions suggesting that the vast majority of humanity will be living in urban contexts by the middle of the 21st century (UN, 2014).
Cities are not only reactive to circumstances (for instance, the switch from wood to stone in the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire in 1666), but they are also the drivers of change in society. In ancient times individual cities rather than nations played a leading innovative role in society as the social mix of trades and professions sparked invention and the creation of wealth. Athens, Harappa, Persepolis, Ur, Babylon, Rome, Carthage, Cusco – all gave rise to flourishing ancient civilisations at the cutting edge of learning and change. Likewise, many centuries later, Italian cities gave rise to the explosion of creativity known as the Renaissance. Today some urban societal developments can seem trivial and fashion led, as in the case of the spread of cafe culture, where even in Dublin coffee outlets are beginning to rival pubs as social spaces. In terms of multilingualism, however, we see emerging a new urban landscape which is multi-textured: a new era of linguistic and cultural co-existence in which value is determined not only on economic criteria but also by the personal values of the plurilingual city dweller able to access language communities worldwide through social media.
Languages spoken, heard, seen and used in the modern cities of the EU originate not only from the EU member states but also from most others around the world (including ex-colonies such as those in the Indian sub-continent or North Africa). Such has been the impact of globalisation (migration, exchange) and rapid technological progress that some modern cities in Europe (and also North America and Australia) are characterised today in terms of their 'super-diversity' (Vertovec, 2007) or 'hyper-diversity' (Tasan-Kok et al., 2013). In all likelihood, therefore, we have 'crossed the Rubicon' for multilingualism: communication in the cities of today (real and virtual, institutional and individual, public and private) involves multi-layered complexities along dimensions of language, religion, ethnicity, culture, class and generation that are unparalleled in human history.
We will next give an overview of the LUCIDE cities as a prelude to an exploratory discussion of the vitality of urban multilingualism today.
The LUCIDE Cities
There is no accepted typology for characterising the multilingualism of the diverse LUCIDE cities. One might, for example, consider relative size, geographical position or historical antecedents as possible indicators of similarity and difference. Any one solution, however, is unlikely to be completely satisfactory given the complexity of the issues and the different contexts of each city. With this caveat we have nonetheless chosen to discuss the LUCIDE cities under four broad categories (as presented also in the final LUCIDE conference), which in some senses reflect their prevalent relationship to multilingualism and to the vitality of multilingualism. There are, for example, cities with long multilingual histories, in some cases dating from antiquity, where this sense of historical place still has an impact on current realities; included in this group are Rome, Utrecht and Varna. An even more clear-cut category is the group of cities which are not only multilingual but which have actually been built on and prospered as a result of (multilingual) immigration. These 'immigration cities' include Madrid, Hamburg, London and, outside Europe, Melbourne, Toronto and Vancouver. Then there are cities for which multilingualism, as we have described it (see the Introduction), is a new phenomenon. Even though they may have some historical multilingual precedents, as is the case with Athens and Sofia, their modern history has been one of emigration and only in recent years have the challenges of diversity figured more prominently. As well as Athens and Sofia we include Oslo and Dublin in this group. Finally we include a group of cities which are officially or overtly bilingual, or which occupy border regions including more than one language group: Limassol, Osijek, Strasbourg, Ottawa and Montreal.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
ContributorsPreface
1. Lorna Carson and Lid King: Introduction: ‘Multilingualism is Lived Here’
2. Itesh Sachdev and Sarah Cartwright: The Vitality of Urban Multilingualism
3. Lorna Carson: The Sights and Sounds of the Multilingual City
4. Maria Stoicheva: Urban Multilingualism: Bond or Barrier?
5. Peter Skrandies: Language Policies and the Politics of Urban Multilingualism
6. David Little: Languages at School: A Challenge for Multilingual Cities
7. Lid King: Multilingual Cities and the Future — Vitality or Decline?
List of References
Index