Fifth International Conference on Third Language Acquisition and Multilingualism

Despite their undoubted multiple language abilities, many people in Scotland believe themselves to be monolingual. Among the possible reasons for this are that some do not accept that one of their languages (i.e. Scots) is necessarily a language, and that some have a tendency to de-value the level of foreign-language proficiency which they acquired at school. Yet in fact much of the population is able to express itself along a spectrum which embraces Standard English, Scottish English, some form of Scots and some foreign language, mixing these varieties according to purpose and context. The Council of Europe recognises Scots as a language, a view endorsed by the Scottish Executive in its recent (2007) draft Language Strategy document, but some still consider Scots to be an inferior form of English.

Four backgrounds particularly favour multilingualism in Scotland:

those who speak a local variety of Scots at home and in the local community, who are taught a more Standard variety of English at school, and who learn a foreign language at school;
those who use Scottish Gaelic at home and in the local community, who may also pick up Scots in the local or national community, who are taught English at school and who learn a foreign language at school;
those who speak English (or some form of Scots) at home, who receive Gaelic-medium education at primary and possibly secondary school, and who learn a foreign language at school. (It should be noted that most children receiving Gaelic-medium education come from English-speaking rather than Gaelic-speaking homes);
those from other language backgrounds who may possibly maintain some use of their ‘community’ language (e.g. Punjabi, Urdu, Cantonese, Italian) at home and in their particular community, who may use some local variety of Scots, who are educated at school mainly through English and who also learn a foreign language at school. In some cases, there are complementary language schools which take place usually at the weekends and which help to maintain and pass on the particular community language.

Research findings on the above will be discussed against the background both of comparable research findings elsewhere, and of emerging policies at Scotland and European levels (e.g. the European Commission’s Action Plan for Languages) which focus on issues of diversity, inclusion, citizenship, interculturality and mobility.

Richard Johnstone retired recently from his post at the University of Stirling, Scotland, where he was Director of Scottish CILT (the government-funded Scottish Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research) and Head of Languages Education. He was Head of the university's Institute of Education for six years and then Vice-Dean for Research in the Faculty of Human Sciences, and is now Professor Emeritus. He is well-known for his annual review of international research on the learning and teaching of languages, published in the journal Language Teaching (Cambridge University Press), and has given plenary talks in many different parts of the world, particularly on his specialist areas of languages policy and the early learning of additional languages. He has directed or been involved in several research projects funded by the Scottish Executive, the European Commission, and other bodies, and has been a specialist consultant to the Council of Europe. His research and publications cover modern foreign languages, community languages and heritage languages.

While the concept of thirdness has been applied to places (Soja 1996), cultures (Kramsch 1993, 1999, Bhabha 1994), and images (Barthes 1977), it has not been applied to languages that are acquired in adolescence and adulthood, once the first language or dialect has already been supplemented by a second - national, international, colonial, or heritage language. The thirdness of a third language is more than an additional aspect of multilingualism. Acquired by definition by someone who is already bilingual, a third language offers a potentially very different experience in terms of subjective resonances, memories, and identifications. Whether it is a family language lost in childhood and regained in adulthood, or the language of the enemy, or the language of economic survival, of amorous pursuit, of self-fulfillment, or the language of written self-expression, the L3 potentially enables an “emancipatory detachment” (Pavlenko 2006:183) that can bring about “the willed renovation of an individual’s own identity” (Kellman 2000:21). This paper will draw on published and unpublished memoirs and testimonies from third language learners, in order to explore the specific linguistic, emotional, social and cultural make-up of L3 speakers.

Barthes, Roland. 1977. The third meaning. In Image, Music, Text. Trsl. Stephen Heath. New York : Noonday Press.
Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The location of culture. London: Routledge.
Kellman, Steven G. 2000. The translingual imagination. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Kramsch, Claire. 1993. Context and culture in language teaching. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
Kramsch, Claire. 1999. Thirdness:The intercultural stance. In T.Verstergaard (Ed.)
Language, Culture and Identity. Aalborg : Aalbord University Press.
Pavlenko, Aneta. 2006. Emotions and Bilingualism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Soja, Edward W. 1996. Thirdspace. Oxford : Blackwell.

Claire Kramsch is Professor of German and Affiliate Professor of Education at UC Berkeley, and Director of the Berkeley Language Center . She teaches second language acquisition and applied linguistics and directs PhD dissertations in the German Department and in the Graduate School of Education. In 1998, she received the Goethe Medal from the Goethe Institute in Weimar for her contributions to cross-cultural understanding between the United States and Europe . In 2002, she received the Distinguished Service Award from the American Modern Language Association as well as the Faculty Distinguished Teaching Award from UC Berkeley. She is the past president of the American Association of Applied Linguistics and the past editor of the international journal Applied Linguistics. She has written extensively on language, discourse, and culture in applied linguistics. She is the author of Discourse Analysis and Second Language Teaching (1981), Interaction et discours dans la classe de langue (1984), Reden Mitreden Dazwischenreden. Managing conversations in German (1985), Context and Culture in Language Teaching (1993), Language and Culture (1998). She is the editor of Redrawing the Boundaries of Language Study (Heinle 1995) and Language Acquisition and Language Socialization. Ecological Perspectives (Continuum 2002). She is currently writing a book on The multilingual subject.

Ajit K. Mohanty (Jawaharlal Nehru University): Multilingual Socialization and Negotiation of Identities in Contact between Multilingual Adults and Communities: Social Psychological Processes

The processes of formation and negotiation of multiple linguistic identities are affected by complex dynamics of the relationship of power, dominance and hierarchy between languages in a multilingual society. Studies on language socialization and inter-group relationship in multilingual contact situations in different parts of India show how social perception of the relationship between languages and power impacts the mechanisms underlying these processes. Development of multilingual awareness and differentiation between languages proceeds in a sequence of stages through which children, growing up in environments with at least three languages in use, acquire the social norms of hierarchical relationship between languages quite early in their development. The stages of multilingual socialization and the underlying processes of social interaction are analysed to show how the norms in respect of multiple languages are transmitted. Linguistic identities and inter-group relationship in situations of contact between multilingual individuals and communities are also shown to be regulated by perception of the relationship between languages and power and relative ethnolinguistic vitality. Individual and collective identity strategies of minority linguistic groups are shown to be associated with marginalization and revitalization of languages. It is suggested that the social psychological processes in multilingual societies need to be viewed as being qualitatively different from dominant monolingual and bilingual societies. The characteristics of Indian multilingualism, the role of dominant languages in the Indian society and the state of minority and indigenous languages are analysed in view of these studies. Implications of linguistic inequalities in multilingual societies for development of the dominated linguistic groups are discussed.

Ajit K. Mohanty received his Ph.D. in 1978 from the University of Alberta , Canada in the area of Psycholinguistics. He is currently a Professor of Psychology and Chairperson in the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University , New Delhi . He has been a Professor, since 1983, and Chairperson at the Centre of Advanced Study in Psychology, Utkal University , India and President of the National Academy of Psychology, India (1997). Among his books are – Bilingualism in a multilingual society; and Psychology of poverty and disadvantage. He has published extensively in the areas of psycholinguistics, multilingualism and reading processes and his work has focused on issues relating to education, poverty and disadvantage of linguistic minorities in multilingual societies characterized by unequal power relationship between languages. He has written the chapter on Language Acquisition and Bilingualism in the Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology (second edition). Ajit Mohanty was a Keynote Speaker in the International Congress of Applied Psychology, Madrid , Spain (1994); International Conference on Multilingualism, South Africa Applied Linguistics Association (2004), a Special Speaker in the International Symposium on Imagining Multilingual Schools, Teachers College, Columbia University (2004) and the Cornell Conference on Language and Poverty (2005). He is in the Editorial Boards of International Journal of Multilingualism, Language Policy, and Psychological Studies. He has been a Fulbright Fellow in the University of Wisconsin in Madison , a Killam Scholar in the University of Alberta, a Senior Fellow of the Central Institute of Indian Languages and a visiting scholar in the University of Geneva and University of Chicago .