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CHAPTER 1

Between Support and Marginalisation: The Development of Academic Language in Linguistic Minority Children

Guadalupe Valdés School of Education, Stanford University, USA

Within the last several years, researchers working with linguistic minority children have focused increasingly on the development of the types of language proficiencies that are required to perform successfully in academic contexts. Most practitioners and researchers agree that, in order to succeed in schools, such learners must be given the opportunity to acquire academic, rather than everyday, language. Unfortunately, in spite of the growing interest in the kind of language that will result in school success, we currently lack a single definition or even general agreement about what is meant by academic language. This paper examines the conflicting definitions and conceptualisations of academic language and argues that limited understandings of bilingualism and of the linguistic demands made by academic interactions will lead to the continued segregation of linguistic minority children even after they have reached a level of stable bilingualism.

Keywords: academic language, second-language learners

In the American context, debates surrounding the education of linguistic minority children have become especially acrimonious within the last several years. Anti-bilingual education initiatives in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts have polarised both members of the public and school personnel. Opponents of bilingual education argue passionately that if children are not taught in English, they will not acquire the common public language. They contend that young children learn English quickly and that therefore they should be limited to a maximum of 1 year of special instruction in 'structured immersion' classrooms followed by mainstream classes. Researchers and practitioners who have worked extensively with linguistic minority students, on the other hand, argue that it takes a minimum of 3–5 years to develop oral proficiency in English and 4–7 years to develop academic English proficiency (Hakuta et al., 2000–2001). These researchers further argue that English language learners require some type of sustained help and support for learning both content knowledge and English.

In responding to the rhetoric surrounding these recent initiatives and/or in simply trying to explain English language development to sympathetic individuals, it has become increasingly clear to practitioners and researchers who work with language minority children that the general public has little understanding of the subtleties of English language learning and about the types of English that are required to succeed in school. It has also become clear that much more work needs to be done by the profession in understanding the kinds of language that will result in school success.

Unfortunately, there is currently no agreed-upon definition of either academic English or academic language in general. While this has been discouraging and problematic for many researchers and practitioners within the second-language teaching profession, what is significant is that a number of related professions are engaging in the examination of what they understand to be academic language and inquiring about its role in the school success of all children. It is my position that it is both useful and productive to try to unravel and to examine what different professional groups mean by the various terms used to refer to academic language and particularly to understand the dialogic nature of the discussion itself – a discussion held at professional meetings, at conferences, in articles published in journals and in entire books written by scholars as they consciously or unconsciously respond to what the Bakhtin Circle referred to as other voices in the dialogue. These voices include those heard through the popular media, those of political activists of various types and backgrounds, and those of everyday citizens who wish to inform themselves before voting on now-popular propositions that directly focus on language.

In this paper, I am concerned with professional communities in the United States and with the multiple voices that surround and contextualise currently ongoing, parallel conversations about the development of academic language. Informed by Bakhtinian theory, I argue that the context for all discussions, including academic debates, encompasses a multitude of dialogues that help shape, reconfigure and constantly change the multi-voiced utterances of the various speakers. The discussion of academic language is no exception. The various existing approaches to the definition of academic language have developed and evolved in communication with a particular set of voices that are part of specific professional worlds. I will describe these various definitions as well as the voices to which these various perspectives primarily speak. I will point out, moreover, that, given the various boundaries of academic professions, the dialogue on academic language is unfortunately made up of a series of unconnected conversations that often fail to be heard by scholars who are members of other closely related professions.

My second concern in this paper is with the voices available to second language learners in both their communities and their schools. While I agree that English language learners must be given the opportunity to acquire and master the kind of language that will allow them to succeed in school, I have many questions about the kinds of academic language that can be taught and learned in classrooms. I will suggest that what is missing from a number of professional and scholarly discussions focusing on academic language is a view of the types and range of experiences and interactions that must surround minority youngsters if they are to acquire the kinds of language proficiencies considered desirable by educational institutions.

The Scholarly Dialogue on Academic Language

Scholarly discussions do not take place in a social vacuum. Even without the insights offered by the Bakhtin Circle about the nature of intertextuality, it is very generally accepted that scholars engage in an ongoing dialogue with other members of their academic communities and their professional organisations. Scholars respond to each other's papers, engage in polemical debates about theories and their implications, and write dense scholarly tomes, sometimes understandable exclusively to other members of the same inner scholarly circle.

Within recent years, however, the recognised isolation of scholars in their ivory towers and the perceived irrelevancy of their opinions to public debates has given way to a view in which scholarly 'experts' have taken on the role of providing information and background to the courts, to media organisations and to the public in general. As was made evident by the recent Ebonics controversy, the opinions of university researchers and scholars often become very much a part of national debates on issues about which the public has strong interest. As members of professional media organisations seek both to provide background for their audiences and a balance of differing opinions, scholars are sought after to present their views and to participate in what Tannen (1998) has called the 'argument culture'. Scholars are expected, not to engage in a discussion of the complexity of issues, but to take one of two diametrically opposed sides. Television news programmes, for example, regularly offer their viewers the perspective of a single 'resident' expert who interprets a controversy for the public, or they present two scholars who take on opposing views on the issues in question. As was made evident by the California campaign opposing Proposition 227, public exchanges where journalists required that bilingual education scholars and second language acquisition experts engage in debates with political activists were very different from academic exchanges among professional colleagues. Often individuals engaged in the discussion of Proposition 227 had strong opinions and little knowledge of and little respect for scholarly evidence.

In the case of academic English, the discussion of many significant and important issues is taking place in a context in which the response of both the community of scholarly specialists and members of the public (including special interest organisations, news media, parents, teachers, administrators, policy makers) are anticipated. The dual realms of public context and academic orbit surrounding scholarly discussion result in a discourse that is made up of utterances that are a link in the chain of speech communication in two very different types of spheres; the academic sphere and the public sphere. Scholarly utterances, then, particularly on topics that are of public interest, attempt to refute, affirm, supplement, rely on, presuppose and take into account as Bahktin maintained, the 'echoes and reverberations' ([1986] 1990: 91) of two very different discourse communities. The context for the current dialogue on academic language is depicted in Figure 1.

The ideological context

In the United States, all public discussions relating to academic language, no matter how neutral, are currently taking place in a context that is influenced by ideologies about the standard language. For example, discussions of academic English are informed by ideologies about standard English as well as by ideologies about the place of English in multilingual America. To those concerned about the erosion of Standard English, any mention of the teaching of academic language necessarily refers to the teaching of the 'correct' language to all students but especially to students who are speakers of non-standard varieties of English. To those concerned about maintaining and protecting the status of English as the language of education in this country, on the other hand, discussions of the teaching of academic language necessarily focus on the use of English as the only language in which instruction is offered, especially to newly arrived immigrant students.

Researchers and practitioners, then, who enter into the discussion of academic English in the United States engage in a dialogue with both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic voices that are part of the discourse surrounding both Standard English and English Only as illustrated in Figure 2.

The Public Sphere

The dialogue about Standard English

The various voices that have taken part in the dialogue surrounding standard English have been well described by numerous scholars both in the United States and in Great Britain. The voices are heard at times of conflict over national curricula and at times when guardians of the language march forward to defend a glorious heritage (J. Milroy, 1999). Hegemonic voices argue for teaching the standard language to the underprivileged, while counter-hegemonic voices argue that insisting on the standard will only continue to maintain the position of the powerful who already speak the privileged variety of the language. The particular beliefs about language that are known as 'standard language ideology' with reference to English have been examined by Milroy and Milroy (1999), Lippi-Green (1994, 1997), and by L. Milroy (1999).

Recently, the debates surrounding the Ebonics controversy once again fore-grounded the deeply engrained beliefs among Americans about the importance of teaching standard English. As Baugh (2000: ix) pointed out, the Ebonics debate 'launched another round in a continuing national discussion on how best to educate students for whom standard English is not native'. This discussion, as Wolfram et al. (1999) maintain, once again involved the voices of those who oppose the teaching of standard English and favour the acceptance of all varieties of English. It also involved the voices of the proponents of teaching standard English who argue that all students, in order to succeed in school and in the workplace, must master standard English.

As is the case in all public debates and discussions of standard English, the Ebonics debate involved both the hegemonic and the counter-hegemonic positions depicted in Figure 2. The ever-present voices of what Milroy and Milroy (1999) have termed 'language guardians' and Bolinger (1980) called 'language shamans' were very much in evidence. Also present among the supporters of the teaching of standard English were African-American conservative pundits whose views Baugh (2000: 113) attributes to a 'uniform sense of linguistic shame about their heritage'. These individuals were joined in their condemnation of Ebonics by other opponents of 'bad' and 'incorrect' English, prescriptivists, and those fearful about the future of English in America. Countering these views – perhaps with little success – were the declarations of academic specialists who focus on the study of African American Varieties of English including Baugh, Rickford, and Smitherman.

The dialogue about English-Only

Like standard English ideologies, ideologies of English monolingualism underlying the English-Only movement are protectionist and view English as fundamentally threatened by the current state of affairs. In the case of English-Only, the threat is seen to involve, not merely the incorrect use of the language by particular groups of people, but the increasing use of non-English languages by rapidly growing immigrant communities. The various voices that have taken part in the debates surrounding English-Only have been well described by Barron (1990), Crawford (1992) and Daniels (1990). These include the voices of patriotic citizens whose parents or grandparents did not maintain their immigrant languages and who are afraid that the United States will lose its common language as well as the very strong voices of nativists who fear that, because this country is being overrun with foreigners, Americans are being made to feel like strangers in their own land. Supporters of English-Only oppose the use of bilingual ballots, bilingual education, the use of non-English languages in the workplace, and special assistance to non-English speakers. Like individuals who support only allowing standard English in classrooms populated by African-American children who speak African American English Vernacular, many well-intentioned teachers who oppose bilingual education worry that newly arrived immigrant children will not acquire enough English to succeed both in school and in the workplace. Proponents of the use of non-English languages in addition to English, on the other hand, include cultural pluralists, supporters of bilingual education, supporters of immigrant language maintenance, and political activists supporting the rights of newly arrived immigrants.

Standard English as a highly charged notion

Within the American public sphere, the voices that enter into a discussion of standard English express deeply held views about education and particularly about the education of children who arrive in school speaking either non-English languages or non-standard varieties of English. The voices of academic scholars involved in public sphere conversations, respond to and refute or affirm the utterances of both informed and uninformed others – all of whom have strong opinions about academic language.

The Professional and Scholarly Sphere

Communities of professional practice

In comparison with the public voices engaged in dialogue surrounding the discussion of academic language, scholarly conversations attending to the definition and investigation of the kind of language required for academic success embrace perspectives that differ depending on the particular focus of the professional practice or research community in question. Figure 3 depicts the different communities of professional practice that are currently focusing on academic language.

As will be evident from Figure 3, discussions of academic language have focused on two very different groups of students. The first group attends to those individuals whose first language is English, while the second group attends to students who have learned or are learning English as a second language. While the concerns of the different professional groups focusing on these two types of students may be similar at some levels, the specific focus of attention and the definitions of academic language used by one professional group and another vary significantly.

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Excerpted from "Bilingualism and Language Pedagogy"
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Copyright © 2004 Janina Brutt-Griffler, Manka Varghese and the authors of individual chapters.
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