Voices of Authority: Education and Linguistic Difference

by Monica Heller (Editor), Marilyn Martin-Jones (Editor)

Overview

This collection of case studies from around the world examines how struggles for equality unfold in policies, programs, and practices in educational settings in multilingual contexts. Using sociolinguistic, interactional and discourse analysis, Heller and Martin-Jones examine the complex ways in which dominant ideologies of education, pedagogy, language and identity intersect in a wide variety of educational settings. They focus in particular on how those ideologies are reproduced or challenged, and on the consequences of such processes for changing or maintaining social relations of difference and inequality. Written for policy-makers, educators, and anyone else interested in education and multilingualism, the book places questions of power at the center of thinking about language and education.

This collection of case studies from around the world examines how struggles for equality unfold in policies, programs, and practices in educational settings in multilingual contexts. Using sociolinguistic, interactional and discourse analysis, Heller and Martin-Jones examine the complex ways in which dominant ideologies of education, pedagogy, language, and identity intersect in a wide variety of educational settings. They focus in particular on how those ideologies are reproduced or challenged, and on the consequences of such processes for changing or maintaining social relations of difference and inequality. Written for policy-makers, educators, and anyone else interested in education and multilingualism, the book places questions of power at the center of thinking about language and education. It invites us to link questions about minority language maintenance, individual multilingualism, immigrant language education, and the use of former colonial languages in post-colonial settings to the politics and economics of our globalizing age, and to look locally for the spaces for change and action that always present themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781567505313
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/28/2001
Series:	Contemporary Studies in Linguistics Series , #1
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.92(d)

About the Author

Monica Heller is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies and the Centre de recherches en éducation franco-ontarienne of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto./e Her most recent publications include a book, Linguistic Minorities and Modernity: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography, and articles in such journals as the Journal of Sociolinguistics, Language in Society, and Discurso y Sociedad.

Marilyn Martin-Jones is Professor of Bilingualism and Education at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. She taught for 15 years in the Department of Linguistics at Lancaster University. Her most recent publication is a book (coedited with Kathryn Jones) entitled: Multilingual Literacies: Reading and Writing Different Worlds (2000). She has also published articles in a number of journals such as Applied Linguistics, Linguistics and Education, and The International Journal of the Sociology of Language.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Symbolic Domination, Education and Linguistic Difference by Monica Heller and Marilyn Martin-Jones
Constructing Legitimate Language: Ritualization and Safetalk
Co-Constructing School Safetime: Safetalk Practices in Peruvian and South African Classrooms by Nancy Hornberger and Keith Chick
Codeswitching and Collusion: Classroom Interaction in Botswana Primary Schools by Jo Arthur
Language and Educational Inequality in Primary Classrooms in Kenya by Grace Bunyi
The Contradictions of Teaching Bilingually in Post-Colonial Burundi by Lin Ndayipfukamiye
Turn-Taking and the Positioning of Bilingual Participants in Classroom Discourse in British Primary Schools by Marilyn Martin-Jones and Mukul Saxena
Symbolic Domination and Codeswitching in Hong Kong Secondary Schools by Angel Lin
Coping With Contradiction and Creating Ambiguity
"Like You Are Living Two Lives In One Go": Negotiating Different Social Conditions for Classroom Learning (in a Further Education Context in Britain) by Celia Roberts and Srikant Sarangi
Constructing Hybrid Post-Colonial Subjects: Codeswitching in Jaffna Classrooms by Suresh Canagarajah
Language Values and Identities: Codeswitching in Secondary Classrooms in Malta by Antoinette Camilleri
Classroom Interaction and the Bilingual Resources of Migrant Students in Switzerland by Lorenza Mondada and Laurent Gajo
Authority and Authenticity: Corsican Discourse on Bilingual Education by Alexandra Jaffe
Language of State and Social Categorization in an Arctic Quebec Community by Donna Patrick
Contestation and Struggle
Collusion, Resistance and Reflexivity: Indigenous Teacher Education in Brazil by Marilda Cavalcanti
Telling What is Real: Competing Views in Assessing ESL Development in Australia by Helen Moore
Legitimate Language in a Franco-Ontarian School by Monica Heller
Youth, Race and Resistance in Multilingual Britain: A Sociolinguistic Perspective by Ben Rampton
Conclusion: Education in Multilingual Settings: Stakes, Conditions and Consequences by Monica Heller and Marilyn Martin-Jones

Editorial Reviews

Arguing that most work on providing effective, democratic education under conditions of increasing sociolinguistic diversity ignore the pivotal issues of social and political issues, Heller (sociology and equity studies, U. of Toronto) and Martin-Jones (bilingualism and education, U. of Wales) present 18 contributions that highlight the role played by education institutions in the construction of cultural identities and in the reproduction of social inequalities. They argue that we can develop a fuller understanding of these processes of production and reproduction in education by investigating the communicative practices of learners and educators in the daily cycles of life in educational settings. The chapters provide ethnographic analyses of socially and historically situated cases from a variety of education sites in postcolonial, indigenous, and immigrant settings in Australia, Botswana, Brazil, Britain, Burundi, Canada, Corsica, Hong Kong, Jaffna, Kenya, Malta, Peru, South Africa, and Switzerland. A number of the chapters originally appeared in issues 1 & 2 of (1996). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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