Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

136 Part 2: Language and Society
Rather, teachers and students have recourse to CS to meet delineable classroom
needs, such as to compensate for a lack of comprehension, encourage
greater student participation, build rapport and express solidarity
with the students, and so on.
The chapter has also briefl y discussed the relationship between classroom
CS and other language contact phenomena such as diglossia. I have
argued that by the very defi nition of diglossia, CS involving an H language
and an L language or variety should not occur at all in the classroom
or in any other formal context, since diglossia is premised on a strict
functional compartmentalization of languages. And yet, as research has
shown, CS can and does occur in any domains of language use, formal or
informal; its occurrence in either domain is governed by the context of
situation and the communication needs of the participants. Accordingly,
the concept of diglossia needs redefi ning to refl ect not only general language
practices but also classroom language practices in multilingual
communities around the world.
Finally, the chapter has discussed the implications of classroom CS for
the English-only argument in the United States, as well as in Englishmedium
or ESL/EFL classrooms worldwide. It was noted that using L1 in
an L2 classroom validates learners’ lived experience, provides the learners
with opportunities to experiment and take risks with English, and constitutes
a natural bridge for overcoming problems of vocabulary, sentence
structure and language confi dence. In spite of its signifi cance for classroom
management and interaction, L1–L2 classroom CS has been viewed
by some as an impediment rather than a resource to learning, and as a
mark of linguistic defi ciency (Auerbach, 1993; Elridge, 1996; Martin-Jones,
1995; Peires, 1994; Rubdy, 2007). Research is needed to educate teachers
and language policy makers about the benefi t of classroom CS, to change
their attitudes toward classroom CS, to raise their awareness about the
signifi cance of CS for classroom interaction, and to underscore the importance
of L1 in L2 learning (Cleghorn & Rollnick, 2002; Cook, 2001). Until
that research is done, educators need to heed to Elridge’s admonition that
‘. . . we understand precisely the causes, motivations, and effects of CS,
and . . . avoid making rash, censorial judgements on its classroom manifestations’
(1996: 303). The more we know about the social motivations for
CS, the greater will be our appreciation of its manifestations in bilingual
classrooms around the world.
Suggestions for further reading
Those interested in learning more about CS will fi nd the following sources very
useful. The sources provide further insights not only into classroom CS, but also
into various aspects of CS not covered in the present chapter, such as grammatical,
psycholinguistic, pragmatic and neurolinguistic aspects of CS.