Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

168 Part 2: Language and Society
This pedagogy-based LP occurs because local contexts and personal
needs of learners, and the cultural, technological and economic changes
that characterise communities, cannot be anticipated in formal policy documents,
textbooks and examination procedures. The immediately focused
communication required by teachers’ routine work of imparting knowledge
and skill involves regular micro-LP as learners are assisted to master
educated speech and both print and multimodal literacies. At this level,
LP activity in education shares features of educational linguistics (Spolsky,
1978). Educational linguistics came into being around questions such as:
How can language be defi ned for teaching? How can language learning be
sequenced for teaching? How does learner processing of linguistic input infl uence
teaching and curriculum design? How can language learning be assessed; how
does literacy relate to spoken language? These questions are readily reformulated
in LP terms. Whether in the primary linguistic socialisation described
by Watson-Gegeo (2004) or in secondary linguistic socialisation (Lo Bianco,
2008b), educational linguistics focuses attention on teachers’ most direct
enactment of LP activity. Instructional language integrates content and
language by (1) extending home registers of language knowledge for
‘majority’ children to include educated school registers; (2) extending
non-standard language competence of minority communities towards
educated school registers; (3) modelling elevated linguistic registers and
styles; (4) teaching the national standard language to non-speakers; (5)
teaching subject literacy in print and multimedia forms; (6) teaching standard
language and literacy for children with language-connected special
needs; (7) mother-tongue teaching for minority speakers; and (8) teaching
prestige foreign languages (Lo Bianco, 2008b: 113–114).
Schooling often validates middle class and educated modes of linguistic
expression, imposing these as the required register of exchange in classrooms,
and as the modelled norm for what is sociolinguistically appropriate
for educated circles generally. This is reinforced by the literacy demands
particular to different subjects. Multilingual/multiliterate settings offer a
greater repertoire of languages, expressive styles and literacies aligned
along a multifaceted continuum (Hornberger, 2002) but the choices validated
by schooling are typically narrow and often perform the assimilationist
policy demanded by dominant interests (Corson, 1999). This policy
is refl ected in the series of language and literacy selections that are made
and by the omission of those languages and literacies deselected.
Responses to language diversity and the multilingual consequences of
globalisation and mass migration convert schools and teachers into actors
in elaborated LP activity. LPs often refl ect an underlying ‘orientation’ to
this reality (Ruiz, 1984, 2010). Multilingual homes make available to education
systems, schools and individual teachers both pedagogical choices
and ideological possibilities. We can see these as gradations along a continuum
combining pedagogy and ideology. Three are identifi ed here as