Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Language and Ideologies 21
methods in their four months of fi eldwork in the 8th, 9th and 10th grade
classrooms, which were taught either through English, the medium in
which most black learners studied, or through Afrikaans, used in the classrooms
enrolling mostly colored students (in the South African system,
‘colored’ was the designation for students who were not white, not black
and not Indian, and so considered mixed race). Modes of data gathering
included being present at the school daily, taking extensive fi eld notes,
holding extended interviews with teachers and the principals, and analyzing
two writing assignments done by all students, one the construction of
a ‘language map’ and the other an account of personal educational history.
Evidence showed overwhelming enthusiasm for acquisition of what teachers
and students saw as the kind of English linked with social and economic
mobility, but extremely limited opportunities to acquire and practice
this aspirational target. While there was considerable English used, it
refl ected the local norms and varieties created through the contact and
intermingling of English with the other languages. Most relevant for this
chapter is the researchers’ conclusion that, in such a setting, it makes little
sense to speak of ‘errors’ in standard academic English when there is so
little access to the standard. Rather, in this extraordinarily heteroglossic
and dynamic environment, different but related norms emerge. While
these may well serve local pedgagogical goals appropriately, they can
simultaneously prevent learner progress in higher levels of education.
They conclude that emergence of such local norms ‘reproduces systemic
inequalities’ and thus exacerbates the gap between educational centers and
peripheries (2005: 399). 4 Relatedly, Hill (2001) points out that some attempts
by English speakers in the United States to use a few words of Spanish
refl ect not an acceptance of the language and its speakers but a covert form
of racism, which could work to limit rather than expand educational equity.
In considering the hybrid forms of communication now emerging in many
similar settings, Lam (2006) reminds us that linguistic identities are now
often dispersed across time and space, and calls for educators to use
the images and codes emerging in popular cultures to heighten engagement
of otherwise marginalized learners rather than further alienating
them (see Alim, Pennycook and Rymes, this volume).
Language choice in bilingual classrooms
Ideological infl uences on the choice between two different languages in
bilingual classrooms where either could plausibly be used have been
favorite sites for research. In the United States, most such work has examined
occasions of and motivations for language choices and alternation in
Spanish–English classrooms. Many of the fi ndings of this work are also
potentially relevant to other bilingual settings, although the languages at
issue, education systems and community and national contexts determine
the extent of comparability.