Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

246 Language Diversity in the ClassroomEnglish is the medium when he flies with Air India to New Delhi, and hesometimes watches English-language films at the cinema. He reads aGujerati newspaper written in a dialect somewhat more ‘standard’ thanhis own. Our merchant sometimes has dealings with a Bengali colleaguewho routinely speaks both ‘high’ and ‘low’ Bengali a man whose‘primary’ wife speaks a dialect strongly marked as a female variant, andwhose ‘secondary’ wife normally speaks Urdu. His office managerspeaks Dhaki and his servants variously use Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Maithili,Ahiri and Chatgaya. This Bengali businessman has a cousin in Orissa, anOriya speaker married to a Tamil: they use English at home, but theirchildren are more likely to speak Bengali; they employ a Hindustaninurse and a Nepali watchman. I have drawn upon Pandit (1979) andPattanayak (1986) for these examples; see some further illustrations inD’Souza (2006).There are many bilinguals, however, whose competence is more deepseatedand whose abilities go beyond instrumentality, and these aretypically the people one has in mind when considering the relationshipbetween bilingualism and identity. There are two broad divisions ofrelevance here: the first comprises those bilinguals with a kinshipattachment to each group (we will detour here around a large literature,and accept either real or perceived attachments); the second is made upof people who have, in a more formal way, acquired another linguisticcitizenship, as it were. The latter division involves a so-called ‘élitebilingualism’, best exemplified by socially well-placed persons whoseformal instruction would traditionally have been seen as incompletewithout the acquisition of another language or two. Typically, then, élitebilingualism involves prestigious languages, although the term couldreasonably be extended to cover the competence of those whose maternalvariety is of lesser-used status, as well as of those lucky, intelligentor industrious enough to have achieved upward mobility througheducation. 5 Élite bilingualism is often discussed in comparison with‘folk bilingualism’, where the latter signifies a necessity-induced repertoireexpansion; indeed, the distinction seems apt, particularly when oneconsiders that, historically, the élite variety often had as much to do withsocial-status marking as it did with a thirst for knowledge and culturalboundary crossing. In earlier times, not to have known Latin or Greek orFrench in addition to one’s vernacular would have been unthinkable foreducated people, but unthinkable, perhaps, in the same way that itwould have been unthinkable not to have had servants. Among themembers of this group, there were (and are) many driven by purerscholastic motives, of course. But acknowledging this also means