Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Bilingualism: A Very Brief Overview 247acknowledging that élite bilingualism need not rule out the motives ofnecessity more usually associated with the folk variety. It is just thatnecessity itself becomes a little more rarefied, a little more intellectualin nature.In any event, it is not difficult to see that the life’s work of a sensitivescholar could arise from, or give rise to, an extended group allegiance orsense of belonging. Indeed, this scenario also theoretically applies tothose whose excursions across boundaries are motivated by nothingmore than interest. After all, given a threshold of intelligence andsensitivity, the difference between the scholar and the amateur lies informality of focus. The general point here is that we can ally ourselves, bymore or less conscious effort, with another group, and that a formallycultivated bilingualism can act as the bridge here.What of the other broad category, those bilinguals who have some realor understood blood attachment to more than one language community?Setting aside the technicalities associated with the onset and timing ofbilingual acquisition, it is surely the case that the deeper the linguisticand cultural burrowing into another community, the greater the impactupon identity. This, in turn, suggests that those whose bilingualcompetence is nurtured early will, other things being equal, have afirmer foot in the two (or more) camps. It will usually be the case, ofcourse, that one camp will have psychological and emotional primacy.But there are some cases where home itself is difficult to establish, at leastin any simple unidimensional sense some cases, that is, where bilingualor multilingual capacities, linked to their several cultural bases, developso early and so deeply that a primary allegiance is hard to discover.(Think of George Steiner again, arguing [1992: 128] that his sort of‘primary multilingualism’ may be ‘an integral state of affairs, a caseradically on its own’.) There are generally two ways to consider thesituations of those whose bilingualism begins at the parental knees. Thefirst is simply that two or more base camps are home simultaneously;the second is that one primary home indeed exists, but it is constructed,in a manner unique to the individual, from materials taken from severalsources.As we move towards the bilingualism of more ‘ordinary’ individuals,we move more obviously towards the idea of a unitary identity wovenfrom several strands, to be sure, but inevitably influenced by onelanguage and culture more than by others. But, if we move from theSteiners of the world, whose literary and linguistic power, and the abilityto reflect in meaningful ways upon its multifaceted origin, is simplyunavailable to most people, we must not imagine that we have moved