Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

286 Language Diversity in the Classroomrarely those spoken by the common people in their midst. Generally,however, just as all roads of commerce, education and culture lead to theRome of the day, so there are accompanying linguistic pathways.A second point to bear in mind when considering patterns ofbilingualism has to do with identity. There are many motivations forlearning new languages, and for most ordinary people these have to dowith necessity, with mundane requirements for daily life, or with hopesfor social advance and improvement. But, if language were solely aninstrumental medium, then the acquisition of some new and more usefulvariety would very soon lead to the discarding of the original one. Thatthis does not happen as quickly as mere practicality would suggest is anindication of continuing affections and, indeed, uses. The language ofhome and hearth can be retained even as another language takes overbeyond the front gate. Furthermore, lingering linguistic threads can bedetected even later in language-contact scenarios. When, for example, theoriginal variety is no longer spoken even in the intimacy of the home, itssymbolic value as a marker of group history and tradition can bemaintained for a long time just as long, in fact, as is desired. It mayperhaps be said that, when a language has given up even this symbolicrole, the group in question has indeed become seamlessly assimilatedinto another, although even at that point other markers of ‘groupness’may yet be retained.‘Bilingualism’ in these last circumstances has become rather attenuated,of course, and the developmental course that I have outlined abovereveals a home truth: however long symbolic aspects of a language mayremain, however enduring their influence increasingly latent though itmay be over generations, these aspects rest upon the more ordinary,communicative ones. Symbolism can outlive instrumentality, but it growsout of it. The unavoidable corollary is that, when linguistic instrumentalityfades, the important symbolic pillars of support of social andpsychological support that even an unspoken language can continue toprovide for the group cannot be expected to stand forever. They can, asI have just said, last for a very long time. Their power of enduranceresides in their intimate and retiring disposition; their very intangibilitymeans that they present no impediment to social mobility. Between thesixth-generation Polish American and her equally long-establishedItalian American neighbor, there may yet remain symbolic-languagedifferences that can be highlighted according to need or desire eventhough, for all obvious and visible intents and purposes, the neighborsare socially and culturally indistinguishable. But the symbolic attachmentsthat my own family has to our Welsh past are now gone. Only the