Master’s Program-
Applied Linguistics
Academic Year: 2012-
2013
Course Title:
Sociolinguistics
Instructor: Dr. Mohamed
Jabeur
Student: Nada Mrabet
Topic
Is Multilingualism a Social
Problem?
Essay
Many countries concede themselves as
monolingual rather than multilingual or bilingual. This misconception often
comes about due to the fact that those countries operate as monolingual either de
facto or de jure. Only a quarter of all nation-states recognize more than one
official language. Unbeknownst to the other three quarters, monolingualism is
only the tip of the iceberg. If they look beyond the surface, they will find a
great deal of diversity offered by societal
multilingualism. This essay seeks to prove that multilingualism is not a social
problem. I will first list what sociolinguists conceive as problematic in
multilingualism; provide a problem-solving approach to these problems;
illustrate the advantages of multilingualism; and explain why one should stop
perceiving it as something of a problem.
A major problem that
is causing an enigmatic quandary is the nationist-nationalist conflict. Fishman
(1972) defines a nation as “any
political- territorial unit which is largely or increasingly under the control
of a particular nationality.” Nationists use the old colonial language as their
official language because the governing institutions and records are already in
that language. However, “a solution to a nationist problem often creates a
nationalist problem” (Fasold, 1984). Choosing the old colonial language as the
official language of a newly independent colony contradicts with the concept of
nationality which refers to “a group of people who think of themselves as a
social unit different from other groups” on the local and global scales. Not
only in the field of general government administration do nationists and
nationalists live in an ongoing conflict, but also in education. Nationists
follow what they consider the best and most efficient strategy and choose to
use ethnic-group languages in the educational institutions. This is what Fasold
(1984) calls “contranational nationalism”: This nationist choice contradicts with
nationalism because it does not fulfill unity of language.
Fasold (1984) suggests two
approaches to settle this problem: (1) Either develop a national language or (2)
develop nationalism on grounds other than language. Still, the first suggestion
may bring about the nationism-nationalism conflict anyway when selecting the
language, promoting its acceptance and developing the language itself. Another approach
adopted by Ireland is to declare both the nationalist and the colonialist
languages official to serve the nationist purposes while promoting nationalism
at the same time. A similar case is India. The only difference between Ireland
and India is that the latter country have declared a deadline when English will
no longer be used de jure. In education,
a similar approach is adopted in India where they use the ethnic-group
languages for initial education and then switch to the national language for
more advanced levels. This way the minorities will not be denied their linguistic
right to speak their own language. This pragmatic approach will get
multilingual governments out of dictatorship’s way.
Being Multilingual is no longer “a
marker of high status” (Edwards, 1994) to a certain group of people referred to
as the Elite. It is rather “a contribution to a more dynamic society” (Fasold,
1984). Many countries came to prove Fasold right. The most striking example of
all is the United States of America, with an average of 322 spoken languages,
probably because it is built on a multi- migration system. Another probable
reason is that the Founding Fathers declared no official language in the
American constitution. Doing that would narrow the rights of those who have a
limited English competence. Indeed, the secret of power, progress and
prosperity in America lies in its diversity in terms of both language and
ethnicity. This example proves multilingualism as a resource of democracy. As
we may see in The Economist Intelligence Unit’s: quality-of-life
index of the year of 2005, multilingual
countries which citizens enjoy the highest levels of political and civil
liberties are listed on the top of the Worldwide quality-of-index, such as
Ireland, Italy, Singapore, and the United States. Therefore, a good management
of multilingualism will definitely lead multilingual countries to prosperity
and the well- being of their peoples.
Although Fasold
(1984) insists on the existence of monolingual countries, Auer and Wei (2007)
came to reject this idea and said that “the world is de facto multilingual”. They
consider multilingualism “natural”, and the real problem is monolingualism. The
problems that arise through multilingualism are not the result of the existence
of multilingualism itself, but rather crop up because of certain contexts like
those set by nationism and nationalism. According to Auer and Wei (2007), Multilingualism
started to be marginalized during a phase of European history in which nation-states
like the United Kingdom and France unleashed a concept stating that in order to
be part of a nation, one needs to speak its language. In fact, it took these
two nation-states hundreds of years to marginalize languages other than English
and French. Nation-states believe that one official national language is
capable of unifying their people. Even in research within the field of linguistics,
Auer and Wei (2007) see multilingualism as being marginalized by linguists due
to the bias of European thinking to monolingualism. This state has changed
since two decades ago.
Multilingualism is perceived
problematic for nationism and nationalism. While nationists adopt a pragmatic
approach towards language by picking the old colonial language as the official
language or using ethnic-group languages, nationalists seek to unify their
nations by recognizing one official national language. The conflict occurs when
choosing the one language to be recognized as official. There are roughly 6.900
languages in the world and only around 200 nation-states. Like it or not, nationists
and nationalists should give up to the fact that “multilingualism is the rule not the exception” (Genesse and
Cenoz, 1998). The majority of these languages are unofficial due to the fact
that nationalists believe that diversity is capable of endangering their
nationality. Auer and Peter (2007) declare all of these assumptions null and
void and say that it is time to stop perceiving multilingualism as a problem
and start appreciating it as a resource, and that the real problem is
monolingualism. %
References
Auer, P., & Wei, L. (2007). Handbook
of Multilingualism and Multilingual Communication. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter
GmbH & Co.
Fasold, R. (1984). The Sociolinguistics of Society. Oxford: Blackwell Hudson.
The Economist Intelligence Unit.
2005. Quality-of-life index. Retrieved from:
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