Legitimate Language in a Multilingual School

1. Legitimate Language in a Multilingual School Monica Heller Presentation by: Gabriela Ivanova

2. “Legitimate Language” What is a “legitimate language”? • uttered by a legitimate speaker • uttered in a legitimate situation • addressed to legitimate receivers Bourdieu 1997 For Discussion: • How are specific kinds of language practices legitimized? • How does this help advance or marginalize the interests of different groups? • What does this tell us about the development of relations of power through the process of bilingual or multilingual education?

3. Champlain Secondary School Manipulation of French and English Effect on Education Social positions • Ethnographic work in French-language high school in the Toronto area; data collected: 1991- 1993 • French- Ontarian system • designed to maintain the French language and culture; • Enable francophones to take part in Ontarian, mostly anglophone, society; • Most of the teachers and parents at the school have participate in the struggles of francophones of the 1960s and 70s E

4. Language practices at l’école Champlain Number and age of the students: 400, ages 12-18 (grade 7 through the end of high school) Students’ origin French Canadians (mainly from Quebec, Ontario, and New Brunswick): working-class Toronto-born children of mixed marriages of alnglophone background: middle class Students from Somalia(members of the country’s elite ?), Ethiopia, and Djibouti Francophone Europeans, Iranians, Lebanese, and Haitians, and others Levels of study university-preparatory “advanced” level Vocational training-oriented “general” level (most of the working-class French-Canadians and most of the Somalis and Haitians)

5. The Study Questions Connection between forms of language/linguistic repertoires/verbal performances and success at school look at language choice Role of language in the construction of language identity turn-taking

6. Language Choice “ParlezFrançais!” “Don’t speak English!” Many students prefer to speak English Institutional monolinguism (French) • English as a means to contest school authority (Mohamud and Lise) • General-level Français classes: teachers invest less in maintaining classroom monoligualism • English as a point of reference for “out-of-the-class experience” • Somali vs. English – creating new dynamics • Canadian Standard French: legitimate language is distinct from the old European French and the Canadian French vernaculars • Anglicismesand Canadian vernaculars (erroneous forms) are defined as such and corrected: vue film; à cause queparceque

7. Contradictions Standard monolingual French emphasized vs. students graduate without a mastery of French French Canadian identity vs. European French valued/Canadian vernaculars devalued Somali and Haiti students placed in general-level classes oriented toward Canadian French vernacular Two models: mode of sequential turn-taking on a unified floor multivocal and non-sequential floor “le respect” Mohamud takes the floor? (turn-taking as a way to enforce the teacher’s control and legitimate language) Turn-taking