Myths
surrounding monolingualism come complete with the notion that using
one language means using it in the same way. I’ve addressed this
issue before, for example in connection with (school) language
learners: questions like “Do you speak X?”
are loaded questions,
because they take for granted the kind of X
that you mean.
For
those of us who are identified as multilinguals, the different uses
that we make of language are said to be different languages –
whatever “different languages” might mean).
But all of us, including those of us who are identified as
monolinguals, may be exposed to equally different linguistic uses in
the same language – whatever “the same language” might mean.
Whether in accent, grammar, vocabulary, or pragmatic features,
different varieties of the “same” language can be as foreign to
their respective users as “different” languages.
Children may grow up surrounded by different uses of language in
different ways. So-called multilingual settings may be replicated in
so-called monolingual ones: mummy may happen to be Honduran and daddy
Peruvian, say, and everyone lives in Madrid, with a nanny who was
born and raised in Andalusia. Schooling marks the beginning of a new
life, including linguistically,
because school environments are meant to standardise not only your
knowledge, but also your uses of language.
Singapore is a
case in point. There are four official languages, and education is
bilingual, in that schooling takes
place in the child’s (so-called) mother tongue,
Mandarin, Malay or Tamil, and English. That is, schooling takes place
in official versions of these official languages,
which do not necessarily match the varieties used by the children at
school start, because languages, like pineapples or prawns, change
with the environments in which they are found.
Take
the case of English, to give an example of a language which is
familiar to you and me, in Singapore, which is quite familiar to me.
The English which is spoken in Singapore is called Singapore
Standard English, where the
country name in the label indicates that this is a different English
from other Englishes which are standardised elsewhere. There is also
Singapore Colloquial English,
commonly known as Singlish, and commonly described as
an English-based creole. Creoles are languages which first emerged
through contact of different languages, for adult purposes like e.g.
trading, to then become native languages, passed on from adults to
children.
Singlish
is a native language in Singapore, and a de facto lingua franca
melding the local pot of heritages and ethnicities. It reflects
Singaporean culture: Singaporean
is not a language name. Singlish is as much “bad” English as
Swiss German is bad German or Kristang bad
Portuguese, by the way. Similar judgements of value about language uses
abound in the discourse of those who fail to realise that
standardised varieties and real-life varieties of language(s) serve
different purposes. That’s what they’re there for. Or those who
remain persuaded that lingualism means engaging in a subtractive competition,
where (certain) language uses are weeds depriving (certain) language
uses of rightful nourishment. That’s not what lingualism is.
Singlish
is the English, or one of the Englishes (if we insist on calling
Singlish a “variety” of English), with which Singaporean children
come to school. Anthea Fraser Gupta reported on what happens to the
children’s Englishes in school, in her book The Step-Tongue. Children’s English in Singapore.
More recently, Rani Rubdy’s study titled Singlish in the school: an impediment or a resource?
found that Singlish mediation, in the classroom, may well favour
school learning rather than detract from it. I address similar
issues, specifically concerning accents, in a book chapter, Learning English in Singapore: pronunciation targets and norms.
This
research also shows that coming to school with unofficial uses of
language is true of teachers too, and I’ll return to this matter
some other day. My point here is twofold. First, that school
languages and school language uses can only be nurtured in school: a well-rounded education
includes awareness of linguistic etiquette, that is, of what to say
to whom, when, where and how – and why. Second, that we, educators,
must meet the child where the child is,
for schooling purposes, if schooling is to make any sense at all.
Especially
language-wise. Nobody can be schooled productively in Foreign-Speak.
Especially in
Foreign-Speak disguised under labels which call it “your”
language.
The next post looks at one way of integrating the rich variety of
linguistic resources that we discover around us, as we grow up, into
a cohesive whole which makes sense of who we are.
© MCF 2012
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