What, exactly, do we mean by the label
‘multilingual’? I don’t mean dictionary-sanctioned definitions
of the word, nor what the word should mean according to more or less
entitled opinions, I mean what linguists mean when we talk about word
meanings: what does the observation of uses of the word
‘multilingual’ tell us about its meaning? In order to find out,
we can do what linguists do, which is to collate a sample of contexts
where we find the words that interest us.
We observe, first, that ‘multilingual’
appears in contexts such as “... bilingual and/or multilingual
...”, implying a core distinction between two and more than two
languages. The dichotomy, however, seems exclusive to bi- vs.
multi-, in that we don’t find contexts such as “trilingual
and/or multilingual”, “quadrilingual and/or multilingual”, and
so on. The reason might well be that two languages were long thought
to be the crowning achievement
of human linguistic ability. Evidence of this belief lingers on in
our current terminology, where we still talk about SLA (Second
Language Acquisition) to refer to any number of languages learned
beyond our native ones, or about L1 to refer to a (single) language
learned from birth, the assumption here being that there must be some
L2 politely waiting in line to become part of one’s linguistic
repertoire. Habitual use of cardinal/ordinal 2-related words in these
contexts, lacking relationship to the meaning of ‘2’,
explains why the word bilingual has come to mean ‘more than
one language’ or ‘two or more languages’. Which is rather
confusing, to say the least: just imagine using words like bifocal
or bilateral to refer to ‘two or more’ focal lengths or
sides, respectively. This is why I prefer multi-words
to refer to ‘more than one’.
We observe, second, that the word
‘multilingual’ collocates with family, school,
clinic, on the one hand, and with child, teacher,
clinician, on the other. This sample shows that the word is
used as a qualifier (we could call it an adjective) of another word
(a noun). The same goes for contexts like The family/child/ ... is
multilingual. More uncommon are collocations such as A
multilingual is ..., multilinguals are ...,
or a/the multilingual., where a final stop follows the word: I
am / They are multilingual is sanctioned by use, but I am a
multilingual / They are multilinguals apparently isn’t. Not all
that long ago I had to add the plural form multilinguals to
the dictionary in my word processor, which kept marking it with a
no-no wavy red line. We’re not comfortable using this word as a
noun – yet: it could well be only a matter of time for
multilingual/multilinguals to become as noun-worthy as
bilingual/bilinguals, given that our attention to
non-monolinguals dates from quite recently.
A third observation is that when we’re
talking about, say, multilingual schools and multilingual teachers,
we’re talking about two different multilingualisms – and yes, my
word processor also had issues with this plural. A multilingual T,
including families, schools, clinics, countries, environments, is a
T(hing) where more than one language is used, whereas a multilingual
P, including children, parents, teachers, clinicians, individuals, is
a P(erson) who uses more than one language. This is not splitting
hairs: the verbal form “is used” indicates a passive
construction, probably familiar from school textbooks
in interesting sentences like The bone is eaten by the dog. In
language textbooks, the by-phrase is always there, because the
purpose of textbook passives is to teach that they must match an
active counterpart, in this case The dog eats the bone.
Language students apparently need not be taught that we use passives
precisely to be able to ignore the by-phrase, either because
we have no idea who is actively doing the action represented by the
verb, or because we prefer not to say. Exactly as when we define,
say, a multilingual school as a school where more than one language
is used. By whom? We don’t know.
What we do know is that families or
schools, being institutional abstractions, can’t ‘use’
languages: people can. We also know that when we say that a
school or a country ‘has’ more than one language, we’re using
metaphor.
Schools and countries can’t own anything, except metaphorically:
people can. Which means that talking about, say, multilingual
environments is not the same as talking about multilinguals: a
multilingual environment is one where different languages are
involved, but not necessarily multilingual people. Multilingual environments can feature monolinguals, as in
multilingual schools or clinics where the students or clients are
multilingual whereas the staff are not, and that’s why multilingual
signs exist for the benefit of those who use only one of the
languages in them.
 |
In
Cruz-Ferreira, M., Multilinguals are ...?,
Chapter 11
Image © MCF
|
Failure to realise that multilingualism
has to do with *multilinguals*
explains the obsession with the languages of a multilingual
that has characterised specialist and lay quests into
multilingualism. We select multilinguals’ vocabulary sizes,
accents, grammar, pragmatic proficiency, for comparison with
monolinguals’, to ascertain the presumed state of health, or
integrity,
or wholeness,
of multilinguals’ languages, apparently expecting to find the key
to multilingualism in the languages themselves. A bit like saying
that the key to Maria João Pires’ performance lies in
her pianos. We’ve even started comparing trilinguals to bilinguals,
those not-so-exciting-any-more language geniuses of yore, and I’m
sure the day will come when we’ll compare octalinguals to
heptalinguals, to find out... What, exactly? I wonder, too. This way
of looking at multilingualism takes it as a property of languages,
which is clearly nonsensical. Languages can’t be multilingual:
people can.
If we want to understand
what being ‘multilingual’ means, we need to shift our focus from
the languages to the language users. Only then can we stop asking
useless questions about what different languages do to people
and start asking relevant questions about what people do with
different languages. Next time, I’ll try to work out what this
means.
© MCF 2015
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