Kshetra and the nurturing of a plurilingual ethos
Family plurilingualism and coloniality
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jmtp.26407Keywords:
decoloniality, family language policy, multilingualism, plurilingual ethos, southern approachAbstract
This article discusses a family’s plurilingualism from a southern and decolonial lens, looking at the role of language ideologies in its plurilingual practices. It focuses on the concept of space as kshetra and its accompanying plurilingual ethos, originating in the Asian origins of the family. The overarching claim is that by holding on to its legacy of a plurilingual ethos, the family has maintained its ever-changing plurilingualism over three generations by navigating a tension or duality between an out-group assimilation to the prevalent monolingualism that it encounters outside the home in its transcontinental migrations and an in-group maintenance of plurilingualism within the kshetra of the family. The article concludes that it appears to be the ethical attitude to linguistic and cultural heterogeneity, rather than the actual use or maintenance of a specific heritage language, that is of more value to transnational and transgenerational plurilingual families.
References
Agnihotri, R. K. and Khanna, A. L. (1997). Problematizing English in India. Sage.
Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. Routledge.
Bhabha, H. K. (2014). The right to narrate. Harvard Design Magazine, 38. Retrieved on 4 November 2023 from http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/38/the-right-to-narrate
Bhabha, H. K. (2018). Migration, rights, and survival: The importance of the humanities today. From the European south, 3, 7–12. Retrieved on 4 November 2023 from http://europeansouth.postcolonialitalia.it
Botelho, A. (2011). Language and early schooling in Goa. Directorate of Official Language.
Castro-Gómez, S. and Grosfoguel, R. (eds). (2007). El Giro Decolonial. Siglo del Hombre Editores.
Chang, H. (2008). Autoethnography as method. Routledge.
Curdt-Christiansen, X. L. (2016). Conflicting language ideologies and contradictory language practices in Singaporean multilingual families. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 37(7), 694–709. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2015.1127926
Degu, Y. A. (2021). Exploring family language policy in action: Child agency and the lived experiences of multilingual Ethiopian and Eritrean families in Sweden. Multilingual Margins, 8(1), 26–51. Retrieved on 4 November 2023 from https://www.multimargins.ac.za/index.php/mm/article/view/234
Gordon, L. (2006). Through the zone of nonbeing: A reading of Black Skin, White Masks. The C.L.R. James Journal, 11(1), 1–43. Retrieved on 4 November 2023 from https://globalstudies.trinity.duke.edu/sites/globalstudies.trinity.duke.edu/files/file-attachments/v1d3_LGordon.pdf
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. Ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. International Publishers.
Grant, C. (1792). Observations on the state of society among the Asiatic subjects of Great Britain, particularly with respect to morals. In L. Zastoupil and M. Moir (eds) (2000), The great Indian education debate: Documents Relating to the Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy, 1781–1843 (pp. 81–89). Routledge.
Grosfoguel, R. (2013). The structure of knowledge in Westernized universities’ epistemic racism/sexism and the four genocides/epistemicides of the long 16th century. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 11(1), 73–90. Retrieved on 4 November 2023 from https://www.okcir.com/product/conversations-with-enrique-dussel-on-anti-cartesian-decoloniality-pluriversal-transmodernity
Hollebeke, I., Van Oss, V., Struys, E., Van Avermaet, P. and Agirdag, O. (2022). An empirical investigation of Spolsky’s framework applied to family language policy. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 25(9), 3228–3241. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2022.2039894
Khubchandani, L. (1988). Language as an everyday life activity. In L. Khubchandani (ed.), Language in a plural society (pp. 29–39). Indian Institute of Advanced Study.
Khubchandani, L. (1997). Revisualizing boundaries: A plurilingual ethos. Sage.
Khubchandani, L. (1998). Plurilingual ethos: A peep into the sociology of language. Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 24(1), 5–37.
Kumaravadivelu, B. (2016). The decolonial option in English teaching: Can the subaltern act? TESOL Quarterly, 50(1), 66–85.
Lanza, E. (2021). The family as a space: Multilingual repertoires, language practices and lived experiences. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 42(8), 763–771. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2021.1979015
Lanza, E. and Lomeu Gomes, R. (2020). Family language policy: Foundations, theoretical perspectives and critical approaches. In A. Schalley and S. Eisenchlas (eds), Handbook of home language maintenance and development: Social and affective factors (pp. 153–173). De Gruyter.
Lanza, E. and Li Wei (eds). (2016). Special issue: Multilingual encounters in transcultural families. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 37(7), 1–2.
Lomeu Gomes, R. (2021). Family multilingualism from a southern perspective: Language ideologies and practices of Brazilian parents in Norway. Multilingua, 40(5), 707–734. https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2019-0080
Macaulay, T. B. (1835). Minute recorded in the General Department by Thomas Babington Macaulay, law member of the governor-general’s council, dated 2 February 1835. In L. Zastoupil and M. Moir (eds) (2000), The Great Indian Education Debate: Documents Relating to the Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy, 1781–1843 (pp. 161–173). Routledge.
Menezes de Souza, L. M. (2019). Glocal languages, coloniality and globalization from below. In M. Guilherme and L. M. Menezes de Souza (eds), Glocal languages and critical intercultural awareness: The south answers back (pp. 17–41). Routledge.
Menezes de Souza, L. M. (2023a). Foreword. In B. Antia and S. Makoni (eds), Southernizing sociolinguistics: Colonialism, racism, and patriarchy in language in the global south (pp. xiv–xviii). Routledge.
Menezes de Souza, L. M. (2023b). Preface. In S. Makoni, A. Kaiper-Marquez and L. Mokena (eds), The Routledge handbook of language and the global south/s (pp. xxiii–xxvi). Routledge.
Mignolo, W. and Walsh, C. (2018). On decoloniality: Concepts, analytics, praxis. Duke University Press.
Mirvahedi, S. H. (2020). Examining family language policy through realist social theory. Language in Society, 50(3), 389–410. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404520000287
Pinto, R. (2007). Between empires: Print and politics in Goa. Oxford University Press.
Ranciére, J. (2010). Dissensus. Continuum.
Santos, B. de S. (2003). Entre Próspero e Caliban: colonialismo, pós colonialismo e inter-identidade. Novos Estudos Cebrap, 66, 98–104.
Santos, B. de S. (2007). Beyond abyssal thinking. Review, 30, 1–66. Retrieved on 4 November 2023 from https://www.jstor.org/stable/40241677
Santos, B. de S. (2018). The end of the cognitive empire. Duke University Press.
Sevinç, Y. and Mirvahedi, S. (2023). Emotions and multilingualism in family language policy. International Journal of Bilingualism, 27(2), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069221131762
Spolsky, B. (2007). Towards a theory of language policy. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 22(1). Retrieved on 5 March 2023 from https://repository.upenn.edu/wpel/vol22/iss1/1
Spolsky, B. (2019). A modified and enriched theory of language policy (and management). Language Policy, 18, 323–338. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-018-9489-z
Veronelli, G. (2015). The coloniality of language: Race, expressivity, power and the darker side of modernity. Wagadu, 13, 108–134. Retrieved on 4 November 2023 from https://sites.cortland.edu/wagadu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2015/07/5-FIVE-Veronelli.pdf
