International Journal of Multilingualism, 2015

Vol. 12, No. 2, 151161, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2015.1009371

INTRODUCTION
Multilingualism and literacy: attitudes and policies
Susana A. Eisenchlas*, Andrea C. Schalley and Diana Guillemin
School of Languages and Linguistics, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD, Australia
(Received 14 January 2015; accepted 14 January 2015)

In this special issue we shine light on the relationship between multilingualism and
literacy and on dominant forces that shape it. Here we present a selection of peerreviewed papers presented originally at the Multilingualism and Literacy workshop held
at the 19th International Congress of Linguists in Geneva, 2127 July 2013. That
workshop explored the impact of multilingualism on the literacy development of both
children and adults, seeking to identify how literacy skills or lack of them in one language
can affect development of literacy in other language(s). This special issue focuses on two
particular factors that strongly affect achievement of literacy in multilingual contexts
educational policies and societal attitudes and therefore also considers community
responses these may generate.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank the Multilingualism and Literacy
workshops International Program Committee for their assistance in helping us to select
the abstracts for presentation and thank workshop participants and audience for
constructive comments and suggestions. We are also grateful to the editors of
International Journal of Multilingualism, Professor Danuta Gabrys-Barker and Professor
Eva Vetter, for the opportunity to share these papers with a wider audience. Last but not
least, we express our gratitude to the papers peer reviewers, whose expertise and
assistance have helped make this special issue possible.

Background to this issue

Living in an increasingly multilingual world, we are interested in how languages do and
do not coexist in and among societies and individuals. As editors of this special issue,
we share the view that linguistic diversity should be actively cherished for the wealth of
personal, social and economic benefits it brings to individuals and communities (see
Bialystok, 2001), rather than simply tolerated or worse, ignored or suppressed. We
believe that maintenance and development of ones home language is a human right, as
recognized in several international conventions (Singh, n.d.).1 Moreover, we argue that
for minority language speakers, it is essential to develop literacy skills in their home
language (where the language has a written form), as well as in the mainstream language,
if high levels of proficiency in the home language are to be achieved and maintained.
This is where language policies have a crucial role to play.

*Corresponding author. Email: S.eisenchlas@griffith.edu.au

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However, a cursory exploration of language policies across the globe reveals that in
most countries widespread societal and individual bi/multilingualism runs counter to the
language policies formulated under the mainstream ideologies of governments and
implemented through national and subnational education systems and programmes, as
illustrated by the papers in this issue. Needless to say, language policies in general and
education policies in particular do not exist in a sociopolitical vacuum but stem from, and
in turn inform, and indeed are used to inform, societal attitudes and practices. In the case
of minority languages education, the biggest challenge speakers and communities face is
overcoming the monolingual bias, at both societal and individual levels, that still operates
in most societies.
This special issue is motivated by our conviction that individual and societal interests
can be furthered by re-examination of language policies and attitudes in light of current
research findings, and by recognition that so-called minority languages are significant,
although often squandered, resources in our multilingual multiethnic societies. Thus, one
aim of this special issue is to raise awareness of the increasing personal, social and
economic costs of illiteracy that result from language education policies in various
regions of the world. The second aim is to showcase initiatives taken by minority
language-speaking individuals and groups, both within and outside the formal education
system, to redress the lack of institutional support for their languages.
We begin this introduction by debunking the monolingual bias at both societal and
individual levels. We then introduce the papers that comprise this special issue, each
illustrating different perspectives and approaches formulated to deal with the practical
challenges and opportunities posed by the quest for literacy in the context of
multilingualism.
Normative societal monolingualism
The precise number of languages spoken worldwide is still a matter of discussion. Debate
hinges, among other factors, on the definition of language and its theoretical and
empirical distinction from dialect. Most estimates range between 5000 and 7000
languages (Crystal, 1987; Tucker, 1999). Ethnologue, the most comprehensive catalogue
of the worlds languages, lists 7105 distinct living languages (https://www.ethnologue.
com/world). Since there are only 193 United Nations recognized sovereign member
states, a simple calculation highlights an obvious conclusion: there is no one-to-one
correlation between languages and nation states. Since the number of languages exceeds
the number of countries by almost 39 to 1, it can be safely concluded that languages
coexist at close proximities and that multilingualism is a well-established phenomenon
across the globe. Adding dialects to this equation significantly strengthens this point.
Although the concentration of languages is greater in some countries than in others,
there are very few, if any, monolingual countries. Even Japan, which is typically
considered one of the most monolingual countries, has three small linguistic minorities:
Ainu, Koreans and Chinese (Grosjean, 1982) as well as sizeable numbers of expatriates
speaking a wide variety of languages. English language is not only a compulsory school
subject, it has a palpable presence, especially through Japans relationship with the USA
through post-Second World War occupation and consequent security support and through
advertising appeal. Even so, less than a quarter of the worlds countries officially
recognize two or more languages (Tucker, 1999). As Clyne (2005, p. 169) noted, many
countries are still caught in the nineteenth century notion of the language based
monocultural nation state in an era of unprecedented migration and international and

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intercultural intertwining.2 Yet even countries that recognize officially more than one
language usually fail to achieve equal status for all the languages spoken in their
territories.
Languages are not socially or politically equal, and some languages enjoy higher
prestige and support than others. The 2009 Bolivian Constitution, for instance, lists 36
Indigenous languages as official languages, in addition to Spanish. However, in practice,
the onus is on all Bolivians to master Spanish if they seek to achieve social mobility,
while there is no real incentive for Spanish first-language speakers to master any of the
Indigenous languages listed in the constitution, some of which are endangered or even
extinct. Another example of linguistic inequality in a multilingual setting can be found in
Canada, an officially bilingual country where the two mainstream languages of English
and French coexist despite substantial variation in the language policies of the different
provinces and territories, and a rich variety of Indigenous languages spoken nowhere
else but which is yet to cater for the educational needs of its increasingly diverse
migrant population speaking languages other than English and French. The Canadian
situation, it should be stressed, is the international norm rather than the exception when it
comes to institutional support for minority languages in multilingual settings.
Linguistic diversity has long been shaped by dislocating processes that mostly involve
the exercise of power, such as colonialism, colonization, military invasion and
annexation, displacement of populations, and nationalism, as well as migration and
educational and economic imperatives (Crystal, 1987; Liddicoat, Heugh, Curnow, &
Scarino, 2014). These reasons are clearly not mutually exclusive: Australias multilingualism, for instance, to a considerable extent stems from two main sources: British
colonization of a territory where Indigenous peoples spoke around 250 Indigenous
languages (Clyne, 2005) and extensive and ongoing migration particularly after
government restrictions on immigration were dismantled from 1966 (Department of
Immigration and Border Protection, 2012). Timor Lestes multilingualism, to give another
example, stems from the coexistence of a number of Indigenous languages spoken in the
region with further languages imposed first by Portuguese colonization (17691975) and
subsequently by Indonesias forcible annexation (19761999; see Boon & Kurver, 2015).
As distinctive and complex circumstances determine the use and status of languages
in each society and the relationships among these languages, generalizations about
multilingualism applicable across all contexts are impossible. Societies formulate
responses to linguistic diversity based on their own backgrounds, needs, resources and
ideologies, as the papers in this issue illustrate.3
The monolingual mindset/normative individual monolingualism
The discussion above concerns national and societal bi/multilingualism. However, similar
trends apply at the individual level given that across the world bilingual/multilingual
people outnumber monolingual people (Scarino, 2014; Tucker, 1999). Yet there is a
pervasive assumption, in the Western world at least, that monolingualism is the norm and
bi/multilingualism is the exception. The proliferation of books and articles on the
advantages of bi/multilingualism can be seen as evidence that the normative monolingualism assumption is alive and well. As Romaine (1995) observed, it would be
strange to find a book titled Monolingualism, since this phenomenon is taken as the
default and therefore not problematized. Being the marked option in terms of ideology
rather than demographic reality it is bilingualism that needs to be explained and
justified. To corroborate this point, in April 2014 we conducted a title search in the

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biggest online bookseller, Amazon. The search yielded titles of 74 books using the search
term monolingualism, 3101 books using bilingualism, and 1789 using multilingualism. Excluding monolingual dictionaries and books that also deal with bilingualism reduced the monolingualism list to just three titles, all on monolingualism in the
context of language standardization or discussing linguistic ideologies. Monolingualism
appears to have lost its apologists in recent times.
The scarcity of defenders of monolingualism is a relatively recent development.
Equating monolingualism with normality has a long tradition, probably starting with the
curse of Babel (Genesis, 11, pp. 58) where linguistic diversity is inflicted on humanity
as a means of punishment, to confuse their language so they will not understand each
other. Research in the early to mid-1900s similarly viewed bilingualism as a potential
mental handicap that would cause confusion in children and could result in semilingualism, that is, the inability to develop adequate levels of proficiency in any of the
languages to which children were exposed simultaneously (Skutnabb-Kangas &
Toukomaa, 1976). Current scholarship, however, has moved away from the idea that a
monolingual upbringing is preferable to a bilingual/multilingual one. Research has
documented conclusively the many cognitive, affective, psychological and social
advantages associated with bi/multilingualism in general and with biliteracy/multiliteracy
in particular (see Bialystok, 2001; Eisenchlas, Schalley, & Guillemin, 2013, for an
overview). Bi/multilingualism is also now recognized for the symbolic capital it offers to
the individual, communities and nations (Clyne, 2005). Indeed, in the globalized
economy, language is a commodity that can have market value (Bourdieu, 1977) as
well as a marker of identity.
Yet these understandings have not impacted strongly outside academic circles.
Maintenance and development of home language/s that create and sustain bi/multilingualism typically falls outside the scope of educational institutions (cf. Liddicoat &
Curnow, 2014). Migrant/refugee parents and carers still struggle with potentially negative
consequences of their decision to raise children with more than one language. In some
migration countries, educators or other well-intentioned parties may still urge migrant/
refugee parents to switch to their new countrys mainstream language at home
irrespective of their proficiency in that language if they want their children to succeed
academically. The decision to maintain the home language is made even harder when the
home language is perceived negatively in the wider community or has little or no
institutional support, or when the cultural practices and norms of minority groups clash
with mainstream educational practices (as discussed by Stavans with regard to Ethiopians
in Israel, 2015). In these situations, minority languages become relegated to the private
domain. Speakers seldom develop literacy in these languages, restricting their ability to
realize their linguistic potential to the fullest and reap the multiple benefits mentioned
above.

Why this special issue?

Our discussion so far points to the following paradoxes. First, while in most countries
linguistic diversity is a visible and audible reality, it is still recognized as a marked
occurrence in public discourse, and at times as something to be tolerated rather than
encouraged. Further, while solid research validates the claim that advantages accrue to
those with proficiency in more than one language, in many national and subnational
contexts assimilationist policies deny institutional investment to support minority

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language development. This lack of government commitment is particularly detrimental

to acquiring literacy in a home language, the topic of this issue.
Literacy is a very fragile skill. While acquisition of a home language is typically
through exposure, literacy in that language must be learnt. Research has shown that initial
literacy in the home language facilitates, rather than hinders, the acquisition of literacy in
additional languages (e.g. Benson, 2005; Bialystok, 2001). Since there is consensus that
literacy is essential for academic success, it can be argued that investing time and effort in
developing literacy in the home language first can enhance the scholastic experience and
achievements of children whose home language is a minority language. Many of these
children are considered to be at risk when submersed in mainstream schooling without
sufficient additional support. Yet few parents feel confident about their ability to develop
their childrens literacy skills in the home language. In some refugee communities fleeing
from protracted war, a high number of adults are illiterate themselves, so there is little
parents can do to foster literacy in their children. Furthermore, migrant and refugee
communities may not be concentrated in one geographical area, making provision of
home language literacy in ethnic/community/Saturday schools, which could complement mainstream schooling, impractical. Lack of resources and trained teachers
compounds the problem, in particular for smaller and more vulnerable communities.
These challenges bring us to the title of this special issue, Policies and Attitudes, and
to the question of the interplay between these factors. Do attitudes shape policies, or do
policies shape attitudes? Or is this another chicken and egg situation in which both these
constructs impact upon each other? If, indeed, attitudes affect policies, whose attitudes are
incorporated when policies are decided, whose voices are heard and whose interests are
served; as Bourdieu put it, who has the right to speech, i.e., to the legitimate language,
the authorized language which is also the language of authority (1977, p. 648).
As Bourdieu (1977, p. 648) has argued, language is not only an instrument of
communication or even of knowledge, but also an instrument of power. Educational
programmes and practices in general, and decisions about language of instruction and
minority language maintenance more specifically, are defined by the interests of dominant
groups (Bourdieu, 1977; Martin-Jones & Heller, 1996). Schools, as social institutions,
play a crucial role in naturalizing or normalizing relations of power (Martn Rojo, 2014),
thus upholding the status quo or helping to create a new one if that is sought by those
who hold dominant power.
Subordinate groups, although limited in their access to power and capacity for
influence vis--vis mainstream society, are not totally powerless. Minority groups can
strategically position themselves with respect to the obstacles posed by the limits on their
access to opportunities by enacting greater or lesser degrees of resistance and
contestation. Here we must note that neither minority groups nor their responses are
necessarily homogenous. Numerous examples show sectors within these groups at times
embrace mainstream policies that they consider to be conducive to their own
advancement. One is the 1998 vote in favour of Proposition 227 (a.k.a. English for the
children) in California. This Proposition, which effectively banned bilingual education,
was passed by a 69% margin that included a significant proportion of Latino parents
concerned that their children would if educated bilingually fail to achieve the
linguistic abilities valued in mainstream educational and professional contexts (Johnson &
Martinez, 1999). Li and Chuk (2015) provide more recent evidence from Hong Kong
that members of minority elites may choose to master the dominant language at the
expense of, rather than alongside the home language, as a possible means of social
mobility. While these initiatives may be successful in terms of enculturation into, and

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perhaps upward social mobility in, the mainstream culture, the price minority, communities
pay is often home language attrition and the failure to benefit from the well-documented
advantages of a bi/multilingual upbringing.
Cooper (1989, p. 182) claimed succinctly that to plan language is to plan society,
and in line with proposals summarized above, warns that language planning is typically
motivated by efforts to secure or maintain interests (p. 183). Thus, it is unlikely that
initiatives that can lead to more equal and inclusive education policies and education
outcomes will be imposed from above. Still, they can be initiated at the community level
and led by grassroots initiatives, as evidenced by formulation of the 1987 National
Languages Policy in Australia, as Schalley, Guillemin, and Eisenchlas (2015) discuss.
Social change happens when communities extend their aspirations beyond the restrictive
language policies of the day. Groups then start developing and implementing their own
solutions to the challenges they face, at times within the existing educational system, at
times outside and independently of it. Weth (2015), for example, describes the initiatives
of Moroccan Arabic (MA)-speaking children to write in their vernacular for the first time
using French orthographic conventions, providing evidence of bilingual childrens
metalinguistic abilities. Examples of education and language policies in multilingual
settings, as well as attitudes held and initiatives taken in various contexts to redress the
resulting inequalities, are the focus of this special issue.
Organization and overview of this issue
The papers selected for this special issue are original investigations dealing with policies,
attitudes and practices that impact on bi/multilingual literacy acquisition by children and
adults. Since their focus is upon practical matters, the papers acknowledge theoretical
ground as the basis for their discussion, but do not explore central concepts that are
carefully defined and critiqued in theoretical/conceptual studies. The geographical areas
discussed in these papers are Australia (Schalley, Guillemin and Eisenchlas), Hong Kong
(Li and Chuk), Israel (Stavans), Timor-Leste (Boon and Kurvers) and France (Weth). In
terms of the age of learners under consideration, the papers span widely, including
emergent literacy (Stavans), primary schoolers (Schalley et al., Weth), university students
(Li and Chuk) and illiterate adults (Boon and Kurvers). The thematic sequence of papers
begins with educational policies and moves through a continuum across different learner
ages, looking at both formal and informal educational settings.
As mentioned early in this introduction, one of the most common sources of
multilingualism is migration. Countries that are strong targets of migration usually
experience a tension between support for the official language(s) and attitudes towards
the minority languages of migrants and refugees. This tension is felt particularly with
education policies and practices. The paper by Schalley, Guillemin and Eisenchlas,
Multilingualism and assimilationism in Australias literacy-related educational policies,
focuses on Australia, where more than 300 languages are spoken and where 19% of the
population aged over five years speaks uses a language other than English at home. The
authors overview successive government education policies and plans formulated and
implemented from 1987, when Australia proposed the first comprehensive national policy
on languages in an English-speaking country. By Australias current policy standards, that
policy was remarkable in its explicit support for multilingualism, which the policy
perceived and acknowledged as an asset to the wider community. The authors analysis of
policy documents reveals a steady narrowing in policy focus over time, paralleled by a
marked change in government attitudes towards minority languages, moving on to

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recognize these as a potential hindrance to its speakers use of the national language,
English, and in later documents plainly ignored.
The change in policy attitude towards multilingualism was motivated by, inter alia,
the finding that Australia lags behind other English-speaking nations on literacy, with
25% of Year 4 students failing to meet the minimum reading standard for their age.
Children with a minority language as their first language were said to represent one of the
most vulnerable groups with respect to achieving adequate levels of literacy. In a remedial
move, the philosophy and emphasis of education policy were shifted to focus exclusively
on English literacy, and the push for multilingualism was abandoned in favour of
assimilationist policies. The authors thus point to the negative correlation the more
multilingual Australia became, the more assimilationist were the education policies, and
the more monolingual the orientation of the society. These education policies fail to
address the particular needs of children whose first language is not English. Neither do
they explore whether the academic challenges these children face could have been
diminished had the children been encouraged to develop literacy in their home language
first, and supported in this endeavour. The authors recommend better informed
philosophy and more carefully considered policy that promotes maintenance of home
languages and supports literacy acquisition in home languages so children, families,
communities and nation can reap the educational, cognitive, social and affective benefits
of bilingual upbringing.
Stavans paper, Enabling bi-literacy patterns in Ethiopian immigrant families in
Israel: A socio-educational challenge, focuses on a community that migrated to Israel in
the 1990s, has a low socio-economic status, limited schooling and non-Western oral or
literate cultural traditions. The academic achievement of youths in this community lags
behind that of their Israeli peers, but the school system has done little to bridge this gap.
This paper focuses on pre-literate Ethiopian children and the socialization practices
employed by their families before children start the formal schooling process. The author
explores parental attitudes towards both the home language and the target language,
parents understandings of the role they play in their childrens education, and pre-literacy
practices in which parents engage with their children, which may facilitate or hinder the
transition from home to school. Data were collected from 67 dyads consisting of
Ethiopian Amharic-speaking parents and 37+ years old children, and included a
questionnaire on language attitudes and use, and extended discourse tasks, which were
recorded.
The results provided evidence of wide-ranging discrepancies between the practices
these parents engaged in, and their attitudes to formal schooling vis--vis mainstream
Israeli parental practices. On parents roles in education, the questionnaire data revealed
that in general Ethiopian immigrant parents engage in their childrens educational and
social life until the child reaches first grade. But once schooling begins, Ethiopian parents
unlike Israeli parents disengage from the childs education, usually relinquishing
maintenance of the first language, culture and traditions. To investigate preparation
activities for later literacy development, parents were asked to perform various extended
discourse tasks. The data showed that Ethiopian parents prefer oral to written discourse as
the anchor for their literacy-driven parentchild interaction, and resort to descriptions and
folk narratives coinciding with expected vocabulary use and the cannons of narrative
syntax in their native language and culture. These practices may hinder the transition
between informal home education and formal schooling and partly explain the gaps in
ability between these children and their Israeli classmates. The paper recommendation

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that the institutionalized language education policy be made more culturally and
linguistically inclusive to ease the transition between the two literacy traditions.
Weths paper, Orthographic competence among multilingual school children: Writing
Moroccan Arabic in France, discusses a study of literacy acquisition in a multilingual
society by exploring the written production of 10 young multilingual children of MA
background growing up in France. The participants were exposed to French literacy
practices at school, and to Standard Arabic (SA) classes delivered twice a week during
class time. However, SA is neither spoken nor written in the home, and instead is
available in the form of Koranic calligraphy, or cadres that emphasize the sacred status
of texts from the Koran. Unlike the situation of migrant children in countries where no
institutional support for their minority languages is available, these children also attended
optional MA classes as extra-curricular activities financed by the Moroccan Government.
Since MA is not generally used for written purposes, the extra-curricular tuition children
received did not focus on literacy development.
This study investigated whether children would use their knowledge of the writing
systems they have already been exposed to in order to produce an orthographic
representation of their home language, and, if so, whether they model their production
on French or SA. Data were collected through a written production task, in which
children were asked to write a narrative in both French and MA based on a picture story.
This task required that children rely on the knowledge of the writing systems they had
already acquired to create a writing system for MA, devising phonemegrapheme
correspondences and finding solutions for consistent representation of lexemes and
morphemes. All children used Roman orthography to produce their stories. Systematic
analysis of the childrens written productions provided evidence for a structured system
that exploited the participants knowledge of their second language (French) orthographic
rules to conceive a new writing system in their native language. These children had not
used Arabic as a model for their written production. Despite exposure to written Arabic at
home and in school tuition, literacy in this language was low for all the participants, and
limited to passive recognition.
Li and Chuks paper, South Asian students needs for Cantonese and written Chinese
in Hong Kong: A linguistic study, focuses on postcolonial Hong Kong and on changes
in Hong Kongs language policy after the UK returned Hong Kong sovereignty to the
Peoples Republic of China in 1997. Hong Kongs language policy is currently
characterized by biliteracy and trilingualism. HK residents are expected to be able to
read and write Chinese and English and to speak Cantonese, English and Mandarin
(Putonghua). The authors investigate the linguistic challenges facing school students from
South Asian families in Hong Kong as they learn standard written Chinese. This is a
difficult learning task for these students given that the logographic, non-alphabetic script
is based not on Cantonese but on Mandarin, the mainstream education system lacks
academic support for students of diverse linguistic backgrounds, there are cultural
inconsistencies between the Confucian ethics embedded in the curriculum and the culture
and religious values of South Asian families, and the low levels of Chinese literacy in the
South Asian migrant communities make parents unable to help their children. Under
these circumstances, few South Asian students succeed in the mainstream school system,
but segregation in designated schools fails to create a language-rich environment that
facilitates these students ability to learn Chinese. The dropout and school failure rates are
alarmingly high and few manage to develop a level of Chinese literacy that will allow
them access to education and career opportunities and enable their social mobility.

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To investigate learners perspectives on the factors that enhance or hinder their

acquisition of Mandarin-based written Chinese and Cantonese in Hong Kong, Li and
Chuk conducted focus group interviews with 15 South Asian students studying towards a
Bachelor of Education in English Language. These students were atypical in that they
belonged to the 1% of South Asians admitted into an undergraduate programme in
government-funded university-level institutions. The data revealed that despite their
academic achievements, these students generally experienced great levels of difficulty
developing Chinese literacy. Although most of them were proficient in two or more
languages, they were unable to use their bi/multilingual repertoire as a resource, as the
difference in writing systems did not allow for the transfer of skills. The only exceptions
were the students who had been enculturated into the HK education system since early
childhood. The authors offer explanations for their findings and conclude with specific
recommendations for policy change.
Boon and Kurvers paper, Adult literacy education in Timor-Leste: Multi-layered
multilingualism, focuses on language policy-in-education in a young multilingual nation
with a high level of illiteracy. Having emerged in 2002 from a long colonial past, first as a
Portuguese colony (17691975) and then as a territory forcibly incorporated into
Indonesia (19761999), Timor-Leste has engaged actively in the process of nation
building. This paper turns to literacy acquisition in that process. While previous research
in this field is mostly concerned with child literacy acquisition, this paper explores adult
literacy development in multilingual classes, where both teachers and learners speak three
languages on average and both teachers and learners have to operate in Tetum, the official
language, which is not necessarily their first language.
This paper (1) compares the ideals of language policy vs. teaching and learning
practice in adult literacy classes; (2) investigates teachers and learners proficiency in
various languages, and their use of these in everyday life and classroom interactions; and
(3) investigates the impact of language proficiency on the development of literacy in adult
learners. Interviews and classroom observations revealed extensive use of regional
languages for adult literacy classes, and that proficiency in Tetum was not necessarily an
advantage for the acquisition of literacy in Tetum. This is attributed to use of regional
languages in the adult literacy classes. The findings of this study suggest that resources
may be developed in these languages for teaching literacy especially since both teachers
and learners are proficient in regional languages. If indeed using regional languages in
adult literacy classes facilitates the acquisition of literacy in Tetum as L2, this study
provides further evidence (and supports findings of much recent research) that literacy in
L1 facilitates literacy in L2.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes
1.

2.

3.

See, for instance, the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (1989) (International Labour
Organisation, 19962014), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations Human
Rights, 1989) and the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant
Workers and Members of their Families (United Nations Human Rights, 1990).
The idea of the monolingual monocultural state was a myth even at the time of the
consolidation of the modern nation state. As Hobsbawm (1996, p. 1066) noted, this imagined
community would have surprised the founders of the original nation states. For them, the
unity of the nation was political and not socio-anthropological.
See Liddicoat and Curnow (2014) for additional examples.

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