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Approaching migration, intercultural contact and language learning

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DOI: 10.13140/2.1.3172.3209

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Approaching migration, intercultural contact and language

learning

Barbara Geraghty and Jean E Conacher

In 1969, at the age of seventeen, the writer Vikram Seth left his family home in Calcutta

and set out for London to continue his education. Like many migrants before and since,

he went to join family; his Indian great-uncle, Shanti, and German-Jewish great-aunt,

Henny, had met in 1933 in Berlin, where he was pursuing dentistry studies. Unable to

find work as a foreigner in Hitler’s Germany, Shanti moved first to Edinburgh to re-

qualify and then to London. Only five weeks before the outbreak of war, Henny followed

him, leaving behind in Berlin a sister and mother who would not survive the

concentration camps. Neither Shanti nor Henny ever returned permanently to the

countries of their birth, but made a life for themselves in London, using German as their

home language, Shanti maintaining links with India and Henny acquiring British

nationality. Reflecting much later upon all their lives, Seth comes to recognise that, across

the generations, he and his relatives share the experiences and emotions of the long-term

migrant, living in the space where multiple languages, cultures and traditions meet and

interact:

Shaken about the globe, we live our fractured lives. Enticed or fleeing, we re-form

ourselves, taking on partially the coloration of our new backgrounds. Even our

tongues are alienated and rejoined – a multiplicity that creates richness and

confusion. Both Shanti and Henny were in the broader sense exiled; each found in

their fellow exile a home. (Seth, 2005: 403)

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The Seth family’s experiences are shared by millions of people across the globe at any

one time; living in, and with, diversity is both the challenge and condition of the post-

modern world, and it has been argued (Vertovec, 2009: 2) that this phenomenon has been

intensified by the growth in globalization, a development which has been defined in

various ways, emphasising its economic, cultural and social aspects (Braziel and Mannur,

2003: 10-1; Mukherjee and Krieckhaus, 2011).

For our current purposes, two recent discussions of globalization appear particularly

apposite in foregrounding key characteristics which will underpin discussions in this

volume. Citing Held, McGrew, Goldblatt and Perraton (1999), Vertovec (2009) argues

that globalization ‘has entailed the increasing extent, intensity, velocity and impact of

global interconnectedness across a broad range of human domains’ (p. 2), while Collins,

Slembrouck and Baynham (2009) explain the concept by what ‘it transcends: the nation-

state, itself a unit of power and identity of considerable scale and breadth… surpassed by

transnational, globe-spanning movements of peoples, commodities and cultural media’ (p.

1). In striving for a balanced representation of the concept, however, it is important to

recall Bauman’s prescient critique of globalization where weakened nation-states are

reduced to ‘securing [the] modicum of order required for the conduct of business, but

need not be feared as effective brakes on the global companies’ freedom’ (1998: 42).

In the chapters which follow, contributors adopt a range of perspectives to question

how legitimately one can speak of the eclipse of the nation-state and to discuss the impact,

both positive and negative, on people’s lives of the increased speed, scope and

multiplicity of world-wide connections in situations of intercultural contact brought about

frequently, but not exclusively, by migration.

2
 With technological advances and the growth in short-term travel for work and

tourism, many people find themselves coming into contact with cultures other than their

own, and such contact can now happen equally well without their ever leaving home. The

need for many to engage with hybridity and multiple identities amid constant change

ensures that people, operating as individuals, groups or communities, are constantly

negotiating the challenges of intercultural contact through languages with which they are

more, or less, familiar. At the heart of this volume, therefore, lies an exploration of what

actually happens to both languages and their users when cultures come into contact. What

actions do supranational institutions, nation states, communities and individuals take in

response to questions raised by the increasingly diverse forms of migration experienced in

a globalized world, where top-down and bottom-up impulses exist in at times antagonistic,

at times constructive, tension?

Against this backdrop, our thesis is that the increasing diversity in interpretation of

intercultural contact, language learning and migration apparent within the current

research literature requires a multi-faceted exploration of how these intertwine and a

recognition of the need for greater diversity in methodological approach. Consequently, a

number of the contributions engage both with the data themselves and the actual research

process, addressing issues and challenges of gathering and analysing data. The volume

not only engages with the type of research more often associated with Applied Linguistics

but also explores the use of narrative, image and song as cultural manifestations of

aspects of language and cultural contact brought about by short and longer term migration.

Towards the end of this introduction, we will discuss the structure of the volume and

provide outlines of the individual chapters in each section. First, however, it seems

valuable to address each of our core concepts in turn, beginning with migration which so

often acts as the trigger to intercultural contact, with language learning easing the process
3
of negotiating one’s place in a new environment (while recognising that language

learning intrinsically presupposes a desire for intercultural contact, even if one never

leaves home).

[A]Migration

Since earliest hominid movements from the Rift Valley two million years ago (Larick and

Ciochon, 1996), migration has characterized and shaped individual and community lives,

and yet the term continues to evade concise definition. On closer examination, any

nuanced formulations prove value-laden and ideologically-driven, ‘the results of state

policies, introduced in response to political and economic goals and public attitudes’

(Castles, 2000: 270), while efforts to establish neutral descriptors risk dissolving into

truism. Both political and academic bodies struggle to capture increasingly diverse and

complex patterns of human movement within a multidimensional rubric integrating

parameters of space, time, motivation and volition, overlaid with variables such as age,

gender and ethnicity, in an endeavour to explain not just the sociocultural and linguistic

choices made by, or imposed upon, individuals and groups, but also the impact such

choices have for broader societal and global developments.

Multidisciplinary approaches provide an important relativizing function to current

debates, allowing individual examples of migrant experience to be valued both for their

unique story and their contribution to broader trends in migration studies. Historical

studies illustrate that many of our current concerns relating to migration, including power

dynamics, citizenship and language politics, were already to be observed in ancient times

(Koslowski 2002) and that remarkably similar patterns of migration have occurred across

the globe, not just in Europe and the Americas, but also in Africa and north and east Asia,

with ‘[t]he near contemporaneous rise of global migration suggest[ing] that non-
4
Europeans were very much involved in the expansion and integration of the world

economy’ (McKeown, 2004:171).

Interwoven with the study of migration, and partly facing the same difficulties of

definition, is the study of ‘diaspora’, frequently presented in relation to particular subsets

of migrants who are dispersed beyond their original state borders and yet retain a loyalty

to their ‘homeland’ which shapes their values, identity and a communal sense of loss. The

clear setting of boundaries between the diasporic community and their host society and

the establishment of diaspora organisations appear to nourish the preservation of a

distinctive identity and a common sense of purpose (Brubaker, 2005; Sheffer, 2003). Yet,

as Brubaker posits, ‘it may be more fruitful, and certainly more precise, to speak of

diasporic stances, projects, claims, idioms, practices, and so on’ (2005: 13), firmly

placing such ‘personal and cultural positioning’ (Hermans, 2001) within the realm of

Anderson’s (1983) ‘imagined communities’.

That the term has not lost its cultural and political force in national and

supranational efforts to exploit its emotional pull is clear from calls for Africa to counter

the sustained ‘brain drain’ of its professional elite with the positive approach adopted by

other countries such as India and China in encouraging their diasporas to reinvest in

national development (Davies, 2007); thus, ‘diaspora’, often interpreted negatively as lost

human and cultural capital to the homeland, is reconstructed into a positive economic and

cultural asset.

Recent interpretations of migration seem increasingly marked by the interplay

between top-down measures of (supra)national bodies and the bottom-up actions of

individual migrants. Efforts ‘to encourage, restrict, select, protect, distribute, and monitor

migration’ (McKeown, 2004: 173) can be traced back to the growing importance of

nation-building in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the widespread introduction
5
of official documentation, such as passports, as material evidence of belonging (Hoerder

and Macklin, 2006: 796). Indeed, some researchers view the nineteenth century as ‘an age

of experimentation in migration control’ (Castles, 2004: 856), arguing that such

regulation is at least as important in explaining migration patterns today as globalized

market forces; the establishment of strong national borders informs who belongs, and

who does not, and creates sanctioned routes towards (partial) belonging (Calder, Seglow

and Cole, 2010).

In response, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have experienced a growing

sub-categorization of the terms ‘migration’ and ‘migrant’; while allowing governments to

establish differentiated approaches to the in- and outflows of particular groups crossing

their borders, this development can be seen to obscure the inter-related nature of all

global migration processes (McKeown, 2004: 171). Certainly, what it does create is an

over-riding atmosphere of uncertainty and tension:

The question of who is a ‘stranger’ and who ‘does not belong’, however, is also

continuously being modified and contested, with growing ethnic, cultural and

religious tensions within as well as between societies and states. Politics of

belonging have come to occupy the heart of the political agenda almost everywhere

in the world. (Yuval-Davis, 2011: 2)

Nonetheless, migration for the individual remains an intensely personal, and

sometimes painful, experience, for ‘migrants are not isolated individuals who react to

market stimuli and bureaucratic rules, but social beings who seek to achieve better

outcomes for themselves, their families and their communities by actively shaping the

migratory process’ (Castles, 2004: 860). Increasingly, in defining migration, bodies such
6
as UNESCO acknowledge the power of such migrant agency as a counter-balance to

national aspirations and the long-term consequences of such a positive tension for all

concerned:

Migration is an important factor in the erosion of traditional boundaries between

languages, cultures, ethnic group [sic], and nation-states. Even those who do not

migrate are affected by movements of people in or out of their communities, and by

the resulting changes. Migration is not a single act of crossing a border, but rather a

lifelong process that affects all aspects of the lives of those involved. (UNESCO, no

date)

While research would indicate that the nation-state remains resilient (Thiel, 2011)

despite forces from above (through, for example, the creation of supranational entities

such as the European Union) or below (for example, the rejection at local level of existing

political ‘national’ boundaries), the processes of globalization and the communication

revolution have certainly made national borders increasingly porous. This has led

researchers (Hoerder, 2006; Thiel, 2011) to question the extent to which ‘transnationalism’

(Glick Schiller, Basch and Blanc-Szanton, 1992), predicated as it is upon an

understanding of bounded nations where migrants ‘were forging and sustaining multi-

stranded social relations that linked their societies of origin and settlement’ (p. iv),

remains a useful term to use, despite its intended recognition of the multiple border-

crossings that many people experience in their lives. In fact, in defining transnationalism

in a more nuanced way as ‘the flow of people, ideas, goods and capital across national

territories in a way that undermines nationality and nationalism as discrete categories of

identification, economic organization, and political constitution’, Braziel and Mannur

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(2003: 8) point to the inherent contradiction in the term – the more frequently borders are

crossed, the more difficult they become to hold firm.

The reality is today much more complex. The concept of ‘transnationalism’ must at

least be complemented, if not immediately subsumed, by the concept of ‘transculturalism’

(Hoerder, 2006; 2013) which facilitates a multimodal understanding of personal and

group identity formation. Herrmann and Brewer (2004: 8) identify three main ways in

which group identity can be configured: as nested identities, each fitting neatly inside the

other like the layers of a Russian Matryoshka doll; as cross-cutting, where some members

of one identity group also belong to another – as within the intersection of a Venn

diagram; as totally separate, where members of two identity groups have nothing in

common. While the first and second configurations point to the possibility of the

development of Bhabha’s ‘third space’ (1994), which is inhabited apart from either the

home or new culture, Hoerder (2013) rejects this interpretation and, drawing on

Appadurai (1991), suggests that ‘[t]ransculture, in contrast to third space, emphasizes the

overlapping, interactive, processual character of such scapes’ (p. 2968), whereby it

constitutes:

an everyday adjustment, negotiating, coping, accommodating in migrant lives and

those of their resident neighbours. Strategic transcultural competence involves

capabilities to act and plan life projects in multiple cultures and to choose between

elements of cultures. In the process of transculturation individuals and societies

change themselves by integrating diverse ways of life into a new dynamic everyday

culture. (p. 2968)

[A]Intercultural contact
8
Even the most apparently stable existence today is coloured by intercultural developments

and migration, as Hoerder (2006) aptly illustrates in his description of the multicultural

influences on the ‘lifeworld of a conservative couple with anti-immigrant convictions and

essentialist national identity’, sitting out in the garden after lunch and making plans for a

visit with friends, where imports such as potatoes and tulips have become such an integral

part of their lives that they are now culturally invisible (p. 93). Indeed, as we have seen,

the movement of people, and the resulting contact between different cultures, has been

such a pervasive feature of the human condition that it seems clichéd to single out the

current era as being characterized by migration. However, developments in transport have

undoubtedly increased both the speed and frequency of this type of movement (Vertovec,

2009: 15), as well as changing the character of migration in terms of who migrates, and

how. Figures from the International Organization for Migration for 2010 indicate that

there are almost one billion migrants worldwide, of whom 214 million are international

migrants and 740 million internal migrants. They estimate that the number of

international migrants could reach 405 million by 2050 (IOM, 2010; 2011).

These levels of migration have led to greater intercultural contact, and the resulting

intercultural communication, more often intercultural miscommunication, has been a

major focus of research, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century. Much of

that work resulted in guides being developed for those interacting with the ‘other’ in the

business sphere, and was based frequently on Hofstede’s definition of culture as ‘the

collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human

group from another’ (1980, cited in Nakata, 2009: 3), which enabled him to group

cultures (based on national boundaries) according to five dimensions allowing a

classification aimed at achieving greater cross-cultural understanding. While his

definition is helpful in that it emphasises that cultural norms are unwritten, developing
9
frameworks based on national boundaries risks essentialist or stereotyped images of

cultures. In any case, in a world of hypermobility – in which ‘the circulation of

commodities, people, information [and] cultural goods keeps increasing’ (Berger, 2011:

147) – and where few, if any, nations are not multicultural, equating culture with nation

becomes anachronistic.

More usefully, Sadri and Flammia (2011) assert that culture ‘is learned, … involves

the shared perceptions and values of large groups of people, ... is expressed as behaviour,

and … is dynamic and adaptive’ (p. 32). Fischer (2009) also argues that culture is passed

on through socialization and concludes that culture is a ‘shared meaning system’ (p. 29).

If the co-construction of meaning is central to communication in a shared first language,

it is obvious that the negotiation of shared meaning in a second language within an

intercultural contact situation is even more significant. Thus an individual as a social

actor develops multiple cultural identities: ‘shared self- or hetero-categorisations that

social actors develop, activate or modify in the particular interactive context, or historical

or social circumstance according to the specific interest that prompts them to act as a

group’ (Beacco, 2005: 7). In common with many other concepts discussed in this volume,

the image of culture as static and unitary can no longer be left unchallenged.

This construction of shared meaning itself is multi-layered in that it can, of course,

occur at all levels from the supranational to, and even within, the individual, as people

modify their performance of culture and identity depending on the context or interlocutor

(Dervin, 2009). Indeed, given this fluidity, Dervin’s analysis questions the terms

themselves, proposing that: ‘[identity and culture] should be seen in terms of

identification and culturality, processes rather than objects, since they are mutable’ (p.

121).

10
 The sites where intercultural contact occurs have been detailed, for instance, by

Ammon, Dittmar, Mattheier and Trudgill (2006) as ‘variable’ (p. 2357), ranging from

educational settings to healthcare, the workplace and the community. To these sites could

be added the home, travel and social networks including contact through the Internet,

email and social media. It must always be remembered, however, that migration, and the

intercultural contact which results, is not always a positive experience for either migrants

or the society where they settle; it can be triggered by, and cause, trauma, anxiety and

oppression. Hoerder (2006) argues that the trope of ‘the Uprooted’ is no longer relevant

for the experience of today’s migrant, but this confidence may not be shared by all who

find themselves leaving home. What is true is that intercultural contact today is

characterized by rapid change, greater ease of contact by advances in physical transport,

but also by dramatically increased transcultural contact brought about by computer-

mediated communication. The increase in, and diversification of, intercultural contact

radically changes the environment in which language learning take place.

[A]Language learning

Since the middle of the twentieth century, both formal and informal language learning

have been transformed by technological change. At the same time, increased participation

in mass education has enabled the development of a larger and more diverse learner

population. Formal language learning now uses technology as a matter of course,

allowing all learners equal access to intercultural contact and liberating learning from the

physical and temporal boundaries of the class. This offers increased potential for

autonomy and learner agency in choosing what, when and how learning takes place.

Outside the formal educational sphere, recent developments in interactive technologies

have expanded possibilities to an even more diverse population of learners.

11
 The scale and pace of change in informal learning activities in particular have led to

a questioning of some of the central tenets of language learning itself. A distinctive

feature of this type of informal activity is its pragmatic, spontaneous and unregulated

quality, where people use, adapt and acquire language as they need it. The growth of this

phenomenon, where communication takes place virtually and globally, arguably redefines

the traditional, bounded speech community and questions the hierarchical labelling of

language, dialect and vernaculars (see also Blommaert, 2011: 3-4; Varis and Wang, 2011:

71). This growing sense of flux exemplifies the productive tension between traditional

authority structures, which continuously attempt to regulate language use, and the

unstoppable energy of people getting on with their everyday lives.

Whether the learning is formal or informal, the answer to the question of what

language should be learned and to what level has also changed since the 1990s, with the

‘the idealized normative view’ (Cook, 1999: 189) of the native speaker, traditionally held

up as the norm for the non-native learner to approximate, seen to have ‘outlived its use’

(Kramsch, 1998: 27). Cook recommends instead that second-language users be seen as

‘multicompetent language users rather than as deficient native speakers’ (Cook, 1999:

185). An example of supranational policy which attempts to take the multi-faceted nature

of language learning into account is the Council of Europe’s language policy which

aspires to plurilingualism for European citizens: ‘a degree of communicative ability in a

number of languages over their lifetime in accordance with their needs’ (Council of

Europe, 2012: no page numbers). This, it is hoped, will lead to individuals having a

repertoire of languages at different levels of competency, reflecting the ways in which

inhabitants of a transcultural world interact with and use languages.

Currently, one of the main media for interacting transculturally is the Internet.

Computers have been used in language education since the 1960s, as Warschauer and
12
Healey (1998: 57) remind us, with changes in Computer Assisted Language Learning

(CALL) reflecting modifications to models of language education from behaviourist to

communicative to socio-cognitive models. What has become known as Web 2.0, offers

users the chance to generate content, interact and use ‘the participatory potential of the

Web’ (Wang and Vásquez,2012: 412). The term refers not to ‘a new version of Web

technology but changes in the communicative uses of the underlying Web platform’

(Warschauer and Grimes, 2007: 2). The heightened level of interactivity and the increased

variety of applications offering synchronous communication has revolutionary

implications for education in general and language learning in particular.

Of course, the technology is not as important as what is done with it, and learned

using it. Applications for language learning are only as effective as the pedagogy used

with them (Levy, 2009: 775, 778); the adoption of ICT itself does not automatically bring

about improvements in teaching or learning. Lack of teacher and learner training can be a

problem, and traditional teaching approaches can continue in learning environments

bristling with the most up-to-date equipment. Vallance, Vallance and Matsui (2009)

report that in Singapore: ‘technological implementation appeared to sustain and reinforce

an instructor-focused, didactic pedagogy and not facilitate the student-centred

constructivist pedagogy anticipated’ (p. 3). As Conacher and Kelly-Holmes (2007)

remind us: ‘The term “new learning environment” is not a label reserved for technology-

rich contexts. Instead, it constitutes a state of mind, a new way of approaching the

teaching and learning environment that is characterised by diversity, flexibility, access

and equality’ (p. 28). While access to the Internet is still dependent on economic privilege

(Warschauer and Grimes, 2007: 16-7) – 2007 figures showed that 80% of the world’s

population remained off-line (Alonzo and Oiarzabal, 2010: 7) – mobile phone technology

has been adopted enthusiastically in some of the least-developed countries on the planet.
13
Mobile phone subscriptions (measured by the number of active SIM cards) in Africa rose

from 16 million in 2000 to 376 million in 2008 (Aker and Mbiti, 2010: 210), far

outstripping predictions. Greater access to technological resources facilitates learner

autonomy and radically broadens the scope of where and how language learning takes

place, and who can learn languages, potentially giving greater voice to speakers in

marginalized communities.

[A]The Contact Zone

All the essays in this collection deal with various aspects of intercultural contact within

the context of transnationalism and transculturalism, contact that can result from long-

term or target migration, shorter-term travel, study abroad, assertion of identity or by

contact with difference within one’s own country. It would seem useful to have a

construct which accommodates the diversity of the intercultural experience. Pratt’s (1991)

concept of the contact zone offers the flexibility and subtlety that the issues raised in this

volume demand. She defines this contact zone mainly in terms of geographical or

historical conflict: ‘social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash and grapple with

each other, often in high asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination – like

colonialism, slavery or their aftermaths as they are lived out across the globe today’ (p.

34). Later use of the concept has broadened its scope and offers a useful construct for

examining intercultural encounters not only in the geographical or spatial sense, but as a

social metaphor as developed by Yeoh and Willis (2005):

We take ‘contact zones’ to denote both a sense of embodied presence within

geographical space as well as a social and cultural metaphor. The concept insists on

14
 analysis of everyday encounters and everyday experiences of sameness and

difference … to view globalisation and transnationalism. (p. 271)

Viewed in this way, the contact zone provides an invaluable heuristic approach for the

exploration of a variety of institutional, national, community and individual encounters

with, and responses to, difference. This approach draws together diverse instances of

intercultural contact into a debate which promises to provide new, thought-provoking

insights.

[A]Structure

The chapters which follow reveal the profound impact that decisions made at national and

international level can have on the lives of the individual migrant, language student, or

speech community. Equally, they evaluate the broader ramifications of actions taken by

migrant communities and individual language learners around issues of language learning,

language maintenance and intercultural contact.

The volume is divided into three sections, which focus in turn on migration and

language contact (particularly language management and planning), language learning

and cultural contact (particularly new language-learning environments) and migration and

contact (particularly individual and community experiences of language contact). Each of

the sections is prefaced with a brief discussion of key themes which are interwoven across

the individual chapters and pick up threads explored across the volume, for such divisions

are, of course, to some extent arbitrary, and readers will find it quite possible, and indeed

desirable, to cross these borders (as the authors themselves have done) drawing

alternative links between the individual chapters. In so doing, a range of themes emerge,

such as negotiation of transnational identity (Borrull; Choi and Nunan; van Niele; Regan
15
and Dewaene; Skrzypek et al; Spolsky; Studer), voice (Borrull; Choi and Nunan; van

Niele; Regan and Dewaene; Spolsky; Studer; Velghe and Blommaert), autonomy

(Borrull, Sudhershan, Velghe and Blommaert) and the impact of changing technologies

on communication (Choi and Nunan; Kennedy and Furlong; Velghe and Blommaert).

Section One examines how large-scale movements of people, driven primarily by

political, economic and cultural factors, impact upon individuals, communities and

institutions, and how those involved react to top-down efforts to regulate such

environments through formal language policy and planning. Bernard Spolsky begins by

exploring the global impact of the Diaspora in his historical analysis of the Jewish

experience of migration and language management; he uncovers a continuous negotiation

of transnational identity in the creation of inter-related languages which give voice to

both local societal affiliations and a common heritage. He concludes that while migration

in itself may bring change to people’s lives, the nature of that change will be decided by

the degree of linguistic and cultural contact which ensues.

This potential for intercultural contact can prove threatening, and reaction to the

arrival of such larger migrant groups is frequently mixed, with public attitudes

increasingly driven by media representations, impacting directly on the day-to-day

experiences of individual newcomers (Pijpers, 2006). Vera Regan and Edwina Debaene

take up the example of another group with a long history of migration, exploring the

impact of local attitudes on the transnational experience of first- and second-generation

Polish migrants in France, manifested not least in the transfer of the Polish language to

children brought up in, and with, another culture.

Migration, frequently seen historically as forced by economic necessity, political

and religious intolerance, war and famine has more recently been constructed positively

within the European Union as ‘mobility’, one of the central pillars underpinning efforts to
16
develop both a strong economic entity within Europe capable of competing successfully

in the global market, and of a European identity superseding, or at least existing in

parallel to, national and regional identities. In his study of how these aspirations

potentially conflict with the EU commitment to linguistic and cultural diversity, Patrick

Studer provides a valuable insight into the thinking of EU language planners, enabling

them to articulate the challenges of multilingual intercultural communication in the space

between public rhetoric and private ideology.

In Section Two, authors examine language learning in the context of contact,

migration and technological change. Sociolinguistic categories have been modified

hugely by the processes associated with globalization. As Blommaert (2011) has found,

the former attributes of a speech community: ‘territorial fixedness, physical proximity,

sociocultural sharedness and common backgrounds’ can no longer be depended upon in

an era of super- or hyperdiversity (pp. 3-4). Larger, transcultural communities of

language users increasingly meet and communicate virtually, transnational and

transcultural ‘supergroups’ using ‘supervernaculars’, one of which is what Blommaert

(2011: 6) terms ‘mobile texting codes’ and Velghe and Blommaert (this volume) term

‘textspeak’. Their chapter examines how middle-aged women in an economically

marginalized community in South Africa learn and make use of textspeak in various ways,

investigating to what extent increased access to interactive technology allows language

learners to learn languages autonomously and informally, without having to access the

educational system. Their research also questions whether language use on the web by

communities of this type leads to cheerful anarchy, as the chapter explore how

textspeak’s norms and local variations are learned and enforced informally in a bottom-up,

learner-led process. In an interesting role-reversal, the ethnographer becomes a learner of

this dialect and the study participants, teachers. In this way, the use of ICT facilitates the
17
development of agency and voice in economically and educationally disadvantaged

communities in the developing world. That one of the participants in this research is

reported to have returned to using paper and pen (something she had had great difficulty

with at school) to make notes to support her learning and use of this new dialect

demonstrates the role that new technology can have in the teaching of ‘old’ skills.

A more commonly studied locus of intercultural contact is the migrant community

in its interaction with the majority society. While some migrants can struggle to maintain

their own language and culture, other groups can build a strong community identity at the

expense of learning the language of the surrounding society. In contrast, the chapter on

the Polish migration to Ireland by Agnieszka Skrzypek, David Singleton, Romana

Kopečková and Barbara Bidzińska examines ethnolinguistic vitality in the community,

motivation to learn English and the maintenance of Polish in Dublin, showing migrants

balancing acquisition of English with successful maintenance of Polish language and

culture.

That direct, person-to-person interaction between learners has an important role in

the development of consciousness through mediation and interpersonal relations is

demonstrated in Fionnuala Kennedy and Áine Furlong’s chapter where study abroad

students, paired with partners from the host institution, explore cultural difference

through regular meetings discussing a range of diverse topics. Interaction enables learners

to develop their consciousness of their own culture and engage consciously as mediators

of knowledge. L2 awareness is also raised by these interactions, language anxiety is

reduced and willingness to communicate is strengthened through the face-to-face tandem

exchange. This recalls the importance in oral communication of access to body language

and gesture in such exchanges. While facial expressions and gestures are visible on Skype,

subtler metalinguistic clues are not so easily picked up. Though learning takes place in a
18
traditional educational setting in the project under discussion, autonomous learning is

encouraged, and the learners’ voices are central to the methodological and analytical

approach adopted.

The use of technology in facilitating learners to assess their developing intercultural

competence is examined in Aleksandra Sudershan’s chapter, where the use of an

electronic addition to the European Language Portfolio by students from abroad studying

in Ireland is shown to enhance the autonomous development of intercultural competence.

Here, the Electronic Language Portfolio, a top-down initiative of the Council of Europe,

is supplemented with a version based on Michael Byram’s savoirs (Guilherme, 2013:

347). The research reminds us that incremental modifications to top-down supranational

actions can be applied successfully at local level.

In Section Three, the authors demonstrate how exploring individual and community

narrative through reflection, life story and song can provide us with a deeper

understanding of the experiences of those living in intercultural contact, language

learning and migration. Julie Choi and David Nunan adopt a layered approach. They

encourage individual reflection on language and cultural choices within a series of key

intercultural incidents and marry this self-reflexive, insider perspective with a reflective,

outsider commentary which simultaneously supports, and calls into question, the

linguistic and cultural assumptions made and conclusions drawn.

Núria Borrull explores the use of song to express individual and collective identity

and resistance within a repressive political regime which seeks to supplant one culture

with another. In her discussion of the role of La Nova Cançó in sustaining Catalan

language and culture through Franco’s rule, she shows how a once subversive form can

become the norm upon which future forms of cultural identity are built, while being

ignored as a new elite settles into place.

19
 Finally, in adopting a creative autonarrative approach, Irmina van Niele allows us,

at least partially, inside the unique experience of the transnational and the transcultural, as

she engages reflexively with her own life-story as an intercontinental migrant, illustrating

vividly Chambers’s (1994) point that once movement begins, the journey never ends:

Migrancy … involves a movement in which neither the points of departure nor

those of arrival are immutable or certain. It calls for a dwelling in language, in

histories, in identities that are constantly subject to mutation. Always in transit, the

promise of a homecoming – completing the story, domesticating the detour –

becomes an impossibility. (p. 5)

The diversity in content in this collection of essays is reflected equally in a diversity in

methodological approach, reflecting Jan Blommaert’s (2010) assertion that in a world

shaped by globalization, what is needed is ‘a theory of language in society... of changing

language in a changing society’ (p. 2). This volume argues that in a world where the

national paradigm seems increasingly out-dated, researchers must increasingly seek

diverse methodological approaches if they are to do justice to the diversity of experience

and response they encounter. In adopting a range of approaches, the chapters which

follow take up this challenge and uncover the rich variety of positive and negative life

stories which unfold within the contact zone.

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