Subject-Specific Academic Language Versus Mathematical Discourse

Abstract

The significance of language for the learning of mathematics has long been thematised in mathematics education research. Since Austin and Howson provided the first overview of the state of research in 1979, the field has become more differentiated. The present article will discuss one area of research emerging from this differentiation—multilingual contexts. This example shows how mathematics and language as a research field has developed from dichotomous approaches towards the idea that the language of mathematics is characterised differently in different cultural and group contexts, thus emphasising discursive aspects. This trend gives rise to the question of how the individual resources of participants can be acknowledged and exploited in groups with different abilities, while simultaneously providing the participants with the necessary linguistic support to participate in the linguistic discourse of that group.