Business as Usual? (Re)conceptualizations and the Multilingual Turn in Education. The Case of Mother Tongue

Abstract

This chapter takes a critical stance towards the multilingual turn, particularly on the claim that some well-established concepts in language education should be reconfigured or even put away, as they are considered unsuitable for describing the new world linguistic order. The concept ‘mother tongue’ will come under scrutiny in order to discuss its place in the current epistemological landscape of applied linguistics and language education. I will propose the articulation between an ethic and an emic perspective in the study of the multilingual self and thus the need to respect subjects’ choices of concepts to describe the relationship they establish with the different languages of their repertoires. This articulation will prevent the ‘Chronicle of a Heuristic Death Foretold’ and will balance the power of two groups of experts—researchers and multilingual subjects—in the framing of a common conceptual landscape.