Heteroglossia as practice and pedagogy

Abstract

This chapter introduces the notion of ‘heteroglossia’ as a means of expanding theoretical orientations to, and understandings of, linguistic diversity. The discussion responds to contemporary debates about multilingualism and proposes that Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia offers a lens through which to view the social, political, and historical implications of language in practice. The chapter refers to the rich theoretical and empirical contributions of the authors of the volume. In recent times, scholars in sociolinguistics Sociolinguistic have found that language use in late modern societies is changing. Rather than assuming that homogeneity and stability represent the norm, mobility Mobility, mixing Mixing, political dynamics, Political dynamics and historical embedding Historical embedding are now central concerns in the study of languages, language groups, and communication (Blommaert and Rampton 2011) Blommaert, J.Rampton, B. As large numbers of people migrate across myriad borders, and as advances in digital technology make available a multitude of linguistic resources at the touch of a button or a screen, so communication is in flux and in development. In these conditions, multilingualism Multilingualism is the norm. At the same time, the notion of separate languages as bounded systems of specific linguistic features may be insufficient for analysis of language in use and in action (Jørgensen et al. 2011) Jørgensen, J.N.Karrebæk, M.S.Madsen, L.M.Møller, J.S. The idea of ‘a language’ therefore may be important as a social construct, but it is not suited as an analytical lens through which to view language practices. This volume responds to the limitations of an approach to understanding linguistic diversity which relies on the naming and separation of languages—that is, an approach which relies on the concept of ‘multilingualism’ to describe the language competence of speakers in the context of language diversity and language contact. We propose a return to Mikhail Bakhtin’s theoretical and practical notion of ‘heteroglossia’ HeteroglossiaBakhtin’s conceptions of as a lens through which to view the social, political, and historical implications of language in practice. First, however, we briefly review some recent developments in the study of multilingualism.