![]() I explore the predictions that this proposal makes and discuss them in taking the French state as a case study that provides adequate historical context for the development of such a body modification practice in modern Europe. The social practice of monolingualism forces the faculty of language (the linguistic brain organ) into a state of functional atrophy. Like cranial shape modification in babies, foot binding, or tight-lacing of girls, the social practice of monolingualism takes advantage of the plasticity of human bodies in order to alter the natural growth of children before puberty, obtaining a shape and behaviour that conspicuously mark their bodies and deliver a desired social signal. Considering the biological foundations of human language, and the input impoverishment necessary for the realization of monolingualism, I propose that monolingualism is a social practice of body modification. As cognitive linguistics makes progress in understanding the organ that produces this multilingual faculty of language, monolingualism emerges as the marked case. ![]() Humans possess a cognitive faculty to acquire and practice multiple linguistic systems. Humans possess a cognitive faculty to acquire and practice The paper concludes with a call for the development of a framework within which to understand monolingualism and its social and educational effects. This latter strand of literature critiques the influence of the monolingual perspectives held by those who wield authority in language policy and in education. The third and most critical representation employs metaphors of disease, sickness and disability to portray monolingualism as a pathological state (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000a Oller, 1997). Perspectives from language policy documents in Australia are presented to illustrate the second representation. The second representation is of monolingualism as a limitation on cognitive, communicative, social and vocational potential (Kirkpatrick, 2000 Crozet, Liddicoat & Lo Bianco, 1999). ![]() The first is as an unmarked case, against which bilingualism and multilingualism are set as the exception. This paper will review three representations of monolingualism in the applied linguistics literature. Linguistic theories have often assumed monolingualism to be the norm (Pavlenko, 2000), and this view is often held by individual monolinguals who are speakers of a dominant language such as English (Edwards, 1994). It is frequently observed that bilingualism and multilingualism are more common in the world than monolingualism, and yet, as Romaine (1995) points out, it is rare to find a book with the title 'Monolingualism'. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |