Claire Kramsch • Teaching Local Languages in Global Settings: the European Challenge 1 Abstract. The switch from a national framework to an international framework of reference for the teaching of foreign, second and heritage languages in Europe has spurred a rethinking of what foreign language education is about. This essay examines an international research project currently underway to craft a bilingual French/ English critical handbook of multilingualism and multiculturalism and the challenges that such a project encounters when it proceeds to discuss the teaching and learning of national languages for an international readership in global settings. 1. What has changed in the teaching of foreign languages The teaching of modern foreign languages came into its own at the end of the nineteenth century, at a time when nation-states were being established or strengthened by the standardization of their one national language and by the teaching of foreign languages other than Greek and Latin. The teaching ofmodern standard national languages in the first half of the 20 th century was meant to reinforce international understanding among nation-states. Because the nation state is built on a long tradition of print literacy, which is the foundation ofits legal system, its national history, and its institutional bureaucracy, the pedagogy of choice was the so-called grammar-translation method, that taught the literacy skills necessary to read a foreign print culture, learn about the legal institutions and the history of a foreign nation, and appreciate the specific genius of various languages through translation exercises. In the second half of the 20 th century, the spread of mass media and the needs of a multinational economy ushered in a communicative approach to teaching foreign languages that taught the interactional skills necessary to collaborate in the workplace, negotiate business contracts, and in general participate in the growing communication culture promoted in all walks of life by an international neo-liberal ideology. Since the end of the 20 th century, the computer and the internet have globalized the planet. The teaching offoreign languages is slowly being redirected from anational or even interna- Korrespondenzadresse: Prof. Claire KRAMscH, German Department, 5323 Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley, BERKELEY, CA 94720, USA. E-mail: ckramsch@berkeley.edu Arbeitsbereiche: Deutsch als Fremdsprache, Diskursanalyse, Sprach- und Kulturdidaktik, ökologische Ansätze zum Fremdsprachenunterricht. 1 This paper was given as a plenary address at the IALIC annual meeting in Brussels on 11 December 05. I wish to tliank Jan Walravens for inviting me to give this talk. lFLulL 35 (2006) 202 Claire Kramsch tional mission to a global one. The communicative approach, predicated on the notion of a nationally defined native speaker speaking a standard national language, and on a view of human communication based on the efficient and effective information exchange in international business transactions, has been found lacking in a global world of human migration, displacement, and linguistic and cultural hybridity. Notions like intercultural competence and multilingual sensitivity have been proposed. In Europe, the switch from a national framework to an international Common European Framework of Reference for the teaching of foreign, second and heritage languages has spurred a rethinking ofwhat foreign language education is and should be about. This rethinking takes place either in global English or in the local national or regional languages ofEurope. But frequently national idioms vehiculate global meanings that belong to a neoliberal discourse ofEnglish origin. Globalspeak talks many different languages. lt changes the value ofwords. For example, the notion of communicative or intercultural competence has come to mean something different dependent on whether we are dealing with face to face business transactions, political debates, e-mail exchanges, or internet anonymous chatrooms. The ideology of autonomous, national languages has been problematized by recent research on societal multilingualism. Language variation and the symbolic power gained through the ability to switch and mix codes are now seen as crucial to the construction of citizens' identities, and to their ability to navigate the semiotics of a global economy. lncreased geographic mobility and migrations are giving rise to a multilingual student population that is no longer learning a target language on the basis of one common native language. Communication technologies have generated multimodal types of literacy that challenge the primacy of print literacy traditionally taught in academia. National cultures are becoming increasingly multicultural and cultural differences between generations are more pronounced. Finally, research on language learning is more multidisciplinary than thirty years ago (KRAMSCH in press). In all these changes, language has gained in importance, not only as a mode of representation and communication, but also as an instrument of symbolic power. Writing this, as I am doing, in English, I realize how many assumptions/ schemata behind my words belong themselves to an anglosaxon globalspeak. This globalspeak often clashes with specific national discourses on language and education. In this paper, I discuss the way language learning and teaching is being talked about in French by French educators in national and international settings; andin English by American applied linguists in global settings. I draw on a research project that I am engaged in with Genevieve Zarate from the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) and an international team of researchers from various disciplines: educational linguistics, linguistic anthropology, sociology, literary and cultural studies, language education, language policy. The aim of this project is the crafting of a bilingual French/ English Precis critique du plurilinguisme et du pluriculturalisme/ Critical handbook of multilingualism and multiculturalism for teachers and researchers, educators and administrators in the learning and teaching of foreign languages. lFLuL 35 (2006) Teaching Local Languages in Global Settings: the European Challenge 203 2. Towards a plurilingual conception of foreign language education This project grew out of the recognition that recent research on individual and societal multilingualism had profoundly put into question some of the main tenets of foreign language pedagogy inherited from 19 th century nationalistic ideologies: e.g., the idea that languages are autonomous and self-contained symbolic systems, that native speakers speak standard national languages linked to easily identifiable national cultures, that any deviation from this standard is defective and has to be redressed. Two major statements define this project. One is by Canadian sociolinguist Monica Heller, Professor of sociolinguistics at the University of Toronto and an early principal investigator in the project. Une didactique plurilingue dans Je sens profond du terme ... viserait moins ce qui est, et plutöt ce qu'on fait et comment acceder a une position qui pennet de faire. Donc, moins un enseignement de Ja langue, de Ja culture, de l'identite, mais plutöt une formation qui tient compte des pratiques langagieres, culturelles et identitaires, ainsi que des ideologies, des interets et des relations de pouvoir qui ! es sous-tendent. Une teile approche comprendrait aussi necessairement un certain degre de reflexivite de Ja part de tous et toutes ! es participant-e-s a l'activite de formation ou de construction des savoirs, et Ja mise en place de systemes de negociation entre formes de savoir et pratiques de construction des savoirs qui peuvent etre radicalement differentes ! es unes des autres (HELLER 2003). The other is by anthropologist Genevieve Zarate, principal investigator and Chair of the department ofFrarn; ais Langue Etrangere at INALCO. La langue etant definie comme un instrument d'action (ou de pouvoir) plutöt qu'un instrument d'intellection (BOURDIEU 1977) du monde, ce projet editorial organise autour de Ja pluralite linguistique et culturelle a pour objet de restituer Ja complexite des pratiques sociales observables liees a Ja relation a l 'etranger. La pluralite n 'y est pas definie par Ja seule coexistence des langues en presence, mais d'abord par l'activite sociale specifique qui est Je produit de Ja circulation transfrontaliere des valeurs, de Ja dynamique des identites toujours negociees, des inversions (voire inventions) de sens, souvent masquees par l'illusion partagee d'une communication efficace. [ ... ] La volonte didactique de ce projet n'est pas normative. Elle n'a pas pour objet de definir des modeles scolairement acceptables, car moralement irreprochables (Ja tolerance) et renvoyant une vision pacifiee des relations sociales. Elle interroge au contraire Je fonctionnement des entre-deux linguistiques et culturels que Ja classification scolaire tend a eluder, objets metisses, echappant au decoupage des disciplines qui concourent a Ja socialisation scolaire des eleves (langues, histoire, geographie, education civique, etc.). Tel qu'il est ici propose, l'espace de Ja didactique ne se limite pas aux pratiques dont Ja relation enseignant-enseigne serait Je centre (ZARATE 2003). The handbook is ·structured around various notions, themes and concepts that intersect with various disciplinary fields and various geographic, historic and linguistic conceptions of these fields. lt will consist of eight macroentries: Paysages, espaces tiers et mediation / Linguistic landscapes, third spaces and mediation Locuteurs, acteurs / Speakers, actors Discours sur Ja langue / Discourses on language lFLuL 35 (2006) 204 Expression de la subjectivite/ appartenances / Subjectivity, belonging Mobilites / Mobility Distance et proximite / Distance and proximity Institution, pouvoir, lien social / Institution, power, social bond Histoire et memoire / History and memory Claire Kramsch Each macroentry, coordinated by a team of international researchers, is subdivided into seven rnicroentries that respond to various research questions. For example, the second macroentry Locuteurs, acteurs / Speakers, actors, coordinated by applied linguists Richard Kern (UC Berkeley) and Anthony Liddycoat (University of South Australia), is subdivided into: 1. Voice (self-expression, articulation), e.g., how do second language users develop an individual voice through language learning? 2. Interaction (participation), e.g., what strategies are.available to second language users to participate in interaction? 3. Communities (connections), e.g., how do language learners come tobe recognized as competent participants in new communities (incl. classroom communities)? 4. Decentering (border-crossing), e.g., how do second language users establish and communicate new cultural perspectives as the result of their multiple language repertoires? How does acquiring a new language affect the learner's sense of self? 5. Translation, e.g., how do second language users express ideas across their languages? 6. Modalities, e.g., how do second language users use the modalities of reading/ writing, speak: ing/ listening, technologically mediated communication to participate in local and supralocal communities? 7. Education, e.g., how does language education foster/ hinder learners' agency and the development of the competences and strategies for communicating across cultures, languages and modalities? The discourse of these various statements indexes in a dramatic way the challenges that such an international, interdisciplinary, and interlingual project represents. The two introductory texts, written in French by a French Canadian (Monica HELLER) and a French scholar (Genevieve ZARATE) respectively, reflect a welcome change in the way foreign language education is usually talked about: not as the internalization of linguistic forms, the approximation to a standard native speaker norm, nor the transmission of linguistic and cultural facts, but as sociological and political practice, as exercise in cultural hybridity, as reflexivity and meditation on identity. Heller's text expresses the concerns of a linguist interested in linguistic variation and change at the societal level. Her approach to language teachirtg is that of a sociologist interested in the way immigrants learn French or English as second languages in Canada and use these languages to find a place for themselves in the host society. Zarate's text reflects the concerns ofthose teaching French as a L2 to immigrants and other non-native speakers ofFrench in France and abroad. Both conceive of didactique des langues as an endeavor that extends beyond the classroom and whose aims far exceed an individual' s acquisition of linguistic and pragmatic proficiency. Language acquisition in these two texts deals explicitly with the conflictual nature of social relations and the ideological tensions in the construction of knowledge. They explicitly problematize the relation of disciplinary knowledge and institutional power. FLuL 35 (2006) Teaching Local Languages in Global Settings: the European Challenge 205 By contrast, the macroentry "Locuteurs/ acteurs", written in English by two applied linguists from the U.S. and Australia respectively, reflects the discourse of anglosaxon foreign language school educators. Their use of such phrases as "developing a leamer's voice" or "enhanced sense of self', "fostering a learner's agency", "participating in communities" belong to an educational discourse that is primarily concemed with fostering the emotional and social growth as well as the cultural identity of anglophone adolescents by teaching them a language other than English and thereby opening their minds to the world outside their national borders. This discourse is part of a larger discourse of individual autonomy, self-reliance and agency, that prizes participation in the realization of communal goals and minimizes conflicts and power struggles. The challenge is not only a challenge of translation from one language into the other. One can find Heller's and Zarate's discourse expressed in English by teachers and researchers of English as a second language in the English speaking world, and one can find Kern and Liddicoat's discourse expressed in French by foreign language teachers in France, albeit with the difference in values promoted by the French national educational system and by the various anglosaxon educational systems in the U.S. and Australia (KRAMSCH 2002: 64-69). The challenge is for researchers from different disciplines, different languages and discourses, and different fields of action to speak with one voice and one discourse in a coherent handbook of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism. I take as an example the Call for Papers that was issued for a conference to be held by our research group in Paris in July 2006 and that I was to 'simply' translate into English. 3. Local languages, global setting: An example The following are extracts from a call for papers that went out in December 2005. I first give the original text in French, followed by my translation. I have highlighted in the two texts those concepts that gave me trouble because of their different value in the two discourse worlds. COLLOQUE INTERNATIONAL « Grandes » et « petites » langues et didactique du plurilinguisme et du pluriculturalisme. Modeles et experiences Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales Paris, 3-5 juillet 2006 APPEL A COMMUNICATION Dans les annees 70, la didactique des langues europeennes et occidentales a utilise la linguistique appliquee comme refärence disciplinaire centrale. Les langues les plus enseignees et les plus dijjusees hors de leurs frontieres ont generalement ete le point de depart pour modeliser la description d'autres langues a usage d'enseignement. S'appuyant sur le fait que les modeles didactiques issus d'une tradition nationale sont de plus en plus interroges par les societes actuelles, travaillees par la mobilite internationale des biens et des personnes, ce colloque vise a elargir le cercle des lFLuL 35 (2006) 206 Claire Kramsch disciplines et des langues de refärence. II se donne pour objet d'explorer une didactique du plurilinguisme et du pluriculturalisme, entendue comme la pratique de plus de deux langues ou cultures, et vise a modifier les contours disciplinaires d'un champ qui s' etait construit a partir des specificites linguistiques et nationales de chaque langue et culture. En se donnant pour objet d'identifier les modeles didactiques et leur circulation d'une langue a l'autre, le colloque questionne plus particulierement ce que le sens commun designe par « grandes » et« petites » langues etrangeres, apprehendees ici en tant que representations sociales et categorisations qui fluctuent au gre des histoires nationales, des renversements geopolitiques, des visions du monde traversees par ! es profondes mutations resultant de la mondialisation ... II est ici pose qu'une didactique du plurilinguisme et du pluriculturalisme s'interprete a travers l'histoire de la diffusion des langues, les discours portes sur les langues, la conception de l 'identite nationale et de la relation a l'alterite ... Ja relation entre etranger et natif. .. ! es attitudes xenophiles et xenophobes, etc. INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM Commonly and less commonly taught languages in a didactics of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism Models and experiences Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales Paris, 3~5 July 2006 CALL FOR PAPERS In the '70s, the main disciplinary base for the teaching ofEuropean and Western languages was applied linguistics. The languages most frequently taught and promoted beyond their national borders have generally served as models for the description of other languages and their pedagogies. But the universal validity of models bom from one pedagogic tradition has been increasingly put into question in societies with other pedagogical traditions andin a global world characterized by an increased mobility of goods and individuals. This colloquium intends to broaden the range of disciplines and languages relevant to a didactics of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism, roughly defined as the individual .and societal practice of more than two languages or cultures. Its purpose is to expand the disciplinary parameters ofa field that was built on the specific linguistic and cultural characteristics of a given speech community. The goal of this colloquium is to identify the various models for studying the acquisition and use offoreign languages and the transfer ofthese models from one target language to another. lt examines in particular the relation of the commonly and the less commonly taught languages, considered here not as linguistic systems but, rather, as language ideologies and representations in the flux of national histories, geopolitical developments, and global changes ... The colloquium is based on the belief that a didactics of plurilingualism andpluriculturalism cannot be conceived without considering the history of the dissemination of languages, the various discourses on language, and the dominant conceptions of group identity and relation to the Other ... the relation between native and non-native speakers, ... social, cultural and racial discrimination. In attempting to cast the first text into English, the first sign oftrouble came with the nonequivalence of linguistique appliquee and applied linguistics. While the French term denotes the application of descriptive linguistics to the teaching of French as a second language, the English term covers a wide variety of fields such as psychoand sociolinguistic, pragmatic and discourse analytic approaches to second language acquisition, FLuL 35 (2006) Teaching Local Languages in Global Settings: the European Challenge 207 discourse stylistics, and language policy, planning and testing. Applied linguistics is still today the main disciplinary base for the teaching of English around the world, so the argument that the French version makes does not hold when translated into English. Namely, it puts forward the argument that the cross-disciplinary field of didactique des langues is much more than 'just' applied linguistics, but in anglosaxon research it is in fact pretty much covered by the English term, albeit perhaps with a lesser emphasis on the linguistic and more on the sociological/ anthropological. In English the distinction is carefully upheld between language leaming and language use, so how should one translate didactique? The word didactics is not a familiar word for English speakers and every other term - "pedagogy", "acquisition", "leaming and teaching" has its own historic connotations that uneasily match the French term. The next challenge was to translate plurilinguisme etpluriculturalisme. The American words multilingualism and multiculturalism are historically (OLNECK 1990) and politically marked (KRAMER 2005). They denote a societal phenomenon, not an individual characteristic..Each term has its historic genesis and its incompatible connotations. Other pitfalls in translation emerged from clashes in disciplinary worldviews. The phrase grandes and petites langues is not a recognizable concept in English, that prefers to categorize languages in commonly and less commonly taught languages, but this phrase leaves out the uncontrovertible social hierarchy between languages. The reference to traditions nationales strikes the non-French reader as odd, particularly since disciplinary knowledge (presumed to be universally valid), not national traditions have been the determining factor in the research on English as a foreign or international language. In addition, the less commonly taught languages are not necessarily coextensive with national boundaries (see Breton, Basque, Native American languages, but also Gujarati, Pashtun, Dari etc.). Similarly, reference to a leamer's identite nationale and its relation to the Other is not a category familiar to the American reader, who is hardly conscious of belonging to one American culture and for whom cultural and ethnic identity is more salient than national identity. La relation entre etranger et natifis not a category familiar to Americans for whom the concept 'foreigner' does not exist when referring to American society, only 'American citizen', 'permanent resident' or 'visitor'. Hence the phrase attitudes xenophiles et xenophobes applies to a European but not to an American context, that would use terms like racist, sexist, or discriminatory instead (ZARATE 2001). Together with 'foreigner', the notion of the 'native speaker' has long been put into question in anglosaxon applied linguistics. How to deal with these linguistic, discursive and conceptual incompatibilities? 4. Metalogue and the art of the contact zone One solution to the problem, inspired by Gregory BATESON's Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972), is to have at the end of each chapter a metalogue 2 or conversation on the 2 BATESON defines metalogue as follows: "A metalogue is a conversation about some problematic subject. FLuL 35 (2006) 208 Claire Kramsch discourse ofthe entry itself. In a fictitious dialogue conducted in both French and English, one francophone and one anglophone contributor will discuss some of the notions used in the chapter and place each concept in its proper social, cultural and historical context as contrasted with that of other concepts in the other language. They will also conunent on the very discourse ofthe entry, its disciplinary affiliations and the authors' subject positions. The addition of such a metalogue reflects the increasing need for explicitly flagging the cognitive, social, historical and subjective coordinates ofthe global language user in what Mary Louise PRATT called "the contact zone". In a well-known article titled "Arts of the contact zone" ( 1991 ), Mary Louise Pratt describes what it takes not only to be read but to be readable in social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other. She tells the story of the discovery in 1908 in the Danish Royal Archives in Copenhagen of a manuscript from Cuzco, Peru written in the year 1613, some four decades after the final fall ofthe Inca Empire to the Spanish, and signed with an Andean name: Felipe Guaman Pama de Ayala. Pratt conunents: This letter by an unknown Andean, written in a mixture of Quechua and rough, ungrammatical Spanish, was twelve hundred pages long and was addressed to King Philip III of Spain. Titled "The New Chronicle and Good Government and Justice" it proposed nothing less than a new view of the world. lt began by rewriting the history of Christendom to include the indigenous peoples of America, then went on to describe in great detail the history and lifeways ofthe Andean peoples and their leaders. This was followed by a revisionist account ofthe Spanish conquest, and hundreds of pages documenting and denouncing Spanish exploitation and abuse. Guaman Poma's letter ends with a fictional interview in which he advises the King as to his responsibilities, and proposes a new form of government through collaboration of Andean and Spanish elites (PRATT 1992: 2). Pratt notes that Guaman Poma's letter tragically was never delivered or if it was, it was never read nor was it readable for lack of cultural mediation. The concept of cultural mediation is gaining in importance in a variety of fields but nowhere more urgently than in the teaching and leaming offoreign languages (see, e.g., LEVY/ ZARATE 2003, ZARATE [et aL] 2004). The handbook project proposes a radically new way of conceptualizing the leaming and teaching of foreign languages, and the metalogues will make explicit and critically examine four aspects of symbolic activity that mediate the plurilingual and pluricultural use of foreign languages in the contact zone. 1) Framing. The way an issue is framed and the choice of categories used to talk about it will create a context of expectation through which events are made readable, i.e., understandable and acceptable. A plurilingual pedagogy will require us to make our disciplinary, cultural, political, experiential frames ofreference explicit. 2) Indexicality. The choice oflanguage used with a particular interlocutor on a particu" lar topic points to, i.e., indexes, underlying ideologies, worldviews, and attitudes that must be reflected upon. In a plurilingual pedagogy, it is no longer sufficient to teach the This conversation should be such that not only do the participants discuss the problem but the structure of the conversation as a whole is also relevant to same subject." (p. l) lFLuL 35 (2006) Teaching Local Languages in Global Settings: the European Challenge 209 infonnational, referential meaning ofwords within one symbolic system. What has tobe taught is how each symbolic system indexes both its own uses in various contexts and the new connotations gained through juxtaposition with other symbolic systems. 3) Historicity. The reason so much miscommunication takes place even between people who share the same language is the differing ways in which they remember and understand historical events and their conventional representations. A plurilingual pedagogy will have to reflect on the way knowledge is mediated by textual genres, disciplinary traditions, and institutional rules and nonns for the management of knowledge. 4) Subjectivity. Contact zones are also zones of imagined communities, fantasized identities, projected selves. Cultural mediation must take into account the subjective aspects oflanguage use and the sensitivity of non-native speakers to the meaning of form. A plurilingual pedagogy will have to integrate the subjective experiences ofleamers in various languages and draw on their imagination to make sense of their own various contact zones. 5. Conclusion In the end, I too have to state my subject position. This paper was written and conceived by a bilingual author who spent the first half of her life in France, the second in the United States. While writing in English, she remembers her native language, French, and feels the tensions carried by each of the two languages' connotations. This tension is favorable to the imagination and the scenarios ofpossibility that it opens up. As Gayatri Spivak noted recently: "The imagination is nourished by the slow leaming ofthe other's language, with the memory ofthat first leaming in the works" (SPIV AK 2002: 720). I have chosen to discuss the "European challenge" in English, but as someone who shares her time between the United States and Europe, speaks English, and often thinks French. This dis-location makes me both acutely aware ofthe very different discourses on foreign language education in the United States andin Europe. Their non-equivalence is sometimes a source of frustration, but more often than not it is a source of inspiration and, as more and more people around the globe share in this condition, it is also a source of enrichment and hope for the future. References BATES0N, Gregory (1972): "Metalogues". In: Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 1-60. HELLER, Monica (2003): "Plurilinguisme et didactique. Textes introductifs". In: Seminaire Langues, cultures, identites en didactique des langues. 27-28 mars 2003. Paris: INALCO. KRAMER, Jane (2005): "Difference". In: The New Yorker, Nov. 21, 41--42. KRAMscH, Claire (2002): "Standard, norm, and variability in language leaming: A view from foreign language research". In: GASS, Susan / BARD0VI-HARLIG, Kathleen / SIEL0FF MAGNAN, Sally / WALZ, FLuL 35 (2006) 210 Claire Kramsch Joel (eds.): Pedagogical Normsfor Second and Foreign Language Learning and Teaching. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 59-80. KRAMSCH, Claire (in press): "The uses of communicative competence in a global world". In: Review of Applied Linguistics in China, vol.2. LEVY, Danielle / ZARATE Genevieve (eds.) (2003): La mediation et la didactique des langues et des cultures. Numero special duFram; ais dans le Monde, Janvier 2003. OLNECK, Michael R. (1990): "The recurring dream: Symbolism and ideology in intercultural and multicultural education". In: American Journal of Education, February, 147-175. PRATT, Mary-Louise (1991): "Arts ofthe contact zone". In: Profession 91, 33-40. PRATT, Mary-Louise (1992): Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge. SPIVAK, Gayatri C. (2002): "Righting wrongs". In: OWEN, Nicholas (ed.): Human Rights. Human Wrongs. The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2001. Oxford: OUP, 168-227. ZARATE, Genevieve (ed.) (2001): Langues, xenophobie, xenophilie dans une Europe multiculturelle. Caen: Centre Regional de Documentation Pedagogique de Basse-Normandie. 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