English as a lingua franca conference 2010
I am attaching here the ppt for the paper which Nicos Sifakis gave last week – on behalf of the research team also including Vally Lytra and myself – at the ELF (English as a lingua franca) conference in Vienna. I will also add his reflections on how it went.
Sifakis, N., Lytra, V. and Fay, R. (2010). English as a lingua franca in an increasingly post-EFL era: The case of English in the Greek state education curriculum. Paper presented at the Third International Conference on English as a Lingua Franca, hosted by the University of Vienna, 22nd – 25th May 2010, Vienna, Austria.
Nicos writes (to Richard and Vally):
Back from Vienna. The presentation went really fine. It took place on the final day of the conference (Tue), in the policy strand of the conference, with Barbara Seidlhofer chairing. There were people from Italy and Spain (Enric Llurda) in the audience. After the presentation, the colleagues from Italy wanted to find out more about our paper, I’ll send them the slides. They want to create materials for their EFL classes there that would integrate an ELF perspective. Perhaps that could spawn a brand new joint project.
I am attaching the final version of the slides for your files – I thought, after talking to some people about the topic of our talk (before the actual presentation) that some additional clarifying of how EIL and MATE link to ELF was necessary. I therefore added a couple more slides to that end. I also coloured the different terms and the various evaluations of some of the examples, as you’ll see. This apparently helped, as people could more easily (and quickly) link colours with notions. They even used colours to refer to specific examples. It turned out to be helpful, because the 20 minutes of the actual talk went by very fast!
The term MATE was very well received. People understood it (in fact, they said so themselves), which was very important, I thought, especially for a conference like this where terminology is so fluid and abundant (people always coming up with new terms, e.g. “speakers of other langs teaching English”, or SOLTE, instead of TESOL, etc). It goes without saying that, as with the previous ELF conferences, understanding terminology was seen as crucially important. There were many people (some plenary speakers even, especially the more “theoretical” linguists, like Schneider and even applied linguists like Guy Cook) who were openly against ELF, albeit not against ELF research. That’s why it seemed to me important to emphasise in our paper that we were more interested in ELF as function (and in the classroom context at that), with the terms EIL and MATE tied in to international and intercultural functions and uses of NNS discourse, rather than as a type of NNS variety.
There are many more things to add of course, about the conference, and so little time! Next year’s ELF takes place in Hong Kong and at the end of the conference the organisers announced the launching of the International Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, with Jenkins, Seidlhofer and Mauranen as editors.
Hi again Achilleas
I think we are probably in that kind of discussion space where we are talking in the vicinity of each other’s ideas without fully connecting with them. For sure, I do not recognise some of the ways you characterise MATE, and do not agree with others, but I have do have considerable respect for some positions (e.g. on linguicide and ELT) that you raise. These points have been articulated in response to the MATE theme but, as they take us into related but different territory – and I should make clear, fascinatinga nd important territory – I for one would find it helpful to hear those views in a fresh strand, unemcumbered by the MATE discourse of the paper that initiated this thread. Perhaps you will be taking some of your thinking to the September conference you mention elsewhere? And if so, maybe you could initiate a thread around that?
R.
Thanks for that powerful response, Richard. It was very helpful in understanding what MATE is(n’t).
On reading your reply and the thread so far, I realise that I have probably overemphasised the case of ‘historical’ linguistic minorities, perhaps at the expense of my overall argument. This is partly because it is an issue I care about deeply and I strongly feel the need to raise awareness of it. It is also partly because I implicitly assumed it as self-evident that whatever holds true for indigenous linguistic minorities also applies to the linguistic communities of immigrants. In other words, I assumed that if I could establish that e.g. speakers of Pomak (a variety of Bulgarian mainly spoken in the Greek-Bulgarian border) have been linguistically repressed for decades, that would suffice to demonstrate the prevailing policy of linguicide, and I would not need to explicitly extend the argument to e.g. Bulgarian immigrants who have recently settled in Greece or any other minority on a case-by-case basis.
That some Greek teachers of English want to challenge this policy in favour of multi-cultural awareness is encouraging – and I say that in all honesty. Indeed, I have come across similar practices myself and have read similar ideas on our professional discourse, and I think it is a laudable thing to do. However, I remain deeply conscious of a number of contradictions that seem to lie at the core of this emergent trend. I am also concerned that while it is necessary to problematise over such contradictions, what I often come across is a smug attitude and a naïve belief that raising multicultural awareness offsets social injustice. So what follows is not a critique of MATE as such, but of the way I perceive MATE is being implemented in Greece, and the goals it appears to serve. It is a critique of what MATE isn’t, but passes as MATE in my experience.
One fundamental misconception that needs to be challenged is that multicultural awareness needs to be raised through English, because of the large number of ethnicities represented in the Greek student population. I believe that the diversity of the typical Greek class that is assumed in this argument is quite overstated, and I suspect that this is sometimes done deliberately. Unfortunately, the Greek government does not publish official statistics about the ethnic breakdown of the student population, but a rough guesstimate is that more than two thirds of the immigrant population are of Albanian origin (many of whom were born in Greece and have been brought up by their Albanian parents in Greek, but let’s ignore this for now). A large proportion of the remaining immigrants speak language varieties that belong to the South Slavic language continuum, and are (without prejudice to their language status) mutually comprehensible to a greater or lesser degree. Albanian and the Slavic family of languages are also present in the indigenous minorities, in the form of Arvanitika, Dopia and Pomak. This means that by introducing just two languages in the curriculum, and perhaps even encouraging Greeks to learn them, one could foster communication with the vast majority of the immigrant population and many indigenous communities. Similar policies could be enacted at a local level with other tightly clustered languages, such as Vlach or Urdu. To argue that the Greek student population is uniformly diverse, as many Greek educationalists do, reflects an unwillingness to acknowledge the special role of each individual linguistic community in the local language ecology, and stands – in my opinion– in sharp contradiction with the stated goal of MATE.
Regardless of whether one shares this opinion or not, when faced with such demographics one cannot escape the question “why use English to promote multicultural awareness?” One entirely pragmatic response, which your Greek teachers of English casually seem to put forward, is that “The children are being taught English anyway”, but this seems to indicate an unwillingness to problematise over the real question ‘Why are the children being taught English anyway?’ Such problematisation might lead one to reflect on the role of the English teacher lobby in promoting English (plans are already in place to introduce ELT in the first class of primary school and increase teaching provision by 30%). I cannot speculate whether those Greek teachers of English who advocate MATE do so out of honest belief in its democratic underpinnings (emphasis on the MA bit), out of partisan self-interest (emphasis on the TE bit) or a combination of both, although there are reasons in our professional discourse to occasionally suspect mixed motives. At any rate, when assessing the attitudes of Greek teachers of English, it may be hermeneutically helpful to remember that they are members of an elite group –in the sense that they were schooled in their own language and benefited from a multilingual education to the tertiary level– and that MATE preserves their status. This is perhaps not a bad thing in itself, but one cannot help noticing that it is the Greek-speaking elite who seem to have the most to gain, whereas the linguistic minorities are being deprived of their linguistic capital in the process of schooling. Nor can one help noticing that members of linguistic minorities will never have the opportunity to use their own language in order to talk about aspects of their culture that they feel are worth sharing, not will they develop the linguistic resources in their language to reflect on the cultures of their peers. This inequitable distribution of cost and benefit is difficult to reconcile with the democratic principles from which the multicultural awareness imperative seems to stem.
Discussion of linguistic capital and resources brings me to the third point I wanted to raise: language policy, whether enacted top-down by the state or implemented bottom-up by the co-activity of individual teachers, learners and administrators is about the allocation of limited resources. That a fraction of these resources is directed to developing multicultural awareness is creditable, but perhaps it should not divert our attention from the fact that resources devoted to the teaching of English (for whatever purpose) are secured at the expense of other languages. At government level, one might be called to decide whether they will commission a new set of secondary English coursebooks or a Greek-Albanian dictionary (they went for the former); at local level, it might involve deciding whether to organise supplementary tuition in English or the mother languages of the students (in a case that captured the attention of the media, the head teacher who decided for the latter was summarily relieved of her duties); at a personal level, it could be about greeting one’s students in either their mother language or English. My concern is that –the aims of MATE notwithstanding– what is happening in practice (in Greece at least) is that English is systematically displacing whatever provision there might be for other languages. I believe that this is done with a deliberate agenda of marginalising such languages, or at very least that there is a callous disregard over the ramifications of such policies. Whatever the case, linguistic minorities not only are kept confined in the [less powerful] periphery of Greek society, but are also are deprived of the linguistic means to define and preserve their identity. This effectively precludes them from posing a threat to the ideal of a homogenous Greek state. Hidden in here there are –I feel– two more contradictions: on the one hand we have stated aims to empower minorities and to acknowledge diversity, and on the other hand we have disempowering language policies that expunge diversity.
I should stress that none of the above is intended as criticism of the ideas that MATE stand for. I wholeheartedly espouse the ideological background behind MATE and agree with you, Richard, on the political imperative for teaching practices that informed by MATE, as opposed to an Anglocentric EFL paradigm. But when looking at Greek education, what I see is a linguicidal policy that has gone on for generations, and is still current with regard to immigrant languages. The fact that this policy has become more sophisticated with the addition of ELT (along with other ‘high-status’ but ‘non-threatening’ languages) in the curriculum does little to detract from its discriminatory purposes and unjust nature. In such a context, MATE –or rather the uncritical versions of MATE I come across in my professional encounters– just provide a façade of political correctness to this policy but do little to challenge it. If anything, I am afraid that by fostering the illusion that we’re being respectful of diversity, (uncritical) MATE probably makes it harder for everyone involved to problematise over the harsher aspects of language policy in Greece, and therefore essentially reproduces an inequitable status quo.
That is not to say that I doubt the potential for a bottom-up process like the one you describe, Richard. I do think, however, that such a pedagogy needs to go beyond exchanging interesting tidbits about one’s country of origin, or using textbooks with characters from different backgrounds (useful though the above may be). What I have in mind is a critical MATE, as it were: a pedagogy that knows students might not be able to provide definitive answers but nevertheless encourages them to ask questions like ‘Why does English feel like a “neutral space” whereas Greek doesn’t?’, ‘Why do English-speaking people seem to have more power than people who don’t speak English?’, ‘Where do I stand in relation to my Greek-speaking peers?’ or ‘Why can’t I understand my grandparents’ language?’
Many thanks, Paul and Achilleas, for running with my posting about the (T)EIL and MATE paradigm possibilities, the topic I presented with colleagues Nicos and Vally at the recent English as a Lingua
Franca (ELF) conference in Vienna. You have certainly run far with this topic so perhaps it is now a good time for me pick up on some of the enlarged discussion area and relate it back to our thinking for that conference paper. Let me begin with a few thoughts regarding my own position and my thinking about MATE as a possible paradigm option for (some) TESOL practitioners (in some contexts) as a means of enriching their existing (usually TEFL paradigm informed) practices (to the extent that curricular and other contextual parameters permit).
First, I am deeply aware of how individuals’ and groups’ linguistic human rights can be (and often have been) trampled upon (to put it mildly perhaps) by dominant groups, by nations, and by colonising empires, as well as through processes such as globalisation. Second, this ‘trampling’ disregard for human rights and equity of experience / opportunity is particularly relevant in the case of English(es) given its role in colonialism, etc, its current associations with political hegemony (i.e. of the US and more widely), its prime position in processes / phenomena in which inequity seems firmly embedded (e.g. globalisation). Not least, English is a currently domineering linguistic phenomenon in a global context where languages are dying out almost daily. Therefore, TESOL – according through whatever paradigm and in whatever context – is essentially political action (at least in part).
Third, many national contexts (e.g. I would suggest Greece) have their own complex history (of ‘historification’) in which notions of identity have been and continue to be constructed in ways which often foreground the majority and often fail to accord equality to minority groups and their linguistic / cultural resources. The accompanying narratives of cultural (and linguistic) continuity and homogeneity are now being challenged to some extent but the fact that they are being challenged reminds me just how dominant they still are, i.e. they remain securely in place in many public discourses.
Fourth, TESOL not only has to recognise the political complexities of English’s own chequered past and do so in different ways in different contexts (e.g. ESL / outer circle vs EFL / expanding circle contexts), it also has to take its place (in state education at least) alongside the language policies of the state in question, e.g. Greece. If those policies are ‘problematic’ (or, to rephrase it, would merit in my view form being problematised) vis-a-vis the longstanding minority populations of the country (as well as other sources of cultural and linguistic diversity), then TESOL is also affected by these policy aspect (which I seek to problematise, which I see as problematic).
All of the above issues are important. And the list could be extended further. For me, these issues work top-down, i.e. work at a political-strategic-policy level. There are, however, ways of working which begin elsewhere. These do not negate the top-down issues nor remove the need to aware of them etc, but a bottom-up way of thinking is where MATE’s origins lie. Let me next briefly narrate that origin. In my conversations with EFL teachers in Greece over the years – i.e. with Greeks who teach English in (perhaps unusual, perhaps not so unusual) primary schools (as I would call them in English) – I have been struck by the repeated appearance of the issue of increasing multiculturality and multilingualism in their teaching contexts, in their classes. These increases are the result, in large part, not of cultural diversity linkable to the officially recognised minority populations in Greece but rather the result of all manner of recent / current migratory behaviours. The result of such behaviours is the presence in Greek schools of some (and the statistics and guestimmates vary substantially here) children for whom Greek is (at best) a Second Language. And in these classrooms, the GSL children often do not share one common language, i.e. they have differing cultural and linguistic backgrounds (albeit there are blocks of children with similar backgrounds). For this reason, English seems – for the teachers to whom I have been listening – to be functioning as a different kind of linguistic space for the children concerned, a space not carrying the weight and connotations that the Greek language might carry in Greek curricular terms, a space also not carrying the ‘baggage’ that English as a former colonial and currently globalising language usually carries. In simple terms, for some of these children English seems to be a relatively neutral lingua franca, one part of a complex set of linguistic and cultural resources with which they are living their lives in Greek schools and beyond.
Some of their teachers see an opportunity to do multicultural awareness-raising through English that would benefit these children in particular, but also their GMT classmates, the school as a whole, and the society as whole. The children are being taught English anyway and, so runs the logic, why use e.g. British cultural context/contexts when instead the language being taught could be recognised less as a foreign language and more as a lingua franca through which all manner of cultural content/contexts could be explored. In the case of these multicultural primary classrooms, this would have immediate benefits. So, this is the genesis of the MATE paradigm idea, an idea which has been picked up by Spanish colleagues where, albeit with clear differences, immigration is being felt in primary classrooms and similarly English seems to have some role and potential as a lingua franca.
So, how does this bottom-up kind of approach (i.e. teachers developing MATE practices for the benefit of their particular children) sit alongside the top-down political ‘awkwardnesses’ (if I can put it like that) of e.g. the Greek constitutional and educational policies with regard to language education, cultural awareness, and minority rights? That is a complex question on which I am not at all well-qualified to reply. I have my own views of course – e.g. on the destructive quality of national discourses (with regard to minorities and their cultural and linguistics resources as well as their opportunities, educational and otherwise) in states where dominant cultural groups are given pride of place etc – and I have my own ‘take’ on the complexities of cultural identity in the 21st century – e.g. I am happy to possess more than one passport and happy to acknowledge no strong emotional affiliation to either state in political terms), i.e. my identity, like so many people’s identities, is complex, fluid, multi-dimensional, transient, etc etc.
I am interculturalist at heart, not an inherent believer in nation states as anything other than a fairly recent organisational measure for human societies, a measure which has some advantages but also many disadvantages. Its time will pass just as surely as the time of earlier empires passed and then new organisational structures will come into being. And when that happens, I hope that the world is still populated by many different sorts of people, with many different sorts of linguistic and cultural resources, with individuals whose complex identities are respected and given equal value, with individuals with equal rights and opportunities regardless of which state they happen to reside in. In this sense, I am not particularly interested in the top-down issues but rather in the bottom-up actions through which (unlike at top-level) I can make a contribution. If teaching English MATE-ly can facilicitate even an iota of multicultural awareness in societies where cultural diversity and equity are as yet not natural bedfellows, then I am delighted to be part of a MATE mindset where this is appropriate.
So, in the context of rethinking the teaching and learning paradigms available in a (perhaps becoming) post-EFL era, I remain interested in (T)EIL and MATE, as well as in (T)EAL, TESL, TEFL, and so on. In fact, I would underpin them all with the specific purpose of Teaching English for Intercultural Communication (TEIC) and I would support the subverting of nationalistic educational curricula with interculturally-oriented curricula. I have no desire to glorify past battles (as represented through the lenses of particular historical orthodoxies). I am more intent in the role of language education in preventing tomorrow’s battles. IN passing, I note that this war-like imagery is probably not at all coincidental given the recent Gaza flotilla ‘activities’. Although this a BIG theme – and one for a separate blog entry I think – it is worth noting that the Israeli ‘spin’ and the ‘flotillerista’ accounts are mostly appearing in English. Thus, English is functioning as a the lingua franca of intercultural failure rather than as the lingua franca of developing intercultural concord. I wish it were the latter and hope that MATE might play a part in making it so some day not too far hence.
By making English a vehicle less for particular national / supra-national ideologies and more for an intercultural ideology, I recognise I am flying in the face of a great deal of contrary momentum and history but … I only speak English because my forefathers were colonised through it and for me it is a linguistic space which is not only constrained by its ignoble past but also enriched by the complexities of the contexts and users it now has. This is why MATE is possible with English language teaching in a way that is probably less true of other ‘foreign’ languages where the link to national ideology and narratives of essentialised cultural homogeneity are that much stronger.
OK, enough for one day!
R.
Thanks for that Paul. As I told you in our email conversation, this situation also echoes the official language controversy in the US, and one could also draw parallels with e.g. the Israeli language policy. What all this highlights, I think, is how identity tends to be connected with language. It is difficult for me to conceive of language as being politically neutral, so I cannot help wondering how all the ideological ‘baggage’ associated with English might influence the development of a multicultural identity.
I can see where Richard is coming from when pointing out that EIL is a special case, in that it is not by default associated with any particular culture. Such a language would, I think, be a viable option for promoting a multi-cultural identity, provided one could demonstrate the psychological reality of the distinction between EIL and ENL/EFL for a significant number of users.
Upon re-reading this discussion, I have come to realise that many of my reservations regarding MATE may stem from an inaccurate understanding of what MATE stands for. At first reading, the term seemed to refer to the promotion of English as a means for re-defining ‘Greekness’ in favour of an identity that appears to be more inclusive, but is -in my opinion- profoundly undemocratic. This reading was strongly influenced by an ambivalence in the way terms like ‘multi-culturality’ tend to be used in Greek educational discourse in connection with language learning, an explicitly articulated agenda by certain lobbies with government representation to “ make English our second official language” and recent ministerial decisions to allocate more resources to ELT in public education. My objections to these policies have been stated, but I must say that I am no longer sure that any such considerations are present in the MATE thesis.
Hi Richard and Achilleas,
At the outset of this discussion I felt that there were echoes of another politically heated debate over the status of languages, namely the position of the Irish language within Northern Ireland. I am not so sure that comparisons can be drawn in the way of any meaningful contribution to this particular debate but, as in the writings of authors such as Clare Kramsch, this example shows how language cannot be isolated from the context and culture in which it is spoken/used.
The reason I say this is that Irish (called Gaelic in Scotland) is a prime example of the ‘politicisation’ of a language which appears to also be happening in the Greek situation. The Irish language itself is thousands of years old and part of the same family of languages as Manx, Gaulish, Welsh, Breton, and Cornish although the Celtic languages are sub categorised into two groups within which Irish, Scots Gaelic, and Manx are specifically classed as being Q-Celtic rather than P-Celtic.
In Northern Ireland, although they may not all speak it, the Catholic population (43-47% depending on which statistics one reads) identify culturally, nationalistically, and politically with the Irish language. Thus some nationalist politicians have demanded that Irish is positioned as the official second or joint language of Northern Ireland, as it is in the Republic of Ireland where political independence has actually diluted romantic attachment to the language in past decades.
There are two points here, both of which I want to give equal standing, but the first is that the party promoting the elevation of the Irish language, most vociferously, are the Sinn Fein party which is seen as having a anti-British agenda at its heart. Whether justified or not, that is how the Unionist/Protestant parties interpret their motives. Thus the Irish language has become, for them, tied up with the idea of a united, Catholic, Gaelic Ireland that is hostile to their sense of Britishness.
This may be one of the background factors for the Unionists’ (50-55% of the extremely binary political divide) consistent refusal to give Irish any form of official status. In fact, in a rather derogatory manner, they argue idiosyncratically that other minority languages should be given equal prominence to Irish. These minority languages include Chinese (1% of the population at best) and Urdu.
It is sad that such political games are played with languages but in the Northern Irish situation, it is possibly best that the two sides continue fighting each other with words and dictionaries rather than the more harmful weapons of the recent past. Demographics are likely to kill these futile arguments in a decade or so anyway.
Not sure if this contributes anything to the discussion other than to show the sensitivity regarding the issue of languages in culturally divided societies. There is a huge difference in 45% of the population and the minorities in the Greek situation so as I said previously I am not directly comparing two very different contexts. I just felt this might be an interesting aside to the present discussion.
OK. To minimise the danger of over-reading things (on the basis of one ppt for example), I find asking questions is a helpful strategy. Thus, you could have asked me how I saw a MATE-like possibility for intranational communication in relation to the long-established Greek complexities (linguistic / multicultural / minority rights etc)? Or asked how I saw such an intranational use of English vis-a-vis political issues relating to the context and to the language itself? I know that I personally find this kind of approach conducive to collaborative exploration of an issue … but that’s me.
BTW, I’m back in Greece from tomorrow (Mani this time) for a holiday. You know Taygetos well?
R.
Thanks for clarifying this, Richard. Like I said, it is easy to form an inaccurate understanding of your view(s) when one relies solely on a single .ppt presentation. I should also clarify that the phrase ‘to promote…languages’ was meant to refer to a nascent language policy that the current government seems to be considering, traces of which are also documented in the 2003 curriculum. In other words, I was not thinking of your work or the MATE thesis as such when developing this strand of the argument.
You clearly speak with passion on this theme Achilleas. Indeed – and even as an outsider (hopefully one with some privileged access to local sensibilities and sensitivities) I can see that the narratives of Greekness (re homogeneity / heterogeneity, linguistically, culturally, etc) are complex and I would say problematic.
That said, the one thing we do not do in the MATE argumentation is “To promote English at the expense of non-Greek indigenous and immigrant languages” (to quote). This phraseology runs the risk of inaccurately positioning our work. Our focus lies elsewhere – on new(er) sources of cultural and linguistic heterogeneity resulting from the well-documented changing demographics resulting in large part from immigration (legal and otherwise). But it is good to be reminded that issues surrounding intranational communication in countries / contexts (e.g. Greece) with internal linguistic and cultural complexities – old / ancient but also new / dynamic in source – also need to be discussed, i.e. older but still lively issues regarding language policy do not disappear when contextual changes occur etc. We know this but perhaps it does not come across clearly enough for you in this one ppt input.
I see your point, and I suppose that Dr Lytra’s research into the way Turkish is used by the Muslim minority as they shape their identity is a good starting point, despite the fact that Turkish is an exceptional case in Greek language policy. That said, I believe that there are rather broader issues at stake here.
Despite claims that Greece is / was linguistically homogenous, there are several linguistic pockets where minority languages have been used for generations. In my grandmother’s hometown, for instance, the population is evenly split between Greek- and Turkish- speaking populations. This raises the practical question of how these populations should communicate, and the political/moral question of how they might develop an inclusive identity. What I find hard to understand (and in my defence my understanding of MATE is grounded on a single .ppt presentation), is why such an agenda is better served through the medium of English, rather than by teaching Turkish to the Greeks and Greek to the Turks.
I think that the point is worth re-iterating, that the only reason why English is being promoted by some parties (obviously I am not referring to you here) is that it constitutes a politically ‘neutral’ alternative. I am afraid that Greeks have never been comfortable with the idea that some Greek citizens do not conform to the ideal of linguistic, religious and ethnic homogeneity, to the point of sometimes denying the very existence of ‘threatening’ languages, as was the case of Dopia/Dopiolalia [an Ausbau variety akin to Slavic-Macedonian and Bulgarian]. The very concept of “multi-cultural” awareness, as enshrined in the language curriculum, cunningly sidesteps the issue of drawing attention to any specific cultures, even though some minorities and immigrant languages are clearly much more salient than others and may therefore deserve a special status. To promote English at the expense of non-Greek indigenous and immigrant languages seems like a Machiavellian scheme that pays lip-service to the ideal of multi-cultural awareness, while stripping individual cultures of whatever linguistic capital they have left.
This is not to say that I am against the teaching of English as a means of international communication – I have written elsewhere that I am enthusiastic about it. What I am saying is that English is a resource that needs to complement the local language ecology rather than disrupt it, and I remain unsure of how MATE would fit in all this.
Thanks Achilleas. There’s much that you and I will argue about on this topic. That will have to await another day though. One general point: when working on topics connected to contexts other than one’s own, it is very easy to trespass on the sensitivities of some locals. In this regard, I am very fortunate to collaborate with Nicos and Vally (and others it should be noted) whose part in shaping my own thinking is inestimable and builds upon their insider understandings of, and research focused on, Greece, Greek education, and Greek TESOL. Vally’s doctoral and post-doctoral research on the ways in which some of the languages you mention are used by some children in some schools in Greece has been particularly helpful for me as have her understandings of the issues of linguistic repression etc that you also mention. These are matters which can indeed stimulate impassioned responses.
Thanks for sharing this, Richard. It was very interesting to read, especially as regards what you define as a new intra-national role of English. Before going into that, however, there are a couple of rather more tightly focused thoughts that I would like to share:
a) In Slide 3, mention is made of ‘awareness of a new international role of English’. I was wondering about the evidentiary basis of this claim. It is of course true in the trivial sense that ‘we must learn English to speak to tourists’ but it does seem to contradict the claim made elsewhere that that ‘[i]n the eyes of their learners, fellow teachers, and learners’ parents, EFL teachers are custodians of the English [i.e. NS] language and culture’ (Sifakis 2009: 235).
b) In Slide 14, there is a reference to ‘alternative forms of assessment’ that the curriculum is said to favour. Doubtless, there must be something of that sort in that collage of aspirational thinking, good intentions and verbose statements that make up our ‘official’ curriculum. But in actual practice, school exams in Greece must consist of reading comprehension, grammar exercises and a dictation (it says so in the law [!] dating back to 1982 which remains in effect even after the 2003 curriculum was introduced). What I am driving at is that one needs to be very cautious when using policy statements as evidence, especially when practice deviates so much from them as to render them irrelevant.
Having made these points, I would now like to return to the question of elevating EIL to the status of an intra-national lingua franca. Even though I have no doubts of your own good intentions, frankly I am more than a little concerned that such a suggestion would serve a subtle but very real language policy of repression.
Let us first consider what is meant by phrases such as ‘plurilingual’ and ‘pluri-cultural’ in the Greek context. It is of course true that there are scores of ethnicities represented among our immigrant population. However, more than 70% of these are Albanians, and the number is even higher in specific regions. Let us also consider the variously-sized populations that speak Turkish, Aromanian languages, Pomak, Vlach, Arvanitika (an Albanian dialect) and Slavic-Macedionan. Opaque terms such as ‘multi-culturality’ serve to refer to such cultures generally while at the same time invisiblising each particular minority.
For the purposes of mutual comprehensibility, it would make just as much sense to promote the universal learning of these languages, particularly Turkish and Albanian, at a local level, alongside Modern Greek which could serve the purpose of intra-national communication. Of course, anyone who knows a thing about Greek sensitivities would tell you that this is politically unacceptable and possibly “dangerous”. I suspect that whatever calls for the promotion of English as an intra-national lingua franca are documented in your data are, at least in part, motivated by the political agenda of supplanting and thus suppressing non-Greek indigenous and immigrant languages. Despite your good intentions, the introduction of MATE (am I using this acronym correctly?) into this context could very efficiently deal the death blow to several languages that the Greek state has been trying to repress for generations, and I think that this eventuality deserves some attention.