multilingualism, education, and economy (1)
TRANSCRIPT
Multilingualism as Cultural Capital?
Study of Studies
Donna L. Confere
Objectives
• To determine if there is a correlation between multilingualism and cognitive ability.
• To determine if multilingualism translates into higher grades and greater academic achievement.
• To determine if the number of languages in which a person has achieved proficiency impacts their economic advancement, stability, and status.
Cultural Capital
• Pierre Bourdieu (1986) The Forms of Capital:
• Cultural capital can exist in three forms: in the embodied state, i.e., in the form of long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body; in the objectified state, in the form of cultural goods (pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines, etc.), which are the trace or realization of theories or critiques of these theories, problematics, etc.; and in the institutionalized state, a form of objectification which must be set apart because, as will be seen in the case of educational qualifications, it confers entirely original properties on the cultural capital which it is presumed to guarantee (241-258).
Multilingualism and Cognition
Shift in research in the 1960s to 1980s:
Multilingual strengths in childhood:
• Flexibility
• Good at substitution
• Use of semantic cues
• Metalinguistic awareness
• Making corrections
Multilingual strengths in adulthood:
• Comparison of language rules
• Cognitive reserve
• Memory
• Abstract thinking
• Greater attention
Multilingualism and Education Outcomes
Schooling
• Contradictory studies related to grade point average (GPA).
• Interpersonal communication
• Conflict resolution
• Educational attainment questions
• Word choice
• Code switching
• Memory, abstract thinking, & attention
Multilingualism and Economic Status
Globalisation
Advantages
• Multilingualism accepted
• Job market
• Promotes self-efficacy
Disadvantages• Minority and tribal
languages
• Impact on elderly, poor and immigrants
• Dialect and “high” form of a language
Multilingualism as Cultural Capital
Possibilities• Language immersion
programs
• Focus on literacy
• Multilingualism and multicultural values
Impediments• Political power of
particular languages
• Immigration and prejudice
• Lack of focused curriculum on formal language
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Mallinson, Christine. (2007). Social Class, Social Sttus and Stratification: Revisiting Familiar Concepts in Sociolinguistics. Selected Papers from NWAV 35 Volume 13 Issue 2.Mohanty, Ajit K. (2006). Multilingualism of the Unequals and Predicaments of Education in India: Mother Tongue or Other Tongue? Imagining Multilingual Schools Ofelia Garcia.Palma, Helena Lopez. (2008). Aspects of Multilingualism in the Deocratic Republic of the Congo. In Conversarii: Dynamics of Language Contact in the Twenty-first Century. Ed. Carla Vergaro. Perugia. 93-110.Prediger, Susanne. (2013). Family Background or Language Disadvantages? Factors for Underachievement in High Stakes Tests. In Proceeding of the 37th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Vol. 4. 49-56. Kiel, Germany.Schnelten, Eva-Maria. (2003). Multilingualism: Obligatory at First, Fun at Last. University of Gronigen. Accessed at talen.wewi.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/.../multilingualism-ev.