The aim of this study was to explore the journey from an unconscious multiple monoglossy towards an awareness of the plurilingual self of fourteen students from the Faculties of French Language and Literature and Greek Philology at the School of Philosophy of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens⃰. In particular, through a participatory action research and the use of the Dominant Language Constellation concept, we aimed to create a space of plurilingual awareness for these students. Plurilingual awareness is conceived as the journey of a person towards realizing and reconsidering any established views about her/his own multilingualism. It is, in other words, a journey of transition and relocation regarding perceptions which were adopted without prior processing within a particular spatiotemporal context. The DLC approach is used in our study not only as a tool to investigate the expedient languages of our sample of undergraduate Student Language Teachers, but also as a trigger to activate their plurilingual awareness.
The research was implemented in two phases: a) During the first phase, Student Language Teachers conceptualized their DLCs through two research tools that represented their language choices. The first one was the ‘language portrait’[i] (Fig. 1), inspired by the language biography[ii]. The second research tool is the language road (a tool created for the needs of our research), (Fig. 2). The participants were invited to mention the languages and the places where they encounter them on an everyday trajectory.
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*Τhe present research was conducted under the auspices of the Centre of Excellence for Multilingualism and Language Policy. It is one of the 15 Centres of Excellence of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (henceforth NKUA) and its mission is to create a space for interdisciplinary research on languages, language learning, teaching and assessment, language policies in society and in/for all levels of education. https://cem.uoa.gr
[i] Molinié, M. (2009). Le dessin réflexif: élément d’une herméneutique du sujet plurilingue. Centre de Recherche Textes et Francophonies. Université de Cergy-Pontoise, CRTF. Busch, B. (2012). The linguistic repertoire re-visited. Applied Linguistics, 33(5), 503-523. [ii] Krumm, H. J. (2011). Multilingualism and Subjectivity: Language Portraits, by Multilingual Children. In G. Zarate, D. Lévy, & Cl. Kramsch (Eds), Handbook of Multilingualism and Multiculturalism (pp.101–104), Archives Contemporaines. Prasad, G. (2014). Portraits of Plurilingualism in a French International School in Toronto: Diverse Identities. The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 17(1), 51–77.
The language portraits depicted students’ DLCs that relate to themselves and the immediate family environment (inner social circle). The language roads represent their language repertoires, related to their wider personal context (intermediate social circle) and broader social environment (outer social circle). The participants’ sets of languages form distinct combinations for each individual, which are viewed as “patterns”. b) During the second phase, the participants were involved in semi-structured interviews, where the language portrait and the road were used as stimuli for further discussion. The connection of the DLC concept with plurilingual awareness was based on the conclusions that emerged during the interviews. Starting from the consciousness of their perceptions, Student Language Teachers seemed to do small transitions from their initial certainties on their DLCs and language repertoires. The greatest transitions were identified in the outer social circle while the slightest in the inner.
Lo Bianco, J. & Aronin, L. (2020). Dominant Language Constellations: A new perspective on Multilingualism. Springer International Publishing. Aronin, L., & Singleton, D. (2012). Multilingualism. John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.30 [1] Molinié, M. (2009). Le dessin réflexif: élément d’une herméneutique du sujet plurilingue. Centre de Recherche Textes et Francophonies. Université de Cergy-Pontoise, CRTF. Busch, B. (2012). The linguistic repertoire re-visited. Applied Linguistics, 33(5), 503-523. [1] Krumm, H. J. (2011). Multilingualism and Subjectivity: Language Portraits, by Multilingual Children. In G. Zarate, D. Lévy, & Cl. Kramsch (Eds), Handbook of Multilingualism and Multiculturalism (pp.101–104), Archives Contemporaines. Prasad, G. (2014). Portraits of Plurilingualism in a French International School in Toronto: Diverse Identities. The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 17(1), 51–77.