The construction of multilinguals as Others

The construction of multilinguals as Others Do we practice what we preach? Edited by Artemis Alexiadou Claudio Scarvaglieri Christoph Schroeder Heike Wiese language science press Contact and Multilingualism 9 Contact and Multilingualism Editors: Isabelle Léglise (CNRS SeDyL), Stefano Manfredi (CNRS SeDyL) In this series: 1. Lucas, Christopher & Stefano Manfredi (eds.). Arabic and contact-induced change. 2. Pinto, Jorge & Nélia Alexandre (eds.). Multilingualism and third language acquisition: Learning and teaching trends. 3. Hakimov, Nikolay. Explaining Russian-German code-mixing: A usage-based approach. 4. Sánchez Moreano, Santiago & Élodie Blestel. Prácticas lingüísticas heterogéneas: Nuevas perspectivas para el estudio del español en contacto con lenguas amerindias. 5. Migge, Bettina & Shelome Gooden. Social and structural aspects of language contact and change. 6. Coler, Matt & Andrew Nevins (eds.). Contemporary research in minoritized and diaspora languages of Europe. 7. Pfadenhauer, Katrin, Sofia Rüdiger & Valentina Serreli (eds.). Global and local perspectives on language contact. 8. Haig, Geoffrey, Mohammad Rasekh-Mahand, Donald Stilo, Laurentia Schreiber & Nils Schiborr (eds.). Post-predicate elements in the Western Asian Transition Zone: A corpus-based approach to areal typology. 9. Alexiadou, Artemis, Claudio Scarvaglieri, Christoph Schroeder & Heike Wiese (eds.). The construction of multilinguals as Others: Do we practice what we preach? ISSN (print): 2700-8541 ISSN (electronic): 2700-855X The construction of multilinguals as Others Do we practice what we preach? Edited by Artemis Alexiadou Claudio Scarvaglieri Christoph Schroeder Heike Wiese language science press Artemis Alexiadou, Claudio Scarvaglieri, Christoph Schroeder & Heike Wiese (eds.). 2025. The construction of multilinguals as Others: Do we practice what we preach? (Contact and Multilingualism 9). Berlin: Language Science Press. This title can be downloaded at: http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/393 © 2025, the authors Published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (CC BY 4.0): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ISBN: 978-3-96110-528-1 (Digital) 978-3-98554-148-5 (Hardcover) ISSN (print): 2700-8541 ISSN (electronic): 2700-855X DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15655344 Source code available from www.github.com/langsci/393 Errata: paperhive.org/documents/remote?type=langsci&id=393 Cover and concept of design: Ulrike Harbort Typesetting: Sebastian Nordhoff Proofreading: Alina Bachmann, Annika Schiefner, Christian Döhler, Elen Le Foll, Elliott Pearl, Frederic Blum, Harold Somers, Laurentia Schreiber, Nicoletta Romeo, Sebastian Nordhoff Fonts: Libertinus, Arimo, DejaVu Sans Mono Typesetting software: XƎL A T EX Language Science Press Scharnweberstraße 10 10247 Berlin, Germany http://langsci-press.org [email protected] Storage and cataloguing done by FU Berlin Contents Preface iii 1 Introduction: Multilinguals as Others Artemis Alexiadou, Claudio Scarvaglieri, Christoph Schroeder & Heike Wiese 1 2 Othering of multilinguals in society Claudio Scarvaglieri 11 3 Othering of multilinguals in linguistics: Implications from labelling Heike Wiese 35 4 Methodological othering through monolingual controls: How not to Artemis Alexiadou 63 5 (M)other tongue: How Global South multilingual practices allow uncovering multilingualisms beneath the invented monolingual European Self Friederike Lüpke 81 6 Constructing a clientele in need: The field of German as a Second Language Jana Gamper, Christoph Schroeder, Julia Schlauch & Dorotheé Steinbock103 7 Multilingualism and identity construction in pedagogical discourse İnci Dirim 135 8 The anxious heritage speaker? Language anxiety and insecurity in multilingual contexts Oliver Bunk 153 9 Who’s there? In/Exclusively addressing the Other in disseminating linguistic results Judith Purkarthofer 179 Contents Index 198 ii Preface The first sparkle of this volume began with intensive discussions within the framework of the research group “Emerging Grammars in Language Contact Situations” (RUEG), funded by the German Research Council (FOR 2537). Three of the editors were involved in RUEG with research projects. Claudio, whose discourse-analytical work on the German migration debate provides an important additional aspect, quickly joined the discussion. The first result of our collaboration was a joint working paper entitled “Multilinguals as Others in society and academia: Challenges of belonging under a monolingual habitus”. We are very grateful to Ben Rampton for constructive comments on a previous version of this paper and for making it possible for us to publish it in the Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies (Paper 302, 2022). The positive reactions to the working paper in turn gave us the idea of addressing the topic of “Othering” in the context of multilingualism research in a broader context in a workshop that took place at the Humboldt Forum Berlin on 11 July 2022. The workshop resulted in this volume. All contributions have undergone the elaborate multistage review process which LangSci envisages. We thank the internal and external reviewers for their valuable input on earlier versions of the papers, and we are very grateful to all authors for their high-quality contributions. In the final stage of preparation, we gratefully received numerous comments in the crowd review process, and in dealing with these, Lea Coy’s expertise was truly invaluable. Many thanks are also due to İrem Duman Çakır for organizational assistance. Last, but not least, we are grateful to the series editors of the Contact and Multilingualism series, Isabelle Léglise and Stefano Manfredi, for accepting the volume and to the publisher, ad personam especially Sebastian Nordhoff, for the technical support during its production. Artemis Alexiadou Claudio Scarvaglieri Christoph Schroeder Heike Wiese Chapter 1 Introduction: Multilinguals as Others Artemis Alexiadou Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS); Humboldt Universität zu Berlin Claudio Scarvaglieri Université de Lausanne Christoph Schroeder Universität Potsdam Heike Wiese Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 1 Multilinguals as Others Multilingualism is the normal condition for contemporary as well as historical human societies (e.g., Grosjean 2010). However, European nation-state building has led to a strong “monolingual habitus” (Gogolin 2002) that constructs a community of monolingual speakers as bearers of a nation (Ortega 2009, Grosjean 2010, Cook 2016). This erases or exoticises multilinguistic practices and excludes multilingual speakers. The effects of this exclusion are visible in the public discourse on multilingual speakers, where we find a widespread “Othering” of multilingual speakers, understood as constructing them as members of a social and linguistic out-group (Lamont & Molnár 2002, Dervin 2015). Such Othering is, for example, evident for Artemis Alexiadou, Claudio Scarvaglieri, Christoph Schroeder & Heike Wiese. 2025. Introduction: Multilinguals as Others. In Artemis Alexiadou, Claudio Scarvaglieri, Christoph Schroeder & Heike Wiese (eds.), The construction of multilinguals as Others: Do we practice what we preach?, 1–9. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/ zenodo.17132439 Artemis Alexiadou, Claudio Scarvaglieri, Christoph Schroeder & Heike Wiese Grosjean, François. 2010. Bilingual: Life and reality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. DOI: 10.4159/9780674056459. Gudmestad, Aarnes, Amanda Edmonds & Thomas Metzger. 2022. Moving beyond the native-speaker bias in the analysis of variable gender marking. Frontiers in Psychology (12). Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes, Cristina Suarez-Gomez, Mila Vulchanova, Antonella Sorace & Valentin Vulchanov (eds.). 11–23. DOI: 10 . 3389/fcomm.2021.723496. Jaspers, Jürgen & Lian Malai Madsen. 2019. Critical perspectives on linguistic fixity and fluidity: Languagised lives (Routledge Critical Studies in Multilingualism 19). New York & London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Jespersen, Otto. 1922. Language: Its nature, development, and origin. New York: Holt. Kerswill, Paul & Heike Wiese (eds.). 2022. Urban contact dialects and language change: Insights from the Global North and South (Routledge Studies in Language Change). New York & London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Lamont, Michèle & Virág Molnár. 2002. The study of boundaries in the social sciences. Annual Review of Sociology 28(1). 167–195. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.soc. 28.110601.141107. Li, Wei. 2016. Epilogue: Multi-competence and the translanguaging instinct. In Vivian Cook & Wei Li (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic multicompetence (Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics), 533–543. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781107425965.026. O’Rourke, Bernadette & Joan Pujolar. 2015. New speakers and processes of new speakerness across time and space. Applied Linguistics Review 6(2). 145–150. DOI: 10.1515/applirev-2015-0007. Ortega, Lourdes. 2009. Understanding second language acquisition. London: Hodder Education. Pennycook, Alastair. 2016. Mobile times, mobile terms: The trans-super-polymetro movement. In Nicolas Coupland (ed.), Sociolinguistics. Theoretical debates, 201–216. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rampton, Ben. 2010. From “multi-ethnic adolescent heteroglossia” to “contemporary urban vernaculars”. Language & Communication 31(4). 276–294. DOI: 10.1016/j.langcom.2011.01.001. Rash, Felicity & Geraldine Horan. 2020. Discourse of British and German colonialism: Convergence and competition (Empires in Perspective). London: Routledge. Rosa, Jonathan & Nelson Flores. 2017. Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective. Language in Society 46(5). 621–647. DOI: 10.1017/ S0047404517000562. 8 1 Introduction: Multilinguals as Others Rothman, Jason, Fatih Bayram, Vincent DeLuca, Grazia Di Pisa, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Khadij Gharibi, Jiuzhou Hao, Nadine Kolb, Maki Kubota, Tanja Kupisch, Tim Laméris, Alicia Luque, Brechje van Osch, Sergio Miguel Pereira Soares, Yanina Prystauka, Deniz Tat, Aleksandra Tomić, Toms Voits & Stefanie Wulff. 2023. Monolingual comparative normativity in bilingualism research is out of “control”: Arguments and alternatives. Applied Psycholinguistics 44(3). 316–329. DOI: 10.1017/S0142716422000315. Shadrova, Anna, Pia Linscheid, Julia Lukassek, Anke Lüdeling & Sarah Schneider. 2021. A Challenge for contrastive L1/L2 corpus studies: Large interand intraindividual variation across morphological, but not global syntactic categories in task-based corpus data of a homogeneous L1 German group. Frontiers in psychology 12. 165–193. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.716485. Tsehaye, Wintai, Tatiana Pashkova, Rosemarie Tracy & Shanley E. Allen. 2022. Deconstructing the native speaker: Further evidence from heritage speakers for why this horse should be dead! Frontiers in Psychology 12. Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes, Cristina Suarez-Gomez, Mila Vulchanova, Antonella Sorace & Valentin Vulchanov (eds.). 67–80. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.717352. Warnke, Ingo. 2019. Three steps in chromatic abysses: On the necessity of researching colonialism in late linguistics. Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics 1. 41–59. Weisgerber, Leo Johann. 1966. Vorteile und Gefahren der Zweisprachigkeit. Wirkendes Wort 16. 73–89. Wiese, Heike. 2013. What can new urban dialects tell us about internal language dynamics? The power of language diversity. In Werner Abraham & Elisabeth Leiss (eds.), Dialektologie in neuem Gewand (Linguistische Berichte - Sonderhefte), 208–245. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. Wiese, Heike, Artemis Alexiadou, Shanley Allen, Oliver Bunk, Natalia Gagarina, Kateryna Iefremenko, Maria Martynova, Tatiana Pashkova, Vicky Rizou, Christoph Schroeder, Anna Shadrova, Luka Szucsich, Rosemarie Tracy, Wintai Tsehaye, Sabine Zerbian & Yulia Zuban. 2021. Heritage speakers as part of the native language continuum. Frontiers in Psychology 12. Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes, Cristina Suarez-Gomez, Mila Vulchanova, Antonella Sorace & Valentin Vulchanov (eds.). 209–227. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.717973. Wiese, Heike, Artemis Alexiadou, Claudio Scarvaglieri & Christoph Schroeder. 2022. Multilinguals as Others in society and academia: Challenges of belonging under a monolingual habitus. Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies 302. https://wpull.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/WP302-Wiese-et-al2022-Multilinguals-as-others.pdf. 9 Chapter 2 Othering of multilinguals in society Claudio Scarvaglieri Université de Lausanne This contribution describes ways of Othering of multilinguals in public discourse. Based on a corpus of 49 texts from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, I first demonstrate that multilinguals are characterized as different from the ‘We’ group and labelled with terms that disregard their multilingual capabilities and instead portray them as geographic, national or religious others. This ‘being-different’ from ‘Us’ is regularly evaluated in negative terms, with multilinguals being blamed for, e.g., antisemitism or homophobia in ‘Our’ society. The data also shows that these labels and the underlying distinctions between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ persist against criticism and that they are used to explain new social phenomena (like the development of a pandemic). Taken together, this study not only allows us to understand how Othering of multilinguals proceeds in the investigated societies, but also to reconstruct a very narrow concept of the perceived ‘We’ group. As academia in general, and linguistics in particular, is influenced by the societal context in which it operates, such folk concepts of ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’ have the potential to influence linguistic research – as evidenced by the contributions to this volume. 1 Introduction Othering has been described as a language practice that demarcates individuals or groups as distinctly different from the group the current speaker identifies with (Dahinden 2011, Brons 2015). Othering identifies people as “alien” (Brons 2015) from ‘Us’ – the speaker’s group – and as belonging to a different group. Historically, such othering processes have often led to negative evaluations of the Other group (Scarvaglieri & Zech 2013, Dahinden et al. 2014; Scarvaglieri & Luginbühl 2023) and have at times been a basis for drastic and coercive social and political measures directed at that group (Drakulić 1993, Müller-Funk 2016: Claudio Scarvaglieri. 2025. Othering of multilinguals in society. In Artemis Alexiadou, Claudio Scarvaglieri, Christoph Schroeder & Heike Wiese (eds.), The construction of multilinguals as Others: Do we practice what we preach?, 11–34. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17132441 Claudio Scarvaglieri 141). In this contribution, I aim to describe ways in which multilinguals are portrayed as Others in society. To this end, I examine data from public discourse in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.1The data demonstrates 1) that multilinguals in these countries are often portrayed as different from the majority society, 2) the ways in which such Othering proceeds and 3) the types of Othering created. I show that studying processes and practices of Othering not only tells us about how the Other group is perceived, but that it also allows us to better understand how the majority perceives themselves. By describing and discussing Othering in society, this contribution aims to lay the groundwork for the articles in this volume that investigate Othering in science. Since science is connected to social processes in multiple ways, multiple interdependencies between the way multilinguals are perceived in society and science are to be expected. This contribution argues that a clear and objective concept of multilinguals and multilingualism that does not ostracize multilinguals as Others, needs to be the basis of a more open and non-discriminating social discourse about multilinguals. In the following, I first present the existing research about Otherness and Othering and discuss the main strands in the discourse analytic literature about the portrayal of immigrants in the mass media. I then briefly describe the analytic procedure and the dataset that was used in this study. The study is exploratory in nature and follows a qualitative approach that allows for a rather detailed, thick description (Geertz 1973) of Othering processes but does not claim representativeness or statistical significance. Instead, it aims at uncovering some of the most important patterns in which Othering of multilinguals proceeds in public discourse. In the Findings section, I analyze six examples that illustrate the different patterns of Othering in my data.2I first describe practices of Othering and secondly demonstrate that Othering is not restricted to existing social debates, but will also be applied to new emerging problems, like the Covid-19 pandemic or the 2022 New Year’s Eve riots in Germany. Thirdly I will show that Othering frequently leads to negative evaluations of the Other group that allows this group to be blamed for societal problems and thus to portray the ‘own’ group in more positive, desirable terms. In the discussion section, I point out the principles that guide Othering processes and the underlying folk concepts of ‘Us’ vs. ‘They’, i.e., the ideas that guide the creation of group membership in the investigated societies. I close by touching on the connections between scientific and social discourse and by arguing for a different conceptualization of multilinguals in linguistics and language science. 1All three of these countries are multilingual. In this contribution, I will only study the Germanlanguage discourse in these countries. 2Some of these examples have already been briefly discussed in Wiese et al. 2022. 12 2 Othering of multilinguals in society 2 Research on Othering The distinction of same vs. different constitutes a fundamental principle of human perception (Freud 1913, Maturana & Varela 1980, Tauber 2015). This not only holds true from a biological or psychological individualistic perspective but can also been transferred to social processes – people regularly distinguish between those they perceive as belonging to their own groups vs. those perceived as members of another group (Gillespie 2007; Müller-Funk 2016: 66). While such processes might be seen as “natural” (cf. Gadamer 2010: 374) and not per se problematic, the linguistic practice of Othering has been described in more critical terms (Dahinden 2011, Dahinden et al. 2014; Wiese et al. 2022). Linguistic Othering proceeds in two basic steps: First, a distinction is drawn between an Inand an Out-group, a group ‘We’ belong to vs. a group ‘They’ belong to (Reisigl 2014). While the In-group is often not referred to explicitly – implying that who ‘We’ are is self-evident and does not need to be explained – the Other group is often identified via a specific term, e.g., as Jews, Muslims, or people with a ‘migration background’ (see below).3In a second step, negative attributes (like delinquency or abuse of the social welfare system) are regularly ascribed to this Other group. Much linguistic research has described such Othering practices in public discourse in the mass media (see for example Jung et al. 1997, Reisigl & Wodak 2001, Wengeler 2003, Butterwegge & Hentges 2006; Conrad & Aðalsteinsdóttir 2017; Holzberg et al. 2018; Joris et al. 2018; Amores et al. 2020, Figoureux 2021, Scarvaglieri & Luginbühl 2023). While a complete survey of the literature is not intended here, it has been shown that immigrants – and their offspring, i.e., children born and raised in the respective country of immigration – have been portrayed in more negative than positive terms, i.e., that negative attributes are ascribed to the Other group. Among such attributes, the description of immigrants as criminals is one of the phenomena most investigated in the literature (see e.g., Wengeler 2003, de Ridder 2010, Tort et al. 2016, Conrad & Aðalsteinsdóttir 2017, Scarvaglieri 2018, Joris et al. 2018, Holzberg et al. 2018, Figoureux 2021, Czymara & van Klingeren 2022). Other important frames in this context are that of immigrants as intruders (van Gorp 2006; Scarvaglieri 2018, Rheindorf & Wodak 3One of the striking aspects of these labels is that at first sight they appear to denotate a clearly defined social group, while in reality the boundaries of these categories are often very porous and historically undergo a process of gradual extension. In the German Nazi-state, for example, the category of Jews included families and individuals who did not practice their belief for generations or who did not identify as Jewish but had Jewish ancestors. In contemporary discourse in many European countries, people are identified as Muslims if they or their ancestors come from a majority Muslim country, regardless of whether they practice their belief, identify as atheists, agnostics or belong to a religious minority. 13 Claudio Scarvaglieri 2018) penetrating ‘our’ space despite not belonging ‘here’ or that they produce problems and financial costs for the majority society (Scarvaglieri & Zech 2013, Tort et al. 2016, Conrad & Aðalsteinsdóttir 2017, Joris et al. 2018, Figoureux 2021). These attributions not only present the Other group in a negative light, but also implicitly suggest clear paths of dealing with this Other group – criminals need to be punished, intruders need to be sent away, even more so if they are responsible for social problems and rising social welfare costs. Thus, even if such measures are not explicitly called for in the respective Othering texts, ascribing such characteristics to a social group implies a certain course of action towards them. The same holds true for the water metaphors very frequently used to describe immigrants as a flood or wave of people. These metaphors present Others as a mass of uncountable and uncontrollable objects that threaten to wash over ‘Our’ country and need to be dealt with in ways appropriate to natural disasters (Rehbein 1993, Jung et al. 1997, Wengeler 2003, Joris et al. 2018). Of course, Othering in principle also allows for describing the Other group in more positive or neutral terms. Especially persons fleeing from war zones have been described as victims in the mass media (van Gorp 2006, Conrad & Aðalsteinsdóttir 2017, Joris et al. 2018, Holzberg et al. 2018) and sometimes they are also being framed as useful or beneficial (most often in economic or demographic terms). These categories are often used in the media to try to balance the reporting on immigrants and portray the Other group in a less negative light, also with the aim of not feeding racist narratives and stereotypes. While research has in general been very interested in the description of immigrants in public discourse, even linguists have so far ignored the language aspect of Othering, i.e., the Othering of immigrants based on their multilingual competencies. Researchers have yet to demonstrate language as a source of Othering and to describe the ways in which linguistic Othering in society proceeds (for a first step see Scarvaglieri 2022). Therefore, the present contribution pursues the following goals: 1. Document cases of Othering of multilinguals in public discourse; 2. Differentiate between different kinds of Othering of multilinguals; 3. Describe the attributes and labels used for Othering multilinguals; 4. Elaborate how, based on the findings of 1)-3), the ‘We’ group is constructed vs. the Other group. In the following section, I describe the data corpus and the analytic approach that were used to pursue these goals. 14 2 Othering of multilinguals in society 3 Data and analytic approach This exploratory study is based on a corpus of 49 texts, including audioand video files, from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria4. All elements of the database are journalistic articles or interviews that contribute to public discourse. The data does not contain forum discussions or contributions to social media, only contributions to traditional news media (online and print versions of newspapers, radioand tv-programs). The data were collected by Heike Wiese, who graciously allowed me to use her data, and by myself. Sampling followed a basic hermeneutic approach – newspaper articles or contributions to radio or TV programs were collected if at first sight they seemed to contribute to the Othering of Multilinguals or – more generally – people portrayed as immigrants. This of course explains the rather small corpus – we did not gather all texts about language, multilingualism, or immigrants, but only such sources that were deemed relevant to the topic of this contribution. Following a first reading, listening, or watching of the data, I transcribed the audio and video files. For transcription, I opted to follow conventions established in media linguistics (Burger & Luginbühl 2014: 523) that focus on the verbal content of the contributions, less on paralinguistic or nonverbal information (cf. Jefferson 2004). I then analyzed the data according to established methods of discourse analysis (Wodak & Meyer 2009, Spitzmüller & Warnke 2011), focusing particularly on what was said about multilinguals, how they were portrayed, whether Othering occurred and how it proceeded. My analytic approach thus offers interpretations of the meanings of texts, situates them in the context in which they occur and discusses how their meanings is constructed (cf. Richardson 2019). In a fourth analytic step, I distinguished between different types of Othering apparent in the source texts. This distinction was mainly based on which aspects the Othering was grounded in (e.g., geography vs. ethnic or national belonging). Sampling and analysis thus followed these four steps: 1. First view (reading, listening, watching) and decision about including the source in the corpus; 2. Transcription of audio and video sources; 4The discourse in the Netherlands and in Dutch-speaking Belgium shows very similar patterns (Van Maele 2021, Scarvaglieri 2022), but due to space restrictions this contribution will be limited to German-language data. 15 Claudio Scarvaglieri 3. Close linguistic analysis of the sources with regards to Othering of multilinguals; 4. Differentiation of types of Othering. As mentioned, the study is exploratory in nature and does not claim representativeness for public discourse as such. Based on the limited dataset, it is also not possible to make statements about the overall frequency of the patterns of Othering apparent in my data. Despite these limitations, this contribution is able to demonstrate that Othering of multilinguals exists in the public discourse of the respective countries and how such Othering proceeds. My study thus also aims to lay the groundwork for future studies that would then be able to use for instance statistical methods and a larger database to examine the representativeness and frequency of the patterns described here. 4 Findings Despite sampling for Othering of multilinguals, a first look at my data revealed that even in this carefully chosen subset of public discourse, language is often disregarded or treated as a side-issue with limited relevance for the overarching point of the article. This often means that multilingual immigrants or their children or grandchildren are Othered, without mentioning their multilingual capabilities (see extracts 3 and 5 below for examples). One of the effects of this phenomenon is that multilinguals are not framed as persons who – by speaking multiple languages – have more capabilities than the average monolingual member of the majority society. Not mentioning multilingualism when talking about – and Othering – immigrants thus conceals an important asset of the objects of the contribution, which in turn lends itself to portraying them not as important and contributing members of society, but as deficient, problem-inducing Others in need of support (cf. Scarvaglieri & Zech 2013). Contrary to what would be expected, the concealing of their multilingualism thus does not contribute to ‘normalizing’ multilinguals – as one of the attributes that possibly differentiates ‘Them’ from ‘Us’ is not mentioned – but can instead be a part of portraying them in negative terms. The not mentioning of the multilingualism of Others thus contributes to the second step of Othering mentioned above, the negative evaluation of Others or “crude othering” according to Brons (2015: 71). One first finding is thus that often the multilingual capabilities of the immigrant population are not mentioned in public discourse. Instead, multilinguals 16 2 Othering of multilinguals in society are portrayed as geographic, ethnic, or national Others (cf. Wiese et al. 2022), without referring to language. A related finding is that language is often used as a trait, to demarcate multilinguals as, for example, ‘non-German-speaking’. In these cases, linguistic competencies are treated like labels, used interchangeably with other labels demarcating the Other group. A first example from a discussion about educational policy in the state parliament of Berlin illustrates this practice (emphasis added). (1) Extract 1: “Unequal opportunities in finishing school”, Tagesspiegel, 22. 3. 2017 Melzer [member of parliament; C.,S. ] also wanted to know how students from immigrant families compare to those from German-speaking families. His question was, however, not answered – instead, Secretary of State Rackles gave him the overall figures – Germans and migrants together – as well as the separate figures for migrants. To be able to calculate the school completion rates separately for children with and without a migrant background, one would first have to grab a calculator. If you don’t do that, all you find out is that 34 percent of migrants graduate from high school at the A-level, while the rate for Berlin overall is 47.4%.5 In this extract, a distinction is made between on the one side “Germans”, “children without a migration background”, and “German-speaking families”, and on the other side “immigrant families”, “migrants” and “children with a migration background”. Language is thus used as a trait to characterize some members of society – those that are “German-speaking” – and to distinguish them from other members who do not have this trait. It also becomes clear that ‘German-speaking’ is just one of the labels assigned to one of the two groups, which by reverse marks the Other group as non-German-speaking. This label is used even though both groups attend the German education system and – to a large extent at least – were born and raised in Germany and thus factually do speak German. This labelling is thus less about the actual ability to speak German, but more about whether the children speak another language besides German. This Othering practice thus leads to the paradoxical situation in which a group of children that speaks German is portrayed as non-German-speaking because they speak German along with another language. Othering here is based on children speaking not only German, but also another language. 5Extracts are presented in translation. The German originals are provided in the appendix. 17 Claudio Scarvaglieri And he continues: “I am curious whether you have the courage to address this publicly. I think probably not, rather lead fake debates, because you could be called a racist broadcaster”. So a lot of rage expressed here. Andreas Schleicher, what do you say? Expert: So the topic of integration is really a crucial one today, and you basically have to get the parents on board early. And I think that’s the task of a good education system, to approach these people. I was once in one of the poorest regions of China [...]. That’s what we have to expect from a good education system, to seek the conversation early, because the language basics are the basics for everything, right. The interviewer refers to a listener who expresses very sharp criticism of a family that is practicing what has scientifically been found to be the most adequate way of multilingual language development: speaking the family language at home and having children acquire the society’s majority language in the educational system (Tracy 2008, Rehbein 2013, Montanari 2019, Wiese et al. 2020). The listener connects this with the topos of “parallel societies” and gives the child growing up in this way “no chance”. He also states that the child would only be “allowed” to speak German after entering school, while in reality her parents are probably not actively preventing her from learning German, but are simply speaking their native language with their child. The listener’s strong – and scientifically wrong – statements are classified by the interviewer as expressing “a lot of rage” but not otherwise commented on. In his reaction, the expert again accepts the proposition that immigrants need to avoid speaking their family language at home and should speak German instead. It thus seems clear that the quoted listener, the interviewer and the expert all agree that the Turkish family mentioned in this case it at fault speaking their first language with their child. The expert blames this mistake on the German education system that did not inform the family about the ‘right’ behavior. In her next turn, the interviewer continues to bring the topics immigration and multilingualism together: Interviewer: Just to get back to the topic of immigration […]. So the proportion of fourth graders who always speak German at home was just under 62% in 2021, compared with 84% in 2011. Can conclusions be drawn about this, does something like this drag down a class? In this turn, the interviewer brings up immigration for the third time and explicitly connects immigration and speaking a language other than German with 24 2 Othering of multilinguals in society problems in the education system (classes being “dragged down”). The proposition, that the problems in the much-maligned German education are due to immigrants speaking a language other than German at home is expressed very clearly and in distinct terms: the classes, the other students and the whole system is going down (cf. Lakoff & Johnson 1980 for the metaphorical concepts of ‘up is good’ and ‘down is bad’) because of these students not “always speak[ing] German at home”. The expert supports this as well, in unambiguous terms: Expert: Absolutely. I think that’s what we must realize that early language education is the be-all end-all. That’s why elementary education is of crucial importance, where children have the opportunity to learn the target language German. […] So the parallel worlds usually develop when this school world and the home are basically decoupled, right. He agrees emphatically (“absolutely”) and again points out the importance of early language education, without mentioning that this can be achieved multilingually as well, independently of which language is spoken at home. He even takes up the notion of “parallel worlds” or “parallel societies” and relates it to families speaking another language at home, similar to the listener quoted earlier. I leave out a short sequence of this interview and bring up the final question about immigration, in which the interviewer seems to propose coercive measures against immigrants speaking their family language at home. Interviewer: Klaus Klemm, an educational researcher, says that positive discrimination is the way to go, i.e., if there are not enough places in daycares, make sure that children from socially disadvantaged families are given preference. Would something like that be a solution, also for language support perhaps, to make it obligatory, perhaps? The interviewer again shifts from “socially disadvantaged families” to immigrant multilinguals and seems to suggest forcing them to learn German early (“make it obligatory”). The expert again agrees emphatically (“absolutely”) and then strongly argues in favor of positive discrimination. It remains unclear if he understands the question as suggesting coercive measures against immigrant families. In this example, that I gave a bit more space to, we thus find a clear connection between immigrants and language. As in other examples, multilingualism is not 25 Claudio Scarvaglieri portrayed as a resource or an asset but reduced to not speaking German. Secondly, the connection between immigration and multilinguals who do not speak German is framed very negatively, mainly as producing problems in the German education system (‘dragging classes down’ or building ‘parallel worlds’). Multiple times during the exchange, speaking a language other than German at home is depicted as highly problematic, with interviewer, expert and even a listener agreeing on this proposition. One would expect that this would leave a strong impression on most listeners of the program, especially since the connection between multilinguals and problems of the education system is made multiple times in very explicit terms and supported by an internationally renowned expert. Thirdly, it appears as if coercive measures are suggested, designed to force immigrant families to speak German (such a suggestion is reminiscent of deeply problematic language policies that historically have led to the extinction of languages in some countries (Brizic 2007)). We also find that a clear distinction is drawn between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. This is done for example by the expert pointing out that members of educational institutions need to reach out to immigrant parents and let them know about the importance of speaking German. Immigrants are thus portrayed as special cases that, differently from members of the majority society, need to be contacted and informed separately. Also, the notion of “parallel societies” is brought up multiple times, which suggests that immigrants have willingly chosen to form ‘Their’ own society within ‘Our’ society, to differentiate ‘Themselves’ from ‘Us’. Furthermore, the languages that immigrants speak at home are only mentioned once – by the listener who is upset about his neighbor speaking Turkish with her child – in all other cases, the conversation is concerned with languages Other than German, which literally hints at the Othering that is happening here. This is reinforced in one of the questions – not refuted by the interviewee – that explicitly presents the fact that there are less monolingual German children – fourth graders who “always speak German at home” – than ten years ago as a problem. Multilingualism is thus explicitly portrayed and accepted as a problem for ‘Our’ society. Finally, the example demonstrates that there is an entire discourse strand that problematizes and Others multilinguals, as various studies or researchers are referred to during the discussion. Those studies are used to support the Othering conducted in this conversation, which makes it clear that this discussion is not an isolated example but based on pre-existing contributions to public and scientific discourse that Othering can rely on. A sixth and final example illustrates that linguistic Othering can also be applied to so-called autochthonous minorities. As reported by numerous outlets 26 2 Othering of multilinguals in society (extract 6: Der Tagesspiegel , “Saxons vs. Sorbs”, 7. 1. 2018; Neues Deutschland “Hostility towards Nationals”, 18. 1. 201813), the former prime minister of the German state Saxony, Stanislaw Tillich, was publicly labelled non-Saxon: after another politician had been elected as prime-minister, the mayor of a small Saxon town stated that “at least now for the first time we have a Saxon as prime minister” (Der Tagesspiegel 7. 1. 2018) and later explained that the other former prime ministers came from other parts of Germany and therefore could not be considered Saxon, while Tillich, who was born and raised in Saxony, was a Sorb – a member of the officially recognized autochthonous Sorbian minority in Saxony – and thus not a Saxon. In this case, Othering is thus not related to immigration but to a person belonging to a multilingual minority. The fact that Tillich was born and raised in Saxony, strongly identifies with the region, and speaks German as one of his native languages thus apparently does not suffice to him being included in the ‘We’ group. Instead, him speaking a language besides German and identifying as a member of a minority, leads to him being Othered. We find that a very narrow concept of who ‘We’ are underlies this Othering process. I discuss this concept in the next section and sum up what I found about Othering of multilinguals in the data. 5 Summary and discussion Before discussing the findings, I first present a short summary of the patterns of Othering of multilinguals in public discourse that are visible in my data. • Othering proceeds by portraying people as different and labelling them with terms that express Otherness (Wiese et al. 2022). In the examples discussed above, some of these labels were related to language (nonGerman speaking, Turkish-speaking), others to ethnic (Turkish, Arab) or geographic origin (migrant) or religion (Muslim). As pointed out, these labels are often very broad and do not describe the Other group in much detail but pick out one aspect to demarcate them as Other. • In my dataset, the multilingual capabilities of multilinguals are often not mentioned. Contrary to what might be expected, this does not work against Othering, but supports the negative evaluation of the Other group (‘crude othering’ according to Brons 2015: 71), as an important asset of the group is concealed. 13This article can be read here: https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1076671.inlaenderfeindlichkeit. html (last seen 22. 1. 2024) 27 Claudio Scarvaglieri • If language is mentioned in these contexts, it is almost always portrayed as a fixed trait, not as communicative ability. The language label (nonGerman-speaking etc.) is then used interchangeably with other essentialist and broad ways of labelling such as “immigrant”, “migration background” or “Muslim”. • Such essentialist labels (“migration background” etc.) – be they related to language or not –and the corresponding distinctions are upheld and reused even against explicit criticism. They are also applied to new social phenomena (like a pandemic, riots etc.). • Othering is often combined with clearly negative evaluations of the Other group, which makes it possible to blame social problems (homophobia, antisemitism, bad performance of the education system) on the Other group. This also has the effect of portraying the ‘We’ group in more positive terms (cf. Gillespie 2007: 580), as they are presented as less responsible for existing societal problems. • The distinction of ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’ and the clearly negative evaluation of the Other group can lead to the suggestion of coercive measures against this group (cf. Drakulić 1993, Scarvaglieri & Zech 2013, Brons 2015). • Othering is not restricted to multilinguals who migrated or whose ancestors did so but can also be applied to autochthonous minorities (cf. Wiese et al. 2022). These findings thus illustrate how Othering proceeds and the terms in which Others are portrayed and labelled. multilinguals are labelled as linguistic Others, geographic Others, national, ethnic, or religious Others (Wiese et al. 2022). Since the Other group is often if not always portrayed against the backdrop of the ‘We’ group, my findings also allow for conclusions about important traits ascribed to this ‘We’ group. According to my data, a person will be considered a member of the ‘We’ group if they hold the following traits: • ‘We’ were born and raised ‘here’, i.e., ‘We’ have no familial or individual experience of cross-border migration. ’Here’ is related to national borders, people who migrated within a country are generally accepted as part of the ‘We’ group; • ’We’ are members of the socially dominant ‘ethnic’ (cf. Redder 2011) group; 28 2 Othering of multilinguals in society • ’We’ are ‘native speakers’ of the socially dominant language and do not speak another language on a native-like level. Anyone who differs in one or multiple of these aspects from these features is perceived and labelled as Other in ways discussed above. The data also shows that the boundaries between these groups are perceived as very sharp – individuals or groups are portrayed as part of either group, they cannot belong to both the ‘We’ and the ‘They’ group.14 We thus find that in social public discourse, there exists a commonsense or folk concept about who ‘We’ are vs. who ‘They’ are. Ehlich (1993: 210) understands such everyday or folk concepts (Alltagskonzepte) as basic ideas about reality, incl. nature, society or culture, that guide how we act ourselves and how we understand the actions of others in ordinary everyday contexts. Due to their very fundamental nature, many individuals often are not consciously aware of such folk concepts, and they might perceive them as self-evident presuppositions that need not be criticized Such folk concepts might then appear impossible to discuss or deconstruct. Contrary to methods or theories – which in science are regularly made the objects of intense reflection, discussion and revision – such basic ideas and pre-concepts can therefore become unanalyzed parts of research processes (Ehlich 1993). Since there are multiple connections between science and society – including personal, financial, infrastructural, legal and epistemic connections – science is in general influenced by the social system in which it is conducted (e.g., MacIntyre 1987, Rosa 1998). This holds especially true for ideas about who we are and what constitutes us as a society – ideas that form the foundation of collective and individual identity (Taylor 1989). As the contributions to this volume show, the unanalyzed, often unconscious notion that Mutlilinguals are Others, is not only present in public discourse but has continued to influence language science for decades and has often formed one of the starting points for scientific undertakings in the linguistic field. I argue that linguistics needs to discuss and deconstruct this distinction to be able to push for a more open and egalitarian societal discourse about linguistic belonging. 14There are few exceptions to this rule, namely articles that portray individuals in detail and discuss contradictory feelings of belonging, often of multilingual immigrants or their children. In these contributions however, it is usually pointed out that portraying someone as feeling like they belong to multiple groups is unconventional and difficult and that it goes against the general way of understanding identity and belonging. 29 Claudio Scarvaglieri Acknowledgements I thank my co-editors as well as two anonymous reviewers for extensive and very helpful comments on this study. I also thank the participants of the Othering workshop conducted in Berlin in July 2022 for their comments on this study. References Amores, Javier J., Carlos Arcila-Calderón & Beatriz González-de-Garay. 2020. 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(MA thesis). 33 Heike Wiese ethnic levels (1ab), and sometimes openly racist (1c), (German originals; translations by me, H.W.): (1) a. “not our German grammar”; “semilingual parents […] quarterlingual children” b. “migration children” c. “I think it is also somehow a problem of their intellect” “emotional superficiality” “cultural alalia” “they also have a different anatomy, they also have completely different faces. Often they have very bulging lips, and then on top of that the puberty” [laughs] Note that these are utterances made in the context of an interview, that is, in a situation where participants tend to monitor themselves more closely and tend to avoid statements they deem to be socially undesirable or unacceptable. That we find such evidence from language professionals could indicate that such opinions are widely shared in society or at least perceived as such. How does this affect academia? Do we find effects of this societal habitus in linguistics? 1.2 Does this affect linguistics? If we are looking for possible influences of a monolingual and monoethnic societal habitus in linguistics, we have to remember that this kind of habitus is primarily characteristic for the Global North, given its origin in European nationstate building. At the same time, research from the Global North has been dominant in academia for a long time. For psychology, Henrich et al. (2010) pointed out that research traditionally concentrated on what they called WEIRD societies: an abbreviation for “Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic”. In linguistic typology, Dahl (2015) criticised a LOL bias: a focus on languages with the features “Literate, Official, Lots of users”, which account for less than 1% of human languages. Both patterns are related to the dominance of the Global North, with its characteristic political, economic, and linguistic make-up. Accordingly, we might expect to also see effects of the monolingual and monoethnic habitus prevailing in the Global North. This is borne out not only in such earlier structuralist idealisations as de Saussure’s “forme idéale” (de Saussure 1916) or Chomsky’s “ideal speaker-listener” (Chomsky 1965) that were discussed in the Introduction (Alexiadou et al. 2025 [this volume]). We can also see evidence for such a habitus in current conceptualisations of a “native speaker”.7 7For a recent debate see contributions in Guijarro-Fuentes et al. (2022) 40 3 Othering of multilinguals in linguistics: Implications from labelling In research on language acquisition, monolinguals have long been constructed as the primary bearers of a language.8In heritage language research, monolinguals are still commonly used as controls (see also Lüpke 2025 [this volume]):9heritage speakers have so far primarily been investigated in the Global North, in societies with a strong monolingual habitus, and monolinguals have been chosen as a control group for “native-like” behaviour, “native competence” or “native levels” of language attainment. This implies a monolingually biased view on who belongs to the primary speaker group and owns a language, very much in keeping with the societal habitus we discussed. In the present paper I am going to delve deeper into this by looking at a broader range of subdisciplines. In order to uncover possible implicit biases, I will focus on the way multilinguals are labelled. In what follows, I present evidence from linguistics and from related fields of sociology and education, and analyse the different topoi that are evident in labelling practices (Section 2). Against this background, I discuss how this might affect our research perspectives (Section 3). The final section (Section 4) summaries our results and discusses their implications. 2 Labelling multilinguals as Others 2.1 Evidence from academic writing In what follows, I present a qualitative analysis of Othering patterns implicit in labels used for multilinguals in academia. For this analysis, I use as my empirical basis examples of labelling I found when reading literature relevant for my research interests. This is hence not a representative sample, but skewed towards my own reading. The goal was not to identify quantitative patterns, but to analyse the underlying topoi evident in such labels. This said, the examples indicate that Othering through labelling has a wide distribution in linguistics. My examples come from publications across different perspectives, subdisciplines and research domains, including contact linguistics, heritage language research, language acquisition, grammatical analysis, and sociolinguistics, plus some examples from related fields of sociology and education. Geographically, all examples come from the Global North, predominantly from research in Europe, but also from North America and Australia. I have anonymised all sources. Speaker codes identify the discipline (L – Linguistics; S – Sociology; E – Education), speaker number within a discipline (L01, 8Cf. criticism in Ortega (2009); O’Rourke & Pujolar (2015). 9Cf. Rothman et al. (2023) for a recent critique of “monolingual comparative normativity”. 41 Heike Wiese 02, … S01, …), and publication year. There are two reasons for this anonymisation. First, I use publications as data points here, hence authors are treated as subjects and accordingly anonymised. Second, since these are widespread practices, it would be besides the point to put individual authors on the spot, and might hinder an open discussion. In this context, let me point out that the examples also include a quote from one of my own earlier publications. As I will show in the following sections, Othering through labelling falls into three main, interrelated strands: (1) Othering with respect to territorial belonging constructs geographic Others; (2) Othering with respect to national group membership constructs national Others; (3) Othering with respect to linguistic ownership constructs linguistic Others. These strands closely follow patterns of Othering in public discourse, as discussed in Section 1.1. In what follows, I look at each strand in turn. 2.2 Territorial belonging: Constructing geographic Others Labelling practices in this strand construct children and grandchildren of immigrants as geographic Others, although they are locally born (and non-mobile). This is hence reminiscent of the use of “migrant” interchangeably with “migration background” mentioned above for the public discussion in Germany. In some cases, a migrant status is perpetuated over several generations, with speakers labelled as (im-)migrants, rather than locals when their ancestors were immigrants. In other cases, a foreign origin is perpetuated for later generations, with speakers labelled as originating from other countries, rather than from the country of their birth and upbringing. We can identify two topoi here: • Topos 1 “Perpetual Migrants”: Multilinguals are migrants. • Topos 2 “Not from Here”: Multilinguals have a foreign origin. The first topos is evident when multilingual speech communities are described as “immigrant populations” (L01/2019), and when locally born speakers are labelled as “migrants” (S01/2014) and set apart as “migrant peers” (L19/2009) of monolingual local speakers. Rather than being acknowledged as first or second generation locals – or indeed just locals – they are labelled as “second” or “third generation (im-)migrants” (L01/2019, L03/2020, L06/2020, L10/2017, L11/2013, L16/2011, L19/2009, L20/2013, E02/2017), or as coming from “migrant families of the second or third generation” (E01/2020). 42 3 Othering of multilinguals in linguistics: Implications from labelling The second topos manifests itself when foreign “home countries” (L01/2019) or “countries of origin” (L05/2013, E02/2017) are postulated for locally born speakers, while the country they have lived in all their lives is described as a “host country” (L20/2013) or, adopting a perspective of the speaker, they are described as “living abroad” (L06/2020). Speakers are characterised, e.g., as of “Turkish origin” (L19/2009) or of “Moroccan” or “Turkish descent” (L07/2014, E02/2017) or as having “foreign roots” (S01/2014). Taken together, this kind of labelling foregrounds an ancestral migration event in the family history and applies it to a generation that has not participated in it, making them new arrivals in the country of their birth (Topos 1), and constructing them as aliens whose home is not the country they live in, but the sending country of those earlier generations in their family history (Topos 2). 2.3 National group membership: Constructing national Others Labelling practices in this strand construct multilingual speakers as members of a foreign out-group or establish dichotomies between them and the local in-group. Again, two topoi are associated with this: • Topos 3 “Foreign Nationals”: multilinguals are Turks, Chinese, … • Topos 4 “Not Our People”: multilinguals are not German, Dutch, …. Topos 3 is evident when speakers who were born and grew up in, e.g., Germany, the Netherlands, or Australia are labelled “Chinese”, “Greek”, Turks”, “Moroccan”, “Albanian”, or “Surinamese” (L01/2019, L02/2013, L07/2002, L07/2014, L12/2008). In some cases, similarly to the “Perpetual Migrants” topos, there is explicit reference to the fact that speakers are already the second generation living in the country, but instead of, e.g., “second generation Dutch/Australian”, they are labelled as “second generation Chinese/Greek” etc. (L01/2019, L13/2019). Feeding into Topos 4, locally born young people who are multilingual are contrasted to an in-group of, e.g., “Dutch” or “German” children or adolescents who are constructed as monolingual (L04/2017, L07/2002, L17/2008, E03/2005, S01/2014, S02/2017). This restricts local belonging to monolingual speakers and demarcates multilinguals as outsiders. Especially in the context of the Netherlands, an additional opposition pair sometimes used here is that of “autochthonous” vs. “allochthonous”, which terminologically restricts belonging to one group, marginalising the second group as “allo-”. While this is in keeping with the state’s census terminology, associating this dichotomy with 43 Heike Wiese monolingualism vs. multilingualism in linguistics supports further Othering of multilingual speakers. These topoi feed into a narrative that sets multilinguals in contrast to the national in-group and casts them as members of another nationality. Especially in the context of European nation-states, this constructs an alien speaker group that is excluded from local belonging. 2.4 Linguistic ownership: constructing linguistic Others Labelling practices within this strand deny multilingual speakers ownership of the languages they speak, even if they grew up with them as a family language or as the dominant language in the society they were born into. My data reveals two topoi: • Topos 5 “Not Native Speakers”: multilinguals are not native speakers of Spanish, Dutch, … • Topos 6 “Not of Our Language”: multilinguals are not German-, … speaking Topos 5 is evident through labelling that constructs only monolingual speakers as native speakers and contrasts them with bilinguals. In heritage language research, this is evident when differences between “native speakers and heritage speakers” or deviations of “heritage speakers from native speakers” are investigated (L01/2019, L14/2018), thus denying native-speakerhood to bilinguals, even though they acquired the language from birth. The other side of the coin is evident when bilinguals are contrasted to “native speakers” of the majority language that they speak in addition to their heritage language (S01/2014). Taken together, this kind of labelling denies bilingually grown up speakers native-speakerhood for both of their languages. In Topos 6, this is taken a step further for the case of the majority language, excluding bilinguals from its speaker base altogether. Such Othering is evident in a paper constructing as “non-German speaking students” German university students with a “migration background” (L09/2010), referring to speakers who went to school in Germany (and usually were already born there) and graduated from school there – in schools where German would normally be the language of instruction, given the country’s strong monolingual habitus. This might look like an extreme case, and it certainly seems to be less common than Topos 5. However, the paper in question is not a fringe publication, but a contribution to a 44 3 Othering of multilinguals in linguistics: Implications from labelling well-established handbook in which this obviously remained unnoticed throughout the reviewing and editing process, which underscores the normality of such terminology in our field. 2.5 Three strands: parallels to public discourse As mentioned in 1.1 above, public discourse on language and belonging in the wake of European nation-states is often dominated by a nexus of “one country, one nation, one language”. My findings indicate that this nexus is not restricted to the general public and “lay” discourse: results reveal labelling practices in academic writing that construct multilingual speakers as Others with respect to territorial belonging, national membership, and language ownership, mirroring the trinity of country, nation, and language. Figure 2 illustrates this integration of the three strands and the topoi feeding into them. Territorial belonging “Migrants” “Not from here” National membership “Foreign nationals” “Not our people” Language ownership “Not native speakers” “Not of our language” country nation language Figure 2: Othering of multilingual speakers through labelling practices in academia This result suggests that when it comes to the labels we use for multilinguals, the monolingual and monoethnic habitus dominant in larger society exerts its power in academia as well. The linguistic side of this is evident in Othering that denies speakers language ownership, the ethnic side in territorial and national Othering. With respect to the latter, it is presumably not a coincidence that the speakers labelled in this way were invariably speakers of marginalised and racialised groups.10 As the contrast discussed for the two Tagesspiegel articles in 1.1 above illustrated, it is these groups that are subject to such Othering in the public debate, rather than those constructed as white middle class. 10See Fuller (2012) on bilingual settings constructed as “immigrant” vs. “elite” in Germany and the US; Rosa & Flores (2017) on raciolinguistic patterns. 45 Heike Wiese That labelling practices in academia should so closely mirror negative language ideologies in larger society is surprising. It suggests an unreflective use of terminology that entails biases that presumably none of the publications in question would subscribe to – in fact the very biases that many explicitly criticise. Davies & Langer (2006: 20), discussing standard language ideologies, remind us that “Folk linguistic views will also be expressed by academic linguists, of course, whenever they are guided by their native instincts rather than their official academic views”. It seems that too often, we are still guided by “instincts” on monoand multilingualism that reflect linguistic and ethnic societal biases, as revealed in the labels we use. Avoiding such labelling practices is not only important from the point of view of scholarly terminology. The Othering implicit in such labelling can further undermine social equality and societal participation of marginalised groups. A case in point comes from the public discussion in Germany in early 2024. It illustrates, for an extreme example, the kind of narratives that such a conceptualisation as Others can support. Journalists working with the investigative platform “Correctiv” revealed a secret meeting of conservative and right-extremist politicians in November 2023 where plans of mass deportations had been discussed of foreign nationals as well as German citizens who were conceptualised as ethnic Others. When these plans became public, they led to a public outcry, with major demonstrations against the extreme right throughout the country lasting for weeks. The interesting point for our discussion is that this deportation plan had been constructed as “remigration”. Note that this is in fact a term in keeping with the kind of labelling discussed in this paper: by calling second-generation Germans etc. “(im-)migrants” we are ultimately blowing in the same horn. If locally born speakers are understood as “migrants” from other “home countries”, then it is only a small step to frame their expulsion into those countries as “remigration”. When, on the other hand, we conceptualise them as Germans, we recognise such a deportation for what it is. Interestingly, some traces of Othering of the people targeted in this deportation plan were evident even in the public outcry against it. An initiative #ZUSAMMENLAND (“togetherland”) that was joined by the major media, the industrial sector, and all major academic institutions in Germany (incl. the German Science Foundation, the Leibniz Association, the Max Planck Society, the Helmholtz Association, the German Academic Exchange Council and a large number of universities) criticised “the so-called “remigration” of our friends, neighbours, colleagues”. While those “friends, neighbours, colleagues” are not framed as non46 3 Othering of multilinguals in linguistics: Implications from labelling German, they are also not us: they are not part of the “we”-group that makes this statement.11 With respect to academia, the Othering evident in the kind of labelling practices discussed in this paper can also affect our research perspective. If multilinguals are constructed as Others, this can lead to a problematic research bias. In the literature, we find some indication for this in different areas. In the following section, I illustrate this with two examples, highlighting problems for approaches to language structure and language use. 3 Problems for our research perspectives 3.1 Allocating multilinguals’ language use outside native grammars A societal monolingual and monoethnic habitus casts multilinguals as linguistic outsiders and leads to doubts about their language competence. This is what we saw, for instance, reflected in such funding schemes as FörMig for linguistic and educational research projects in Germany (Section 1.1). In the public debate, a frequently voiced assumption is that adolescents with a “migration background” do not master German properly, and such voices include well-known linguists.12 Along the same lines, if a monolingual and monoethnic habitus leads to constructing multilinguals as being outside the native speaker group, then their linguistic practices might not be seen as part of native grammars.13 An example of how this can impact research in linguistics comes from earlier accounts of an urban contact dialect now known as “Kiezdeutsch”,14 which emerged in multilingual and multiethnic neighbourhoods in peer-group interactions among adolescents. In the early 2000s, grammatical characteristics of this variety were typically described as more or less random deviations and omissions. For instance, Auer (2003: 4) states that “gender gets changed (presumably ad hoc), […] definite and indefinite article forms are often missing, […] the XV…-order of German is transformed into SVO”.15 The last characteristic refers to an option in Kiezdeutsch 11For the full text of the statement (in German) see https://cmk.zeit.de/cms/articles/ 16974/anzeige/zusammenland/neue-kampagne-zusammenland-vielfalt-macht-uns-stark (last accessed May 24th, 2024). 12See Wiese (2015) for a discussion of linguists’ contributions to the public debate on Kiezdeutsch. 13See contributions in Guijarro-Fuentes et al. (eds.) (2021/2022) for critical approaches to the concept of “native speaker”; Wiese et al. (2021) for evidence from heritage language research. 14Lit. “(neighbour-)hood German” (Wiese 2012). 15German original, my translation (H.W.). 47 Heike Wiese to place an adverbial and a subject in front of the finite verb, which violates the verb-second (V2) constraint for standard German main declaratives. Selting & Kern (2009) discussed this for a specific prosodic pattern and described it as something normally not found in German including its “colloquial and/or regionalized varieties”. Meanwhile, this word order has been analysed as a systematic verb-third (V3) construction that is a viable option within German grammar,16it has also been attested in monolinguals, including in spoken language outside Kiezdeutsch,17 and it has been shown to have parallels with options found in earlier diachronic stages, suggesting long-standing Germanic roots.18 Hence, it is unlikely that such statements would still be made today. The point is, however, that at the time those claims were made without any empirical backing on the range of options outside V2. This might not have been the case if such patterns had first been observed in monolinguals, and it might be linked to a construction of speakers as outsiders. Auer (2003) calls the variety Türkenslang “Turks’ slang”, Kern & Selting (2006)19 use the term Türkendeutsch “Turks’ German”, thus conceptualising speakers as “Turks”, rather than Germans, even though they were born and raised in Germany (and often hold German citizenship), in line with Topoi 3 and 4 discussed in 2.3 above. This points to a possible implicit bias that can have negative effects on our research: if speakers are not perceived as a legitimate part of the German in-group, their language use will not be allocated within the normal range of German – an Othering of speakers goes hand in hand with an Othering of their language use. Against this background, Dittmar (2013) states, in a paper on the speakers of this variety, which he refers to as “multiethnolectal German” (short: MED), “I advise caution here: we should […] not miss any opportunity to point out that MED speakers […] also have to practice the German standard – it is the only way they can be valuable, indispensable co-designers and creative language changers of our society and remain so in the future!” This seems to put Kiezdeutsch speakers outside society: they seem not to be included in the “us” in “our society”; speaking Kiezdeutsch puts them at risk of 16Cf. Wiese (2012); Freywald et al. (2015); te Velde (2017); Walkden (2017); Alexiadou & Lohndal (2018). 17See Schalowski (2015); Wiese & Müller (2018); Bunk (2020). 18Wiese (2012); Walkden (2017). 19This is an earlier, German version of Selting & Kern (2009). In Selting & Kern (2009), they changed the term to “Turkish German”. 48 3 Othering of multilinguals in linguistics: Implications from labelling remaining in the out-group. This highlights the link between Othering a way of speaking and Othering a social group associated with it. At the same time, it also shows how this goes hand in hand with doubts about language competence, again parallel to what we found for larger society. In this case, the doubts are on register competences, specifically those in formal, standard-close registers, which are regarded as a precondition for speakers being “valuable” members of “our society”. Apart from the strong standard language ideology evident here, such doubts show that register differentiations are overlooked when it comes to language use that is primarily associated with marginalised multilingual speakers – even though evidence of broader speakers’ repertoires in such multilingual settings was available well before that paper was published.20 And in the same year, Auer (2013) still described the V3 pattern found in Kiezdeutsch as a “change of XV order” that “deeply intervenes in the structure of autochthonous German in its standard and nonstandard forms”. This was despite evidence for the structural integration of this pattern into the German sentence lay-out (e.g., the presence of verbal brackets in V3 and the use of verb-last order in subordinate sentences), together with an overall very low frequency of this pattern, with canonical V2 accounting for the overwhelming majority of main declaratives in speakers’ productions.21 That such evidence is overlooked and that patterns deviating from standard language are allocated outside authochthonous German, suggests a research bias that casts speakers as allochthonous and that has negative effects on our findings: we miss out on the opportunity to learn something new about native grammars and their options. As research guided by a multilingual, rather than deficit perspective has shown, multilingual settings can support a linguistic dynamics that leads to quantitative advantages and provides us with an interesting spotlight onto linguistic variation and change.22 3.2 Erasure of majority language practices in multilinguals If multilinguals are seen as linguistic Others in countries with a monolingual societal bias, this can also mean that their use of the majority language is not seen. Such an erasure is evident in two related assumptions often found in research on multilinguals that speak a heritage language: (1) if a neighbourhood is associated 20See, for instance Kallmeyer & Keim (2003), Keim (2007). For register-differentiated use of standard varieties and urban contact dialects by adolescent speakers in other countries, e.g., Cornips (2008) on Dutch, Ganuza (2008) on Swedish. 21See Wiese (2013) and references therein. 22Wiese (2013); Kupisch & Polinsky (2022); Wiese et al. (2021). 49 Heike Wiese In linguistics, the results of our analysis contribute to existing calls to adopt a genuinely multilingual perspective, approaching characteristics of multilinguals’ language use as an integral part of language variation, understanding multilinguals as members of the linguistic in-group, and ultimately moving beyond the bilingual/monolingual dichotomy in favour of a more inclusive approach to native speakers and native grammars. Acknowledgements Different aspects of the findings presented here were discussed at a number of talks at universities, workshops and conferences, including the 33rd meeting of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) at Yale University 2023, the Bilingualism Matters Research Symposium in Edinburgh 2022, Heritage Language Syntax 3 in Paris 2022, the Annual Meeting of the Società di Linguistica Italiana in Brixen 2022, the online lecture series “Language and Society” by the universities of Rostock, Greifswald, and Frankfurt/Oder 2022, the workshop “Do we practise what we preach? The construction of multilinguals as Others in public discourse and academia” in Berlin 2022, the Sociolinguistics Series of Leiden University 2019, and the Sociolinguistic Lectures Cocktail Series of Cologne University 2019. I thank the participants for constructive discussions and valuable input from different perspectives. Special thanks go also to my group at Humboldt University Berlin: Oliver Bunk, İrem Duman Çakır, Annika Labrenz, Antje Sauermann, and Britta Schulte discussed different aspects of my analyses for this paper and Nicole Wong and Johanna Pott provided much-needed help in checking the sources on societal ideologies. The analysis of topoi in linguistic labelling practices draws on section 3.1 in Working Paper in Urban Languages and Literatures 302 (Wiese et al. 2022); I am grateful to Ben Rampton for very helpful input on an earlier version of that working paper. Research for this paper was supported through funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) for the Research Unit “Emerging Grammars in Language Contact Situations” RUEG 2537 (WI 2155/10-1, 10-2, 11-1, 12-1, 13-1) and the Collaborative Research Center “Registers” SFB 1412, 416591334. 56 3 Othering of multilinguals in linguistics: Implications from labelling References Aalberse, Suzanne, Ad Backus & Pieter Muysken. 2019. Heritage languages: A language contact approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Alexiadou, Artemis & Terje Lohndal. 2018. V3 in Germanic: A comparison of urban vernaculars and heritage languages. Linguistische Berichte Sonderheft 25. 245–264. Alexiadou, Artemis, Claudio Scarvaglieri, Christoph Schroeder & Heike Wiese. 2025. Introduction: Multilinguals as Others. In Artemis Alexiadou, Claudio Scarvaglieri, Christoph Schroeder & Heike Wiese (eds.), The construction of multilinguals as Others: Do we practice what we preach?, 1–9. 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DOI: 10.37307/j.1868-775X.2017.01.03. 62 Chapter 4 Methodological othering through monolingual controls: How not to Artemis Alexiadou Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS); Humboldt Universität zu Berlin In a substantial body of work on a particular group of multilingual speakers, namely heritage speakers, these are often described as deviating from native-like mastery in a variety of ways. In comparison with monolingual controls, heritage speakers are viewed as lagging behind. This paper addresses this issue and argues that monolingual controls should not be dispensed with, but rather they can be used to gain insights into language variation and the processes that shape monolingual and heritage grammars alike. 1 Introduction Typically, in empirical research participants are divided into two groups: the experimental group (the group we are interested in) and the control group. In heritage language ressearch research, the control group is composed of agedmatched monolingual speakers, and also monolingual children, and the experimental group are the heritage speakers. Thus, based on an idealized first language (L1) competence, adopting the inclusion of a control group of monolingual speakers of the language is the default in empirical research, see Vulchanova et al. (2022) for a recent discussion. However, this perspective leads to othering heritage speakers, viewing them as some sort of special group: as in most cases, such speakers do not behave the exact same way as monolinguals, the explanations that are often given are deficit oriented. The grammar of heritage speakers is non-target grammar in comparison to the target, i.e., monolingual native grammar. This has been argued to be the result of incomplete acquisition or attrition Artemis Alexiadou. 2025. Methodological othering through monolingual controls: How not to. In Artemis Alexiadou, Claudio Scarvaglieri, Christoph Schroeder & Heike Wiese (eds.), The construction of multilinguals as Others: Do we practice what we preach?, 63–80. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17132445 Artemis Alexiadou or both depending on the phenomenon (Montrul 2016), the result of a bottleneck (Slabakova 2019), or simply heritage grammar is in some ways defective (Polinsky & Scontras 2020). The focus on non-target properties of heritage grammars have recently led Domínguez et al. (2019: 247ff.) to defend the term incomplete acquisition. As they state, in the field of L1 acquisition, it expresses the procedural character of language acquisition: grammars may fluctuate, change, develop and show sensitivity to maturational constraints. In the field of heritage language grammars, it is suggestive of a situation whereby heritage language speakers have not had the chance to learn all the available cues. The authors explicitly conclude that ’’investigating the grammatical knowledge of heritage speakers would benefit from including at least two control groups, a group of monolingual speakers and a group of speakers representing the parental/community input that the heritage speakers receive in that context. This could help clarify whether properties not instantiated in heritage speakers’ grammars were present in the input to start with.’’ Domínguez et al. (2019: 251). Thus, from this perspective two and not just one control groups are necessary to assess the properties of heritage grammars. The so-called deficit framing of heritage speakers has been criticized from a variety of perspectives, see e.g., Kupisch & Rothman (2018), Bousquette & Putnam (2020), Higby et al. (2023), Wiese et al. (2021), Wiese et al. (2022) to mention a few. In this paper, I will align with these perspectives and propose to abandon the idea that the monolingual speaker/native speaker is the model of all different types of language acquisition and competence. My focus is on heritage speakers (henceforth HSs) of Greek. I will adopt the idea that HSs are in fact part of the native speaker range, see e.g., Rothman & Treffers-Daller (2014); while I will not argue that one needs to dispense with the notion of the control group as such, I will suggest that whenever a control group is used, the point of departure should be to show how HSs opt for patterns that are also produced by monolinguals, and thus present in the input in some form, albeit in different settings. I will attempt to identify the mechanisms the different groups of speakers employ, see Higby et al. (2023), Luk & Bialystok (2013), Wiese et al. (2021) for insightful discussion from different perspectives. I will then discuss differences between HS and monolingual productions from the perspective of representational economy and analyticity, Scontras et al. (2018), and Putnam et al. (2021). The chapter is structured as follows: in section 2, I offer a definition of heritage speakers and their relation to the notion of the native speaker. In section 3, I report on several studies that show similarities and differences in the productions of HSs and native speakers of Greek. In section 4, I turn to some discussion of the findings, and in section 5 I conclude. 64 4 Methodological othering through monolingual controls: How not to 2 Heritage speakers and the native speaker As stated in a post by Grammon & Babel (2021), ’’the idea of the “native speaker” originated within the context of European nationalism and colonialism in the 19th century. It proved useful both as a way of conceptualizing and labeling a particular linguistic identity tied to a nation and to differentiate between social groups within a colonial hierarchy. A closer examination reveals that the concept of the “native” speaker is tightly connected to discriminatory logics.’’, see also Higby et al. (2023) and references therein. Why should that be the case? As Grammon & Babel discuss, linguists and non-linguists use the term native speaker to describe an individual that grew up speaking a particular language and who is fully proficient in that language. The point is, however, that often a certain kind of authority as to how a language should be spoken is bestowed upon native speakers, thus othering multilingual speakers, see also Wiese et al. (2022) for extensive discussion and references. Typically, monolinguals are seen as native speakers of their language, as in their case one can a priori exclude language interference that may create a more complex linguistic behavior. For this reason, the monolingual speaker has been in the center of investigation in the history of theoretical and experimental linguistics. The origin of this view can be found in the early pages of Aspects of the Theory of Syntax: “Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance” (Chomsky 1965: 3). Thus, for a very long time, as stressed in Lohndal (2013), only monolingual speakers, treated as producing invariant speech were analyzed. This type of approach, however, leads to a situation where bilingual speakers cannot be viewed as a pure case of study, as there are too many factors interfering with the acquisition of their two grammars. The language of heritage speakers thus might be considered a rather complicated case. In other words, since there is a lot of variation among speakers in this domain, formal models of grammar cannot really be applied to the linguistic behavior of such speakers. However, we know by now that monolingual speakers do exhibit divergent outcomes, see e.g, Dąbrowska (2012) and subsequent work. Thus, if, as rightly suggested by an anonymous reviewer, such gradience is not only characteristic of bilingual populations, but is also found among monolinguals as well, the notion of the ideal speaker-hearer 65 Artemis Alexiadou 3.5 Periphrastic constructions in heritage-Greek A different picture emerges in the domain of the lexicon, discussed in Alexiadou & Rizou (2023). Here using the same corpus and the same groups of speakers, the focus was on the question of whether HSs speakers show effects of reorganization in the verbal domain. In particular, the question was whether they use periphrastic constructions (PCs) instead of lexical verbs. What prompted this question is the fact that the Greek lexicon has a mixed character, as the result of diglossia (Ferguson 1959). According to AnastasiadisSymeonidis & Asimakis (2003), Ralli (2004) and Efthymiou (2017), the feature [+learned] characterizes words that either a) come from Ancient Greek or b) constitute artificial formations of ‘katharevusa’. The feature [-learned] applies to words that have a popular origin. [-learned] elements are used in informal or spoken (colloquial) speech, while [+learned] ones are used in refined or written speech. Typically, prefixed verbs and non-active morphology on verbs belong to the so-called [+learned] features and thus verbs that are built on the basis of these prefixes are [+learned]. Precisely these verbs were the focus of our study. We expected that HSs should behave differently from monolinguals due to lack of formal education, in view of the fact that [+learned] features are acquired only via formal education. Table 3, from Alexiadou & Rizou (2023: 98) shows the raw numbers and the percentages of the speakers who produced PCs across registers. Table 3: Use of PCs. No PCs’ indicates the speakers who did not use any PCs in their narratives and the row “Both formal and informal” indicates the number of speakers who used PCs in both settings. yHSs in the US Control group No PCs 32/ 50.8% 40/ 62.5% Formal 12/ 19.0% 6/ 9.4% Informal 4/ 6.3% 9/ 14.1% Both formal and informal 15/ 23.8% 9/ 14.1% We noted that the number of HSs that produced PCs in the formal register is higher than that of monolinguals. Monolingual speakers also use PCs in the formal register, which was not expected. Fewer HSs in the US produce PCs in the informal register, which was not expected, and can be explained by fact that the informal US narratives are much shorter compared to their formal counterparts. 72 4 Methodological othering through monolingual controls: How not to Monolinguals use PCs as well but preferably in the informal settings. Some examples of the PCs and the lexical verbs we found are given in table 4, from Alexiadou & Rizou (2023: 99): Table 4: Types of PCs used by HSs vs lexical verbs used by the control group PCs Lexical verb Ekane freno,evale ta frena,ekane brake= do brake Frenare = brake pire attention = pay attention Siniditopiise = realise Pire agalia= take a hug Agaliase = hug Kanun erevna = do an investigation Erevnun = investigate Kanune parking= do parking Ihe stathmefsi = park Den ihe ora (na)= don’t have time to Prolavene (na) = catch up Ekane stop= do stop Stamatise = stop Kano report = do a report (na)katatheso = testify Our prediction was thus borne out: because the Greek lexicon has a mixed character, HSs behave differently from monolinguals due to lack of formal education. We attributed this to the fact that since speakers are exposed to [+learned] elements only in secondary education, HSs receive much less input: their formal education is achieved by attending either bilingual schools or afternoon/ weekend schools, and arguably the hours of instruction are comparatively fewer than in the case of monolinguals. Because of this, as predicted, both the monolingual group and the HSs replace lexical verbs that bear [+learned] features in the informal register, and HSs use PCs in both registers. The importance of formal education has also been recently discussed for Heritage Persian in Gharibi et al. (2023), who show that literacy seems to be the most important factor for variation in heritage language outcomes. With respect to our analysis of the pattern, we assumed that both the lexical verb and the PC lexicalize the same structure, the difference being that the PC spells-out each subcomponent of the verbal meaning with a dedicated form, the light verb corresponding to a causative layer and the nominal form corresponding the result component, while the lexical verb realizes both sub-parts via a single element. In conclusion, in our case studies, monolingual speakers behave differently from HSs in the domain of agreement, where no mismatches are observed. When it comes to the selection of a particular structure, where the choice is guided by register (and/or modality), monolinguals also show the same patterns as HSs 73 Artemis Alexiadou in their choice of variant, as is the case with pu relatives and PCs. By contrast, register does not seem to play a significant role in the choice of realization of agreement in different contexts. 4 Discussion The above case studies show two different patterns in the same group of speakers, one of which, however, also characterizes the monolingual control group. In the first study, both HSs and monolingual speakers alike use pu relatives irrespectively of formality. The difference between the two groups amounts to the avoidance of the agreeing form, found only with HSs. In the agreement mismatches studies, monolinguals do not produce mismatches, while US speakers show agreement restructuring. In other words, in these cases we have suggestive evidence that HSs of Greek use less complex representations. In the case of the lexicon, HSs use PCs, generalizing a pattern found also in monolingual productions, where it is associated with informal settings. Unlike in the first case study, here HSs show effects of use of a more analytic pattern. By contrast, in the case of RRCs, they use a more complex representation. Why should they behave differently in all these case studies? To approach this question, I revisit the recent discussion of the mechanisms that shape heritage grammars in Scontras et al. (2018), see also Lohndal & Putnam (2024): according to Scontras et al. (2018), two pressures shape heritage grammars, representational economy and analyticity. In their terms, in the first case, the heritage grammar somehow eliminates while in the latter it augments structures in comparison to the patterns used by monolingual speakers. Specifically, HSs in some cases prioritize representational economy, restructuring their grammar in favor of lighter-weight linguistic representations: less articulated, more parsimonious structures (e.g., structures with fewer explicit agreement features) could ease the load on working memory and might therefore be preferred to their fully-articulated structures. By contrast, Analyticity favors one-to-one correspondence between form and meaning. This pattern suggests that HSs prefer one-to-one form-meaning correspondences, which are more transparent, (see also Alexiadou 2021). It is interesting that in our case studies the patterns shown go in very different directions. In the studies which involve agreement, we have use of forms that basically lack features or inconsistent patterns. In other words, as also discussed in Scontras et al. (2018), HSs restructure their agreement categories and favoring fewer feature values and perhaps less structure. The interesting thing in the case 74 4 Methodological othering through monolingual controls: How not to of Greek RRCs is that the form with less features is an option in the Greek grammar to begin with, also used by monolinguals and it looks like HSs generalize this. This is not the case in the DP internal agreement patterns, where a restructuring is observed. Here there is no option in the grammar, nouns, adjectives and articles have to agree in number and gender. The same applies also in the lexicon case, where the PC is an option next to the lexical verb. Thus, one may ask, as Scontras et al. (2018) do, whether it is possible to predict which domains may deliver more parsimonious representations, and which may increase analyticity in HS grammars but also in general, i.e., beyond the HS debate. While we might not yet have a full empirical picture of how to answer this yet, an important insight of this paper is that the two mechanisms Scontras et al. (2018) discuss are not unique to heritage grammars, but also shape monolingual grammars as well; this becomes evident once we take into consideration how speakers use variants of the same feature/structure. Whenever there is alternation between two (or maybe more) forms, a speaker may prefer one of the two. In the RRC study, it was the form without agreement, the less transparent form, in the case of the lexicon, it was the more explicit one. In the latter case, the choice was influenced by register. This in turn suggests that depending on the domain of grammar, lexicon vs. phi-features, different mechanisms may be exploited, see also Bousquette & Putnam (2020), and importantly also by monolingual speakers. Analyticity typically correlates with less formal registers, while representational economy does not seem to be dependent on formality. Importantly, this entails that the use of forms with and without agreement does not correlate with register, at least in Greek RRCs, unlike the situation in English RRCs, where the distribution of whelements as opposed to complementizer is regulated by socio-linguistic factors. Rather, it is employed because it is correlates with expression of fewer or rather no features. Agreement is one area, where as Putnam et al. (2021) state, while robust in the input, shows restructuring across heritage languages. According to Putnam et al. (2021), this is particularly clear with fusional languages such as Greek. Finally, note that the agreement mismatches identified are all in the DP domain. A way to explain this is to assume that the mechanisms involved DP internally to produce agreement, namely concord, are more complex that those in the verbal domain, see Alexiadou et al. (2023) for discussion and references. 5 Conclusions In this paper, I presented a view on monolinguals not as controls in a normative sense, but as a group providing information on speaker variation. In order to 75 Artemis Alexiadou better understand the mechanisms involved in heritage grammars that lead to differences between two varieties of the same language or group of speakers, it is important to look at variation within monolingual speech. It is not the case that heritage languages are less complex: they employ patterns also produced by monolinguals. We thus need to investigate a variety of domains of language use to have a more complete picture of what HSs can do and how they differ from monolingual speakers. I showed that if we focus on register comparison, in some cases we are able to present a different narrative about how HSs differ from their monolingual ’controls’. Moreover, it became clear that, at least in Greek, lexicon choice signal register variation, perhaps unsurprisingly. By contrast, use of forms with fewer or less phi-features does not correlate with register variation. In general, our case studies align with the trends Putnam et al. (2021) identified for fusional languages: towards simplification, on the one hand, and analyticity on the other. Acknowledgements I am indebted to two reviewers for their extensive comments as well as to the participants to the Othering Workshop in July 2022 in Berlin. 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Rispoli (eds.), Three streams of generative language acquisition research: Selected papers from the 7th GALANA meeting, 319–346. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/lald.63.16sla. Vulchanova, Mila, Valentin Vulchanov, Antonella Sorace, Cristina Suarez-Gomez & Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes. 2022. Editorial: The notion of the native speaker put to the test: Recent research advances. Frontiers in Psychology 13. DOI: 10.3389/ fpsyg.2022.875740. Wiese, Heike. 2020. Language situations: A method for capturing variation within speakers’ repertoires. In Asahi Yoshiyuki (ed.), Methods in dialectology XVI, 105–117. München: Peter Lang. Wiese, Heike, Artemis Alexiadou, Shanley Allen, Oliver Bunk, Natalia Gagarina, Kateryna Iefremenko, Maria Martynova, Tatiana Pashkova, Vicky Rizou, Christoph Schroeder, Anna Shadrova, Luka Szucsich, Rosemarie Tracy, Wintai Tsehaye, Sabine Zerbian & Yulia Zuban. 2021. Heritage speakers as part of the native language continuum. Frontiers in Psychology 12. Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes, Cristina Suarez-Gomez, Mila Vulchanova, Antonella Sorace & Valentin Vulchanov (eds.). 209–227. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.717973. 79 Artemis Alexiadou Wiese, Heike, Artemis Alexiadou, Claudio Scarvaglieri & Christoph Schroeder. 2022. Multilinguals as Others in society and academia: Challenges of belonging under a monolingual habitus. Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies 302. https://wpull.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/WP302-Wiese-et-al2022-Multilinguals-as-others.pdf. 80 Chapter 5 (M)other tongue: How Global South multilingual practices allow uncovering multilingualisms beneath the invented monolingual European Self Friederike Lüpke Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies This paper, part of a collection on the Othering of multilinguals in linguistics, explores Othering from the perspective of Global South societies, in which multilingualism is commonly perceived through Eurocentric lenses prevalent in cognitive science and linguistics. The paper critically examines these viewpoints through describing the effects of processes of Othering, focusing particularly on the invention of the European Self as a crucial component of Othering and drawing on critical theory and postcolonial studies, especially the works of Édouard Glissant and Gayatri Spivak. The first process of Othering involves describing the non-European Other using Eurocentric concepts, whose applicability to Global South contexts needs to be challenged. However, merely critiquing these concepts within the SelfOther framework fails to address the need to deconstruct the European Self, invented as part of the Othering process. The constructedness of the European Self itself emphasises the need for a paradigm shift in linguistics that acknowledges the inadequacy of current analytical frameworks. This need is compounded by the effects of Othering on the self-perception of the Other, which compels them to perceive themselves through external lenses, to contribute to the colonial library and to perpetuate colonial viewpoints. The paper advocates a recalibration of ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies in the description of multilingualism across all settings. By dismantling the notion of the monolingual European Self, the road is paved towards normalising dynamic and fluid multilingualisms, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of multilingualism worldwide based on convivial research paradigms. Friederike Lüpke. 2025. (M)other tongue: How Global South multilingual practices allow uncovering multilingualisms beneath the invented monolingual European Self. In Artemis Alexiadou, Claudio Scarvaglieri, Christoph Schroeder & Heike Wiese (eds.), The construction of multilinguals as Others: Do we practice what we preach?, 81–102. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17132447 Friederike Lüpke 3 Enriching the conceptual library of multilingualism research in convivial ways Multilingualism research has diversified dramatically over the last decade. Today, its scope is not limited to contemporary industrialised societies in the Global North and postcolonial urban settings in the Global South but also includes a growing research focus on rural situations extending into precolonial times (Lüpke 2016b, Singer & Harris 2016, Good et al. 2019, Stenzel 2005, Lüpke et al. 2020, Pakendorf et al. 2021). Yet, an awareness of these (small-scale and rural) multilingual societies as globally widespread and evolutionary old (Evans 2017) is slow to enter mainstream linguistics, including multilingualism research. Prevailing tendencies of foregrounding settings in the anglosphere have been critiqued (Blasi et al. 2022, Henrich et al. 2010) and Othering of Global South practices and research on Global South settings has been pointed out (Kasstan 2022, Meyerhoff & Nagy 2008, Smakman 2015). Yet, it remains exceedingly rare to read a study of multilingualism in a Global North setting that draws inspiration from Southern theories of multilingualism (Ndhlovu & Makalela 2021, Pennycook & Makoni 2019), and too many studies situated in the Global South exclusively use Eurocentric epistemologies and ontologies (Lüpke & Storch 2013, Makoni 2013). This marginalisation is exacerbated by the deeply inequal circulation of epistemologies and research outputs that excludes research in and on Global South societies from the global economy of knowledge (Aboderin et al. 2023). Continuing such a focus means that research on settings at the knowledge periphery, most notably in the Global South, is not seen as relevant outside the settings in which its data were collected, echoing Mbembe (n.d.)’s observation that they (and Africa in particular) are seen as residual entities, places of data collection that have not much to contribute to theory formation. As the forgotten and underresearched history of multilingualism in Europe and the Global North (Pavlenko 2023) reminds us, pre-nationalist configurations were seen as unsuitable for the construction of the European Self, and their history buried under new identity concepts and linguistic notions of ideally monolingual speakers and societies. Turning to the vast body of research on Global South multilingualisms is therefore of prime importance for decentring European narratives not only in and on Global South societies (Ndhlovu & Makalela 2021, Makalela 2018, Pennycook & Makoni 2019, Makoni 2013, Adejunmobi 2004) but also in and for Global North societies. Imaginations of rural societies as monolingual ethnolinguistic communities prior to urbanisation and mass migration and the continuing dominant imagination of multilingualism as mostly happening in “superdiverse” Global North 88 5 (M)other tongue societies (Vertovec 2007) hinders a full appreciation of multilingual societies, including in Europe. These assumptions are based on the central tenet that ethnonationalist language ideas are universal AND that they captured the reality of language use in (some) societies prior to recent disturbances of this order. In the following, rather than attempting a (futile and inescapably Othering) overview of how multilingual societies outside Europe function, I illustrate how integrating concepts from these settings can serve to dismantle dominant notions in Europe and establish a convivial dialogue as a basis for exploring the meanings of language in a non-deterministic manner. I will mainly focus on arguing against the following notions: • Language users ideally being speakers and writers of one language, and language as the most prominent marker of (ethnic) identity. • Languages having absolute attributes (“indigenous” vs. “colonial”, “mother tongue”, “ethnic language”, “lingua franca”, etc.). • Roles identified for languages, such as “mother tongue” capturing social realities rather than language ideologies. • Languages as reified, uniformly territorialised and used by speech communities that are also language communities. • Multilingualism, mixing and contact as special (and always identifiable) cases, or as new, urban and young. The categories of mother tongue and native speaker are prime examples of notions originating from a European desire to essentialise identities (Bonfiglio 2010) in the wake of the formation of monolingually imagined nation states. Mother tongue is an imprecise signifier in the Lacanian sense, but the UNESCO (2025) definition “a language learned in childhood in the home environment, also referred to as mother tongue, first language, or native language”, in turn containing several signifiers that circularly reinforce each other, is representative for contemporary attempts to turn it into a sign with concrete meaning. That the category of mother tongue is not applicable to multilinguals quickly emerges, for instance when sociolinguists and education planners in Senegal and Mali resort to the use the French loanword langues maternelles to designate mother tongues for want of a translation equivalent that is not systematically misunderstood as meaning ‘mother’s languages’, that is, the language(s) spoken by one’s mother. Stating their mother tongues presents multilinguals with the conundrum of seeing themselves through the prism of European language ideologies. 89 Friederike Lüpke I am often asked to provide alternative notions of speakerhood stemming from colleagues’ and my own research in Global South settings. A number of recent publications offer insight into aspects of identity foregrounded in the relations between speakers and some of their focal languages in a variety of settings from across the globe (Good et al. 2019, Pakendorf et al. 2021, Lüpke et al. 2020). However, it also emerges from this research that relationships between spaces and speakers, between speakers in interaction, and between researchers and research participants dynamically shape how repertoires are categorised and presented, and that researchers’ focus on language as a central tool for identity influences responses (Goodchild 2016, Goodchild & Weidl 2018, Lüpke 2019, Lüpke 2021a, Di Carlo 2016). This convivial nature of language use and its categorisation is qualitatively incompatible with static and absolute roles for named languages and for the notion of language as a predetermined category that exists outside of an interactional context. Sociolinguistics has undergone three waves bringing it from the assumption of particular speech forms characterising social groups in the first wave and from the recognition of the construction of social groups through the use of particular linguistic features in the second wave to researching how speakers make use of a wide array of styles and features to construct diverse social meanings in interaction (Eckert 2012, Tagliamonte 2016), even though this variation often is only studied within one named language, with a standard variety as the benchmark. The time has come for descriptive and documentary linguistics to move from assuming that languages index or construe fixed social identities to studying how language itself is constructed convivially (see Lüpke & Watson (2020) for an example from Senegal). A podium discussion on African linguistic diversity at the Kenako Africa Festival 2020 in Berlin illustrates the struggle with European language ideas and the impossibility to simply replace them with alternative categories. Four AfroDiasporic panellists – linguist Reginald Duah, comparative literature scholar Rémi Tchokothe, writer Elnathan John and political theorist Stephanie Wanga aim at answering the seemingly simple question “What is your mother tongue?” asked by the moderator. In the process of answering it many layers of misunderstandings and contradictions connected to this concept are revealed when the panellists try to describe their lived linguistic experiences in Kenya, Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana through this lens. Elnathan John states his experience as one of growing up without a mother tongue, but with two languages – Hausa and English – which have been imposed on him, and out of which English has become his writing tool. John’s experience illustrates the limits of dichotomies such as “indigenous” vs. “colonial”: Hausa, a language of precolonial empire formation, can be as alienating to speakers on whom it is forced as English, the colonial lan90 5 (M)other tongue guage, which in turn can become a cherished tool of expression. Rémi Tchokothe mentions Camfranglais and Cameroonian Pidgin English as languages that are seen as nobody’s mother tongue but establish relationships of solidarity among speakers who would be seen as different based on assumptions of a single ethnolinguistic identity. The evocation of non-standard forms of English as horizontal forms of solidarity testifies both of the plurality of forms contained in a named language and of the racialisation of these forms as outside colonial and neo-colonial institutions. Stephanie Wanga dreams of a Kenyan society in which all her father and mother tongues (all the languages and language forms used by her father and mother and their parents in turn) would have equal rights and be invested with resources, testifying of the impossibility of selecting one language as having the all-encompassing importance for identity suggested by the term mother tongue. If cast in mother tongue terms, her vision would mean to allow dynamic, non-regulated multilingualism as a mother tongue. Reginald Duah sets out to provide the named language Akan of Ghana as his mother tongue but confesses that there is no certainty of knowing what Akan means. This label, in circulation for more than 400 years, has been and is used as a changeable umbrella term for languages and lects whose composition in terms of linguistic features and labels differ depending on space, time and perspective, with not all people identifying as Akan speaking an Akan language, and not all speakers of an Akan language necessarily seeing themselves or being categorised as Akan. Even if the orientation here, primed through the question, remains towards named languages, it becomes manifest that they cannot account for the multiple, ambivalent and dynamic communicative practice of the panellists beyond a rough first approximation. That is, meanings of the concept of a named language can be diverse and qualitatively very different from those in a monolingual standard language culture. The following quote, from the autobiography of the Senegalese philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne (2021: 28–29) questions the essence of named languages as well as common categorisations of language in terms of sequential acquisition: J’en [des langues, FL] ai parlé assez rapidement quatre; le wolof, le français, le diola, le créole. Le diola, langue à laquelle on identifie la région sud du Sénégal où pourtant tout le monde en parle plusieurs, est une langue que j’ai attrapée assez vite. Je regrette tant de l’avoir laissée s’échapper, plus tard, de la zone de mon cerveau où elle ne s’était pas assez profondément incrustée. Plus tard, c’est-à-dire autour de mes neuf ans, lorsque ma famille a déménagé à Dakar. Le créole portugais, qui était la langue commune de la ville de Ziguinchor, s’est aussi dissipé dans l’atmosphère de Dakar lorsque 91 Friederike Lüpke je ne l’ai plus parlé, même s’il m’en reste des bribes. Le wolof et le français me sont « langues premières » autant l’un que l’autre car les circonstances on fait que je les ai parlés en même temps. [I pretty quickly spoke four languages: Wolof, French, Joola, Creole. Joola, the language with which the Southern region of Senegal is identified, although everybody there speaks several languages, is a language I’ve caught very quickly. I regret very much to have let it escape, later, from the area of my brain where it hadn’t entrenched itself deeply enough. Later, meaning when I was about nine years old, when my family moved to Dakar. Portuguese Creole, which was the communal language of Ziguinchor, also dissipated into the atmosphere of Dakar when I didn’t speak it any longer, even though I still have some pieces of it. Wolof and French are “first languages” to me, each as much as the other, because circumstances have made that I have spoken them simultaneously.] Are Joola (and if so, which Joola?) and Creole Diagne’s heritage languages? Can French be a mother tongue for a citizen of Senegal? Is a community language different from a lingua franca? How can we account for the fact that Wolof is deeply entangled with French, in a strongly established fluid type of “unmarked code-switching” (Myers-Scotton 1993) that has prompted some researchers to characterise it as a “postcolonial creole” (Swigart 1992)? Is Portuguese Creole an indigenous language? Can Diagne, who has taught at American universities for most of his academic life, claim English as a language he owns on a par with his other languages? The multiplicities, ambivalences, vague referentialities of named languages, changeability of repertoires elucidated in the testimonies presented above cannot be captured with these or any other term, they require thinking away from named languages and their roles in standard language cultures and towards convivial multilingualism. The shortcomings of the colonial language library and the alternative language worlds that emerge from these testimonies are of relevance not only for Global South societies; comparing them with lived experiences all over the world also reveal hidden multilingualism through enabling the opening of cracks in European and Northern language ideologies. Reacting to linguistic repertoires such as those given above enables Europeans to relate their experiences to them. Rather than seeing them as exotic and alien, the evocation of such complex and dynamic repertoires (Lüpke & Storch 2013) often empowers Europeans, too, to accept the mismatch between normative stances and actual behaviour and experience and articulate their likewise changeable and multiple links to languages. A recognition of such mismatches allows: 92 5 (M)other tongue • seeing multilingualism as variably categorised rather than associated with fixed functions for clearly determined named languages; • recognising the use of multiple registers within and beyond named languages; • perceiving ruptures in language socialisation, for instance between convivial language use in the family and the exposure to a standardised language of education at school, regardless of whether the same named language is used or not (Lüpke & Cissé 2023). Listening to my examples from Senegal, a Spanish colleague told me that she could relate to them very well, since she had always wondered why she was told that she was receiving mother tongue education when learning standard Galician and Castilian, which were both very removed from language use in her family and out-of-school environment. At home, not only different linguistic varieties of these named languages were used, but they were also used with a fluidity not allowed in the school context. The language of her intimate environment had no place in this mother tongue logic. The American writer Amy Tan has captured the multitude of Englishes and how monolithic notions of a mother tongue and a shared body of linguistic signs as incarnating it fail to grasp this variability in a powerful essay (Tan 1990). Her narrative captures the multitude of sociopolitical registers and how they connect her to different facets of her identity that are hidden behind the façade of a single named language. Such experiences extend beyond English to everywhere, from Swahili (Mugane 2015) to Finnish (Laakso 2022). It is not just language users whose dynamic and multiple relations to language(s) and registers means that they cannot be statically and univocally considered as particular types of speakers. The concepts contained in particular roles associated with named languages, in analogy to those for other socio-political identity concepts such as nationality and ethnicity are indexing imagined, rather than really existing communities (Anderson 1983, Silverstein 2015), for which equally imagined named languages serve as signs of difference (Gal & Irvine 2019) through “lies that bind” (Appiah 2018). Both the categorisation through language names and language roles and of linguistic practice are subject to perspectival and scalar socio-cognitive perception (Lüpke 2021a). Investing named languages with fixed social indexicality is only possible through the necessary “cultivated vagueness” and “magical uncertainty” (Balaton-Chrimes 2021) of seemingly clearly referential ontologies. Fixing languages through a delineated inventory of named languages and associated linguistic forms fails to acknowledge 93 Friederike Lüpke that we all always only use “bits and chunks of language” (Blommaert 2010), akin to Deleuzian assemblages (Pietikäinen 2021). Dynamic, fluid, and variously categorisable repertoires always defy being cast in terms of finite and objective categories. 4 Outlook: how to make multilingualism research truly global This century has seen a multilingual turn in all areas of linguistics. Too often, this turn is seen as correlated with increasing multilingualism and superdiversity. Such a view is ahistorical in that it only takes into account a short period of imaginary monolingualism (or regulated multilingualism) disturbed by globalisation and increasing migration. It is now necessary to globalise the multilingual turn and free it from Eurocentric language ideologies. Such a turn requires first and foremost a rethinking of language, as Ndhlovu & Makalela (2021: 11) remind us: as Ndhlovu (2018: 118) puts it, while the invocation of ‘high-sounding metaphors of human rights, anti-imperialism and biodiversity resonate with contemporary international conversations around social justice and equity issues’, they struggle to achieve much because ‘standard language ideology remains ensconced as the only valid and legitimate conceptual framework that informs mainstream understandings of what is meant by “language”’. This is not a question of language standardisation – the problem that language revival projects generally need to reduce language variety to a much narrower set of options – but that these projects all too often operate with a constricted understanding of what language is and how it operates. Such an opening towards “free range language” (Wiese 2023) involves “provincialiser la langue” (Canut 2021), provincialise language through acknowledging the origin and recognising the limitations of dominant ideas of language not only for Other places, but in the North as well. No longer can we say “Africans are so multilingual” and thus contrast them with an imagined monoor less multilingual European Self. Rather, we should ask what makes African multilingualisms more visible than European multilingualisms, a question that inevitably leads us to investigating the processes that have erased Europe’s and the North’s linguistic diversity from consciousness and banned them from many domains of public 94 5 (M)other tongue life and to researching the social contexts which enable multilingualism to be less censured and more convivial. Monolingualism is a nationalist invention (Schneider 2018, Gramling 2016). If we concede that monolingualism is constructed, this also entails that we need different epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies to approach multilingualism. To paraphrase in arithmetic terms, there is no longer a multiplicand that can be multiplied, nor a code that can be mixed. Without such a base line, what we are left with is fluid (trans)languaging (Mignolo 1996, García 2009, García & Li 2014, Li 2018, Makalela 2015, 2016) as the phenomenon that can be observed. (Trans)languaging, convivial language use in interaction, constrained in accordance with language ideologies and language regimes at work in particular spaces and exchanges but never a sealed monolingual container. Heteroglossic and variable language use becomes monoor multilingual through social indexicality (Agha 2005, Silverstein 2003). It is thus socio-cognitive categorisation processes that determine how (trans)languaging is categorised as monoor multilingual. It follows that language IS conviviality: it has no fixed meaning outside of particular places, interactions and observations which are shaped by language ideologies and repertoires (Lüpke 2021a). Investigating convivial language use is best done in convivial setups. It starts from exploring interactional spaces, not from researching languages, an endeavour that requires diverse collaborative research groups. In descriptive and documentary linguistics, a conviviality framework paves the way to investigating how different individuals and societies construct, reify and index particular social categories, including language (or not). This requires the development of new models of language and (trans)languaging taking the necessary incompleteness of language in multilingual repertoires and use into account. Such research is necessarily convivial itself, driven by interand crossdisciplinarity and aiming at being socially relevant to multilingual speakers. Conviviality research therefore requires a political and activist stance. It is not possible to celebrate multilingualism and showcase the creativity of convivial (trans)languaging practices or argue for their introduction into formal education systems without challenging the exclusionary and raciolinguistically motivated practices of these institutions (Cushing 2021, Flores & Rosa 2015, Rambukwella 2021, Lüpke & Cissé 2023). Convivial multilingualism is outlawed there, because solitude mono-or multilingualism in standard languages is the prevailing language idea. In postcolonial societies of the Global North and South, these institutions penalise the most convivial multilinguals most, because their presence is either erased or seen as an educational challenge, and their language use does not correspond to solitude ideas of language: they do not have mother tongues 95 Friederike Lüpke corresponding to a clear set of linguistic features and used in standard-based writing. According to mother-tongue-based monolingual ideologies, they are excluded from owning large parts of their repertoires, either because they contain non-valorised Southern forms of languages of European provenance or because they are seen as impure and deficient. Advocating for convivial multilingualism means actively encouraging convivial ideas of language and convivial language use. The very fact that I am constrained by deeply rooted Northern academic traditions to write this article in a strongly reified form of English, which is supposed to instantiate ‘native’ or ‘native-like’ proficiency and keep separate varieties of English that fluidly intermesh in my language use (for instance by choosing either ‘American English’ or ‘British English’) while at the same time remaining excluded from being a ‘native speaker’ or claiming ownership of this language illustrates the enormity of this task. And I am writing as a privileged European steeped in standard language culture and schooled in standard British English. For “multicephalous” language users across the globe (Sow 2021), the standard languages imposed on them are the metropolitan forms of colonial languages or (post)colonially created standard version of ‘their’ languages (Ngué Um 2015), thereby disowning them and disqualifying their convivial practices, a status quo that we need to unseat. References Aboderin, Isabella, Divine Fuh, Eyob Balcha Gebremariam & Puleng Segalo. 2023. Beyond ‘equitable partnerships’: The imperative of transformative research collaborations with Africa. Global Social Challenges Journal 2(2). 212–228. DOI: 10.1332/27523349Y2023D000000002. Adejunmobi, Moradewun. 2004. Vernacular palaver. Imaginations of the local and non-native languages in West Africa. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Agha, Asif. 2005. Voice, footing, enregisterment. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15. 38–59. 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DOI: 10.1017/ 9781108649209. García, Ofelia. 2009. Education, multilingualism and translanguaging in the 21st century. In Education, multilingualism and multilingual education for social justice: Globalising the local, 140–158. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. 97 Jana Gamper, Christoph Schroeder, Julia Schlauch & Dorotheé Steinbock on studies related to child and adolescent learners. We combine this with a second question, asking, how academic studies in the academic field of GSL conceptualize their “clientele” of learners. We conduct our research in the form of a systematic literature review. Our research questions originate in the observation that GSL is a rather vague concept, tending to take a deficient perspective on its clientele. This is related, in our view, to an unclear differentiation between the psycholinguistic notion of GSL in the frame of second language (henceforth L2) acquisition on the one hand, which has or should have (in our view) certain specific and empirically based implications. On the other hand, the academic field of GSL has a particularly applied tradition in Germany that differs from (established) second language acquisition (henceforth SLA) research in particular ways. Our chapter is structured as follows: In section 2, we substantiate our research question. In section 3, we develop and conduct our review. Section 4 discusses our findings. 2 Theoretical considerations To substantiate our research question, we first briefly introduce our understanding of multilingualism and second language acquisition (2.1), before turning to the academic field of GSL (2.2) and some initial qualitative observations (2.3), which lead us to point out certain dangers of “Othering”, which may originate in the mismatch between the scope of the academic field and the psycholinguistic notion of GSL. 2.1 Multilingualism, second language acquisition and age of onset Acquiring an L2 is one way an individual can become multilingual, and in the individual-oriented use, the term “multilingualism” is an umbrella term for various forms of language acquisition in the course of an individual’s life, as well as for linguistic practices and regulations in everyday life, in working life and institutions (cf. Grosjean 2010). Individuals become multilingual by acquiring more than one language. There is no doubt that the age of onset (AoO) and the length of exposure (LoE) to the language(s) are decisive for the course of the acquisition process, but also for its speed and to some extent for its success (cf. Gagarina et al. 2021, Grimm & Cristante 2022, Meisel 2009). Differences in AoO, then, are important indications of the (expected) qualitative course of acquisition. The acquisition of more than 104 6 Constructing a clientele in need: The field of German as a Second Language one language simultaneously as first languages is commonly called “bilingual first language acquisition”. The acquisition of a second language after the age of 3 is called “successive second language acquisition”. Speaking of German as an L2, this is where “German as a Second Language” begins.1Successive second language acquisition up to the age of 7 is summarized as “early childhood second language acquisition”. Finally, a distinction must be made between whether the language(s) are acquired as a child or as an adult. Adult acquisition of another language is considered to start with the onset of puberty (cf. Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson 2003). All in all, language development in German as L2 can be summarised well by saying that the earlier the acquisition of German begins, the more similar its course and dynamics are to monolingual first language acquisition. Work by Thoma & Tracy (2007) and Tracy (2008) makes it quite clear that children who begin acquiring German before the age of 3-4 go through the same stages of acquisition, at least in the area of syntactic development, as children who acquire German as their first language. A first qualitative break becomes visible at the age of onset into second language acquisition around age 4. In particular, the work of Haberzettl (2014) and Gagarina et al. (2021) show that children who begin second language acquisition at this age acquire the language differently than children for whom the process begins earlier (see also Grimm & Cristante 2022). These age-related differentiation of learner groups are no more than approximate guidelines for the connection of onset and course of L2 acquisition, but AoO is a crucial defining factor when it comes to L2 learner identification. However, there are no reliable figures for Germany on how many of the multilingual individuals can be classified as L2 learners. For example, there are no figures available on the proportion of families who speak only German as the family language (=monolingual German language acquisition), or speak German and another language as family languages (=simultaneous bilingual acquisition). Childcare rates in kindergartens could provide a clue, although in official state reports only data on “migration background” is available,2but not linguistic data. Still, if we take 1This distinction is by no means uncontroversial. There are certainly approaches that place the beginning of successive second language acquisition (in contrast to bilingual first language acquisition) later, namely at the age of four or five (Meisel 2009, Schulz & Grimm 2019). Note that the fact that the exact formulation of the criteria might be controversial does not diminish the importance of clear-cut criteria. 2“Migration background” (Germ. Migrationshintergrund) is a sociodemographic characteristic used in demographic statistics in Germany in order to describe the migrant community in the country. According to the Federal Statistical Office in Germany, individuals have a migration background if they themselves or at least one of their parents were born with a non-German citizenship. See for an overview and critical evaluation Will (2020). 105 Jana Gamper, Christoph Schroeder, Julia Schlauch & Dorotheé Steinbock the start of kindergarten attendance as the start of the acquisition of German for children with a “migration background”, then, the (cautious) conclusions about the age at the start of acquisition are as follows: For the vast majority of children born in Germany with a migration background, we can assume bilingual first language acquisition or early second language acquisition.3 What does this say with regard to expected competencies in German? On the one hand, the idea that second language acquisition is completed when the speaker has mastered the second language at the same level as a monolingual speaker is not tenable: Bilingualism or multilingualism does not mean multiplied monolingualism, as the famous citation from Grosjean (1989) goes. At the same time, the variation in language use and competence among monolingual speakers is so great that a normative assumption of monolingual language use and competence is not possible (Shadrova et al. 2021). However, there is a growing body of research results which compare the academic language competencies of children and adolescents born in Germany with a migration background and/or with a family language other than or besides German with those of children and adolescents without a migration background or with a monolingual acquisition biography. These allow the following conclusion: The vast majority of children and adolescents born and raised in Germany with a family language other than or alongside German do not differ in their linguistic competencies from monolingual children and adolescents when it comes to academic language performance (see among others Haberzettl 2016, Ricart Brede 2020, Petersen 2014). If there was successive second language acquisition at all (and not bilingual first language acquisition), then this process reaches completion in primary school (Gagarina et al. 2021). At the same time, this does not necessarily have to mean that the linguistic competencies and practices of multilinguals are indistinguishable from the linguistic competencies or practices of monolinguals. However, potential support needs are no different from those faced by monolinguals and correlate primarily with social factors that limit access to the academic register of school (Reiss et al. 2019, Rauch 2019). If we summarise the discussion above for our research questions, two points become evident: First, in the study of multilingual children and adolescents, it 3According to the figures of the Federal Statistical Office, just over 20% of 0-3 year old children with a migration background attend kindergarten and the rate rises to over 80% for 3-6 year olds (with certain differences between the federal states), see Statistisches Bundesamt, figures for March 2020, at https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/GesellschaftUmwelt/Soziales/Kindertagesbetreuung/Tabellen/betreuungsquote-migration-unter6jahrennach-laendern.html;jsessionid=8F81E7EAE4F5065DB0917E1313242370.live742 [accessed 2024/04/09]. 106 6 Constructing a clientele in need: The field of German as a Second Language is essential to ask for biographical details concerning the exposure to the newly acquired language, before classifying them as L2 learners. On a minimal level, this is best done through inquiring about the age of onset of acquisition (AoO), and/or the length of exposure (LoE), possibly also the length of schooling (LoS) in the language. And second, for those we classify as “early second language learners”, we can assume that they stop being “second language learners” at the latest at primary school age. 2.2 The academic field of German as a Second Language The academic field of Deutsch als Zweitsprache (DaZ / GSL) is relatively new. It emerged from the period of the first “guest worker” immigration to Germany in the 1970s. Germany experienced an economic boom in the late 1960s, and the demand for labor exceeded domestic resources. As a result, workers from Southern Europe and North Africa were recruited in large numbers. Initially, these so-called “guest workers” were to stay only for a few years, but it soon became clear that the need for labor continued, and companies did not want to let their trained workers leave again. Consequently, the workers were invited to settle for good, together with their families. Research projects focussing on the linguistic aspects of this development (initially carried out under the name of Deutsch als Fremdsprache (DaF), that is, “German as a foreign language”, and only from the 1980s on “DaZ”, cf. Baur 2001) concentrated, on the one hand, on untutored second language acquisition of (mostly young) adults (Ahrenholz & Rost-Roth 2021). On the other hand, a strong applied orientation developed, which turned to the socially important question of how the school system dealt or should deal with students whose knowledge of German was initially too low to be able to follow the content of instruction (Menk 2000). In this line of research, a focal topic of GSL research became the particular school register of academic German (Bildungssprache, cf. Lange 2020) that is presumed to open doors for social participation. Almost half a century has passed since the emergence of GSL as an academic field. On the one hand, the original field of activity of GSL has changed considerably. The study of adult second language acquisition has diversified considerably because adult immigration has changed greatly in form and scope. After all, the new German Immigration Act of 2005 has introduced institutionalized language teaching in the form of integration courses (cf. Gamper et al. 2021). At the same time, the former “children of foreigners” (Germ. Ausländerkinder) are now adults “with a migration background”; they are parents or grandparents; their children and children’s children were born in Germany, go through German educational 107 Jana Gamper, Christoph Schroeder, Julia Schlauch & Dorotheé Steinbock institutions and, as long as at least one parent was born abroad with a foreign citizenship, are again children or young people “with a migration background”. Let us underline the fact that a history of family migration does not tell us anything about whether German is an L1 or L2, especially for descendants of the first generation of immigrants (see section 2.1). On the other hand, immigration of children and adolescents continues. Particularly with the large numbers of refugee migration in recent years, first in 2015 following the Syrian civil war, and then after the Russian attack on Ukraine in February 2022, questions about forms of schooling for newcomers with little or no knowledge of German, studies on the second language acquisition of this group at school, and on the conditions and possibilities for support have once again come to the fore (Gamper et al. 2021). Thus, the academic field of GSL in Germany deals with at least two fundamentally different groups: On the one hand, some multilingual children and adolescents are born in Germany and acquire German as one of their first languages or as their early L2, and, on the other hand, the first generation of immigrants, who acquire German as their L2. It is crucially important to distinguish between these two groups. The second group needs support in learning German, but the first group does not, at least not in the same way. Support here means that newly immigrated children and adolescents need help to acquire basic knowledge of German to gain access to the school-specific registers. Secondly, lumping the two groups together is meaningless if one wants to generalize the dynamics of second language acquisition. And thirdly, not distinguishing between the groups may have the consequence that the first group slips into a “problem group” categorization. This is not only wrong but it also has discriminating tendencies, in other words, tendencies of “Othering”.4 So far, we have seen that the umbrella term GSL is ambiguous. On the one hand, it covers learners who are new immigrants and meet the criterion of having started L2 acquisition after the age of 3. However, due to the historical development of the field of GSL, it also covers learners for whom it is unclear whether German is a (second) L1 or an L2. This conceptual vagueness5has consequences for how L2 learners are conceptualized and what attributions are made to this (unclearly defined) group. 4We speak of “Othering” as the differentiation of a group or a person from another group by describing the former group or person as different and alien. Language is a possible tool of differentiation here (cf. Szymczyk et al. 2022). 5See for a similar discussion in Great Britain Szymczyk et al. (2022). 108 6 Constructing a clientele in need: The field of German as a Second Language 2.3 Observations Given the previous observations, we have the impression that the academic field of GSL does indeed have a tendency to develop a certain blind spot and treat bilingual young people who were born and raised in Germany as GSL learners and in need of special language support. Three examples should suffice for a start, and we give them without a reference, because we do not want to put individual authors on a spot: • A more didactically oriented introduction to teaching German in multilingual classrooms from 2017 equates being multilingual with acquiring German as the second language. • One of the most successful introductions to German as a second language (4th edition, 2020) uses “migration background” as the central defining criterion for L2 learners of German. Later, “insufficient knowledge of German as a second language” is identified as a decisive factor for the educational failure of this group, in addition to “lower class membership”. • A study on the reading behavior of adolescents, published 2014 by a recognized publisher in the field, defines L2 learners of German on the basis that they have “non-German mother tongue”. At no point does AoO or LoE play a role, neither are the linguistic competencies of the adolescents topic at any point. Our review is intended to answer the question, whether the above examples represent a general trend in the sense that features like migration background, multilingualism and L2 learner are mixed and additionally attributed with insufficient academic performance, or whether they are exceptions. Let us make quite clear at this point that our study is not intended as just another act of Othering. The authors of this study by no means exclude themselves from this critical (self-)reflection but have in the past engaged themselves in publications which defined German as a L2 through implicit and vague categories. So when asking here, what kind of discursive construction of a clientele emerges in scholarly publications on GSL, we also ask, what kind of discursive constructions we ourselves have engaged in. 3 Review The focus of the empirical work that follows is on the question of whether our selective observations stand up to empirical verification. These observations in109 Jana Gamper, Christoph Schroeder, Julia Schlauch & Dorotheé Steinbock clude on the one hand the hypothesis that different target groups, namely L2 learners in the narrow sense as well as multilingual speakers in general, are mixed under the umbrella term GSL. On the other hand, the construct GSL seems to be associated with insufficient knowledge of German and the need for support. To test these assumptions, we conducted a semi-systematic review. Our research question was: How do academic papers on GSL published in Germany, and written in German for a German academic audience, conceptualize child and adolescent GSL learners? 3.1 Methods 3.1.1 Sample The sample of our review includes 138 papers, of which 92 are empirical studies and 46 are non-empirical (i.e. conceptual). To compile the sample, we conducted an automatic literature search in the database “FIS Bildung”,6which includes monographs, collective work contributions and journal articles from different fields of acquisitionand learning-related research. The database includes more than 1 million subject-specific titles. Within this database, we searched for papers that carried the term “German as a Second Language” (in German) in the title in different variants (i.e., German as a Second Language, Second Language German, L2 German, German as a Foreignand Second Language) and were published between 2011 and 2021. The first sample compiled in this way included 113 titles, which were reduced in a second step excluding works focusing on out-of-school learning, teacher education, development of teaching material, as well as on adult learners. The final sample extracted from the FIS database comprised 79 titles. In a second step, we included a book series in the sample that has established itself in the German-speaking community as relevant to the topics of GSL, multilingualism, and L2 acquisition. The series is the result of the workshop Kinder mit Migrationshintergrund (Children with a Migration Background), which has existed since 2009 and was renamed Workshop Deutsch als Zweitsprache, Migration und Mehrsprachigkeit (German as a Second Language, Migration and Multilingualism Workshop) around 2015. The workshop is held annually and invites researchers conducting GSL research. The series was included in the review because it reflects current research projects and discourses and can thus be classified as discourse-shaping. The review includes 14 workshop volumes (volume 1 to double volume 14/15) from the period 2009 to 2021. The volumes comprise a 6https://www.fachportal-paedagogik.de/literatur/erweiterte_suche.html?checkFormParams= 1&herkunft[]=fis [accessed 2024/04/09]. 110 6 Constructing a clientele in need: The field of German as a Second Language total of 189 contributions, of which we only included the empirical papers in the review (n = 89). Of the 89 empirical workshop papers, 30 were excluded because they did not meet the above mentioned inclusion criteria, leaving 59 titles in the workshop series subsample. The reason for including only empirical papers from the book series is that we assume that mainly empirical studies can shed light on how GSL learners are operationalized. For the overall sample, however, this means that there is a surplus of empirical studies. 3.1.2 Data preparation The sample was coded using a double-coding approach (cf. O’Connor & Joffe 2020). The codes were first developed deductively from the psycholinguistic literature and then extended on the basis of a smaller data sample. In this way we were able to identify a total of 19 features, of which we considered three to be explicit and 16 to be implicit or secondary. We recorded both sets of characteristics (i.e., explicit vs. implicit) once with regard to the theoretical description of GSL in the entire sample and once exclusively with regard to the operationalization of subjects in empirical studies. Table 1 gives an overview of the features we identified within the sample. Under “explicit”, we have grouped features which unambiguously clarify that German is an L2 in the psycholinguistic sense. The AoO, LoE and LoS features can be used to measure the onset and age of acquisition.7Under “implicit” we have grouped characteristrics that may be a consequence of (e.g., bilingualism or multilingualism, other or additional language spoken at home)8or a reason for L2 acquisition (e.g., migration, refuge status), but these are not sufficient criteria to determine whether German is indeed an L2 for the learners described in the papers. Among the implicit features, moreover, there are also numerous ones that have no relation to GSL in the narrow sense, most notably the features “insufficient competence” and “educational disadvantage”. Such characteristics may apply to all learners in the school, regardless of their individual language biographies. The list also includes features that suggest an Othering of GSL speakers (e.g., specific ethnic background or the feature “foreign”). The term “unspecific” was used when GSL learners were mentioned but not described in detail. “Other” includes characteristics that are too rare to record separately. 7We included Length of Schooling (LoS) under explicit features since we assume that reporting the length of schooling allows us to infer the length of exposure and also the age of onset. 8“Other language” refers to the assumption that the speakers speak a different language and therefore do not speak German at home or as L1. “Additional language”, on the other hand, means that German is spoken in addition to another family language. 111 Jana Gamper, Christoph Schroeder, Julia Schlauch & Dorotheé Steinbock Table 1: Coded features for GSL explicit features implicit features age of onset (AoO) other family language / other L1 Length of Exposure (LoE) additional language (i.e., other than German) Length of Schooling (LoS) multilingual bilingual migration background foreign migration refugee specific ethnical background (e.g., Turkish) German as a Foreign Language specific learning context (e.g., separate classes) insufficient competence in German educational disadvantage (e.g., poor performance in comparative studies) born in Germany other unspecific 3.1.3 Coding procedure and interrater reliability As mentioned, the data sample was coded by two raters. First, a subsample was coded using the inductively generated lists of features. The coding of the subsample showed that the deductive criteria were not sufficient to capture all definitional features. Based on the first coding step, the feature list was therefore expanded to include additional features derived from the first coding step. The two coders then coded the entire sample with the complete list created in this 112 6 Constructing a clientele in need: The field of German as a Second Language way. We distinguished between non-empirical papers on the one hand and empirical papers on the other. Going from this general split we then distinguished between passages and sections within the papers that contain general descriptions and sections that contain an operationalization of participants in a narrow empirical sense. The features listed in Table 1 were therefore coded in a twofold manner: Passages and sections containing general descriptions of GSL speakers were assigned the prefix “th” for each feature. This applies to all non-empirical papers and to the theoretical sections (and, e.g., discussion of results) in empirical papers. Passages and sections containing information on the operationalization of participants were assigned the prefix “op” for each features. This applies only to empirical papers. To calculate the interrater reliability, a sample of 27 titles (corresponding to 20 per cent of the total sample) was randomly selected. The coding of the data was conducted by Rater 1 and Rater 2, with each rater responsible for half of the data. The calculation of the interrater reliability was achieved by coding the selected titles by the respective other rater. The reliability of the two coding results was determined by calculating Cohen’s Kappa (Plonsky & Derrick 2016). The calculation resulted in a value of 𝜅 = 0.56, which corresponds to a moderate and thus satisfactory strength of agreement. 3.2 Results In general, we almost always found more than one feature used to describe GSL speakers. We first present the 15 most frequent features that appear in the entire data set and then differentiate the proportion of identified features according to empirical and non-empirical studies. This should provide a first impression of the characteristics with which GSL can be associated in our sample. In the second step, we use an association analysis to show which features in our dataset occur most frequently together and thus form semantic networks. Through these two analytical steps we want to approach the question of which concepts are associated with the term GSL. 3.2.1 General overview The first step is a descriptive presentation of the relative frequencies. It has been calculated how often each feature occurs in the data sample (n=138). At this point, we do not differentiate between empirical and non-empirical papers. The “th”- features in Figure 1 thus include the general descriptions of GSL speakers both in non-empirical papers and the theoretical sections of empirical papers. A distinction of “th”-features between empirical and non-empirical follows in Figure 2 113 Jana Gamper, Christoph Schroeder, Julia Schlauch & Dorotheé Steinbock Association analysis requires the definition of a confidence threshold. We decided on a comparatively high threshold of 0.8 which means that we get an output of those rules whose probability of occurrence is at least 80%. By setting this, we have ensured that the rules we observe have a high probability of features co-occurring. In addition, an association analysis requires the setting of a support threshold which is a value that is set to determine which combinations of elements in a data set should be considered relevant. It defines the minimum frequency with which a combination must occur for it to be considered. In our case, we initially set a support threshold of 0.2 meaning that we are only interested in combinations of features that occur at least 20% of the time in our data. In other words, we focus on patterns that occur fairly frequently. For subset 2, however, we found that there is only one rule that meets the Confidence and Support thresholds. To make more rules visible, we therefore lowered the Confidence threshold for subset 2 to 0.6 and Support to 0.1. The two results of subsets 1 and 2 thus differed in the frequency of the rules we observed. In consequence, the rules observed for subset 2 are weaker than those for subset 1. Below we first see the results of the identified rules in a table format, each for subsets 1 and 2. The “lhs” (= left-hand side) column in the Table 2 and Table 3 lists the features that were identified as conditionor if-elements of a rule. If more than one feature is listed in this column, it means that these features occur together as a condition for the rule. The order of the variables in the column is not meaningful and has no significance for the interpretation of the rule. The column “rhs” (= right-hand side) refers to the variables that are included in the rule as inferenceor then-elements. The tables thus show the frequency (= Support) and the likeliness (= Confidence) of if-then-elements (that together form rules) within the data set. The column “count” states the number of papers in which the observed rule occurs. As we can see for both Table 2 and Table 3, there is a clear contrast between the Support and Confidence values. We find comparatively high Confidence values, but rather low Support values. This means that the if-then-relations we found in the data are fairly strong in the sense that the likeliness of co-occurrence is very high. At the same time, the co-occurrences do not occur very frequently. This is especially true for subset 2: since we had to lower the Confidence and Support thresholds, the if-then-relations are generally lower. This, in turn, may imply, that there is a certain arbitrariness as to which features are associated with GSL and that there is semantic vagueness and ambiguity in the construct. To better understand the numeric results from Table 2 and Table 3, the results of the association analyses are presented in Figure 4 and Figure 5. Figure 4 represents the results based on Table 2 and Figure 5 those based on Table 3. Both 120 6 Constructing a clientele in need: The field of German as a Second Language Table 2: Results association analysis subset 1, n=29 papers which mention explicit features condition/if-elements inference/then-elements support confidence count {op_LoS} →{op_LoE} 0.21 1.00 6 {th_disadvanataged} →{th_biling} 0.21 1.00 6 {th_multiling} →{op_otherL} 0.25 1.00 7 {th_multiling op_LoE} →{op_otherL} 0.21 1.00 6 {th_biling op_otherL} →{op_LoE} 0.25 1.00 7 {th_immigration} →{op_LoE} 0.25 0.87 7 {th_otherL, op_otherL} →{op_LoE} 0.25 0.87 7 op_otherL op_LoE} →{op_otherL} 0.25 0.87 7 {th_biling op_LoE} →{op_otherL} 0.25 0.87 7 {th_multiling} →{op_LoE} 0.21 0.86 6 {th_insufficientcomp} →{op_LoE} 0.21 0.86 6 {th_multiling op_otherL}→{op_LoE} 0.21 0.86 6 Table 3: Results association analysis subset 2, n=87 papers which do not mention explicit features condition elements (= lhs) inference element (= rhs) support confidence count {th_disadvantaged} →{th_biling} 0.14 0.81 13 {op_multiling} →{th_multiling} 0.13 0.75 12 {op_multiling} →{op_otherL} 0.13 0.75 12 {th_multiling, op_multiling}→{op_otherL} 0.10 0.75 9 {op_otherL, op_multiling} →{op_multiling} 0.10 0.75 9 {th_multiling, op_otherL} →{op_multiling} 0.10 0.75 9 {th_biling, op_otherL} →{th_otherL} 0.12 0.68 11 {th_multiling} →{th_biling} 0.20 0.64 18 {th_disadvantaged} →{th_otherL} 0.11 0.62 10 {th_immigration} →{th_otherL} 0.13 0.60 12 121 Jana Gamper, Christoph Schroeder, Julia Schlauch & Dorotheé Steinbock figures were drawn manually, but are based on a visualization of results using the packages arulesViz and gggraph in R (cf. for application of packages for association analyses Hahsler & Karpienko 2017). The if-conditions are colored in white, and the then-conditions in grey circles. Arrows show the if-then relations between the features. The width of the arrows represents the support values, which are also indicated in the figure legend. As can already be seen from Table 2, we see in Figure 4 two main nodes in those empirical papers that use explicit features to operationalize participants: “other language” and “length of exposure”. It is striking that the two nodes go hand in hand with each other: “LoE” is an if-condition for “other language” and vice versa. The rather strong connection between these two features is largely plausible: If LoE is recorded, it also seems logical to include other language(s) of participants for operationalization. Also, the “th”-features used to describe GSL speakers within the theoretical section of the papers follow a largely consistent pattern: we predominantly find “th”-features such as “multilingual” and “bilingual” for the general description of GSL speakers. One exception is the “th”- feature “insufficient competence”. In addition, the isolated pair of nodes at the bottom right of the figure is also striking: completely detached from the operationalization features LoE and “other language”, we find a connection between the “th”-features “bilingual” and “disadvantaged”. Together with the “insufficient competence” feature, this is an indication that even studies that make use of explicit and psycholinguistically motivated features for the operationalization of participants use implicit (and deficient-oriented) features to describe GSL speakers. However, such attributions seem to be rather rare in these papers. Where speakers are identified as GSL learners based on the feature LoE, features that are a logical consequence of L2 acquisition (i.e., bi-/multilingualism, presence of other languages in addition to L2 German) predominate. This is different in papers that do not mention the explicit features AoO and LoE at all (i.e. neither for the general description of GSL speakers nor for operationalization of participants). In such papers, we see four main nodes in Figure 5: “other language” (as an “op”-feature), “multilingual”, “bilingual” and “other language” (all three as “th”- features). With respect to the operationalization of participants with the help of the feature “other language”, we find co-occurrences with “th”-features like ‘multilingual’ and “bilingual”. Although these co-occurences are in line with the papers that refer to more explicit features (mainly LoE, see Figure 4), it remains unclear whether an operationalization of GSL speakers through the feature “other language” is justified. Furthermore, we see in Table 3 and Figure 5 that the “th”- feature “educationally disadvantaged” triggers the features “bilingual” as well as “multilingual”. As already pointed out in section 3.2.1, the feature “educationally 122 6 Constructing a clientele in need: The field of German as a Second Language Figure 4: Associations of features in subset 1 123 Jana Gamper, Christoph Schroeder, Julia Schlauch & Dorotheé Steinbock Figure 5: Associations of features in subset 2 124 6 Constructing a clientele in need: The field of German as a Second Language disadvantaged” is never used for operationalization. Whether the relations of multilingualism, GSL and educational disadvantage suggested by such regularities are empirically verified and tenable remains open. Overall, the association analysis shows no particularly large differences between papers that use explicit features to operationalize subjects and those that do not mention the features at all. In both data subsets, we see that GSL speakers are predominantly described as bior multilingual and as speakers of an “other language”. There is also a tendency in both subsets to use implicit deficit characteristics such as “insufficient competence” and “educationally disadvantaged” as part of general descriptions of speakers. Finally, the main difference between the two subsets is that those who rely on explicit features to operationalize participants can state with a high degree of certainty that their participants are real L2 learners. At the same time, this does not justify the deficient attributes that we nevertheless find in the data. For those papers that do not contain any explicit features, we only know that the participants or speakers are bior multilingual and speak a language other than German. Whether they are L2 learners in the narrower sense remains completely open. 4 Discussion Our review started with the question of how German as a Second Language is conceptualized in scholarly publications on the subject, which concentrate on child and adolescent learners. The research question is based on the observation that GSL seems to be a rather vague concept, implying a deficient perspective on its clientele. To test our research question, we reviewed a data sample of n=138 papers that were coded according to explicit and implicit features related to GSL. In the first exploratory analysis, we determined which features are generally frequent and whether there are differences between empirical and non-empirical studies. We also assessed the relationship between general descriptions of GSL speakers and the operationalization of participants in the studies. In the second step, we used association analyses to determine whether there are regular relations between features in studies that use explicit features for operationalization (= subset 1) and those that do not mention explicit features at all (= subset 2). Our results can be summarized as follows: 1. Implicit features occur noticeably more often than explicit ones, regardless of the type of paper (i.e., empirical vs. non-empirical). 125 Jana Gamper, Christoph Schroeder, Julia Schlauch & Dorotheé Steinbock 2. The most frequent features are linguistic features, but mainly those that do not allow to conclude whether German is an L2 (i.e., “bilingual”, “multilingual” as well as “other language”). These features shape the general description of GSL speakers to a large extent and are also frequently used for the operationalization of participant groups in empirical studies. 3. The features “insufficient competence” (here concerning German) and “educationally disadvantaged” are also frequently used. These non-linguistic parameters are mainly found in the field of theoretical descriptions of GSL but are hardly ever used for operationalization in empirical studies. 4. Both papers that use explicit features for operationalization and those that do not mention them at all base their general description of GSL speakers and the operationalization of participants on the features from point 2. Regardless of whether the papers use explicit features to operationalize participants, we find deficient attributions using features from point 3. Based on these results, the initial observation that GSL seems to be a rather vague and unspecific construct can be confirmed, at least for our data sample. It is uncertain whether German can be considered an L2 for the speakers described in the non-empirical papers and the participants in empirical studies, in most cases. This is because only a small number of papers are based on comparatively strict acquisition-theoretical criteria (i.e., AoO, LoE and LoS). In the majority of the papers, GSL speakers are conceptualized as a group of speakers who are biand/or multilingual, speak a language other than German at home, are educationally disadvantaged, and/or have insufficient German language skills. The fact that explicit criteria for the definition of GSL speakers are rather rare is problematic for two reasons: First, the group’s second language proficiency in German is uncertain due to the lack of explicit criteria. Second, the lack of explicit criteria allows for the creation of a construct of GSL speakers that may not exist in reality or may be highly biased. Our data analysis suggests an answer to our second research question: The GSL construct, as pursued in the academic field of GSL in Germany indeed has tendencies toward a deficit view of GSL speakers in particular and multilingualism in general. The fact that biand multilingualism, inadequate German language skills, and educational disadvantage appear to be entangled in our data in such a dominant way suggests that a discourse is being reiterated here that we originally found in non-expert educational policy debates. Large-scale studies such as PISA or educational trends for German, among others, have suggested, at 126 6 Constructing a clientele in need: The field of German as a Second Language least in their early results, that migration-related multilingualism is problematic when it comes to achieving adequate German competencies and high educational attainment (cf. Artel et al. 2003: 51ff.). This initial interpretation has since been significantly weakened (cf. Reiss et al. 2019: 158f.). Instead of migration-related multilingualism, social factors (independent of students’ linguistic background) seem to influence the attainment of certain language competencies and degrees. GSL research should correct this form of bias with the help of accurate methodological designs, instead of using labels such as GSL or multilingualism to support proxy debates (precisely because important causal factors such as social inequality seem to be more important reasons for different school performance). There is reason to be concerned that such proxy debates stigmatize GSL learners as well as (certain) multilingual speakers. Such an interpretation of our data does not mean that there are no studies that do not address this issue - there certainly are. However, in our data set, we find a clear tendency toward methodological as well as conceptual imprecision coupled with the aforementioned correlation with more deficit education-related features. Another tendency that is evident in our data is the conceptualisation of GSL as linguistic Otherness. The dominance of the characteristic ”other language” (than German) in our data shows that the mere existence of a language other than German in the family context leads to a classification in which the multilinguals are not competent speakers of German - and thus ’other’ from the monolinguals (cf. also Szymczyk et al. 2022). Although we did not test whether the characteristic correlates with concepts of Othering, it would be worthwhile investigating such correlations in future studies. Our findings highlight problematic tendencies in the GSL research community of participating in parts of a deficit discourse and share responsibility for discursively treating multilingual speakers in general and GSL learners in particular as Other. This is a harsh accusation. Let us stress again that the authors of this study by no means exclude themselves from this problem. Our studies, too, often define GSL through implicit and vague categories and engage in a form of Othering.10 Therefore, our review in no way intends to defame individuals or research approaches. Rather, it aims to make certain, in our view problematic, approaches 10We are aware of the fact that it is state of the art to include a monolingual control group in empirical studies. However, there are numerous problems to this, one of them being that monolinguals hardly ever constitute a homogeneous group of speakers but tend to show high degrees of heterogeneity (see also Alexiadou 2025 [this volume]). It is therefore necessary to carefully evaluate whether a comparison between multilinguals and monolinguals is theoretically grounded and purposeful. In any case, a control group should be well justified and should not be an automatism, as this can contribute to conceptualizing GSL and multilingual speakers as others. 127 Jana Gamper, Christoph Schroeder, Julia Schlauch & Dorotheé Steinbock in the field of GSL research visible. At the same time, we would like to contribute to renewing our research practice and internal discourses. In our view, such a renewal comprises two central points: There needs to be a re-evaluation of which learners or speakers we should label as GSL-learners and which not. And this must have consequences for the compilation and revelation of speaker-related metadata that allow us to precisely describe participant groups (in empirical studies) or learners in general. We elaborate on these two related points below. Our review has made clear that in most studies we do not know whether the speakers labelled as GSL learners in the papers are actually L2 learners or not. Explicit and narrowly defined theoretical criteria on AoO and LoE are either not reported and/or not assessed. Instead, GSL is equated with multilingualism or the presence of other languages at home. Thus, it is no longer possible to clearly delineate whether empirical study findings or theoretical presuppositions about GSL refer to L2 learning in the narrow sense at all. It seems reasonable to assume that they do not. This in turn has the consequence that multilingual speakers are automatically assumed to have German as an L2. Coupled with the co-occurrence of the label GSL and partly deficient features such as “insufficient competencies”, this creates an overall deficient picture of multilingualism. To enable a differentiated view, it is necessary to return to narrow definition criteria for GSL. As stated in section 2.2, according to the current state of the art, German is a second language only if its acquisition begins after the age of three. Furthermore, studies suggest that early successive L2 acquisition (starting at age 3) does not seem to result in any differences in the acquisition process compared to L1 learners. From an acquisition theory perspective, the fact that German is acquired as an L2 has a qualitative (e.g., concerning acquisition sequences) as well as quantitative (e.g., concerning aquisition speed) effect on the acquisition trajectory at the earliest from the age of four (see section 2.1). The task of GSL research should be to reveal how L2 acquisition proceeds, which factors can influence it, and how. It is not the task of GSL research to capture the linguistic Otherness of multilingual speakers. That this nevertheless happens is, in our view, also due to a lack of clarity when learners leave the status of being learners. For example, are adolescents or adults whose acquisition of German began in childhood still GSL learners? Or are they simply multilingual (if at all)? This question leads us to a discussion on acquisition theory, which is already underway. In a nutshell, this debate can be summarized as follows: Assuming that the age of acquisition is captured, we would expect that being in the process of learning the basic structures of a second language means being in the process of L2 acquisition. The process of the acquisition of academic language however, which builds up upon that, is usually 128 6 Constructing a clientele in need: The field of German as a Second Language no different from what monolingual L1 speakers have to go through in schoolinduced language expansion (see Gamper & Schroeder 2016, also Hulstijn 2019 “basic language cognition” vs. “extended language cognition”). From this point of view, research in the frame of GSL would be focused predominantly on learners who are in early acquisition phases and serve to acquire basic grammatical and lexical structures. We thus argue for a narrowing of the concept of GSL only to learners who are in the early stages of L2 acquisition. GSL would then apply only to learners who are in the early stages of L2 acquisition. In our opinion, this almost always applies to those speakers who are new migrants to Germany. For children born and raised in Germany, this is usually not the case.11 GSL research and the term “GSL” would thus be closely linked to factors in the context of new immigration.12 We are aware that such narrowing can trigger debates because it questions established research traditions and research questions. However, in our view, it is necessary to significantly revise and overcome deficient concepts of GSL and multilingualism and forms of Othering - also concerning educational policy debates. Our proposal to limit GSL exclusively to newly immigrated learners of German has particular implications for empirical studies in this regard. A consensus is needed that studies related to GSL should only be considered GSL if they focus on L2 learners in a narrow sense. That they do so includes both the careful collection of meaningful metadata, which must include at least AoO. Other features such as LoE (or LoS) are useful, and more (such as individual educational and schooling experiences, heritage languages, writing experiences in these languages, and individual language learning situations) are desirable to get a maximally differentiated picture. Such metadata must not only be collected 11We are grateful to one of the reviewers, who pointed out the parallel to L1 acquisition: Clearly, one would not call a monolingual adult “L1 learner”, even if one could argue that language learning, at least lexical learning, continues throughout the lifespan. 12We are aware of the fact that our proposal comes along with problems when dealing with adult L2 learners. An anonymous reviewer rightly pointed out that adult L2 acquisition takes a comparatively long time when it comes to acquiring basic lexical and grammatical features. Making the term GSL dependent on the language acquisition domain would therefore mean that these learners would have to keep the label GSL for a very long time (although they may achieve a high level of communicative competence in everyday life). One idea could be to distinguish between L2 learners on the one hand and GSL speakers on the other. L2 learners would then (regardless of the AoO) primarily mean those learners who have recently immigrated and have to learn basic grammatical and lexical structures. GSL speakers, on the other hand, would primarily refer to those whose acquisition process has been going on for some time, but who do not yet show extensive competence within the domain of basic language cognition. In any case, the label GSL should not be used for speakers who are concerned with the development of so-called extended language cognition. 129 İnci Dirim assimilationism is concerned with the dissolution of difference in a model that affirms the primacy of the nonimmigrant way of life, multiculturalism advocates a different perspective, namely the recognition of cultural identities, including especially those of immigrant minorities” (transl.: İD). Language was also quickly identified as a central feature of different cultural ways of life, most probably because it is less abstract than culture – it constitutes a visible and audible diversity.1This concept of multiculturalism included the suggestion of cultivating so-called migrant languages. The argument was that the languages of origin of those identified as migrants2should be taken into account because of their importance for the identity of these people. This sometimes paternalistic argument was quickly taken up in pedagogical contexts, such as in the field of German as a second language. In this field, there was and still is an interest not only in teaching German, but in languages in general, in migration, the development of the society, and above all in the people of the society (see also Chp. 6). Through their direct contact with the learners, teachers of German as a second language also became and still are experts on migration issues, not least because this area is strongly interwoven with migration policies and educational policies. Thus, it is in the field of German as a second language where the ‘identity argument’ developed, i.e. the idea that origin and thus languages of origin are centrally important and worthy of protection. The argument continues to be used in educational policy as well as in academic contexts. An example for a policy context is the position paper of the Integration Council of the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where it says: “The appreciation of a person’s language of origin is at the same time the appreciation of a person’s identity – this applies in a very special way to children and adolescents” (Landesintegrationsrat NRW 2022, transl.: İD). What ideas lie behind these arguments and references? What can it mean for people who are considered to have a migration background, to be associated with these ideas? In this chapter, I will adopt a subjectivizational perspective. The subjectivizational approach encourages thinking about backgrounds and attributions that imply a connection between language and identity 1Religion was increasingly regarded as another characteristic of culture (Donlic & Yildiz 2024). This domain is not addressed in this article. On the connection between the categories of language, race and religion, see Thoma 2022, Rühlmann 2023. 2In the nineties, the term “migrant” largely replaced the term “foreigner”, which was perceived as racist. Later, in the course of the growing political recognition of migration as a social fact in Germany, the term “migration background” (Perchinig & Troger 2011 in Knappik & Mecheril 2018:169) emerged. However, the term was subsequently strongly criticised, partly due to its imprecision and exclusionary nature (ibid.). In this article, following the criticism, this term is only used when necessary and in a distanced manner. 136 7 Multilingualism and identity construction in pedagogical discourse (Bjegač 2020; Pokitsch 2022; Rühlmann 2023). In the following, the subjectivizational implications that the claim of the unity of language of origin with identity can have, will be presented and discussed in detail.3 2 Identity, language and culturalization/lingualization In everyday contexts, as well as in educational and didactic models of dealing with bilingualism and multilingualism, ideas of identity are often assumed in which a stable identity, tied to a certain origin or language, forms the center of the personality. According to these conceptions, in the acquisition of a second language, the acquisition of knowledge certainly takes place, but the formation of identity continues to rely on reference back to a speaker’s origin and their language of origin. This notion of origin as the factor determining a person’s identity presumably goes back to Erikson’s theory of the development of identity in a so-called life cycle: “‘Identity’ thus expresses a reciprocal relationship insofar as it encompasses both a permanent being-same-self and a permanent participation in certain group-specific traits” (Erikson 1989: 124; s. also Erikson 1968, 1982). Identity in these conceptions is thus perceived of as a trait that is permanently inherent in people and permeates the course of life. It is assumed that there is such a thing as a healthy development of identity, which has the strength to refer back to oneself again and again in the crises of life, and from which one gains the strength to continue to exist with dignity. Identity, in this theoretical orientation, is more or less given from birth, so that there is a natural connection to origin, which includes belonging to a concrete primordial group. Such a teleological view of identity is also evident in approaches to multilingualism which claim that cultural and linguistic (partial) identities need to be fostered so that those fostered can arrive at a balanced development of their total personality. In higher education, one frequently finds the argument in student papers that learners’ mother tongues have to be integrated into the classroom so that the development of their identity can proceed in a healthy way. Even a quick search on the Internet will yield a large number of articles from different pedagogical approaches that support this approach. An example is the web page “Erziehungskunst” (“Art of Education”) on Waldorf education: “Thus, not only the second language and its cultivation has a fundamental importance for the overall development of children from language minorities, but also the 3This article contains revised and updated passages from the publication Dirim & Heinemann 2016. I am grateful to the editors and to the anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions. 137 İnci Dirim cultivation of the first language. Many members of the third generation of immigrants know the home countries of their parents and grandparents only from vacation, and they often grow up with two languages without being able to identify with either of them. Accommodation to the external ways of life, to the social habits and to the legal norms of the language majority should therefore not be understood as assimilation. The foundation of a healthy personality development can only lie in the harmony between one’s own cultural identity and the appreciation and openness towards other cultures – and not in a cultural uprooting” (Perazzo et al. 2012,1, transl.: İD). Undoubtedly, these arguments are based on a desire to contribute to the wellbeing of the pupils involved. There is nothing wrong with making room for languages that play almost no role in the monolingual (German-speaking) education system, to address and develop languages that are important to pupils, which they speak in such private contexts as in the family, and to enable education in these languages. However, if such efforts are not reflected carefully, they can have a number of unintended consequences, in particular if the symbolic meaning of language is made central to an identity argument in an overly prescriptive way. This has taken place, and continues to take place, in a very similar way in the discussion of cultural identity, and it has been criticized on a number of occasions (Tajmel 2013, Döll et al. 2015, Altmayer 2023). Some of the possible effects of a rigid definition of identity can be summarized by referring to Paul Mecheril’s discussion of the category of “cultural identity” (Mecheril 2003): When complex social processes of human coexistence are reduced to the category of culture, a “culturalization” takes place. People are then no longer perceived in their distinctiveness, but instead, their presumed cultural affiliation is used as a general explanatory pattern. The same applies when the complex process of developing a self-understanding is reduced to a language of origin. In the approach of Niku Dorostkar, this reduction resembles “culturalization”, and he calles it “lingualization” (Dorostkar 2014: 66). Referring to national and supranational EU language discourses, Dorostkar understands lingualization as a reduction of social issues to language (ibid.). One example of lingualization is the language policy, apparent in almost all EU member states, of reducing the complex process of migrants’ integration to language (acquisition). The exclusive and problem-oriented reference to people with a so-called migration background creates the impression that only this group ’suffers’ from ’identity problems’. Conversely, this means that people who are not multilingual and who speak the majority language are at peace with themselves. Furthermore, it is assumed that speaking a language considered to be the language of origin must 138 7 Multilingualism and identity construction in pedagogical discourse make the speaker feel comfortable. This overlooks that in particular the multilingual children and adolescents also have their second language and other languages at their disposal, and that identity-relevant confrontations and learning processes take place in these languages, too. These reifying and one-dimensional notions of identity are gradually being replaced in the academic field by subjectivizational and similar perspectives, largely based on the work of Michel Foucault (1982) and Judith Butler (1990).4In these perspectives, identity is not viewed essentialistically as a relatively closed given, but as an ever dynamically evolving complex system of self-reference. According to these approaches, there is no core identity that is pure and intact and that needs to be protected: it is only through addressings and – concomitant – ascriptions that the reference system identity emerges, and references are always modified and contain contradictions.5It is the discourses that provide the knowledge about roles and affiliations that are attributed to subjects and to which they are more or less at mercy. In his essay on “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” Althusser (1977) exemplifies a situation in which someone is called by a policeman with “Hey, you there!” (Althusser 1977: 142) and turns toward the policeman. According to Althusser, in the moment of this reaction and turning towards the policeman, the individual becomes a subject because he relates the call to himself and thus accepts it. Subjecthood and thus identity are understood in this approaches as radically decentered and always influenced by discourses and practices, through which a subject can be formed. In other words, identity is dependent on invocation and ascription (Althusser 1977: 108f.). Stuart Hall critically considers the question of a unitary identity on this basis. He writes that, contrary to prevailing opinion, a reflexive conceptualization of identity cannot hold to a stable core of the self. He considers it impossible for this self to evolve through the twists and turns of life without change and to remain the same through the entire lifetime. He also considers the idea that this self can guarantee cultural unity and clearly emphasizes external differences to be an illusion, as is the idea of having a unified history of one’s own self. He considers such a story to be an unrealistic narrative that only takes place because there is a need for it (Hall 2004: 170f.). In his opinion, which is also shared by other theorists of cultural studies (for an overview s. Marchart 2018, esp. Chap. 1: 17f, and Chap. 5: 169f), identities 4Both authors have published numerous works on the subject of subjectivation. A very good overview in English is available in Wiede 2020. 5There is a difference between the positions of Foucault and Butler in that Butler grants the subject greater freedom of decision and action than Foucault (Foucault 1982, Butler 1990, Wiede 2020). 139 İnci Dirim are constructed, interwoven, and associated with contradictory discourses, practices, and positions, and they are constantly changing and transforming (Spies 2009 w.p.). Let’s return to our starting point, language. When language is used in its symbolic function as a marker of origin and identity, the crucial point is the question how origin is conceptualized in this process. References loaded with constructions of origin are brought to subjects, affect them, are carried forward in different ways, and are incorporated into discourses that provide figures of argumentation with which subjects are established. Foucault points out that it is a form of power that turns individuals into subjects (Foucault 2005: 275). However, power here is not thought of as something “bad” per se, but as a productive force. Self-conceptions depend on the attributions which are directed at the subjects from positions of higher power in society. The emphasis is on an investigation of the qualities of attributions, as a result of which self-understandings such as “Spaniard”, “child”, “beautiful girl” etc. are acquired. Subjectivizational approaches do not distinguish between social and personal identity because they question the construct of an identity as such. They understand identity as an ongoing fluid process in which the subject forms itself in the confrontation with a social environment and at the same time shapes this environment, so that personal and social categories cannot be separated. Accordingly, the subject develops in line with the acceptance or rejection of attributions in social space. In pedagogical contexts, it is therefore important to take a closer look at the attributions that children and adolescents encounter. In this respect, the work by Vesna Bjegač (2020) is a valuable contribution to the discussion: She analyses pedagogical discourses in the academic field of German as a second language (GSL, see also Chp. 6) on the connection between language and education and relates this to interviews with young people with a so-called migration background. She shows how these adolescents are negatively influenced by negative representations in the academic field. In particular, young people develop negative self-conceptions with regard to the connection between language and origin. It becomes clear that there is a great responsibility of the academic field as well as related pedagogical and educational discourses, as their discourse can have an inferiorizing-subjectivizing effect. This problem is evident, for example, in a study by Heike Niedrig (2015), where students from African countries report that their French or English is seen as less valuable in the Hamburg schools they attend than the French or English of students who are from Europe, for instance from France. We see here a strong connection between (the attributed) country 140 7 Multilingualism and identity construction in pedagogical discourse or continent of origin and language when it comes to recognition, and we understand that recognition differs when countries of origin are judged differently (Niedrig 2015, 7). Rühlmann’s (2023) dissertation, following studies in the area of racio-linguistics, shows that these hierarchies are related to postcolonial value hierarchies. Thus, the extent to which language competence is recognized also has to do with racial categories. Against this background, we can now formulate more precisely the question on the role of language for identity development in migration society contexts: What addresses to multilinguals become visible in connection with language in social discourses and what attributions do these addresses contain? Or, to put it more general: To what extent do “identity ascriptions” contain powerful culturalizing or lingualizing connotations through which children, young people, and also adults with a so-called migration background are discursively turned into inferior subjects and are thus disadvantaged? These questions will be discussed in the following, using the example of a European Commission (EC) document that carries a discourse-forming function by mandate. 3 Language and identity by order of the European Commission At the EU level, multilingualism is a programme as well as a requirement. At the supranational level, the idea that multilingualism is of fundamental importance prevails because of the multinationality and multilingualism of the EU. This fundamental attitude has an impact on the view of migration-related multilingualism. In 2008, a newly formed “Group of Intellectuals for Intercultural Dialogue” addressed the issue of multilingualism. In the following, I present and analyze a document produced in this context. I carry out this analysis in the frame of the subjectivation approaches outlined above, according to which identity does not emerge on its own, but develops in the course of dealing with attributions, especially when these come from authorities higher in power. The analysis concentrates on the identity-related ideas that the document sends out as a political statement. 4 Proposals of the council of intellectuals At the request of the then President of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, and the Commissioner for Multilingualism, Leonard Orban, a 141 İnci Dirim group of discourse-shaping actors was set up in 2008.6The group was given the task of advising the EU Commission “on the contribution of multilingualism to intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding among citizens in the European Union”7(European Commission 2008: 2). In 2008, the Council of Intellectuals published a report entitled “A worthwhile challenge – how multilingualism can contribute to the consolidation of Europe”. As a basis for my analysis, I briefly review the basic statements of this report, especially those that are relevant to our present discussion. Must we try to define a ‘European identity’? Can this overcome all our differences?” (ibid.: 2) These questions, classified as “enormously sensitive” (ibid.: 2), are then related to multilingualism: “Our brief was to think about multilingualism and how multilingualism might impact on European integration and intercultural dialogue. Therefore, we decided to leave aside our preconceived opinions – both optimistic and pessimistic – to start from a completely neutral observation: For any society, linguistic, cultural, ethnic or religious diversity brings at the same time advantages and disadvantages, it is a source of richness but also of tensions” (ibid.: 2). The authors see the solution in taking linguistic diversity into account in a specific way: “Respecting our linguistic diversity does not only mean taking into account a cultural reality based on history. Even if the majority of European nations were founded on the basis of their identity-forming languages, the European Union can only be based on its linguistic diversity. [...] We even consider it capable of standing as a model for the whole of humanity of an identity based on diversity” (ibid.: 5). With regard to immigrants, it is stated that a deep knowledge of the national language and the culture they carry is an indispensable condition for integration into the host society, in order to participate in its economic, social, intellectual, artistic and political life. Furthermore, the report underlines that European countries must understand the importance of maintaining the language of origin for any immigrant or person with a migrant background. This is justified by an argumentation that, in turn, ties the 6The group was led by the author Amin Maalouf and included the following members: Jutta Limbach, president of the Goethe-Institut; Sandra Pralong, communications expert; Simonetta Agnello Hornby, author; David Green, president of EUNIC (European Network of National Cultural Institutes), former director of the British Council; Eduardo Lourenço, philosopher; Jaques de Decker, author, permanent secretary of the Académie Royale de Langue et de Littèrature françaises de Belgique; Jan Sokol, philosopher, former Minister of Education of the Czech Republic; Jan Christoph Grøndahl, author; and Tahar Ben Jelloun, author (Europäische Kommission 2008: 2). 7The report was analysed in the German version; all quotes have been translated by the author (İ.D.) into English. 142 7 Multilingualism and identity construction in pedagogical discourse loss of identity, first, to the loss of linguistic competence in the so-called ‘migration language’, and, second, pathologizes it: “A young person who loses the language of his or her ancestors also loses the ability to communicate with his or her own parents in an unclouded manner, which is a factor of social destabilization that can, in turn, lead to violence. The exaggerated affirmation of identity often springs from a sense of guilt toward one’s culture of origin, a guilt that is sometimes expressed in an overemphasis on religious components. In other words, an immigrant or a person with an immigrant background who is proficient in his or her mother tongue, who can pass it on to his or her children, who feels that his or her language and culture of origin are recognized in the host society, would feel less need to quench his or her thirst for identity in other ways” (ibid.: 21).]The report begins by stating that linguistic diversity is a challenge for Europe. However, the authors argue that it is a worthwhile challenge (ibid. 3), which must be met in an efficient manner. The following question is then brought to the fore: “How can we make it possible for so many different peoples to live harmoniously together? [...] Must we try to define a ‘European identity’? Can this overcome all our differences?” (ibid.: 2) These questions, classified as “enormously sensitive” (ibid.: 2), are then related to multilingualism: “Our brief was to think about multilingualism and how multilingualism might impact on European integration and intercultural dialogue. Therefore, we decided to leave aside our preconceived opinions – both optimistic and pessimistic – to start from a completely neutral observation: For any society, linguistic, cultural, ethnic or religious diversity brings at the same time advantages and disadvantages, it is a source of richness but also of tensions” (ibid.: 2). The authors see the solution in taking linguistic diversity into account in a specific way: “Respecting our linguistic diversity does not only mean taking into account a cultural reality based on history. Even if the majority of European nations were founded on the basis of their identity-forming languages, the European Union can only be based on its linguistic diversity. [...] We even consider it capable of standing as a model for the whole of humanity of an identity based on diversity” (ibid.: 5). With regard to immigrants, it is stated that a deep knowledge of the national language and the culture they carry is an indispensable condition for integration into the host society, in order to participate in its economic, social, intellectual, artistic and political life. Furthermore, the report underlines that European countries must understand the importance of maintaining the language of origin for any immigrant or person with a migrant background. This is justified by an argumentation that, in turn, ties the loss of identity, first, to the loss of linguistic competence in the so-called ‘migration language’, and, second, pathologizes it: “A young person who loses the language of his or her ancestors also loses the ability to commu143 İnci Dirim nicate with his or her own parents in an unclouded manner, which is a factor of social destabilization that can, in turn, lead to violence. The exaggerated affirmation of identity often springs from a sense of guilt toward one’s culture of origin, a guilt that is sometimes expressed in an overemphasis on religious components. In other words, an immigrant or a person with an immigrant background who is proficient in his or her mother tongue, who can pass it on to his or her children, who feels that his or her language and culture of origin are recognized in the host society, would feel less need to quench his or her thirst for identity in other ways” (ibid.: 21). In the course of the text, the authors further concretize the danger of generating violent acts as a consequence of not taking into account the so-called languages of origin, and distinguish it from the category of religion: “Allowing migrants, European as well as non-European, easy access to their language of origin and allowing them to preserve what could be called their linguistic and cultural dignity seems to us once again an effective antidote to fanaticism. Religious and linguistic affiliation are obviously among the elements that most strongly constitute identity. However, these affiliations function differently, and sometimes even compete with each other. Religious affiliation is exclusive, while linguistic affiliation is not. The decoupling of these two powerful identity-forming factors, the development of a linguistic and cultural belonging not at the expense of religion, but very much at the expense of the identity-forming function of religion, seems to us a salutary undertaking that could contribute to the reduction of tensions both in European societies and elsewhere in the world” (ibid.: 18). Overall, the recommendations of the Group of Intellectuals pursue a benevolent goal, namely that of securing peace, and see certain differences between peoples as a possible and historically proven obstacle, namely religious and linguistic differences, which are identified as cultural categories. In relation to language, we find the following underlying argumentation: • Language is a factor that creates identity. • Everybody has a/one language of origin; language and origin are inseparably connected. • People must have opportunities to speak their first language because of its identity-forming function. • If young migrants cannot speak ‘their languages of origin’, there is a danger that they will become alienated from their parents and thus become violent. 144 7 Multilingualism and identity construction in pedagogical discourse • The identity-forming moment of religioness is a problem to be combated. The focus on religion arises from the urge for identity, which can be stopped by taking into account the ‘mother tongues’ of ‘migrants’. A subjectivizational perspectives reveals the following patterns, among other things: • The Council of Intellectuals follows a “monolingual habitus” (Gogolin 1998), according to which monolingualism represents the normality and the symbolic means of establishing the togetherness of citizens. Gogolin (1998) shows that in the course of the formation of the German nationstate, German was brought to the fore as the only (legitimate) language of the state; with the help of the educational institution school, in the course of time this position of German became the normality. The Council of Intellectuals seems to follow this idea of the national language as a crucial unifying element, given that it assumes that all people possess an (one) identity language. The document hence equates people and language, as is typical for the development of a certain form of nation-state. Moreover, also in the context of migration, language is understood as a language according to the nation-state model; language contact phenomena and hybridizations that are typical for migration are not taken into account. From the point of view of language ideology theory, a similar picture emerges. The language of origin (often called mother tongue) forms a unity with the so-called fatherland. This establishes a connection that also appears in contemporary negotiations of linguistic (non)belonging: an “ethnic ownership of language” (Bonfiglio 2013: 36), with which speakers of a certain language and origin are thought to be indissolubly linked. According to Pokitsch & Dirim (2024), this is linked to three central language-ideological aspects, which are also effective in the document under discussion: “mother tongue as a singular language category (each person has only one mother tongue), mother tongue as a character-defining feature, and mother tongue as a collectivizing element that determines belonging” (Pokitsch & Dirim 2024, also Pokitsch & Bjegač 2022, Bonfiglio 2010, Ahlzweig 1994, in detail Pokitsch 2022: 50ff.). • People regarded as migrants are fixed to their origin and thus positioned as not belonging and having to be integrated. Language is ascribed a central significance in this context. This is hence a pattern of a lingualization (Dorostkar 2014), since no social categories other than religion are taken 145