Table Of ContentEducational Linguistics
Larissa Aronin · Michael Hornsby
Grażyna Kiliańska-Przybyło Editors
The Material
Culture of
Multilingualism
Educational Linguistics
Volume 36
Series Editor
Francis M. Hult, Lund University, Sweden
Editorial Board
Marilda C. Cavalcanti, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil
Jasone Cenoz, University of the Basque Country, Spain
Angela Creese, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
Ingrid Gogolin, Universität Hamburg, Germany
Christine Hélot, Université de Strasbourg, France
Hilary Janks, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa
Claire Kramsch, University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A
Constant Leung, King’s College London, United Kingdom
Angel Lin, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Alastair Pennycook, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
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Larissa Aronin • Michael Hornsby
Grażyna Kiliańska-Przybyło
Editors
The Material Culture
of Multilingualism
Editors
Larissa Aronin Michael Hornsby
Oranim Academic College of Education Adam Mickiewicz University
Tivon, Haifa, Israel Poznań, Poland
Grażyna Kiliańska-Przybyło
University of Silesia
Katowice, Poland
ISSN 1572-0292 ISSN 2215-1656 (electronic)
Educational Linguistics
ISBN 978-3-319-91103-8 ISBN 978-3-319-91104-5 (eBook)
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Foreword
“The material culture of multilingualism” explores a highly original relationship
that has attracted researchers working on multilingualism only in the last years.
Multilingualism can be understood at the individual and social levels, and its study
can be approached from disciplines such as neurolinguistics, sociolinguistics, psy-
cholinguistics, education, anthropology or history. It is certainly a broad concept,
and it is studied by using different theoretical models and research methodologies.
The study of material culture dates back hundreds of years, and it is also multi-
disciplinary, archaeology being one of the main disciplines involved. The relation-
ship between multilingualism and material culture has not received much attention,
but it is not new. In fact, the most ancient examples of multilingualism are also
considered as important examples of material culture. The Behistun Inscription in
the Kermanshah Province of Iran, authored by Darius the Great, was composed
between 522 BCE and 486 BCE. It is in cuneiform script and is in three languages:
Old Persian, Akkadian and Elamite. These three languages were also found in the
cuneiform inscription of Xerxes at Van Fortress (Turkey). This is a Sumerian trilin-
gual tablet from the fifth century BCE. The Letoon trilingual is also an inscription
that brings together material culture and multilingualism. It is a stele from the fourth
century BCE, and the three languages are Lycian, Greek and Aramaic. Another
famous example is the Rosetta Stone. This stele is inscribed with a decree issued in
Egypt in the year 196 BCE and has three scripts: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs,
Demotic and Greek.
Another example of an important multilingual cultural object is the Glosas
Emilianenses from the eleventh century. This is not a stele but a trilingual volume
which is a Latin codex with marginalia written in Spanish and Basque. These com-
ments on the margins are very valuable as early examples of these languages.
Further East and closer in time, another example of multilingualism and material
culture is the Galle Trilingual Inscription erected in Galle (Sri Lanka) in 1409
CE. The three languages on this stone tablet inscription are Chinese, Tamil and
Persian.
v
vi Foreword
When we look at the link between material culture and multilingualism, it is
surprising that this relationship has not attracted researchers on multilingualism
until only recently. This volume brings together research studies from different con-
texts and explores different ways of understanding how multilingualism and multi-
lingual communication are related to objects and artefacts that are part of material
culture. Larissa Aronin, Michael Hornsby and Grażyna Kiliańska-Przybyło clearly
contribute to filling that gap by editing this volume. The volume certainly provides
food for thought because it goes beyond the traditional scope of studies in multilin-
gualism. At the same time, the chapters in this volume show the challenges that the
material culture of multilingualism faces.
One such challenge is the scope of what can be defined as material culture in
relation to multilingualism. According to the editors’ definition in the introduction
to this volume, “material culture is the realm of physical items embracing everyday
objects... all produced by humans and interconnected by and with local and global
mindset, culture, tradition and social life”. This definition shows that material cul-
ture is much broader than the way the concept is understood in disciplines such as
archaeology, which is more constrained by space and time. This inclusive view of
material culture has some advantages because it is difficult to decide whether some
objects are culture and others are not. From the perspective of multilingualism,
there is no reason to justify that a household utensil from the Middle Ages is mate-
rial culture, whereas a modern one is not.
The trend in expanding the scope is also occurring now in the study of the lin-
guistic landscape. The new journal, Linguistic Landscape, defines the field as going
beyond texts posted in public space, including images, sounds and any other feature
that defines public spaces as well. It seems that the linguistic landscape is becoming
the study of many different types of elements in the urban public space, including
buildings, movement, food or bodies, which is quite far from the tradition of linking
it to public and commercial signs. Danuta Gabryś-Barker, in her chapter, considers
that it could be worth exploring the relationship between the linguistic landscape of
restaurant names and the material culture that can be found in the messages on
Portuguese sugar bags.
The scope of material culture overlaps to a certain extent with the linguistic land-
scape, but the material culture of multilingualism is even broader because it is not
limited to the public space. The chapters in this volume show how the study of the
material culture of multilingualism can take as its object of analysis postcards, exhi-
bitions, road signs, festivals, souvenirs, sugar bags, customs or public displays and
how these objects can be related to identity, minority languages, globalization,
immigration, language teaching or cultural differences. Some of the objects anal-
ysed have some writing on them while others do not have any writing present, but
can potentially be related to some aspects of multilingualism. The precise boundar-
ies of the material culture of multilingualism are indeed hard to define, and more
research is needed to define the main research questions and methodology.
Foreword vii
Although there have been some publications on the topic before, this volume can
be considered as the starting point for a very fruitful line of research. The stimulat-
ing insights of the studies in this volume will certainly trigger further research on
the interaction between multilingualism and material culture.
University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU Jasone Cenoz
Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain [email protected]
Acknowledgements
The first editor would like to thank the Oranim Academic College of Education
Research Authority for its support.
The second editor would like to acknowledge the input from discussions on the
“new speaker” theme as part of the EU COST Action IS1306 network entitled “New
Speakers in a Multilingual Europe: Opportunities and Challenges”.
ix
Contents
Introduction: The Realm of the Material Culture
of Multilingualism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Larissa Aronin and Michael Hornsby
Part I Theoretical Issues of the Material Culture of Multilingualism
Theoretical Underpinnings of the Material Culture
of Multilingualism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Larissa Aronin
The World of Things: Material Culture in Language
Teaching and Teacher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Hanna Komorowska
Part II C ultural, Linguistic and Educational Awareness
of Material Culture
Multilingual Students’ Representations of Material Culture . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Teresa Maria Włosowicz
“Big” Culture in Small Packages: On Material Culture
for Developing Cultural Awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Danuta Gabryś-Barker
Multilingual Awareness in Tyrolean Material Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Ulrike Jessner, Dominik Unterthiner, Stephanie Topf,
and Manon Megens
xi
