Multilingualism, Citizenship, and Identity: Voices of Youth and Symbolic Investments in an Urban, Globalized World

Description

Through an innovative and interdisciplinary approach that combines critical sociolinguistic ethnography, multi-modality, reflexivity, and discourse analysis, this groundbreaking book reveals the multiple (and sometimes simultaneous) ways in which individuals engage and invest in representations of languages and identities.This timely work is the first to consider the significance of multilingualism and its relationship to citizenship as well as the development of linguistic repertoires as an essential component of language education in a globalized world. While examining the discourses and interconnections between multilingualism, globalization, and identity, the author draws upon a unique case study of the experiences, voices, trajectories, and journeys of Canadian youth of Italian origin from diverse social, geographical, and linguistic backgrounds, participating in university French language courses as well as training to become teachers of French in the urban, multicultural and global landscape of Toronto, Canada. In doing so, Byrd Clark skilfully illustrates the multidimensional ways that youth invest in language learning and socially construe their multiple identities within diverse contexts while weaving in and out of particularistic and universalistic identifications. This invaluable resource will not only shed light on how and why people engage in learning languages and for which languages they choose to invest, but will offer readers a deeper understanding of the complex interrelationships between multilingualism, identity, and citizenship. It will appeal to researchers in a variety of fields, including applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, language acquisition and linguistic anthropology.

Dr Julie Byrd Clark is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.

Julie Byrd Clark's new interdisciplinary book explores issues of globalization, identity and language learning in new, fascinating and challenging ways. She illuminates what it means for Italian Canadians to learn French in a pluralistic, multilingual society and explores this phenomenon through multiple ideologies and discourses across various settings. This book will appeal to experienced and novice researchers from many different fields. It's one of the most exciting, interesting, and well-written accounts of ethnographic research I've read in a long time. -- Martha Bigelow, Associate Professor, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Minnesota, USA This in-depth study of the experiences of a group of university-age Italian-Canadians becoming teachers of French in the Toronto area uses a variety of overlapping techniques and theories to convey the variegated lived reality of multilingual Canadian italianita. Julie Byrd Clark draws on her own multiply-identified background to help her make sense of the many confusing, often contradictory statements by these young adults struggling with the realities of contemporary Canadian multiculturalism as they attempt to find their linguistic niche. In a country riven with language politics, Byrd Clark's starkly honest attempt to portray the complexities of one of Canada's most prominent ethnolinguistic communities from the inside, with a trained yet sympathetic eye, stands out as an excellent example of the potential of ethnographic method in critical applied linguistics. The new paperback edition of this monograph deserves wide attention from the scholarly community. -- Mela Sarkar, Associate Professor, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, Canada