Multilingualism and Literacy

INTRODUCTION

Multilingualism and literacy: attitudes and policies

Susana A. Eisenchlas*, Andrea C. Schalley and Diana Guillemin

School of Languages and Linguistics, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD, Australia

(Received 14 January 2015; accepted 14 January 2015)

In this special issue we shine light on the relationship between multilingualism andliteracy and on dominant forces that shape it. Here we present a selection of peer-reviewed papers presented originally at the Multilingualism and Literacy workshop heldat the 19th International Congress of Linguists in Geneva, 2127 July 2013. Thatworkshop explored the impact of multilingualism on the literacy development of bothchildren and adults, seeking to identify how literacy skills or lack of them in one languagecan affect development of literacy in other language(s). This special issue focuses on twoparticular factors that strongly affect achievement of literacy in multilingual contexts educational policies and societal attitudes and therefore also considers communityresponses these may generate.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the Multilingualism and Literacyworkshops International Program Committee for their assistance in helping us to selectthe abstracts for presentation and thank workshop participants and audience forconstructive comments and suggestions. We are also grateful to the editors ofInternational Journal of Multilingualism, Professor Danuta Gabrys-Barker and ProfessorEva Vetter, for the opportunity to share these papers with a wider audience. Last but notleast, we express our gratitude to the papers peer reviewers, whose expertise andassistance have helped make this special issue possible.

Background to this issue

Living in an increasingly multilingual world, we are interested in how languages do anddo not coexist in and among societies and individuals. As editors of this special issue,we share the view that linguistic diversity should be actively cherished for the wealth ofpersonal, social and economic benefits it brings to individuals and communities (seeBialystok, 2001), rather than simply tolerated or worse, ignored or suppressed. Webelieve that maintenance and development of ones home language is a human right, asrecognized in several international conventions (Singh, n.d.).1 Moreover, we argue thatfor minority language speakers, it is essential to develop literacy skills in their homelanguage (where the language has a written form), as well as in the mainstream language,if high levels of proficiency in the home language are to be achieved and maintained.This is where language policies have a crucial role to play.

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

International Journal of Multilingualism, 2015Vol. 12, No. 2, 151161, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2015.1009371

2015 Taylor & Francis

However, a cursory exploration of language policies across the globe reveals that inmost countries widespread societal and individual bi/multilingualism runs counter to thelanguage policies formulated under the mainstream ideologies of governments andimplemented through national and subnational education systems and programmes, asillustrated by the papers in this issue. Needless to say, language policies in general andeducation policies in particular do not exist in a sociopolitical vacuum but stem from, andin turn inform, and indeed are used to inform, societal attitudes and practices. In the caseof minority languages education, the biggest challenge speakers and communities face isovercoming the monolingual bias, at both societal and individual levels, that still operatesin most societies.

This special issue is motivated by our conviction that individual and societal interestscan be furthered by re-examination of language policies and attitudes in light of currentresearch findings, and by recognition that so-called minority languages are significant,although often squandered, resources in our multilingual multiethnic societies. Thus, oneaim of this special issue is to raise awareness of the increasing personal, social andeconomic costs of illiteracy that result from language education policies in variousregions of the world. The second aim is to showcase initiatives taken by minoritylanguage-speaking individuals and groups, both within and outside the formal educationsystem, to redress the lack of institutional support for their languages.

We begin this introduction by debunking the monolingual bias at both societal andindividual levels. We then introduce the papers that comprise this special issue, eachillustrating different perspectives and approaches formulated to deal with the practicalchallenges and opportunities posed by the quest for literacy in the context ofmultilingualism.

Normative societal monolingualism

The precise number of languages spoken worldwide is still a matter of discussion. Debatehinges, among other factors, on the definition of language and its theoretical andempirical distinction from dialect. Most estimates range between 5000 and 7000languages (Crystal, 1987; Tucker, 1999). Ethnologue, the most comprehensive catalogueof the worlds languages, lists 7105 distinct living languages (https://www.ethnologue.com/world). Since there are only 193 United Nations recognized sovereign memberstates, a simple calculation highlights an obvious conclusion: there is no one-to-onecorrelation between languages and nation states. Since the number of languages exceedsthe number of countries by almost 39 to 1, it can be safely concluded that languagescoexist at close proximities and that multilingualism is a well-established phenomenonacross the globe. Adding dialects to this equation significantly strengthens this point.

Although the concentration of languages is greater in some countries than in others,there are very few, if any, monolingual countries. Even Japan, which is typicallyconsidered one of the most monolingual countries, has three small linguistic minorities:Ainu, Koreans and Chinese (Grosjean, 1982) as well as sizeable numbers of expatriatesspeaking a wide variety of languages. English language is not only a compulsory schoolsubject, it has a palpable presence, especially through Japans relationship with the USAthrough post-Second World War occupation and consequent security support and throughadvertising appeal. Even so, less than a quarter of the worlds countries officiallyrecognize two or more languages (Tucker, 1999). As Clyne (2005, p. 169) noted, manycountries are still caught in the nineteenth century notion of the language basedmonocultural nation state in an era of unprecedented migration and international and

152 S.A. Eisenchlas et al.

intercultural intertwining.2 Yet even countries that recognize officially more than onelanguage usually fail to achieve equal status for all the languages spoken in theirterritories.

Languages are not socially or politically equal, and some languages enjoy higherprestige and support than others. The 2009 Bolivian Constitution, for instance, lists 36Indigenous languages as official languages, in addition to Spanish. However, in practice,the onus is on all Bolivians to master Spanish if they seek to achieve social mobility,while there is no real incentive for Spanish first-language speakers to master any of theIndigenous languages listed in the constitution, some of which are endangered or evenextinct. Another example of linguistic inequality in a multilingual setting can be found inCanada, an officially bilingual country where the two mainstream languages of Englishand French coexist despite substantial variation in the language policies of the differentprovinces and territories, and a rich variety of Indigenous languages spoken nowhereelse but which is yet to cater for the educational needs of its increasingly diversemigrant population speaking languages other than English and French. The Canadiansituation, it should be stressed, is the international norm rather than the exception when itcomes to institutional support for minority languages in multilingual settings.

Linguistic diversity has long been shaped by dislocating processes that mostly involvethe exercise of power, such as colonialism, colonization, military invasion andannexation, displacement of populations, and nationalism, as well as migration andeducational and economic imperatives (Crystal, 1987; Liddicoat, Heugh, Curnow, &Scarino, 2014). These reasons are clearly not mutually exclusive: Australias multi-lingualism, for instance, to a considerable extent stems from two main sources: Britishcolonization of a territory where Indigenous peoples spoke around 250 Indigenouslanguages (Clyne, 2005) and extensive and ongoing migration particularly aftergovernment restrictions on immigration were dismantled from 1966 (Department ofImmigration and Border Protection, 2012). Timor Lestes multilingualism, to give anotherexample, stems from the coexistence of a number of Indigenous languages spoken in theregion with further languages imposed first by Portuguese colonization (17691975) andsubsequently by Indonesias forcible annexation (19761999; see Boon & Kurver, 2015).

As distinctive and complex circumstances determine the use and status of languagesin each society and the relationships among these languages, generalizations aboutmultilingualism applicable across all contexts are impossible. Societies formulateresponses to linguistic diversity based on their own backgrounds, needs, resources andideologies, as the papers in this issue illustrate.3

The monolingual mindset/normative individual monolingualism

The discussion above concerns national and societal bi/multilingualism. However, similartrends apply at the individual level given that across the world bilingual/multilingualpeople outnumber monolingual people (Scarino, 2014; Tucker, 1999). Yet there is apervasive assumption, in the Western world at least, that monolingualism is the norm andbi/multilingualism is the exception. The proliferation of books and articles on theadvantages of bi/multilingualism can be seen as evidence that the normative mono-lingualism assumption is alive and well. As Romaine (1995) observed, it would bestrange to find a book titled Monolingualism, since this phenomenon is taken as thedefault and therefore not problematized. Being the marked option in terms of ideologyrather than demographic reality it is bilingualism that needs to be explained andjustified. To corroborate this point, in April 2014 we conducted a title search in the

International Journal of Multilingualism 153

biggest online bookseller, Amazon. The search yielded titles of 74 books using the searchterm monolingualism, 3101 books using bilingualism, and 1789 using multi-lingualism. Excluding monolingual dictionaries and books that also deal with bilingual-ism reduced the monolingualism list to just three titles, all on monolingualism in thecontext of language standardization or discussing linguistic ideologies. Monolingualismappears to have lost its apologists in recent times.

The scarcity of defenders of monolingualism is a relatively recent development.Equating monolingualism with normality has a long tradition, probably starting with thecurse of Babel (Genesis, 11, pp. 58) where linguistic diversity is inflicted on humanityas a means of punishment, to confuse their language so they will not understand eachother. Research in the early to mid-1900s similarly viewed bilingualism as a potentialmental handicap that would cause confusion in children and could result in semilingu-alism, that is, the inability to develop adequate levels of proficiency in any of thelanguages to which children were exposed simultaneously (Skutnabb-Kangas &Toukomaa, 1976). Current scholarship, however, has moved away from the idea that amonolingual upbringing is preferable to a bilingual/multilingual one. Research hasdocumented conclusively the many cognitive, affective, psychological and socialadvantages associated with bi/multilingualism in general and with biliteracy/multiliteracyin particular (see Bialystok, 2001; Eisenchlas, Schalley, & Guillemin, 2013, for anoverview). Bi/multilingualism is also now recognized for the symbolic capital it offers tothe individual, communities and nations (Clyne, 2005). Indeed, in the globalizedeconomy, language is a commodity that can have market value (Bourdieu, 1977) aswell as a marker of identity.

Yet these understandings have not impacted strongly outside academic circles.Maintenance and development of home language/s that create and sustain bi/multi-lingualism typically falls outside the scope of educational institutions (cf. Liddicoat &Curnow, 2014). Migrant/refugee parents and carers still struggle with potentially negativeconsequences of their decision to raise children with more than one language. In somemigration countries, educators or other well-intentioned parties may still urge migrant/refugee parents to switch to their new countrys mainstream language at home irrespective of their proficiency in that language if they want their children to succeedacademically. The decision to maintain the home language is made even harder when thehome language is perceived negatively in the wider community or has little or noinstitutional support, or when the cultural practices and norms of minority groups clashwith mainstream educational practices (as discussed by Stavans with regard to Ethiopiansin Israel, 2015). In these situations, minority languages become relegated to the privatedomain. Speakers seldom develop literacy in these languages, restricting their ability torealize their linguistic potential to the fullest and reap the multiple benefits mentionedabove.

Why this special issue?

Our discussion so far points to the following paradoxes. First, while in most countrieslinguistic diversity is a visible and audible reality, it is still recognized as a markedoccurrence in public discourse, and at times as something to be tolerated rather thanencouraged. Further, while solid research validates the claim that advantages accrue tothose with proficiency in more than one language, in many national and subnationalcontexts assimilationist policies deny institutional investment to support minority


language development. This lack of government commitment is particularly detrimentalto acquiring literacy in a home language, the topic of this issue.

Literacy is a very fragile skill. While acquisition of a home language is typicallythrough exposure, literacy in that language must be learnt. Research has shown that initialliteracy in the home language facilitates, rather than hinders, the acquisition of literacy inadditional languages (e.g. Benson, 2005; Bialystok, 2001). Since there is consensus thatliteracy is essential for academic success, it can be argued that investing time and effort indeveloping literacy in the home language first can enhance the scholastic experience andachievements of children whose home language is a minority language. Many of thesechildren are considered to be at risk when submersed in mainstream schooling withoutsufficient additional support. Yet few parents feel confident about their ability to developtheir childrens literacy skills in the home language. In some refugee communities fleeingfrom protracted war, a high number of adults are illiterate themselves, so there is littleparents can do to foster literacy in their children. Furthermore, migrant and refugeecommunities may not be concentrated in one geographical area, making provision ofhome language literacy in ethnic/community/Saturday schools, which could comple-ment mainstream schooling, impractical. Lack of resources and trained teacherscompounds the problem, in particular for smaller and more vulnerable communities.

These challenges bring us to the title of this special issue, Policies and Attitudes, andto the question of the interplay between these factors. Do attitudes shape policies, or dopolicies shape attitudes? Or is this another chicken and egg situation in which both theseconstructs impact upon each other? If, indeed, attitudes affect policies, whose attitudes areincorporated when policies are decided, whose voices are heard and whose interests areserved; as Bourdieu put it, who has the right to speech, i.e., to the legitimate language,the authorized language which is also the language of authority (1977, p. 648).

As Bourdieu (1977, p. 648) has argued, language is not only an instrument ofcommunication or even of knowledge, but also an instrument of power. Educationalprogrammes and practices in general, and decisions about language of instruction andminority language maintenance more specifically, are defined by the interests of dominantgroups (Bourdieu, 1977; Martin-Jones & Heller, 1996). Schools, as social institutions,play a crucial role in naturalizing or normalizing relations of power (Martn Rojo, 2014),thus upholding the status quo or helping to create a new one if that is sought by thosewho hold dominant power.

Subordinate groups, although limited in their access to power and capacity forinfluence vis--vis mainstream society, are not totally powerless. Minority groups canstrategically position themselves with respect to the obstacles posed by the limits on theiraccess to opportunities by enacting greater or lesser degrees of resistance andcontestation. Here we must note that neither minority groups nor their responses arenecessarily homogenous. Numerous examples show sectors within these groups at timesembrace mainstream policies that they consider to be conducive to their ownadvancement. One is the 1998 vote in favour of Proposition 227 (a.k.a. English for thechildren) in California. This Proposition, which effectively banned bilingual education,was passed by a 69% margin that included a significant proportion of Latino parentsconcerned that their children would if educated bilingually fail to achieve thelinguistic abilities valued in mainstream educational and professional contexts (Johnson &Martinez, 1999). Li and Chuk (2015) provide more recent evidence from Hong Kongthat members of minority elites may choose to master the dominant language at theexpense of, rather than alongside the home language, as a possible means of socialmobility. While these initiatives may be successful in terms of enculturation into, and


perhaps upward social mobility in, the mainstream culture, the price minority, communitiespay is often home language attrition and the failure to benefit from the well-documentedadvantages of a bi/multilingual upbringing.

Cooper (1989, p. 182) claimed succinctly that to plan language is to plan society,and in line with proposals summarized above, warns that language planning is typicallymotivated by efforts to secure or maintain interests (p. 183). Thus, it is unlikely thatinitiatives that can lead to more equal and inclusive education policies and educationoutcomes will be imposed from above. Still, they can be initiated at the community leveland led by grassroots initiatives, as evidenced by formulation of the 1987 NationalLanguages Policy in Australia, as Schalley, Guillemin, and Eisenchlas (2015) discuss.Social change happens when communities extend their aspirations beyond the restrictivelanguage policies of the day. Groups then start developing and implementing their ownsolutions to the challenges they face, at times within the existing educational system, attimes outside and independently of it. Weth (2015), for example, describes the initiativesof Moroccan Arabic (MA)-speaking children to write in their vernacular for the first timeusing French orthographic conventions, providing evidence of bilingual childrensmetalinguistic abilities. Examples of education and language policies in multilingualsettings, as well as attitudes held and initiatives taken in various contexts to redress theresulting inequalities, are the focus of this special issue.

Organization and overview of this issue

The papers selected for this special issue are original investigations dealing with policies,attitudes and practices that impact on bi/multilingual literacy acquisition by children andadults. Since their focus is upon practical matters, the papers acknowledge theoreticalground as the basis for their discussion, but do not explore central concepts that arecarefully defined and critiqued in theoretical/conceptual studies. The geographical areasdiscussed in these papers are Australia (Schalley, Guillemin and Eisenchlas), Hong Kong(Li and Chuk), Israel (Stavans), Timor-Leste (Boon and Kurvers) and France (Weth). Interms of the age of learners under consideration, the papers span widely, includingemergent literacy (Stavans), primary schoolers (Schalley et al., Weth), university students(Li and Chuk) and illiterate adults (Boon and Kurvers). The thematic sequence of papersbegins with educational policies and moves through a continuum across different learnerages, looking at both formal and informal educational settings.

As mentioned early in this introduction, one of the most common sources ofmultilingualism is migration. Countries that are strong targets of migration usuallyexperience a tension between support for the official language(s) and attitudes towardsthe minority languages of migrants and refugees. This tension is felt particularly witheducation policies and practices. The paper by Schalley, Guillemin and Eisenchlas,Multilingualism and assimilationism in Australias literacy-related educational policies,focuses on Australia, where more than 300 languages are spoken and where 19% of thepopulation aged over five years speaks uses a language other than English at home. Theauthors overview successive government education policies and plans formulated andimplemented from 1987, when Australia proposed the first comprehensive national policyon languages in an English-speaking country. By Australias current policy standards, thatpolicy was remarkable in its explicit support for multilingualism, which the policyperceived and acknowledged as an asset to the wider community. The authors analysis ofpolicy documents reveals a steady narrowing in policy focus over time, paralleled by amarked change in government attitudes towards minority languages, moving on to


recognize these as a potential hindrance to its speakers use of the national language,English, and in later documents plainly ignored.

The change in policy attitude towards multilingualism was motivated by, inter alia,the finding that Australia lags behind other English-speaking nations on literacy, with25% of Year 4 students failing to meet the minimum reading standard for their age.Children with a minority language as their first language were said to represent one of themost vulnerable groups with respect to achieving adequate levels of literacy. In a remedialmove, the philosophy and emphasis of education policy were shifted to focus exclusivelyon English literacy, and the push for multilingualism was abandoned in favour ofassimilationist policies. The authors thus point to the negative correlation the moremultilingual Australia became, the more assimilationist were the education policies, andthe more monolingual the orientation of the society. These education policies fail toaddress the particular needs of children whose first language is not English. Neither dothey explore whether the academic challenges these children face could have beendiminished had the children been encouraged to develop literacy in their home languagefirst, and supported in this endeavour. The authors recommend better informedphilosophy and more carefully considered policy that promotes maintenance of homelanguages and supports literacy acquisition in home languages so children, families,communities and nation can reap the educational, cognitive, social and affective benefitsof bilingual upbringing.

Stavans paper, Enabling bi-literacy patterns in Ethiopian immigrant families inIsrael: A socio-educational challenge, focuses on a community that migrated to Israel inthe 1990s, has a low socio-economic status, limited schooling and non-Western oral orliterate cultural traditions. The academic achievement of youths in this community lagsbehind that of their Israeli peers, but the school system has done little to bridge this gap.This paper focuses on pre-literate Ethiopian children and the socialization practicesemployed by their families before children start the formal schooling process. The authorexplores parental attitudes towards both the home language and the target language,parents understandings of the role they play in their childrens education, and pre-literacypractices in which parents engage with their children, which may facilitate or hinder thetransition from home to school. Data were collected from 67 dyads consisting ofEthiopian Amharic-speaking parents and 37+ years old children, and included aquestionnaire on language attitudes and use, and extended discourse tasks, which wererecorded.

The results provided evidence of wide-ranging discrepancies between the practicesthese parents engaged in, and their attitudes to formal schooling vis--vis mainstreamIsraeli parental practices. On parents roles in education, the questionnaire data revealedthat in general Ethiopian immigrant parents engage in their childrens educational andsocial life until the child reaches first grade. But once schooling begins, Ethiopian parents unlike Israeli parents disengage from the childs education, usually relinquishingmaintenance of the first language, culture and traditions. To investigate preparationactivities for later literacy development, parents were asked to perform various extendeddiscourse tasks. The data showed that Ethiopian parents prefer oral to written discourse asthe anchor for their literacy-driven parentchild interaction, and resort to descriptions andfolk narratives coinciding with expected vocabulary use and the cannons of narrativesyntax in their native language and culture. These practices may hinder the transitionbetween informal home education and formal schooling and partly explain the gaps inability between these children and their Israeli classmates. The paper recommendation


that the institutionalized language education policy be made more culturally andlinguistically inclusive to ease the transition between the two literacy traditions.

Weths paper, Orthographic competence among multilingual school children: WritingMoroccan Arabic in France, discusses a study of literacy acquisition in a multilingualsociety by exploring the written production of 10 young multilingual children of MAbackground growing up in France. The participants were exposed to French literacypractices at school, and to Standard Arabic (SA) classes delivered twice a week duringclass time. However, SA is neither spoken nor written in the home, and instead isavailable in the form of Koranic calligraphy, or cadres that emphasize the sacred statusof texts from the Koran. Unlike the situation of migrant children in countries where noinstitutional support for their minority languages is available, these children also attendedoptional MA classes as extra-curricular activities financed by the Moroccan Government.Since MA is not generally used for written purposes, the extra-curricular tuition childrenreceived did not focus on literacy development.

This study investigated whether children would use their knowledge of the writingsystems they have already been exposed to in order to produce an orthographicrepresentation of their home language, and, if so, whether they model their productionon French or SA. Data were collected through a written production task, in whichchildren were asked to write a narrative in both French and MA based on a picture story.This task required that children rely on the knowledge of the writing systems they hadalready acquired to create a writing system for MA, devising phonemegraphemecorrespondences and finding solutions for consistent representation of lexemes andmorphemes. All children used Roman orthography to produce their stories. Systematicanalysis of the childrens written productions provided evidence for a structured systemthat exploited the participants knowledge of their second language (French) orthographicrules to conceive a new writing system in their native language. These children had notused Arabic as a model for their written production. Despite exposure to written Arabic athome and in school tuition, literacy in this language was low for all the participants, andlimited to passive recognition.

Li and Chuks paper, South Asian students needs for Cantonese and written Chinesein Hong Kong: A linguistic study, focuses on postcolonial Hong Kong and on changesin Hong Kongs language policy after the UK returned Hong Kong sovereignty to thePeoples Republic of China in 1997. Hong Kongs language policy is currentlycharacterized by biliteracy and trilingualism. HK residents are expected to be able toread and write Chinese and English and to speak Cantonese, English and Mandarin(Putonghua). The authors investigate the linguistic challenges facing school students fromSouth Asian families in Hong Kong as they learn standard written Chinese. This is adifficult learning task for these students given that the logographic, non-alphabetic scriptis based not on Cantonese but on Mandarin, the mainstream education system lacksacademic support for students of diverse linguistic backgrounds, there are culturalinconsistencies between the Confucian ethics embedded in the curriculum and the cultureand religious values of South Asian families, and the low levels of Chinese literacy in theSouth Asian migrant communities make parents unable to help their children. Underthese circumstances, few South Asian students succeed in the mainstream school system,but segregation in designated schools fails to create a language-rich environment thatfacilitates these students ability to learn Chinese. The dropout and school failure rates arealarmingly high and few manage to develop a level of Chinese literacy that will allowthem access to education and career opportunities and enable their social mobility.


To investigate learners perspectives on the factors that enhance or hinder theiracquisition of Mandarin-based written Chinese and Cantonese in Hong Kong, Li andChuk conducted focus group interviews with 15 South Asian students studying towards aBachelor of Education in English Language. These students were atypical in that theybelonged to the 1% of South Asians admitted into an undergraduate programme ingovernment-funded university-level institutions. The data revealed that despite theiracademic achievements, these students generally experienced great levels of difficultydeveloping Chinese literacy. Although most of them were proficient in two or morelanguages, they were unable to use their bi/multilingual repertoire as a resource, as thedifference in writing systems did not allow for the transfer of skills. The only exceptionswere the students who had been enculturated into the HK education system since earlychildhood. The authors offer explanations for their findings and conclude with specificrecommendations for policy change.

Boon and Kurvers paper, Adult literacy education in Timor-Leste: Multi-layeredmultilingualism, focuses on language policy-in-education in a young multilingual nationwith a high level of illiteracy. Having emerged in 2002 from a long colonial past, first as aPortuguese colony (17691975) and then as a territory forcibly incorporated intoIndonesia (19761999), Timor-Leste has engaged actively in the process of nationbuilding. This paper turns to literacy acquisition in that process. While previous researchin this field is mostly concerned with child literacy acquisition, this paper explores adultliteracy development in multilingual classes, where both teachers and learners speak threelanguages on average and both teachers and learners have to operate in Tetum, the officiallanguage, which is not necessarily their first language.

This paper (1) compares the ideals of language policy vs. teaching and learningpractice in adult literacy classes; (2) investigates teachers and learners proficiency invarious languages, and their use of these in everyday life and classroom interactions; and(3) investigates the impact of language proficiency on the development of literacy in adultlearners. Interviews and classroom observations revealed extensive use of regionallanguages for adult literacy classes, and that proficiency in Tetum was not necessarily anadvantage for the acquisition of literacy in Tetum. This is attributed to use of regionallanguages in the adult literacy classes. The findings of this study suggest that resourcesmay be developed in these languages for teaching literacy especially since both teachersand learners are proficient in regional languages. If indeed using regional languages inadult literacy classes facilitates the acquisition of literacy in Tetum as L2, this studyprovides further evidence (and supports findings of much recent research) that literacy inL1 facilitates literacy in L2.

Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes1. See, for instance, the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (1989) (International Labour

Organisation, 19962014), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations HumanRights, 1989) and the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All MigrantWorkers and Members of their Families (United Nations Human Rights, 1990).

2. The idea of the monolingual monocultural state was a myth even at the time of theconsolidation of the modern nation state. As Hobsbawm (1996, p. 1066) noted, this imaginedcommunity would have surprised the founders of the original nation states. For them, theunity of the nation was political and not socio-anthropological.

3. See Liddicoat and Curnow (2014) for additional examples.


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Background to this issueNormative societal monolingualismThe monolingual mindset/normative individual monolingualismWhy this special issue?Organization and overview of this issueDisclosure statementNotesReferences

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Multilingualism and Literacy