Karen Lynn G.

Macawile ENG 604 October 3, 2017

Bridging People through Languages: An Insight on Multilingualism

Multilingualism, a word that is often encountered in the millennial world, is viewed

as what the environment, as structured determinations and interactional emergence,
enables and disables and not what individuals have and don’t have (Blommaert, Collins
& Slembrouck, 2005). Aronin and Singleton (2008), on the other hand, states that
multilingualism is not merely the acquisition of two or more languages but also an integral
part to the construction of the contemporary globalized reality. These views go beyond
the definition of multilingualism which could be a very interesting subject of argument and
study. As a student, teacher and researcher, one must be involved in the latest issues
and trends of the globalized world, and one of those is multilingualism—thus attending to
conferences, seminars and symposiums is essential in expanding the horizons of our
knowledge and skills in the field.

A lecture last September 19 at DLSU- Bro. Andrew Gonzales 1403 helped me

understand more the concepts and relevance of multilingualism in my field. Dr. Loy Lising,
a proud alumna of De La Salle University-Manila who is now a teacher and researcher at
Macquarie University, Australia, presented her paper entitled “Multilingualism Research:
From Attitudes to Practices”. Generally, the research targets to determine the role that
multilingualism plays in the society, particularly across the specific intersections. It also
aims to tackle the language attitudes and practices and how they are related to each other
in multilingual societies. Dr. Loy used ethnographic methodological approach in which
she considered the social construct, context, access to unfolding stories and the active
participants of the study. She emphasized that doing ethnographic studies “allows us to
tell a story which illuminates social processes and generates explanation for why people
do and think the things they do” (Heller, 2009). Her data collection strategies are
variations of questionnaire, interview, observation, audio-video recording, field notes and
document analysis. She also discussed what are the classifications of beliefs about
multilingualism practices. First is the ontological belief or what is the nature of reality
followed by epistemological belief which talks about how we understand the idea or the
reality of it.

On a larger study, she presented the “Multilingual Perspectives on communicating

in English: same language different meanings” which was conducted in the Philippine
setting. It is shown in her study that most participants speak Filipino and English followed
by Spanish, Mandarin, Ilokano, Bikolano and Kapampangan. The third highest group of
multilinguals speak Hiligaynon, Ybanag and French and the last specified group speaks
Cebuano, Waray, Ilonggo and Hangul. She speculated that Filipinos started to learn
Hangul or Korean language during the phenomenon of Korean dramas in the Philippines
which could be an area for future studies in sociolinguistics. The two most important
languages are said to be Filipino and English. Filipino is our national language or our
mother tongue and is the most used language in the country. English, on the other hand,
is used for academic purposes, globalization, competitiveness and as a second language.

The social domains that are further investigated are education, family, friendship,
transaction, social medias and media, and national identity. It was found out that Filipino
or English is used when students are communicating with teachers while Filipino or
Codeswitching is used when students are speaking with their classmates. In the family,
Filipino or the mother tongue is the preferred language. Filipino or codeswitching is the
language that Filipinos use when talking to their friends. During transactions, Filipino or
English is used. Participants on social medias like blogs, Instagram, emails and movies
or tv shows use English or codeswitching. In Facebook posts, status and comment
sections, Filipino or codeswitching is used. The language for national identity is said to
be Filipino or Tagalog which represents unity, uniqueness and cultural identity.
Codeswitching was also discussed during the talk. She stated that codeswitching is used
for cultural or borrowed words, function words and as discourse markers.

To sum up the data, it is the personal, social and institutional motivations that
underpin language choice. The findings include that the students’ use of languages in
their repertoire is reflection of ‘flourishing functional multilingualism’ (Coetzee-Van-Rooy,
2012) and the students’ reported language use does not always match actual practice.
 The significance of the research to the discipline are to contemplate that 1)
research on multilingual practices needs to consider both self-report and data from actual
language, 2) individual approach does not capture complexity and 3) research needs to
include fine-grained data allow understanding of languages in multilingual habitat. To
language teaching and policy, it is important that we determine revitalized pedagogical
approach that seeks to understand the complexity of multilingualism. It was also given
emphasis that CMC employs ‘interactive written discourse’. Current national policies give
privilege to English language mainly because of its power to the economic capital.

The research of Dr. Loy Lising on multilingualism, in connection to our subject,

ENG 604, can be a turning point of the re-evaluation of some parts of the K to 12
Curriculum and a starting point for the discovery of new knowledge and phenomenon.
Particularly this can help experts in improving the implementation of Mother-Tongue
Based and Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE). As what Blommaert, Collins & Slembrouck
(2005) believe, it is not the languages that people have or don’t have, rather it is what the
environment and the interaction demands. This research can be of immense help in
increasing awareness of the needs in language. If needs of the language in education are
distinguished, it will enable us to reflect on which languages are effective in the
transmission and acquisition of learning. It is also a good point to determine how students
communicate in the social context to be able to understand their nature and the
environment they are dealing with. This will help us create, modify, prepare and
implement a curriculum that will best cater the needs of our students with different cultural
backgrounds and languages.

Multilingualism should bridge people and not just fill the gap among languages.
The idea of multilingualism may be simple but its complexities is a challenge that we
should take part in. It is never easy to tolerate differences without deeper understanding
of cultures but using multi ‘languages’, we can begin and take a step in understanding
each other’s culture. Through multilingualism, we should be ‘abled’ and not ‘disabled’ in
the construction of our globalized and contemporary world.