Multilingualism in Educational Contexts: Ideologies and Identities

There is a growing body of research that addresses the sociolinguistics of multilingual classrooms. Three themes within the research can be identified. The first is classroom discourse strategies; these studies address the interactional functions of language choice. Another theme is how power relations in the larger society influence language use in the school and classroom. The third theme in this body of research is the construction of social identity by students in bilingual settings. These three intertwining areas of research are a reflection of the themes of interest in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology in general: language ideologies, social identities, and the mapping of linguistic forms on to interactional functions. Educational implications of these studies include challenging perspectives on multilingualism as exceptional and creating policies that encourage multilingual practices.