Magister Educationis - MEd / Rwanda has taken a strong move towards language-in-education policy shift whereby English became the sole medium of instruction in 2008, despite her rich linguistic diversity. The language shift occurred at the time when the country had resolutely embraced Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) as one of the country’s key development plans for socioeconomic development. In spite of these changes, research on multilingualism and digital identity in Rwanda is very limited. Given the pressing need for Rwanda to play an increasing role in the global economy, it is important to explore the ways in which the new generation negotiates multilingual digital identities in second language learning. The aim of this study, therefore, was to investigate the ways in which secondary school learners used digital technologies to negotiate new identities in two or more languages in order to understand the implications for English second language learning in the multilingual context of postcolonial Rwanda. Specifically, my interest was to examine Grade 11 learners’ current digital practices and the ways in which existing multilingual repertoires were drawn on as resources in navigating digital literacies. I also aimed at understanding how such practices could be harnessed as resources for English second language learning in the classroom. This study is informed by post-structural theories of identities as well as of Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, field and capital. The post-structural frame of analysis underlying issues of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) has also been important to establish a bridge between the learners’ digital practices and their English learning processes. It draws on debates around digital literacies, multilingualism, and identity, theories of access to ICTs and digital technologies and English as Additional Language Acquisition. The research sites were two urban based high schools mainly selected for their proximity to digital technologies, namely cyber cafes and/or computer laboratories and by their representativity in terms of gender and subject choices. Drawing on the qualitative research tradition and informed by ethnographic methodology, the study investigated Grade 11 learners’ insider views of the affordances of digital technologies for language learning. To reach this end, non-participant observations, focus group discussions and a questionnaire were used. Issues of research ethics namely, informed consent, anonymity and confidentiality were adhered to throughout the research process. With regard to access to technologies, the research findings reflect Bourdieu’ post-structural theory notion of ‘habitus’ as they show that the social dimensions the learners were involved in influenced their engagement with several digital technologies. In relation to Warschauer’s model of access, this study was able to identify the following: (1) material access’ linked to the learner’s access to the internet connection; (2) skills access’ concerning the learner’s ability to interact with computers and communicate with peers or fellow friends by typewriting and (3) usage access’ associated with the learner’s opportunity to use ICT facilities. The findings also generated insights into the learners’ construction of multiple digital identities and the fluidity and hybridity of ‘youth digital literacies’. The learners created a form of global digital identity by simply interacting or engaging with various multimodal literacies. Findings also indicated that learners negotiated digital identities by immersing themselves in Social Networking Sites (SNS) that fall under ‘Web 2.0’, an online platform which online users make use of to interact, share and perform different activities, focusing chiefly on social media. It was observed further that learners constructed a national language identity in the digital world by visiting mostly popular sites whose medium of communication was the national vernacular “Kinyarwanda”, thus stimulating the sense of national language identity of ‘ Rwandaness’. Additionally, it was apparent that Grade 11 learners had a great sense of attachment to their language as a significant characteristic of their digital practices through ‘translanguaging’ which became one of the resources in the digital space. The findings also indicate that technology served as a bridge between learners’ digital practices and their learning of English as an additional language, although language power relations were apparent as English was conferred a status of symbolic capital. The study concludes that various forms of access to ICTs do not only inform and strengthen Grade 11 learners’ process of learning English as additional language, but also support the construction of their multiple identities. There is a need to capitalize on face-to-face interaction and integrate ICT in teaching and learning so that learners can create their own learning space whereby they construct their digital identities as adolescents in the different languages they get exposure to.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This thesis traces the trajectories of a group of young Cameroonian learners as they engage in new social and educational spaces in two South African primary schools. Designed as a Linguistic Ethnography and using data from observations, interviews and more than 50 hours of recorded interaction, it illustrates the ways in which these learners position themselves and are differentially positioned within evolving discourses of inclusion and exclusion. As a current study in a multilingual African context, it joins a growing body of literature in Europe which points to the ways in which young people’s language choices and practices are socially and politically embedded in their histories of migration and implicated in relations of power, social difference and social inequality. The study is a Linguistic Ethnography of young school learners’ language experience, which falls outside the scope of much mainstream research. It is one of very few studies to focus on migrant children in contexts of the South where multilingualism is the reality yet where language-in-education policies tend to follow monoglossic norms. The focus is on how a group of 10-16 year old Cameroonian children use their multilingual repertoires to construct and negotiate identities both inside and outside the classroom. It also investigates in more detail the acts of identity of two individuals entering the same school with different linguistic profiles, who are positioned in differentiated ways in relation to transnational and local flows and interconnections. The context is a low socio-economic suburb of Cape Town, South Africa, where Cameroonian practices of language, class, and ethnicity become entangled with local economies of meaning. The study also contributes to an emerging body of qualitative research that seeks to develop greater understanding of the relationships between language learners, their socio-cultural worlds and processes of identity construction (Cummins, 1996; Gee, 2001; Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998). ; Rampton, 1995, 2006). Recent international and South African studies tend to focus on secondary school learners, showing how they are struggling to negotiate the currents of a complex society (Adebanji, 2010; Sayed, 2002; Sookrajh, Gopal & Maharaj, 2005), although there is a recent and rapidly growing body of Scandinavian research on primary school children (for example, Cekaite & Evaldsson, 2008; Madsen, 2008; Møller, 2009; Møller, Holmen & Jørgensen, 2012). In contrast, the children in this study are negotiating the transition between childhood and adolescence, faced with issues of race, linguistic competence and discrimination at a time when moving from one age group to the next should have been relatively unproblematic. They are thus entangled in different levels of transition: emotional, physical and spatial. These issues of transition and negotiation will be highlighted through the lens of positioning. The concepts of ‘position’ and ‘positioning’ (Davis & Harré, 1990) appear to have origins in marketing, where position refers to the communication strategies that allow certain products to be placed in a market among their competitors (Tirado & Gálvez, 2007, p. 20). Holloway (1984) first used the concept of positioning in the social sciences to analyse the construction of subjectivity in the area of heterosexual relationships (Tirado & Gálvez, 2007). Positioning here was explained as relational processes that constitute interaction with other individuals. The present study focuses on how ‘interactants’ position themselves vis-à-vis their words and texts, their audiences and the contexts they both "respond to and construct linguistically" (Jaffe, 2009, p.3). As they make use of lexical and grammatical tools available to them in interaction, it becomes apparent that the process of identity construction through positioning does not "reside within the individual but in intersubjective relations of sameness and difference, […] power and disempowerment" (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005, p. 607). Thus to interpret multilingual children’s positioning requires a recursive process, using a double perspective: it means looking at the day-to-day moments of interactional and other practices, and also the wider political discourses in which these practices may be embedded and historically rooted (Maguire, 2005) and which they index in different ways. These day-to-day moments of practice thus involve different “acts of identity” (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985) which can also be described as acts of stance-taking (Jaffe, 2009). A stance may index multiple selves and social identities. However, not all stances are open to everyone: those whose who have their social, cultural or linguistic capital (Bourdieu, 1991, 1997) recognized in a particular space will be able to position themselves more strongly there than those who do not. Moreover, stances are not successful unless 'taken up' by interactants (Jaffe, 2009): this uptake may take the form of interlocutors’ stances of alignment, realignment, or misalignment (C. Goodwin, 2007; Matoesian, 2005). Uptake in multilingual contexts is influenced by the prevailing "linguistic market" (Bourdieu, 1991, pp.55-67): day to-day acts of positioning take place in inequitable markets. These ‘markets’ are fertile grounds for social stratification where speech acts and the languages in which they are realized are assigned different symbolic values (Bourdieu, 1991, 1997). Mastery of the 'legitimate' language or languages is then often a pre-condition for claiming symbolic and material resources. New institutional spaces in South Africa become interesting here, because they are characterized by new formations of class, changes in gender roles and relations and other instances of macro-structural shifts. In such spaces, linguistic hierarchies and patterns of distribution of linguistic resources are rapidly changing (Kerfoot & Bello-Nonjengele, 2014). The school as a key institution in the distribution of social, cultural and linguistic capital is thus an important site for exploring the role of language and multilingualism in social and educational change. This thesis sets out to answer the following research questions: a) How do immigrant learners use their linguistic repertoires to construct, negotiate or contest identities in new school spaces? b) How do different spaces enable or constrain the new identities negotiated? c) What are the implications for language learning policy and practice? Data collection took place over two years between February 2010 and June 2013, and followed participants from grades 5 to 7 in the English medium and Afrikaans language classrooms. Participants were 10-16 year old Cameroonian children in two Cape Town schools, ten in each. The study contains nine chapters, with chapter 1 providing an overview of the background, rationale, and conceptual and methodological framework. Chapter 2 traces the shift towards the social in language studies, considering frameworks for understanding the differential values placed on linguistic resources as actors move across social spaces, both local and transnational. Here interaction is viewed as a crucial site for identity construction, generating a social stage through which reality is constructed, shared, and made meaningful. Chapter 3 reviews studies of interactional positioning amongst multilingual learners in social and educational contexts in South Africa and more globally. Chapter 4 focuses on the methodology used in the study, discussing the research design based on Linguistic Ethnography, a qualitative approach which is based on the two broad planks of ethnography and Interactional Sociolinguistics (IS) and which enables an analytical framework combining Conversation Analysis (CA), Discourse Analysis (DA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Together, these analytical tools enable a multifaceted illumination of the construction of identity in discourse. The various tools used in data collection are discussed in depth followed by comment on reflexivity, challenges in the field and limitations of the study. Chapter 5 delineates the researcher’s trajectory in the field. This comprises profiles of the study schools (including the schools’ socio-economic, ethnic and linguistic make-up in relation to teachers and learners), perspectives on why the schools were chosen, the differing receptions to a research presence there, and some reflections on the researcher’s identity construction. The chapter further explores different techniques of data collection within this context: field notes and thick description, interviews, and audio recordings of interactions in and out of schools. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 present and analyse findings from classroom observation and interview data, together with audio-recordings of a group of Cameroonian learners interacting with each other and with children of other nationalities in classrooms, community and home spaces. These chapters aim to illustrate how these learners used linguistic resources to position themselves and others, to build, maintain and negotiate identities, and to assert or negate identifications. Chapters 7 and 8 build on the analysis presented in chapter 6 by focusing respectively on two key emergent themes: owning participatory spaces and defying positioning in multilingual spaces. Chapter 7 centres on the interactional and other means by which a 12 year old Anglophone learner, James, navigated his way increasingly successfully through new social and educational spaces, expanding his linguistic repertoire. Chapter 8 focuses on a 12 year old Francophone learner, Aline, and the ways in which she tried to convert her linguistic capital on new linguistic markets. Her efforts were more often than not met with negative evaluation, leading to a loss of both social and academic identities. The analysis of data thus serves as a rich point of entry for understanding the connections between linguistic repertoires, relations between ethnic groups, youth culture, and the experience of social change. Through their discursive production of selves, these adolescent learners supposed to be negotiating only the normal transition from one age group to the next) are here negotiating the currents of a complex society and dealing with issues of race, language and segregation. Findings suggest that participants had multiple identity options that were negotiated through different practices, from food choices to language and interactional norms. These different identity options were however constrained by existing norms and linguistic hierarchies in each space, allowing some to accommodate new linguistic practices and ways of doing things, while others experienced more ambivalent and contradictory processes of adaptation. In informal settings there was evidence of a third space characterized by a mélange of languages in which both formal and informal versions of English and French, along with Cameroonian Pidgin English (CPE) and other Cameroonian languages, were used. However, even in these settings there was a gradual shift to English, indicating the penetration of macrosocial and institutional discourses into private spaces. The thesis concludes with a set of recommendations for caregivers, teachers and policymakers seeking to create schools more welcoming of diversity. It is hoped, then, that this study will help families and schools to realize the variety of ways in which linguistic repertoires influence school success, both social and educational, and to find ways of using these repertoires for development and learning. In this way, they might contribute to immigrant youngsters’ ability to construct strong identities as learners and valued social beings.

Magister Educationis - MEd / In South Africa, there has been little research into the language practices of multilingual students in tertiary institutions or into how such students negotiate identities in these globalising contexts where the dominance of English remains an important factor. This research was aimed at exploring the appropriateness of 1997 Language-In-Education policy for schools and the national Language Policy for Higher Education (2002) for equipping students for tertiary teaching and learning. It therefore investigated the relationship between the language practices and construction of identities of a group of multilingual first year students in the Education Faculty at a Western Cape university. In this integrated institution, in spite of the current political and socio-economic transformation that has been at the centre of new policies, the medium of instruction is still predominantly monolingual. The premise of the research was that in a multilingual country such as South Africa with 11 official languages, tertiary institutions ought to more vigorously engage with their current language policies in order to value and extend the language practices of multilingual students for academic learning. Here multilingual repertoires are understood as resources rather than problems. The research draws extensively on Bourdieu's notion of 'linguistic capital' quantifying language itself as a form of capital with a market value. Through thematic analysis of themes drawn from questionnaires, interviews, focus group discussions, and participant observation in both tutorials and lectures, the investigation concluded that a monolingual medium of instruction to non-native speakers should be practised alongside other languages as means to support in their academic attainment. Finally the research emphasised the importance of code switching as a strategy that facilitates learning and promotes understanding of the role language resources play in social and academic interaction.

The presence of Allophone students in French-language secondary schools in Ottawa is gradually increasing. While the politique d’aménagement linguistique (PAL) insists on the use of French within the school, one may begin to wonder which language Allophone students are speaking. French? English? Their native language(s)? This qualitative case study of four multilingual Allophone students explores their language repertoire use in relation to their desired linguistic representation, their linguistic proficiency in French, English, and their native language(s), and their perceptions of language prestige. The results indicate that students spoke a significant amount of English, some French (particularly with their teacher or Francophone classmates), and minimal amounts of their native language. Recommendations are suggested to increase the effectiveness of PAL within a Francophone minority context and to ensure that the policy’s objects are attained.

Due to an increasing number of students in the Swedish schools who has another first language than Swedish, multilingualism is now a feature all teachers must consider – and language teachers in particular. While multilingualism previously was believed to cause intellectual disabilities, more current research has showed the benefits of being proficient in several languages. Pedagogical strategies such as translanguaging, in which a students’ entire linguistic repertoire is recognized, has been developed, and studies have shown that this has increased students’ metalinguistic awareness. Despite this, a policy analysis of steering documents shows that other languages possibly could be interpreted as a problem in English education. By conducting interviews with English teachers I have identified positive as well as challenging aspects of using students’ first languages in English education in a multilingual classroom. This has concluded in a number of suggestions to policy makers, educators and researchers, in order to better make use of the positive aspects of multilingualism and solve some of the challenges.

The aim of this study is to examine the work carried out at Swedish upper-secondary special schools for pupils with learning disabilities in the subject area of language and communication, with particular focus on augmentative and alternative communication and multilingualism. The learning process is approached from a sociocultural perspective in this study, which entails that learning is taken to occur in social contexts in which interaction, communication, and co-operation play key roles. The method takes the form of semi-structured qualitative interviews inspired by a phenomenographical approach in the hope of highlighting five areas communication, possibilities, obstacles, AAC and competence development, that special education teachers and special educators are faced with in their work with students with language and communication impairments. The results show that special education teachers and special educators demonstrate a high capacity to see both possibilities and obstacles in the teaching process, together with an understanding for the students’ differing functional impairments and needs. The challenges facing special education teachers and special educators when dealing with multilingual student groups give an indication of the difficulties attached to determining remedies capable of leading to students’ increased participation and comprehension of the subject area. The two alternatives offered by Swedish special schools are individual native language instruction (in which the student is separated from the class) and support within the classroom in the form of a personal assistant with knowledge of the native language. The study demonstrates that the latter is preferable as means for a student to progress in their learning. The result also indicates that special education teachers and special educators have great understanding for the importance of using AAC in instructing materials but at the same time there are many things to be done about translating AAC material in order to increase educational participation for multilingual students. Results also indicates that peer learning within the profession is desirable. / Denna studie har till sitt syfte att belysa arbetet på gymnasiesärskolans individuella program inom ämnesområdet språk och kommunikation, och med fokus på AKK och flerspråkighet. Studien lyfter fram lärandet ur ett sociokulturellt perspektiv där lärande ses som handlingar i ett socialt sammanhang, och där interaktion, kommunikation och samarbete är viktiga för att nå ett lärande. Studien är en semistrukturerad kvalitativ intervjustudie och har inspirerats av en fenomenografisk ansats där jag försökt få kunskap och information kring hur verksamma speciallärare och specialpedagoger upplever arbetet med elever i kommunikativa svårigheter med behov av AKK- stöd och som har en flerspråkighet. Jag valde att redovisa resultatet utifrån fem olika teman kommunikation, möjligheter, hinder, AKK och kompetensutveckling. Resultatet visar att det finns en hög kompetens i att se både möjligheter och hinder i undervisningen, samt en förståelse för elevers olika funktionsvariationer och behov samt att öka delaktigheten för flerspråkiga elever. Möjligheterna och hindren i att möta och bemöta flerspråkigheten hos elevgruppen visar på svårigheterna i att bedöma vilka insatser som leder till både ökad delaktighet men också ökad förståelse och kunskap inom ämnesområden. Modersmålsundervisning och studiehandledning är de två alternativen som erbjuds inom den specifika gymnasiesärskolan. Studiens resultat visar att studiehandledning är att föredra för att öka flerspråkiga elevers delaktighet. Studien visar även på speciallärares och specialpedagogers kunskap kring att använda olika AKK-metoder för att skapa en större delaktighet hos elever med kommunikativa svårigheter och flerspråkighet men även på bristande översatta material att använda i undervisningssyfte för att öka delaktigheten för flerspråkiga elever. I resultatet kring kompetensutveckling ses kollegialt lärande som en möjlig kompetenshöjande funktion men respondenterna anser att det rent organisationsmässigt inte skapas utrymme för det kollegiala lärandet.

I dagens samhälle finns flerspråkighet överallt och i de allra flesta svenska klassrum finns flera elever som inte har svenska som modersmål. Andraspråkselever är en heterogen grupp som precis som elever med svenska som förstaspråk ska ges möjligheter att nå skolframgång oavsett tidigare kunskaper eller individuella förutsättningar. Det medför att allt högre krav ställs på lärare som behöver utforma och anpassa undervisningen för att tillgodose alla elevers skilda behov. Syftet med denna kunskapsöversikt är att undersöka forskningsområdet inom andraspråkselevers språkutveckling i svenskämnet i grundskolan. Studierna som kom att användas i kunskapsöversikten samlades in genom sökningar i databaserna Primo, DiVA, ERIC och SwePub. Sökorden som användes för att finna refereegranskade artiklar som baserats på studier utförda i svenska skolor var bland annat flerspråkighet och multilingualism. Resultatet visar på flera faktorer som anses kunna vara framgångsrika i undervisningen, bland annat användande av elevers modersmål och att låta elever använda sina förkunskaper och tidigare erfarenheter i klassrummet. Utifrån artiklarna har det också gått att urskilja tydliga mönster för sådant som kan komma att vara hinder för andraspråkselevers språkutveckling, till exempel att lärare förenklar sitt språk och inte utmanar andraspråkselever med tillräckligt kognitivt krävande uppgifter och att andraspråkselever inte möter tillräckligt mycket av det svenska språket utanför skolan.  Andraspråkselever når inte upp till samma resultat som de elever som har svenska som förstaspråk. För att kunna erbjuda andraspråkselever en likvärdig undervisning behöver svenska skolor bli bättre på att anpassa sig till den mångfald som råder i samhället.

This thesis explores the Chinese immigrants’ multilingual competencies, the development of their communication skills in Spain with the languages from different language groups among which the immigrants’ Spanish, English and Chinese skills’ development is the main part of the exploration. The study further examines the relationships between their multilingual development and the influenced factors such as family and school backgrounds, social environment, education, policy, etc. The paper also analyse different ways and processes of acquiring multilingual skills for Chinese immigrants in Spain and presents a number of suggestions for future work on the diversity on immigrant multilingualism. Additionally, the study reflects some effective approaches for second and third language acquisition in multilingual education especially for the languages from different language groups with large distance of structure as well as script. According to the development of the social and linguistic diversity, the multilingualism has to be studied in-depth with a diversity perspective. Generally , the study contributes to a better understanding of the language dynamics that take place in the contact between languages from different family groups in contexts of migration which reveal and enrich the principle of multilingual development on the diversity from immigration perspective which differs from the general multilingual development influenced by a variety of environmental factors and individual reasons. / Esta tesis explora las competencias multilingües de los inmigrantes chinos, el desarrollo de sus habilidades de comunicación en España con los idiomas de diferentes grupos lingüísticos, aunque se centra en el desarrollo de las habilidades comunicativas en español, inglés y chino de los inmigrantes de origen chino. El estudio examina más a fondo las relaciones entre su desarrollo multilingüe y los factores que influyen su desarrollo, como los antecedentes familiares y escolares, el entorno social, la educación, las políticas, etc. A través de este estudio, analizando el desarrollo multilingüe en los idiomas de diferentes familias lingüísticas y los diversos orígenes de los inmigrantes chinos en España, nuestra propuesta distingue diferentes formas y procesos de adquisición de las habilidades multilingües para los inmigrantes chinos en España y presenta una serie de sugerencias para un futuro trabajo sobre la diversidad en el multilingüismo de los inmigrantes chinos. Además, el estudio refleja algunos enfoques efectivos para la adquisición de un segundo y tercer idioma en la educación multilingüe. De acuerdo con el desarrollo de la diversidad social y lingüística, el multilingüismo debe ser estudiado en profundidad con una perspectiva de diversidad. En general, el estudio contribuye a una mejor comprensión de las dinámicas lingüísticas que se producen en el contacto entre lenguas de diferentes grupos familiares en contextos de migración, que revelan y enriquecen el principio de desarrollo plurilingüe sobre la diversidad, desde la perspectiva migratoria, que se diferencia del multilingüismo general cuyo desarrollo es influenciado por una variedad de factores ambientales y razones individuales.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The study set out to investigate siding and translanguaged siding as an under-researched student-to-student communication which happen parallel to teaching. Lemke (1990) defines siding as student-to-student talk while the teacher is teaching, and Antia (2017) defines ‘translanguaged siding’ as student-to-student talk in a language or combination of languages that is different from the LoLT. In this way, siding encapsulates ‘translanguaged siding’.

Neuropsychological assessment in linguistically heterogeneous populations is fraught with numerous challenges, such as lacking or inappropriate normative data or the unavailability of appropriate tests. Accommodating multilingual individuals exacerbates the issue by adding the question of which language(s) to use when assessing multilingual individuals. Different testrelated concepts may be accessible to them via different languages, as their lexicon is spread out over two or more languages. Hence, any monolingual instrument is likely to disadvantage them. The present set of three studies circumvents this question and presents evidence for an inherently multilingual English/Afrikaans/isiXhosa screening tool for intelligence, the Multilingual Vocabulary Test (MVT). I describe the instrument’s development from the pilot study to a psychometric analysis of the final, digitally administered version. For an abbreviated 13-item version, Study 3 (N = 494) shows an internal consistency of  = .59 and Study 2 (N = 101) produced significant criterion-related validity values of r = .46 and r = .52 with the KBIT-2 and Shipley-2 VIQ scores respectively. Linear regression analyses show that, while all criterion measures are biased toward E1-speakers, the MVT is largely immune to test-takers’ linguistic background. Thus, the MVT paves the way toward more fairness in cognitive assessments, in general, and provides a promising first step toward addressing one of South African neuropsychologists’ greatest needs—that of a quick and easy-to-administer, yet linguistically fair screening tool for cognitive impairment.