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International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
Vol. 14, No. 4, July 2011, 383!398
Social inclusion through multilingual ideologies, policies and practices: a
case study of a minority church
Huamei Han*
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Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada
Adopting a materialist and processual approach to language and specifically
multilingualism, this paper explores what language ideologies a minority, noneducational institution embraced and how this facilitated social inclusion through
constructing institutional multilingualism within societal monolingualism. Specifically, I document how a Chinese church in English-dominant Canada
developed institutional multilingualism over time by adopting multiple languages
institutionally, allowing code-switching in various events, and assigning speaking
roles based on identities beyond linguistic performance. Examining the socioeconomic conditions that made multilingual ideologies, policies and practices
commonsense at that church, I discuss the implementational and ideological
spaces that may be opened up, as well as the challenges they presented for
individuals and institutions. In order to further the social inclusion agenda,
I argue for making the materialist and processual view of multilingualism more
accessible and operational to the general public, and particularly to educational
practitioners.
Keywords: multilingualism; social inclusion; language policy; immigrant settlement;
Canada; Chinese immigrants
With increasing numbers of people moving across regional and national borders in
search of better work and life opportunities in the globalized new economy, many
societies and their institutions face the challenges of regulating and serving
unprecedentedly diverse populations, with linguistic diversity an integral and
important dimension. Educational institutions in western democracies generally
tend to see immigrants and their children as being deficient in the dominant language
rather than being multilingual, and see their multilingualism as a liability rather than
a resource (e.g. Marshall 2010; Martin 2010). Consequently, mainstream educational
institutions usually legitimize the dominant language as the medium of instruction
(MoI), while minority languages at best are regarded as only suitable for home and
community life, and at worst their use is discouraged or even prohibited. Not
surprisingly, with a few exceptions (e.g. Smythe and Toohey 2009), there are limited
empirical studies focusing on how minority languages are, or can be, included and
integrated in regular mainstream classrooms, and with what effects. On the other
hand, for centuries immigrants and their children have lived multilingual lives, and
sometimes have carved out alternative spaces that help them to survive and thrive
socioeconomically (e.g. Han 2009a; Moyer 2010). These alternative spaces may have
a lot to offer to mainstream institutions regarding policies, practices and conditions
*Email: huamei_han@sfu.ca
ISSN 1367-0050 print/ISSN 1747-7522 online
# 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13670050.2011.573063
http://www.informaworld.com
Downloaded By: [Han, Huamei] At: 03:35 10 June 2011
384
H. Han
that are conducive to furthering social inclusion and multilingual development,
which may help us to discover and envision creative responses to linguistic diversity.
The aim of this paper is twofold. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Canada,
I first and foremost intend to offer a study of a successful case: a minority church
that successfully included newcomers, mainly recent immigrants, through a set of
institutional language ideologies, policies and practices that this church and the
larger minority religious communities embraced. Secondly, through this successful
case, I hope to articulate a materialist and processual view of multilingualism in a
way that is accessible to educational practitioners and the general public in order to
open up implementational and ideological spaces for validating and supporting
multilingual practices and identities in localized institutional settings. This twofold
goal is motivated by my desire to explore pedagogical and ideological tools that wellintentioned educational practitioners can use to better serve marginalized individuals
and groups in their immediate contexts to facilitate, instead of hindering, social
inclusion.
Several terms need to be defined before I go any further. First, in this paper,
I distinguish social inclusion from ‘material well-being or employment’, which is
commonly considered as social inclusion in the European context (Piller, forthcoming) but as economic integration in the Canadian context. However, I emphasize
that elsewhere I have argued that social inclusion in institutional practices tends to
lead to economic inclusion and constitutes processes of language learning (Han
2007a, 2009a). Secondly, in discussing social inclusion, I choose to focus on
ideologies, policies and practices that include newcomers as potentially full members
in social institutions within nation-states, such as families, schools, workplaces,
community centers, religious institutions or the media. The major reason for
focusing on institutions is that today most nation-states practice societal monolingualism by enforcing or recognizing one language as socioeconomically and/or
politically dominant (Edwards 1994; Garcı́a 2009). At the same time, interactional
orders reflect and constitute institutional and social orders (Heller and Martin-Jones
2001). In this context, localized institutional language ideologies, policies and
practices comprise an important dimension and process that mediates social
inclusion or exclusion in these institutions and which constitute the process of
reproducing or contesting the existing social order.
Finally, I emphasize that in the Canadian context, immigrants as a bureaucratic
category is transitional as it refers to those who arrive under certain immigration
selection categories and are entitled to apply for citizenship after three years of
consecutive residence. However, the folk version of the term refers to individuals and
groups who are minoritized on the basis of race, class, occupation, English
proficiency, religion, among other factors, and thus overrides immigration category
and citizenship status and can extend for generations (Li 2003). In this paper, I use
immigrants in its folk version to highlight its connotations of minoritization.
In the following pages, I will first introduce a materialist and processual view of
multilingualism by defining what I mean by multilingual and multilingualism, and
identify three dimensions of language policies and practices that mediate social
inclusion/exclusion in institutional settings. After a brief introduction to research
methodology and the research site, I will devote three subsequent sections to analyze
institutional language ideologies, policies and practices at one specific church and the
larger minority religious communities. I will conclude with a discussion of the
implications of this positive case for understanding and facilitating social inclusion.
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
385
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A materialist and processual view of multilingualism
In this paper, I use multilingual to refer to ‘the ability to speak, at some level, more
than one language’ (Edwards 1994, 33), which recognizes that all multilingual
individuals have varying degrees of ‘linguistic balance, dominance, and fluency’ (ibid:
3) in their linguistic repertoires because of differential conditions of and access to
learning multiple languages. I see multilingualism as a cluster of ideologies that
recognizes and validates multilingual individuals with diverse forms, degrees and
compositions of proficiency in their linguistic repertoires, and further supports them
to maintain and develop their competencies as they need and/or desire. Following
Heller (2007), I call this a materialist and processual view of multilingualism to
recognize its origin in poststructuralist theories of language, particularly that a
rigorous science of language must take into account the socioeconomic conditions of
linguistic production and circulation, and their symbolic and material effects of
producing and reproducing existing social relations (Bourdieu 1977, 1991).
The materialist and processual view of multilingualism contrasts with the
seemingly commonsense, but in fact highly ideologized, view of the so-called
‘balanced bilingualism’, which is in fact ‘parallel monolingualisms, or in which
each variety must conform to the norms’ of the standard or prestigious variety
(Heller 1999, 271). Rooted in the view that sees languages as bounded, homogeneous
and autonomous linguistic systems (Garcı́a 2009; Heller 2007) and learning as
individual cognition, balanced multilingualism idealizes the practice of speaking
each language ‘perfectly’ and separately, or ‘elite multilingualism’ (Heller 2002) as
the norm, and frames all other forms as deficient. Shaped by linguistic nationalism,
an ideology that views one nation as one people speaking one language, schools
often adopt policies and practices underpinned by (parallel) monolingualism which
effectively devalue, regulate or prevent the use of home/community languages and
non-elite forms of multilingual practices (e.g. Brock-Utne and Hopson 2005; Heller
and Martin-Jones 2001).
On the basis of his analysis of the legitimization of standard language, Bourdieu
(1977, 646) proposes ‘a threefold displacement’ of traditional/structural linguistic
concepts: replacing the standard language with the legitimate language that gets
recognition based on the socioeconomic power of its speakers; replacing the meaning
of speech with the value and power of speech that are at the heart of the audience’s
reception; and replacing linguistic competence with symbolic capital that the speaker
can command to impose reception. This threefold displacement provides important
concepts to describe and explore various dimensions of institutional multilingualism
that mediate social inclusion. Indeed, in analyzing language ideologies, policies and
practices in and beyond classrooms in various contexts, three dimensions have been
found to be important: (1) choice of institutional language(s), (2) regulation of
codeswitching, and (3) choice of speakers.
Scholars of language education have paid much attention to various kinds of
classrooms around the world, and noted that monolingualism is prevalent in both
language and content classes (Garcı́a 2009; Martin-Jones 2007), and in mainstream
as well as minority schools. First, in terms of language choice, for a long time
‘English only’, or target-language only, was often assumed to be the ideal policy in
(English) language classes, and today the role of students’ first language in language
classes in general and in English classes in particular remains an ongoing matter of
debate (e.g. Turnbull and Arnette 2002). Second, while codeswitching is a common
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386
H. Han
practice that multilinguals engage in, intuitively and sometimes deliberately, to serve
cognitive and affective functions, it remains being ‘generally disapproved of, if not
explicitly prohibited, by many educational authorities’ (Ferguson 2009, 237).
Teachers and administrators often discourage and regulate students’ codeswitching
in both dominant- and minority-language medium schools and classes (e.g. Heller
1999). Third, with language policies and practices underpinned by (parallel)
monolingualism, teachers often control the interactional orders in the classroom
by distributing turns, controlling floors and sanctioning unacceptable linguistic
performances (Heller and Martin-Jones 2001). Consequently, we see how ethnolinguistic minorities are silenced and marginalized in English-medium classrooms in
North America (e.g. Toohey 2000; Sharkey and Layzer 2000).
Since the 1980s, language education and literacy researchers have strived to link
language and literacy practices in classrooms to those in homes and communities
(e.g. Heath 1983; Orellana et al. 2003; Smythe and Toohey 2009). However, while
religious institutions remain important in today’s socioeconomic life in Western
democracies, they remain understudied in the field of multilingual education. From
the few language-focused qualitative studies that emerged in the past few years, we
know that there is great linguistic diversity in minority churches administered and
ministered largely by and for ethnolinguistic minorities. These minority churches
tend to frequently conduct religious services in multiple languages (Muse 2005;
Woods 2004) while some insist on monolingual religious services in sacred or
minority languages (Woods 2004). English services are often introduced to
accommodate the younger generations, which at times split up the church over
time (Ley 2008; Woods 2004).
It is in this context that I documented one English-medium and one MandarinEnglish-medium minority church that socialized Chinese immigrants from different
parts of the world, in which language learning was integral to regular activities the
churches structured and organized (Han 2007a,b, 2009a). Building on my previous
analyses of interpersonal linguistic practices, this paper explores what language
ideologies the Mandarin-English bilingual Chinese church embraces, how they play
out in institutional policies and practices, with what effects for the social inclusion of
immigrants. Before launching into the analysis, a brief introduction to the church
and the project is due.
The Mandarin Chinese church and the context
In April 2004, I first visited the Mandarin Chinese Church (MCC)1 in a suburb in the
Greater Toronto Area (GTA hereafter). MCC and its umbrella association, the
Chinese Evangelical Missions Association (CEMA), have been active participants
and contributors to the larger transnational Chinese evangelical Christian (TCEC)
communities. While there are many interesting aspects to MCC, CEMA and the
TCEC communities at large, here I emphasize three that are important to this paper.
First, MCC was a multilingual church serving a diverse membership. While its
name MCC suggests a monolingual (Mandarin) and homogeneous (Chinese) space,
MCC was neither. It sanctioned two institutional languages by hosting Sunday
worship services in Mandarin and English respectively, with 300!400 attending the
Mandarin services and 70!90 the English services in 2004, and with membership
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International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
387
growing to over 500 in 2005. While almost all attendees at MCC were of Chinese
descent, according to its English website, the small English congregation alone
hosted members ‘from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, Singapore, Malaysia,
Indonesia, India, and even Canada’.2
Second, MCC prioritized evangelism. Chinese churches tend to be evangelical
due to the socio-historical circumstances of missionary work in Asia and Chinese
immigration to Canada, and have been the major force in evangelizing other Chinese
in North America and beyond for over two decades (Han 2007a; Yang 1999). MCC
and other CEMA churches were active participants in world evangelism and regular
activities and programs at MCC were all geared toward evangelism by caring for the
spiritual and earthly needs of both affiliated members and visitors. Like many other
evangelical Chinese churches, MCC divided its members into sub-groups based on
age, residential areas and other factors, and instituted a set of regular activities for
members which included: (1) weekly Sunday School classes to study the Bible at
church with volunteer teachers; (2) weekly recreational activity times at church to
socialize with other members; (3) weekly cell groups for a dozen or so members to
study the Bible and worship at members’ homes; (4) monthly Fellowship gatherings
at church for members of several cell groups to worship together; (5) seasonal
outings, retreats and other socializing events; and (6) regular large-scale evangelistic
conferences and conventions in the larger TCEC communities in North America
(Han 2007a, 2009a).
Third, MCC had a transparent and volunteer-run institutional structure. Each
year, through elaborated preparation and a transparent process, at the General
Membership Meeting MCC members passed budgets, and elected members of the
Mandarin and English governing board which would oversee important administrative matters, including hiring pastors and drafting and managing annual budgets.
In addition to a few paid pastors and staff members, the regular operations of MCC
relied mainly on member volunteers. In this institutional structure and culture, being
a good Christian is generally seen as a matter of the heart, and serving God seemed
to be an essential dimension. Serving God could take any form, ranging from
praying and studying the Bible privately, worshipping and fellowshipping with other
believers, offering, evangelizing, and volunteering at church in various capacities, to
full-time ministry. As a matter of fact, those who were elected to the English and
Mandarin governing board at MCC were often the ones who took on major roles
volunteering at the church regularly.
The study
Data for this paper mainly included ethnographic observations at MCC and of
evangelistic events organized by various TCEC communities based in the GTA
between 2004 and 2006, on approximately monthly basis. Hard copies of various
texts and audiovisual materials produced for and made available at these events were
collected, complemented by periodic checks of the Chinese and English website
maintained by MCC which were updated weekly during my fieldwork, with back
issues archived. However, my interpretation of these data is also informed by
ethnographic projects involving several Chinese churches in Western and Eastern
Canada from 2002 to 2006 (Han 2007a) and from 2007 to 2009 (Han 2009b).
388
H. Han
Institutional multilingualism: a pragmatic and integrated approach
At MCC and in the larger TCEC communities in Canada today, serving diverse
populations and sanctioning two or more institutional languages is an accepted
reality. For instance, information on the designated, required or preferred linguistic
media is an integral feature of newspaper advertisements, fliers, online postings and
other promotional materials whenever large-scale evangelistic events are announced
or pastoral searches are advertised. Pastors and gospel workers routinely acknowledge and encourage their audience to use all their linguistic resources and skills to
learn about the Bible and/or to spread the gospel during various events and
gatherings. For example, at an evangelistic conference sponsored by the TCEC
communities in the GTA, Rev. Dennis Balcombe closed his sermon with the
following remarks:
Balcombe:
[?] /
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......
Balcombe: When you believe in God/ the Holy Spirit enters you/ and you will naturally
grow to like the Bible[?]/ use your own language/ no matter if it is Mandarin, Cantonese
or English/ use your own language/ to pray . . . . . . (Transcript, 25 May 2004)
Rev. Balcombe’s remarks above, and the multiple languages used at various
occasions, recognize the multiple languages used in these communities, and see all
media as fitting for conducting Christian practices. In other words, institutional
language policies at MCC and the TCEC communities in Canada indicate that, at
the ideological level, they see all language varieties as equal media for the gospel
message, as equally legitimate languages. How did this happen?
Tracing the historical developments of MCC and CEMA, it becomes clear that
their institutional multilingualism today has been developed over time as a response
to the diverse populations they wanted to serve and attract to their churches.
According to CEMA Monthly and its website, CEMA originated from a monolingual Cantonese-speaking church, ‘planted’ by a Chinese pastor in 1975 sent by a
missionary organization based in Hong Kong. This church ministered to seven
families initially, but had developed into several churches and formed CEMA in
1986. In 2005, CEMA had nine member churches, seven of which were offering
multiple worship service sessions on any Sunday in two or three languages
(Cantonese, English, Mandarin), while the two newest churches offered services in
English only. Similarly, on MCC’s Chinese website, in his profile, Rev. Luke, MCC’s
first Senior Pastor, recalled how MCC began:
...
. . . In January 1991 [I] was commissioned by [the CEMA] Church [where I was the
Associate Pastor] to promote Mandarin gospel work, and started a Mandarin
monolingual worship. Relying on God’s blessing, after five years of diligent sowing,
the Mandarin Ministry grew steadily and established itself as an independent member
church under CEMA in 1996 . . .
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International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
389
According to the MCC English website, MCC started its first English Worship
Service in 2001, and gradually established English Fellowships, English Sunday
School classes and Activity Times for children and youth. In 2003, the English
congregation at MCC started English Sunday School classes, weekly English
Activity Times, and a monthly English Fellowship for adults.
Therefore, both CEMA and MCC started out as monolingual institutions, which
explains how MCC got its name initially. Among the many interesting points in
CEMA and MCC’s history, here I will emphasize three. First, CEMA and MCC
responded to the linguistic characteristics of different waves of Chinese immigrants
that they intended to attract and serve by expanding their institutional linguistic
repertoires. The adoption of Cantonese in the 1970s, the subsequent expansion to
include English and Mandarin in the 1990s at CEMA and MCC responded to
different waves of Chinese immigration to Canada from the late 1960s until now. In
1967, Canada abandoned race-based policies and started to select immigrants based
on their potential contribution to the economy, which brought about the first wave of
Hong Kong immigration to Canada in the early 1970s. Around this time mainstream
churches stopped local outreach (Wang 2006), and indigenous churches in Southeast
Asia responded by sending native missionaries and building ethnic churches (Yang
1999), including the first Cantonese-medium CEMA church in 1975. The start of the
monolingual Mandarin worship group in 1991 followed the June 4th Tiananmen
Square massacre in 1989, after which the Canadian government first granted visa
extensions, and later landed immigrant status, to visiting scholars and international
students from Mainland China (Lo and Wang 1997). The establishment of MCC in
1996 and its subsequent development was on the heel of the Canadian government’s
increase of the quota for skilled immigrants in 1995 when the Chinese government
started issuing passports for personal reasons and allowing its citizens to leave China
on valid immigration visas for the first time since 1949. Therefore, Rev. Luke’s
account of the origin of MCC, and the fact that most of the Cantonese-dominant
CEMA churches today are offering Sunday worship services in Mandarin clearly
indicates their linguistic responsiveness.
Second, MCC and other CEMA churches further adopted a systemic and
integrated approach in institutional policies, to meet its membership’s linguistic
needs and desires. The establishment of English programming for adults at MCC was
a particularly telling example. As MCC’s history indicated, MCC first started
English programming for children, a strategy that many ethnic minority churches
have adopted to cater to the younger generation (Ley 2008; Woods 2004). However,
MCC added English programming for adults two years later, which has to be
understood in the context of the newest wave of skilled immigrants from Mainland
China to Canada in the mid-1990s. Being educated in the atheist education system in
China and the first group to leave China in large numbers on immigration visas, this
group was identified by various stakeholders in Canada as lacking English
proficiency, which was believed to be a major factor contributing to their difficulty
in finding employment (George et al. 2000). Understandably, this group needed and
desired to improve their English, particularly in terms of speaking, for settlement and
other purposes in the host society. By establishing English programming for adults,
MCC set itself apart from other churches that had been offering free ESL classes for
immigrants for over a century (Wang 2006). At institutional policy level, offering free
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390
H. Han
ESL classes at church would be an equivalent to offering ESL classes in Englishmedium educational institutions, while MCC’s approach resembled the integration
of language (English) and content (Christian practices). The multitude of regular
activities at MCC’s English congregation meant that its adult Chinese immigrant
members could actively practice Christianity in English, instead of being asked to
learn English as an abstract and discrete linguistic system first before using it
meaningfully for real life purposes.
Third, it seems that legitimating newcomers’ languages institutionally required
little or no justification at CEMA and MCC. For instance, Rev. Luke’s online profile
reported an action, i.e. starting a Mandarin monolingual worship, which resulted
from a language policy, i.e. adopting Mandarin as an institutional language, while
the language policy itself did not require any justification, debate, or even discussion.
In fact, the absence of justification was consistent in various texts produced by MCC,
CEMA, and the TCEC communities in North America. This indicates that, given the
focus on ‘gospel work’ in these communities, adopting newcomers’ languages at
institutional level was seen as ‘natural’ or ‘commonsense’, and required no other
justification.
The historical developments discussed above indicate that, when spreading gospel
is the central goal and integrating newcomers is needed to achieve this goal, MCC
and CEMA included newcomers structurally and systemically by engaging them in
regular church practices through both the languages they brought and the languages
they needed or desired. I therefore argue that CEMA and MCC’s institutional
language policies discussed above indicated a linguistic pragmatism characterized by
a willingness and flexibility on the churches’ part to address the actual and changing
linguistic characteristics, needs and desires of those whom the churches intend to
attract and serve. This linguistic pragmatism is evident in this excerpt from a report
in the November 2005 issue of CEMA Monthly:
...
To adapt to the urgent need in Mandarin gospel work in Toronto, and to equip gospel
workers so that they can understand and speak Mandarin fluently, CEMA is offering
pastors and [evangelical] coworkers the Second Series of Mandarin Classes, . . .
Here I emphasize two aspects of the linguistic pragmatism apparent in this excerpt.
First, CEMA had a pragmatic communicative aim for the Mandarin classes it
offered, ‘to equip gospel workers to understand and speak Mandarin fluently’, which
differs from the expectation of achieving native-like proficiency which has underpinned mainstream SLA and TESOL as academic disciplines and professional fields.
Secondly, by offering Mandarin classes to its pastors and gospel workers, as an
institution, CEMA supported its evangelical workers, or old-timers in Christianity,
to learn the newcomers’ languages to reach out to them. Indeed, as we will see later,
some old-timers at MCC saw evangelism as their duty and voluntarily took it upon
themselves to learn the newcomers’ languages. These two aspects seemed to have an
immediate impact on what would count as legitimate linguistic practices and who
could take on speaking roles within the MCC and CEMA communities, which I will
discuss in the next two sections respectively.
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
391
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Codeswitching as legitimate linguistic practices
As discussed earlier, codeswitching in general has been viewed negatively in
educational institutions, but it does not seem to be an issue at MCC, CEMA and
the TCEC communities. Overall, there seemed to be a shared understanding that
when onstage facing an assembled audience, people would conduct themselves in the
designated language(s) announced ahead of time or as understood, while offstage
language practices were left for individuals to decide and negotiate. Therefore, codeswitching off-stage was unmarked; but within on-stage performances that were
supposed to be monolingual, code-switching occurred with differential intensity and
frequency at all levels of events, including during sermons at large events, such as
Rev. Balcombe’s sermon mentioned earlier. In this section, I present one example of
the code-switching practices that I recorded during an English Sunday School class.
(mudao you) in Mandarin, which
The particular class was for ‘Seekers’, or
literally means ‘friends who admire the Truth’, a generic term for all non-Christian
visitors within the TCEC communities regardless of their reasons for visiting. The
volunteer teacher was Joy. Later I found out that she had grown up in Hong Kong
and received post-secondary education and medical training in the US in the 1970s,
and was an elected member of the English Committee, the governing body of the
English congregation. Among the attendees were my key participants Grace and
Timothy, a young couple who had decided to try out MCC two weeks ago (see Han
2007a,b), a male engineer, and myself, the researcher; all four of us had emigrated
from Mainland China within the past five years. The extract was taken from
fieldnotes I jotted down after a full-day observation. Given that it was my first time
visiting MCC seeking the church’s consent to observe Grace and Timothy there and
that day’s focus was interviewing Grace and Timothy at their home that afternoon,
I did not record the original words, phrases and sentences people used in the
fieldnotes. However, I noted down the fluid codeswitching in that class, which
contrasted with linguistic practices I observed in institutional spaces elsewhere:
Standing in front of the room with a piece of chalk in hand, Joy spoke fluent English
with a slight Cantonese accent. She mixed some Mandarin words when she detected that
her students had difficulty understanding her. Sometimes, Joy offered some Cantonese
words when neither her Mandarin nor the students’ English were sufficient; the students
then discussed in Mandarin amongst themselves, sometimes laughed in disbelief when
they figured out the meanings of the Cantonese words, and reported back to Joy in
English. Sometimes, after speaking a key word in English, Joy asked her students how to
say it in Mandarin, and repeated after them for several times. Joy’s awkward Mandarin
pronunciation often led to giggles and even laughter from the students, to which she
seemed oblivious (Fieldnotes, 4 April 2004).
I would like to emphasize the linguistic pragmatism of the event and the social
relations that were reflected and constructed through these acts of code-switching.
First, Joy mobilized, and invited others to mobilize, whatever linguistic resources
participants brought to the room for the purpose of explaining basic ideas of
Christianity, evidenced by her inserting Mandarin and Cantonese words in this
primarily English-medium Sunday School class. It is worth noting that since the
linguistic code that all the participants shared the most was English, when Joy
switched to Mandarin and Cantonese, she was switching into codes that either she or
her students had very limited proficiency in. This differed from the commonly
392
H. Han
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observed phenomenon of codeswitching into a mutually shared code in language and
content classes (Heller and Martin-Jones 2001). It was particularly interesting that Joy
inserted Cantonese translations, knowing that her Mandarin-speaking students had
not developed even basic receptive skills in it. However, by so doing, Joy permitted and
invited the students to discuss in Mandarin, which enabled the students to achieve
what they otherwise could not have achieved, as evidenced by the students’ laughter in
disbelief and subsequent reporting back to Joy in English. Joy’s switching into
Cantonese thus served both cognitive and affective function in this class.
Second, for the teacher to ask her students for Mandarin translations of English
keywords and to then repeat after them was even more unusual. These incidents
could be said to serve an affective function, as evidenced by the students’ giggles, but
not necessarily a cognitive function since the students apparently already knew and
understood these words in English. However, when looking at the extract below
which was recorded a year and half later, it dawned on me what Joy was doing:
During the snack-and-juice fellowship after the English Worship Service, Joy and
I chatted in English. She told me that she had been ‘studying Mandarin for quite a
while.’ I asked if she took the CEMA classes. Joy seemed a little surprised, and said:
‘No, but I’ve been studying by myself.’ I asked her why, Joy laughed: ‘Of course it was
for gospel work ! otherwise why would I put myself through this?! It’s very hard for me
to learn to speak Mandarin!’ (Fieldnotes, 10 September 2005).
In retrospect, when Joy told me that she had been ‘studying Mandarin’, I first
associated it with instructed learning, such as taking Mandarin classes offered by
CEMA discussed earlier. When Joy emphasized that she was studying by herself,
I interpreted it as that she had been learning Mandarin sporadically, like many of us
do in non-committed ways in our everyday life in multilingual societies. After all, Joy
was a volunteer teacher in the English congregation, and therefore there was no
requirement or obligation for her to learn Mandarin. However, as an elected member
of the English Committee, she was widely recognized for her services at MCC: Joy
was teaching this English Sunday School class every week; and during the class that
I observed in April 2004, Joy was already using Mandarin keywords in her
instruction. These indicated that, motivated by her desire to serve gospel work,
Joy had voluntarily and deliberately used her class, particularly the code-switching
incidents and her students’ linguistic resources, to study Mandarin regularly herself.
In this sense, these incidents of codeswitching mainly served cognitive function for
Joy, the teacher, which may not help the students in the classroom then and there, but
certainly may help other students in the future.
Last but not the least, I argue that, by switching to Mandarin in which she had
very limited proficiency, and by learning Mandarin deliberately and systemically, Joy
recognized and validated her students’ linguistic capital in a straightforward and
unmistakable way. Through her actions, Joy showed her students that they embodied
the linguistic capital that she as the teacher not only valued but also was actively
acquiring. Joy’s actions thus communicated a message that contrasted sharply with
those in schools that subscribe to (parallel) monolingualism where teachers and
administrators routinely monitor, regulate, and police their own and their students’
code-switching into languages other than the MoI. By contrast, Joy’s fluid acts
of code-switching into Mandarin and Cantonese both reflected and created a
comparatively more equal power dynamic in this class and at MCC. Despite Joy’s
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
393
expertise in both evangelical Christianity and English, and despite it was the first
time for the male engineer and the second time for Grace and Timothy to be in this
class, they all giggled and laughed, which indicated their relative ease with each other
as a result of a relatively equal relation.
In short, I argue that the fluid code-switching practices in this Sunday School
class and at MCC constituted the process of building a comparatively egalitarian
relation between the old-timers and the newcomers, and comprised a significant
characteristic of MCC as an institution. Another dimension of multilingual
practices, to which I turn next, indexed and constructed similar social relations at
MCC.
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Legitimating speakers in their additional languages
As discussed earlier, it is not uncommon that ethnolinguistic minorities, including
ESL students and immigrants, remain silent or are forgotten when it comes to taking
on speaking roles in class. After all, speech, or the act of speaking and listening,
‘presupposes a legitimate transmitter addressing a legitimate receiver, one who is
recognized and recognizing’ (Bourdieu 1977, 649). However, shortly after joining
MCC, Timothy told me that at MCC everybody had the opportunity to speak in
front of a crowd. My observations confirmed that the stage was indeed open to every
Christian, or Christian-to-be, regardless of their linguistic talent or even fluency. This
is because MCC structured various levels of opportunities to build new members and
potential leaders, train them at cell groups and Fellowships and eventually move
some to perform during Sunday worship services and other large and ceremonial
events. More importantly, linguistic performance was only one of several dimensions
that mattered in assigning speaking roles. During my fieldwork in the TCEC
communities, I witnessed various people performing speaking roles at various
occasions, including some odd ones that sounded far from eloquent or even passable
if judged in narrow linguistic and pragmatic terms, as in the following example.
During an English Adult Fellowship session celebrating Thanksgiving at MCC in
2004, the Fellowship invited one ‘outsider’, Uncle John, to be the first speaker in the
formal program following the potluck dinner. This session was reserved for ‘member
sharing’, meaning the entire program was led and performed exclusively by this
Fellowship’s regular members, most of whom were recent immigrants from China.
Uncle John was an elected member of the governing board of MCC’s Chinese
congregation; he brought along his adult son, who was born and raised in Canada
and was a teacher at a local school, and told the audience that he had asked his son
to give a short testimony after him. As the following data extract from my fieldnotes
indicates, I first tried to jot down the exact words Uncle John was using, but found it
challenging within a few minutes. I then inserted an evaluative comment that Uncle
John’s testimony was ‘full of incomplete sentences and incoherent thoughts’, after
which I shifted to paraphrase what he was saying:
[Uncle John] Works for City of Toronto and will retire at the end of Oct. . . . Came to
Canada through Hong Kong and Macau – at that time, the Chinese government
allowed him to exchange one HK dollar for his trip. . . . His testimony is full of
incomplete sentences and incoherent thoughts. But one message seems clear: Don’t think
‘I was so and so’; you people humble yourself first, then you can take any job. Take any
job you can get for your first job in Canada, even though it is unlikely to be
professional, and might be low-paid. Take it. God has his plan. It is not for your whole
394
H. Han
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life. . . . A university graduate, he worked as a waiter in a Chinese restaurant catering to
western customers when he first came to Toronto in 1959. He started at 6:00 in the
morning so that he could go off to study in late afternoon. . . . (Fieldnotes, 9 October
2004; emphasis added.)
While Uncle John would not normally be considered a good speaker of English,
I observed no signs of inattention during his testimony; nor did I hear or overhear
any negative comments about his performance when people chatted informally after
the formal program. In other words, the audience paid attention and regarded Uncle
John as a legitimate speaker who was worthy to be heard. What was the basis of
Uncle John’s legitimacy as a speaker then?
The audience’s acceptance and attentiveness to Uncle John’s testimony must be
understood in terms of ‘the value and power of speech’ that originated in factors
beyond linguistic competence in its narrow sense. After all, ‘[w]hat speaks is not the
utterance, the language, but the whole person’ (Bourdieu, 1977, 653). Specifically, it
was Uncle John’s double identity as a good Christian and a successful immigrant that
made him a legitimate speaker at MCC. First, being elected to the governing board
of MCC’s Chinese congregation indicated that Uncle John was widely recognized as
a good Christian, and bringing along his son who also gave a testimony added
another dimension of his good Christian identity: he had raised a Christian family.
Second, Uncle John was a successful immigrant whom his audience could relate and
look up to because of their shared experiences of declassing and deskilling in the
process of immigration and settlement. While it was very rare to obtain a university
education in China in the 1950s, Uncle John had to work in a Chinese restaurant
upon arriving in Toronto; however, he managed to work for the municipal
government in the end, a relatively comfortable and secure job which marked his
success as an immigrant. He attributed his success to hard work and strategic
planning, e.g. starting at 6 a.m. at the Chinese restaurant so that he could go off to
study in the university. Even though going to university may not be a viable option
for many immigrants, Uncle John’s advice echoed the common wisdom of individual
survival and upward mobility as well as the mainstream construction of the so-called
model minorities.
Similar criteria of assigning speaking roles seemed to apply to both prominent
speakers and newcomers. For instance, as mentioned earlier, Rev. Balcombe was
invited to preach at a large evangelistic event. While his functional proficiency in
Mandarin was important, his life-long missionary work in Hong Kong and
Mainland China itself would have qualified him as a suitable speaker (see also
Han 2011). Similarly, when the regular chair of the English Adult Fellowship
Thanksgiving session had to be absent unexpectedly, my focal participant Timothy
was invited to be the substitute Chair. While his outgoing personality and relatively
better English proficiency surely were important considerations, his identity as a
good Christian and a hardworking and relatively successful new immigrant were
crucial in assigning him this highly visible speaking role. Having emigrated from
Mainland China in late 2001 and received baptism in December 2002, Timothy had
been attending MCC and this monthly fellowship for half a year only. However, as a
door-to-door salesperson, Timothy had built his reputation of being a good
Christian and successful new immigrant by actively evangelizing his sales team
members and bringing MCC church members into sales. In this sense, even though
he was less proficient in English and less experienced in chairing than any old-timer,
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
395
Timothy was a better role model for other newcomers in being a resilient immigrant
and taking on leadership roles at church.
The case of Uncle John, Rev. Balcombe and Timothy indicate that linguistic
competence in the narrow sense seemed secondary in assigning speaking roles in the
TCEC communities, while being a good Christian and a good role model seemed
essential. In a community that prioritizes Christian evangelism, it is not surprising
that being a good Christian is more important than being eloquent or even fluent. As
I have argued elsewhere (Han 2009a), taking on speaking roles in English at MCC
constituted the very process of social and subsequently economic inclusion in the
TCEC community for Timothy, in which English learning was an integral side effect.
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Institutional multilingualism: implementational and ideological spaces for social
inclusion
So far I have analyzed institutional multilingual ideologies, policies and practices
that mediate social inclusion in the TCEC communities. Motivated by a strong
commitment to Christian evangelism, they emphasize attracting and converting nonbelievers and serving both members and visitors. To serve this end, they see it as
commonsense and are more than willing to adapt to the changing linguistic
characteristics of different waves of newcomers and to meet their linguistic needs
and desires. Ideologically, they adopted a linguistic pragmatism that accepts all
linguistic codes as appropriate media of evangelical Christianity. This means that no
matter who came, the newcomers’ languages were adopted, including setting up
parallel sets of regular activities in multiple languages. Furthermore, the old-timers,
particularly the gospel workers, learned the newcomers’ languages to communicate
with them and help them to learn the languages they needed and desired. Old-timers
who themselves had learned additional languages as minority adults treated
newcomers as potential full members by focusing on their messages behind their
sometimes poor linguistic performances and assigned them speaking roles. Finally,
both old-timers and newcomers learn each other’s languages in and through doing
important things together regularly and it is common practice to codeswitch to get
things done. These ideologies, policies and practices reflect, and also constitute, the
process of constructing a relatively inclusive space and equal social relations between
old-timers and newcomers.
As a successful case of social inclusion, MCC offers a concrete example of the
three dimensions of successful institutional multilingual policies and practices which
can be selectively implemented in institutions of various sizes, compositions and
orientations. While not everybody is in the position to decide their institutional
linguistic repertoires, such as in a public school or a large company, any teacher or
supervisor can develop and adopt more flexible attitudes toward codeswitching, and
can be more thoughtful in allowing or creating opportunities and structuring support
for the traditionally marginalized to take on speaking roles within their immediate
institutional environment, such as the classroom, office or production floor. In fact,
any individual, regardless of their migration status, social position and linguistic
repertoire, can contribute to social inclusion to various degrees through their own
attitudes and approaches to multilingualism. In this sense, examining and exploring
creative responses to linguistic diversity in alternative spaces such as MCC may help
individuals and institutions to affirm, discover, adopt and create innovative multilingual strategies and approaches to facilitate social inclusion. In other words, studies
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396
H. Han
of alternative spaces such as MCC may help to open up implementational spaces for
supporting multilingualism and social inclusion among committed and interested
individuals and institutions in monolingual societies.
More importantly, MCC as a successful case may open up a space for dialogue
and reflection on the localized enactment of national and institutional language
ideologies and policies. Indeed, as Moyer (2010) argues, ‘institutional ideologies
about languages and communication account for the way multilingualism is put into
practice’. For instance, contrary to MCC’s approaches to linguistic diversity,
mainstream educational institutions typically have embraced the policy of ‘no
matter who comes, our institutional/national language remains’, and the assumption
that the newcomers are solely responsible for learning the legitimate language in the
classroom. Further, ESL classes for immigrants and their children are often set up
separately from the regular programs, with the remedial goal of moving them to
English-only performance as soon as possible, and often discourage or prevent
codeswitching, and offer limited opportunity or provide little systemic support to
enable them to perform speaking roles onstage which would have symbolic and
linguistic effects. Contrasting the two sets of language policies and practices can
potentially stimulate discussions about why we do what we do.
However, it would be naı̈ve to assume that the multilingual ideologies, policies
and practices enacted at MCC can be easily adopted by or implemented in
mainstream institutions. After all, one cannot change the value of a language unless
one changes the market (Bourdieu 1991, 57). For instance, it is unlikely that, working
in monolingual schools shaped by monolingual national language policies, many
teachers would be motivated to learn their students’ home/community languages out
of individual good will. However, individuals of various minority backgrounds have
been exercising their discursive agency by contesting and resisting interactional as
well as institutional orders one way or another. Therefore, I see it as the duty of
critical language researchers to discover effective implementational and ideological
tools to support those who have been contesting and resisting, overtly and covertly,
deliberately or intuitively, and to support them in building coalitions.
To conclude, what counts as legitimate language, what counts as legitimate
linguistic practice, and who counts as legitimate speaker are important dimensions
mediating social inclusion or exclusion in localized contexts and beyond. Positioned
differently socioeconomically and ideologically in today’s globalizing political
economy, each individual and institution is bound to make different choices; and
our actions and inactions constitute the social processes that make our future. I thus
contend that it is important to make the materialist and processual view of
multilingualism more accessible and operational to the general public, maybe
particularly to those who are the major language policy makers in their immediate
contexts, such as educational practitioners. More research on successful cases in
minority settings is urgently needed to expand our understandings and visions of
multilingualism, and to provide implementational and ideological tools for social
inclusion in diverse societies.
Acknowledgements
I thank Drs Kelleen Toohey, Roumi Ilievia, and Ingrid Piller for constructive comments to, and
Anna du Bois for editing, earlier drafts of this paper. Remaining errors and omissions are mine.
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
397
Notes
1.
2.
I have chosen pseudonyms that reflect the essences of the original names for institutions
and individuals in this paper, except for the well-known missionary Rev. Balcombe and his
affiliated institutions.
The actual URLs of MCC and CEMA websites and references to texts they produced are
not included as a means to protect the identities of these institutions and the individuals
involved.
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