The last two decades have seen a growing interest, internationally, in multilingualism, multilingual literacy, bilingualism in education and in the role of discourse in the construction of asymmetries of power between linguistic groups in multilingual societies. This is largely due to the significant linguistic, cultural and demographic changes ushered in by globalisation and international migration and to the major changes that are now taking place in the political, cultural and linguistic landscape of Europe as a result of the accession of new nations to the European Union. The last two decades have also seen the emergence of a distinct new strand of critical, interpretive research on multilingualism which combines the analysis of discourse and of literacy practices with ethnography.

A good deal of empirical work has been conducted in educational sites with children and/or with adults – in bilingual education programmes, in complementary schools, in adult education centres, in colleges and universities and in mainstream primary and secondary schools in multilingual settings.  Whilst the goals of this critical, interpretive research have been broadly similar, that is to identify ways of linking the close study of the interactional order with an analysis of the wider social and symbolic order, researchers have employed diverse approaches in investigating the particularities of the discourse practices in the multilingual sites with which they are concerned.

Objectives

The main objectives of this seminar will therefore be:

• To bring together a group of 25-30 scholars working within this critical, interpretive strand of research with a view to generating new thinking about methodological issues.
• To provide the basis of a publication focusing on these methodological issues (either as a special issue of a journal or as a book)
• To serve as a formal launch of the newly constituted MOSAIC Centre for Research on Multilingualism at Birmingham.

Themes

The Research Seminar will focus on the following broad themes:

• Links between theory and method (e.g. Bourdieu and Socio/Linguistic Ethnography; sociolinguistic scales; revisiting the notion of ‘communities of practice’ and spatialisation of multilingual practices)
• The development of and links between critical, analytic lenses on multilingualism (e.g. Critical Discourse Analysis, Multimodal/Semiotic Analysis, Narrative Analysis, New Literacy Studies, Systemic Functional Analysis)
• Issues in Socio/Linguistic Ethnography in multilingual settings (e.g. Doing multi-site ethnography; researcher-researched relations; language use during fieldwork in multilingual settings; combining ethnography with discourse analysis; researching multi-modal and textual practices in multilingual settings).

Invited Speakers

The key note speakers will be: Monica Heller (University of Toronto) and Alexandra Jaffe (University of California at Long Beach).

Details of other speakers to follow

Local organisers

 Marilyn Martin-Jones and Sheena Gardner, University of Birmingham, on behalf of the members of MOSAIC.

Members of MOSAIC: Adrian Blackledge, Angela Creese, Gill Cressey, Sheena Gardner, Muhammad Khan, Deirdre Martin, Marilyn Martin-Jones

Venue

G39, School of Education, University of Birmingham