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Building on Heteroglossia and Heterogeneity: The Experience of a Multilingual Classroom

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Heteroglossia as Practice and Pedagogy

Part of the book series: Educational Linguistics ((EDUL,volume 20))

Abstract

This chapter draws on empirical research carried out in a primary school located in a multilingual neighbourhood in Vienna where learning has been taking place in pilot multigrade classrooms for more than 10 years. The multigrade approach follows an open learning strategy inspired by Freinet pedagogics understanding heterogeneity as a resource and not as a drawback. The chapter will present examples from a research project which focusses on how learners perceive their heteroglossic linguistic repertoires and how they draw on multiple resources—modes, codes, discourses—to produce creative and meaningful texts. These texts, a multimodal classroom diary and a classroom library consisting of single as well as co-authored printed ‘mini-books’, form a core element in the open learning environment of the school.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See different contributions in the special issue 20/4 (2010) which focusses on “how children, in naturally occurring school and neighborhood peer and sibling-kin groups across a variety of cultures and societies, socialize one another to do heteroglossia” (Kyratzis et al. 2010, p. 457).

  2. 2.

    In today’s reception, the term ‘heteroglossia’ is generally used to designate Bakhtin’s concept of linguistic and discursive plurality as a whole. This corresponds to Emerson’s and Holquist’s terminology who translate the Russian word raznorečie as ‘heteroglossia’ (Holquist 1981, p. 428). Todorov (1984, p. 56), however, insists on a more differentiated understanding. He translates raznorečie as ‘heterology’, meaning the multiplicity of (social–ideological) discourses. In contrast, he reserves the term ‘heteroglossia’ to translate raznojazyčie, meaning linguistic variation or diversity, and the term ‘heterophony’ for raznogolosie, meaning the diversity of (individual) voices. Bakhtin himself admitted a certain penchant for variation and plurality of terms to name the same phenomenon examined from different perspectives (Todorov 1984, p. xii), but in some places there is a clear distinction between the three notions as in the following quote when he speaks about “a diversity of social speech types (sometimes even diversity of languages) and a diversity of individual voices” (Bakhtin 1981, p. 262). Another source of possible confusion is related to the diverging use of the English term ‘discourse’ which in Emerson’s and Holquist’s translation stands for the Russian slovo [word, talk], in Todorov’s translation for the Russian reč’ [speech].

  3. 3.

    M2 classroom web site: http://ortnergasse.webonaut.com/m2/.

  4. 4.

    Arbeitsgemeinschaft Wiener reformpädagogische Mehrstufenklassen (2008); http://www.mehrstufenklassen.info/.

  5. 5.

    Classroom diary: http://ortnergasse.webonaut.com/m2/index1.html.

  6. 6.

    World ABC: http://weltabc.at.

  7. 7.

    Some of the little books can be viewed at: http://ortnergasse.webonaut.com/m2/kb/.

  8. 8.

    I would like to thank Roswitha Breckner for analysing together with me this and other booklets and for her important input for a fuller understanding of the process of multimodal meaning making.

  9. 9.

    See e.g. Maus-und-Elefant-Witze: http://www.kidsville.de/tiergarten/witze/.

  10. 10.

    Interview with Christian Schreger, June 2010.

  11. 11.

    Translation B.B.

  12. 12.

    For more details about this multimodal approach to language biographies and linguistic repertoires, see Busch (forthcoming).

  13. 13.

    Overall, 21 languages in the school year 2009/2010 (Informationsblätter des Referats für Migration und Schule Nr. 5/2011. BMUKK Wien).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Department of Linguistics, University of A-1090 Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Brigitta Busch

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  1. Brigitta Busch
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Correspondence to Brigitta Busch .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom

    Adrian Blackledge

  2. School of Education, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom

    Angela Creese

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Busch, B. (2014). Building on Heteroglossia and Heterogeneity: The Experience of a Multilingual Classroom. In: Blackledge, A., Creese, A. (eds) Heteroglossia as Practice and Pedagogy. Educational Linguistics, vol 20. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7856-6_2

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