Introduction

This study explores the role English language plays in a plurilingual society—Taiwan—from the perspective of language maintenance, with a specific focus on Daighi (also known as Taiwanese, see Yang, 2020; Yang et al., 2021 for definition). In the Taiwanese context, what might be referred to as English imperialism is evident (Chuang, 2019), which has led to Daighi and other local languages being recognized as “threatened languages” by the Taiwanese Ministry of Culture in the Development of National Languages Act in 2019 (Ministry of Culture, 2019). This status is also in line with the intergenerational language shift from Daighi to Taiwanese Mandarin, identified by the Census 2010 and 2020.

This paper focuses on the context of primary school education, where Taiwanese Mandarin is the medium of instruction. In the National Curriculum of Taiwan, both Taiwanese Mandarin and English are positioned as mainstream subjects, while Daighi is categorized as “other” subjects (see Ministry of Education, 2021). Given the plurilingual context, this study sets out to explore the role English plays in Daighi classrooms, to investigate the potential of how different linguistics resources might contribute to the development of pluriliteracies.

Adapting pedagogic approaches to reflect the superdiverse and multicultural society we are in today; increasingly, research studies focus on the implementation of plurilingual and pluricultural approaches to language teaching and learning in different contexts, for instance, Galante (2020)—English, Gyogi (2022)—Japanese, and Schmid (2020)—English, most of which focuses on learning mainstream languages. There are also studies that draw on translanguaging, a multilingual pedagogy, as a practice to the teaching and learning of minority languages in plurilingual contexts such as Basque (Cenoz & Gorter, 2013, 2017; Otheguy et al., 2015), te reo Māori (Otheguy et al., 2015; Seals & Olsen-Reeder, 2020), Samoan (Seals & Olsen-Reeder, 2020), and Hawaiian (Mendoza, 2023; Otheguy et al., 2015). Moreover, increasing interest in studies that adopt a pluriliteracies lens to teaching and learning, such as Meyer et al. (2015a, b), Cinganotto and Cuccurullo (2019), and Coyle and Meyer (2019, 2021), focuses on the teaching and learning of subject knowledge other than language through target language or languages. Taveau’s (2023) study addresses language learning as a subject discipline and explores pluriliteracies through literary creative writing in French with younger beginner learners. He proposed a need to “reposition language as an academic discipline in our contemporary educational world” (p. 185) and presented a pedagogical framework that provides a “disciplinary-oriented pluriliteracies approach” (p. 210) for deeper learning. Taveau’s (2023) argument on repositioning language as a subject discipline provides a foundation for this study on the intersection of language learning and using. It takes a language maintenance approach to investigate the advantages and challenges of what more holistic pluriliteracies thinking can bring to the teaching and learning of threatened, minoritized languages. In particular, this study is aimed at exploring possibilities to shift the attitudes toward English from being a threat, drawing on the concept of English imperialism, to recognizing English as an existing linguistic phenomenon not only to support the learning of the endangered languages but also to lead to greater plurilingual and pluricultural benefits through pluriliteracies development.

Literature Review

This section first explains and defines plurilingualism in this context, followed by a discussion of plurilingual approaches to literacy practices or pluriliteracies (García et al., 2007), and the potential of a more holistic pluriliteracies approach as pedagogy in language classrooms.

Plurilingualism

In their Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for Languages, the Council of Europe proposed the concept of plurilingualism within language education (Council of Europe, 2001). Plurilingualism, in their definition, recognizes linguistic and cultural diversity in Europe and seeks to sustain linguistic and cultural diversity and heritage, in response to increased mobility of its citizens alongside socio-economic development (Council of Europe, 2007, p. 7). Beyond Europe, Taiwan also shares the linguistic and cultural diversity with more than 45 recognized national languages alone (Development of National Languages Act, 2019). This literature review conceptualizes the importance of plurilingualism as being at the core of pedagogic approaches in the Taiwanese context.

Plurilingualism emphasizes the interrelated nature of languages within an individual’s linguistic repertoire rather than seeing languages in separate compartments (Council of Europe, 2007, p. 4). In the educational context, plurilingual competence is defined as follows:

The ability to use languages for the purposes of communication and to take part in intercultural interaction, where a person, viewed as a social agent, has proficiency of varying degrees, in several languages, and experience of several cultures. This is not seen as the superposition or juxtaposition of distinct competences, but rather as the existence of a complex or even composite competence on which the user may draw (Council of Europe, 2001, p. 168).

This definition of plurilingualism focuses on the language user, emphasizing their ability to draw on their full linguistic repertoire using a variety of languages and cultural experiences to communicate effectively and make sense of written and spoken texts in a language previous unknown to the plurilingual speaker (Council of Europe, 2001, p. 4). Here, plurilingualism is seen as the development of an individual’s holistic linguistic repertoire rather than seeing languages as separate entities (Jorgensen et al., 2011). This definition of plurilingualism views a plurilingual speaker as having varying degrees of proficiency in several languages, as opposed to “mastery” level of one or two or three languages (Council of Europe, 2001, p. 5). This positioning embraces a heteroglossia perspective (Bakhtin, 1981). More recently, May (2016) coined the term the “multilingual turn” in second language contexts (see also Blackledge & Creese, 2014; García & Otheguy, 2020), which shifts from “abyssal thinking” to “thinking otherwise” (García et al., 2021).

Moreover, the Council of Europe, (2007) Guide for the development of language education policies in Europe emphasizes the use of the term “language variety” specifically to address the concept of linguistic inequality. The guide promotes all linguistic systems regardless of status, whether codified or standardized, and moving toward a holistic conceptualization of language education involves bringing together “foreign,” “second,” “minority” languages, and “mother tongue/first language” and languages of (im)migrant community for maintenance (Council of Europe, 2007, p. 8-12). This recognition that all languages are of equal value implies the need for linguistic tolerance leading to what García and Otheguy (2020, p. 22) refer to as “plurilingualism as a value.” This brings into question the nature of linguistic or language hierarchies. According to Becker and Knoll (2022, p. 2569), while plurilingualism might be accepted as valuing different languages, the contemporary, social trend of promoting multilingualism especially within the education sector (Jessner, 2008) can best be described as a “selective celebration of linguistic diversity” (Berthele, 2020).

The complexity of integrating linguistic diversity into schooling is challenging. Research into issues concerning the imbalance between the value that schools and language education place on languages of high prestige and the value placed on minority languages is well documented (e.g., Busse et al., 2019; Liddicoat & Curnow, 2014; Krumm, 2012). This study focuses specifically on the maintenance of a threatened local language—Daighi—drawing on different languages in the classroom that contribute to the promotion of linguistic equality. It seeks to understand how language education policies are enacted in the classroom. One key area is that of developing the competencies and providing the experiences required to enable young people to become confident plurilingual learners. This requires more nuanced understanding of how different linguistic features of varying degrees of competence are recognized and used as tools to make sense and learn new languages or linguistic features previously unknown to the learners and to communicate with one another.

Plurilingual Literacy Practices

Understanding literacy or literacy practices in the classroom goes beyond early definitions that focus on the more traditional prioritizing of reading and writing skills in languages (Goodman et al., 1979; Fishman, 1980). In more recent decades, reconceptualizing the fundamental importance of literacies practices in the plurilingual classroom has encompassed social contexts that take into account individual teacher and learner identities, values, and beliefs. For example, Hornberger’s (1989) continua of biliteracy emphasized the involvement of “biliterate actors, interactions, practices, activities, programs, situations, societies, sites, worlds” (Hornberger, 2003: xiii; Hornberger & Skilton-Slvester, 2000, p. 98; Hornberger, 2000, p. 362). Also, García et al. (2007) suggest literacy practices as “enmeshed within and influenced by social, cultural, political, and economic factors, and that literacy learning and use varies by situation and entails complex social interactions” (p. 207). In other words, literacy practices are at the core of communication, making sense and meaning that cannot be isolated from sociocultural, sociohistorical, and sociopolitical contexts. According to Piccardo (2013), plurilingual-inspired pedagogies challenge traditional diglossia by proposing a pedagogical space where languages of all kinds are recognized as a learner’s full linguistic repertoire and, therefore, can be used as a resource for learning. Developing this further, García (2009b, p. 340) refers to pluriliteracy practices as being built on principles that emphasize the integrated, hybrid nature of plurilingual literacy practices and value all of these plurilingual literacy practices equally. She highlights the continuous interplay of multiple languages, scripts, discourses, dialects, and registers and calls attention to the ways in which multilingual literacies are enmeshed and rely upon multimodal channels of communication and semiotic systems. While acknowledging the hybridity of plurilingual literacies studies that foreground the influence of cultural contexts and social relations, García also emphasizes the need to look beyond schooling to draw on a wider variety of literacy practices to develop school-based literacies across languages and curriculum (García & Flores, 2012).

Toward Developing Pluriliteracies Approaches to Language Learning

As shifts in conceptualizing plurilingual-inspired pedagogies continue to emerge, two critical developments impact on current thinking about effective plurilingual classroom learning—the role of translanguaging and the development of pluriliteracies pedagogies.

Acknowledging all languages as learning resources, the concept of translanguaging has gained increasing attention. García defines translanguaging as “multiple discursive practices” in which plurilingual learners engage to make sense of their worlds:

Translanguaging is the act performed by bilinguals of accessing different linguistic features or various modes of what are described as autonomous languages, in order to maximize communicative potential (Garcia, 2009a, p. 140).

At times contentious, translanguaging has been conceptualized in many ways—e.g., Williams, 1994, 2002; García and Li, 2014; García et al., 2007—including strong and weaker forms (García & Lin, 2017), or “fixed” and “fluid” languaging approach (Bonacina-Pugh et al., 2021; Jaspers & Madsen, 2019). Regardless of how translanguaging is conceptualized, both forms or approaches of translanguaging in the language classroom recognize target languages. However, as argued by Turnbull (2019), a strong form or fluid translanguaging approach allows learners to draw on their full linguistic repertoire to complete their tasks or assignment in that target language (p. 234).

As a plurilingual-inspired pedagogy (or plurilingual pedagogy), translanguaging openly challenges the “two solitudes” approach to bilingualism (Cummins, 2008) in which languages were kept strictly separate. It sees languages as a “property of the community” where language resources are those shared by students and the teacher. This is especially relevant in Taiwan given the plurilingual environment and “threatened” languages. Moreover, when languages are seen as resources for communicating learning, understanding, and meaning, this suggests that learners can use more than one language in the language classroom to develop linguistic understanding and communicate more effectively and appropriately in any of the languages while strengthening the target language in question.

Gyogi’s (2022) study is a case in point exploring the benefits of such plurilingual pedagogy to language learning and teaching. In an English Medium Instruction (EMI) university in Japan, she reports how students are encouraged to speak language(s) other than Japanese for expressing their ideas and for in-depth discussion (p. 3293). The findings suggest that learner engagement is improved through developing a sense of agency by providing a safe space for promoting creative use of learner’s full linguistic repertoire. These findings are reflected in other studies of Galante (2020) and Galante et al. (2020).

Other studies exploring plurilingual approaches include Schmid (2020) researcher-practitioner collaborative action research (Burns, 2010), which designed plurilingual-inspired pedagogies in EFL classrooms in Germany. In collaboration with in-service and pre-service teachers, existing activities were adapted to create spaces for learners to explore and share their own cultural practices through their heritage languages. Findings show strong connections between learner investment and classroom literacy practices, which “(a) bring the foreign language classroom closer to the real world and (b) support the development of pupils’ imagined identities as plurilingual speakers in a multilingual society” (Schmid, 2020, p. 78). Such findings also echo those of Cenoz and Gorter (2017). Other scholars also explored the incorporation of multimodal texts in plurilingual classrooms, such as drawing and mapping, music and drama, video, and creative works and performances (see Choi & Slaughter, 2021; Cummins & Early, 2011).

Most recently, the literacies turn (Morton, 2018; see also the New London Group, 1996; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Jewett & Kress, 2003; Kleifgen, 2001; Kress, 2003) in language learning contexts is attracting increasing attention drawing on plurilingual and pluricultural repertoires from a more ecological, holistic perspective. Pluriliteracies approaches seek to unite monolingual, bilingual, and plurilingual practices with literacies development in first and other languages rooted in ways of mentoring learning and language learning that enable all learners to develop confidence in their own ways of thinking and doing which has shared value. As proposed by Coyle and Meyer (2021), pluriliteracies is an approach to teaching and learning that empowers teachers and learners to develop disciplinary literacies specific to the subject (including languages) from a basic level (p. 38, see also Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). “Languaging,” i.e., when learners put into their own words what they have learned, is highlighted as fundamental to meaning making processes to internalize concepts and subject knowledge (Meyer et al., 2015b). It encourages “deeper learning” (Meyer et al., 2015a, 2015b), a process defined by National Research Council [NRC] (2012) where “an individual becomes capable of taking what was learned in one situation and applying it to a new situation” (p. 5), or “transferrable skill and strategies” to transfer conceptual knowledge to another context and problems (Coyle et al., 2023) and to critically engage with other subject disciplines and problem-solving. They suggest that deeper learning is “key to lifelong learning” (p. 1) and “key to global citizenship” (p. 2).

Influenced by the New London Group’s multiliteracies pedagogy (1996) and The Douglas Fir Group (2016), transdisciplinary framework, Coyle and Meyer (2021, p. 40) suggest that pluriliteracies represent “an ecological conceptualization of dynamic, complex yet sustainable literacies across subjects, languages, values, cultures and our digitized world.” By highlighting different kinds of literacies development, they suggest that working toward linguistic fluency in the language classroom is not enough. When “textual fluency” across languages and cultures is developed alongside, that is, when learners are actively encouraged to build on their linguistic repertoires to critically navigate, evaluate, and construct their own plurimodal texts rooted in their communities, cultures, and experiences (Coyle & Meyer, 2021, p. 42) pathways are opened up to investigate multi-perspectives on broader global issues and “other” worlds. These principles upon which the pluriliteracies model is framed conceptualize languages as both a discipline and a learning tool which strengthen the arguments formulated in this study.

The review of literature has focused on making the case for rethinking pedagogies—embracing current research in plurilingualism, pluriculturalism, and pluriliteracies educational contexts. While further detailing of the pedagogies themselves is not possible in this article, these studies have informed the current research in the specific plurilingual context of Taiwan. As Baetens-Beardsmore (1993) contends—no model is for export. The contextual exigencies set out in this research demand further investigation into the potential of how mainstream language(s) or medium of instruction might support the learning and maintenance of Daighi.

Study Design

The Taiwanese National Curriculum allocated different number of classes for each language class, see Table 1. As argued in other studies (see Yang, 2020), this can be interpreted as another form of suppressing the localized languages such as Daighi and enhancing linguistic inequality, but this study will not further address this argument.

Table 1 Number of classes per week per language and primary year, 40 min per class
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This qualitative study comprising twenty Daighi primary teachers in Taiwan (see Table 2) employed semi-structured interviews as the main data collection tool with two classroom observations per Daighi teacher as supplementary data. Three out of nine Primary 4 Daighi classes are taught by their home teachers, who teach other subjects such as Taiwanese Mandarin, social studies, integrative activities but not English, and the remaining Daighi teachers teach only Daighi.

Table 2 Participant information
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Two research questions comprise:

  1. 1.

    How do Daighi teachers perceive the role of English in the Daighi classrooms?

  2. 2.

    What role does English play in Daighi classroom practices?

The semi-structured interviews provided space to explore Daighi teachers’ views on the role of English in the classroom, as well as enabling both researcher and Daighi teacher participants to co-construct an understanding of teachers’ perception of their own language use in the classroom. The interviews were followed by two unobtrusive classroom observations to record teachers’ classroom practices and teacher and student interaction, finishing with a short post-observation interview and opportunities for further confirmation or clarification purposes. The teachers were given pseudonyms and students were anonymized. Thematic analysis proposed by Braun and Clarke (2006) and constant comparative method proposed by Glaser and Strauss (1967) were used to analyze both interview and classroom observation data.

To improve the validity of the findings, peer checking (Dörnyei 2007) was employed at the first cycle coding level. The codes overlapped substantially, which helped assure the validity of this qualitative research. In terms of ethics, the research procedure and design followed the British Educational Research Associate (BERA) Guidelines (BERA, 2018) and was approved by the University’s Ethics Committee.

Findings

The findings section is structured following the two research questions of this study; however, to understand the findings, it is crucial to explore the research context—the Daighi classroom.

Daighi Classroom Context

Teaching and Learning Materials: Enmeshed Within the Sociocultural Context in Literacy Learning

First, I shall focus on the Daighi classrooms I observed. The Daighi lessons from these classrooms are mainly based on textbook contents, which are designed to reflect local culture, close to students’ day to day life and experience, with the objective of enabling students to use expressions and terminologies introduced in the textbook in their daily contexts (Huang, 2016). According to the learning objectives, the textbook contents include stickers with Taiwanese Mandarin translation, vocabulary cards, with main text in songs, and other forms to provide plurimodal materials to engage students for better learning (Huang, 2016, p. 1).

During my observations, the textbook topics covered in primary 6 were as follows:

  • Let us engage in public welfare

  • Flowers in spring

  • I have grown up

Textbook topics covered in primary 4 were as follows:

  • Taiwan is a treasure island

  • Taiwanese cultural festivals

  • Let us recycle

Let us engage in public welfare is designed as a short conversation between two sisters drawing on a locally well-known example of an individual who donated her savings from selling vegetables in traditional market, to build a public hospital and library. It encourages thinking about how young primary school students can engage in public welfare in their own ways. The other topics are presented in songs and included local culture elements such as Taiwanese festivals and knowing the food produce of different cities in Taiwan, recycling, and songs that describe students’ status as graduates from primary school. In addition to the textbook material, Daighi teachers also prepare and bring additional topics into their classroom. Ivy, for example, created a unit on the Tāi-Kah Má-tsóo Pilgrimage to introduce Daighi idioms and Taiwanese culture to her students. This religious folk event was not covered in the textbook but took place during classroom observation. The Daighi teaching materials thus echo the development of social and cultural embedded literacy practices beyond school as emphasized by García et al. (2007) and García and Flores (2012).

Plurimodal Texts for Pluriliteracies Development

To encourage learners’ textual fluency in Daighi, the tasks designed in the textbook are plurimodal. They use written texts in combination with visual materials like pictures and drawings, multimedia material to provide further input of sounds like pronunciation and songs, and short cartoon clips or documentary clips relevant to the content exploring the wider sociocultural context. The textbook also designs tasks such as storytelling, speaking practice activities, and accompanying activities including paper materials to make dice, characters introduced, vocabulary cards with image on the other side, and graduation cards (see Huang, 2016).

In the classrooms, Daighi teachers also introduced a range of activities and tasks that enable students to communicate through different channels, through different modes, and draw on diverse semiotic systems from their full linguistic repertoire. For example, Tracy brought handmade posters to introduce Daighi idioms and tell stories; Karen used drama, by asking her students to play the roles of the stories from the textbooks; Jessica and Claire included competitive games; Lucy engaged students with song singing and dancing activities; Richard and Sandra introduced Daighi quizzes for students to complete.

These activities were commonly observed in the Daighi classrooms, and along with the plurimodal materials, they reflect the plurimodal characteristics defined by García et al. (2007), that “written-linguistic modes of meaning are intricately bound up with other visual, audio, and special semiotic systems” (p. 216). The use of music, drama, video, and creative works are in also in line with the findings of Choi and Slaughter (2021) and Cummins and Early (2011) on plurimodal texts in plurilingual classrooms, which are practices that have the potential to develop learners’ textual fluency.

How Do Daighi Teachers Perceive the Role of English in the Daighi Classrooms?

To reiterate the linguistic context, Taiwanese Mandarin is the official language, medium of instruction, and along with English are positioned as mainstream language subjects of the university entrance exam (Ministry of Education, 2018). Daighi, along with other 45 plus localized languages, are mandatory language subjects but not mainstream ones. This is discussed in the introduction section, and it is reflected also in the allocated hours per week discussed in the study design section. This section explores Daighi teachers’ perceptions of English drawing on interview data.

To explore how teachers perceive linguistic equality, teachers were asked to rank the importance of three languages: Daighi, English, and Taiwanese Mandarin. This question assumed that the three languages would be perceived as different according to its importance although the responses are varied (see Table 3).

Table 3 Teachers’ perceived ranking of languages according to its importance
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  1. a)

    English is the most important language and Daighi is the least important.

    Four teachers ranked English as the most important. For example:

    Extract 1:

    I think English is the first and foremost in terms of its importance, then Taiwanese Mandarin, then mother tongue (Claire.T.I).Footnote 1

    Similar to Clare’s view, Queenie used a metaphor to explain the importance of English: English is the main meal, where Daighi is just a dessert. You don’t always need to have dessert, but we cannot skip main meal. Lucy, on the other hand, perceived that English and Taiwanese Mandarin are of same importance, while Daighi is the least important one.

  2. b)

    Taiwanese Mandarin is most important language

    Five of the teachers perceived Taiwanese Mandarin as the most important language, while four of them ranked Daighi as second, and English as third. According to Karen:

    Extract 2:

    I think Taiwanese Mandarin is the most important, because after all, to us, it is the main language. After that, I think we need to know Daighi, because that is our foundation, if you don’t know it, there’s nothing more to say. Then it is English, yes, even though we want to be international, but I think we need to focus on our roots. If you don’t even pay attention to your own roots, what is the use to talk about internationalization? (Karen.C.I).

    Although Taiwanese Mandarin was perceived as the most important language here, Daighi was the language Karen linked with identity and roots (see also Yang et al., 2021 on Daighi and Taiwanese identity). Also, in Karen’s view, internationalization should not be at the expense of linking to one’s identity and roots, enabling individuals to know themselves by knowing their own mother tongue.

  3. c)

    Daighi is the most important language

    Six of the Daighi teachers shared their believe that Daighi is the most important language. Similar to Karen, Richard, for example, also linked English to internationalization and explained that “indigenization is the key to internationalization” (Richard.T.I). He believed that while it is important to learn English, it is even more important to learn mother tongue because internationalization can only be achieved through linguistic diversity. Sandra also emphasized the importance of Daighi because of its threatened status:

    Extract 3:

    Of course, I think Daighi is more important, because after all it is a Taiwanese language, if you lose it, no one can help you save it and get it back…if you throw away such a valuable asset, isn’t it a pity? (Sandra.T.I).

    Sandra explained the importance of Daighi to Taiwanese people and emphasized that it is the speakers of Daighi who need to take the responsibility to preserve Daighi. The threatened status of Daighi was also a shared concern of many Daighi teachers in this study, who held the sense of responsibility to preserve Daighi by teaching the language.

  4. d)

    All languages are equal

    When asked to rank the languages, five of the Daighi teachers responded that all languages are of equal importance. Ethan, for instance, specifically emphasized that not only does he believe that all languages are of equal value, this belief is also at the core of his teaching practice:

    Extract 4Footnote 2:

    Researcher: In the Daighi class, you used some other languages like English or

    Ethan: That’s right! I mixed and use different language.

    Researcher: Does it serve a specific purpose?

    Ethan: Specific purpose? it is to break down that English is not the only (important language). Because in the past, around 7 to 8 years ago, at that time, primary school X, a student raised their hand and said: Teacher, my mom said why do we need to learn Daighi? I said, what is not good about learning Daighi? Like now, we used a different version of the textbook…in the first lesson of the second semester in Primary 6, ‘Ah-Diong Ah-Diong often travel abroad’, I then take this opportunity, and introduce thank you from different main languages in the world. Students might hear it and forget it, it’s fine to forget it, it is the most important to tackle that concept: English is not the only’ (Ethan.T.I.post).

Ethan explained his active use of other language in his Daighi class, to demonstrate to the students that his Daighi class is a space for all languages, and his practice of introducing “thank you” in different languages challenges the perceived students’ belief that English is the only language or the most important language. Matching with the classroom observation data, Ethan actively used English to communicate with students; he also introduced thank you in Russian, Spanish, and Italian, as well as comparing the coffee pronunciation in Daighi with Korean to show the similarity.

Peter, on the other hand, explained that all languages are of equal importance and should be developed alongside each other. This view is also shared by Mindy and Tracy. These views that position language as equal matches with the plurilingualism approach to language, that “all language are of equal value” (Council of Europe, 2007, p. 12), and that all pluriliteracy practices are valued equally (García et al., 2007, p. 217).

In sum, although nine out of the twenty teachers perceived that either English or Taiwanese Mandarin are more important than the threatened localized languages, more than half of the Daighi teachers perceived the status of Daighi being the most important language or of equal importance comparing to the other two mainstream languages. This effort to include Daighi and other localized languages being the language subject in the National Curriculum is in line with the plurilingualism proposed by the Council of Europe (2007), which “promote and maintain the concept of linguistic diversity” (p. 7). However, given that the majority of the Daighi teachers perceived unequal importance of the languages, the “plurilingualism as a value” concept proposed by García and Otheguy (2020) which positions all languages having equal value is not reflected in these findings. The case of Taiwan echoes what Berthele (2020) addressed as “selective celebration of linguistic diversity” (p. 126), which demonstrated that the approach to languages has not yet shifted from “abyssal thinking” to what García et al. (2021) addressed as “thinking otherwise.”

The Role of English in the Daighi Classroom

The discussion below thus draws on the role English plays in Daighi classroom to explore further the potential of a pluriliteracies approach to teaching in the Taiwanese localized language context.

Based on the classroom observation data, both Daighi and Taiwanese Mandarin are used as mediums of instruction, while nine out of twenty Daighi teachers also used English to communicate and interact with the students. Three functions of English observed are resource for communication, grammar instruction, and assisting spelling and pronunciation.

  1. a)

    Resource for communication

    As discussed above, Ethan is one of the Daighi teachers who actively used multiple languages in his Daighi classes as a resource to communicate. The English examples are use of words such as “understand?” (Ethan.T.CO.A), or encouragement to students struggling with the tasks in Daighi by using “trust me you can make it” (Ethan.T.CO.A) or “don’t worry about it” (Ethan.T.CO.B). Drawing on the shared linguistic repertoire, his students also initiated their turn by speaking in English, along with Taiwanese Mandarin:

    Extract 5:

    Student A: Teacher, I don’t know where my pencil case is!

    (Student B passed the pencil case back).

    Student A: Thank you very much!

    In this example, student A calls attention of teacher Ethan and addressed him using the English word teacher, they switched to Taiwanese Mandarin to explain what the issue was and used English again to “thank” the classmate for returning their pencil case to put an end to this incident. Such linguistic diverse practice for communication is thus developed in the space Ethan created in his Daighi classroom.

  2. b)

    Grammar instruction

    In addition to using English as resource to communicate with students, Daighi teachers also drew on students’ existing knowledge and skills of English grammar to help understand Daighi grammar:

    Extract 6:

    Ofelia: Repeat again

    Students: Dad is eating a fish that is salty

    Ofelia: Yes, dad is eating a fish that is salty. I want to ask, what is the part of speech for dad? (silence)Footnote 3Which part of speech?)

    Students: (inaudible)

    Ofelia: That eat, eat is a verb, I want to ask, in English you have present progressive, what do you need to add to verb?

    Students: (inaudible)

    Ofelia: ING right? In English, because when we are in English class, English this language, is not what we speak when we were born, so we need to teach grammar first, right? Have to teach grammar, show examples. I want to ask you, do we need to learn grammar in Taiwanese Mandarin? Do we need to learn grammar in Taiwanese Mandarin? No. You can yourself, what? Fluently what? Say it. Right? So how do you use present progressive in Taiwanese Mandarin? Dad is eating a fish that is salty, how do you say it in Taiwanese Mandarin?

    Students: (inaudible)

    Ofelia: Dad is now, is now, right? Is now eating a fish that is salty, or salty fish, right?

    (Ofelia.C.CO.B)

    In this extract, to explain the grammar of present progressive in Daighi, Ofelia explicitly drew on both English grammar (add ing) and Taiwanese Mandarin grammar to explain it. Such practice was also observed in other classrooms, for instance, Ethan also used English grammar to help his students understand Daighi grammar, he wrote not only…but also… in English and translated to Taiwanese Mandarin. These examples demonstrated that students and the Daighi teachers were aware of students’ varying degree of proficiency in different languages they speak and drew on existing linguistic knowledge of other languages to help make sense of and scaffold learning the target language.

  3. c)

    Assisting spelling and pronunciation

    In the textbooks used by the Daighi teachers, all use Han characters, with Taiwan Language Phonetic Alphabet (TLPA) and Mandarin Phonetic Symbols (MPS, or BoPoMoFo) (see Huang, 2016). According to the Daighi teachers, students often confuse the pronunciation of the Han characters between Daighi pronunciation and Taiwanese Mandarin pronunciation (Henry.T.CO.A), as both languages use Han characters. When it comes to the spelling system, four out of the twenty Daighi teacher expressed that the use of TLPA could also be confusing, and this is the perceived most prominent impact of the simultaneous Daighi and English learning. For example: “when I teach TLPA, our vowels have A, E, I, O, U, they got confused…they pronounce it the same way as English alphabet” (Gloria.T.I). Because of the confusion between the pronunciation of English alphabet and TLPA, some Daighi teachers avoid using TLPA and rely mainly on MPS (Doris.T.I). At the same time, another 4 Daighi teachers believed that students do not get confused, and it is good for students to be exposed to such multilingual education. According to Ofelia (C.I) and Ivy (C.I), students’ confusion between languages is a belief held also by many parents.

Henry had a different approach to teach pronunciation. He explained that “sound is what attracts students’ interest…and Daighi has beautiful sounds” (Henry.T.I), In Henry’s second Daighi class observed, he organized the students into five groups for a group singing performance task. Henry used a homophonic approach to teach his students pronunciation of the lyrics, and together, they wrote the plurilingual spelling on the blackboard: we 哩哇 m \(\ll-Y\)懶嘎但狗狗, a combination of English (we, m), Han characters (哩哇懶嘎但狗狗) and MPS\(\left(\ll-Y\right)\). This example reflected the characteristic emphasized by García et al. (2007), the “integrated and hybrid nature of plurilingual literacy practices” (p. 217). After understanding the pronunciation of the lyrics, students had to act on the words drawing on their understanding of the meaning of each word. This process of meaning making through expression of thinking to self and others draws on the creative use of learners’ full linguistic repertoire for languaging that improved learner engagement and sense of agency as well as a safe space reflected in Gyogi’s (2022), Galante’s (2020), and Galante et al.’s (2020) studies. Henry’s example shows the impact of English in Daighi, which highlights another characteristic of pluriliteracies defined by García et al. (2007): the “continuous interplay of multiple languages, scripts, discourses, dialects, and registers” (p. 217). What is evident is the opening up to pluriliteracies competence for the Daighi teachers and students and practices that encourage knowledge transfer.

In sum, this section explored the perceived role of English in Daighi classrooms and in practice. As explained, regardless of how English is ranked, English is perceived to play an important role in the Taiwanese community. Drawing on both the interview and the classroom observation data, English functions in the Daighi classroom as resource for communication, as prior knowledge to learn Daighi grammar, and as a semiotic resource to help understand the meaning and pronunciation of Daighi. As a result, the existing semiotic resources corresponding to English that students possess in their linguistic repertoire is recognized and drawn upon to help learn Daighi.

It emerges therefore that opening pathways toward a pluriliteracies approach to teaching and learning Daighi in the Taiwanese context may be beneficial for the development of Daighi literacies, though there is concern over how pluriliteracies as a practice can help maintain threatened languages like Daighi. From the perspective of language maintenance, a call for a sustainable pluriliteracies approach to teaching of threatened languages is needed and should address the proposed key elements:

  1. (1)

    Recognizing and promoting all linguistic systems regardless of status, whether codified or standardized, and moving toward a holistic conceptualization of language education that involves bringing together “foreign,” “second,” and “minority” languages, as well as “mother tongue/first language” and languages of (im)migrant community for maintenance (Council of Europe, 2007, p. 8–12)

  2. (2)

    All languages are of equal value implies the need for linguistic tolerance leading to what García and Otheguy (2020, p. 22) refer to as “plurilingualism as a value”

  3. (3)

    Subject literacy knowledge development as an “ecological conceptualization of dynamic, complex yet sustainable literacies across subjects, languages, values, cultures and our digitized world” (Coyle & Meyer, 2021, p. 40), that creates a “breathing space” for threatened language development and use (see Cenoz & Gorter, 2017 on their sustainable translanguaging framework)

  4. (4)

    Deeper learning that enables knowledge transfer (Coyle et al., 2023) to critically engage across languages, to problem solve, and to become global citizens who engage with lifelong learning

To build a context-sensitive sustainable pluriliteracies approach to language teaching and learning, this study suggests the creation of “breathing space,” which promotes the development of the learners’ holistic language repertoire that can be used beyond the Daighi classroom across other languages.

Discussion and Conclusion

This study explored the role of English in the context of Taiwanese primary school Daighi education from language maintenance perspective to investigate the potential of a plurilingual context to further develop a more holistic pluriliteracies approach to language teaching and learning. Given the current threatened status of Daighi (see Yang, 2020) alongside the promotion of Taiwanese Mandarin as the official language, English can be seen as a threat to Daighi. However, this study suggests the role English could play in developing the Daighi language and literacies across languages.

In response to research question 1: “how do Daighi teachers perceive the role of English in Daighi classrooms?”, the findings suggest that English is perceived as an important language and as the medium to develop internationalization. However, in this study, while five out of twenty Daighi teachers believe that all languages are equal and can be learned alongside one another, there was also a view that learning English should not be at the expense of learning Daighi—students’ ethnic first language, where six out of twenty teachers perceived its importance above all other languages. It could be argued that this result is to be expected given that the teachers interviewed are all Daighi teachers. However, this study also observed Daighi teachers’ use of plurimodal texts in the classroom, to improve learners’ ability to engage with a wide variety of hybrid and plurimodal communication. They acknowledged students’ use of semiotic resources corresponding to named languages such as Taiwanese Mandarin, English, and Daighi, with varying degrees of proficiency. This preparedness opens the door to further deepening the resources through pluriliteracies development across all languages.

Findings in response to research question 2: “what role does English play in Daighi classroom practices?” noted three different functions of English used to support learning Daighi through:

  1. (1)

    Providing resources to communicate, when Daighi teachers draw on plurilingual instructions in the classroom

  2. (2)

    Supporting grammar instruction, when Daighi teachers explicitly draw on learner’s existing English knowledge and encourage transfer to develop Daighi literacies

  3. (3)

    Improving spelling, and pronunciation in Daighi classroom, through Daighi teachers’ instructions and learners’ creativity, cross language literacies were drawn upon to make sense of Daighi literacies, reflected in learners’ languaging their learning processes and demonstrating deeper learning

From these findings, it could be argued that learning English can offer rich ways of contributing to the maintenance and development of Daighi.

However, plurilingual contexts are complex where languages can be viewed from socio-ethnic, economic, political, and life skills perspectives. A consensus on the status of languages is unlikely but this study indicates an opening for exploring an alternative pathway—that of not only supporting language maintenance but also deepening plurilingual competences across languages through developing pluriliteracies skills. This is not to suggest that there are panaceas. Rather, it demands further exploration that may lead to a context-relevant interpretation and implementation of pluriliteracies practices that involve both teachers’ and students’ understanding of how authentic meaning making across languages hinges not only on linguistic fluency but also through multimodal textual fluency. This will require specific activation and development of all language resources; learners will draw on their full linguistic repertoire to language their learning, with practices that echo a more integrated and hybrid nature of teaching and learning; and classrooms will harness teaching practices that are plurimodal, linked to wider social and cultural contexts, to develop and influence literacy practices beyond school. However, for this to happen in a principled way, professional development will be needed to support teachers in creative cross-curricular pluriliteracies practices with resources that are fit-for-purpose. It may also require broader support to gain greater student, teacher, and parental confidence, requiring further piloting, class-based research, and dissemination of good practice. This study suggests the ground is fertile. Finally, to return to the language maintenance perspective of a threatened language undergoing an intergenerational language shift such as Daighi, the study may offer a rightful space in a plurilingual community, where pluriliterate students can become agents of change in a linguistically diverse community.