Plurilingualism amid the panoply of lingualisms: addressing critiques and misconceptions in education

Abstract

Today, scholars and students face an array of lingualisms: bilingualism, multilingualism, polylingualism, metrolingualism plurilingualism, codeswitching, codemeshing, and translanguaging, among others. Plurilingualism can be understood as the study of individuals’ repertoires and agency in several languages, in different contexts, in which the individual is the locus and actor of contact; accordingly, a person’s languages and cultures interrelate and change over time, depending on individual biographies, social trajectories, and life paths. The term ‘plurilingual competence’ adds emphasis on learners’ agency, and constraints and opportunities in educational contexts. We discuss where and how plurilingualism fits among the other lingualisms, its similarities and differences, with an example of plurilingual pedagogy and practice from a university in Vancouver, Canada. In doing so, we challenge three common critiques of/misconceptions about plurilingualism: (i) that it is based on an invalid static binary between the social and the individual, (ii) that it is over-agentive, and (iii) that it can serve to reinforce social inequities within a neoliberal world order.

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