Many Voices

Bilingualism, Culture and Education
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-041-08440-2
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 228 Seiten, Format (B × H): 138 mm x 216 mm

Reihe: Routledge Revivals

Attitudes to bilingualism have always been contradictory. The possession of more than one language has been thought to be an advantage, even a necessity, while simultaneously being regarded as an inconvenience, sometimes a disastrous one. Yet more than half the world’s population is bilingual. Britain is also now a multilingual society. It is therefore important to understand the phenomenon of bilingualism and to unravel the contradictions in attitudes towards it. In her book Many Voices (originally published in 1983 and now with a new foreword by John Yandell), Jane Miller has set out to listen to children and to adults—some of whom are well-known writers—for whom bilingualism is undeniably an asset.

If there are advantages to being bilingual, there are also problems: personal, social, and inevitably, political ones. Jane miller moves from individual testimonies to their cultural and educational implications. It may be, she suggests, that we can gain from the strengths of bilingual speakers’ knowledge which could enrich schooling and the curriculum for all children. By attending to the experiences of people who have had to make their way within a new society, we learn something about how all individuals construct their identities out of cultural difference. Language, languages are central to this. Jane Miller argues that bilingualism allows for a special focus on developments in culture generally which is useful to teachers, linguists, readers of literature, and makers of educational policy.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Miller, Jane

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Mehrsprachigkeit
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Lehrerausbildung, Unterricht & Didaktik Methoden des Lehrens und Lernens
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Lehrerausbildung, Unterricht & Didaktik Allgemeine Didaktik Literatur, Deutsch, Fremdsprachen (Unterricht & Didaktik)
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Pädagogik Bildungssystem Bildungspolitik, Bildungsreform
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Pädagogik Bildungssystem Curricula: Planung und Entwicklung
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Pädagogik Bildungssystem Vergleichende und Empirische Bildungsforschung
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Teildisziplinen der Pädagogik Multikulturelle Pädagogik, Friedenserziehung

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction  1. The dimensions of bilingualism in London schools  2. ‘So I think I’ll stay halfway’  3. ‘Urdu has very deep manners’  4. ‘It’s a positioning of the self within the language’  5. The social perspectives of bilingualism  6. Learning first and second languages  7. Do bilinguals think better?  8. The educational implications of bilingualism  9. Writing in a second language

Über Autor(innen)

Jane Miller is Professor Emerita of the UCL Institute of Education. She taught in the English and Media Department there from 1976 to 1998 and edited Changing English from 1993 to 2013. She has written books about bilingualism, women teachers, and literature.