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PLURILINGUALISM IN TEACHING
AND LEARNING
Assembling a rich and diverse range of research studies on the role of pluri-
lingualism across a wide variety of teaching and learning settings, this book supports
teacher reflection and action in practical ways and illustrates how researchers tease
out and analyze the complex realities of their educational environments. With a
focus on education policies, teaching practices, training, and resourcing, this
volume addresses a range of mainstream and specialized contexts and examines
the position of learners and teachers as users of plurilingual repertoires. Providing
a close look into the possibilities and constraints of plurilingual education, this
book helps researchers and educators clarify and strengthen their understandings
of the links between language and literacy and offers them new ways to think
more rigorously and critically about the language ideologies that shape their own
beliefs and approaches in language teaching and learning.
Julie Choi is a Lecturer in Education (Additional Languages) in the Melbourne

Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Sue Ollerhead is a Lecturer in Literacies and English as an Additional Language

in the School of Education at the University of New South Wales, Sydney,
Australia.
PLURILINGUALISM
IN TEACHING AND
LEARNING
Complexities Across Contexts
Edited by Julie Choi and

Sue Ollerhead
First published 2018
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Taylor & Francis
The right of Julie Choi and Sue Ollerhead to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification
and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-22847-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-22849-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-39246-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo and Stone Sans

by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
For my new friends at MGSE, Sue and Mei
—Julie
CONTENTS
Foreword by Angel M. Y. Lin ix

Preface xiii
1 Introduction 1
Sue Ollerhead, Julie Choi, and Mei French
Part I: Plurilingual Language-in-Education

Policies 19
2 Provision, Policy and Reasoning: The Pluralisation
of the Language Education Endeavor 21
Joseph Lo Bianco
3 Mother-Tongue-Based Multilingual Education in the
Philippines: Perceptions, Problems and Possibilities 37
Priscilla Angela T. Cruz and Ahmar Mahboob
4 Bypassing Unrepresentative Policies: What do Indigenous
Australians Say About Language Education? 54
Rebecca Hetherington
Part II: Plurilingual Student Repertoires 69

5 The Translingual Advantage: Metrolingual Student
Repertoires 71
Emi Otsuji and Alastair Pennycook
viii Contents
6 An Expanded View of Translanguaging: Leveraging the

Dynamic Interactions Between a Young Multilingual
Writer and Machine Translation Software 89
Sara Vogel, Laura Ascenzi-Moreno, and Ofelia García
7 Keeping the Plurilingual Insight: Visualising the Literacies
of Out-of-School Children in Northern Ghana 107
Brendan Rigby
Part III: Plurilingual Classroom Practices and Teacher

Perspectives 127
8 Translingual Innovation Within Contact Zones: Lessons
from Australian and South African Schools 129
Sue Ollerhead, Mastin Prinsloo, and Lara-Stephanie Krause
9 Plurilingualism and Agency in Language Education:
The Role of Dramatic Action-Oriented Tasks 147
Enrica Piccardo and Angelica Galante
10 The Plurilingual Life: A Tale of High School Students
in Two Cities 165
Brian Davy and Mei French
Part IV: Plurilingualism in Higher Education Contexts 183

11 Transforming Lexicon, Transforming Industry: University
Lecturers as Language Planners in Timor-Leste 185
Trent Newman
12 Challenging the Quiet Violence of a Powerful Language:
Translanguaging Towards Transformative Teaching in
South African Universities 201
Monica Hendricks and Ntombekhaya Fulani
13 From Linguistic Preparation to Developing a Translingual
Mindset: Possible Implications of Plurilingualism for
Researcher Education 220
Jane Andrews, Richard Fay, and Ross White
List of Contributors 234

Index 238
FOREWORD
Plurilingualism in Teaching and
Learning—Productive Tension
in Heteroglossia
The past two decades have witnessed a plurilingual and dynamic turn in applied
linguistics. This turn is gaining increasing momentum as poststructuralism is given
a new twist by new materiality ontologies and assemblage theory (Clark, 1997;
Cowley, 2006; de Landa, 2006; Thibault, 1997) culminating in the recent
Distributed Language View (DLV) (Thibault, 2011) and post-humanist applied
linguistics, shifting the researcher’s focus from the speech/language of the
individual and the community to distributed and spatial repertoires (Canagarajah,
2017; Makoni & Pennycook, 2007; Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010; Pennycook,
2016). The DLV emphasises distributed, dynamic repertoires (including both
human bodies and non-human objects and artifacts) and disrupts the monolithic
view of language as stable, bounded codes (e.g. named languages). Plurilingualism
and translanguaging (García & Li, 2014) thus have the potential to disrupt the
hierarchy of named languages. However, the notion of plurilingualism is often
also exploited by neoliberalist discourses to uncritically celebrate and promote a
kind of elite/non-egalitarian multi/plurilingualism dominated by English or other
sociopolitically/socioeconomically powerful languages (Kubota, 2014; Lin, 2015).
Neoliberalist discourses now demand that the elites of the world will also
need English in order to participate in a globalised, neoliberalist economy. Multi/
plurilingualism then often becomes understood as another language or lang-
uages plus English—i.e., an ‘English plus’ multi/plurilingualism (García & Lin,
forthcoming). As the editors of this volume point out, educational policy still
privileges ‘elite’ foreign language learning over maintenance and development of
home languages and literacies (Choi and Ollerhead, this volume). Kubota (2014)
also makes a strong critique of the trans-, multi-, pluri-, super-diversity discourses
pointing out that these theoretical discourses often have little to offer when it
x Foreword
comes to addressing issues of inequalities facing linguistic minorities in education

and society.
That said, I am still optimistic that the plurilingual and translanguaging turn
does have something important to offer, as we can gain insights from the
multifarious ways in which the authors of the articles collected in this volume
have critically engaged with these complex issues in each of their diverse contexts.
What unifies them is the commitment to a candid and critical discussion of how
to serve students’ best interests amidst all these new competing policy discourses
and institutional regimes. Their critical discussions remind me of Hilary Janks’
critical exploration of how one might overcome the ‘access paradox’, which says
that providing students with access to the dominant codes perpetuates the
domination of these codes in society ( Janks, 2004). Janks’ (2010) critical literacy
synthesis approach proposes that different ways of doing critical literacy follow
from different ways of conceptualising the relationship between language and
power by foregrounding one or other of the four key orientations: domination,
access, diversity and design. These four orientations to critical literacy are inter-
dependent and should be integrated in practice. It has very important implications
for the application of genre theory (or other kinds of pedagogy) geared towards
providing access to the dominant linguistic/academic conventions, styles, registers
in education or society:
Genre theory without creativity runs the risk of reifying existing genres;
deconstruction without reconstruction or design reduces human agency;
diversity without access ghettoises students. Domination without difference
and diversity loses the ruptures that produce contestations and change. . . .
We need to find ways of holding all of these elements in productive tension
to achieve what is a shared goal of all critical literacy work: equity and
social justice. We need to weave them together in complex moves from
deconstruction to reconstruction to deconstruction, from access to
deconstruction to redesign, from diversity to deconstruction to new forms
of access. These different moves need to control and balance one another.
( Janks, 2010, p. 27; italics added)
What I’d like to highlight is Janks’ use of ‘productive tension’. The plurilingual,
dynamic turn has highlighted tension as an inescapable condition of our existence
now. We need to provide students with access to the powerful dominant ‘named
languages’ or genres/conventions through plurilingual pedagogies (Lin, 2013;
Lin & Lo, 2017; Lin & He, 2017) and yet we also need to raise students’ critical
awareness of the domination of these (institutionally stabilised) conventions,
registers and named languages while encouraging and validating students’ diverse,
creative translanguaging acts in the direction of expanding their distributed,
emplaced repertoires (Turner & Lin, forthcoming). It is a difficult yet interesting
time because there is no easy stipulation of pedagogies but only a constant, reflexive
Foreword xi
juggling with all these different (competing) goals/orientations in a kind of

productive tension—a kind of tension-filled heteroglossia in the full Bakhtinian
sense (Bailey, 2012).
Angel M. Y. Lin
The University of Hong Kong
References
Bailey, B. (2012). Heteroglossia. In M. Martin-Jones, A. Blackledge, & A. Creese (Eds.),
The Routledge handbook of multilingualism (pp. 499–507). London, UK: Routledge.
Canagarajah, S. A. (2017). The smartest person in the room is the room: Emplacement as language
competence. Keynote speech delivered in the Annual Conference of the American Associ-
ation for Applied Linguistics (AAAL), 18–21 March 2017, Portland, OR.
Clark, A. (1997). Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Cowley, S. J. (2006). Language and biosemiosis: A necessary unity? Semiotica, 162 (1/4),
417–444.
De Landa, M. (2006). A new philosophy of society: Assemblage theory and social complexity.
London, UK: Continum.
García, O., & Li, W. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education.
Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.
García, O., & Lin, A. M. Y. (forthcoming). English and multilingualism: A contested history.
To appear in P. Seargeant (Ed.), Routledge handbook of English language studies. London,
UK: Routledge.
Janks, H. (2004). The access paradox. English in Australia, 139(1), 33–42.
Janks, H. (2010). Literacy and power. New York: Routledge.
Kubota, R. (2014). The multi/plural turn, postcolonial theory, and neoliberal multi-
culturalism: Complicities and implications for applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics, 37(4),
474–494.
Lin, A. M. Y. (2013). Towards paradigmatic change in TESOL methodologies: Building
plurilingual pedagogies from the ground up. TESOL Quarterly, 47(3), 521–545.
Lin, A. M. Y. (2015). Egalitarian bi/multilingualism and trans-semiotizing in a global world.
In W. E. Wright, S. Boun, & O. García (Eds.), The handbook of bilingual and multilingual
education (pp. 19–37). Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell.
Lin, A. M. Y., & He, P. (2017). Translanguaging as dynamic activity flows in CLIL
Classrooms. Journal of Language, Identity and Education, 16(4), 228–244.
Lin, A. M. Y., & Lo, Y. Y. (2017) Trans/languaging and the triadic dialogue in Content
and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) Classrooms. Language and Education, 31(1):
26–45.
Makoni, S. and Pennycook, A. (2007). Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages. Clevedon,
UK: Multilingual Matters.
Otsuji, E. and Pennycook, A. (2010). Metrolingualism: Fixity, fluidity and language in flux.
International Journal of Multilingualism, 7(3), 240–254.
Pennycook, A. (2016). Posthumanist applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics, amw016.
Thibault, P. J. (1997). Re-reading Saussure: The dynamics of signs in social life. London, UK:
Routledge.
xii Foreword
Thibault, P. J. (2011). First-order languaging dynamics and second-order language: The

distributed language view. Ecological Psychology, 23(3): 210–245.
Turner, M., & Lin, A. M. Y. (forthcoming). Translanguaging and named languages:
Productive tension and desire. To appear in International Journal of Bilingual Education
and Bilingualism.
PREFACE
The past three decades have seen monumental political and economic changes
taking place around the world, resulting in a marked increase in cross cultural
contact. Rapid increases in mobility and migration have given rise to a proliferation
of terminologies to capture the cultural and linguistic integration that has ensued
across communities on a large scale, including terms such as translanguaging
(García, 2009), code-meshing (Canagarajah, 2006) polylingualism ( Jørgensen,
2008), third spaces (Gutierrez, 2008) and metrolingualism (Otsuji & Pennycook,
2010). This profusion of terms calls for a reconceptualisation of language as system
to one of language as an inherently social practice, in which grammars are
emergent, performative, mixed and distinctly multimodal (Pennycook, 2012).
The term “plurilingualism” emerged from the Common European Framework
of Reference for Language Learning and Teaching (Council of Europe, 2001),
which characterised plurilingual competence as the ability to use several different
languages for communication. Within this view, people are seen as social actors
who have varying degrees of proficiency across a number of languages. These
competencies do not sit discretely alongside each other. Instead, together they
form a “composite” repertoire of competencies (Coste, Moore & Zarate, 2009,
p. 10) that people can draw upon during communication. Plurilingualism has
thus come to be seen by most language educators, policy makers, curriculum
designers and learners as an essential feature of communities and classrooms.
Plurilingualism in Teaching and Learning: Complexities across Contexts assembles
a rich and diverse range of research studies on the role of plurilingualism across a
wide variety of teaching and learning settings. It addresses a range of mainstream
and specialised contexts, examining the position of learners and teachers as users
of plurilingual repertoires, and the opportunities and challenges posed by the
different policies, teaching practices, training and resourcing in these environments.
xiv Preface
While this book illuminates the possibilities and affordances of plurilingual

education, it also makes space for both researchers and educators to clarify and
critically reflect upon plurilingual endeavors in their specific contexts. This book
is not about advocating for any one position, or ‘stance’. It is also not about telling
practitioners what to do but about interrogating the possibilities and constraints
of a ‘plurilingual stance’ in different contexts. By seeing how researchers tease
out and analyse the complex dynamics that crisscross particular teaching and
learning settings around the world, such as the interactions between policy,
practices, resources and the positions of different stakeholder groups, the book
also encourages educators to analyse their own practices and spaces.
The book is divided into four sections: 1) Language-in-education policies;
2) Plurilingual student repertoires; 3) Plurilingual classroom practices and teacher
perspectives and 4) Plurilingualism in higher education contexts.
In each of the 12 chapters, authors will take a close look into the possibilities
and constraints in taking up a plurilingual stance within the unique dynamics that
constitute particular spaces of teaching and learning. Factors of influence include
policies, histories, discourses, pedagogies, practices, resources, and linguistic and
cultural repertoires. Through a critical analysis of the context, each contributor will
propose pedagogical possibilities s/he thinks are most appropriate for the setting.
The aim of the book is to help researchers, teacher trainers and teachers to
think more deeply, rigorously and critically about their orientations, beliefs, values
and approaches to language teaching and learning. In drawing out the complex
dynamics that assemble in particular teaching and learning settings, we believe
teachers will gain clearer insight into the dynamics that flow in their teaching
spaces so that they may “develop the knowledge and skill, attitude, and autonomy
necessary to construct their own context-sensitive pedagogic knowledge”
(Kumaravadivelu, 2001, p. 541). Trendy and new terms are moving at a rapid
pace in multilingual studies. This book aims to provide a reflective punctuation
point or pause in thinking through the ideas before translating them into practice.
Few books on plurilingualism cover as comprehensive and extensive coverage
of the topic. The chapters in this book consider both language and literacy edu-
cation. While the majority of the chapters will focus on English language learning
in different contexts, we also include studies where English is used as a vehicle
for teaching content. Furthermore, chapters in this book will address a range of
educational contexts such as mainstream and intensive English language settings
at different stages of education, including primary, secondary, vocational and
tertiary levels. In addition, we give focus to contexts of education which are often
sidelined in contemporary discussion of plurilingualism, including de-colonised
settings, developing nations, marginalised learners in developed settings.
Most of the chapters in this volume provide a finely grained description of
plurilingual interaction, in sites presented as micro-systems embedded within the
broader, ideological macro-context of language policy and planning. In this way,
Preface xv
the book provides an invaluable contribution to the study of cultural and linguistic
diversity in teaching and learning contexts around the globe, providing situated
accounts of linguistic, social, political and pedagogical practice.
References
Canagarajah, S. (2006). Towards a writing pedagogy of shuttling between languages:
Learning from multilingual writers. College English, 68, 589–604.
Coste, D., Moore, D., & Zarate, G. (2009). Plurilingual and pluricultural competence.
Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe. Retrieved from www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/
publications_en.asp?toprint=yes&-40
Council of Europe. (2001).Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning,
teaching, assessment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
García, O. (2009). Bilingual education in the 21st century: A global perspective. Malden, MA:
Blackwell.
Guiterrez, K. (2008). Developing a sociocritical literacy in the third space. Reading Research
Quarterly, 43, 148–164.
Jørgensen, J. N. (2008). Polylingual languaging around and among children and adolescents.
Kumaravadivelu, B. (2001). Toward a post-method pedagogy. TESOL Quarterly, 35,
537–560.
Otsuji, E., & Pennycook, A. (2010). Metrolingualism: Fixity, fluidity and language in flux,
Pennycook, A. (2012). Language and Mobility: Unexpected Places. Bristol, UK: Multilingual
Matters.
1
INTRODUCTION
Sue Ollerhead, Julie Choi, and Mei French
Plurilingualism in Language Studies

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the impact of globalisation and
new technologies has seen previously isolated linguistic groups come into
increasing contact with each other. This has led applied linguists concerned with
linguistic diversity and multilingualism to shift away from associating the term
multilingual with an “enumerative strategy of counting languages and romanticising
a plurality based on these putative language counts” (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007,
p. 16). Instead of thinking about languages in additive, discrete systems where
we have distinct cognitive compartments for separate languages with different
competencies for each (see de Jong, 2011; Makoni & Pennycook, 2007 on the
‘collateral damage’ such embedded notions of language may be perpetrating),
languages are thought of as always in contact with and mutually influencing each
other, always open to renegotiation and reconstruction, and as mobile resources
that are appropriated by people for their purposes (Canagarajah, 2013, pp. 6–7).
Thus, increasingly, researchers do not start with languages in language studies
but with people, translingual practices, places and spaces where communication
transcends both “individual languages” and words, thus involving “diverse
semiotic resources and ecological affordances” (Canagarajah, 2013, p. 6). This
proliferation of new ways of conceptualising linguistic diversity has resulted
in the Council of Europe and scholars such as Moore (2006) and Piccardo (2013)
drawing a distinction between the terms “multilingualism” and “plurilingualism”.
While the term “multilingualism” denotes several different languages co-existing
in a given physical location or social context, the term “plurilingualism” accounts
for the ways in which individuals’ linguistic repertories overlap and intersect and
develop in different ways with respect to languages, dialects and registers. Thus,
2 Sue Ollerhead, Julie Choi, and Mei French
while multilingualism is “the study of societal contact”, plurilingualism allows us

to study the individual’s repertoires and agency in several languages (Moore &
Gajo, 2009, p. 138).
Such a shift has resulted in an explosion of new terminologies that help us to
think about language practices in more fluid ways. García & Li Wei (2014) describe
translanguaging as “the enaction of language practices that use different features
that had previously moved independently constrained by different histories, but
that now are experienced against each other in speakers’ interactions as one new
whole” (p. 22). Li Wei (2015) also describes translanguaging as “the strategic
deployment of multiple semiotic resources, e.g. languages, modalities, sensory cues,
to create a socio-interactional space for learning and understanding, knowledge
construction and identity negotiation” (p. 32). Jørgensen, Karrebæk, Madsen
& Møller (2011) use the term polylanguaging to illustrate the [interactional] use
of features associated with different “languages”, even when speakers know only
a few features associated with (some of) these “languages” (p. 33). Rather than
assuming connections between language and culture, ethnicity, nationality or
geography, metrolingualism, as coined by Otsuji and Pennycook (2010), “seeks to
explore how such relations are produced, resisted, defied or rearranged” (p. 246).
Blackledge and Creese (2010) draw on Bakhtinian notions such as heteroglossia,
polyphony, double-voicedness, dialogue, and multivocality to reflect the notion of simul-
taneity of multiple meanings, intentions, personalities and consciousness and the
traces of a speaker’s past, the present context and future desires that are embedded
within utterances. Lin (2013) pushes for ‘plurilingual pedagogies’ in language
teaching and learning, “fostering plurilingual competences[,] . . . creating and
affirming plurlingual identities and subjectivities” (p. 540). While similar but
different in their own ways, scholars in this area of language studies take the overall
stance of rejecting notions of language as “the co-existence of multiple linguistic
systems [as] discrete, ahistorical, and relatively self-contained” (Bailey, 2012,
p. 500). The focus in multilingual studies, as we understand it, now inherently
starts with a polyphonic lens that seeks to capture the simultaneity of multiple
language use, the inclusion of various semiotic resources, and the socio-political/
historical and negotiation processes that shape utterances in a certain point in time
and space. “Polycentricity”, the crisscrossing of multiple meanings but also mul-
tiple belongings (Blommaert, 2005, p. 75) is inherently present in today’s studies.
García (in García and Sylvan, 2011) argues that today’s multilingual and
multicultural classrooms are defined by a “plurality” of language practices. She
eschews the notion of pedagogies that cater for specific language groups, instead
advocating for a focus on the singularity of individual students within a classroom
characterised by multiple linguistic practices. To this end, she espouses Makoni
& Pennycook’s (2007) term “singularization of plurality—that is, a focus on the
individual differences in the discursive regimes we call languages” (p. 386).
Certainly, with rising global mobility of many types, the focus for researchers
and educators is turning increasingly to extreme linguistic heterogeneity brought
Introduction 3
about by new immigration patterns into settings previously constructed as

monolingual or as having relatively homogeneous multilingual populations.
Multilingualism and Literacy

Within prevailing teaching practices in many mainstream educational teaching
settings, additional language learners experience serious challenges in achieving
high literacy levels and literacy engagement (August & Hakuta, 1998; Collier,
1992; Cummins, 2000). In Canada, Ashworth (2000) noted that despite multi-
culturalism being promoted in many educational systems, bilingual children were
gradually becoming more at risk of losing their home language rather than
developing and maintaining it alongside English or French. This is despite the
fact that successive empirical studies over the past century have found that
literacy development in two or more languages provides not only linguistic
benefits, but also cognitive and social advantages for bilingual/multilingual
students (Cummins & Early, 2011; García, Bartlett, & Kleifgen, 2007). Studies
have also found that achievement in first language literacy is a key indicator of
success in academic literacy in the second language, and that home language
maintenance supports second language and academic development (Thomas &
Collier, 1997). However, educational policy still privileges ‘elite’ foreign language
learning over maintenance and development of home languages and literacies.
In Australia, Eisenchlas, Schalley and Guillemin (2015) state that “the more
multilingual Australian society has become, the more assimilationist the policies
and the more monolingual the orientation of the society politicians envisage and
pursue” (p. 170). In relation to literacy education, there are critiques of literacy
education being limited to English monolingual assumptions, and marginalising
multilinguals and multilingualism (see Coleman, 2012; Cross, 2011, 2012; Lo
Bianco, 2002). According to García (2009), schools need “to recognise the multiple
language practices that heterogeneous populations increasingly bring and which
integrated schooling, more than any other context”, has the potential to liberate
(p. 157). To date, however, these research findings have done little to influence
multilingual education policy and practice.
In recent years, multilingual literacy researchers have proposed a suite of
principles they have found to enhance students’ multilingual literacy proficiency.
We now understand that bilingual students’ cultural knowledge and linguistic
abilities are vital for enabling them to engage with academic tasks across the
curriculum; teaching practices that draw upon students’ identities will lead to their
investment in literacy learning; and collaboration between schools and parents
from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds offers a rich resource for
literacy development (see Cummins, 2006; Helot & Young 2002; Hornberger
& Link, 2012; Molyneux, 2009). As de Jong and Freeman Field (2010) discuss,
teaching strategies from bilingual settings can be adapted to support students in
linguistically heterogeneous classrooms. Methodologies associated with research
into effective multilingual literacy practices include building upon students’ funds
of knowledge (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005), and the use of collective
pedagogical inquiry frameworks that use teachers/school based researchers and
university-based educators/researchers to work together to observe and document
pedagogical strategies being made in particular contexts. The case studies serve
to document the feasibility of using specific multilingual pedagogical strategies
that use students’ home languages as valuable resources for learning and teaching.
Theoretical Lenses
A number of theoretical lenses inform research into multilingual literacy practices.
The concept of multiliteracies, introduced by the New London Group in 1996
and developed by numerous researchers such as Cope and Kalantzis (2000;
2009), Hull and Schultz (2001), and Pahl and Rowsell (2005), emphasises multi-
modality as a discerning feature, focusing on the multiple semiotic resources avail-
able to students involved in meaning making, including audio, visual, linguistic,
spatial and performative. This allows students to extend and adapt their literacy
learning by responding to cultural and linguistic diversity and promoting the use
of home languages within the classroom.
Another useful framework is that of post-structural theories of identity and
the concepts of identity positioning (Toohey, 2000) and identity investment
(Norton, 2000). McKinney and Norton (2008) propose that “foregrounding
identity and the issues that this raises are central in responding critically to diver-
sity in language and education” (McKinney & Norton, 2008, p.195). Drawing
on the notion of identities as temporal, fluctuating, shaped by social context
and coming about as a result of membership of specific communities, teaching
strategies that harness students’ funds of knowledge and draw upon their linguistic
and social capital help students to develop a positive learning identity.
Complementing these theoretical frameworks are pedagogies such as the
Literacy Engagement Framework (Cummins & Early, 2011), which emphasises
engagement in literacy tasks as a necessary condition for literacy achievement.
Reinforcing and affirming students’ identity positions is crucial in this regard.
Thus, activities such as identity texts, which include elements of creativity and
cultural expression through multiple modes (e.g. art, drama, animation) allow
students to articulate, shape and account for their identities in front of various
audiences and engage in feedback and dialog which allows for intercultural sharing.
According to Ntelioglou, Fannin, Montanera, and Cummins (2014), classrooms
that facilitate students’ use of multiple languages through multimodal texts allow
students to select their own multiple linguistic repertories. In other words, they
are able to make meaning through their own choice of medium. Such an ap-
proach, or “stance”, cultivates learner autonomy, identity investment and literacy
engagement (p. 12). When teachers open up instructional spaces for multilingual
and multimodal forms of pedagogy, languages other than English are legitimised
Introduction 5
in the classroom and students’ home languages and community connections

become resources for learning. Thus, teachers play an important role in not only
bringing these ideas to their classroom practices but how they weave the
plurilingual into either resource-poor spaces or spaces that have a long-standing
monolingual or mono-centric ideological structure, tradition or formal policy.
Literature in TESOL and language education is starting to show examples of
teachers taking up a plurilingual stance. Before we turn to the kinds of comments
we are beginning to see, we will clarify what we mean by teachers taking up a
plurilingual stance.
What we Mean by a “Plurilingual Stance”

We base our understanding of what we mean by taking up a plurilingual stance
by foregrounding it in Canagarajah’s (2011, p.1) statement that, for multilinguals,
languages are part of a repertoire that is accessed for their communicative
purposes; languages are not discrete and separated, but form an integrated system
for them; multilingual competence emerges out of local practices where multiple
languages are negotiated for communication; competence doesn’t consist of
separate competencies for each language, but a multicompetence that functions
symbiotically for the different languages in one’s repertoire; and, for these reasons,
proficiency for multilinguals is focused on repertoire building—i.e., developing
abilities in the different functions served by different languages—rather than total
mastery of each and every language.
We understand teachers taking up a plurilingual stance typically embody the
following beliefs and understandings:
a) Successful learners of English are successful plurilingual learners and com-

municators, rather than pseudo native speakers.
b) All of a student’s language knowledge is part of their single plurilingual
repertoire, and languages are not siloed in their mind.
c) Understanding of plurilingual practices such as translanguaging, switching,
mixing, translating as the norm.
d) Understanding that language competence is realised in its performance and
practice, not as a set of knowledge inside a learner’s head.
As a consequence of these ways of thinking about language then, a teacher

with a plurilingual stance would seek ways to:
e) acknowledge multilinguality of students and society as something that is both

normal and valued as an achievement;
f) activate students’ existing knowledge of and in the languages that they
know;
g) link new knowledge to that existing knowledge;
h) link language learning and literacy skill to existing knowledge of language

and literacy in the full range of languages possessed by learners;
i) use a range of students’ plurilingual resources and practices in the classroom
to support learning through various means including interaction, individual
tasks and resources;
j) build on students’ plurilingual repertoires so that these repertoires expand
and mature as the students do.
Teachers Taking up a “Plurilingual Stance”

In English-medium countries such as the United States, Canada, the United
Kingdom and Australia, increased migration flows have resulted in English
language learners (ELLs) enrolling in greater numbers than non-English language
learners in some urban areas. Accordingly, a new focus has been placed upon the
ways mainstream teachers are prepared to meet the language and literacy needs
of ELLs. Existing research suggests that mainstream secondary school teachers feel
inadequately prepared to cope with such learners (Gitlin, Buendia, Crosland &
Doumbia, 2003; Reeves, 2006). Moreover, many mainstream teachers fail to
identify with the practice of drawing upon students’ home languages as a resource
for language and literacy teaching. Much of this research has been conducted in
the United States, and includes studies on teacher attitudes towards inclusion
(Franson, 1999; Youngs & Youngs, 2001), curriculum changes (Reeves, 2006)
and teacher training (Crandall & Christison, 2016; Hutchison & Hadjioannou,
2011). In Australia, research conducted by Hammond (2008) found that while
teachers had predominantly favourable views on cultural and linguistic diversity,
mainstream teachers had little confidence to incorporate multilingual pedagogies
into their content teaching. To address this issue, Hammond (2014) calls for “more
wide-ranging, theoretically robust accounts of teacher learning” to support
EAL/D learners in particular (p. 530).
In a recent study into students’ use of their plurilingual resources in an
Australian high school, French (2015) interviewed teachers of a variety of school
subjects on the place of students’ home languages in school education. Many
teachers were positively disposed towards students’ plurilinguality as a resource
for learning, but lacked strategies to engage this in the classroom. We include
some of the teacher comments from the larger study to illustrate the complex
influences and implications of a plurilingual stance.
The majority of teachers recognised the role of students’ plurilingual repertoires
as potential funds of knowledge. Mary (participants’ names are pseudonyms), an
IT teacher and member of school leadership, recognised home languages as a
vehicle for recognising students’ prior knowledge in the classroom. This is
important to learning, because, she believed, “it’s almost like an impossibility for
anyone to learn without utilising what they already have”. Likewise, Dennis,
another IT teacher, saw home language as a useful tool in his classroom to remove
Introduction 7
barriers to learning. “It takes one barrier away and it makes them, gives them
one less thing to worry about.” Gerta, a teacher of Italian language, humanities
and English, valued her students’ plurilingual repertoires for learning: “Well really,
we should be encouraging students to learn the best way that they can learn.
So if that is the multilingual way, then that’s what we should be encouraging.”
However, the counterpoint to this positive disposition was the lack of knowledge
of how to support plurilingual repertoires in the classroom, also articulated by
Gerta. “I think languages are so valuable but we don’t, we don’t use them as
much as we should, so I don’t know what the role should be.” Comments such
as these point us to the fact that, although teachers may take on a plurilingual
stance, the curriculum they must work within, or the dominant practices of the
institution, may not be set up to encourage or support such a stance.
At the same time as they espoused the value of students’ plurilingual resources,
teachers rued their inability to enact strategies to engage students’ linguistic
resources in the classroom. Mary showed a keen awareness of opportunities for
students to draw on multilingual resources in her classroom, although she
recognised implementing these strategies was not always as straightforward for
other teachers as for herself. “Because I think a lot would just think it’s too hard
or I don’t know how . . . I don’t even know how, it’s just trying to give that
opportunity”. With plurilingual teaching strategies outside of the expertise and
experience of these teachers, some placed responsibility back onto the students.
The difficulty for John, a physics and maths teacher and a speaker of Russian as
his first language, was that he would not be able to assist his students if they chose
to do this:
I don’t mind if one girl talks to another using a different language to help
her understand. It’s fine. It’s perfectly fine and fine, but my problem is that
it’s like beyond my control. I cannot interfere or cannot influence this
process. I don’t mind if they do it, I am more than happy to accept this
process. I don’t say like, ‘don’t do it,’ now, they can do this, fine. Well if
they for example in addition to English physics book, they also read the
same physics in Japanese to understand ideas better, then more than
welcome. Problem is that I cannot do it myself.
In situations such as these, we might begin to think about the changing roles
of teachers when students can draw on multiple resources to find the information
they need. What is the job of the teacher in providing such resources, and how
can the teacher assess the contribution of these resources to students’ learning?
The questions of researchers in this field must mirror those of teachers. What
is the role of students’ home languages in the classroom? How can teachers engage
these plurilingual resources? It is clear there is a place for more teacher education,
knowledge, and support in helping teachers to think through what it means to
take up certain positions in pedagogical terms (see also Ellis, 2013 on the need
to acknowledge and value teachers’ plurilingualism). Considering teachers are

invariably dealing with learners from unequal social backgrounds, life trajectories
and political circumstances, a ‘critical’ take, where explorations of assumptions,
ideologies, values, authority, affect, and power that shape particular people in
particular situations, needs to be at the center of teacher education. It is within
this line of critical thinking that we take Kubota’s (2014) following statement
seriously into account.
The Problem with the Plurilingual Stance

While we are excited by the increasing studies on the trans-, multi-, poly-, and
pluri-, as language teacher educators, we take heed of Kubota’s (2014) critique
of this ‘multi/plural turn’ where she argues that the multi/plural turn should not
be embraced with unqualified optimism. She states:
While notions such as hybridity, fluidity, and multiplicity are potentially

liberating, they can obscure actual struggles and inequalities . . . Using the
multi/plural frame of reference with insufficient critical reflection makes
us complicit with a neoliberalism that exacerbates economic and educational
gaps and with a neoliberal multiculturalism that evades racism and other
injustices. (p. 17).
As we reflect on Kubota’s comment in relation to language education and

language teacher education, we are also reminded of examples from Cenoz’s (2009)
work in Basque multilingual education and other contexts involving minority
languages that show translanguaging can be considered simultaneously as a threat
to the survival of minority languages, or as an opportunity for their development.
In the context of minority ethnic groups or groups with less social power, Wallace’s
(2013) argument that “the privileging of choice and freedom may not . . . work
well for those who have not the cultural ‘know-how’ to play the system”
(p. 232) is also an important factor to consider. This is illustrated in comments
by teacher Gerta in French’s study. She wondered:
Would we be doing them a disservice by doing it in another language inside

of the classroom? You know, if this is where they want to live and build
a life, and that is the language that we speak, which is a downfall of Australia,
that we only speak English, then are we doing them any justice by speaking
another language there might not be any value in?
Key to the successful adoption of a plurilingual stance is understanding the

complex socio-historical context in which students’ language practices are formed
and practiced. But we also must ask, do inevitable missteps due to gaps in teachers’
understanding threaten the position of already vulnerable plurilingual students,
Introduction 9
or is it still more equitable for individual teachers to adopt such a stance even
without full understanding of their linguistic setting?
As a language teacher educator, over the years I ( Julie) have collected students’
comments voiced in class while I observe my teachers in their teaching practicums.
Adult learners have expressed that they appreciate teachers who allow them to
use all of the resources they have available to them but, outside of their safe class-
rooms, they realise their resources are either not appreciated, accepted or not
helping them to achieve their goals in crucial moments such as finding jobs. Inter-
national students recognise there is a more welcoming attitude towards World
English accents and pronunciations as they learn English in English medium
countries. But they do not know how to deal with their own impatience with
those they cannot understand nor what to do about the deeper desires that have
been instilled in them that make them feel their pronunciation is shameful.
Teachers who don’t have much understanding of the politics behind certain
dialects, varieties, registers and styles of particular languages and ways of dealing
with sensitive cultural issues also run into trouble when asking their students to
draw on words they know from their other languages to complete classroom tasks.
I have seen heated classroom scenarios where students from Hong Kong, main-
land China, Taiwan and who are Chinese residents of Korean descent, have
had to work together while each of them disagreed passionately on the other’s
interpretation causing tension-filled silence and hostility in the classroom. In a
high school setting, French and de Courcy (2016) note the implications of
a curriculum and system that does not account for social and linguistic distinc-
tions between users of Farsi, Dari and Hazaragi languages. The provision of ‘home
language’ lessons in a single variety, Persian, is an example of educational policy
that falsely homogenises the ethnic, linguistic, religious, academic and individual
characteristics of students, advantaging some, but disadvantaging many. Blanket
statements that usually have good intentions at their core, such as ‘don’t worry
about XYZ’ or ‘be yourself’, ‘just be confident’, or ‘it doesn’t matter if you get
it wrong’, ultimately cause more irritation and silence in learners, and are not
always productive in helping learners to develop their ‘whole self’ in and outside
of the classroom where real problems exist. Teachers’ primary place of concern
is understandably the context of classroom spaces. However, following Kubota,
we believe “increased attention to places where real problems exist can make our
professional activities more socially meaningful and transformative” (p. 18).
We are now asking questions such as, what do these explosions of terminologies
and ideas in the ‘multi/plural turn’ mean in terms of pedagogy and teacher and
learner practices in and out of spaces of language teaching and learning? To what
extent can/should teachers take up a plurilingual stance? Is it all or nothing, or
is a partial adoption still of value? What are the strengths and weaknesses, threats
and opportunities, possibilities and constraints in taking up a plurilingual stance
in teachers’ local teaching spaces where politics, policies, curriculums, cultural
discourses and practices, ideologies and desires differ? What alternative views,
knowledge, and approaches might come to light if we pay more serious attention
to, as Kubota suggests, “asymmetrical relations of power and inequalities that
privilege or stigmatise individuals and groups due to their plurilingualism,
cosmopolitanism, and hybridity on the one hand, or their monolingualism and
monoculturalism on the other” (p. 17)? What new or different possibilities,
constraints, or consequences emerge when we critically explore the unique
assemblages, “the literal bringing together of a range of heterogeneous elements
in different modalities to offer different perspectives on a phenomenon” (Denshire
& Lee, 2013, p. 221), that constitute different spaces of language teaching and
learning? And what might our findings tell us about the kinds of skills, knowledge,
and understandings teachers need in continuing to teach in increasingly hetero-
geneous but unequal and uncertain times? Importantly, we are not only asking
these questions, but by examining pockets of current plurilingual practices, we
propose strategies that can be adopted by teachers.
About the Book

The chapters in this book provide teachers and teacher educators a close look into
the possibilities and constraints in taking up a plurilingual stance within the unique
dynamics that constitute particular spaces of teaching and learning (i.e. policies,
histories, discourses, pedagogies, practices, linguistic and cultural repertoires,
etc.). A range of contexts are addressed, with mainstream curriculum to specialised
settings such as EAL, CLIL or community language classrooms; students ranging
from early childhood to adult learners as well as pre-service teaching courses; groups
with shared language backgrounds through to highly heterogeneous linguistic
mixes; and settings where teachers have different relationships with policy, from
highly regulated to subversive practice. Through a critical analysis of the context,
each contributor will propose pedagogical possibilities s/he thinks is most
appropriate for the setting. The chapters will end with recommendations on the
kinds of skills, knowledge and understandings that are necessary for teachers in
the respective learning area (e.g., language teaching, Literacy, CLIL).
The aim of the book is to help teachers to think more deeply, rigorously and
critically about their orientations, beliefs, values and approaches to language
teaching and learning. In drawing out the complex dynamics that assemble in
particular teaching and learning settings, we believe teachers will gain clearer insight
into the dynamics that flow in their teaching spaces so that they may “develop
the knowledge and skill, attitude, and autonomy necessary to construct their own
context-sensitive pedagogic knowledge” (Kumaravadivelu, 2001, p. 541). Trendy
and new terms are moving at a rapid pace in multilingual studies. This book aims
to provide a reflective punctuation point or pause in thinking through the ideas
before translating them into practice.
The majority of the chapters will focus on English language learning in
different contexts, but we also include studies where English is not the main
Introduction 11
focus but where English is used as a vehicle for teaching content. Most books
on multilingualism overlook content focused contexts, neglecting the significant
proportion of teachers whose daily work is being reshaped by increasing pluri-
linguality of students and the multilingual world for which teachers prepare them.
By showing readers (whom we assume will be mostly teachers and students
interested in multilingual educational studies) how a rich and insightful analysis
is done, teachers will gain direct insight into how to examine their own beliefs
and practices, and will be able to explore what language ideologies sit at the heart
of their contexts and practices.
Chapter Organisation
This edited volume comprises 12 chapters and casts a wide lens on plurilingual
learning and teaching practices in diverse contexts. Among the authors are
researchers who are well established in the field, as well as emerging scholars whose
research is contemporary and topical. Collectively, the chapters examine key issues
related to plurilingual approaches and resources in varied locations around the
globe, ranging from highly urbanised to rural settings, from formal education
to out of school contexts, and within policy environments that serve to either
reinforce plurilingual approaches or to constrain them. The chapters are divided
into four broad themes: 1) Plurilingual language-in-education policies 2)
Plurilingual student repertoires 3) Plurilingual classroom practices and teacher
perspectives and 4) Plurilingualism in higher education contexts.
Part 1 begins with predominant issues of language-in-education policies and
the ways in which they address plurilingual teaching and learning. Joseph Lo Bianco
begins the discussion with a helpful contextualisation of the ways in which
globalisation and migration have forced language policies that have previously
privileged official, dominant languages to “make space” for sub-national languages.
He provides a taxonomy of categories of pluralism in language education,
covering a broad range of international settings from North America, Europe,
Australia, Pacific Island nationals and Southeast Asia, and makes a strong case for
those involved in plurilingual teaching and learning to be viewed as legitimate
shapers of language policy.
With Chapter 3, Priscilla Cruz and Ahmar Mahboob move the discussion to
the Philippines, where they offer a critical analysis of the country’s language policy
shift towards mother-tongue based multilingual education (MTB-MLE). Drawing
on the perspectives of a range of stakeholders, the chapter discusses the ways in
which MTBL-MLE helps to develop and maintain the use of local languages in
school settings, where teachers use them to address classroom content rather than
merely for regulative and interpersonal purposes.
Rebecca Hetherington’s Chapter 4 makes a valuable contribution to the
literature on Australian language in education policy, which has a crucial role to
play in the maintenance and revival of indigenous languages. In her analysis,
Hetherington draws on in-depth interviews with indigenous Australian com-

munity members, arguing that it is their views, needs and interests that should
be foregrounded in the shaping of language policies that affect them and their
communities.
Part 2 of the volume narrows the lens slightly from the broad-picture policy
context to more situated contexts of plurilingual student repertoires, focusing on
students’ access to what Angel Lin (2015) refers to as “trans-semiotic” resources,
including multiliteracies and digital technologies. The first study comes in Chapter
5, by Emi Otsuji and Alastair Pennycook, who explore the metrolingual practices
of students at two tertiary institutions in Tokyo and Sydney. The authors provide
accounts of both their out-of-class and in-class language use, arguing that focusing
too narrowly on translingual educational practices may cause us to overlook the
myriad, fluid and creative ways in which students access semiotic resources across
multiple digital and face-to face contexts.
The second study, by Ofelia García, Laura Ascenzi-Moreno and Sara Vogel
in Chapter 6, reinforces the semiotic potential of digital technologies by providing
an account of how a sixth-grade student from China makes creative use of online
tools to engage more meaningfully in a New York language arts classroom
community. Their analysis of the student’s fluid movement between English and
Chinese, as well as between translation software, online search tools and spoken
and written modes, makes a case for the ways in which “digital translanguaging”
can enrich the ways in which students and teachers interact with one another.
Multimodal student repertoires are also the focus of Chapter 7, albeit in a
far more rural setting. In this study, Brendan Rigby explores the potential of
participatory visual research methodologies to research the literacy practices of
children in northern Ghana who do not have access to mainstream schooling.
Rigby suggests that the ways in which Ghanaian children document their myriad
literacy practices through the lens of a camera, including embodiment, gesture
and performance, provide valuable data on which to build culturally responsive
literacy pedagogies and policies.
Part 3 directs our attention to classroom practices and the perspectives of
teachers, providing another range of contexts from Australia, South Africa,
Canada and New Zealand. Beginning with Chapter 8, Sue Ollerhead, Mastin
Prinsloo and Lara-Stephanie Krause collaborate to compare the ways in which
translingual innovation is taken up in two very different contexts: South African
township schooling, where the majority of children speak languages other than
English yet are taught and tested in English, and Australian urban schooling, where
newly arrived students are immersed in English language instruction to prepare
them rapidly for mainstream schooling. By carrying out a contrastive analysis
between two very different sites, the authors make a case for plurilingual
pedagogies to be viewed as “placed resources”, and for teachers working in such
sites to view their work as occurring within “contact zones”, where cultures come
together in social spaces characterised by unequal power relationships.
Introduction 13
In Chapter 9, Enrico Piccardo and Angelica Galante move the focus on teacher
perspectives to North America, where plurilingual approaches are embraced in
theory, yet remain challenging to implement in school classrooms. In this chap-
ter, the authors advocate for plurilingual pedagogies that appeal to authentic and
personal learning experiences for students. As an example, they illustrate how the
dramatic arts can facilitate learners’ semiotic agency, through the use of meaningful
language development through interactional and situational authenticity.
Teachers are also the focus of Brian Davy and Mei French’s Chapter 10, which
examines teachers’ responses to student plurilingualism in two culturally and
linguistically diverse schools, in New Zealand and Australia. Documenting a range
of teacher responses to their students’ plurilingual practices, Davy and French
conclude that in order for teachers to harness their students’ multilingual resources
effectively, they need to be cognizant of the numerous and often contradictory
factors students face in negotiating their plurilingualism.
Part 4 concludes this volume with a collection of perspectives related to
plurilingualism in higher education contexts, including cases from Timor-Leste
and South Africa. To begin with, Trent Newman explores in Chapter 11 the
strategic ways in which Timorese university lecturers translate and explain key
disciplinary terms to their students. Drawing upon research conducted in three
Timorese higher education institutions, Newman shows how the plurilingual
practices of lecturers are closely aligned with their conceptualisations of work-
place language use.
In Chapter 12, Monica Hendricks and Ntombekhaya Fulani move the
discussion to the higher education context of South Africa, in which the issue
of language, specifically as the medium of instruction, has played a significant
role in recent student protests calling for institutional and cultural reform at South
African universities. In this study, the authors examine the ways in which
university lecturers shift their language practices between English and isiXhosa
in both oral and written modes in a teacher education program. In doing so, they
illustrate how translanguaging can be both pedagogically and politically trans-
formative: Not only does it serve to increase bilingual students’ access to epistemic
knowledge, but it also acts to disrupt the current hegemonic position of English
in South African tertiary education.
Richard Fay, Jane Andrews and Ross White conclude the volume with
Chapter 13, by examining the ways in which “linguistic preparation” and
a “translingual mindset” can contribute to the field of researcher education. The
authors make a strong case for foregrounding the role of language in researcher
education and praxis across diverse disciplines, not only those that are language-
oriented. They point to the potential of translanguaging and translingual insights
to offer valuable insights into “researching multilingually” in linguistically diverse
contexts, thereby informing and shaping all aspects of the research process, from
design to literature review to fieldwork, analysis and presentation of results.
Across the diversity of contexts represented in these chapters, a common thread

is the clear portrayal of plurilingualism as an individual’s repertoire of connected
linguistic resources. We see that learners apply these plurilingual resources
strategically in engaging with education, whether language learning, content
learning, or negotiating the structures of schooling. In engaging with these
chapters, we hope that our readers, be they students, teachers, researchers (or
perhaps all of the above) will make connections between the diverse contexts,
plurilingual practices and responses presented therein, and their own practice.
Readers may take a new perspective in considering ways in which plurilingual-
ism shapes student experience, teacher practice, institutional approaches and policy
across schooling and higher education. The data and analytical perspectives of
these studies can guide and stimulate teachers to embrace the challenge of
critically and creatively building on the plurilingual repertoires of their students.
There are many possible layers of response to this challenge. Educators can seek
out and acknowledge plurilingual identities and ways of learning in their stu-
dents. Teachers and teacher educators can build on students’ personal, social and
electronic plurilingual practices in teaching practice, and from this develop peda-
gogies that engage plurilingual resources in responsive and enriching ways. The
role of plurilingual learners and their teachers can yet come to the fore in shaping
policy that elevates plurilingualism to both an end and a means of education.
There is ambition in these goals, but they are very firmly grounded in the everyday,
yet far from ordinary, experience of plurilingual learners.
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PART I
Plurilingual Language-in-
Education Policies
2
PROVISION, POLICY AND
REASONING
The Pluralisation of the Language
Education Endeavor
Joseph Lo Bianco
An (Academic) Turn?
In 2014, two prominent publishers issued edited volumes with near identical titles
(The Multilingual Turn, edited by Stephen May for Routledge, and The Multilingual
Turn in Languages Education, edited by Jean Conteh and Gabriela Meier for
Multilingual Matters). In that same year, Ryuko Kubota (2014) also identified a
turn, a “multi/plural” shift in applied linguistics linked to postcolonial theory and
neoliberal multiculturalism. This turn, however, is not unidirectional, and in
Kubota’s depiction, neither is it singular.
Nevertheless, this phase of newly productive thinking about language diversity
imposes new demands on the discipline of applied linguistics in general, since
much of this new writing deliberately sets out to challenge the discipline in vari-
ous ways. Because applied linguistics is acknowledged as an autonomous field of
inquiry, investigating language issues based in ‘real world’ situations (Brumfit,
1997), all this is healthy for the growth and sophistication of applied language
studies. This chapter poses questions about the relationship between language
education and provision, policy and reasoning. Although my discussion focuses
largely on Australian experiences, some links are made to global consequences
of these new ways to conceive multilingual communication environments. A key
question explored in the chapter is how teachers and researchers can productively
connect the insights, new directions and concepts of new disciplinary thinking
in practical language education contexts, especially language policy.
This challenge is substantial if we take into account how circumscribed under-
standings of multilingualism are in practical reality. In most societies, a multilingual
22 Joseph Lo Bianco
demography is discussed as a threat or at least a challenge to social cohesion.

This is increasingly true in Denmark, Thailand, Turkey, Myanmar, and even in
societies with long and established traditions and public rhetoric of recognition
of multiculturalism, such as Australia and Canada (see Horst; Joshee, Peck,
Thompson, Chareka & Sears; Özsoy & Bilgi; Lo Bianco & Slaughter; Wang,
Hong & Schapper; in Lo Bianco & Bal, 2016). In other societies such as Brazil
and South Africa, race and cultural affiliation, rather than language diversity, are
the central feature of national discussions about pluralism (see Chamlian &
Kolwalewski; Soudien & McKinney; in Lo Bianco & Bal, 2016). The dominant
way to think about multilingualism appears to be how political systems and
institutions can “manage” it (Little, Leung, & Avermaet, 2014).
At the heart of most change that follows public debate and political agitation
is a pattern of cycles, oscillating between ‘centripetal and centrifugal forces’
(Lo Bianco, 2010). The first tends towards convergence and the second towards
divergence. These are relationally organised and interactive, as politico-discursive
pressures that mutually constitute each other. Change brought about by political
demands, new thinking, or via new social movements, rarely erases existing
arrangements. Instead, prevailing over and changing an existing state of affairs
tends to lead to temporary new practices and accommodations, the original
remaining available to all actors as an alternative to the new.
Observing Australian language policy closely shows that even at times when
one pattern of understanding languages, similar to Ruiz’s (1984) Language as
Resource orientation, appears to have prevailed, a shift to an alternative, even to
the complete opposite, such as viewing multilingualism as a major social problem,
can occur rapidly (Ruiz, 2010). Such radical shifts have characterised English
literacy policy in schools (Schalley, Guillemin, & Eisenchlas, 2015), literacy policy
and programming for adults (Wickert, 2001) and languages other than English,
whether focused on indigenous, immigrant and international languages (Lo
Bianco & Aliani, 2013).
Not the Topic du Jour

Commenting on the upsurge of academic interest in contemporary language
studies Stephen May described multilingualism as a “topic du jour” (May, 2014,
p. 1). Despite “terminological proliferation”, he notes that the situation is positive
because of “the increasing focus on superdiverse linguistic contexts”. The study of
superdiverse linguistic contexts has generated a range of compelling explanatory
notions: Multivocality, plurilingualism, translanguaging, metrolingualism and
polylanguaging. These all have resonance for pedagogy, programming, curriculum
writing, and for how we understand the communicative choices and behaviours
of individuals and groups, and should also impact on public policy formulation.
Unfortunately, language diversity of any kind, let alone as described and
celebrated in the multilingual turn, is not any kind of ‘topic du jour’ in policy-
Provision, Policy and Reasoning 23
making circles. A brief survey shows instead strong moves towards limiting
diversity, by foregrounding either monolingual or prestige biased choices.
Across Asia there is almost complete domination of standard ‘inner circle’
English as the first foreign language of instruction (Cha & Ham, 2008), even in
societies with large domestic second languages, and always in preference to other
Asian languages of neighbour societies. Globally, the first few decades of the 21st
century have been marked by the largest attrition of indigenous languages in
history, especially in North America and Australasia (Lo Bianco, 2014). This is
despite important progress in declarations of and legal-academic theorisation about
language rights (Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson, 2016). There are few settings in
the world where violation of language rights is banned in law or contested in
education and employment practices. In many immigrant-receiving nations edu-
cation, employment, citizenship and public participation are marked by major
language inequalities and prejudices (Piller, 2016).
The main focus of language education planning in many parts of the world
is for cultural assimilation, with occasional weak acknowledgment of diversity.
Most minority languages in societies that do gesture towards multilingual edu-
cation remain positioned in intellectually inferior diglossic relationship with
official languages, inevitable given that most minority language support tends
to be limited in duration and delivered through transition pedagogies. Extreme
limitations on mother tongue education are evident in Southeast Asia for
indigenous and ethnic languages (Lo Bianco, 2016) and in colonial, post-colonial
and globalised sub-Saharan Africa (Kamwangamalu, 2016). In these settings
African languages continue to be minoritised in upper schooling, and in all eco-
nomic domains, and therefore denied the chance to develop the social and
economic prestige that might assure them intergenerational vitality, even in states
that make liberal declarations favouring multilingualism (Kamwangamalu, 2016).
In the Americas, researchers have noted many bright spots where progress and
development have been achieved such as promising examples where new speakers
of endangered languages are being identified and innovative projects of
revitalisation are underway, yet the great majority of languages shed users and
uses and remain intergenerationally endangered (Coronel-Molina & McCarty,
2016).
Perversely, as Schalley, Guillemin, and Eisenchlas (2015) show in a recent
examination of 30 years of “government policies and prominent initiatives”, a
pattern of public restriction has coincided with academic expansion. These writers
call this a “distinct negative correlation” (p. 162) so that “the more multilingual
Australia has become, the more assimilationist the policies, and the more mono-
lingual the orientation of the society” (p. 162). Ominously for future developments
they cite a significant speech by Australian Minister for Social Services, Scott
Morrison, delivered in London in January 2013, in which he argued for a “post
multiculturalism agenda” premised on “the supremacy of Australian values, [and]
the primacy of the English language” (cited in Schalley et al., 2015, p. 173).
24 Joseph Lo Bianco
In light of these restrictions and reversals what lessons can applied linguists
and ‘multilingual turn’ researchers gain from the reflections and research of
specialists who analyse policy production? One aim of the present volume is to
illuminate some possibilities and constraints related to how particular ideas
generated in research can be implanted in policy and practice. This will be the
focus of my discussion here, although I will not address the pedagogy implications
of ‘new multilingualism studies’, but focus instead on language education
provision, policy and reasoning in superdiverse multilingual contexts. Provision,
policy and reasoning can be seen as barometers of how the wider evaluation of
multilingualism is faring in practice, at a time when diversity and pluralisation of
language education in research, teaching and teacher education, are generating
such a rich and powerful account of multiplicity and fluidity of language in society.
The present discussion, therefore, addresses how we are to think about the task
of influencing the decision-making, resource-dispersing, curriculum-formulating,
and assessment-imposing political sphere. This space of power, resources and
decision-making structures public education, and while teaching does provide a
space of semi-autonomous activity, pedagogy is not immune from public policy.
Poor Performance
On 6 December 2016, Australia’s multilingual public radio and television network,
the Special Broadcasting Service, sent a program to air and online entitled: “Our
languages, a national resource, in ‘terminal decline’ (SBS, 2016).” The by-line
accompanying this sensational claim reads: “Australia is losing the riches of its
many languages. Even school children from immigrant families are abandoning
the study of their mother tongues. In the nation’s most multicultural state,
researchers claim students are being ‘punished’ with the scaling down of their
HSC marks” (Feneley & Calixto, 2016).
These three sentences encapsulate recurring issues of administrative unrespon-
siveness, intergenerational attrition and policy crisis, collectively presented as an
overall linguistic calamity. Ominously announced as “. . . the collapse of Australia’s
multi-lingual ambitions”, the Special Report sets out “the grand failure of that
vision for multicultural Australia” which is turning bilingual students into
monolingual ones.
The SBS itself has a substantial investment in this vision. Beginning full
time transmission in 1980 (McLean, 2014), it has long been the most visible
element of national multicultural policy ( Jupp, 2007), the ‘meta-policy’ on
which the pluralisation of Australian language education commenced in the
mid 1970s. The vitality of Australia’s demographic multilingualism and its
cultivation in formal education owes its origin to debates and experimentation
with language rights, cultural diversity and ethnic participation in the era of the
reformist Whitlam government (1972–1975), widely recognised as the most
energetic phase in Australian language politics (Ozolins, 1993).
Reflecting this ethos, the SBS website (www.sbs.com.au/aboutus/our-story/)

describes its mission that:
. . . regardless of geography, age, cultural background or language skills [all

Australians] should have access to high quality, independent, culturally-
relevant Australian media . . . including the estimated three million
Australians who speak a language other than English in their homes . . . to
share in the experiences of others, and participate in public life.
It is a sobering judgment when the premier mechanism of public dissemination

of multilingual information and entertainment, direct heir of nation-changing
cultural choices that refashioned public life through recognition of diversity, decides
that multilingual communication is in ‘terminal decline’. Key evidence supplied
for this claim (Cruickshank & Wright, 2016) is on participation rates in school
language programs, especially enrolments in languages in the pre-tertiary final
school level (Year 12) in New South Wales, the most populous state, and the
effects of the practice of ‘scaling’. Statistical scaling is applied to assessment marks
to produce an individual student’s Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank, or
ATAR, the composite final year score to determine entry into most Australian
undergraduate university programs.
Reviewing 2015 Higher School Certificate (HSC), Year 12, results for before
and after effects of ATAR scaling the Universities Admissions Centre shows
that the average HSC score for “Chinese Background Speakers” of “43 out of
50” is reduced by the ATAR scaling algorithm to 23. A score of 42 in Turkish
was converted to 24.6; a score of 39.1 in Vietnamese was scaled to 26.6; and
an average mark of 45 in Ancient Greek became an ATAR rank score of 41.1.
The 2015 German HSC mark of 40.3 was scaled to 33.9. These languages com-
bine the prestige classical subject of Ancient Greek, non-prestige community/
heritage languages (Turkish, “Chinese Background”, Vietnamese) and prestige
foreign languages (German). The differential effect of scaling on these subjects
demonstrates the essential critique of scaling: That it advantages relatively prestige
languages (Ancient Greek and German) and marks down community based spoken
languages identified with the ethnic or national backgrounds of students from
minority communities.
The SBS story also foregrounds two other features of Australian language
debates: Tension between multicultural rationales versus Asian trade languages
in subject selection, and a version of the cultural rivalry between the country’s
two largest cities, Melbourne and Sydney. These dynamics are as follows:
[I]n 1992 in NSW, 42 per cent of students from a Greek background studied
their language for the Higher School Certificate. By 2011, only 7 per cent
took Greek for the HSC. In the same period, Arabic study has plummeted
26 Joseph Lo Bianco
from 21.7 per cent to 9 per cent of students of Arabic background. And
as Australia embarks on the so-called Asian Century, only one in six NSW
students who start school as bilingual will further develop their language
skills. Just 8 per cent of the state’s students study a language for their Higher
School certificate, less than half the result achieved by Victoria.
Commenting on this data, Dr. Ken Cruikshank (Cruickshank & Wright, 2016)
remarked that while Australia has “an international reputation for its development
of language policy and programs”, in reality “young people . . . spend less time
studying languages than young people in all other OECD countries” (p. 73). He
shows that language study in NSW is concentrated in Years 7 and 8, where 70
per cent of students are offered language programs, but that this falls dramatically
in Year 9 with the onset of elective options of languages. By contrast, in the
State of Victoria language learning opportunities are more extensive, though
not always of greater depth or duration. In 2015, 92.4 per cent of Victorian
government schools offered language programs, accounting for 63 per cent of all
students, with further large enrolments in ‘taster’ programs, making a total of
354,326 students. Additionally, 16,956 students were taking languages through
special provision arrangements of the Victorian School of Languages, bringing
total language enrolments to 374,961 (DET, 2016; Table 1.1).
There has been recent improvement in Victoria so that 92.1 per cent of pri-
mary schools now offer languages, accounting for 77 per cent of government
primary school students engaged in language learning. At the secondary level,
87.9 per cent of Victorian students have access to language learning. This figure
declined at the Year 12 level when only 17.4 per cent of government school
students completed a language, through various assessable official modes of
provision, though this figure is far higher than for NSW.
The concrete problems revealed in this overview of design and delivery,
persistence and performance, are classic issues for language provision policy.
An unresolved sociological tension with direct policy consequences is how
community-based and school-supported languages are connected, what choices
are made by systems and by speakers, and what kinds of program design are
implemented in practice. One upshot of the SBS report is that much more robust
policy input is needed from applied linguistic research to design an adequate formal
language-teaching regime that is appropriate for a hugely multilingual society, a
design in which national priorities and community preferences are so badly
misaligned.
The next section discusses interaction between the worlds of research and
practice that could lead to this more substantive involvement of research
knowledge in policy design, through conversations between applied linguistics
researchers and policy makers, to build more socially responsive language
education arrangements.
Policy Analysis Lessons

A major issue within studies of public policy has been the problem of agenda-
setting, essentially how topics or areas of concern are selected for attention. Policy
makers are faced with multiple claims from constituents, pressure groups and other
interests for policy attention to be devoted to particular causes or topics. The
responsiveness of elected decision makers to constituent pressure is dictated to
some extent by the programs of their political organisations, and their interests
and ideological inclinations. However, political programs are often only general
sets of parameters or orientations derived from the underlying political philosophy
of the party or individual, and most studies of how issues are taken up in practice
in pressure group democracies reveal ample scope for citizen or expert input.
As ‘experts’, applied linguists are positioned in policy conversations as suppliers
of knowledge. To make progress in dialogue with policy makers, the purveyors
of this knowledge need to be present in conversations on political programs.
Effective presentation of research findings relies on the persuasive potential of
research, its legibility within prevailing political discourse, and the extent to which
a shared appreciation of problems and solutions can be negotiated between applied
linguists’ perspectives and those of decision makers.
During the 1970s, Australian governments conceded to demands from
organised alliances of ethnic and indigenous organisations, supported by applied
linguistics researchers, language educators and various civil society support groups,
to overturn discriminatory language laws and to adopt officially supportive
positions on multiculturalism (Ozolins, 1993). In retrospect, the policy rhetoric
of the period appears more accepting of input from researchers than exists today,
given that the climate was generally reformist and open to experimentation, and
in fact produced sweeping educational transformations across many areas of
public policy at the time (Clyne, 2005). A range of impressive new innovations
were commenced to recognise the presence of multilingualism in health, legal,
and educational settings, both symbolic and affirmative, but often pragmatic and
institutionalised as well ( Jupp, 2007). Provision and policy for indigenous and
community language education was created, generating a distinctively Australian
language planning experience, bolstered by a kind of citizenship/settlement
reasoning that supported language maintenance for immigrant/community
languages, a ‘reconciliation’ and social justice legitimation for indigenous language
communities, and skills/competencies/intercultural reasoning for additional
language acquisition throughout mainstream society (Clyne, 2005; Ozolins,
1993). All these innovations, in practice and in ideology, flowed from interaction
between knowledge brokers and power holders. None of these policy positions
was inevitable, alternative ones were possible and are regularly proposed, and the
space in between can be seen as ‘agitational potential’. This field of potential policy
is studied by analysts and is of direct relevance to the question for applied linguistics
that emerges from the multilingual turn.
28 Joseph Lo Bianco
Today Australian language policy has reverted to a more conventional

preference for prestige foreign languages over language maintenance activities or
language reclamation efforts (Liddicoat, 2010). There is a major gap therefore
between the preoccupations of researchers and teachers with the sociolinguistic
reality of multilingualism and apparent official indifference. How are these to be
reconciled? This gap becomes a pronounced gulf when it comes to the political
morality invested by academics in the new depictions of communication, and
claims that new pluralisms open space for various kinds of emancipation or human
rights. Does academic belief and evidence recognising superdiverse social realities
open space for minority communities to gain traction in public policy? If it is
accepted that recognition of pluralism is empowering, how can research know-
ledge be applied to policy production? Is it realistic to hope for impact and change
on the basis of research knowledge? Does ‘terminological proliferation’ assist or
hinder this process? What are the consequences of succeeding in persuasion of
public officials?
To address the prospects for productive exchanges and develop an argument
about how these might occur, I will trace some steps in thinking about research
knowledge and policy action in general terms, informed by ideas from key policy
analysts: Giandomenico Majone and Carol Weiss. I will draw on some of their
early thinking in this area and then briefly outline a map of policy studies, the
‘Multiple Streams Framework’ (Weible and Sabatier, 2014), to look at points of
intersection that are promising.
Policy as Argument and Persuasion

The intersection between research and policy derives from a long history of
philosophical reflection on knowledge and ruling, from Plato through Machiavelli
to modern scholars, and it is often termed the relationship between knowledge
and power. Political decisions revolve around the grounds for action, what legiti-
mations are sufficient for power holders to take action in knowledge-influenced
fields, such as education.
Majone’s (1989) analysis of the point of intersection between ‘science’ and
public policy addresses what are shown to be incommensurable notions of rules
of argumentation. Each domain, academic research and public decision-making,
utilises and relies on different rationalities: Principles of falsifiability within science,
evidentiary robustness in legal settings, and pragmatic achievability and public
accountability in politics.
In Majone’s terms these are typified by evidence, argument and persuasion.
His work was one of the first in mainstream policy analysis to shift discussions
away from technical and managerial operations towards the conversational
rationalities inherent in the process of making policy decisions and disbursing
resources. His writing has convinced many policy analysts that understanding how
argument works is a necessary, legitimate, and acceptable supplement to the
traditional focus on efficient technical procedures that policy analysis has utilised.
The main way to do policy had traditionally been understood to be an exclusive
activity between public servants and elected officials, the former supplying the
latter with costed options, with the possible mediation of political advisers, and
occasionally supplemented by technical demonstrations. Close analysis of real world
actually occurring policy revealed instead that it contains many emotional,
narrative-centred, interest based and other ‘non-technical’ elements, essentially
politics infused with value judgements and political interests. Majone’s project
was to repudiate the technical/managerial paradigm and offer an argumentative/
persuasive alternative, injecting a specific focus on ‘rhetorical skills’ for intending
policy analysts and practitioners, also relevant for those seeking to influence policy
processes. Even explicitly evidence-based policy contains strong elements of
rhetorical skill, because there is often contestation around what counts as evidence,
how it is defined, collected and interpreted. In these ways, public discourse is
central to effective policy processes.
In Majone’s approach, policy analysis “has less to do with formal techniques
of problem solving than with the process of argument” (1989, p. 7). His aim is
to install persuasion and advocacy within the professional preparation of public
officials, policy analysts and the general public, but also to extend the under-
standing of policy processes beyond cost and administrative efficiency operating
through formal ‘objective’ procedures of evaluating options.
Carol Weiss, like Majone, was both a policy practitioner (adviser) and
theoretician with a long focus of analysing major US and international policies
to isolate the effects of and influence from ‘knowledge’, especially knowledge
produced by researchers and research studies. Her work confirms the cultural
hypothesis that policy makers and researchers inhabit different conceptual and
reasoning domains, and that they often do not link well. During the 1960s Weiss
evaluated the US “War on Poverty”, expecting but not finding traction from
her detailed, long term analysis (Dale, 2003). Reflecting on the failed ‘take
up’ by government of expert advice her academic focus shifted to the role of
evaluation, decision-making processes and politics, and especially the limits and
impact of research on the essentially political processes of governmental calcula-
tions. According to Weiss, policy makers, community advocates and academic
researchers all bring unique and often mis-aligned stocks of ‘information’,
‘ideology’ and ‘interests’ to their interactions (Weiss, 1983). Realistically, many
researchers and most research can only expect to have indirect and therefore long-
term impact on the social and political dynamic of public decision making. The
marketplace of knowledge generation is crowded. A multitude of agencies,
interest groups, think tanks, university based academics, management consultants,
investigative journalists etc. produce and peddle knowledge to influence decision-
making. Prospects for success must be assessed against the existing stocks
of information that policy holders have, the persuasiveness and rhetorical skill of
researchers and the power of their interests, and those of policy makers and the
30 Joseph Lo Bianco
perceived, if undeclared interests of academics. Yet, there are some areas where
research information is clearly the source of policy change and influence, such
as the slow-acting origin of changed interpretational frameworks for difficult social
problems. Studies of how research knowledge is used have shown its relevance
to exposing myths, but only after the long percolating effects of introducing new
knowledge into societies play out. New knowledge also builds policy maker
capacity, such as Majone’s stress on teaching public officials rhetorical skill, and
new knowledge is tracked as the source for disconfirming long held assumptions,
setting new agendas. In these ways, research and knowledge generally contribute
to policy ‘enlightenment’ (Weiss, 1977).
There are many insights here of relevance to multilingualism research, such
as how new ways to name and group the phenomenon of language in super-
diverse societies that suggest long term traction for the ‘turn’ are possible. The
flow of new notions percolating into conversations beyond researchers and
multilingual communities can be tracked. In recent work, I reflected on the related
‘turn’ in English studies, especially the efforts of teachers and researchers working
in the paradigm of English as a Lingua Franca who want to influence publishers,
education systems and assessment agencies to dismantle the privilege bias accorded
to ‘inner circle’ Englishes (Lo Bianco, 2014).
In more recent work, policy analysts are building on these foundations of
Majone and Weiss, producing frameworks to account for radically different policy
practices in different societies and in the same societies over time and under
different political regimes. As a result, current frameworks attempt to incorporate
multiple influences on policy, the ambiguity and contradictions of the process
and the roles of information, as knowledge, research, data or wisdom, at different
stages of agenda-setting, decision-making, and the carrying out of decided policies
into action (Weible & Sabatier, 2014).
Three streams of influence, the events and ideas circulating around the topic,
are strong and invariably struggled over in what becomes enacted as policy: The
problems stream (focusing on the names of problems, their representation and how
they come to the attention of policy makers); the politics stream (which addresses
both the formal political process and pressure, persuasion, media and other ways
to enter the formal political stream); and a policies stream (the existing policy settings,
the evaluations and critiques of these, past policy attempts and related ideas linked
to the ‘values acceptability’ of new proposals and their ‘technical feasibility and cost’).
Individuals or groups might exploit a propitious position they hold, whether
crafted by them through skill, rhetorical mastery or because of good fortune, and
become ‘policy entrepreneurs’, exploiting a ‘policy window’ (Kingdon, 1995).
The flow of ideas, events and discourse varies greatly according to the traction
that policy entrepreneurs are able to gain on different issues, or if there is media-
tion from think tanks, media promotion, strategically well placed individual
champions, civil society groups or political alliances of citizens making collective
demands and achieving political traction. The Multiple Streams Framework is
able to accommodate knowledge processes and new ideas, such as the new term-
inology and concepts generated by research making multilingualism normal
rather than exceptional. Multilingual studies can generate a new rationality of
policy analysis and action, for single actors and ethnic groups or professional
associations, or discipline groupings, but what is currently missing is effort from
applied linguistics associations, journals or conferences, to develop convincing or
persuasive representations of social problems in language, in interaction with policy
makers, public officials or opinion-influencing media.
The question arises, to what extent do applied linguists, researchers and
practitioners desire such interactions? What mechanisms are there to facilitate
interaction with policy? What will be the costs and rewards, consequences and
repercussions, of such engagement?
Reflection on Policy Engagements: Adult Literacy and

Asian Languages
The Ordeal of Success 1) Adult Literacy

One of the most compelling accounts of such interaction is by Rosie Wickert
(2001), writing as a researcher who was also a policy actor, on behalf of increased
provision, better policy and acceptance of a permanent social justice oriented
Australian practice of adult literacy education. Wickert’s analysis is a story of policy
influence, initially through a door-opening statistical study of the incidence of
literacy difficulties among adults, extending to narratives about the explanation
of the statistics and the policy and programming responses. The original study,
No Single Measure, consisted of the results of a sample of adults on information
processing and literacy tasks during the late 1980s and persisted through the early
1990s into full-blown policy adoption. The account combines insider reflection,
honest appraisal of outcomes, and a theorised account of the process.
The wider socio-political and ideological context is critical. During the late
1980s and early 1990s, international attention to the problem of adult literacy
shifted from a human rights perspective under the aegis of UNESCO to a human
capital perspective under the influence of the OECD. This macro and major
political/economic shift presented professional organisations, researchers and
teachers with a major challenge and opportunity. The field repositioned itself to
take advantage of the policy opening in which Australian Federal government
authorities who had in 1990, International Literacy Year, imagined that the issue
of adult literacy was only relevant as an item of provision of foreign aid to Pacific
Island developing countries, to a rapid and radical shift, only 4 years later, in which
the role of domestic adult literacy problems was acknowledged, and re-conceived
as hampering micro-economic reform. This reform agenda emphasised the role
of human capital skills in facilitating economic competitiveness, international
exposure, and capital-intensive enterprises.
32 Joseph Lo Bianco
Wickert’s analysis traces the role of statistically presented information, her own
national assessment of the incidence, distribution and characteristics of English
language literacy difficulties among adults in this context of intense public
attention to a field previously dismissed as marginal to policy and primarily the
responsibility of welfare or charity-oriented private tutoring. As a key researcher,
transformed into a policy entrepreneur, unanticipated complications emerged, such
as the relationship with immigrant and Aboriginal people receiving ESL education
and the preferences and politics of the field. Engagement in policy production,
described by some academics as ‘getting your hands dirty’, proved to be successful,
yet also risky, demanding and problematical. The key professional associations
became enmeshed with a major expansion of adult literacy provision, provoking
both celebration and concern. While significant resource increases achieved
greater provision of adult literacy programs and research, and other progress, new
administration imposed tight and intrusive accountability requirements, diverted
attention from and even silenced critical voices and led to prioritisation and curric-
ulum models that proved problematical for many practitioners and researchers.
Some groups of past client groups, those not directly linked to the labour market,
saw provision weaken and worsen, and radical changes to the nature of the field
resulted.
Wickert and other scholars1 report on the coalition building, policy struggles
and terminological changes implicated in this repositioning of adult literacy away
from welfarist charity towards a second chance education right, documenting the
many unforeseen effects among the success and later reversals. Lamented by some
was a generalised loss of professional autonomy, compromise of position and radical
intrusion of bureaucracy into measurement, curriculum, and student selection,
in a process Wickert labels ‘appropriation’.
The Ordeal of Success 2) Asian (Trade) Languages

Different in content but similar in its relations between research and policy is
recent history of Asian language teaching. Australia’s geo-political enmeshment
with Asia has grown from economic and security concerns to become a staple
of public policy, a ‘national project’ (Lo Bianco and Slaughter, 2016), shared by
all major political interests and invested with nation-saving crisis talks for decades
(Dawkins, 1988). A recurring aspect of Asia-centering discussions in policy
documents is to rebuke the nation’s education for its lack of preparation for the
“Asia literate” citizens and workers required in future decades. As a result, and
like the adult literacy example above, a field of relatively marginal educational
activity, the teaching of Asian languages in schools and universities, has been
appropriated to a central role in national discourses of economic restructuring.
Consequently, student language skills, their cultural capabilities and stocks of
knowledge about Asian societies, now feature in public debate about core and
mainstream national skills for economic reconstruction and even for national
survival (Dawkins, 1988). Unlike the marginalisation of Indigenous language

education problems and challenges, and immigrant language maintenance efforts,
or the educational claims of world languages other than Asian ones, or Asian
languages other than trade-linked ones, the study of select Asian trade and
security connected languages has been granted substantial policy attention, public
financing and promotion.
In 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard issued the most recent of a series of White
Papers on Asian engagement, an all-of-government scrutiny of national prepared-
ness. The Australia in the Asian Century (Commonwealth of Australia, 2012) report
was released with high-level endorsement from business and major mainstream
media focus.
The report endorsed the small number of languages selected in 1994 for priority
status according to external trade and geo-political proximity, not according to
criteria linked with speaker populations in Australia or other educational or
intellectual rationales, but trade volume statistics. The multilingualism imagined
in this, and all related documents, was strictly of the foreign kind, distanced in
time and geographic space from speakers, classrooms and communities. Yet, as
evidenced in the SBS report, public discussion about Asian language teaching,
referring to trade foreign languages, tends to be crisis driven, whether related
to declining enrolments (Sturak & Naughten, 2010), poor student interest, or
low assessed proficiency gains from participation in school programs (Scarino &
Elder, 2012).
Unlike the policy entrepreneurship evident in Wickert’s (2001) discussion of
adult literacy, the promotion and priority for key Asian languages has been the
result of policy processes that recruit academics, teachers and community members
to support and legitimise rather than influence and shape policy, pedagogy and
reasoning.
In Singh’s (2001) estimation a considerable part of the project of Asian
engagement recycles orientalist notions of bounded, distant enclosures of foreign
languages, and in any event has little affinity with any of the assumptions, find-
ings, and concerns of the multilingual turn with its focus on superdiverse societies.
Recent focus on diaspora populations and their possible contribution to the
‘engagement effort’ (Rizvi, Louie, & Evans, 2016) suggest efforts to overcome
this legacy and risk of representing Asian societies as increasingly powerful foreign
‘others’, inhabiting bounded distant spaces.
Conclusion
The Australian language education enterprise today is beset by a crisis of under-
performance in provision, weakness in policy conception and reasoning bound
to obsolete notions of languages linked to relatively homogenous bounded
nations. Linguistic human rights are largely denied, unrecognised and denigrated,
and the general reasoning of contemporary policy has lost its decades old
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him than the favour of a Prime Minister. Wallace[127] has totally
failed in speaking, and his principles out-Herod Herod, for the
Ministers could not support him in some assertion he made as to the
King’s power of landing foreign troops without the consent of
Parliament. This heresy to the British Constitution was in
consequence of some Hessians landing from the Isle of Wight.
During my stay at Naples I went, as I was told,
at the peril of my life, to see Baron d’Armfeldt, who SOCIETY AT
it seems is pursued by the Regent of Sweden, the NAPLES
Duke of Sudermania. He is accused of having
formed a conspiracy to murder him, and obtain the keeping of the
minor King’s person. Be this as it may, he has been demanded of the
Court of Naples by that of Sweden formally to be delivered up as a
fugitive rebel, but the Queen is interested about him, and has him
concealed. The Swedish emissaries are active in their search, and
have several times fired at him, and once at a person getting out of
his carriage, whom they mistook for this supposed delinquent. The
accusation is black, but the truth of it uncertain. Ld. Henry laughs at
me for calling him ‘The Victim’: he is at Stockholm, and can judge of
the story. I passed a pleasant day at Cumæ with the Palmerstons. I
took Italinski, Mr. Marsh, and Ld. Holland in my carriage. We were
joined by Count Rumford, etc.
At Rome, which I reached early in May, or, I believe, towards the
middle of April, I lived in the Villa di Matta, a charming situation
upon the Pincian Hill overlooking the city, and commanding a grand
view of the distant hills and Campagna. Almost the whole of our
Neapolitan set was there, with the exception of Lords Digby,
Boringdon, G. Leveson, who for reasons best known to themselves
fled the enjoyments of Italy to fulfil some dull, unimportant duties in
England, where nothing short of compulsion shall ever drag me.
We all made an excursion to Tivoli,
Bessboroughs, Ld. Grandison, and the young men. ‘SAL VOLATILE’
I conveyed Ld. Holland, Mr. Marsh, and Beauclerk.
We lodged at a nobleman’s villa, took our own provisions and cook,
and passed our time with jollity. Lord Bessborough grew very cross,
and from a fit of jealousy about Mr. Beauclerk, compelled us all to
return to Rome, and disquieted our mirth. We got back late at night.
I had seen Tivoli the year before: a charming group of cedars in the
garden of the family d’Este. In the course of our evenings Ld. H.
resolved to make me admire a poet, of whom I had heard but little,
Cowper: he is excellent, and amply repaid the labour of reading
many hundred lines in blank verse, many of which are inharmonious.
Mr. Marsh used to read to me Murphy’s translation of Tacitus. A
sharp fit of gout, brought on by drinking Orvieto wine, did not
increase the good temper of my companion; decorum, not
inclination, made me keep at home. My evenings were agreeable;
he, however, did not mar my comfort by partaking of my tranquil
society. Went out every morning with Ly. B. Ld. Holland’s delightful
spirits cheered us so much that we called him sal volatile, and used
to spare him to one another for half an hour to enliven when either
were melancholy.
I saw the Pope[128] give his benediction to a kneeling and
believing multitude. The sight was imposing. He is an excellent
actor; Garrick could not have represented the part with more
theatrical effect than his present Holiness. I was grievously
disappointed at the Miserere, the composition of Pergolesi, sung by
differently modulated voices in the Sixtine Chapel. The illumination
of the great cross inside St. Peter’s was very striking: the effect of
the light upon the monumental effigies raised the painful recollection
of death, the sombre of the objects and the locality inspired
melancholy. We went about to various chapels, where we found
many a debauched fair one in the comely attire of matronly humility,
expiating in penance and prayer many a dear sin, for the sole
purpose of beginning a fresh catalogue of the cherished crimes. I
saw occasionally the old Santa Croce, Cardinal Bernis, etc., etc., but
Ly. Bessborough, Ld. Holland, Messrs. Marsh, Brand, etc., were those
I lived habitually with.
I became very eager to get to Florence, as I received an account
from Mrs. Wyndham of her arrival, and her being installed in her
diplomatic functions. I parted with regret from Ly. Bessborough, who
is to return by Loreto to England. I went the Perugia road to
Florence, and arrived late in the night at Florence.
My first impulse was to seek with eagerness my little friend, but
to my surprise I found her in a state of despondency that checked
my joy. She abhors the prospect of residing here, and looks back
with regret to England, and even to Bignor, which, whilst there, she
detested. With some difficulty I contrived to make my house
tolerably comfortable. It is a palace belonging to the family of Ginori,
but not calculated for English habits, as it contains only three
fireplaces, and I have not one of the three; my tormentor has one,
the nursery and a sitting-room the others. Lord Holland and Mr.
Beauclerk passed a few days here on their way to Venice. Ld. H.
assured me he came merely to make me a visit. The Palmerstons
and Ly. Spencer came for a few days. Sir G. Elliot came over from
Corsica to pass a few days.
On the twelfth of June I was brought to bed of
a little girl, christened by Mr. Penrose at LORD
Wyndham’s: her name is Harriet Frances.[129] Lady WYCOMBE
Bessborough, Mrs. Wyndham, and Wyndham were the sponsors. A
few days before her christening Ld. Holland returned from Venice;
he came to await the arrival of Lord Wycombe,[130] who joined him
a few days after. Lord Wycombe is a very eccentric person. For the
welfare of himself and family it is to be hoped that his actions are
directly opposite to his sentiments; if not, he must be a scourge. Ld.
H. tells me that the ladies who live with Ld. Lansdown, Miss
Vernon[131] and Miss Fox, call him, ‘A Lovelace without his polish.’
His style of conversation is grand and declamatory, his humour
excellent. He is very gallant: he began by making love equally to me
and Mrs. Wyndham. We half thought of a project of playing him a
trick, and treating him as Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page did the humorous
knight, but Ld. H. said it was playing with an edged tool.
The months of July, August, and September were passed very
pleasantly. Early in September I set off on a solitary expedition to
see Lucca Baths. I went through the town of Lucca, and arrived at
the Baths in time for dinner. I dined with Ly. Rivers: I got up early in
the morning, and went in a portantine to see the hills, etc. The Prato
Fiorito was too distant for a morning excursion; I went from thence
to ——, where I lodged in the house of a Marchese; they gave me a
very good supper, good bed, and received me with cordiality. I spoke
no Italian, and knew none of the party, which was very numerous;
however, I got through the evening tolerably. They must have
thought me a strange person, young, pretty, and alone, travelling
merely to see the quarries of Carrara! It was perhaps an odd freak.
I dined the next day at Massa. I had a letter to a descendant of
the Greek Emperor Paleologus, his name is Paleologo. He is a single
man; to avoid a tête-à-tête with a perfect stranger, the visit to whom
was whimsical in itself, I admitted my maid en tiers. I was in high
spirits and very jolly. I went in a chaise-à-porteurs into the quarries
at Carrara. They produce the finest marble after that found at Paros.
My royal Greek was very careful of me. He escorted me through all
difficulties, torrents, chasms, precipices, etc. Upon the whole I
expect he took me for an aventurière; indeed, he well might, though
my suite rather imposed upon him, for I went in my own chaise, my
maid with me, and on the seat my cook and a footman, and André
was on horseback. I am sure he thought there was something
mysterious, at least, about me.
I went from Massa to Pisa, where to my surprise I found Lords
Wycombe and Holland, and my farouche companion; they had not
found a favourable wind to cross to the Isle of Elba, and were on
their return to Florence. I walked about Pisa in the morning. It is a
beautiful town, and the quay has perhaps the advantage of Florence
in beauty. The Campo Santo, the Campanile, and the church are
very beautiful. The leaning tower is still a problem among the
curious, whether its deviation from the perpendicular was accidental
or intentional. Monsieur de la Condamine measured it with a plumb
line, and found that when let down from the top it touched the
ground at the distance of thirteen feet from the bottom of the tower.
Lord Wycombe read us a sonnet he had just
composed; it was very ingeniously written. I went VALLOMBROSA
to the famous Vallombrosa, a Benedictine convent,
about sixteen miles from Florence. The road for the last six miles is
through a thick forest of chestnut; the ascent is steep. The
monastery is placed on a verdant lawn round which the mountains
form an amphitheatre; the darkest pines surround the whole
building, and hanging woods of that tree only decorate the steep
sides of the hills. No woman is admitted within the convent walls; I
dined at the Mill House close to it. After dinner the Padre Abate and
many of the monks came out and joined us. He is a lively, middle-
aged man, with apparently little love of devotion and a strong love
of pleasure.
In the month of October Lds. Wycombe and Holland went to
Rome and Naples; the latter was unwell, and wanted to consult with
Dr. Thompson. My tormentor went to Milan and Turin for some
months. Mr. Amherst[132] and Mr. Cornewall[133] stayed some time
at Florence. The first is a quiet, sedate young man, full of proprieties
and all sorts of good things. The latter is good-humoured and weak.
Mr. A. fell in love with me and Mrs. W.; he was most in love with the
one he saw last. We went to balls, and were very gay. I quitted my
house in the Via Maggio, as it was too cold for winter, and took a
delicious residence within the walls of the town, but in the midst of
gardens called the Mattonaia or Shuileries.[134] The fitting up of the
house was magnificent; one room cost four thousand sequins. It was
made of rich japan, fine black and gold, and the ornaments were
appropriate and superb.
I read as usual a good deal. About that time, October, I began to
relish the Italian poets, particularly Ariosto. Read the Pucelle in a
castrated edition. Voltaire evidently imitates the Orlando, especially
in the beginning of his cantos; there are some poetical descriptive
passages quite good. Targioni gave me a course of experimental
chemical lectures.
I rode about the environs of Florence; nothing can be more
lovely than the villas. My children lived on Fiesole till about October.
... like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening, from the top of Fesolè.[135]
Milton describes Tuscany often, and seems to feel a proper love

for it. They told me at Vallombrosa of his having resided several
months within their monastery, and of his having written Italian
sonnets—bad enough they were, the critics say.
Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks

In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades
High over-arched embow’r ...
Early in November Lords Wycombe and Holland returned from

Rome. The latter gave us a great ball on the 21st November (1794),
the day he came of age. Ld. Carmarthen and a few other English
added novelty to our parties. The Gallery afforded me a constant
source of delight, the Tribune, &c. About Christmas Sir G. W.
returned from Milan. The masquerading at the Carnival diverted me.
In March, Ld. H., on my birthday, wrote the following lines. ‘To a lady
at Florence, on her birthday, 1795.’[136]
I went to Vallombrosa alone to pass a day or two. I meant to live
in solitude. I lodged at the hospice of the Convent, a building made
for the accommodation of travellers, and used as a residence for the
sick monks during the rigour of the winter, but the overstrained
politeness of the Padre Abate defeated my projects of quiet. He no
sooner heard of my arrival than he came from the sequestered
cloister, and brought with him six or seven of the Fraternity to keep
me company; thus I never had a moment to myself, and was fairly
compelled to go to bed at seven o’clock to escape from their
civilities.
The French have taken possession of Holland this winter, and
compelled the Stadtholder to fly to England with his family.[137] The
terror of the Republican arms spreads everywhere.
I lost my poor father; a nobler, better man he
has not left behind him. Towards me he was MR. VASSALL’S
always fond and affectionate. His only failings DEATH
arose from an excess of goodness. He was weak in
character, as he idolised my mother and was completely subjected to
her dominion. His death puts me into the possession of great wealth,
upwards of ten thousand per annum. Detestable gold! What a lure
for a villain, and too dearly have I become the victim to him.
My health was alarmingly bad, and I was liable to sudden and
frequent losses of blood. Not satisfied with Gianetti’s opinion Mrs. W.
wished me to get better advice, and as Dr. Thompson was at Rome I
went there to consult him in April.
As I had never seen the Spada Palace I determined upon seeing
it, and went with Ly. Plymouth and Amherst. The great ante-camera
contains the statue of Pompey, supposed to be the one at the
pedestal of which Cæsar fell, a retributive justice admired by
superstition. In the gallery, a charming Guido, the ‘Rape of Helen,’
beautiful colouring and composition. It represents the moment of
her flight from Sparta; Paris is conducting her to the ship. She
appears modest and apprehensive; he bold and encouraging. Among
the female attendants there are several pretty faces, particularly one
with a blue head-dress; also a pretty figure of a Cupid in the corner.
A ‘Death of Dido,’ by Guercino; the agonies of death upon a lovely
face finely rendered. The rest of the picture bad, the sword thrust
through the body is pitiful, but the composition was sacrificed to pay
this pitiful compliment to the Spada arms.
Returned by the Siena road as I came. My health did not allow
me to engage in travelling, and to say the truth I made as much as I
could of that pretext, that I might not be forced to return to
England, as I enjoyed myself too much here to risk the change of
scene. In May Sir G. W. set off to England, as he affixed an
importance to his own appearance there that I own I did not strive
to convince him against. In June I set off with my children and Gely
to Lucca Baths, where I had taken Ly. Bessborough’s former
habitation. The situation of the Baths is pretty, but the heat in the
middle of the day is intense, and at sunset the cold and damp begin.
It certainly is unwholesome, and I am surprised at it being sought as
summer residence either upon the score of health or coolness.
J. Hoppner Pinx. 1793

Richard Vassall Emery Walker Ph. sc.
Soon after I arrived Mrs. Wyndham came to
make me a long visit. She left her children at the QUARREL WITH
Villa Careggi in Florence, a villa built by Lorenzo di WYNDHAM
Medici, and inhabited by him until his death.[138]
Mr. Hodges came and resided in my house also. Soon after, Lords
Wycombe and Holland came and lived near. They dined and supped
with me every day regularly. I went to the illumination at Pisa, a
festival in honour of the patron saint of the city. I took up my abode
at Wyndham’s at the Baths of Pisa, about two miles from the town.
Some trifling dispute happened between us, which was not
explained, and we have not yet spoken and perhaps never may.
From Pisa Mrs. W., Ld. H. and myself went to Leghorn; we were
lodged at Udney’s house, the consul’s. Lady Elliot and family stayed
at Lucca Baths. Wyndham came and had a serious éclat with Mrs.
W.; she behaved romantically, and what in a novel would be called
feelingly delicate, but like a very silly person for her worldly
concerns. She is determined to separate and quit him.
In July I set off from Lucca Baths to see Genoa, with Ld. H. and
Mr. Hodges. I left Gely with my children and their nurses. Slept the
first night at San Marcello, a small village upon the new road to
Modena, half-way up the Apennines. The second night at two posts
beyond Modena, and the third at Parma. Correggio’s ‘St. Jerome’
struck me this time as far more beautiful than when I first saw it
about three years ago. Whether a more intimate acquaintance with
the great masters had taught me to appreciate their merits with
more judgment, or that I had not given myself much trouble in the
examination of this charming production I will not pretend to say,
but I beheld it with all the charms of novelty.
The last post to Genoa is beautiful; every step denotes the
splendour and riches of that tottering republic. Magnificent villas,
ornamental gardens, and thick population, the houses of the meaner
class intermingled with the stupendous habitations of a haughty
aristocracy, mark strongly the immense difference power and riches
have placed between them, they being wretched to an unusual
degree of penury, most of them being without the necessary
accommodation of windows or glass. The daily reinforcements
arriving to the Austrians, the fair, and the arrival of a Spanish flotilla,
crowded the town so much that I found it difficult to get a lodging;
indeed the hotels were full, and we were obliged to take up our
quarters in a kind of restaurateur’s, where lodgers never had been.
Such a hell! Only two small garrets.
The Strada Balbi and the Strada Nuova are the finest streets in
Europe, from the stately palaces on each side and their not being
disfigured by any shabby dwellings. The style of architecture is not
chaste, but too much crowded with heavy ornaments. The roofs are
high and filled with garret windows, much in the taste of those
buildings the style of which was introduced into England by William
III. The palaces of Genoa are more like what one expects an Italian
palace to be than any I have ever seen in other parts of Italy—open
corridors, porticoes, arcades, terraces, fountains, orange groves, &c.,
&c.
The Durazzo Palace unites all these beauties in perfection....
There was a dispute about the genuineness of the famous ‘M.
Magdalen,’ by Paolo Veronese;[139] the family in consequence
bought the other at Venice, and considering their own as the
original, keep the other rolled up. In the same street is the Palazzo
Balbi, a spacious and grand mansion, evidently declining from its
past splendour. Many fine pictures, a catalogue of which would be
tedious.
Genoa is not to be compared with Naples, and
is superior to Nice; the fanal has a pretty effect GENOA
jutting into the sea. I stayed only four days in
Genoa, and set off with Mr. Hodges, &c., to go across the Corniche
to Sarzana in portantines. I lent my carriage to Ld. Holland, who
went round by Turin, and was to rejoin me at Lucca Baths.
Mrs. Wyndham joined me in a few days, as did Ld. Holland.
Amherst and Cornewall passed a few days at Lucca. Wyndham came
over, and the rupture with me was final; he would not make me a
visit, but sent to my maître d’hôtel for some dinner, a cavalier mode
of proceeding which I would not gratify him in, and he had no
dinner, as there was no inn, and provisions were scarce, unless
provided beforehand.
The end of August I returned to the Mattonaia. Ld. H. had a set
of Maremma ponies, and used every evening to drive me out, either
to the Cascines or elsewhere. I went to see the Pratolino, a country
house belonging to the Grand Duke. There is an immense statue of
The Apennines, represented as an old man, a colossal figure. The
waterworks must have cost a prodigious sum, and, though contrary
to the present taste of gardening, I confess I admire the jets d’eau
and even the childish tricks which are made to catch and surprise
the unwary observer. I lived very much with Mde. d’Albany and
Alfieri. Don Neri Corsini, Fabroni, and a few others composed my
society. Ld. H. read to me Pope’s Homer, The Iliad. I was delighted
with parts of it, but the Odyssey I could not listen to.
Florence, October 4th, 1795.—The first and strongest sensation
one feels on entering Italy is the recollection of those historical
events that from childhood are impressed upon the mind, and those
classical sentiments that one strives both from vanity and taste to
bring back to memory; but when the turbulence of the imagination
subsides, and a long residence in the country familiarises one with
objects so attractive, modern Italy, her poets, historians, and artists,
arrest the attention very justly by the admiration to which they are
entitled. Florence of all places is the most calculated to inspire a
taste for the pursuit of modern literature. Every step reminds one
that it was the seat of the Medicis, which is synonymous with the
arts, the sciences, and taste; its splendid monuments and useful
works all evince the beneficence of those patrons and restorers of
literature....
I meant to have continued some anecdotes of the Medici, but I
have undergone too much affliction since writing the above. I was
brought to bed of a lovely boy in October, but owing to the neglect
of the nurses he fell into convulsions and died. Never shall I become
mother to such an infant. Lord Macartney[140] came and dined
several times with me on his way to Rome.
November 22nd, 1795.—Set off at one o’clock past midnight from
my house, the Mattonaia, to accompany Mrs. W. as far as Bologna,
on her way to Turin; Ld. H. went with us. The weather was coldish,
but when we got upon the Apennines amidst the snow it was
insufferably rigorous. The road was very rough, being spoilt by ye
frosts and thaws. We accomplished the journey in twenty-three
hours and a half, arrived at the Pellegrino, where Lord Wycombe was
waiting to join our party.
As soon as I had refreshed myself with a few
hours’ rest, I visited the Zampieri Palace. It is BOLOGNA
undoubtedly the best and most valuable collection
here, not eked out like the others with trash.[141] ‘St. Peter
Weeping,’ by Guido, reckoned the first of his works and the most
faultless picture in Italy. It is in his strong manner, and in the highest
preservation. Two hoary-headed old men, one crying and the other
upbraiding, inspire but a small portion of interest, and one is glad to
quit this perfect picture to contemplate the work of a more faulty
painter, who, however, eludes that censure in this charming
composition. Abraham, in compliance with envious old Sarah,
dismisses his youthful handmaid Hagar and her son Ishmael:
Guercino. Agostin Caracci is nowhere so great as in his mellow
picture representing the ‘Woman taken in Adultery.’ A lovely little
Guido, ‘A Heavenly Concert,’ done when he was eighteen....
25th.—Ld. Holland and Mr. Wyndham set off for Turin. Lord
Wycombe, M. Gely, Webby, and myself remained at the Pellegrino.
Lord W. dined with me every day, and several learned Bolognese,
among them a lady who was reckoned a very good Greek scholar.
She wrote an impromptu Greek epigram upon me, but for aught I
know it might be as old as Homer.
‘St. Agnes,’ in the chapel of the monastery of that name.[142] It
represents the martyrdom of that saint, but fails in the effect that
the principal object ought to produce. It is taken at the moment
when the executioner is plunging the sword into her bosom; the
countenance is insipidly livid, without the dignity of resignation nor
the anguish of pain. This group is not enough distinguished, as it
falls in with a heap of dead saints. Three women and a child form a
pretty group on the right-hand side. The upper part seems a
separate composition, and very likely is done by a scholar of
Domenichino’s. Ld. Holland read me a passage out of a letter from
Charles Fox, from which it appears that he reckons this picture
almost the best in Italy, and the masterpiece of Domenichino.
I visited all that was remarkable in the neighbourhood, and saw
much more than I did the first time I was there. I read the Tragedies
of Crébillon; the horrible subjects affected my imagination, and
several nights of restlessness and groundless terror I owe to their
perusal. He said to a friend who was lamenting the sombre of his
taste, that Corneille had exhausted all historical subjects, that Racine
had taken heaven, and l’enfer seul remained to him. Ld. Wycombe
left me the day before Ld. Holland returned from Turin. Ld. Bristol,
[143] with some wretched dependants, came to my inn; he dined
one day with me. He is a clever, bad man. He asked me to let him
have a copy of my picture, the one done by Fagan, and belonging to
my friend Italinski.[144] I hesitated much, and implied, without
giving it, a denial. He told me of Ly. Louisa Hervey’s marriage to Mr.
Jenkinson, a son of Ld. Hawkesbury’s.
On our return to Florence we met with some difficulties on
account of the deepness of the snow. When we got to Scaricar
l’Asino, a small inn used only by the vetturini, we found Gely
missing; after great anxiety for thirty-six hours on his account, he
overtook us at the Maschere.
I passed a delightful winter. About three times
a week I had dinners, to which I invited Fontana, A LITERARY
Fabroni, Don Neri Corsini, Baldelli, Fossombroni, COTERIE
Pignotti, Delfico, Greppi, besides the various
English who passed.
Fontana is a man known among the scientific of Europe; his chief
work is a treatise upon poisons. His political principles are suspected.
He is an intolerant atheist, and is as eager to obtain converts to his
own disbelief as bigots are to make proselytes to their belief.
Fabroni[145] is a physician, and a sort of rival to Fontana. Don Neri
Corsini[146] is the brother of the Prince of that name; he is a pupil of
Manfredini, and supporter of the Tuscan neutrality. He is accused of
being inclined towards the French faction. Fossombroni[147] is a
profound mathematician; he has given in a report full of learning
and science in favour of draining some parts of the Val d’Arno.
Pignotti[148] is a priggish little Abbé, attached to the House of
Corsini; his fables are well known and have much merit. Delfico[149]
is a Sicilian; he has written a dissertation upon the Roman law. His
conversation strongly savours of the new principles. Greppi[150] is a
Milanese. It was of his father that Arthur Young said as a public
collector of the revenue the course he took in that country
conducted him to wealth and titles, but would in England have
brought him to the gallows. He is a lively, mischievous man, full of
laughable stories against the governments he has lived under.
The evenings I generally spent at home. Ld. Holland used to read
aloud. He read me Larcher’s translation of Herodotus, a good deal of
Bayle, and a great variety of English poetry. Madame d’Albany’s
society was a pleasant relief from the sameness of the Italians.
Alfieri, when he condescended to unbend, was very good company.
Feb. 9th, 1796.—Set off with all my children, Gely, and
accompanied by Ld. H., to Rome, with the intention of seeing Loreto.
Slept the first night at Levane, dined the next day at Arezzo. The
effects of the recent earthquake were not so apparent as the
exaggerated accounts of it at Florence had taught us to expect; the
alarm had been great, the injury slight—indeed none but the fright
occasioned to some old nuns, who ran out of their convent, glad
even to see the world upon such terms. A few walls in the building
were split. I went to see the picture of the ‘Martyrdom of St.
Donato,’ by a young Aretin called Benvenuto,[151] who studies at
Rome, and is admired and protected by the old compère. The
picture is well coloured, but the artist is the most barefaced
plagiarist, for not content with taking from pictures, he has pilfered
arms, legs, and torsi from half the statues in Rome. Reached Rome
18th. Ly. Plymouth had taken lodgings for me in ye Palazzo Corea
(?), Strada Pontifice.
The following day I went with Ly. Plymouth,
Amherst, and Ld. H., to see my old acquaintances STATUES IN
in the Museum Clementinum. Even since last year ROME
there are alterations in the dispositions of the
statues. The Laocoon seems even grander than ever. The Apollo is
always miraculous, though it may be criticised, but its defects are
mere artifices to give more spirit to the attitude, but nevertheless
are deviations from correct truth. The legs are allowed to be faulty, if
not of modern restoration. The new Antinous, discovered by
Hamilton, and destined for the D. Braschi’s [sic] Palace, is among the
finest things in Rome. It is of colossal size, and almost perfect; the
restorations are very judicious, particularly the drapery. It is at
present at Sposino’s, the sculptor, a man who has made a lasting
monument of Ld. Bristol’s bad taste, and the merit of originality of
thought is not his. Pitt is represented as the infant Hercules
strangling the serpents, the heads of which are the portraits of Mr.
Fox and Ld. North, the Coalition; Pitt’s head is of the natural size
upon the body of an infant. The whole performance is like some of
the uncouth decorations in the middle ages of our English
cathedrals. The idea was taken from a caricature. The English artists
all to a man refused to execute this puerile conceit. I went with Ly.
Plymouth and Amherst to Tivoli; we stayed a couple of days.
St. Peter’s contains a statue I never observed before, but which
for beauty is equal to any representation of female perfection;
indeed, the effect it produced upon an enraptured artist was such as
to demand drapery. The sculpture is not remarkable: the artist was
Della Porta, a scholar of M. Angelo’s.[152] There is also another
female saint whose cold charms roused to passion the imagination of
a French artist.
Ld. Macartney came, and Ld. H. and I saw a good deal of him.
The first day of March, 1796, I set off to go to Naples, merely to see
my friend Italinski. I conveyed Smith, the American, an ennuyeux, in
my carriage. Slept the first night at Velletri, and the second at
Terracina, where both on account of the measles which prevails at
Naples, and the want of passports for the French persons with me, I
left Gely and my two youngest children and my cook at the pretty
inn, and pursued my journey accompanied only by Smith, Hortense,
and Webby.
The principal object of my excursion was to see my old friend
Italinski, who in consequence of the bad conduct and dismissal of
Cte. Golophin was appointed sole Chargé d’Affaires. I had the
pleasure of finding him well, and sincerely rejoiced to see me. The
four days I passed were totally with him. Ld. Bristol was there
dangerously ill. As soon as the physician declared him in danger he
sent to Italinski for my picture, adding that though he had refused
him a copy, he could not deny a dying man anything. Italinski was
embarrassed, but sent the picture. As soon as it came he had it
placed upon an easel at the foot of his bed, and round it large cires
d’église, and for aught I know to the contrary he may still be
contemplating my phiz. What makes this freak the more strange is,
that it is not from regard to me, as he scarcely knows me, and never
manifested much liking to me; probably it reminds him of some
woman he once loved, and whose image occupies his mind in his
last moments.
The change in the figure of Vesuvius is very
disadvantageous to it in point of beauty. It is now VESUVIUS
lower than Somma, and the crater is apparently
flattened.[153] Torre del Greco presents a curious spectacle, both to
the naturalist and ye moralist. The stratum of fresh lava has raised
the coast near fifty feet above its former level. The lava is of a
peculiar texture, more charged with metallic particles than any of the
other strata from Vesuvius, though not equal in specific gravity to
that at Ischia. In many places it is still smoking, and the cavities are
filled by little beggars who seek warmth there. After a fall of rain the
evaporation is curious, for the density of the atmosphere marks the
course of the lava. The infatuation of the people is wonderful; they
prefer rebuilding upon that spot to accepting lands offered by the
King, and not content with that absurdity they add to it by
immediately commencing, and I actually saw myself a house just
finished, which was built within three inches (for I measured them)
of a hole from whence the smoke issued, and upon which I could
not bear my hand from the excessive heat. This surely is verifying
that curious, novel, and true maxim of Adam Smith’s, that every man
believes to a superstitious excess in his own good luck.
The collection of Capo di Monte has undergone various changes
in the disposition of the pictures. The Queen sent to desire I would
visit her at Caserta, but she told me the measles was in the palace
among her children. I therefore declined the honour, on account of
exposing Webby to the danger. I dined at Caserta with the
Hamiltons. I found Mullady altered, and Sir William seemed more
occupied about his own digestion than in admiring the graceful turn
of her head. I returned day and night from Naples to Albano, where
I found Ld. Holland and Mr. M. waiting for me. The next morning I
went to see the lake and the emissary. The emissary is an issue
from the lake to carry off the superabundant waters. It is perforated
through the hill. In the evening we drove through the villas at
Frascati, and returned to Rome.
I quitted Rome, and went back to Florence by the Siena road.
Nothing very remarkable occurred during my short stay at Florence.
I set off from thence on April ye 11th. I bid adieu to that lovely spot,
where I enjoyed a degree of happiness for a whole year that was
too exquisite to be permanent. Ld. Holland drove me in his phæton
the first post to Prato: he returned, and I pursued my journey upon
the Modena road.
For some reason, unrelated in the text, Lady Webster seems to
have changed her route. On reaching Bologna, instead of turning west
to Modena, she took the road to Ferrara, which she reached on April
18th.
Ferrara is but the skeleton of its former
RELICS OF
grandeur; it is now deserted and thinly inhabited. ARIOSTO
The tomb of Ariosto naturally attracted my
veneration; it is in the Benedictine convent. The architecture of it is
bad, and the bust but moderately executed; it represents him very
much in the decline of life. His house, in which his grotto, chair, and
inkstand used to be shown, is now pulled down and destroyed by
the rapacity of the owner. The public library is small, and contains no
books of value. There they preserve the original manuscript of most
of the books of the Orlando, chair, and inkstand. The manuscript is
written by himself, and in the margin there are numberless
emendations; thus we discover that those verses that seem so easy
and to flow without exertion, are precisely those that have
undergone the most alteration. At the bottom of one of the pages I
perceived written in pencil:—
Vittorio Alfieri vede e vennerò.
18 Giugno, 1783.
He might venerate, but the harmony he can never imitate.
Early on ye 19th I set off and crossed the Po at Lagoscuro, and
from thence got to Rovigo, a dreadful road and two bad barques,
one over the canal Bianco, and the other across the Adigio. Rovigo,
the birthplace of Manfredini, a wretched, straggling town. We
reached Padua at night. I have been there before, but I possess a
very faint remembrance of the place. I have just heard that the
unhappy phantom of royalty, Louis XVIII., has been compelled to
quit the Venetian territory. I remained at Padua several days. Miss
Bowdler and Lady Herries lodged in the same hotel. Ld. Holland
overtook me from Florence.
We went to the monastery of Praia, a rich Benedictine order. The
heat of the weather and badness of the road had fatigued us, and
we asked permission to enter the sacristy and refresh ourselves. The
lay brother, who is the porter, repulsed us with harshness, and
refused us admission within the walls, adding that water was the
only hospitality afforded by the monks. On my return to Padua I
wrote a letter of complaint to the Abbot, who answered it with
civility, and promised to reprimand the insolence of the porter.
I went the next evening to see the Villa Quirini, remarkable for
possessing some of the oldest Egyptian monuments in Europe if not
coeval with the Pyramids at least so Dancarville, the learned
antiquary, assured me. He pretends to be so much au fait of them,
that he even shows a mark made by a soldier of the army of
Cambyses; but the reveries of antiquaries are absurd. The French
have broken into the plain of Piémont by way of Nice, and have
gained a great victory over the Austrians. Buonaparti [sic] is the
French commander.
They left Padua on April 24, and took the road to Trieste.
From Trieste we went through Carniola, Carinthia, Styria, by way
of Laibach, Marburg, Gratz, and Bruck to Vienna. I stayed a few days
only at Vienna, dined at Sir Morton Eden’s,[154] and saw some of my
old acquaintances. Met Clairfait,[155] who seems a mild,
gentlemanlike man. From Vienna I went to Znaym, Iglau, across the
famous field of battle at Kolin, to Prague; from thence to Dresden.
The two posts at Aussig and Peterwald were just as bad as they
were the last time I went. I met Lady Plymouth at Dresden, and
dined with ye Duchess of Cumberland.
From Dresden I went to Berlin; tiresome deep road through
sands and thin forests of pines. At Berlin I came in time to see a
review. I dined with Ld. Elgin,[156] and at his house I saw the
celebrated Pitt diamond,[157] brought from Paris upon sale. Hugh
Elliot insisted upon bearing me company to Hamburg. Great difficulty
of accommodation at Hamburg: the town so filled with emigrants.
Went to see General Dumouriez. I was afraid of crossing the Elbe to
Harburg, so went up where it was narrow. Went through Harburg
and Stade to Cuxhaven: detained there some days on account of
contrary winds.
The 4th of June I quitted Hamburg. Crossed from Cuxhaven to
Yarmouth in six days and half. Came straight to London.
An interval of a year here takes place in the Journal, which Lady
Holland, to use her new name, again resumes in July 1797.
My wretched marriage was annulled by
Parliament on the 4th July. On the fifth I signed a HER MARRIAGE
deed by which I made over my whole fortune to
Sir G. W., for our joint lives, for the insignificant sum of 800l. Every
mean device, every paltry chicane that could extort money from us
was had recourse to.
I was married at Rickmansworth Church by Rev. Mr. Morris to
Lord Holland, on July 6th, 1797. Sir Gilbert Affleck,[158] my father-in-
law, gave me away. As soon as the ceremony was over we went to
Richmond, where I found my mother and my son Henry. They came
to this house the next day and stayed a week. I was twenty-six
years old. Ld. H. was twenty-three. The difference in age is, alas!
two years and eight months—a horrid disparity. All his family
behaved to me with the utmost kindness; they came, those in town,
and those in the country wrote to me. I went to Bowood in July,
where I met with his two aunts, Misses Vernon, and his sister, Miss
Fox; they were kind and cordial. In the autumn I went to Margate.
Having a very bad memory, and many odd irregular half-hours, it
has occurred to me to assist the one and occupy the others by
writing down any events, conversations, anecdotes, etc., that may
interest me at the moment; and though my nature is too lazy to
allow me to hope that I can act up to anything like a systematic
pursuit, yet whilst the fit is upon me to be so employed, I will yield.
As I care too little about politics to talk of them, I certainly shall
refrain from discussing them upon paper, nevertheless this moment
is critical and anxious even to my indifference. The second
negotiation is just broken off;[159] hostilities beginning in Italy; Mr.
Fox decidedly seceded from Parliament, and the session on the point
of opening; fresh taxes, discontents, and the Dutch fleet destroyed.
[160] My own individual happiness is so perfect, that I can scarcely
figure to myself a blessing that I do not possess—indeed, the having
such a companion as I have is, in itself, everything without the
accessories of other advantages.
The 14th October (1797), Mr. Fox, D. of Bedford, etc., dined
here, and it was then finally concluded among them that none of the
shattered remains of their party should attend the meeting of
Parliament. As to the measure of secession there are many different
opinions as to its expediency; but all their discussions end in the loss
of time and temper, for Opposition are too unpopular to have
anything left to hope for, and the system of party is obsolete. It
seems astonishing to me that amidst the number of very able men
who still rally round the standard of Whiggism, not one should have
discovered that the temper of the country requires another species
of resistance to Administration than the old scheme of a regular
Opposition with a Cavendish or a Russell at its head. There is a
bigotry in their adherence to their ineffectual principles that borders
upon infatuation.
Mr. Fox appears sincerely to rejoice at the
prospect of being able to give himself up to those MR. FOX
pursuits that amuse and, notwithstanding his
powers as a statesman, occupy him most. Literature, and especially
the metaphysics of grammar, and the cultivation of his plants, are
objects that engage the wonderful activity of his mind. He has lately
revived his Greek, and daily gets by heart a given number of lines in
Homer. Having seen so little of him, my opinion of him is chiefly
taken from public report and the very partial picture drawn by his
nephew; however, his very enemies admit that he possesses more
estimable qualities as an individual than falls to the share of scarcely
any other. Perhaps to a harsh observer his facility might be termed a
weakness and his good nature an indolent foible, but if extremes are
bad his bent is on the most amiable side. One cannot but regret that
such a man is lost to society, for so may his retirement at St. Anne’s
be called, and the habits of his life when there. Mrs. Armstead,[161] I
understand, possesses still those merits which, when united to the
attractions of youth, a degree of beauty, and much celebrity, placed
her above her competitors for the glory of ruining and seducing the
giddy youth of the day. She has mildness and little rapacity, but
those negative merits, when bereft of the other advantages,
constitute but an insipid resource in solitude. Besides, as she still
retains the immoderate love of expense which her former life led her
into, she may almost be called a pernicious connection, as
disadvantageous for his comfort as for his reputation; for after all
that has passed, fresh pecuniary embarrassments will be
discreditable to him. But I have often remarked that very superior
men are easier satisfied with respect to the talents of those they live
with than men of inferior abilities. Whether it springs from a
movement of vanity, that they despair of meeting an equal and are
therefore contented with gentle accommodation, or that they are
conscious that they have little to learn, I cannot determine, but the
fact is certain.
I do not mean to compare Dumouriez to Mr.
Fox, but nevertheless I was astonished to find, in a GENERAL
visit I made him (last June, ’96), that the partner DUMOURIEZ
of his solitude was much the most trifling,
insignificant personage I had ever beheld. He was living in a
wretched Westphalian hovel or barn near Hamburg, with little money
and less estimation, and yet, contrary to what might have been
imagined from his inordinate ambition and vanity, happier (I believe)
there surrounded by his brood of well-disciplined ducklings than
after the battle of Jemappes. I never saw him but once, and that in
a way that might have offended a man less vain. Hearing from his
relation, Chateauneuf, a bookseller at Hamburg, that he lived in the
neighbourhood, I proposed making him a visit, that I might have the
satisfaction of seeing one of the most conspicuous characters that
had flourished in the Revolution. The motive excused the intrusion,
and he was flattered. He is short and fat, and in person very unlike a
Frenchman, but the deficiency in figure to prove him one is amply
made up the moment he speaks. He is full of vivacity, esprit, and
agrément, expressing himself pointedly and even energetically; and
he may be very justly placed among the best specimens that remain
of the genuine character of a Frenchman under the Monarchy. His
pecuniary circumstances are very narrow—he is going to publish a
4th edition of his works, from which he hopes to obtain a
maintenance. I believe he heartily repents the unlucky adherence to
the Constitution that causes him to be out of his country, and
prevents his rivalling Hoche and Buonaparte, for he could not
conceal the envy excited by their glories. He is a man of an
enterprising genius and undaunted courage, and would never incur
the satire of Mr. Burke’s application of the story of the two generals,
one of whom used to say upon a service of danger, ‘Allez, mes amis,’
and the other, ‘Allons, mes amis.’ He would always be for the latter.
The unfortunate La Fayette and his family are just liberated from
the dungeons of Olmutz, and mean to embark at Hamburg for that
country from whence he imbibed those principles that have since
deluged his country with a sea of blood.[162] Whatever his errors
might have been by risking such a revolution merely to distinguish
himself from the common crowd of courtiers, or to try to practise the
theory of virtue and patriotism, his cruel captivity has extinguished
rancour even in the breasts of his bitterest enemies. M. de Bouillé,
[163] in his Memoirs just published, mentions his intentions as
pernicious and his conduct as weak, but never represents him as
meaning evil; and upon the whole the impression given is more that
of pity than any other. Poor man! his faults are expiated in his
sufferings. His character is that of a phlegmatic, cold-hearted man,
with much vanity and slender abilities.
His cousin Bouillé is of a very different turn: he is quite the tête
chaude of the Royalists, full of that fougue and courage peculiar to
his nation. Misfortunes have softened his mind, and he allows his
reason to conquer his passion; he is candid and impartial to others
and himself. I believe him to be very zealous and honest. I first
became acquainted with him amidst the noise and tumult of a camp.
In ’93, returning from Italy to spend a few weeks in England, I went
from Bruxelles to see Valenciennes, which had just fallen, and in that
tour I made a visit to the Duke of York, who was then besieging
Dunkirk.[164] After dining at headquarters I attended the funeral of
General Dalton, who had been killed the day before on the very spot
over which I passed. The melancholy scene and the noise of the
artillery discharged upon those occasions quite overcame me, and I
declined attending the funeral that followed, of Col. Elde. The D. of
York very politely excused himself from returning to headquarters
with me, on account of his duty requiring his presence, but gave me
to the care of the Marquis de Bouillé, who accompanied me to the
Duke’s tent. Our conversation naturally fell upon those events in
France in which he had had the greatest share, and he gave me a
very interesting narrative of the King’s flight to Varennes, and the
whole scheme as conceived by him which he describes in his
Memoirs. He finished with tears, showing me his cordon bleu, which
was part of his ill-fated Sovereign’s wardrobe that had reached
Luxembourg, and had been received by the Marquis. He said it was
the last and only relic he had of a master from whom he had
received favours that demanded his eternal gratitude and
tenderness.
I saw him once afterwards at the Drawing-
room, and upon my asking him the name of a tall, M. DE BOUILLÉ
gaunt, figure in the circle, he smiled at the
singularity of a foreigner showing to a native the Prime Minister of
the country: for the person was no less than Mr. Pitt himself. There
was afterwards a scheme in the city among the West India planters
and merchants for giving him a pension on account of his noble
behaviour in the islands during the last war. My poor father promised
to subscribe, but I left England, and by hearing no more of it I
presume the affair dropped.
Just before the departure of Lord M. from Lisle,[165] the Trevors,
my old friends, or rather intimate acquaintances, came through
France. He is in a sort of way driven from his post of Minister at
Turin, as that Court exhibited a curious jumble of bigotry and
Jacobinism, which must make a residence there awkward to a
punctilious courtier like Trevor. It was rather whimsical that the
morning she visited me was the precise one chosen by Mr. Fox to
come from St. Anne’s, so the first object that presented itself to her
view upon entering the gallery was her old admirer. Save a little
blushing and stammering the old lovers conducted themselves very
ably. The malicious say nous autres femmes get out of a scrape of
that sort with great ease; this instance confirmed the calumny, as
she possessed the greatest portion of the sang froid of the two.
Mrs. Trevor’s life has been singularly passed, and the latter part
judiciously, circumstanced as she was. She was the daughter of a
rich canon, and was married partly for her beauty and a little for her
wealth. Soon after her marriage she conceived a most
insurmountable disgust towards her husband. She was admired by
Mr. F., and, flattered by his preference, allowed great scandal. She
detained him one night at Ranelagh, whilst the House was
assembled and waiting for him to speak upon a motion he had
made: this gave an éclat which perhaps she did not dislike. But the
moment came that was to separate her from the fashion of London.
Trevor’s foreign missions drew her upon the Continent, where she
has remained mostly for these last eighteen years. The first thing
she did was to live apart from him, and keep up a love
correspondence with him; hence to the world they appeared
enamoured of one another. She is a little mad, and parsimony is her
chief turn. She is good-natured, and a little clever. Trevor has no
judgment and slender talents. His foibles are very harmless, and his
whole life has been insipidly good. His ridicules are a love of dress
coats, volantes, and always speaking French. Au reste, he is very like
other people, only better.
His sister-in-law, Lady Hampden,[166] is a
woman of a most extraordinary character, and a LADY HAMPDEN
melancholy proof of how much we depend upon
others even for our virtues. Her father was the man who first
mentioned the present Queen to Lord Bute, and was employed by
him afterwards to arrange the business, and he was, by-the-bye,
neglected by the upstart Majesty merely because he knew the
obscurity and poverty of her native Court. Ly. H. was his only child,
and was extremely young and beautiful when first married. For ten
years their marriage was perfectly happy—the old Lord was living;
they lived in retirement and were poor. His death gave them riches,
and the fond, domestic husband was lost in the dissipated gambler.
His house was amongst the first where a faro bank was kept.
Unfortunately this has become prevalent, and many hold a share at
those houses where every allurement is held out to attract and
seduce. It was in this country that a man first dared to deal at faro
without a mask, so infamous did they esteem the office upon the
Continent.
It would be a curious subject to investigate and write a book
upon, to trace back the little points and hazards upon which the fate
of the world, its manners and opinions, have depended. Had
Carthage triumphed, and Hannibal been a second Alexander, how
different in all probability would have been the genius and customs
of the world! Commerce would have stifled the glory of arms, and
crushed the taste for the fine arts. Their industry would have spread
civilisation into the heart of Africa, and that extent of country, now
only a barbarous land, might have satisfied the wants of society, and
these miserable Northern latitudes might still have been left to their
Odins, their Druids, their fogs, and their frosts. What a blessing to
have been confined to go no farther north than the Pyrenees! I may
be justified in this wish, whilst at the moment of making it I am
wrapped up in flannels, and roasting by a fire, to keep my blood in
sufficient circulation to carry on the economy of animal life. Another
epoch that would have operated even more powerfully upon the
character of mankind and their usages was the chance of the battle
in France between the Saracens and the Christians.[167] What would
have been the effect had the former succeeded? One good would
have been certain, the human mind would not have been priest-
ridden as it is, and the fear of death would have been checked and
not encouraged. The worst part of the Christian dispensation is the
terror it inculcates upon a deathbed. The wisest dread it; no person
who is strictly brought up in the principles of Christianity can ever
thoroughly shake off the fear of dying. The Catholics supply
instances of this every day; from infancy to manhood their minds are
debased by superstition in every terrific shape. When capable of
reflecting they shake off their shackles, and become from bigots
atheists. So they live, but in fact the evil is but suspended; a fit of
illness throws them back into the bosom of credulity, and like
Gresset[168] they die in sackcloth.
The claims of the Romish Church are stronger upon the
imagination than those of the more purified sects of Protestants. The
priests found it so much to their interests to pervert the
understanding, that the love of power made them hold their empire
beyond the grave—hence their Purgatory.
The Christian priests, with all their subtlety and
policy, from vanity gave the staff out of their own EFFECT OF
hands. Proud of the praise centred upon them for RELIGIOUS
being the preservers of learning, they weakly WARS
taught the laity the valuable treasures they had preserved, and by
enlightening them the progress has been such as we see. Had they,
like the priests of Egypt, confined all knowledge to their own body,
society would still have been dependent upon them, and whilst there
was no contention, they might have been a harmless theocracy.
Certainly during the middle ages they were serviceable even to the
cause of humanity, for those very Crusades eventually benefited
Europe. They drew forth many turbulent spirits, who, had they
remained at home, would have fallen into intestine broils, and kept
up the feudal governments. Whereas, though two-thirds of the vast
armies that issued out never returned, yet the one-third that did
introduced a taste for foreign productions to which commerce
became the consequence, and the manners of every country in
Europe by degrees softened and civilised. Yet this good they did was
severely bought by the horrors of the religious wars after the
Reformation in Germany when Gustavus Adolphus was called in.
That embraces a horrid period in the annals of history: it was an
awful struggle between reason and bigotry. Fortunately for the
advantage (perhaps) of mankind the former conquered to a degree,
and but for the absurd excesses which have disgraced morality in
this French Revolution, the cause of common sense would have
completely succeeded. But we are nearer a relapse into old errors
than a reformation.
Had the Saracens been masters of Europe the lot of womankind
would have been but indifferent, for it is a very remarkable
circumstance that all the institutions in Southern countries are very
degrading to the sex. Morally and physically we are treated as
beings of an inferior class, and though it is not quite demonstrable
that we are supposed to be without a claim to immortality of soul,
yet the reward is but trivial, and we are excluded the Paradise of
men. On the contrary, the natives of the North hold even the
feminine gender in respect, so great is their veneration for us: they
fought with us by their sides as tutelary angels, and submitted to the
government of a female chief. They called the Sun the greatest
luminary, to honour it with a feminine name, and the moon, which is
inferior, by a masculine one. This spirit melted into chivalry, and it is
to the preux chevaliers, the Arthurs, the Orlandos, and the Round
Table, that we owe our present situation in society. However, the
Saracens were a great and enlightened people, and till lately
literature and science have never fairly been grateful for what they
owe them, and half the world to this day even confound them with
those savages, the Turks. It is true that at first they fought with the
sword in one hand and the Alkoran in the other, but once conquerors
they cultivated the milder virtues. Where is there a better
government than that under the Caliphs in Spain? The University of
Granada educated our first literati, Friar Bacon, etc. It would be
endless to enter into their merits: Andrès,[169] a Spanish Jesuit who
lives at Mantua, has written an excellent book in Italian about them.
I have had so strange an education, that if I
speak freely upon sacred subjects it is not from an HER
affectation of being an esprit fort, but positively EDUCATION
because I have no prejudices to combat with. My
principles were of my own finding, both religious and moral, for I
never was instructed in abstract or practical religion, and as soon as
I could think at all chance directed my studies; for though both my
parents were as good and as virtuous people as ever breathed, and
I was always an only child, yet I was entirely left, not from system,
but from fondness and inactivity, to follow my own bent. Happily for
me I devoured books, and a desire for information became my ruling
passion. The experiment of leaving a child without guidance or
advice is a dangerous one, and ought never to be done; for if
parents will not educate it themselves they should seek for those
that will; but I do not complain, as perhaps all is for the best in this
instance, though I should be bien autre chose if I had been regularly
taught. I never had any method in my pursuits, and I was always
too greedy to follow a thing with any suite. Till lately I did not know
the common principles of grammar, and still a boy of ten years old
would outdo me.
But I never look back upon the early period of my life, but I turn
from the picture with disgust. At fifteen, through caprice and folly, I
was thrown into the power of one who was a pompous coxcomb,
with youth, beauty, and a good disposition, all to be so squandered!
The connection was perdition to me in every way; my heart was
good, but accustomed to hear and see everything that was mean
and selfish, I tried to shut it to the calls of humanity, and used my
reason to teach me to hate mankind. Fortune smiled, and made me
ample amends for seven or eight years of suffering, by making me
know the most favoured of her sons. At Florence, in 1794, I began
to think there were exceptions to my system of misanthropy, and
every hour from that period to this (’97), which now sees me the
happiest of women, have I continued to wonder and admire the
most wonderful union of benevolence, sense, and integrity in the
character of the excellent being whose faith is pledged with mine.
Either he has imparted some of his goodness to me, or the example
of his excellence has drawn out the latent good I had—as certainly I
am a better person and a more useful member of society than I was
in my years of misery.
November 1st, ’97.—The peace with Emperor and the Republic is
certain, and a guerre à mort between this island and all the vast
power of the brave, conquering French. How this country can get
out of the mauvais pas it is in remains to be seen. I think it is, from
the obstinacy and folly of the Government, lost, and that completely
by its own fault.
Le bien nous le faisons, le mal c’est la fortune;
On a toujours raison, le destin toujours tort.
Unjust as mankind is, it can hardly rest the blame of our

destruction upon Fortune.
À propos of the simple, philosophical La Fontaine, I either read or
heard a touching trait of his simplicity lately. He was wise enough to

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Plurilingualism in Teaching and Learning

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Effective Learning and Teaching in Engineering

Lifelong Learning Concepts and Contexts 1st Edition P

Sacred Communities Shared Devotions Gender Material

Appraising Digital Storytelling Across Educational

Modern Languages Learning and Teaching in an

Teaching English in Multilingual Contexts Current

Teaching and Learning History 1st Edition Geoff Timmins

Teaching and Learning English in Secondary 1st Edition

Julie Choi is a Lecturer in Education (Additional Languages) in the Melbourne

Sue Ollerhead is a Lecturer in Literacies and English as an Additional Language

Edited by Julie Choi and

ISBN: 978-1-138-22847-4 (hbk)

Typeset in Bembo and Stone Sans

Foreword by Angel M. Y. Lin ix

Part I: Plurilingual Language-in-Education

Part II: Plurilingual Student Repertoires 69

6 An Expanded View of Translanguaging: Leveraging the

Part III: Plurilingual Classroom Practices and Teacher

Part IV: Plurilingualism in Higher Education Contexts 183

List of Contributors 234

comes to addressing issues of inequalities facing linguistic minorities in education

juggling with all these different (competing) goals/orientations in a kind of

Thibault, P. J. (2011). First-order languaging dynamics and second-order language: The

While this book illuminates the possibilities and affordances of plurilingual

Plurilingualism in Language Studies

while multilingualism is “the study of societal contact”, plurilingualism allows us

about by new immigration patterns into settings previously constructed as

Multilingualism and Literacy

in the classroom and students’ home languages and community connections

What we Mean by a “Plurilingual Stance”

a) Successful learners of English are successful plurilingual learners and com-

As a consequence of these ways of thinking about language then, a teacher

e) acknowledge multilinguality of students and society as something that is both

h) link language learning and literacy skill to existing knowledge of language

Teachers Taking up a “Plurilingual Stance”

to acknowledge and value teachers’ plurilingualism). Considering teachers are

The Problem with the Plurilingual Stance

While notions such as hybridity, fluidity, and multiplicity are potentially

As we reflect on Kubota’s comment in relation to language education and

Would we be doing them a disservice by doing it in another language inside

Key to the successful adoption of a plurilingual stance is understanding the

About the Book

Hetherington draws on in-depth interviews with indigenous Australian com-

Across the diversity of contexts represented in these chapters, a common thread

Moore, D., & Gajo, L. (2009). Introduction—French voices on plurilingualism and

demography is discussed as a threat or at least a challenge to social cohesion.

Not the Topic du Jour

Reflecting this ethos, the SBS website (www.sbs.com.au/aboutus/our-story/)

. . . regardless of geography, age, cultural background or language skills [all

It is a sobering judgment when the premier mechanism of public dissemination

Policy Analysis Lessons

Today Australian language policy has reverted to a more conventional

Policy as Argument and Persuasion

Reflection on Policy Engagements: Adult Literacy and

The Ordeal of Success 1) Adult Literacy

The Ordeal of Success 2) Asian (Trade) Languages