Contesting the monolingual mindset

Practice versus policy. The case of Belgium

Bibliographic Data

ID6084371
AuthorsJuly De Wilde (0000-0002-4936-955X), Ellen Van Praet (0000-0002-7595-2124, Flemish Government's Integration Agency, Belgium), Pascal Rillof
Year2016
Volume15
Issue2
Pages121-146
Publication date2016-06-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Language and Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1569-2159 • E-ISSN: 1569-9862
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/jlp.15.2.01dew
OpenAlexW2340336236
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited18

This paper focuses on the day-to-day practices of service providers working with multilingual immigrants. It reports on 74 video recorded conversations between service providers and immigrant mothers, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork atKind en Gezin, the organization that monitors childcare for the Flemish authorities in Belgium. In discussing the findings, we focus on two principal themes: First, we demonstrate what the language requirements enshrined in Belgium’s language policies entail for the day-to-day practices of service providers working with multilingual clients. Secondly, we argue that, in superdiverse contexts, the growing need is towards delegitimizing language policy makers’ protectionist claim that the national language should be the only language used in public service encounters

Business · Ethnography · Flemish · Focus (optics · Immigration · Linguistics · Mindset · Political science · Principal (computer security · Public relations · Service (business · Service provider · Sociology · Computer Science · Interpreting and Communication in Healthcare · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Marketing

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