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Language learning

How can we change language habits?

By August 1, 2018December 3rd, 20203 Comments4 min read7,247 views

Language choice in bilingual couples as habit (excerpt from Piller, 2002, p. 137)

In my research with bilingual couples, habit emerged as one of the main reasons for a couple’s language choice. Partners from different language backgrounds met through the medium of a particular language and fell in love through a particular language. Once they had established a relationship through that language, it became a relatively fixed habit.

This means that entering a couple relationship was a moment of linguistic habit formation. At the same time, it was also a moment of drastic linguistic habit change, at least for one partner. At least one partner had to change their habitual language from one language (usually their native language) to another (usually an additional language).

The question of habit formation is an important one in language learning research. Around the world, education systems invest enormous sums of money into language teaching but the outcomes in terms of getting students to actually speak the language(s) they are learning outside the classroom are often unclear.

Efforts to revive Irish Gaelic provide a well-known example. In the Republic of Ireland, Gaelic is part of the compulsory curriculum of primary and secondary school students. Even so, only around 40% of the population reported in the 2016 census that they could speak Irish. However, when asked whether they actually did so, only 1.7% of the population reported that they regularly used Irish. So, knowing Gaelic and using Gaelic are clearly two different things.

The explanation for this pattern is simple: habit. Studying a language gives learners a new tool. But to actually use that tool on a regular basis outside the classroom requires a change of linguistic habit. In other words, language knowledge needs to be activated.

For the native German speakers in my bilingual couples research, falling in love and establishing a couple relationship with a native English speaker provided such a transformative moment that allowed them to activate the English they had studied throughout their schooling. (The converse pattern was much rarer as native English speakers rarely had studied German and so no basis for a linguistic change of habit existed).

Other than linguistic intermarriage, what transformative moments are there across the life course when people might change from one habitual language to another?

Professor Maite Puigdevall during her guest lecture at Macquarie University

This is the question Professor Maite Puigdevall (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain) addressed in her inaugural lecture in linguistic diversity at Macquarie University. Professor Puigdevall and her colleagues use the Catalan word muda (“change, transformation”) to refer to such biographical junctures where a linguistic change of habit is likely. They have identified six such transformative junctures across the life course:

  • Primary school
  • High school
  • University
  • Workplace entry
  • Couple formation
  • Becoming a parent

At each such juncture, a person starts to move in new circles, make new friends and establish new networks. Establishing oneself in such a new way may lead to all kinds of changes and new habits and a switch in the habitual language may be one such transformation.

Professor Puigdevall and her colleagues have used the muda concept particularly in relation to minoritized languages such as Catalan, Basque or Gaelic. At each juncture, such languages acquire “new speakers” (as opposed to the ever-shrinking number of heritage speakers). However, the life-course approach they propose has at least two implications for language policy elsewhere, too, including Australia.

First, language learning is a long-term investment. Results should not be expected immediately but are more likely to accrue later in life. A good reminder that the old adage non scolae sed vitae discimus (“we learn not for school but for life”) holds for language learning, too, and that we should vigorously contest the “languages are useless” argument that we so often hear, particularly in the Anglosphere.

Second, an investment in language education in school will pay off most when it is complemented by other policy interventions in favor of a particular language. For instance, in comparative research related to Catalan, Basque and Gaelic, Professor Puigdevall and her colleagues found that a significant inducement to turn Catalan into a habitual language was constituted by the bilingual (Catalan, Spanish) language requirement present for employment in the civil service in Catalonia.

Professor Puigdevall’s lecture inspired us to focus on moments in the life-course where bilingual proficiencies may be turned into bilingual habits. What new things will we learn in our next lecture in linguistic diversity when Dr Sabine Little (Sheffield University, UK) asks what we inherit when we inherit a language?

References

Piller, I. (2002). Bilingual couples talk: the discursive construction of hybridity. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Puigdevall, M., Walsh, J., Amorrortu, E., & Ortega, A. (2018). ‘I’ll be one of them’: linguistic mudes and new speakers in three minority language contexts. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 39(5), 445-457. doi:10.1080/01434632.2018.1429453
Pujolar, J., & Puigdevall, M. (2015). Linguistic mudes: How to become a new speaker in Catalonia. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 231, 167-187.

Ingrid Piller

Author Ingrid Piller

Dr Ingrid Piller, FAHA, is Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her research expertise is in bilingual education, intercultural communication, language learning, and multilingualism in the context of migration and globalization.

More posts by Ingrid Piller

Join the discussion 3 Comments

  • Livia says:

    I’ve been thinking a lot about Professor Puigdevall’s recent lecture and how the concept of muda might apply to my own research. The majority of young German backpackers entering Australia on a working holidaymaker visa do so at a ‘transformative juncture’ in their lives: they’re often taking a gap year between finishing high school and before entering university or the workforce. Arriving in Australia, they quickly need to adjust to hearing & speaking English, a language which – until now – was reserved for the foreign language classroom. Working and travelling, and being constantly on the move, means these young Germans need to form new habits in their everyday communication. However, these habits are somewhat complicated by the fact that they frequently come into contact with other German-speakers or ‘undesireable’ English-speaking interlocutors with lower English language proficiency than themselves. I’ve been thinking about whether the gap year experience can be described as a muda in the case of gap year travel, and what that would mean for young Germans as ‘new speakers’ of English within this specific context.
    Thank you, Maite, for answering our questions before and after your engaging lecture, and I look forward to continuing the conversation online!

  • Elizabeth Gunn says:

    One of my colleagues speaks Manx (we work in Melbourne) and he takes all sorts of opportunities to use Manx; eg. taking notes at meetings, singing Manx hymns, appearing on Manx radio while he’s on holiday, and I’m sure there are many more opportunities he could tell you about. He’s absolutely ingenious in finding new ways to make Manx a habit. Maybe he’s even reading this comment and will shine more light on my (limited) observations of his Manx use…

  • Madiha says:

    It was an interesting lecture delivered by prof. Maite, especially the term ‘muda’ was a new learning, though the concept associated with muda was such that one could easily relate to. I also see great role of language ideologies in what, when, where, and how you speak. Agreeing with Ingrid, that the lecture inspires us to think of the moments where bilingual proficiencies may be turned into bilingual habits, I remember that I never used ‘Punjabi’ even though I knew it long before I entered the university as a professional. I was told and taught to speak either in ‘Urdu or English’. Punjabi was just the language of my grandparents and I gradually absorbed it as I saw and hear them speaking it. I never used the language with anyone other than my grandparents until and unless I came to know that not only it was considered a less prestigious language, but it was in contradictory spoken and well acknowledged by highly educated people who took pleasure speaking and conversing in Punjabi. So it was my employment actually which proved to be the language activation juncture.

    Thanks Prof. Ingrid for giving us a chance to get familiar with what’s happening around us in the field, and I really look forward to other interesting talks!

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