Socialized into Multilingualism: A Case Study of a Mauritian Pre-school

A.M. Auleear Owodally

Guiding Questions

• To what extent does the Mauritian school context discussed here reflect language socialization outside school?

• What covert messages about language(s) are the school children in this context unconsciously exposed to?

• What are the opportunities and challenges associated with language socialization practices in multilingual contexts in Mauritius?

Introduction

Despite living on an island which boasts of its multilingualism, most Mauritian children spend the first few years of their lives in monolingual Kreol-speaking families where Kreol is the dominant language of the home and the environment. School is a major site where they are exposed to multilingualism – through the subjects taught (English, French and an optional ancestral language – one of the languages spoken or believed to have been spoken by migrants who came to Mauritius such as Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Hakka, etc.), the written medium of instruction (English) and the oral media of communication (French and Kreol). In the context of this shift from home monolingualism to school-mediated multilingualism, one of the important language and literacy challenges that most children face is that they have to learn English and through English, given that English is the main language of literacy and the main written medium of instruction throughout the education system from the first year of primary schooling. Acting as the linguistic bridge between the home and the primary school, the pre-school is the first semi-formal institution where children are introduced to and exposed to English and multilingualism (Auleear Owodally, 2010).

In this chapter, I use a language socialization perspective to investigate the pre-school as a site where a group of children are socialized into English and, by extension, into local multilingualism. Focusing on daily routine activities (Duff, 2010; Ochs, 2000) in one government pre-school, I show how, through their language practices and language teaching practices, teachers socialize pre-schoolers into languages (their uses and functions), language learning and related ideologies.

I start with a brief overview of the local sociolinguistic situation, showing how the school system contributes to shaping and perpetuating Mauritian multilingualism. With respect to the ways children are socialized into English and local multilingualism, I describe some of the theoretical principles of language socialization which I then draw upon to frame my analysis of data obtained from a longitudinal study of a group of children in one government pre-school. After describing the research design and methodology, I present and discuss my findings.

Mauritian Education – Mauritian Multilingualism

Mauritius has been shaped by a history of voluntary and forced migration: French and British colonizers, African enslaved people, Indian indentured labourers and Chinese workers, all of whom brought along with them their diverse religious, cultural and language practices. These waves of migrants have constituted a richly multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multilingual population, with inhabitants cohabiting fairly peacefully in 'harmonious separatism' (Toth, 1995: 98). Although Mauritius is a secular state, it has developed a particular understanding and a particular performance of secularism (cf. Eisenlohr, 2006), with the religious often permeating secular institutions, sites and discourses. For instance, politicians regularly attend and participate in religious ceremonies, while religious images and practices often infiltrate ancestral language textbooks and classrooms in state schools (Auleear Owodally, 2012b). This point of contact between the religious and the secular is one of the many paradoxes of the local context.

The term 'multilingualism', used to qualify the present language situation in Mauritius, oversimplifies a more complicated language situation with different languages having different values and functions. Rajah-Carrim (2007) divides the languages used locally into three distinct categories: European languages (English and French), oriental/ancestral languages (Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu, Mandarin, Marathi, etc.) and local languages (Kreol and Bhojpuri). English is the de facto official language – the language of the parliament, the judiciary and education; however, it is socially rarely heard and seldom used. French, on the other hand, is a prestigious social language widely used in the spoken and written media and used as a home language among a small bourgeoisie. The oriental languages, which are often utilized in various in-group ethno-religious ceremonies, are seen as 'markers of ethnic and religious identity' (Rajah-Carrim, 2007: 52). The local languages, Kreol and Bhojpuri, are the most popularly used home languages, with the increased use of Kreol as the main home language in the past decades (the 2000 census data revealed that 69% of Mauritians claimed Kreol as the only home language, with this figure rising to 84% in 2011). However, Kreol has low social status for historical and economic reasons.

The education system has endeavoured to...