Introduction

Who is multilingual, and what kind of a society can be called multilingual? Do you need to master more than one language 'perfectly' and acquire them in early childhood in order to be really 'multilingual'? What does this imply for minorities who have not been able to acquire and use their heritage languages to their full potential? Can education make you multilingual, and how should this be done? Are some languages better, more useful, more real, more authentic or more valuable than others?

These questions are seldom asked. Instead, we understand and manage multilingualism as if we already had answers to them. These answers, as will be shown in the following sections, arise from the monolingual bias: the unfounded but unquestioned tacit assumption that monolingualism is the natural and default condition of human beings and societies.

1.1 The Monolingual Bias Underlying European Linguistic Traditions and Language Policies

This section will first introduce the reader to the current understanding of European multilingualism. It reveals that, no matter how multicultural Europe may seem, the view on the diversity of languages spoken there still derives from what is known as the monolingual bias.

1.1.1 All multilingualisms are not equal

From a global perspective, multilingualism is the norm rather than an exception; it has been estimated that the average person grows up using three languages (García, 2009; García & Schiffman, 2006). There are no monolingual states in the world, and most people do need multiple languages in order to manage their everyday lives. It is true that not all states have endorsed an official multilingualism, like, for instance, South Africa, which has 11 administrative languages; and India, which has 22. Instead, many states have opted for official monolingualism in the political and legal spheres, pushing all languages but the dominant one into a marginal position. Yet, even in the face of direct prohibition and discrimination, minority languages were and are spoken at home and among relatives and friends (Lasagabaster & Huguet, 2007).

European history shows a remarkable emphasis on monolingualism developed by force or persuasion over the years of state and nation building. As late as the 1970s, the dominant language ideology in Europe stressed that children whose native tongue was a non-dominant language were to be 'healed' and 'normalised'; the education system was supposed to transform them into monolingual speakers of the dominant state language. For example, Adler (1977a: 40) wrote that 'bilingualism can lead to split personality and, at worst, to schizophrenia'. In other words, the emphasis in the multilingualism debates was – and sometimes still is – on the negative impact of multilingualism. It was believed that the use of multiple languages in childhood might destabilise the personality and provoke identity problems (for critical discussions of this view see e.g. Cummins, 2000; Skutnabb-Kangas, 1982, 2000).

As is also reflected in the European Language Diversity for All (ELDIA) case study reports, all over Europe, the language ideology described above was supported by assimilatory policies. The ideology of 19th-century pseudo-Herderian linguistic nationalism – the belief that multilingualism is harmful both to the individual and to the nation – established itself in Europe partly before World War I and immediately after it (see e.g. Blommaert & Verschueren, 1998; Kamusella, 2009; Gal, 2015) and lived on through most of the 20th century. This ideology emphasised the need for one national culture to guarantee the wellbeing of all citizens on the same basis (Ngugi, 1987). As illustrated by the following quotation, the legacy of these policies can still turn up in everyday contexts; even in today's Europe, teachers and healthcare professionals may still discourage parents from speaking to their children in their mother tongue if it is not the language of the majority.

Despite the ideology stressing the linguistic and cultural unity of the state, multilingualism has always been an organic part of the everyday life of millions of Europeans. In practice, however, multilingualism in the European context is still largely seen from the perspective of majorities and of state languages. At the level of language policies, multilingualism is understood as the knowledge of major European languages, the default case being that people with an assumedly monolingual background acquire these language skills in the education system. The meaningfulness of teaching (certain) foreign languages to everyone – or learning them, for that matter – is far too seldom questioned. Rather, the teaching of 'useful' languages is regarded as a necessary investment in the competitiveness of the country in the global market. For this, the society concerned simply must find the resources.

The multilingualism of minorities and migrants, acquired at home and largely employed in group-internal communication, is, in contrast, implicitly regarded as a burden. In societal discourses, it is framed in terms of costs and workload: costs for the society and extra workload for language learners belonging to a minority, who need support for both learning the national language and maintaining their own heritage language. Consequently, languages are implicitly (or perhaps even explicitly) divided into two categories. The high-status 'major' or 'international' vehicular languages (as well as the national language in each nation-state) are languages that should be learned and are, accordingly, the main target of nationwide language education policies. The low-status or subordinated (Grillo, 1989: 174) 'minority' languages are seen as ethnic attributes rather than tools of communication and identity construction or as carriers of cultural values (cf. Lambert, 1979). 'Minority' languages are often dealt with as if they were of no interest to anybody outside the speech community, and the practices and policies pertaining to them may belong to completely different – and often regional – language-political frameworks. In the worst-case scenario, in the practice of language planning and education, 'the monolingual habitus of (even) multilingual schools' (Gogolin, 1993) ends up making potentially bilingual speakers (of less prestigious, 'ethnic' minority and migrant languages) monolingual while simultaneously attempting to make originally monolingual majority-language...