Luxembourgish as an additional language

Discussing affordances at L3 Warsaw

Defined as “a spectrum of phenomena”, affordances can be manifested through actions, objects, possibilities, events, facts and realities, etc. It is always in plural because affordances work by sets; i.e., knowledge, motivation and context constitute the set of individual affordances (see Larissa Aronin).
Used in the first times in physics, design and psychology, the concept of affordances develops in linguistics and multilingual studies. David Singleton presents language affordances as affordances through the realization of which communication using a language or languages, or the acquisition of a language or languages is possible.
How do affordances work?
First, sets of affordances are required to be available in order that a given action may be performed, a given goal attained.
Second, each action/goal requires the availability of its own specific set of affordances.
Third, exactly which, how many, and in what configuration affordances need to be present depends on the particular nature of the relevant action/goal, actor(s) and environment.
Four and last, affordances function in sets: each set relating to a particular outcome.
Affordances may be created by individuals or provided by the society. In a multilingual context, affordances for using one language may be denied and affordances for using a different language provided. This last point on affordances explains its interest for the lLAL project.

Luxembourg – Luxembourgish: A curiosity at the L3 Warsaw

“What is the dominant language in Luxembourg”,
“Isn’t Luxembourgish a dialect of German?”
“How is the everyday life in Luxembourg without Luxembourgish?”
These are questions that appeal for assumptions on Luxembourgish as a linguistic item rather than for discussions on scientific studies on Luxembourgish as part of learners’ reality in a particular multilingual and multicultural context.
Anyway, my paper on multilingual adults’ perceptions of the values of Luxembourgish was a successful presentation of researches carried out at the University of Luxembourg under the support of the FNR. Interesting questions concerned data transcription and whether the participants to the focus group only used one language each or code-switched during their talk. Another interesting question was on the intended method for investigating on the contradiction that appears in the learning of Luxembourgish as described by the participants to my MA study.
At the end of the presentation, I invited the participants to the L3 Conference to satisfy their curiosity towards Luxembourg and experience its multilingual context. I also invite them to get inform on Luxembourgish by reading about researches carried out by the IPSE research unit and the DICA research group.

“L’action se passe en Pologne, c’est-à-dire nulle part”

15-17 September 2011, Seventh International Conference on Third language acquisition and multilingualism, University of Warsaw, Poland.
With the always developing researches into multilingualism, the once unknown Poland hosted 67 presentations and thousands participants from all over the world discussed new dimensions of multilingualism and their diverse perspectives on future researches in multilingual contexts.
Interesting discussions on multilingual contexts over the world open the conference and Hanna Komorowska presented the history of multilingualism and multiculturality in Poland from the Jagiellonian Period and the partitioning of the country to its disappearing from the map for the 20c. motivations and demotivations toward language learning. In the history of Poland, religion and linguistic diversity were intimately linked together; language and identity, ethnicity and nations were considered important issues and civic categorisation was the basis for linguistic categorisation. Nowadays, multilingualism is promoted and there is a possibility for language choice with English as the most chosen language in linguistic constellations. Although Spanish is another flourishing language, English tends to be the lingua franca in second and foreign language education in Poland. The interesting presentation of the multilingual context in Poland was followed by many questions from the participants who wanted to know about the role of religion in linguistic categorisation today and the motives of families in their different choices of linguistic constellations. Yet, because of the strict respect of timing, not all questions could be answered.

L3-Conference on Third Language Acquisition and Multilingualism

The seventh international conference on Third Language Acquistion and Multilingualism will be hosted by the University of Warsaw on the 15th-17th September 2011. Discussions will address research issues in multilingualism, the multilingual society, multilingual education and teachers training, the affectivity of multilinguality, multilingual literacies and educational policies.

Under the topic of the multlingual society, I will present official and social discourses on the motives of multilingual individuals to learn Luxembourgish. The paper will discuss Luxembourgish as an additional language in a context where two internationally more valuable languages play official roles.

Learning Luxembourgish as an Additional Language – lLAL

In the multilingual context Luxembourg with French and German as the languages of legislation and administrative matters, an interesting issue for multilingual researches and second language acquisition (SLA) is the analysis of multilingual speakers’ attitude toward Luxembourgish, the national language.

The project-lLAL focuses on the learning of Luxembourgish by multilingual adults and the learners’ relationship with the social contexts in which the language learning is taking place and the structuring of the learning opportunities that are made available. Emphasis is laid on the correlation between learning and using Luxembourgish in everyday interactions and social activities.