This talk investigates the relationship between language and identity in multilingual contexts, focusing most particularly on how young, multilingual children deploy a range of communicative resources both in and out of the classroom. The current global context of unprecedented migration of people and ideas leads to an explosion of contact between languages and their speakers. In such a context, understanding the role of multilingualism in children’s educational trajectories is more critical than ever. In this talk I will demonstrate how the linguistic anthropology of education illuminates our understanding of language, identity and power. This approach will be illustrated with data from two of my previous research studies to show how the diverse language resources that children bring to educational contexts can be treated in different ways, how these ways of treating children’s speech are informed by widely shared beliefs about language that circulate through fields of discourse such as schools, and how they are invoked in particular moments of inter-relating, such as small corrections in the classroom, or in the performance of ordinary institutional interactions.

This lunchtime seminar is open for all.