Multilingualism at school as a global phenomenon

Although multilingualism is not a recent phenomenon, it has become more common in recent years due to globalization, transnational mobility of the population and the spread of ICT. According to Aronin and Hufeisen ( 2009 ), contemporary multilingualism has spread geographically and socially and is characterized by the use of languages that are not originally from neighbouring areas. Furthermore, technology has contributed to instantaneous communication among multilingual speakers in different parts of the world. The statistics on the use of English and other languages on the Internet show that multilingualism is increasing. English is still the most widely used language on the Internet. It was used by 51.3% of internet users in the year 2000 (Graddol, 2006 ), but this figure dropped to 26.8% in 2011 (Internet World Stats, 2011 ). Meanwhile, the use of other languages such as Arabic, Chinese and Russian is growing much faster than the use of English on the Web (Internet World Stats, 2011 ). Globalization has given multilingualism not only visibility but also an added value associated with the ability to speak several languages (Edwards, 2004 ).

Multilingualism at the individual level (also referred to as plurilingualism) brings together the process of acquiring second or foreign languages and the use of these languages. Individuals may learn and use languages of wider communication such as English or Mandarin, but they may also learn languages used in their sociolinguistic environment. Multilingualism can give better opportunities, particularly in the job market, but it is also linked to identity and belonging to one or more speech communities. The latter is often the case with less spread languages, such as Maori in New Zealand, Basque in the Basque Country or Welsh in the UK. Speakers of these languages are usually fluent in international languages (English in the case of Maori and Welsh, French and/or Spanish in the case of Basque), but they go on using their own languages.

Multilingualism has spread in education and nowadays it has more visibility in school settings. Many schools in different parts of the world have second or foreign languages as part of the curriculum.

A Brief Description of the Discipline of Linguistics

The discipline of linguistics can be defined as the systematic study of language(s), its nature, its structure and the variation in and between languages. Language permeates, gives direction to and in many ways determines human experience. Linguistics as a discipline is closely related to sociology, anthropology and psychology. The main intellectual thrust in linguistics has shifted from historical work at the beginning of the twentieth century to currently three predominant areas of focus:

• 1 language systems (semantics, syntax, phonetics/phonology),

• 2 the processes of language acquisition, and

• 3 language in culture and society.

Variation and diversity within and between languages can be studied under any of these three areas. Here we will focus on the third area: diversity in languages in culture and society.

Language diversity and multilingualism are closely related concepts, sometimes used synonymously or interchangeably. However, language diversity usually refers to the number and variation of languages and multilingualism to the use of more than one language in a given society as well as the proficiency in more than one language by individuals. ‘Plurilingualism’ is a term also used for the latter, among others by the Council of Europe.

Already in the 1950s, Greenberg (1971) devised different measurements of linguistic diversity. He started with a simple index relating to the chance that two random members of a community speak the same language. He then further took into account the factors of linguistic distance and of ‘polylingualism’ (speakers who command two or more languages). A linguistic diversity index must take into account several factors such as the unit of analysis or the probability of finding speakers. Factors to consider are the number of languages (richness), the distribution of languages (evenness) and the distance between languages (distance) (Van Parijs 2006). Several other indices for linguistic diversity could be constructed based on economic theories, as has been shown for bio-ecological diversity (Maignan et al. 2003), where similar dimensions of diversity such as number, size and distinctiveness are considered.

Language communities are unequally spread across the globe. Most of the world's 7,000 languages are found in a broad belt around the equator.