- UCL Institute of Education
20 Bedford Way,
London
WC1H 0AL
Sian Preece
UCL Institute of Education, Culture, Communication and Media, Faculty Member
- Higher Education, Applied Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Language and Identity, Language and Gender, Critical Discourse Analysis, and 19 moreLinguistic ethnography, Multi- & Bilingualism & Biliteracy, Teacher Education in Teaching English to Speakers of Second/Foreign Languages (TESOL), English language, Bilingual Education, Language and Power, Widening Participation, Heritage Languages, Gender, Academic Writing, Multilingualism, Social Class, London, Gender and Sexuality, Widening Participation in Higher Education, Critical Theory, Ethnography, Narrative, and Marxismedit
- I am interested in the relationship between language and identity in contexts of linguistic diversity. I examine ways... moreI am interested in the relationship between language and identity in contexts of linguistic diversity. I examine ways in which language acts as a marker of identity, pointing to gender, social class and ethnicity, and as a resource for doing identity work. I am particularly interested in issues in which language is related to matters of social justice involving bi/multilingual individuals and groups in the Anglophone world. The main contexts I examine are educational institutions, particularly in post-compulsory settings. My work aims to problematise normative views of monolingualism in the English-dominant world and linguistic diversity (particularly of ethnic minority communities and migrants) as a problem for society and (educational) institutions. I seek to develop understanding of resource based perspectives to linguistic diversity and plurilingual approaches to teaching, learning and research, in which multilingual capital is viewed as a valuable resource enabling the development of cultural understanding and culturally hybrid approaches to knowledge construction and problem solving.edit
Special Issue contents: Siân Preece & Steve Marshall (2020) Plurilingualism, teaching and learning, and Anglophone higher education: an introduction Anglophone universities and linguistic diversity, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2020.1723931... more
Special Issue contents:
Siân Preece & Steve Marshall (2020) Plurilingualism, teaching and learning, and Anglophone higher education: an introduction Anglophone universities and linguistic diversity, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2020.1723931
Siân Preece (2020) Postgraduate students as plurilingual social actors in UK higher education, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2019.1676767
Steve Marshall (2020) Understanding plurilingualism and developing pedagogy: teaching in linguistically diverse classes across the disciplines at a Canadian university, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2019.1676768
Victoria Odeniyi & Gillian Lazar (2020) Valuing the multilingual repertoires of students from African migrant communities at a London university, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2019.1677702
Saskia Van Viegen & Sandra Zappa-Hollman (2020) Plurilingual pedagogies at the post-secondary level: possibilities for intentional engagement with students’ diverse linguistic repertoires, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2019.1686512
Jane Andrews & Richard Fay (2020) Valuing a translingual mindset in researcher education in Anglophone higher education: supervision perspectives, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2019.1677701
Angel M. Y. Lin (2020) From deficit-based teaching to asset-based teaching in higher education in BANA countries: cutting through ‘either-or’ binaries with a heteroglossic plurilingual lens, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2020.1723927
Siân Preece & Steve Marshall (2020) Plurilingualism, teaching and learning, and Anglophone higher education: an introduction Anglophone universities and linguistic diversity, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2020.1723931
Siân Preece (2020) Postgraduate students as plurilingual social actors in UK higher education, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2019.1676767
Steve Marshall (2020) Understanding plurilingualism and developing pedagogy: teaching in linguistically diverse classes across the disciplines at a Canadian university, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2019.1676768
Victoria Odeniyi & Gillian Lazar (2020) Valuing the multilingual repertoires of students from African migrant communities at a London university, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2019.1677702
Saskia Van Viegen & Sandra Zappa-Hollman (2020) Plurilingual pedagogies at the post-secondary level: possibilities for intentional engagement with students’ diverse linguistic repertoires, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2019.1686512
Jane Andrews & Richard Fay (2020) Valuing a translingual mindset in researcher education in Anglophone higher education: supervision perspectives, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2019.1677701
Angel M. Y. Lin (2020) From deficit-based teaching to asset-based teaching in higher education in BANA countries: cutting through ‘either-or’ binaries with a heteroglossic plurilingual lens, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2020.1723927
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This poster reports on ongoing work for The Multilingual University project. This project promotes linguistic diversity as resource not problem in Anglophone higher educational settings. To this end, I present the latest findings from a... more
This poster reports on ongoing work for The Multilingual University project. This project promotes linguistic diversity as resource not problem in Anglophone higher educational settings. To this end, I present the latest findings from a staff-student collaboration with PGT students taking modules in applied linguistics in a London university into the salience of their multilingual repertoires for the taught curriculum. The findings reveal that for students with little experience of English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) prior to MA study, multilingual resources were vital for grasping subject matter, while those more used to EMI harnessed multilingual resources to put subject content to use. A number of plurilingual practices came to light that made use of all 4 language skills. These allowed students to work at a deeper level than English only permitted and enabled content to be related to culture, fostering intercultural competence, critical thinking and the ‘inclusive’ curriculum. The study revealed a misalignment between teaching and learning, in that pedagogy was experienced as monolingual while learning depended on plurilingual practices. Importantly, it shed light on the ‘plurilingual social actor’ in Anglophone higher education contexts, demonstrating that when sanctioned by the institution, this was a dynamic, powerful and affirmative identity positioning well aligned to the teaching and learning agenda in the sector and also a more egalitarian positioning, in that it dispensed with binaries and was accessible to all regardless of origin or linguistic expertise or inheritance.
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This paper sets out to develop a finer-grained understanding of the 'plurilingual social actor' within Anglophone higher educational setting. Drawing on data collected as part of The Multilingual University project, I examine how a group... more
This paper sets out to develop a finer-grained understanding of the 'plurilingual social actor' within Anglophone higher educational setting. Drawing on data collected as part of The Multilingual University project, I examine how a group of plurilingual postgraduate students taking modules in applied linguistics at a university in London viewed their linguistic repertoires as a resource for the taught curriculum and what their experiences can tell us about the plurilingual social actor. The study opened an institutional space for making linguistic diversity visible and for considering how it was a resource for the curriculum. The findings indicate that multilingual resources play an important role in supporting learning at postgraduate level and reveal ways in which familiarity with English medium education shapes how postgraduate students mobilise their multilingual resources in relation to the taught curriculum. Importantly, the study shows how the plurilingual social actor offers a dynamic, powerful and affirmative identity position that is well aligned with the teaching and learning agenda in higher education. It is my contention that a better understanding of this alignment will allow us to raise awareness of language-as-resource and advance plurilingual pedagogies in the sector.
Research Interests:
As universities in the Anglophone world attend to operating on a global stage, linguistic diversity in the sector has intensified. Historically, higher education has adopted language-as-problem orientations to managing linguistic... more
As universities in the Anglophone world attend to operating on a global stage, linguistic diversity in the sector has intensified. Historically, higher education has adopted language-as-problem orientations to managing linguistic diversity, viewing multilingual repertoires largely as an obstacle. An emerging body of work informed by language-as-resource orientations seeks to counter these deficit views. While timely, this work often pays little attention to social class among the multilingual student population. This paper addresses this issue by developing a finer-grained understanding of student experiences of their multilingual repertoires with two groups of students from different socioeconomic backgrounds: working-class Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) undergraduate students and international postgraduate students from more socially elite families. By examining students' experiences of their multilingual repertoires in the institution, I demonstrate how universities stratify the linguistic diversity in their midst, arguing that this is resonant with elite-plebeian views of bilingualism. I contend that language-as-resource informed curriculum and pedagogy needs to attend to institutional practices that stratify linguistic diversity to avoid reinforcing a situation in which the multilingualism of students from professional and socially elite groups is reinforced while little is gained when it comes to the multilingualism of working-class BME students.
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In this talk, I argue that deficit models, rooted in monolingual and monolingualising discourses, are outdated in the contemporary academy. Drawing on the findings of The Multilingual University BAAL-CUP seminar and ESRC Seminar Series,... more
In this talk, I argue that deficit models, rooted in monolingual and monolingualising discourses, are outdated in the contemporary academy. Drawing on the findings of The Multilingual University BAAL-CUP seminar and ESRC Seminar Series, this talk examines how ‘language-as-resource’ perspectives provide a way forward by raising the visibility of linguistic diversity in the academy and treating it as an asset to be welcomed, used and modelled. Following a brief background, I provide some examples of plurilingual approaches to the teaching and learning of academic discourse. I then turn to what principles we may infer from these examples for implementing plurilingual approaches to practice along with some of the issues and challenges that have arisen. I conclude by arguing that plurilingual approaches, informed by resource views of language, hold out the prospect of encouraging and enabling universities in the English-dominant world to take a lead on putting forward views of (linguistic) diversity as the norm and bi and multilingualism as desirable for societal and individual well-being.
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This article examines how non traditional male undergraduate students from linguistic minorities perform gender on an academic writing programme and what this tells us about the significance of gender for the teaching of academic writing... more
This article examines how non traditional male undergraduate students from linguistic minorities perform gender on an academic writing programme and what this tells us about the significance of gender for the teaching of academic writing in the contemporary academy. I focus on how gender is performed in talk about academic discourse and reveal the attraction of 'lad-dish' identities. I aim to deepen understanding in EAP of the importance of the social world on classroom relations and contribute to research that has considered identity in relation to the written outputs of students and scholars. To gain a more nuanced understanding of gender, an intersectional approach is adopted, in which gender is viewed in intersection with social class. I argue that the gender-class nexus is of significance for teaching academic writing in that it reveals how the social world orients students to language learning and their positioning in deficit discourses. I demonstrate how understanding of these issues can be developed through fine-grained analysis of spoken interaction and contend that language-as-resource approaches to linguistic diversity offer a productive way forward for EAP and for teaching in contexts of linguistic diversity in higher education.
Research Interests:
An impact of globalisation on higher education has been an increase in diversity in the student population in universities in English dominant settings. The increasing diversification has impacted on the linguistic ecology of higher... more
An impact of globalisation on higher education has been an increase in diversity in the student population in universities in English dominant settings. The increasing diversification has impacted on the linguistic ecology of higher education, resulting in a wide range of linguistic repertoires among the student body. In some institutions, particularly those situated in urban areas, the multilingual classroom may well be the norm. Bi/multilingual university students form a heterogeneous group, encompassing temporary sojourners and members of linguistic minority communities resident in the host country. These students’ linguistic, cultural, ethnic and social class backgrounds impact on their knowledge and experience of using academic language in higher education. In this article, I examine academic language in relation to a group of working class undergraduate university students from linguistic minority communities in the UK. I focus on the ‘socio-symbolic functions’ (Morek and Heller, this issue) of academic language for the participants in the context of an academic writing programme. I consider their ascribed institutional identity, as remedial users of academic language, and their inhabited identities as bi-dialectal users of English, native speakers of English and as multilingual subjects. I discuss how the participants’ ascribed institutional identity erased their bidialectal and multilingual capital and argue that higher education needs to attend to the inhabited identities of working class linguistic minority students in efforts to foster the development of their relationship to academic language.
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Research Interests:
This article sets out to examine the increasingly complex linguistic ecology of universities in countries in the Anglophone centre. As universities in these set- tings have responded to operating in a globalised world, recruitment of... more
This article sets out to examine the increasingly complex linguistic ecology of universities in countries in the Anglophone centre. As universities in these set- tings have responded to operating in a globalised world, recruitment of students and staff who are multilingual and/ or bi-dialects has significantly increased. However, the diverse and rich linguistic resources that have been brought into the sector are largely ignored or treated as problematic. My intention is to raise linguistic diversity as an issue that needs greater debate and research in these universities, to problematise the monolingual ethos and practices of much of the sector, and to make the case for imagining universities in these settings as sites of multilingualism. This is in the interests of maintaining discourses that represent higher education as in the public good, in which universities have a vital role to play in contributing to the development of pluralistic, multicultural and multilingual societies at national, regional and global levels, in educating “critical citizens of the world” (Giroux 2004: 17), and in promoting an “ethos of personal growth that better represents what humanity might become” (Gibbs et al. 2004: 191).
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This paper examines linguistic diversity among minority ethnic undergraduate students categorised as from widening participation backgrounds in a new university in London. All students are British born and educated and from working-class... more
This paper examines linguistic diversity among minority ethnic undergraduate students categorised as from widening participation backgrounds in a new university in London. All students are British born and educated and from working-class families. The paper considers how the students negotiate multilingual and bidialectal identities within the context of an academic writing programme regarded as providing English language remediation. Firstly, there is a consideration of how the students position their heritage languages in relation to English. It identifies three key ways in which the students adopt multilingual identity positions in the academic community, showing how these allow the students to display weaker to stronger affiliation to heritage languages in the setting. Secondly, there is an exploration of how the students adopt bidialectal identity positions to contrast the ‘posh’ (standard English) practices of the academic community with the ‘slang’ (vernacular English) language practices of their peers. It considers ways in which the ‘posh/slang’ binary enables the students to establish social networks and negotiate their positioning as in need of English language remediation. The paper argues for an imagining of English-medium universities as multilingual spaces in which the linguistic diversity of non-traditional minority ethnic students is viewed primarily as an asset, rather than as a problem.
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Posh Talk: Language and Identity in Higher Education is an in-depth study of a group of multilingual first-year undergraduate students from widening participation backgrounds at a university in London. All were taking an academic writing... more
Posh Talk: Language and Identity in Higher Education is an in-depth study of a group of multilingual first-year undergraduate students from widening participation backgrounds at a university in London. All were taking an academic writing programme set up to improve student retention during the transition into higher education. Through a detailed examination of spoken interaction, the book explores ways in which identity positions emerge, with a particular focus on gender. Key issues discussed in the book include the students' experience of 'Otherness' in higher education, the attraction of laddishness for establishing friendly social relationships with peers and resisting the stigma of remedial English, the construction of a 'slang/posh' dichotomy to contrast the students' everyday language with that of the academic community, a critique of the notion of language remediation in higher education contexts and an argument for treating multilingual students' cultural perspectiveness and linguistic repertories as a resource.
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The term academic literacy is a common term in EAP literature but neither its meaning nor the discourses in which it is embedded are transparent. Lea and Street’s (2000) model of student writing in higher education provides a useful... more
The term academic literacy is a common term in EAP literature but neither its meaning nor the discourses in which it is embedded are transparent. Lea and Street’s (2000) model of student writing in higher education provides a useful starting point for a consideration of this issue. They summarise the three major approaches to student writing in higher education (HE) as study skills, academic socialisation and academic literacies. In this chapter, I view these approaches as embedded in discourses on skills, acculturation and literacies, respectively.
As the notion of ‘academic literacy’ becomes ‘naturalised’ (Fairclough, 1992), in that it is a term in common usage, it is helpful to consider the discourses that underpin it. To do this, I will draw on the work of Foucault and other poststructuralist writing on discourse, which I will first outline. This will be followed by an examination of socialisation, as the dominant discourse in EAP and one that views student writing in terms of acculturation into the academic community. I shall then discuss skills, as a powerful modernising discourse in HE, in which writing is viewed as a study skill with which students need to be equipped. Finally, I will consider the increasingly influential discourse of literacies, in which writing is perceived as sets of practices with which learners need to grapple both at the level of cognition and affect. I consider ways in which skills, socialisation and literacies’ discourses position EAP practitioners and learners. I suggest that skills discourses can encourage students to adopt deficit or remedial positions, which may be reinforced by their lecturers. Socialisation discourses position learners and lecturers in novice/ expert relationships, in which EAP learners’ educational experience in their home country and L1 tend to be ignored or seen as an obstacle to learning. I argue that literacies offer alternative positions to EAP learners and practitioners and argue that discourses on literacies could assist in developing approaches to writing in HE that are more sensitive to student identity.
As the notion of ‘academic literacy’ becomes ‘naturalised’ (Fairclough, 1992), in that it is a term in common usage, it is helpful to consider the discourses that underpin it. To do this, I will draw on the work of Foucault and other poststructuralist writing on discourse, which I will first outline. This will be followed by an examination of socialisation, as the dominant discourse in EAP and one that views student writing in terms of acculturation into the academic community. I shall then discuss skills, as a powerful modernising discourse in HE, in which writing is viewed as a study skill with which students need to be equipped. Finally, I will consider the increasingly influential discourse of literacies, in which writing is perceived as sets of practices with which learners need to grapple both at the level of cognition and affect. I consider ways in which skills, socialisation and literacies’ discourses position EAP practitioners and learners. I suggest that skills discourses can encourage students to adopt deficit or remedial positions, which may be reinforced by their lecturers. Socialisation discourses position learners and lecturers in novice/ expert relationships, in which EAP learners’ educational experience in their home country and L1 tend to be ignored or seen as an obstacle to learning. I argue that literacies offer alternative positions to EAP learners and practitioners and argue that discourses on literacies could assist in developing approaches to writing in HE that are more sensitive to student identity.
Research Interests:
In this article I explore how a group of female university students, mostly British Asian and in their late teens and earlytwenties, perform femininities in talk about heritage languages. I argue that analysis of this talk reveals ways in... more
In this article I explore how a group of female university students, mostly British Asian and in their late teens and earlytwenties, perform femininities in talk about heritage languages. I argue that analysis of this talk reveals ways in which the participants enact “culturally intelligible” gendered subject positions. This frequently involves negotiating the norms of “heteronormativity,” constituting femininity in terms of marriage, motherhood, and maintenance of heritage culture and language, and “girl power,” constituting femininity in terms of youth, sassiness, glamour, and individualism. For these young women, I ask whether higher education can become a site in which they have the opportunities to explore these identifications and examine other ways of imagining the self and what their stories suggest about “doing being” a young British Asian woman in London.
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This is the Introduction to the Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity
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This chapter examines what happens to the identities of working-class linguistic minority students when their linguistic practices come into contact with those of the ‘academic tribes’ (Becher and Trowler 2001) that they seek to join.... more
This chapter examines what happens to the identities of working-class linguistic minority students when their linguistic practices come into contact with those of the ‘academic tribes’ (Becher and Trowler 2001) that they seek to join. Illustrated with data from my study of the identities of multilingual undergraduate students on an academic writing programme in a university in London (Preece 2009), I argue that learning the language and literacy practices of the academic community involves ‘power and identity’ (Morgan 2002: 12). In the case discussed in this chapter, institutional discourses framed linguistic diversity as a ‘problem’ to be fixed rather than ‘resource’ to be used. Informed by ‘language-as-problem’ (Ruiz 1984), the institution erased the multilingual capital in their midst and positioned those on the academic writing programme as in need of English language remediation. This ‘ascribed’ identity (Blommaert 2006) troubled the participants’ identities, as a person worthy of a place in higher education, by stigmatising their linguistic repertoires and categorising them as in danger of failure. This negative identity ascription was resisted by the adoption of other more powerful identities, not all of which were conducive to the scholarly enterprise. These issues will be examined in this chapter.
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Language, Society and Power is the essential introductory text for students studying language in a variety of social contexts. This book examines the ways in which language functions, how it influences thought and how it varies... more
Language, Society and Power is the essential introductory text for students studying language in a variety of social contexts.
This book examines the ways in which language functions, how it influences thought and how it varies according to age, ethnicity, class and gender. It seeks to answer such questions as: How can a language reflect the status of children and older people? Do men and women talk differently? How can our use of language mark our ethnic identity? It also looks at language use in politics and the media and investigates how language affects and constructs our identities, exploring notions of correctness and attitudes towards language use.
This book examines the ways in which language functions, how it influences thought and how it varies according to age, ethnicity, class and gender. It seeks to answer such questions as: How can a language reflect the status of children and older people? Do men and women talk differently? How can our use of language mark our ethnic identity? It also looks at language use in politics and the media and investigates how language affects and constructs our identities, exploring notions of correctness and attitudes towards language use.
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Michael Fielding has written about the dangers of over-emphasis on the functional in schooling and a subordination of the personal. He wrote of, ‘… the need to situate our work within an historical context that requires judgement about... more
Michael Fielding has written about the dangers of over-emphasis on the functional in schooling and a subordination of the personal. He wrote of, ‘… the need to situate our work within an historical context that requires judgement about matters of significance and purpose, not mere efficiency and effectiveness …’ (Fielding 2007, p. 383). The research findings presented here were analysed using this framework within the context of teachers’ professional learning. We drew on interview data from 11 teachers who, as one part of their professional development, were undertaking MA degrees in education. We explored: how far they saw the personal as the ultimate aim in education; the functional in relation to personal in teacher development; transformation and dynamism within teacher learning, which reflected the personal; and the role of challenge and critical reflection within the functional to serve the personal. The MAs our teachers engaged in seemed to provide opportunities for learning that reflected personal goals. These included: the spaces to interact with teachers from a range of backgrounds; encouragement to explore existing published educational research; provision of teaching that could provide a model for their own practice; and support for carrying out action research into an area of practice that each individual found important.
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In the wake of Brexit there has been a reported rise in racially motivated incidents in the UK along with increased intolerance to linguistic and cultural diversity. One way in which this is manifested is in EU nationals, migrants and... more
In the wake of Brexit there has been a reported rise in racially motivated incidents in the UK along with increased intolerance to linguistic and cultural diversity. One way in which this is manifested is in EU nationals, migrants and members of minority communities being told to ‘speak English’ while going about their daily lives. Intolerance to languages other than English in public spaces suggests that language is acting as a proxy for race and racism, as a tool for othering members of migrant communities (including EU nationals) and as a way of reinforcing commonly held and populist notions of the UK as a monolingual and, by extension, a monocultural English nation. This project brings together academics and MA students in applied linguistics and political science with English for Action London (an activist and community group providing free ESOL classes in London) to examine this situation. We are currently doing the following a) examining portrayals of language (e.g. English, languages other than English, language learning & bi/ multilingualism) in political campaigning material of UK political parties and mainstream media sources in Britain in the Brexit Referendum and June 2017 General Election; b) documenting the views of migrants (including EU nationals) in London to such materials and reports; c) investigating how language can be used as a tool for cultural exclusion and a proxy for race and racism in political and media materials texts; d) critiquing the view of Brexit Britain as a monolingual English-only space and the assumption that UK residents are monolingual English speakers. We aim to provide a counter narrative of cultural inclusion setting out linguistic diversity as a norm and asset to cultural understanding and the idea of language learning and bi/multilingualism as an important British value.