Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing - Volume 44, Issue 1, 2022

In this special ‘Perspective’ issue, I would like to elaborate the consequences of my intercultural vision for the disciplines involved with the development of the domain of intercultural communication, especially the discipline of ‘Taalbeheersing’ as a subdiscipline of Dutch Studies and within the communication sciences – and to initiate a discussion about it. On the one hand, I would like to start the discussion on the role of multilingualism in ‘Taalbeheersing’– a discipline that, in my opinion, is still too focused on Dutch alone; and on the other hand, to advocate for the role of ‘Taalbeheersers’ and communication scientists in order to support the university degree programmes in modern foreign languages because of the declining interest of students.

In the study of language-and-social-interaction we can distinguish 3 approaches to multilingualism. The first and most basic version is to make the language explicit in which the studied interaction phenomenon was found. The second is to do a comparative study of an interaction phenomenon in different languages. The third is to study data in which different languages are spoken. At this moment the third approach is the least frequent, with the exception of conversation analysis for second language acquisition (CA-for-SLA).

In this text I argue that the Dutch society sometimes seems to have lost the capacity to embrace multilingualism and language variation – and I explore what role education might play in this development. Hence, it might be that a strong prescriptive attitude towards language in primary schools, which manifests itself explicitly in instruction and feedback on spelling, is followed by an equally strict perspective on language learning and language variation in secondary schools. Could it be that such an account negatively affects students’ willingness to engage with other languages than the most common ones in the Netherlands, that is, Dutch and English? I finish by briefly showcasing how a multilingual approach that embraces translanguaging and lingua receptiva at university level, fosters the European ideal of plurilingual individuals.

In his inciting plea, Ten Thije calls for the rejection of the notion of ‘non-native speaker’. As a member of the group of researchers who subscribe to the term ‘non-nativeness in communication’, I cannot help but feel addressed. In my reaction, I shall discuss the concept of non-nativeness and innovation in language acquisition research, which is getting off the ground partly thanks to research that in the Netherlands is typically called ‘taalbeheersing’.

In addition to Ten Thije’s plea to study the Dutch language as a multilingual object, I argue that the education of Dutch high school students with regard to the Dutch language and culture currently falls short, and will not improve substantially with the proposed new focus on multilingualism. A more fundamental shift in focus is needed: the (re)connection of language and culture studies. For in the Dutch cultural context, the use of the Dutch language is not only deeply embedded in other languages, but also in other cultures.

In this response, I take the concept of monolingualism as a starting point to reflect on the authors’ comments regarding my lead article. For a long time, research in conversation analysis has mistakenly assumed that monolingual studies can explain universal conversation structures. Moreover, the new Common European Framework (2020) is also still based on separate monolingual tests. The authors agree that secondary school exams require thorough reconsideration. Greater focus on language training creating career opportunities in healthcare, media, advertising, marketing, government communications, and diplomacy could motivate students to embark on language studies. After all, students need to be prepared for a society that – as everyone agrees on – is multilingual.