This paper presents observations from an ethnographic study in Finnish classrooms of mother tongue instruction in Arabic. The study is a part of an ongoing research project called MIGDIA that focuses on transnational educational paths of mainly Arabic-speaking migrants in Finland and in Lebanon. The central question of our classroom project is to examine the ways in which mother tongue instruction in Arabic can enhance or limit the ways in which the pupils further socialize into Arabic and learn the language of instruction. In this paper, we focus especially on the ways in which the teachers and the pupils navigate their plurilingual and multidialectal learning environments and linguistic ideologies connected with them.
Because of its diglossia (Ferguson 1959; Haeri 2000) Arabic is a challenging language to be socialized into: structural and lexical differences between the standard variety and various dialects are considerable – as are also the differences between regional dialects. The standard language is learned to various degrees through schooling, but everyday interaction is often based mostly on dialectal linguistic resources. According to our observations, this is also the case in non-diasporic Arabic-medium classrooms (see e.g. Piippo 2021) where the dialects mediate the process of learning the standard language. In diasporic contexts, the challenges posed by diglossia are even more considerable because of the multilingual and multidialectal environment. The contexts of using Arabic are more limited yet the range of spoken dialectal varieties often broader.
In our paper, we examine examples of classroom interaction and discuss the possibilities mother tongue instruction in Arabic has in supporting a plurilingual learner. We briefly focus on the institutional framework of mother tongue instruction in Finland, discuss the sociolinguistic idiosyncrasies of Arabic, and investigate the ideologies connected with both the mother tongue instruction and Arabic language. We then move on to classroom examples and scope the ways in which they provide starting points for developing multilingual pedagogies.
Bibliography
Ferguson, Charles (1959) Diglossia. Word 15: 325–340.
Haeri, Nilofaar (2000) Form and Ideology: Arabic sociolinguistics and beyond. Annual Review of Anthropology 29(1): 61-87.
Piippo, Irina (2021) Mirror-like address practice in Arabic-medium classroom interaction: managing social relations and intersubjectivity. In Jan Lindström, Ritva Laury, Anssi Peräkylä & Marja-Leena Sorjonen (eds.), Intersubjectivity in Action. Studies in language and social interaction, pp. 109–134. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
