Much like my colleagues, we have given a lot of thought to what we could say that you have not heard before.
In my field of applied linguistics, I remember how interesting it was to see the evolution of what it means to “learn a language”. For a long time, we have thought in terms of separate categories. For example, if I am a French-language learner, I only speak French in the French-language classroom. Similarly, when I am in the English-language classroom, I only speak English. Learners' identities are therefore often exclusive: I am an “English as a second language learner”.
As we are increasingly seeing in the literature, in Europe and in language policies, the problem with this vision is that it does not reflect the reality of individuals in society. In the French-language classroom, these individuals are not just French-language learners, but they also bring all their linguistic knowledge. In society, they are not just people who want to learn the dominant language, which could come from another country. In Canada, for example, a person can decide to learn both official languages at the same time.
Why should they not be able to come into a room and say that they want to learn both languages at the same time? The classic divisions will return when they write an assignment, which they will often have to do in the imposed language. Yet, at home, these students often write in both languages, taking advantage of their linguistic duality or multilingualism.
This richness has often been ignored or neglected. However, there is once again the danger of a gap between what young people feel—I am talking about young people because they are the future—and what they see in society or in the way those things are presented.
In her work, Sylvie Roy presents the classic case of immersion students who, at some point, tell themselves that they love French and decide to continue their immersion education. If they are lucky, they will have access to a post-secondary school where they can study in French, a language in which they will eventually reach a good level. However, they will get caught up in the categories when asked whether they are anglophone or francophone. They will say that they are sort of both. However, if the traditional definition of the word “bilingual” is that you must express yourself perfectly in both languages, almost no one will raise their hand.
Until we modernize the definition, we will continue to deal with those old categories and the students in my example will have to call themselves anglophones. That is unfortunate, because we are losing the richness of bilingualism in the process. In reality, we feel it, we see it and people make comments. But this richness is not sufficiently valued.
In my opinion, this is therefore the advantage of a modernized and more complex vision for those who use several languages or promote multilingualism in society.