Abstract Summary
The paper grapples with the ways in which everyday multilingualism intersects with the Australian government’s agenda of ‘social integration’. It argues that it is the trans-semiotic elements of ‘everyday multilingualism’, rather than English, that unite society and provide a key for much-needed changes in social integration and linguistic justice.
Abstract :
‘Australia’s multicultural statement’ (2017) claims “English is and will remain our national language and is a critical tool for migrant integration. And our multilingual workforce is broadening business horizons and boosting Australia's competitive edge in an increasingly globalised economy”. Limited by socioeconomic parameters, the statement is heavily premised on a monolingual mindset and fails to recognise the vital contribution deriving from multilingual and multicultural grassroots experience in translinguistic communication. The statement promotes linguistic injustice and a restricted version of social integration.
By critically scrutinising this neoliberal discourse of social integration which adheres to “fixed national values and integration into the Anglo-Christian mainstream” (Harris, 2018), this paper attempts to grapple with the ways in which everyday multilingualism intersects with the ‘social cohesion’ and ‘social integration’ agendas of the Australian government. By drawing on our work on metrolingual trans-semiotic assemblages which explores the complex ways in which various spatiotemporal elements come together to create local meaning, we show how the current political model of integration utterly misses the point that integration occurs through negotiation with various human and non-human elements including languages, work and religion. We argue, from our Sydney metrolingual data, that mainstream ideologies of ‘social cohesion’ and ‘social integration’ are oblivious to the spatial dynamism and diversity of local assemblages, where social bonds emerge from shared sets of everyday trans-semiotic practices, spatial repertoires, affects and aspirations.
Rejecting the claim that the English language is “an important unifying element of Australian society” (Department of Home Affairs), we conclude that ‘everyday multilingualism’ or ‘metrolingualism’, provides, in fact, a unifying element in itself. By uniting various human and non-human semiotic elements, ‘metrolingualism’ is a key to epistemological change in relation to existing social and linguistic injustice.
