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Continua of Biliteracy
The continua of biliteracy model offers an ecological framework in which to situate research, teaching, and language planning in linguistically diverse settings. Biliteracy is defined here as any and all instances in which communication occurs in two or more languages in or around writing. Instances of biliteracy include biliterate events, actors, interactions, practices, activities, programs, sites, situations, societies, and worlds. The model or framework uses the notion of intersecting and nested continua to demonstrate the multiple and complex interrelationships between bilin-gualism and literacy and the importance of the contexts, media, and content through which biliteracy develops. The notion of continuum is intended to convey that, although one can identify points on the continuum, those points are not finite, static, or discrete. On any one biliteracy continuum there are infinitely many points; any single point is inextricably related to all other points; and all the points share fundamental commonalities. Furthermore, across the multiple intersecting and nested continua, there are many points at which connection, transfer, and reinforcement of biliteracy may occur.
The continua of biliteracy model is an ecological framework, metaphorically incorporating themes of evolution, environment, and endangerment, paralleling those in biological and environmental ecology. Specifically, an ecological view of language posits that languages (a) live and evolve in an ecosystem along with other languages (language evolution); (b) interact with their sociopolitical, economic, and cultural environments (language environment); and (c) become endangered if there is inadequate environmental support for them vis-á-vis other languages in the ecosystem (language endangerment). Significantly, the ecology movement is not only concerned with studying and describing those potential losses but also counteracting them.
Origins and Implications of the Framework
The initial impetus for formulating the continua of biliteracy framework was the Literacy in Two Languages project, a long-term comparative ethnographic research project in two language minority communities of Philadelphia, beginning in 1987.
Looking to scholarly literature to inform the research, Nancy H. Hornberger, the author of this entry, found very little work on biliteracy, which left the definition of the term implicit, assuming a meaning roughly glossed as reading and writing in two languages or in a second language and focusing primarily on mastery of reading and writing in two languages.
A broader theoretical common ground that emerged in considering the larger literatures on bilin-gualism, the teaching of second/foreign languages, literacy, and the teaching of reading/writing was that dimensions of bilingualism and literacy are traditionally characterized in terms of polar opposites, such as first versus second languages (LI versus L2), monolingual versus bilingual individuals, or oral versus literate societies. These polar opposites turn out, under the scrutiny of research, to be only theoretical end points on what is in reality a continuum of features. This notion became the building block for the continua model of biliteracy.
Specifically, the continua framework depicts the development of biliteracy along intersecting first language-second language, receptive-productive, and oral-written language skills continua; through the medium of two (or more) languages and literacies whose linguistic structures vary from similar to dissimilar, whose scripts range from convergent to divergent, and to which the developing biliterate individual's exposure varies from simultaneous to successive; in contexts that encompass micro- to macrolevels and are characterized by varying mixes along the monolingual-bilingual and oral-literate continua; and with content that ranges from majority to minority perspectives and experiences, literary to vernacular styles and genres, and decontextualized to contextualized language texts.
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- Family, Communities, and Society
- Accommodation Theory, Second-Language
- Americanization and its Critics
- Attitudes toward Language Diversity
- Benefits of Bilingualism and Heritage Languages
- Bilingual Education in the Press
- Easy and Difficult Languages
- English in the World
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- Alatis, James E.
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- Cárdenas, José A.
- Castro Feinberg, Rosa
- Center for Applied Linguistics, Initial Focus
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- Hornberger, Nancy
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- Ogbu, John
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- Pérez-Hogan, Carmen
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- Simon, Paul M.
- Spolsky, Bernard
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- TESOL, Inc.
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- Policy Evolution
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- Teacher Certification by States
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