Material Culture Inside and Beyond the Multilingual Classroom: Theoretical and Pedagogical Perspectives

Abstract

Linguistic landscape (LL) studies have developed extensively to describe more places and more items. The tendency of expanding the LL purview towards including the items that, in fact, belong to the material culture deserves thorough analysis. This is especially critical for the classroom research and practices, where tangible, concrete, three-dimensional, culturally indexical, manipulatable and portable materialities, many of which ensure ‘affective understanding’, aid the teaching and learning process. Therefore, it is important that teachers are cognizant of the role of material culture in the learning and in multilingual socialisation of pupils and students in bilingual, multilingual, and monolingual settings. The chapter explains how LL is an ineluctable part of the material culture of multilingualism (MCM), describes the unique qualities of the material culture of multilingualism (MCM) for the domain of education and overviews the specific materialities inside and beyond language classroom basing on the multilingual context of the Russian Federation in the years 2019–2021.

1 Introduction

Countries and communities of the world increasingly face the reality of multilingualism, and multilingual classrooms became its consequence and insignia. Pupils speak a variety of languages and dialects at home and with friends; in addition, teaching two or three additional languages is common. Originally, linguistic landscape (LL) entered the educational realm due to mainly sociolinguistic concerns, pointing to languages used in particular settings and revealing their hierarchy, importance, or lack of attention towards certain languages in a community. Since then, many valuable insights into how LL can help teach languages in class and in out-of-class contexts have been offered (see, e.g., Malinowski, Maxim, & Dubreil, 2020). Education and language teaching embraced the developments of LL in the societal sphere and projected the findings and methods to their domains (see e.g., a comprehensive overview by Dagenais et al., 2009; Niedt & Seals, 2020). Of recent, LoCALL project (https://locallproject.eu/) embodies the best features of classroom related use of LL most vividly, with attractive multimodal educational activities and sufficient cultural knowledge outcome.

Recently, the authors of LL studies expand the purview of the field and attempt to deal with subjects that are not only posters and ads, but also things and objects thus spilling beyond its original agenda defined by Landry and Bourhis as to “the visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region” (1997, p. 23). Although it is a positive development in terms of adding to the pool of knowledge about the environment in which multilingual individuals and communities live and educate new generations, theoretical examination is necessary to clarify the characteristics of items under research and their subsequent relevance for the methodological framework. In simple words, it is not sufficient to call an item a LL piece to obtain valid research results and receive a proper knowledge of how to use it in teaching practice advantageously. The variegated forms of the material world have their own properties which are to be researched in order to enable educators to use them in an informed manner and in proper situations. LL is an important part of the wider area of materialities, but it cannot be indiscriminately used to cover all innumerable items that need the attention of researchers and practitioners.

To this end, the first section of the chapter briefly traces the development of LL research towards the expansion of its purview and situates it within the wider field of the Material Culture of Multilingualism (MCM). The clarification of similarities and distinctions between LL and MCM is followed by the proposal to organise the studies on MCM according to human activity and communication domains. Section two is devoted to the material culture of multilingualism in education and language teaching. The features of MCM that make it important for teaching and learning are singled out, followed by an examination of the multilingual materialities of a classroom (MMC). The theoretical material is supported by the visual evidence from the multilingual classrooms in Russian Federation collected in 2019–2021.

2 From LL to the Material Culture of Multilingualism (MCM)

This section aims to trace the gradual expansion of the purview of LL studies in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics (1.1). It briefly describes the field of MCM (1.2), and demonstrates why and how various kinds of tangible items fit different theoretical frameworks—either LL or the MCM (1.3). The section ends with the proposal to divide the field of MCM into sub-fields based on the domains as they are understood in sociolinguistics (1.4).

2.1 Trajectory of Purview Expansion in the Field of the LL

The fiery stream of studies on the LL resulted in an enormous number of papers on the subject. The field’s growth is marked by descriptions of LL in more streets, further cities and numerous additional places in the world (Backhaus, 2007, Gorter, Marten, & Van Mensel, 2012, Hewitt-Bradshaw, 2014, Barrs, 2017). Along with that, some researchers added to their scholarly discussions the items that they perceived as belonging to LL. We will trace the latter development below.

For the originators of the LL field, “Linguistic Landscape refers to the visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region (Landry & Bourhis, 1997, p. 23). More recently the commonly accepted area of concern of LL is succinctly summarised as referring to” multimodal texts displayed in public places and spaces. It encompasses the range of language use in a speech community. (Hewitt-Bradshaw, 2014, p. 157). Advertisements, posters and signs placed in the public settings of various communities and countries were examined and conditions for language choice in public signage were formulated (Spolsky and Cooper 1991) in various places globally (Backhaus, 2007; Gorter, 2006), especially with regard to minority languages (Cenoz & Gorter, 2006; Gorter et al., 2012). Most of the studies discussed the hierarchy of languages in a particular community or area and consequent power relations between languages and communities as they transpire through the LL, thus investigating the social aspects of the use of languages. The importance of LL was and is still seen in its capacity to be a measure of linguistic contact. The leading researchers of LL pointed out that the LL approach “not only studies the signs, but it investigates as well who initiates, creates, places and reads them,” and looks at how the LL is manipulated in order to confirm or to resist existing or presumed language prestige patterns and hierarchies (Gorter et al., 2012, p. 1).

Cook expanded the research of LL into social semiotics and the realms of writing systems, fonts and punctuation (Cook, 2013, 2014a, b). His expert analysis of the punctuation aspect of LL items in two streets in Newcastle upon Tyne, Stowell Street and Leazes Park Road revealed its telling difference from the ‘standard’ punctuation of the ordinary texts (Cook, 2014a, p. 289) in that the language of the street “uses punctuation very sparingly” (Cook, 2014a, p. 287).

The insightful introduction of a ‘place’ factor by Scollon and Scollon (2003) advanced the field to a new interdisciplinary crossing. The authors put forward an idea of a systematic analysis of signs, based on geosemiotics, which they defined as “the study of the meaning systems by which language is located in the material world” (Scollon and Scollon, 2003, p. 2). According to the authors, it is a place where the signs are situated that grants meaning to them. Only on condition of being placed on the relevant site does a sign acquire its designated meaning. Further studies discussed semiotic landscapes and space (see e.g., Jaworsky & Thurlow, 2010; Malinowski et al., 2020), and extended the mobility concept to LL in a special issue of the International Journal of Multilingualism (Moriarty, 2014a), thus, deepening our understanding of LL. Hult (2014) collected data on visual language use (Spanish and English) in public space, along the San Antonio highway system, that is, literally on the way. He has found that the language choice on signs is mediated by “a confluence of (trans) national, cultural and economic discourses” (Hult, 2014, p. 507). Also referring to mobility, Sebba notes that signs may be “valuable indicators of such things as multilingual composition of a community, public debates about language, public policy goals and power relations between languages” (2010, p. 59). Moreover, he adds a selection of items less typical for the examining LL, to the purview—product labels, pamphlets, banknotes, stamps, tickets, handbills, and flyers—which he calls ‘unfixed’ (Sebba, 2010).

We find such ‘unfixed’ LL items in terms of Sebba (2010) in other works: stickers and flags Moriarty (2014b)—metal manholes in the multilingual town of Zadar, Croatia (Oštarić, 2012), and jars of honey with bilingual labelling in the investigation of LL of French and Italian cities, by Blackwood and Tufi (2012), graffiti (Pennycook, 2009), body as a corporeal landscape (Peck & Stroud, 2015)—all ascribed to LL paradigm. Such studies with explicitly more material subjects of interest multiply as scholarly curiosity inevitably strives further and deeper. There is a clearly perceived and well-justified need within LL research to go further in linking languages with the physical environment where they are used. With that, in our point of view, not all the items examined under the LL agenda are such; many of them are, in fact, materialities. Although LL is part of the wider category of material culture, the distinction between the two is crucial. Allotting each framework its own suitable niche will allow nuanced managing of the environmental factors and their informed and appropriate use in education.

2.2 What is the Material Culture of Multilingualism (MCM)?

The material culture of today’s multilingual world comprises physical objects of various kinds, including everyday items, such as goods, products, books, pens and carpentry tools, food with its packages, utensils, furniture, pieces of art, medications, medical devices, and artefacts such as clay tablets and monuments of the past, as well as the most recent technology appliances of the present, interconnected by and with a local and global mindset, culture, tradition and social life (Aronin, 2018). Scholars also include into the material culture somewhat less tangible phenomena such as events, rituals, smells, sounds, spaces while Ingold (2011) insists on including and studying materials of which materialities are made as more defining characteristics of the material world that we find ourselves in. Whether monumental buildings or small-sized memorabilia, materialities are linked to cultures and ways of life (Schlereth 1985) and objectively represent a group’s subjective vision of custom and order (Marshall, 1981).

Drawing on the earlier and current research by anthropologists, ethnologists, and scholars in material history, we nevertheless have to note that given the contemporary global multilingual condition, in this chapter, we do not refer to ‘material culture’ in general as to just places and materialities. We speak about ‘the material culture of multilingualism’ where the word ‘multilingualism’ added to the term carries an additional important emphasis (Aronin et al., 2018). It implies the co-dependency between mind, action, and matter and the inseparability of thought, action and material things revealed by interdisciplinary studies (Capra & Luisi, 2014; Malafouris, 2013). MCM underlines the pervasive role of multilingualism in current human life. It is defined as a specific blend of materialities, originating from many cultures which constitute a multilingual society (Aronin, 2012, Aronin and Ó Laoire 2013, p. 228). It comprises materialities relating to a multilingual way of existence, whether by individuals or societies.

Material culture is a pervasive and enduring part of everyday experience. It is so natural and common to our lives that it is often taken for granted and may be underestimated by educators. However, artefacts and objects that accompany, enhance and enable human activities possess important features that are to be considered in education and language teaching. They are briefly described below.

Materialities reflect social reality and its dynamics, enabling lifestyles and traditions through their properties: solidity and concreteness; temporal tenacity and dynamicity in time, space, and form; three-dimensional indexicality (Aronin, 2018). The range of the ‘what for’, ‘when’ and ‘how’ people use artefacts and things is unlimited. Some things are used (always or occasionally) and put on display, and others are just kept or hidden, still others, such as roads, buildings and spaces, are experienced as a given or passed by. In other words, material objects are dealt with or manipulated, moved or carried along. In social contexts, solid material culture objects merge with often intangible social, cognitive and emotional aspects of life, thus creating a complex interface of reality. Things in some way arrange, organise and enable our lives and if used in education, materialities can serve as a ‘shortcut’ to multilingual contexts of any scope. Found in both public and private places and in the in-between places, contiguous with physiological and psychological events, materialities provide the ‘whole experience’. Materialities are part of our life-world and reflect it with satisfying exactness.

Objects and things copiously fill in our senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch, or smell, or several of them at a time by virtue of their physical properties. Material culture often invokes thoughts, triggers reminiscences and emotions and boosts cognition by activating the feature of “affective understanding” (Aronin, 2012, 2018). One possible explanation for this may be that “the five senses do not travel along separate channels, but interact to a degree few scientists would have believed only a decade ago” (Cytowic, 2010, p. 46, quoted in Pink, 2012, p. 4). Tangible materialities seem to be the ideal support for cognition and emotions, since they provide natural sources for arousing all the five senses simultaneously. In addition, acting with and manipulating material culture items enhances learning. Furthermore, the material realm is an ineluctable part of human discourse, more precisely, it is one more channel of discourse, in addition to writing and speech. In a broad sense, material culture is a discourse of a particular kind that expresses values, assumptions and ideas, through material objects. Materialities ‘talk’, merging their ‘voice’, or rather ‘touch’, to verbal communication. Normally, multilinguals belong to several discourse communities, either more centrally or more peripherally, thus sharing basic values, assumptions and ways of communication with each of them. For this, multilinguals mix their discourse systems in a wide variety of ways, also including multimodal communication means. This leads us to conclude that materialities are also the means for joining other discourses in addition to their function of supporting selected discourses.

In sum, the ability of materialities to reflect multilingual reality, evoke thoughts and reminiscences, promote or eliminate motivation, awake awareness, include a person into a societal discourse, and provoke attitudes, is beneficial for education and, therefore, material culture should be seriously considered in language teaching. Using materialities in education prepares the pupils to deal with the real world and provide additional modality means for multilingual socialisation.

Having discussed the specific features of the MCM, we now turn to the question: How is LL related to MCM? The following subsection of this paper is devoted to a discussion of this question. While LL and MCM share many things in common, it is important to understand where they diverge. This theoretical excursus in the next subsection (1.3) demonstrates how both frameworks can be used most constructively and the items of LL and MCM researched in an organised and systematic way.

2.3 Distinctiveness of LL and MCM

Since the items of the LL are often placed, written, inscribed on material substances, such as paper, carton, metal or stone, they definitely belong to the realm of material culture. With that, LL and MCM differ in several features, the degree of manifestation of common features, and areas of application. The relation between the fields of LL and MCM can be roughly expressed as overlapping, and one (LL) being an important part of the other (MCM). The material culture of multilingualism embraces a wide variety of material objects and artefacts, LL items being one such category of things (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Illustration roughly showing the relationship between the purviews of Material Culture of Multilingualism and LL

Figure 1 illustrates how LL is part of the wider category of material culture and also their overlap and divergence. Along with similarities, the two frameworks with items belonging to them have distinctive properties. We briefly describe them below.

1. Domain of Spread

While the LL studies originally were meant to investigate language use in public spaces and are still dedicated mainly to items in public display, the material culture items pervade personal and in-between spaces equally copiously. The MCM purview naturally embraces all the domains of human interest and activities. The ‘entrance’ to the identity realm is highly relevant for teaching and education as material culture is a perfect tool for analysing individual cognitive and emotional states and life trajectories. Some materialities label a person or a community and define them in an official, or unofficial manner, adding nuances and tools for intercultural education. Encompassing comprehensively, not partially, the whole environment of multilinguals, materialities relevant to all spheres of human life are a barometer of linguistic, cultural and societal diversity (Aronin, 2018) and serve as good tools of preparation for the multilingual reality of life. Material items of multilingualism can be beneficially used in preparing school children and students to meet the multilingual world in all its manifestations.

It is also obvious that being an inherent part of the personal domain, materialities (memorabilia, remembered items, among them) are more closely connected with identity than the ads and posters on the street, thus being a valuable part of the educational process.

2. Modality

One of the most important tasks of education is to prepare pupils and students to function in the world and fit into society. The contemporary world is noticeably polymorphous. Moreover, the current reality is particularly rich in modalities of all kinds, and current educational practices reflect and embrace them. Materialities are often solid, and they deliver to the perception of their user or by-passer their qualities such as form, texture, smell. This rich multimodality can be advantageously acknowledged in the cognitive tasks in teaching and education through the use of things and objects that are available in several modalities including writing, aural—listening or oral input, digital, texture, smell, touch, olfactory. Technology objects used in a classroom and outside of it are particularly complex with regard to modality (Aronin, 2018) since they include an LL-looking screen display and 3D physical hardware ingredients that account for exceptionally dynamic context.

As for LL, its dominating modality is visual. Partially, the predominance of visuality and some disregard for material components is a consequence of our perception of usually thin material underlying the information content of LL items. They are typically perceived as 2D rather than 3D things, as a sheet of paper or carton. Another reason that has a bearing on preference for visuality in LL is socio-cultural. Boivin (2008, p. 97) reminds us that visualism is “the dominance and privileging of vision [and text] in contemporary and recent Western societies” and its continuing being on the top of the hierarchy of senses in the West is linked to preoccupation with literacy (Ong 1969, 2002). LL relies on visual perception because it originated from the linguistic and sociolinguistic studies tradition. Its difference from the MCM transpires because normally we do not touch posters or advertisements in the public domain unless, of course, they are written in Braille characters, three-dimensional tactile bumps.

As an illustration to the fact that LL historically draws on tendencies that focus on visuality and language, consider the work by Coulmas, a linguist examining writing. His obvious point of departure when discussing inscriptions on things is language. Consequently, while noting the physical qualities of objects under discussion, such as the smell of leather, or the volume and weight of stone material, Coulmas refers to these objects as a “writing surface in the form of” coins, swords and mirrors (2006, p. 558). The linguistic content visually and meaningfully dominates LL items, and the majority of research questions and findings in the LL studies refer to the content of inscriptions and texts. The brilliant excurses into the materials from which the ads are made by Cook (2013, 2014b) on the street are the exceptions proving the rule.

3. Dynamicity, Portability

LLs are dynamic in their own way, but they cannot be compared to material objects in dynamism and capriciousness of behaviour. Big and small things keep moving or being moved, arranged and rearranged, hidden or put on display in sophisticated, utterly complex, and unexpected ways. It is possible to trace the trajectories of objects of material culture (‘thing biography’, or ‘history of things’) in time and space, following the dynamics of their particular ‘life,’ as representations of their owners or users. Unlike ‘fixed’ signs of the LL, which typically are supposed to stay put, ‘in place,’ in order to fulfil their role and acquire their intended meaning, objects and artefacts are very often portable and movable in many ways. One might think of souvenirs that are brought from other countries, pendants worn near one’s heart, a favourite vase brought by an immigrant to a new life, and kept in the new home for many years, then handed on to children and grandchildren, which thus assures the ethnic identity may often relate to a minority language (Hornsby, 2018; Oštarić, 2018). While LL on the street or in any other public space mostly reflect the commonly accepted and practised in this community sociolinguistic status quo, the status of languages and their users, material culture objects, such as tickets, caps, food, uniforms, enjoy high mobility and make a strong emotional and cognitive impact on their users.

4. Agency, Manipulability

The LL items differ from many material culture items in terms of agency. Not getting deep into the discussion of agency in the ethnographic and material culture studies (see e.g., Hoskins, 2001; Tilley, 2001; Knappett, 2005), here we define the agency of materialities as a capacity of things to produce effects in the form of humans’ mental and physical state when used for a particular purpose. LL objects are known to serve four purposes: locating, controlling, informing and service (Cook, 2013). Locating signs identify the streets and its buildings; informing signs provide functional information such as opening times, the availability of goods (e.g., ‘Coffee & Sandwich Shop’), job offers, for sale signs and advertisements; controlling signs ask or require people to behave in particular ways, whether drivers, pedestrians or customers, e.g., ‘No entry’ sign; and service signs such as those put up by providers of services, e.g., ‘Post office’, hydrant sign or manhole cover labelled ‘CATV’ for a particular readership used by special services (Cook, 2014a, 2014b, p. 274, p. 276, p. 279, p. 282). Given these four main tasks of the LL signs, the agency over them is in the hands of those who have these LL items produced and expect a particular impact on the readers according to their specific aim (to point to a shop location, to show the traffic direction). The agency of readership, the receivers of the information provided by a sign, poster or other LL item is rather limited in most of LL cases. Banners and posters are not produced with the thought that each passer-by would correct, change it or take the metal signboard of the store along with him, on the opposite, they are supposed to ‘stay put’ where they were placed by line road police, shop owners, or university administration. We may conclude that the interaction between the producer of a LL item and their ‘clients’ recipients are not equal in terms of agency.

On the opposite, with other than LL types of materialities, the agency over things is spread along with their users more widely; it is common to move, carry along and manipulate things. Things are more easily available for transformations, that are manipulatable in a much more varied way than LL.

5. Emotional Impact

The emotional impact of LL items on their readers is possible but not typical. This can be accounted for by the main mission of LL items already stated above. Information or notification can, of course, annoy or sadden, but these are rather exceptions than a norm. Contrary to that, many materialities evoke emotional response elicited by a variety of reasons: whether for their beauty or scientific meaning, as art and anthropology, or because of the personal story behind an ordinary thing, or due to it being especially fitting to reach particular aims defined by its owner, e.g. comfortable shoes, favourite cup. Emotions and feelings evoked by things may range from positive to negative and various nuances–sweet–sour nostalgia, anger, fear, pride. Emotional component is more commonly expressed in things rather than in LL.

6. Affective Understanding

The feature of affective understanding associated with cognition is also more typical of things and artefacts than of the LL items. Since the affective understanding feature is more pronounced in things rather than in LL, it is sensible to increase the use of material culture in class and beyond it. Materialities are especially of value for language classrooms. Due to it, some things may be brought to a classroom, such as items considered to be indicative of the English language and western culture might be used in a classroom to improve memorisation, lead to deeper understanding, and create motivation (e.g. Włosowicz, 2018).

7. Power of Impact

Finally, due to its qualities and usage to support activities, MCM is more conducive to actions, more persuasive. Consider two options of delivering a smoking policy in a cruise ship to the tourists (see Fig. 2a and b ). One is a LL item, a “No smoking” sign. The other is an MCM object—an ashtray attached to the deck wall of a cruise ship. Given the two opposing instructions, will you smoke in this circumstance? Many people do, because an object affording an activity of smoking- an ashtray—is more conducive to action (of smoking in this case) this than only a visual, written prohibition sign.

Fig. 2

a LL prescribing sign ‘no smoking’ b ash-tray, material culture item

The seven features of LL and DLC items as related to their use and perception in society are presented in comparison in Table 1.

Table 1 Distinctive properties of LL and Material Culture of Multilingualism frameworks

It is easy to see from this table that all the features of LL and MCM singled out above overlap in some ways but differ in their intensity. Quantitative dissimilarities bring qualitative differences leading to the emergence of another quality that makes MCM different from items of LL in important for education aspects. The properties of LL and MCM items signpost their application areas, and we will discuss the benefits of their application in education and language teaching in section two. Material culture of multilingualism (MCM) includes LL as its important constituent, but goes beyond it in its purview, thus offering rich theoretical foundations. In the next sub-section, we discuss the different domains of human life in which the MCM is concentrated.

2.4 Domains of the MCM

The MCM is involved in most of the contemporary human activities and domains of practice. Materialities surround us at home and at work, in official and intimate settings, whatever we undertake. The things, their assemblages and the way they are organised for particular activities and situations differ in different spheres of life, and it seems useful to categorise the material culture of multilingualism according to some practically and theoretically sound criterium. To this end, we propose to utilise the concept of domain introduced by Joshua Fishman about language use in a bilingual society. Fishman (1965/2000, p. 94) defined domain as a “cluster of social situations typically constrained by a common set of behaviour rules.” Domains are settings where interlocutors make their language choice, conditioned by a particular locale and the events and subject matter associated with this domain. Aiming to establish the rationale behind the language choice of bilingual speakers, Fishman found out that in stable bilingual contexts, using one language rather than another in certain situations is not accidental but customarily associated with specific settings, topics, and groups of interlocutors. Fishman (1965/2000) identified five domains named for a social space: ‘family’, ‘education’, ‘employment’, ‘friendship’, ‘government and administration’. Each domain is associated with a specific field of experience and roles of participants, and appropriate to its language variety and language behaviour. Additional domains, both broader and more specific types of situations, were subsequently distinguished; Spolsky (2009) discusses legal, army and health domains, as well as supranational organisations social spaces. Fishman distinguished domains by the location, participants, and topics on which people normally converse in these settings. Thus, the domain of ‘religion’ spreads along with typical locations—temples, mosques and synagogues. Its participants both animated and social bodies are religious institutions, missionaries, and believers and their common set of ‘proper’ issues for conversation and prayers. As in other domains, in the domain of ‘religion’ some languages and not others are normally selected for these particular physical settings and social milieu. Examples are the use of Church Slavonic as a liturgical language in the Russian Orthodox Church and the regular use of Korean by recent immigrants from Korea to Ireland, in the Dublin Korean Church (Singleton, Aronin & Carson, 2013). To account for the global transformations, a domain was defined via the affordances perspective as “a space–time where and when the most powerful collection of affordances favoring the choice of a particular language is furnished” (Aronin & Singleton, 2010, p. 122).

Regardless of their number identified in multilingual settings, domains refer to typical institutional contexts, events, and topics to talk about, and their congruent behavioural co-occurrences. We here wish to emphasise the importance of activities characteristic for each domain and materialities that are involved in or allow to carry out these activities. Hence it is reasonable to divide the field of the MCM into a number of domain-associated sub-areas based on the main activities and associated materialities characteristic for each domain (see Table 2).

Table 2 Sub-fields of the material culture of multilingualism according to the domains of activity (The Material Culture of Multilingualism, MCM)

The domain of education is associated with institutions such as kindergartens, schools, universities, and corresponding events requiring the use of a particular, often official language. Normally, communication in this domain revolves around the issues of learning, teaching, scientific disciplines, class and extracurricular events. This domain of classroom materialities is our special interest in this chapter, and we discuss the benefits and practicality of using MCM in education and language teaching in the next section.

3 Material Culture of Multilingualism in Language Teaching

Section two explicates MCM in the domain of education and language teaching, and singles out its features that are especially conducive for teaching languages in a multilingual classroom and outside it.

3.1 Multilingual Materialities in Language Classroom (MMC)

Since today language classrooms are more often than not are multilingual, teachers want to understand the principles of using the environment to which they are actually preparing their pupils and students. As opposed to some other MCM domains, such as, for instance, home (MMH), which is mainly personal, educational, and classroom domain is largely public. Therefore, this domain of classroom material culture is dependable on current social perceptions, ideas and predispositions concerning both scientific and everyday aspects of life (Aronin & Singleton, 2019; Edwards, 2020).

The role of materialities in education has been treated by historians of education. The seminal volume edited by Lawn and Grosvenor (2005) is dedicated to education in general, to objects and sites of schooling, such as keys, walls and fences, space and light, school furniture, school uniforms. The authors do not see the relationship between objects and people as a dichotomy, rather, giving a rich historical account, they investigate “the ways objects are given meaning, how they are used, and how they are linked into heterogeneous active networks, in which people, objects and routines are closely connected” (Lawn & Grosvenor, 2005, p. 7).

Practitioners and researchers discussed classroom materialities that were not limited to pictures and posters on the walls (e.g., Brown, 2012). In previous decades teachers were concerned with the authenticity of materials and debated the issues of authentic materials and authenticity in foreign language learning (see e.g., Gilmore, 2007), and this interest is in place till our time (Obdalova et al., 2018). Teachers traditionally brought into class postcards, pictures, souvenirs and memorabilia that helped to construct a foreign language space in class. The corresponding classroom research dealt with material culture in teaching materials, academic textbooks, student reports, boxes, bookshelves, correspondence to parents, locally produced items, students’ certificates, official school papers, charts, posters, flags, and visual aids (see e.g., Escamilla, 1994; Coady, 2003). In the case of minority language education, when educators are concerned about the status of the minority language outside the classroom, objects and artefacts related to this language and culture draw attention, remind and stimulate interest on the part of learners. Johnson in 1980 looked into the material culture of public-school classrooms for the purpose of studying the symbolic integration of local schools and national culture (Johnson, 1980). The materials designed with the purpose of giving children and their families opportunities to participate in events and daily activities in the minority language proved to be effective. In the 2000s such were, for example, CD for hockey playing related to Ojibwe youth culture (Williams, 2002) and a bilingual colouring and stuffing activity book for Welsh children (Edwards & Newcombe, 2005).

The materialities of the classroom have been traditionally made of several kinds of materials (Ingold, 2011) such as paper, cardboard, clay, plasticine, chalk, wood for furniture and later plastic. The traditional schooling materialities were ‘invisible’ for a long time because they were so natural for school and schooling. Today plasticines are made of modern materials, texts and books are moving to digital as the nature of materials and materiality used in education gradually changes. In the recent decade and especially, a recent year and a half, the classroom related materialities have undergone drastic and obvious reconfiguration due to the COVID-related changes in education. The proportion of technology materialities increased as teaching and learning went online, thus swapping more traditional materialities for technological ones (Aronin, 2018, 2021; Bylieva et al., 2021). The global trend of multimodality of discourse enhanced by technology has also been adopted in education (see Fig. 3).

Fig. 3

Student places in the German language class at Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University

A powerful increase of technology materialities used in teaching and learning did not eliminate crude ‘real’ things and artefacts (see Fig. 4).

Fig. 4

Collectable toys of Moomin characters and a “Historiska Kvinnor” board game in the Swedish language class at Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University

The expansion of technology artefacts, multilingualism, and the use of various modalities in class is a response to the global transformations. Today socialisation of pupils and students includes the involvement of up-to-date materialities and skills in their appropriate use. In their language classes, children and adult language learners receive not simply socialisation, but multilingual and multimodal socialisation. In addition to awareness of one’s own and other languages in the milieu, multilingual socialisation also requires the development of multilingual social skills, which include knowledge of when, how and with whom use which language, observe the rules of certain language discourse with its traditions and culturally and historically imparted restrictions as well as the ability to participate in conversations and activities. MCM prepares the pupils/students to live in a multilingual society in global and local settings by way of physical examination, use and manipulation of culturally-nuanced materialities, and informed interaction between the material world and language. Therefore, multilingual materialities are relevant for education and language learning for bilingual and monolingual students and those who live in a monolingual enclave or attend a monolingual paradigm school. They still live and deal with a predominantly multilingual world. The acknowledgement, use, and, if needed, creation of age-appropriate, attractive materials (MCM items) that would accompany and enhance educational processes in and outside the classroom is paramount.

Changes befalling materialities in the domain of language classroom also refer to measuring in educational research and practices. The measuring techniques that have been suggested by researchers of material culture earlier were replaced by new technology-supported opportunities. The ingenious measuring methods through the means of material culture might be no longer considered effectual. For example, considering physical traces, that include erosion measures such as ‘wear and tear’ of more or less used books, or the frequency with which the floor tiles must be waxed in a museum, or the rails and doorknobs leading to various corridors require polishing (Webb et al. 1966), may be substituted by eliciting the data from servers. This way is perhaps even more informative nowadays as it allows to register whether an article or book was read in full or only an abstract, etc. The exotic ideas about measuring the nose prints deposited on a glass each day may safely give way to thorough computer registering.

3.2 The Objectives for the Use of Materialities in the Classroom

The unique qualities of the MCM make them indispensable for teaching and learning, both in class and extracurricular work, trips, and events of all kinds. The impact of tangible, portable manipulatable materialities found in private, public and in-between spaces is more inclusive than that of LL items.

The next advantage of the use of things and artefacts can be expressed in the logical chain ‘affordances- actions–materialities’. Material culture provides affordances (Gibson, 1979; Proffitt, 2006); in fact, things and artefacts themselves are affordances (Aronin, 2014) that make certain actions possible. Affordances and actions that are taken with the realisation of affordances are central for the students of languages. These are not only language activities per se, but the widest array of other human activities that are accompanied and made possible by speaking, listening, writing, and reading, in short–by using languages. Material culture also affords to create additional spaces for underrepresented languages, e.g. minority, heritage or second languages.

Following the extended cognition view (Capra & Luisi, 2014; Clark & Chalmers, 1998; Malafouris, 2013), understanding emerges through embodied cognition, body activities of the organism, agent’s physical, social and cultural environment; that is, cognition happens through the physical touch, movement and interaction with things. Materialities afford, enable and enhance the learning/teaching activities. Since material objects and artefacts normally accompany, enable or more often, used as tools for various activities, their pedagogical selection should be driven by the preferred activity that the things are expected to support.

Consider board or card games in a Swedish learning class that are not intended for studying language and, in some cases, do not require knowledge of a particular language but still have a linguistic and cultural component. A game such as “Historiska Kvinnor” (Fig. 4), where players collect cards with Swedish attractions or famous women of Sweden, involves physical operating with cards, chips, cubes, and other material items in an intersection with the knowledge on Swedish cultural realities. Manipulation with notions that are familiar members of a speech community via substitute things (cards, chips, cubes) and traditionally used things in a community with a particular language teaches the students how to behave and be part of its discourse. Without it, communication and cooperation would not be authentic or complete. Applying manipulations with materialities in class is teachers’ prerogative, who, for the purpose of teaching, hand over the agency regarding multilingual artefacts to their students.

The MCM ensures multimodality and sensualising of education that LL items alone cannot guarantee. This is in tune with the current tendencies as applied linguistics researchers increasingly discover the bodily, material and sensual dimensions of life that are to be considered in today’s education. Prada and Melo-Pfeifer (forthcoming) “bring to focus the relationships between language(s), sense(s) and modality(ties) in the interaction with Others and with timespaces”. The polymorphous, multisensory and multimodal world is expected to arrive and stay in a classroom.

Fig. 5

Materialities for the “Spanish cabinet”: a fan and castanets on the wall and artefacts on a shelf: a flamenco dancer statuette and a figurine in a sombrero, Antonio Gaudi’ lizard, peseta, pitchers

Material Culture in a classroom serves various purposes, and MCM items can perform various roles in a classroom. Materialities may be used to supply emotionally-charged elements of languages-cultures and stimulate the affective understanding, which leads to longer remembering and better learning outcomes. Another group of materialities can be used as didactic tools to enhance, anchor and speed up understanding and memorisation. For these purposes, most of the language classes in Russia contain material objects associated with the culture of the country of the target language. The most popular object associated with the target language’s country is a flag, whether plastic or flags to real textile. Among material objects associated with the country can be cultural artefacts, such as castanets, figurines in national costumes a Spanish dancer, fan and peseta coin in the Spanish class, or animals’ figurines such as panda figurine in a Chinese learning class. Such materialities may not always have an activity-related purpose, as does, for example a tin-box with Chinese tea, but have primarily a symbolic meaning serving the purpose of creating a particular culture-related space and emotional tuning (Fig. 5).

When things are examined, moved around and properly used and referred to in class, these activities lead to establishing an appropriate ethos—the characteristic spirit of a culture. Using and manipulating material culture is especially helpful in a monolingual or bilingual community class when things deliver an atmosphere peculiar for a target language community. Enacting the usage characteristic for particular culture items, their typical configurations develops multilingual socialisation. Take tea drinking, for example, with Chinese tea ceremony using culture specific artefacts or the presence of milk-pots in every tea-drinking place in Ireland.

4 Conclusion

In this chapter, we presented the differences between the fields of LL and the material culture of multilingualism as theoretically and practically important and situated LL within the wider field of the MCM. Revealing distinctions in the features and areas of habitual use of LL and MCM items leads to deeper theoretical considerations and practical implications for teaching. We argue that dealing with 3D things and artefacts requires an appropriate theoretical framework that gives due attention to their material qualities, such as physicality and solidity (including size, volume, texture, width, co-volume, texture, width, colour, material, composition), portability and manipulability. To support this approach, we laid down the characteristics of the MCM and discussed the specific features of the classroom multilingual materialities, supplementing the theoretical discussion by illustrations of teaching practices in the language classes of a university in the Russian Federation, in 2019-2021.

We arrived at the following conclusions. LL has deservedly gained currency as an enrichment of classroom activities and multilingual education. With that, labelling all the non-linguistic tangible items as the LL does not do justice to the process of education and diminishes the possible benefits of involving multimodal 3D items in the classroom. LL is an integral part of the MCM. Although LL is part of the wider category of material culture, the distinction between the two is indispensable. Theoretically accurate outline of the areas of LL and MCM will enable appropriate use of these concepts in sociolinguistics and education. It follows that both LL and MCM have their specific niches of use in education and their corresponding aims for practical application.

Multilingual classroom today with its multilingual students, teachers and multimodal activities that take place in formal and informal settings necessitates an increasing awareness in MCM. MCM, which is highly dynamic and interactive, is a welcome and valuable addition to the teaching/learning processes. Physical, concrete and manipulatable materialities that have unique properties due to their distinct nature will play a more prominent role in language teaching classroom if teachers are aware of the role of material culture of multilingualism in a classroom and engage their (of materialities) outstanding properties to the full. Such an awareness includes informed and carefully planned use of materialities at the lessons and during extracurricular activities in a way that gainfully releases their learning-enhancing features such as affective understanding, mobility, agency, in other words, yields its most for the benefit of better learning.