Abstract:
This chapter interrogates the layered linguistic complexity in mono- and
multilingual contexts generally, and in STEM multilingual contexts specifically.
Although the yearbook is about STEM multilingual contexts, understanding the
multifarious linguistic challenges within monolingual contexts, with their ‘supposed’
linguistic homogeneity, buttresses an appreciation of linguistic challenges in multilin-
gual contexts, generally conceived as linguistically diverse. In monolingual contexts,
heterogeneity and linguistic complexity are occasioned by social class engendered
vocabulary knowledge gap; emergence of language varieties (lingua fracas) deviant
from the standard variety; intra-lingual divergence between conversational and
academic language; and the oral–literate language dichotomy/continuum.
Multilingual contexts add more languages into the mix, with their nuanced intra-
and inter-lingual diversities. Their linguistic and orthographic distance compro-
mise the deployment of diverse linguistic resources in the classroom. STEM
subjects add another linguistic layer by their unique disciplinary symbolic language,
unique semantics to familiar words, unique syntactic patterns, and unique technical
vocabulary.
The chapter problematises the research–policy–practice dissonance that further
complexifies instruction within the STEM multilingual contexts. The chapter argues
that, notwithstanding the challenges associated with STEM education in multilingual
contexts, there are prospects for viewing learners’ divergent linguistic repertoires as
resources to be capitalised on, and not problems to be shunned and eschewed
