Classroom composition and backgrounds:
School A boys girls School B boys girls
9 Arabs 5 4 10 Arabs 6 4
9 Somalis 5 4 5 Somalis 0 5
1 Vietnamese 0 1 5 Danes 4 1
2 Kurds 1 1
1 Bosnian 0 1
The above schema is meant to simplify the pupils’ language repertoires in that more languages are involved in their lives, especially those in school B, where the 10 Arabs involved do not
necessarily have both parents sharing the same ethnicity or nationality, but rather one of the parents is Arab. One girl has a mother of German background, and a boy whose mother is Persian, in addition to the Kurdish girl who speaks Arabic, and a boy whose mother is Danish and father Kurdish who presented himself to me by saying that he is “Arab”, and was willing to be part of this study. In School A, pupils come from more homogeneous families where both parents are either Arabs or Somalis. Although parents’ origins play an important role in shaping the linguistic abilities of their children, it remains true that any attempt to demarcate the linguistic abilities of these
children by relying on the parents’ origins is simply unwarranted. Rampton’s (2005) concept of crossing characterizes the linguistic repertoires of the speakers depending on the co-existence and socialization among pupils of different ethnic backgrounds, making it quite possible for a Somali or a Kurd or an Arab to use language utterances which belong to other ethnicities. Almost all the families to which the participants belong have lived in Denmark for at least 19 years, and all the participants were born in Denmark10. The greatest majority of the parents had not received
education beyond the elementary school. Fathers work in blue-collar jobs and many of them are on social-help; mothers are mostly housewives. This can be seen in one of the boys’ discussions in
10 The term “participants” refers solely to the Arabs, and not to other ethnicities.
school B, where they argue about possible sources of income and they consider “social help” as one of the sources. (Jamal, Monir, and Malik are one party who are opposed by Ihsan regarding
possible ways for them to receive an income. The three boys argue that young people can be on pension, while Ihsan considers that one has to be old to receive this social service.) Example: 3.1
1-Jamal: hvis man er pensionist, så får man selv penge man ja::
2-Monir: ja::
3-Ihsan: det skal du være gammel for ja:::
4-Jamal: ne:j der er nogle unge, der er nogle unge der har 5-Ihsan: nej nej nej
6-Jamal: [wallah der er nogle unge der har 7-Ihsan: [nej nej nej nej nej nej
8-Monir: wallah der er nogen 9-Jamal: wallah der er nogen
10-Monir: min mor hun er pensionist. Hun er kun fyrre år 11-Ihsan: ja ok fyrre år hvor mange hvo:: ehh tolv år han bliver snart tretten
12-Monir: og hun er stadig ung
13-Jamal: nej min fætter han er to uh, han er tyve han er pensionist
14-Malik: min storebror er også på pension.
1-Jamal: if you are pensioner, so one receives money man ye::s 2-Monir: ye::s
3-Ihsan: you have to be old for ye:::s
4-Jamal: no: there are some young people, there are some young people who have
5-Ihsan: no no no
6-Jamal: [by allah there are some young who have 7-Ihsan: [no no no no no
8-Monir: by allah there are some 9-Jamal: by allah there are some
10-Monir: my mother she is pensioner. she is only forty years 11-Ihsan: yes alright forty years how many how:: ehh twelve years he will soon be thirteen
12-Monir: and she is still young
13-Jamal: no my cousin he is two uh, he is twenty he is pensioner
14-Malik: my elder brother is also on pension.
They are all destined to deal with a negative stereotypical image that has been perpetrated by the mass media, and which intensifies their feeling of segregation and their awareness of being different from the broader community. Jørgensen (2008: 107) observes that “linguistic minorities in
Denmark struggle against a particularly unfriendly atmosphere and a majority which is particularly determined to marginalize variation and minorities.” Jørgensen tackles the situation of immigrants in Scandinavia during the 1990s and the general atmosphere which has prevailed since that time regarding schooling and immigrants, and he notes that “the school drop-out rate, the number of individuals not going through further education after grade school, and consequently the
unemployment rate, were all higher for the immigrant groups than for the native Scandinavians”
(Jørgensen 2008: 110). Similar observations were made by many researchers (Holmen 2003, 2006;
Horst and Gitz-Johansen 2010; Møller et. al 2014; Colding et al 2005; Taylor 2009; Gilliam 2007).
In a comparison with the rest of the Scandinavian countries, Jørgensen posits that “the atmosphere in Denmark has been shrill with a harsh and negative treatment of linguistic minorities” and
government officials worked hard to suppress minority mother tongues in schools (Jørgensen 2008).
Despite these conditions and policies which attempted – not to integrate but rather - to assimilate minorities into the mainstream culture, by abolishing education in the minority languages, and by implementing Danish as the only language of education, the use of Arabic and other minority languages is still a hallmark that characterizes language use among ethnic pupils attending mainstream schools.
Diglossia:
In order to understand the Arab varieties spoken by the participants, we need to explain the concept of diglossia which characterizes language use among Arab speakers. According to Ferguson
Diglossia is a relatively stable language situation in which, in addition to the primary dialects of the language (which may include a standard or regional standards), there is a very divergent, highly codified (often grammatically more complex) superposed variety, the vehicle of a large and respected body of written literature, either of an
earlier period or in another speech community, which is learned largely by formal education and is used for most written and formal spoken purposes but is not used by any sector of the community for ordinary conversation. (Ferguson 1959: 336)
Ferguson’s definition of diglossia stems from his observations of language use in diglossic communities, as it is the case of the Arab world, where two varieties are normally used by speakers, one is high and represented by Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), and one is low and represented by the various regional colloquial varieties. Wardhaugh (2010, 85) considers that the key defining characteristic of diglossia is that the two varieties are kept quite apart in their functions. One is used in one set of circumstances and the other in an entirely different set, a feature which Fishman (1967) calls “domain congruency” between social situations, including topics, and language varieties. This diglossic situation has consequences for all forms of communication and interaction, in that the high variety is used for formal purposes, and has a higher level of prestige than the low varieties. There are different circumstances of acquisition in that children learn the low varieties at home, while the high at school. The high variety is standardized with a tradition of grammatical study and established norms and orthography. The Arabic grammar study was
established before 1500 years, and it was built on the Quranic model, where any syntactic structure is considered grammatical only if it is compatible with the Quranic syntactic structures. The
grammar of the high variety is more complex despite the fact that the two varieties (high and low) share the bulk of their vocabularies. Moreover, there are differences between what we might call
“classical Arabic” and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), in that the former is comprised of many vocabularies that are considered archaic, and which are exclusively used in ancient religious and literary texts.
Ferguson’s (1959) dichotomy was criticized as several studies attempted to deconstruct the rigid dichotomy of the “high” and “low” varieties that he spoke about. For example, Badawi (1973) identified different levels of varieties depending on use and function of contemporary Arabic:
Formal of Islamic Heritage, contemporary Formal, vernacular of the educated, vernacular of the literate, and vernacular of the illiterate. El-Hassan (1977, 1978) and Ryding (1991) argued for the existence of Educated Spoken Arabic, a variety of the language that incorporates features from both Formal and Colloquial, and which is mostly used by different universities especially in the West to help non-native learners of Arabic to grasp a functional dialect that makes use of both the formal and the informal varieties. Other linguists have also criticized the categorization of Arabic into levels that have discrete points. Holes (1995), for example, described the situation of Arabic as a continuum as he states that Arabic speakers’ behavior is “one of constant style shifting along a cline at opposite ends of which are pure MSA and the pure regional dialect, more accurately conceived of as idealized constructs than real entities.” Moreover, there have been lately several studies taking into account the vernacular spoken Arabic and the emergence of written forms for the
vernacular/dialect. Dauoudi (2011), thus, speaks about the influences of globalization on the emergence of what she calls e-Arabic which is used on the internet and mobile phones, a new Arabic literary genre from blogs and emails, and which uses Latin letters and numbers in
transcription. Nevertheless, it must be stressed that the dichotomy that Ferguson spoke about can still be used to describe the Arabic language. Formal Arabic has fixed grammatical rules from ancient times, and serves different functional communicative purposes: a Friday preach in mosques,
presidential speech, News casting, and other political and social media debates, while the vernacular (dialects) are used for informal purposes. The two varieties share the bulk of their vocabularies, and natives (depending on their education, social status, and domain) make use of different levels on the continuums described above.
The participants of this study are speakers of the low varieties of Arabic, i.e., eleven of them speak the Lebanese - Palestinian dialect, three speak Iraqi dialect, and one speaks the Syrian dialect11. The dialects involved have much in common, and usually they are understood by all, and when a term that pertains to one dialect and not the other is used, the interlocutors usually
investigate further about the meaning of the word. These dialects constitute their mother-tongues and the term Arabic in this study refers to the dialects rather than to MSA or Classical Arabic since these dialects are the ones used in their communication.
Complementary Schools:
Five participants in school B said that they had attended complementary schools which offer teaching in MSA in the weekends and for various periods that range from few months to four or five years. Yet this knowledge of MSA is in the best cases inadequate, as such complementary schools suffer from several problems including lack of teachers and lack of funding, in addition to the lack of discipline which usually characterizes them12. The inadequacy is also manifested by practical examples related to the participants. For example, one girl whose father is Palestinian and mother German, said that she had attended Arabic complementary school for five years in the weekends, a span of time which is enough to make her literate, yet she said that she still cannot read or write MSA. In many situations, I greeted the participants or thanked them using MSA, and they demonstrated an inability to understand and asked me to repeat my statements or to explain to them what I mean. In any case, only four – of those who attended complementary schools -said that they can read and write MSA. Almost all of them said that they use Danish for social communication on the internet, and none of them mentioned Arabic as one of the languages at their disposal, rather some mentioned English. Nowadays, parents interested in teaching their children MSA send them into private schools, where Arabic teaching is integrated with the school’s Danish curriculum. Some parents avoid this choice in that these private schools are mostly led and administered by religious sects or religious groups, where the school’s staff who speak Arabic are members of these religious sects.
Communication with parents is normally conducted through the use of Arabic unless they had one of their parents having another nationality, while with siblings and friends, the two languages are employed. Parents sometimes enforce a policy which - in their opinion – might enhance their children’s linguistic abilities, as we see in the following excerpt, where a group of pupils from A discuss “language use” and what their parents instruct them to do. Example (3.2)
11 It must be stressed that Arabic dialects vary from one city to another, and even from one neighborhood to another in the same city, and specifying that one participant speaks Syrian or Palestinian dialect is only meant to show that their mother-tongues vary, but they nevertheless understand and cope with their different dialects.
12 I have taught many bilinguals who attend classes in Arabic language proficiency at the university and who had attended complementary schools in their childhood; these bilinguals demonstrate considerable weaknesses in MSA in the four skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening). I also wanted to teach my children MSA in one of the
complementary schools during the weekends, but it did not work in that over several weeks there were problems concerned with absent teachers or lack of teaching materials.
1-Noha: min far siger til os tal arabisk og engelsk og i skolen tal dansk.
2-Zaina: det siger min far også 3-Mahir: også mig
4-Ilham: jeg taler arabisk kun med mine forældre 5-Noha: ja ja og så resten dansk
6-Hani: jeg taler flydende dansk 7-Ibo: jeg taler arabisk og dansk
1-Noha: my father tells us speak Arabic and English and at school speak Danish.
2-Zaina: that’s what my father says also 3-Mahir: me too
4-Ilham: I speak Arabic only with my parents 5-Noha: yes yes and the rest Danish
6-Hani: I speak fluent Danish 7-Ibo: I speak Arabic and Danish
Such an excerpt highlights the domain of the use of Arabic, and that it has a restricted and a specific function, mainly to communicate with parents; whereas, communication with siblings and friends is done mainly through Danish, with limited switching to Arabic. This also indicates that their Danish teachers are the only fluent speakers with whom they interact.
Another form of complementary schools is represented by what is called “Quranic schools”, and in which three participants from school A have been enrolled. Quranic schools are mainly
concerned with Classical Arabic. Such schools usually involve Muslims and not Arabs per se.
Bigelow (2010: 39) comments on the content of instruction in these schools by stating that
“recitation of Quranic text does not necessarily include comprehension of the text but fulfills the primary purpose of going to Quranic School, which is to adopt Muslim values and a Muslim identity”. In addition to the problem of archaic vocabularies that characterizes the Quranic text (Classical Arabic), children are burdened with the responsibility of reciting “sounds” that have no meaning, and to memorize these sounds by heart without providing translation (for the Somalis for example) or explanation (for the Arabs). It is worth pointing out that in Denmark we do not have
“Quranic schools” in the traditional sense of the word, in that the supposed “school” could be a hall where the local community might congregate to perform some activities and which might include the teaching of Quran. In one episode from school A, where three Arab girls and one Somali girl work as a group in history class, the Somali girl (Aya) boasts her knowledge in reciting by heart several Quranic verses and dares the others to do the same. One girl (Ikhlas) accepts the challenge, and they turn their history assignment into a competition in reciting Quranic verses by heart, and to tease Noha who seems unable to do the same. Their performance reveals that their memories do not help them, as they mix Quranic verses and statements which belong to various Quranic chapters, and which in turn indicates that they can memorize some of the sounds, but not the meanings nor the syntactic categories or structures. Regardless of the linguistic knowledge that one might get – or not get – in these schools, attending a Quranic school remains important for some of the pupils as we might see in the following conversation. Example (3.3)
1-Aya: hvorfor kan du ikke wal sama'e wal tarikh 2-Noha: jeg ved ikke hvad det er
3-Aya: wal sama'e: zati el tarik 4-Noha: jeg forstår ikke hvad du mener 5-Aya: wal sama'e: wal tarik
6-Ikhlas: wal sama'e: wal tarik 7-Noha: jeg ved det ikke
8-Aya: så du er kun nået til xxxx så springer i i hvert fald over i din quranskole
9-Ikhlas: hun går slet ikke til [quranskole
10-Noha: [JO, om: om lørda om søndag 11-Aya: hvorhenne↑
12-Noha: i paf 13-Aya: nå:: i paf
14-Aya: der er først somalisk quranskole derover [og så efter er der arabisk hvad↑
15-Noha: [ja]
16-Noha: ehm
1-Aya: why can’t you by the heaven and the bright star 2-Noha: I don’t know what it is
3-Aya: by the sky that has the bright star 4-Noha: I don’t understand what you mean 5-Aya: by the sky and the bright star 6-Ikhlas: by the sky and the bright star 7-Noha: I don’t know it
8-Aya: so you’ve reached only to xxxxxxxx so you skip for sure in your quran school
9-Ikhlas: she doesn’t at all attend [quran school
10-Noha: [YES on: on Saturda on Sunday
11-Aya: where?
12-Noha: at paf 13-Aya: oh:: at paf
14-Aya: there is first Somali Quran school there [and then there is Arabic, isn’t it?
15-Noha: [ ja
17-Aya: ennu hvem har kaldt den for paf egentlig↑
18-Noha: os
16-Noha: ehm
17-Aya: that is who has actually called it paf?
18-Noha: us
Noha’s inability to recite the verses was interpreted by the group as a shortcoming and a weakness as lines (8 and 9) might suggest, in that Aya interprets the shortcoming in terms of skipping some chapters in Noha’s school, while Ikhlas considers that Noha doesn’t attend a Quran school, and this is opposed by Noha’s next turn (10). The way Noha reacts to the accusation that she doesn’t attend a school is worth noting, and it demonstrates the importance of such a practice.
Moore (2006 : 114) cited educators and researchers who argue that Quranic schooling interferes with students’ social, cognitive, and linguistic development by teaching children a passive, non-analytic learning style. However, for many Muslims, the mere recitation of Quranic text is enough to be rewarded with God’s blessings, and to protect the reciter from various physiological and psychological problems. Furthermore, it has a meaning in the world of the participants – as the above example shows - in terms of socialization and acquiring a Muslim identity. Recent research by Bigelow (2010) theorized from the point of view of her Somali participants that “students who have gone to Dugsi (Quran School) will be good students because Dugsi helps them be better people and thus more dedicated and serious students.” However, we cannot assume that such a claim can be generalized everywhere. It is true that the girls cited above who attend Quran schools are very serious and calm – except for Noha - and I have never seen them disrupting classroom teaching, or creating troubles, yet in terms of academic achievement they are below the required level, according to the assessment of their main-teacher. Blackledge (2010) also points to an
important fact regarding complementary schools in general by stating that “complementary schools is not universally welcomed by students, who may experience them as the imposition of a language and heritage with which they do not claim to be affiliated.”
Participants’ groups and friendships:
Gender and ethnicity are the two basic frames that shape social relations and social practices in the two schools. However, ethnicity is not a matter of biology or origins for the participants, rather an ability to speak a certain language. A person who is not Arab can be considered by the
participants an in-group member if he is able to use Arabic. Members of a clique share – in addition to Arabic language – some interests, which could be local and related to the specific clique or universal and shared with other “cliques”. Members of cliques and friendships share many similarities in terms of behavior and communication among themselves or in terms of the set of values and norms which shape their lives and identities. Deviation from the group’s norms or behaving in ways that counter the expectations of the group is to invite punishment and rejection, and which can be manifested in bullying, ostracism, or violent disputes, depending on the level of deviation. Moreover, differences among “groups” in terms of being “school oriented” or “trouble-maker” or “tame-and obedient” are all meant to demonstrate the view that heterogeneity is the hallmark of bilinguals, and their bilingualism and “cultural hybridity” are enacted in various ways by each clique and each member.
A major concern for peer group was the need to conform to group norms, and such norms can be general and across the board like for example, to avoid telling on other pupils or to report their misconduct to teachers, or to ridicule an absent pupil. Norms can be seen as aspects of the group boundaries that regulate interactions between teachers and pupils, and interactions among pupils themselves. It is particularly the norm of not reporting misconduct to teachers which was
problematic and made it difficult for teachers to intervene in an effective way and in the proper
time. The fact that the pupils are bilinguals added insult to injury, in that switching to another language in disputes – a language which is incomprehensible by teachers – enabled the pupils to exclude teachers, and to transform the public sphere – classroom – into a private domain. Most often, switching to another language entailed a switch in the tone of voice from angry tone to a calm one, a strategy which made it possible for pupils to give the similitude of an ordinary conversation and as a cover that prevents an onlooker to detect that pupils are involved in a dispute. (This issue will be discussed in detail in part III).
Dixon and Smith (2011) argue that norms could be understood as an important aspect of the boundary that regulates and stabilizes relationships within and between groups. Using a socio-psychological perspective, they demonstrate the view that “children seek to be members of groups that are considered positively distinctive or comparatively superior to other groups, in order to enhance their self-esteem.” (Dixon and Smith 2011: 51). However, in the context of the schools being investigated in this study, to be distinctive and superior does not necessarily entail an improvisation of academic achievement. Rather the opposite, many of the general norms which shape the groups and impact the identities of members are anti-academic, and these include frequent absenteeism13, forgetting assignments and textbooks at home14 , to be physically tough and daring to beat others15 , to be cynical, and to be able to use derogatory and dirty terms.
Forming friendships based on ethnicity is another practice which shaped the boundary of groups especially among Arab boys. This norm was of less importance for girls, and we might find cliques which are composed of Somali and Arab girls. For the Arab groups in general, to be Somali or Dane is categorized as different, and as a member of a low status (Somali) in A, out-group (Danish) in B. Other norms were specific to particular cliques, and these specified who was in or out of a particular group. In the following, I will present the different friendships in the two schools, and sketch the characteristics that define each. Assessments of the groups are based on observations as to how they interact during their lessons and with whom they walk and talk during recess. It was not possible to group them into clusters before finishing with the fieldwork observations, as they all seemed to be one group and acting and interacting in harmony with each other, in time some of those who are members of a friendship were seated – purposefully – in separate corners of the classroom.
categories A – class divided into two ethnicities
9 Arabs, 9 Somalis, 1 vietnamese. Pupils seated around tables in groups of
B- More ethnicities are represented. 10 Arabs – 5 somalis – 5 Danes- 2 kurds – 1 Bosnian – pupils sit in rows of pairs on each desk
Traits – norms - practices
13 I was present in school A for 32 days over a span of five months; some participants were recorded absent for 8 days of these 32 days. In school B, I was present for 24 days over a span of five months, and the highest record of
absenteeism is 3 days.
14 This is a common norm among them all, except for the very few who were dubbed as “nerds”. Sometimes teachers found that the greatest majority in the class do not have their assignments with them, or forgot their text-books at home, in time the teaching design could be dependent on the assignments, and so teachers would lose temper and send pupils home to bring the assignments. Some pupils would make it and return to school by the end of the lesson, others would arrive late for the next class, and they have an alibi: teacher sent me home to bring my assignment.
15 To be aggressive towards others physically was very common among the boys in school A, and mostly this aggressiveness is waged against members of their class (boys and girls). In school B, I witnessed only verbal and conditional threats exclusively by Arab boys towards members from other classes which didn’t materialize into physical violence.