Advancing the European Multilingual Experience

Periodic Report Summary 1 - ATHEME (Advancing the European Multilingual Experience)

Project Context and Objectives:
AThEME (Advancing the European Multilingual Experience) is a collaborative research project studying multilingualism in Europe. This 5-year research project was set up with funding from the European Commission runs from March 2014 until March 2019. The main objectives of the project are: (1) to investigate cognitive, linguistic and sociological issues in multilingual Europe, (2) to assess existing public policies and practices within the areas of education and health as well as their impact on multilingualism and (3) to contribute to evidence-based policy making. AThEME uses a range of research methodology and aims to raise awareness of multilingualism among policy makers, health professionals, academics and educators.
AThEME is made up of four main research areas within which researchers (17 partner institutions) from Croatia, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom work together to study multilingualism. The first group focuses on the regional minority languages in multilingual Europe. Their main objective is to increase the general understanding of what multilingualism with regional minority languages means. From the linguistic perspective, researchers aim to add to the current description and analysis of grammatical diversity of the various regional languages in Europe. From a cognitive point of view, researchers are interested in the effects of language and cognition in various contexts of regional multilingualism. Finally, researchers plan to explore strategies, which can be used to successfully maintain regional bi- and multilingualism.
The second research group investigates heritage languages and heritage language users in the EU. A heritage language is one that families bring with them when they move from one country to another. Researchers first need to understand the sociolinguistic context and the factors contributing to partial language development (when the heritage language is not acquired completely) as well as the attrition of heritage languages (when speakers lose proficiency in their heritage language). Researchers will then investigate the impact heritage languages have on the dominant language.
A third focus of research in AThEME is the relationship between multilingualism and communicative impairment. Many people experience a form of communicative impairment (stutter, dyslexia, Specific Language Impairment (SLI), aphasia). AThEME researchers first aim to increase the evidence base in order to benefit assessments and policies. The second aim is to bring this increased evidence base into concrete tools and applications beneficial to teachers, health care providers and others involved with (the well-being of) communicatively impaired people.
A final research area in this project explores the cognitive aspects of what it means to be multilingual. AThEME researchers are interested in three particular aspects: (1) to gain more knowledge of how factors like age-of-onset (the age at which an individual learns a second language) and language distance (how much one language differs from another) affect the final outcome of a person’s second language acquisition, (2) to investigate the direct effects of multilingualism on human interaction and (3) to collect more data and gain more knowledge of the relationship between language and other mental operations, like attention and memory.
In order to raise general public awareness of multilingualism, AThEME will make use of the already established public engagement and outreach programme Bilingualism Matters (BM). National branches in Croatia, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain and the United Kingdom will function as platforms to inform different groups in society about AThEME’s research results, to organise workshops and other events on issues raised by this project and to build a strong, coordinated European network on multilingualism.

Project Results:
In the first 18 months of the project much preparatory work has been done laying the foundations. A kick-off meeting for the research project was held in the Netherlands (April 2014) followed by a second consortium meeting in Scotland (May 2015). A subset of AThEME’s 17 partners needed to obtain ethical approval for their research and experiments. Another important aspect was having all partners obtain written confirmations proving compliance with national and EU legislation on data protection procedures. Finally, all researchers produced a joint-document describing how the partners conducting studies and experiments coordinate these.
During the first 18 months the group of researchers focusing on regional minority languages in Europe have compiled two extensive state of the art reports. The first report was one on the maintenance of regional bilingualism and the second a report on grammatical diversity of regional languages. The regional languages that were studied for these reports are: Basque, Frisian, Limburgs and Low Saxon, Fiuman, Gaelic, Gallo, Sardinian, Primorskia Slovenian, variants of Italian (Trentino) and German (South Tyrolean), Ladin, Cimbiran and Mòcheno. Taken as a whole, the reports give readers insights into the history, distribution, grammatical variations and so-called ‘vitality’ of the abovementioned regional languages.
As part of the work the second group (heritage languages and heritage language users in the EU), a paper was produced on the new forms of languages that have emerged in multilingual areas of European cities. This paper gives insight into the impact of heritage languages on dominant languages. Other researchers have investigated the attitudes of majority language speakers (native speakers of German living in Germany) towards speakers of heritage languages like Turkish. Current research is also looking into heritage Korean spoken in France and Moroccan Dutch.
Within the group working on Multilingualism and Communicative Impairment, some researchers have been investigating language variation and linguistic abilities in multilingual populations suffering from Dyslexia and Specific Language Impairment. Several studies have already been carried out in the UK, Italy and Spain. Further studies are currently being executed, involving Chinese/Italian and German/Italian bilinguals Finally, one group of researchers in this research area is looking at how elderly citizens might use their knowledge of different languages (in this case Dutch and linguistically distinct dialects) to construct a sense of belonging.
The fourth AThEME group of researchers (cognitive aspects of what it means to be multilingual) has looked at the relationship between language and the more general cognitive function called executive function (related to switching attention between tasks, or ignoring distracting information) and the possible effects of language distance (how much one language differs from another). On-going experiments investigate whether Gaelic-English bilinguals process passive constructions in a way similar to native speakers (of Gaelic or English) and how Mandarin-Dutch bilinguals process mass nouns and count nouns.
A crucial part of the first months of this research project is the establishment of all the national branches of Bilingualism Matters that will be active in AThEME in order to raise public awareness. At the start of AThEME, four national branches were up-and-running: Croatia, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom (headquarters of Bilingualism Matters). Four new branches have been set up in France, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain. While maintaining a common brand identity and tasked with communicating AThEME-related information and results, each branch is shaping its network and activities, which best fit needs and priorities in their national and local contexts.

Potential Impact:
The project aims to first of all have a significant scientific impact. AThEME has been designed to generate comparative, in-depth and scientifically grounded knowledge about linguistic, cognitive and sociological dimensions of multilingualism in Europe. At the level of the individual, AThEME will yield insight into (measuring) an individual’s level of multilingual proficiency but also the cognitive performance of speakers with communicative impairments and of aging individuals with neurodegenerative diseases. At the level of the multilingual group, AThEME will further the understanding of the role of language, identity and ethnicity in language development and the communicative contexts involving multilingual speakers with different language backgrounds and levels of proficiency. Finally, at the level of the multilingual society, AThEME will provide accurate analyses of the differences and similarities of languages spoken in different contexts involving regional languages and dialects. Highlighted scientific impact results:
• Article on the maintenance of regional languages
• Article on heritage languages and the emergence of new language varieties in Europe
• Article on behavioural and ERP studies on Specific Language Impairment and Developmental Dyslexia
• Article on advantages of multilingualism on the cognitive system

This scientific impact will provide a firm foundation on which educators, health professionals and policy makers may gain more understanding of the challenges of multilingualism and can make informed decisions based on these new insights. The second impact of the project is thus informing education and social policies at the national and European level and making concrete policy recommendations based on evidence-based research. It requires a translation from science to practice, which AThEME will do by producing the following concrete results by the end of the project:
• Report on the use of multilingualism for cognitive enhancement and healthy aging
• Report on the design of new teaching methods and remediation tools for dyslexia
• Recommendations for multilingualism and developmental communicative disorders

A third impact is geared towards improving the availability of data and tools for research and policy on multilingualism. By extending the existing research database and the collection of new data, AThEME contributes to improving the availability of data on linguistic diversity in Europe. This includes collecting and analysing new data on linguistic diversity, complementing existing databases on regional languages and dialects and developing a comparative database on sociological and linguistic dimensions of heritage language competence. Language tools for determining underlying communicative impairments serving simultaneously as the basis for cognitive therapies will be especially useful for educators and clinicians.

The fourth expected impact relates to methodology and research strategy. AThEME uses a variety of methodologies and techniques that yield a rich and broad palate of data on multilingualism. Methods ranges from traditional (socio)linguistic fieldwork based on interviews and questionnaires, to experimental techniques such as sentence repetition tasks, reaction time studies as well as ERP/EEG studies. AThEME demonstrates that the integration of different methodologies in investigating a complex phenomenon like multilingualism yields valuable results.

Finally, engaging with civil society can be considered the fifth impact of the AThEME project. As soon as project results become apparent, AThEME’s unique strategy for spreading knowledge and engaging with various actors in society by means of the eight national platforms/networks will truly come to fruition. By organising events with the direct involvement of the AThEME researchers themselves and working to integrate feedback from audiences into future plans for both impact and research, AThEME ensures a project that is rooted in European society.

List of Websites:
www.atheme.eu

Periodic Report Summary 1 - ATHEME (Advancing the European Multilingual Experience)

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