Connecting chronotopes and language ideologies: Educator views on migrants’ majority language use in vocational education

Abstract

This study explores the role of language and migrant students’ language use in the interplay of chronotopes (Bakhtin 1981) and language ideologies (Blommaert 1999) in vocational education and training (VET) in Finland. The study scrutinises how 16 educators imagined and situated migrant students’ language use and constructed values for the majority language and migrant students’ other languages. Data were gathered team-ethnographically in a VET institute. Critical sociolinguistic analysis showed that language use was spatiotemporally located in present education and present and future blue-collar worksites. In these timespaces, the majority language was valorised and viewed as a tool for graduating from VET and performing blue-collar work tasks. The findings indicate that migrant students’ imagined language use rarely extends beyond their VET education or worksites, and that their diverse language resources should thus be better considered and valued in VET.