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Ajit Mohanty is a former Professor and ICSSR National Fellow, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. He was a Killam Scholar, University of Alberta, Fulbright Professor at Columbia University and Visiting Professor in Western University. The Multilingual Reality: Living with Languages (2019, Multilingual Matters) is his latest book. He is a Fellow of the Association of Psychological Science, USA and a Fellow and Past-President of the National Academy of Psychology, India. Mohanty developed Multilingual Education Policy for Nepal and Odisha (India).

Presentation: Changing contours of multilingualism: challenges and chances for multilingual education

With large scale international migration, societies across the globe are becoming more fluid showing increasing surface level linguistic diversity. However, presence of larger number of languages does not make societies multilingual (Mohanty & Skutnabb-Kangas, In press). The global presence of dominant languages like English and the “monolingual habitus” (Gogolin, 1997) in host societies are changing the very meaning of multilingualism and limiting the scope of multilingual approach to language and literacies education. The role of languages in education and the homogenising impact of dominant language(s) show that the hierarchical power structure of languages and the linguistic double divide are reflected in how languages are placed in education in different societies (Mohanty, 2019). The national compulsions to develop competence in the dominant languages at the earliest stage of formal education affect the nature and consequences of mother tongue (MT)-based multilingual education programmes across the world; development of literacy and academic skills in the MT as a ‘bridge’ to learning dominant languages reflects monoglossic ideology, subtractive learning and monolingual outcomes.