Othering of multilinguals in society

Chapter 2 Othering of multilinguals in society Claudio Scarvaglieri Université de Lausanne This contribution describes ways of Othering of multilinguals in public discourse. Based on a corpus of 49 texts from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, I first demonstrate that multilinguals are characterized as different from the ‘We’ group and labelled with terms that disregard their multilingual capabilities and instead portray them as geographic, national or religious others. This ‘being-different’ from ‘Us’ is regularly evaluated in negative terms, with multilinguals being blamed for, e.g., antisemitism or homophobia in ‘Our’ society. The data also shows that these labels and the underlying distinctions between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ persist against criticism and that they are used to explain new social phenomena (like the development of a pandemic). Taken together, this study not only allows us to understand how Othering of multilinguals proceeds in the investigated societies, but also to reconstruct a very narrow concept of the perceived ‘We’ group. As academia in general, and linguistics in particular, is influenced by the societal context in which it operates, such folk concepts of ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’ have the potential to influence linguistic research – as evidenced by the contributions to this volume. 1 Introduction Othering has been described as a language practice that demarcates individuals or groups as distinctly different from the group the current speaker identifies with (Dahinden 2011, Brons 2015). Othering identifies people as “alien” (Brons 2015) from ‘Us’ – the speaker’s group – and as belonging to a different group. Historically, such othering processes have often led to negative evaluations of the Other group (Scarvaglieri & Zech 2013, Dahinden et al. 2014; Scarvaglieri & Luginbühl 2023) and have at times been a basis for drastic and coercive social and political measures directed at that group (Drakulić 1993, Müller-Funk 2016: Claudio Scarvaglieri. 2025. Othering of multilinguals in society. In Artemis Alexiadou, Claudio Scarvaglieri, Christoph Schroeder & Heike Wiese (eds.), The construction of multilinguals as Others: Do we practice what we preach?, 11–34. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17132441 Claudio Scarvaglieri 141). In this contribution, I aim to describe ways in which multilinguals are portrayed as Others in society. To this end, I examine data from public discourse in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.1The data demonstrates 1) that multilinguals in these countries are often portrayed as different from the majority society, 2) the ways in which such Othering proceeds and 3) the types of Othering created. I show that studying processes and practices of Othering not only tells us about how the Other group is perceived, but that it also allows us to better understand how the majority perceives themselves. By describing and discussing Othering in society, this contribution aims to lay the groundwork for the articles in this volume that investigate Othering in science. Since science is connected to social processes in multiple ways, multiple interdependencies between the way multilinguals are perceived in society and science are to be expected. This contribution argues that a clear and objective concept of multilinguals and multilingualism that does not ostracize multilinguals as Others, needs to be the basis of a more open and non-discriminating social discourse about multilinguals. In the following, I first present the existing research about Otherness and Othering and discuss the main strands in the discourse analytic literature about the portrayal of immigrants in the mass media. I then briefly describe the analytic procedure and the dataset that was used in this study. The study is exploratory in nature and follows a qualitative approach that allows for a rather detailed, thick description (Geertz 1973) of Othering processes but does not claim representativeness or statistical significance. Instead, it aims at uncovering some of the most important patterns in which Othering of multilinguals proceeds in public discourse. In the Findings section, I analyze six examples that illustrate the different patterns of Othering in my data.2I first describe practices of Othering and secondly demonstrate that Othering is not restricted to existing social debates, but will also be applied to new emerging problems, like the Covid-19 pandemic or the 2022 New Year’s Eve riots in Germany. Thirdly I will show that Othering frequently leads to negative evaluations of the Other group that allows this group to be blamed for societal problems and thus to portray the ‘own’ group in more positive, desirable terms. In the discussion section, I point out the principles that guide Othering processes and the underlying folk concepts of ‘Us’ vs. ‘They’, i.e., the ideas that guide the creation of group membership in the investigated societies. I close by touching on the connections between scientific and social discourse and by arguing for a different conceptualization of multilinguals in linguistics and language science. 1All three of these countries are multilingual. In this contribution, I will only study the Germanlanguage discourse in these countries. 2Some of these examples have already been briefly discussed in Wiese et al. 2022. 12 2 Othering of multilinguals in society 2 Research on Othering The distinction of same vs. different constitutes a fundamental principle of human perception (Freud 1913, Maturana & Varela 1980, Tauber 2015). This not only holds true from a biological or psychological individualistic perspective but can also been transferred to social processes – people regularly distinguish between those they perceive as belonging to their own groups vs. those perceived as members of another group (Gillespie 2007; Müller-Funk 2016: 66). While such processes might be seen as “natural” (cf. Gadamer 2010: 374) and not per se problematic, the linguistic practice of Othering has been described in more critical terms (Dahinden 2011, Dahinden et al. 2014; Wiese et al. 2022). Linguistic Othering proceeds in two basic steps: First, a distinction is drawn between an Inand an Out-group, a group ‘We’ belong to vs. a group ‘They’ belong to (Reisigl 2014). While the In-group is often not referred to explicitly – implying that who ‘We’ are is self-evident and does not need to be explained – the Other group is often identified via a specific term, e.g., as Jews, Muslims, or people with a ‘migration background’ (see below).3In a second step, negative attributes (like delinquency or abuse of the social welfare system) are regularly ascribed to this Other group. Much linguistic research has described such Othering practices in public discourse in the mass media (see for example Jung et al. 1997, Reisigl & Wodak 2001, Wengeler 2003, Butterwegge & Hentges 2006; Conrad & Aðalsteinsdóttir 2017; Holzberg et al. 2018; Joris et al. 2018; Amores et al. 2020, Figoureux 2021, Scarvaglieri & Luginbühl 2023). While a complete survey of the literature is not intended here, it has been shown that immigrants – and their offspring, i.e., children born and raised in the respective country of immigration – have been portrayed in more negative than positive terms, i.e., that negative attributes are ascribed to the Other group. Among such attributes, the description of immigrants as criminals is one of the phenomena most investigated in the literature (see e.g., Wengeler 2003, de Ridder 2010, Tort et al. 2016, Conrad & Aðalsteinsdóttir 2017, Scarvaglieri 2018, Joris et al. 2018, Holzberg et al. 2018, Figoureux 2021, Czymara & van Klingeren 2022). Other important frames in this context are that of immigrants as intruders (van Gorp 2006; Scarvaglieri 2018, Rheindorf & Wodak 3One of the striking aspects of these labels is that at first sight they appear to denotate a clearly defined social group, while in reality the boundaries of these categories are often very porous and historically undergo a process of gradual extension. In the German Nazi-state, for example, the category of Jews included families and individuals who did not practice their belief for generations or who did not identify as Jewish but had Jewish ancestors. In contemporary discourse in many European countries, people are identified as Muslims if they or their ancestors come from a majority Muslim country, regardless of whether they practice their belief, identify as atheists, agnostics or belong to a religious minority. 13 Claudio Scarvaglieri 2018) penetrating ‘our’ space despite not belonging ‘here’ or that they produce problems and financial costs for the majority society (Scarvaglieri & Zech 2013, Tort et al. 2016, Conrad & Aðalsteinsdóttir 2017, Joris et al. 2018, Figoureux 2021). These attributions not only present the Other group in a negative light, but also implicitly suggest clear paths of dealing with this Other group – criminals need to be punished, intruders need to be sent away, even more so if they are responsible for social problems and rising social welfare costs. Thus, even if such measures are not explicitly called for in the respective Othering texts, ascribing such characteristics to a social group implies a certain course of action towards them. The same holds true for the water metaphors very frequently used to describe immigrants as a flood or wave of people. These metaphors present Others as a mass of uncountable and uncontrollable objects that threaten to wash over ‘Our’ country and need to be dealt with in ways appropriate to natural disasters (Rehbein 1993, Jung et al. 1997, Wengeler 2003, Joris et al. 2018). Of course, Othering in principle also allows for describing the Other group in more positive or neutral terms. Especially persons fleeing from war zones have been described as victims in the mass media (van Gorp 2006, Conrad & Aðalsteinsdóttir 2017, Joris et al. 2018, Holzberg et al. 2018) and sometimes they are also being framed as useful or beneficial (most often in economic or demographic terms). These categories are often used in the media to try to balance the reporting on immigrants and portray the Other group in a less negative light, also with the aim of not feeding racist narratives and stereotypes. While research has in general been very interested in the description of immigrants in public discourse, even linguists have so far ignored the language aspect of Othering, i.e., the Othering of immigrants based on their multilingual competencies. Researchers have yet to demonstrate language as a source of Othering and to describe the ways in which linguistic Othering in society proceeds (for a first step see Scarvaglieri 2022). Therefore, the present contribution pursues the following goals: 1. Document cases of Othering of multilinguals in public discourse; 2. Differentiate between different kinds of Othering of multilinguals; 3. Describe the attributes and labels used for Othering multilinguals; 4. Elaborate how, based on the findings of 1)-3), the ‘We’ group is constructed vs. the Other group. In the following section, I describe the data corpus and the analytic approach that were used to pursue these goals. 14 2 Othering of multilinguals in society 3 Data and analytic approach This exploratory study is based on a corpus of 49 texts, including audioand video files, from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria4. All elements of the database are journalistic articles or interviews that contribute to public discourse. The data does not contain forum discussions or contributions to social media, only contributions to traditional news media (online and print versions of newspapers, radioand tv-programs). The data were collected by Heike Wiese, who graciously allowed me to use her data, and by myself. Sampling followed a basic hermeneutic approach – newspaper articles or contributions to radio or TV programs were collected if at first sight they seemed to contribute to the Othering of Multilinguals or – more generally – people portrayed as immigrants. This of course explains the rather small corpus – we did not gather all texts about language, multilingualism, or immigrants, but only such sources that were deemed relevant to the topic of this contribution. Following a first reading, listening, or watching of the data, I transcribed the audio and video files. For transcription, I opted to follow conventions established in media linguistics (Burger & Luginbühl 2014: 523) that focus on the verbal content of the contributions, less on paralinguistic or nonverbal information (cf. Jefferson 2004). I then analyzed the data according to established methods of discourse analysis (Wodak & Meyer 2009, Spitzmüller & Warnke 2011), focusing particularly on what was said about multilinguals, how they were portrayed, whether Othering occurred and how it proceeded. My analytic approach thus offers interpretations of the meanings of texts, situates them in the context in which they occur and discusses how their meanings is constructed (cf. Richardson 2019). In a fourth analytic step, I distinguished between different types of Othering apparent in the source texts. This distinction was mainly based on which aspects the Othering was grounded in (e.g., geography vs. ethnic or national belonging). Sampling and analysis thus followed these four steps: 1. First view (reading, listening, watching) and decision about including the source in the corpus; 2. Transcription of audio and video sources; 4The discourse in the Netherlands and in Dutch-speaking Belgium shows very similar patterns (Van Maele 2021, Scarvaglieri 2022), but due to space restrictions this contribution will be limited to German-language data. 15 Claudio Scarvaglieri 3. Close linguistic analysis of the sources with regards to Othering of multilinguals; 4. Differentiation of types of Othering. As mentioned, the study is exploratory in nature and does not claim representativeness for public discourse as such. Based on the limited dataset, it is also not possible to make statements about the overall frequency of the patterns of Othering apparent in my data. Despite these limitations, this contribution is able to demonstrate that Othering of multilinguals exists in the public discourse of the respective countries and how such Othering proceeds. My study thus also aims to lay the groundwork for future studies that would then be able to use for instance statistical methods and a larger database to examine the representativeness and frequency of the patterns described here. 4 Findings Despite sampling for Othering of multilinguals, a first look at my data revealed that even in this carefully chosen subset of public discourse, language is often disregarded or treated as a side-issue with limited relevance for the overarching point of the article. This often means that multilingual immigrants or their children or grandchildren are Othered, without mentioning their multilingual capabilities (see extracts 3 and 5 below for examples). One of the effects of this phenomenon is that multilinguals are not framed as persons who – by speaking multiple languages – have more capabilities than the average monolingual member of the majority society. Not mentioning multilingualism when talking about – and Othering – immigrants thus conceals an important asset of the objects of the contribution, which in turn lends itself to portraying them not as important and contributing members of society, but as deficient, problem-inducing Others in need of support (cf. Scarvaglieri & Zech 2013). Contrary to what would be expected, the concealing of their multilingualism thus does not contribute to ‘normalizing’ multilinguals – as one of the attributes that possibly differentiates ‘Them’ from ‘Us’ is not mentioned – but can instead be a part of portraying them in negative terms. The not mentioning of the multilingualism of Others thus contributes to the second step of Othering mentioned above, the negative evaluation of Others or “crude othering” according to Brons (2015: 71). One first finding is thus that often the multilingual capabilities of the immigrant population are not mentioned in public discourse. Instead, multilinguals 16 2 Othering of multilinguals in society are portrayed as geographic, ethnic, or national Others (cf. Wiese et al. 2022), without referring to language. A related finding is that language is often used as a trait, to demarcate multilinguals as, for example, ‘non-German-speaking’. In these cases, linguistic competencies are treated like labels, used interchangeably with other labels demarcating the Other group. A first example from a discussion about educational policy in the state parliament of Berlin illustrates this practice (emphasis added). (1) Extract 1: “Unequal opportunities in finishing school”, Tagesspiegel, 22. 3. 2017 Melzer [member of parliament; C.,S. ] also wanted to know how students from immigrant families compare to those from German-speaking families. His question was, however, not answered – instead, Secretary of State Rackles gave him the overall figures – Germans and migrants together – as well as the separate figures for migrants. To be able to calculate the school completion rates separately for children with and without a migrant background, one would first have to grab a calculator. If you don’t do that, all you find out is that 34 percent of migrants graduate from high school at the A-level, while the rate for Berlin overall is 47.4%.5 In this extract, a distinction is made between on the one side “Germans”, “children without a migration background”, and “German-speaking families”, and on the other side “immigrant families”, “migrants” and “children with a migration background”. Language is thus used as a trait to characterize some members of society – those that are “German-speaking” – and to distinguish them from other members who do not have this trait. It also becomes clear that ‘German-speaking’ is just one of the labels assigned to one of the two groups, which by reverse marks the Other group as non-German-speaking. This label is used even though both groups attend the German education system and – to a large extent at least – were born and raised in Germany and thus factually do speak German. This labelling is thus less about the actual ability to speak German, but more about whether the children speak another language besides German. This Othering practice thus leads to the paradoxical situation in which a group of children that speaks German is portrayed as non-German-speaking because they speak German along with another language. Othering here is based on children speaking not only German, but also another language. 5Extracts are presented in translation. The German originals are provided in the appendix. 17 Claudio Scarvaglieri Example 1 also illustrates the many cases in my corpus in which language is presented as a trait acquired by birth, as it is the fact that these children were born into a family that speaks another language besides German that leads to them being Othered as non-German-speaking. It is thus not surprising that this label is used interchangeably with other labels such as “immigrant”, “migrant” or “migration background” that are also permanently attributed to the Other group. A similar case is extract two, where language-related labels are again used together with labels related to ethnic or geographic origin (emphasis added): (2) subexamples Extract 2 “Antisemitism among Muslim youth”, Tagesspiegel, 5. 4. 2017 According to current knowledge, it is assumed that it was Arabicand Turkish-speaking classmates who so maltreated this youth […]. The comparisons show that adolescents of Turkish and Arab origin had significantly higher antisemitic attitudes than German adolescents […]. The Other group is first labelled as „Arabicand Turkish-speaking”, then as of “Turkish and Arab origin” and as such negatively compared with members of the ‘We’ group, as “German” adolescents had “significantly” lower “antisemitic attitudes”. Similar to example 1, language is used as a trait to differentiate the ‘We’ group and the Other group, interchangeably with an ethnic and or geographic label (the use of “Turkish” and “Arab” here can be understood as referring to the geographic or the ethnic origin of the group). This differentiation was obviously also the basis of the studies that compared the attitudes among these groups and that the author is referring to. The headline of the article – Antisemitism among Muslim Youth – demonstrates that Turkishand Arabic-speaking and Turkish and Arabic origin are used as synonyms for “Muslim” – these different ethnic and linguistic groups are here thus grouped together under a religious label that frames them as different from the ‘We’ group in religious terms. Interestingly, the ‘We’ group is not – neither in this article nor in other cases in my corpus – referred to as “Christian”, probably because such a label would be seen as much too broad to be applied to the religiously diverse or neutral members of the ‘We’ group. As in extract 1, the fact that both groups do in fact speak German – since the article is about students in secondary schools in Germany – is disregarded. This again shows that language is not seen in relation to communicative ability, but as a trait acquired by birth, to be used alternatively with ethnic, religious or geographic labels. It is important to note that the fact that these problematic attitudes were developed in Germany, i.e., in ‘Our’ society, is not brought up. 18 2 Othering of multilinguals in society The responsibility of the majority society for the emergence of such attitudes is not discussed. Instead, these attitudes are portrayed as something that was brought to ‘Us’, was brought ‘Here’, by the Other group. The resulting problem – antisemitic behavior – is thus portrayed as a consequence of the fact that the Other group is ‘Here’, is a part of ‘Our’ society.6 Extract 2 thus demonstrates 1) that linguistic labels are used interchangeably with other labels related to ethnic, religious or geographic framings (cf. extract 1); 2) that Othering categories are used to evaluate the Other group in decidedly negative terms and hold them responsible for problems in ‘Our’ country (cf. below extract 3); and 3) that Othering labels are often very broad (“Muslim”), while the ‘We’ group seems to be seen in much more specific terms. Next to this, this example also illustrates a tendency in the German data that certain labels (like migration background) are often applied to youth whose parents or grandparents come from Turkey or from Arabic-speaking countries.7 So far, we have seen examples in which multilinguals are Othered in ways that disregard their multilingual communicative capabilities and instead treat language as a trait, as if it was acquired by birth, in order to label them as members of the Other group. In my dataset, language is usually not the prime reason for Othering (but see my detailed discussion of extract 5, below), but appears to be used as simply one more alternative of referring to the Other group and lending attention to one more aspect in which that group is different. This of course supports the first finding mentioned above, that the multilingual capabilities of multilinguals are usually not referred to as an asset, i.e., as an advantage that the Other group might have over ‘Our’ group or a resource they contribute to ‘Our’ society (for a distinctly positive perspective on immigrant multilingualism see e.g., Rehbein 2013). One of the alternatives to the “non-German-speaking” label is migration background (Migrationshintergrund in German, migratie achtergrond in Dutch), a term that is used in all countries that are represented in my dataset. This label was created in 2000 and has since gained popularity but has also received criticism (Scarvaglieri & Zech 2013, Will 2018) because, among other things, it essentializes discourse as it cannot be shed (a person will have a migration background their 6In a very similar example from Switzerland, homophobic attitudes and behavior are connected to persons with “migration background”, again without mentioning the fact that these Other persons acquired these attitudes in ‘Our’ society (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 20. 2. 2020, “Nationality is not the reason why someone beats up gays”). 7In fact, people have told me that persons from Poland or other Eastern European countries did not have a migration background as this label referred only to ‘Muslim’ youth or people from the countries mentioned above (oral communication). 19 Claudio Scarvaglieri portrayed as a resource or an asset but reduced to not speaking German. Secondly, the connection between immigration and multilinguals who do not speak German is framed very negatively, mainly as producing problems in the German education system (‘dragging classes down’ or building ‘parallel worlds’). Multiple times during the exchange, speaking a language other than German at home is depicted as highly problematic, with interviewer, expert and even a listener agreeing on this proposition. One would expect that this would leave a strong impression on most listeners of the program, especially since the connection between multilinguals and problems of the education system is made multiple times in very explicit terms and supported by an internationally renowned expert. Thirdly, it appears as if coercive measures are suggested, designed to force immigrant families to speak German (such a suggestion is reminiscent of deeply problematic language policies that historically have led to the extinction of languages in some countries (Brizic 2007)). We also find that a clear distinction is drawn between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. This is done for example by the expert pointing out that members of educational institutions need to reach out to immigrant parents and let them know about the importance of speaking German. Immigrants are thus portrayed as special cases that, differently from members of the majority society, need to be contacted and informed separately. Also, the notion of “parallel societies” is brought up multiple times, which suggests that immigrants have willingly chosen to form ‘Their’ own society within ‘Our’ society, to differentiate ‘Themselves’ from ‘Us’. Furthermore, the languages that immigrants speak at home are only mentioned once – by the listener who is upset about his neighbor speaking Turkish with her child – in all other cases, the conversation is concerned with languages Other than German, which literally hints at the Othering that is happening here. This is reinforced in one of the questions – not refuted by the interviewee – that explicitly presents the fact that there are less monolingual German children – fourth graders who “always speak German at home” – than ten years ago as a problem. Multilingualism is thus explicitly portrayed and accepted as a problem for ‘Our’ society. Finally, the example demonstrates that there is an entire discourse strand that problematizes and Others multilinguals, as various studies or researchers are referred to during the discussion. Those studies are used to support the Othering conducted in this conversation, which makes it clear that this discussion is not an isolated example but based on pre-existing contributions to public and scientific discourse that Othering can rely on. A sixth and final example illustrates that linguistic Othering can also be applied to so-called autochthonous minorities. As reported by numerous outlets 26 2 Othering of multilinguals in society (extract 6: Der Tagesspiegel , “Saxons vs. Sorbs”, 7. 1. 2018; Neues Deutschland “Hostility towards Nationals”, 18. 1. 201813), the former prime minister of the German state Saxony, Stanislaw Tillich, was publicly labelled non-Saxon: after another politician had been elected as prime-minister, the mayor of a small Saxon town stated that “at least now for the first time we have a Saxon as prime minister” (Der Tagesspiegel 7. 1. 2018) and later explained that the other former prime ministers came from other parts of Germany and therefore could not be considered Saxon, while Tillich, who was born and raised in Saxony, was a Sorb – a member of the officially recognized autochthonous Sorbian minority in Saxony – and thus not a Saxon. In this case, Othering is thus not related to immigration but to a person belonging to a multilingual minority. The fact that Tillich was born and raised in Saxony, strongly identifies with the region, and speaks German as one of his native languages thus apparently does not suffice to him being included in the ‘We’ group. Instead, him speaking a language besides German and identifying as a member of a minority, leads to him being Othered. We find that a very narrow concept of who ‘We’ are underlies this Othering process. I discuss this concept in the next section and sum up what I found about Othering of multilinguals in the data. 5 Summary and discussion Before discussing the findings, I first present a short summary of the patterns of Othering of multilinguals in public discourse that are visible in my data. • Othering proceeds by portraying people as different and labelling them with terms that express Otherness (Wiese et al. 2022). In the examples discussed above, some of these labels were related to language (nonGerman speaking, Turkish-speaking), others to ethnic (Turkish, Arab) or geographic origin (migrant) or religion (Muslim). As pointed out, these labels are often very broad and do not describe the Other group in much detail but pick out one aspect to demarcate them as Other. • In my dataset, the multilingual capabilities of multilinguals are often not mentioned. Contrary to what might be expected, this does not work against Othering, but supports the negative evaluation of the Other group (‘crude othering’ according to Brons 2015: 71), as an important asset of the group is concealed. 13This article can be read here: https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1076671.inlaenderfeindlichkeit. html (last seen 22. 1. 2024) 27 Claudio Scarvaglieri • If language is mentioned in these contexts, it is almost always portrayed as a fixed trait, not as communicative ability. The language label (nonGerman-speaking etc.) is then used interchangeably with other essentialist and broad ways of labelling such as “immigrant”, “migration background” or “Muslim”. • Such essentialist labels (“migration background” etc.) – be they related to language or not –and the corresponding distinctions are upheld and reused even against explicit criticism. They are also applied to new social phenomena (like a pandemic, riots etc.). • Othering is often combined with clearly negative evaluations of the Other group, which makes it possible to blame social problems (homophobia, antisemitism, bad performance of the education system) on the Other group. This also has the effect of portraying the ‘We’ group in more positive terms (cf. Gillespie 2007: 580), as they are presented as less responsible for existing societal problems. • The distinction of ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’ and the clearly negative evaluation of the Other group can lead to the suggestion of coercive measures against this group (cf. Drakulić 1993, Scarvaglieri & Zech 2013, Brons 2015). • Othering is not restricted to multilinguals who migrated or whose ancestors did so but can also be applied to autochthonous minorities (cf. Wiese et al. 2022). These findings thus illustrate how Othering proceeds and the terms in which Others are portrayed and labelled. multilinguals are labelled as linguistic Others, geographic Others, national, ethnic, or religious Others (Wiese et al. 2022). Since the Other group is often if not always portrayed against the backdrop of the ‘We’ group, my findings also allow for conclusions about important traits ascribed to this ‘We’ group. According to my data, a person will be considered a member of the ‘We’ group if they hold the following traits: • ‘We’ were born and raised ‘here’, i.e., ‘We’ have no familial or individual experience of cross-border migration. ’Here’ is related to national borders, people who migrated within a country are generally accepted as part of the ‘We’ group; • ’We’ are members of the socially dominant ‘ethnic’ (cf. Redder 2011) group; 28 2 Othering of multilinguals in society • ’We’ are ‘native speakers’ of the socially dominant language and do not speak another language on a native-like level. Anyone who differs in one or multiple of these aspects from these features is perceived and labelled as Other in ways discussed above. The data also shows that the boundaries between these groups are perceived as very sharp – individuals or groups are portrayed as part of either group, they cannot belong to both the ‘We’ and the ‘They’ group.14 We thus find that in social public discourse, there exists a commonsense or folk concept about who ‘We’ are vs. who ‘They’ are. Ehlich (1993: 210) understands such everyday or folk concepts (Alltagskonzepte) as basic ideas about reality, incl. nature, society or culture, that guide how we act ourselves and how we understand the actions of others in ordinary everyday contexts. Due to their very fundamental nature, many individuals often are not consciously aware of such folk concepts, and they might perceive them as self-evident presuppositions that need not be criticized Such folk concepts might then appear impossible to discuss or deconstruct. Contrary to methods or theories – which in science are regularly made the objects of intense reflection, discussion and revision – such basic ideas and pre-concepts can therefore become unanalyzed parts of research processes (Ehlich 1993). Since there are multiple connections between science and society – including personal, financial, infrastructural, legal and epistemic connections – science is in general influenced by the social system in which it is conducted (e.g., MacIntyre 1987, Rosa 1998). This holds especially true for ideas about who we are and what constitutes us as a society – ideas that form the foundation of collective and individual identity (Taylor 1989). As the contributions to this volume show, the unanalyzed, often unconscious notion that Mutlilinguals are Others, is not only present in public discourse but has continued to influence language science for decades and has often formed one of the starting points for scientific undertakings in the linguistic field. I argue that linguistics needs to discuss and deconstruct this distinction to be able to push for a more open and egalitarian societal discourse about linguistic belonging. 14There are few exceptions to this rule, namely articles that portray individuals in detail and discuss contradictory feelings of belonging, often of multilingual immigrants or their children. In these contributions however, it is usually pointed out that portraying someone as feeling like they belong to multiple groups is unconventional and difficult and that it goes against the general way of understanding identity and belonging. 29 Claudio Scarvaglieri Acknowledgements I thank my co-editors as well as two anonymous reviewers for extensive and very helpful comments on this study. I also thank the participants of the Othering workshop conducted in Berlin in July 2022 for their comments on this study. References Amores, Javier J., Carlos Arcila-Calderón & Beatriz González-de-Garay. 2020. 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