ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the conflation of factors surrounding the concept of second-language reading. Indeed, the term second-language reading signifies different phenomena depending on the context in which the term is used. If one chooses to emphasize reading, then the term may refer to the interesting role that second languages have played as contributors to early theories of reading. At the same time, at the level of practice, the single purpose frequently cited for learning a second language is for reading it. Or, at the research level, the term may signify the process of reading in a language other than the mother tongue. If one chooses to emphasize the first part of the term, second language, other images are evoked. At the level of policy, the term may signify much of what became critical problems for public school educators, mainly reading educators, centered on the notion of immigrant children learning to read in English, their second language. Or, at the level of practice, the term may refer to the principle vehicle for learning a second language-reading material. At the level of research, the term may evoke notions of cross-lingual comparisons. Yet another dimension to the term is that of language. In the notoriously monolingual Anglophone world language is frequently synonymous with English and, therefore, second language refers to all languages other than English. This monolingualism, that is, English-language monolingualism, is such a dominant dimension in the Anglophone world that it is often difficult to get even the most astute scholars to think about the world in ways other than with an Anglophone view. Scholarship on language planning, referring to concepts such as linguistic imperialism (Phillipson, 1992; Tollefson, 1991), and on multiculturalism (McKay & Weinstein-Shr, 1993), documents this construction. Whatever the emphasis or whichever component is chosen for foregrounding, it is clear that all of these significations conflate to form a diverse, complicated, and frustrating landscape to traverse, let alone explain or predict.
