The linguistic sense of placement: Habitus and the entextualization of translingual practices in Swedish academia

This paper adopts a Bourdieusian approach to discourse in contemporary Swedish academia. Habitus, entextualization, and translingual practice are employed as epistemological perspectives for investigating the place of Swedish in the text trajectories of two disciplines where English prevails in publishing. Data from meeting recordings, email correspondence, and interviews show that Swedish is the legitimate language throughout in the text production and that discipline‐specific Swedish is practiced so long as it encompasses all participants’ repertoires. In fact, the researchers point to an almost physical awkwardness linked to the unwarranted use of English among themselves. Following Bourdieu, it is argued that these sensibilities pertain to the linguistic sense of placement of socialized agents and that the unease of being out of place prevents them from lapsing into what is socially perceived as unacceptable discourse in their translingual practices.     

English in French Commercial Advertising: Simultaneity,bivalency, and language boundaries

In recent decades, sociolinguists have begun to challenge the traditional view that multilingualism is fundamentally composed of discrete systems known as ‘languages’. Supporting the assessment that languages are not bounded entities but sociocultural and ideological constructions, this article explores commercial advertisements in France, which are subject to language policies assuming that ‘French’ is easily separable from ‘foreign languages’. Employing the Bakhtinian‐influenced notion of bivalency developed by Woolard (1998), the article argues for a special consideration of mixed‐language advertising in France, rooted not only in linguistic form, but also in the specific contextual tension produced by the socio‐political statuses of French and English. The resulting creativity challenges the monolectal assumptions within French language management, indicating a clash of segregational language ideology with integrational language practices. The article further argues that this language mixing is bidirectional, as advertisements may both erase and emphasise the assumed boundaries between codes.     

What's in a name? Language ideology and social differentiation in a Swedish print‐mediated debate1

This paper investigates a recent print‐mediated discussion about linguistic phenomena that are perceived by many commentators to be ‘deviant’ from ‘standard Swedish.’ The aim of the paper is to illustrate how this language debate is built on two closely entwined discursive processes: a struggle to define the name, meaning, and value of a specific linguistic phenomenon; and the indexical processes through which such a phenomenon is bound up with a multifaceted image of its purported speakers, in which gender is imbricated in age and ethnicity. Essentially, the argument is that the metalinguistic pronouncements in this debate are ultimately the outer manifestation of deeper social concerns about what it means to be a ‘non‐Swedish’ young man.     

Elite positionings towards Hindi: Language policies,political stances and language competence in India1

In India, Hindi is imagined and institutionalized as the national language which weds together India's pluralistic population under the banner of a shared Indian identity. Approaching language competence as embedded in and performed through language practices and ideologies, I explore how a New Delhi elite community positions themselves towards Hindi vis‐à‐vis national language policies and political movements. Contrasting with traditional unified elite portrayals, e.g. ‘elite closure’ ( Myers‐Scotton 1990 ), India has multiple sociolinguistically discordant elite groups, and these liberal elites ideologically construct their Hindi (in)competency in an alternative framework attending to the history (and failure) of Hindi‐based nationalism, their disalignment with modern right‐wing movements, and their continued affiliation with English. This perspective of some elites as negotiating and disagreeing with contemporary political movements and language policy legislature illuminates language competencies as socially constructed and locally grounded, and challenges past interpretations of postcolonial elites as unified actors controlling the dominant linguistic marketplace.     

The language ideologies of multilingual nannies in London

In the globalized economy, multilingualism is increasingly perceived as a way of maximizing competitiveness, even in the family home. In the United Kingdom, multilingualism has become an asset for nannies, granting privileged access to a niche job market. Adopting the theoretical lens of language ideology, we identify sites and forms of language evaluation within the nannies’ discursive construction of their language work. Using thematic analysis of interview and focus group data with nannies, we examine how nannies represent their English and L1 language practices, verbalizations, and embodiments. Findings suggest that, rather than language practices, it is the verbalization of the symbolic value of multilingualism (normally through the medium of English) that grants nannies an advantageous position in the market. This market is made possible by upper-middle-class families, whose privileging of specific languages and speakers perpetuates eliteness, gendered language work, and problematic approaches to second language learning.     

Migrants' minority‐language newspeakerism: The pervasiveness of nation‐state monolingual regimes in transnational contexts

From a critical sociolinguistics perspective, this paper investigates processes of minority‐language newspeakerism among 23 migrants from heterogeneous socioeconomic and language backgrounds. Informants networked in a cybercafé and a bench in Catalonia, a European society with a majority and a minority language, Spanish and Catalan. Drawing on audio‐recorded interviews, naturally‐occurring interactions and four‐year ethnographic data, I analyze how informants' language practices and ideologies interplay with self‐/other‐ascribed Catalan newspeakerhood. The results show that migrants do not envision themselves as Catalan newspeakers. They employ ethnicist constructions of Catalan as ‘the locals’’ language, and inhabit fluid identities whereby ‘Catalanness’ is vindicated through global Spanish. They invest in Spanish newspeakerhood instead, presenting Spanish as the language of ‘integration’. I conclude that newspeakerism contributes to understanding migrants’ roles in the linguistic conflicts of minority‐language societies; particularly, the ways in which they invest in majority languages, following nation‐state monolingual regimes which pervade as gatekeepers to post‐national citizenship.     

Less than Human? Diaspora,Disease and the Question of Citizenship

The aim of this special edition of International Migration is to bring about discussion between those conducting research in Diaspora Studies and the Anthropology of Public Health and Medicine. Historically, international migration has been associated with the transport of disease. Regardless of the evidence, metaphors of plague, and infection have circulated and been used to marginalise and keep out diaspora communities in host countries in an effort to ‘exclude filth’. Migrants have been referred to in terms such as the ‘Asiatic menace’ indicating a virus‐like threat to local populations. We look at the impact the traces of these images have on current host nations’ perceptions of diaspora communities and also ask what impact does this have on the diasporic communities’ self‐perceptions, if any? Does this affect conceptions of belonging, or feed into continuing dialogues of displacement? The movement of people has long been associated with the spread of disease and infections. In light of this, we are concerned with the role of medical knowledge and practices in relation to diaspora communities, and how these discourses have contributed to the perception of diaspora populations by host societies, and helped shape wider questions of belonging and citizenship. We aim to look at these questions in their historical context, both in their continuities and discontinuities, emphasising the importance of this to an understanding of current practices. Circuits of migration, and connected medical practices are taking new forms, where, on the one hand migrants are still associated with disease and pollution, but on the other migrants are also increasingly staffing the infrastructure of western public health services. At the same time, the west can no longer lay claim to ‘superior’ biomedical provision. These shifts signal new directions in the relationship between medical discourse and diasporic ‘others’, giving rise to a contradictory language of migrants being seen as both a threat, and a solution to the ‘health of the nation’.     

Language,gender and political symbolics: Insights from citizen digital discourses on gender-sensitive language in Serbia

The topic of gendered language policy has engaged the public for decades, while at the same time becoming increasingly theoretically marginal in the gender and language field. The recent public debates in many parts of Europe, however, highlight the new frames of the topic in the era of rising authoritarian and right-wing discourses, which make notions of ‘gender ideology’ a central symbolic point in neo-nationalist rhetoric. As a hub of this ‘gender trouble’, Eastern European societies have lately attracted particular public attention, but they remain among the least explored in the field. This paper stresses that the complexity of discourses in the post-socialist, post-‘transition’ societies, along with their specific structural-linguistic features, promises rich grounds to assess the newly shifting discourses around gender and language policy in Europe. The study contributes to this research direction by employing a corpus-based, discourse-analytic approach to analyse the media representations, and particularly the citizen responses, in Serbia, which has recently witnessed intense debates on gender, language and politics. The analysis reveals clear trajectories with the discourses described in earlier research, but also some shifting foci pertaining to questions of ‘true science’, distrust of authority and wider social crisis, pointing to emerging global challenges in gender and language research.     

English as a lingua franca: A threat to multilingualism?

In this paper I argue against the widespread assumption that the English language in its role as lingua franca is a serious threat to national languages and to multilingualism. I support this argument by making a distinction between 'languages for communication' and 'languages for identification'. Further support for the stance against one-sidedly attacking English as a killer language will be drawn from the findings of three research projects currently being carried out at Hamburg University, one on the impact English has on discourse norms in influential genres in other languages; the second one on the nature of interactions in English as a lingua franca; and the third one on so-called 'international degree programmes', in which English is the language of instruction. Finally, I make some tentative suggestions for a new research paradigm for English as a lingua franca.     

Researching family practices in everyday life: methodological reflections from two studies

The study of the everyday is recognised as central to the understanding of identities, agency and social life. Yet, attempts to research everyday life often fail to capture the complexity of the mundane. This paper draws on findings from two studies: fatherhood across three generations and adult narratives of childhood language brokering to illuminate that complexity. The purpose of bringing these studies together is methodological; in particular, it is to examine how the storied material generated by narrative approaches can contribute to understanding of the everyday practices of family life, practices that are often unacknowledged, hidden or assumed. One study adopted a narrative form of interviewing while the second combined narrative photo-elicitation techniques with narrative accounts. Methodologically, the two studies illustrate that no one method produces ‘objective’, comprehensive knowledge of family practices. Together, however, they produce new insights into family practices around fatherhood, migration and language brokering and how participants ‘do’, ‘display’ and commemorate family. The paper argues that narrative approaches, sometimes alongside visual methods, can assist holistic analyses of family practices from sociocultural, intergenerational and life course perspectives.     

Contact,the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English

In the multilingual centres of Northern Europe's major cities, new varieties of the host languages are emerging. While some analyse these ‘multiethnolects’ as youth styles, we take a variationist approach to an emerging ‘Multicultural London English’ (MLE), asking: (1) what features characterise MLE; (2) at what age(s) are they acquired; (3) is MLE vernacularised; and (4) when did MLE emerge, and what factors enabled this? We argue that innovations in the diphthongs and the quotative system are generated from the specific sociolinguistics of inner‐city London, where at least half the population is undergoing group second‐language acquisition and where high linguistic diversity leads to a heterogeneous feature pool to select from. We look for incrementation ( Labov 2001 ) in the acquisition of the features, but find this only for two ‘global’ changes, BE LIKE and goose ‐fronting, for which adolescents show the highest usage. Community‐internal factors explain the age‐related variation in the remaining features.     

Language,culture and access to mathematics: a case of one remote Aboriginal community

For many students, coming to learn mathematics is as much about the pedagogical relay through which concepts are conveyed as it is about the mathematics per se. This relay comprises social, cultural and linguistic norms as well as the mathematical discourse. In this study, I outline the practices of one remote school and how the teaching practices scaffold Indigenous learners whose home language is different from the language of instruction (Standard Australian English) as they come to learn mathematics. Through various strategies, teachers have created positive learning environments that celebrate the home languages of the students while supporting the transition into Standard Australian English and the discourse of mathematics.     

Scalar politics,language ideologies,and the sociolinguistics of globalization among transnational Korean professionals in Hong Kong

This paper argues that the sociolinguistics of globalization is accompanied by a constitutive scalar politics. Based on ten interviews with Korean professionals in Hong Kong, we report that Korean migrants’ use and experience of English is characterized by competing language ideologies we identify as: Pragmatic English/Perfect English, Multilingualism/English Only, and Global Language/Local Language. Tensions within these ideologies were revealed as respondents referenced the contexts of their daily lives as intersecting sets of geographic, temporal, and social scales. We discuss how sociolinguistic relations associated with the transnational lifecourse, hybridizing identity, and racialization were imagined in ways that re‐negotiated these scales to serve the interests of the participants and provide coherence to their communicative practices. Sociolinguistic relations both reference scales and constitute them. We conclude that attending to scales and scalar politics provides a better explanatory framework for the ways the uneven linguistics markets of globalization are negotiated by transnational subjects.     

Teaching minority students within minority schools: teachers’ conceptions of multicultural education in Swedish‐speaking schools in Finland

Finland is experiencing increased cultural diversity due to immigration and is facing challenges in developing multicultural education (ME) in schools. There is a Swedish‐speaking minority in Finland, and immigrant students entering Swedish‐speaking schools hence become a minority within a minority. In this study, using open‐ended interviews, we explore the views of Swedish‐speaking teachers of ‘minority within a minority students’ and of ME. We found that Swedish‐speaking teachers have a positive attitude towards cultural diversity. On the other hand, they consider teaching to be independent of culture and take a colour‐blind approach to their work. Being minority language speakers themselves does not necessarily affect their views and understanding of immigrant students.     

‘Talkin' Jockney’? Variation and change in Glaswegian accent1

This paper presents an analysis of language variation and change in a socially stratified corpus of Glaswegian collected in 1997. Eight consonantal variables in read and spontaneous speech from 32 speakers were analysed separately and then together using multivariate analysis. Our results show that middle‐class speakers, with weaker network ties and more opportunities for mobility and contact with English English speakers, are maintaining traditional Scottish features. Working‐class adolescents, with more limited mobility and belonging to close‐knit networks, are changing their vernacular by using ‘non‐local’ features such as TH‐fronting and reducing expected Scottish features such as postvocalic /r/. We argue that local context is the key to understanding the findings. Mobility and network structures are involved, but must be taken in conjunction with the recent history of structural changes to Glasgow and the resulting construction of local class‐based language ideologies which continue to be relevant in the city today.     

Commodification of place,consumption of identity: The sociolinguistic construction of a ‘global village’ in rural China1

This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of place as it relates to globalization and mobility by examining the sociolinguistic construction of a tourism site. A former residential neighborhood, West Street in Yangshuo County, China, was gradually transformed into a so‐called ‘global village’ for domestic tourists partly through appropriating English as one semiotic resource. Positioning this place in the global‐national‐local nexus, this study shows that the promotion of West Street as a ‘global village’ is not only driven by globalization or westernization, but more importantly capitalizes on English as a stylistic resource that indexes the modernist aspirations of the Chinese people. This commodified sense of place is nevertheless negotiated by tourists as they activate and (re‐)work the social meaning of place through their discursive practices. This highlights how place is a social construct, constantly transformed in the process of socio‐historical change, and also mediated by people's conceptualization, imagination and experience. 本文从社会语言学角度考察一处旅游景点的建构,旨在增进在全球化和流动时代背景下对‘地域’ (place) 的理解。位于中国阳朔县的西街,通过把英语作为一种符号资源,从一个历史居民街区转变成为所谓的‘地球村’。本研究从全球‐国家‐地方三位连结的框架审视该地域,说明‘地球村’不仅仅是全球化带动下的地方经济发展策略,更重要的是借用了在英语作为一种语言风格资源在中国社会中的作用。然而,这种构建的地域涵义也同时被游客通过不同方式激活和改写。本文提出,地域是社会构建的产物,其涵义随着社会历史的变革,人们对地域的理解,想象和体验,而不断改变。[Chinese]     

Language,multiple authenticities and social media: The online language practices of university students in Mongolia

This paper seeks to contribute to the current discussion of the sociolinguistics of globalization by revealing youth linguistic diversity from the perspective of the online mixed language practices of university students in contemporary post‐socialist Mongolia. Drawing on sets of Facebook data, the paper firstly argues that the online mixed youth language practices should be understood as ‘translingual’ not only due to their varied recombination of linguistic and cultural resources, genres, modes, styles and repertories, but also due to their direct subtextual connections with wider socio‐cultural, historical and ideological meanings. Secondly, online users metalinguistically claim authenticity in terms of their own translingual practices as opposed to other colliding language ideologies such as linguistic dystopia. How they relocalize the notion of authenticity, however, differs profoundly depending on their own often‐diverse criteria, identities, beliefs and ideas. This shows that, with mixing and recombining at its very core, the translingual practices of modern young speakers provide us with a significant insight into the co‐existence of multiple authenticities and origins of authenticity in an increasingly interconnected world.     

Inside Out: An ‘English’ Dispersal into North-West Wales

This article is based on an empirical baseline study undertaken in 2005 which examined the experience of ‘the English’ who have moved and settled into north-west Wales. The movement of the British/white groups and their experiences have been less of a subject for examination and yet a dispersal of ‘the English’/British as both immigrants and colonisers has occurred and is ongoing. Migration between the constituent countries of the UK and the movement of English people into Wales has been a long-standing and accepted practice; it has been resisted by some in the more Welsh parts of Wales as a continuing ‘colonisation’. The rise of devolution within the UK and the burgeoning Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) with its increasing powers for self governance is leading to a decline of English dominance in Wales. This essay explores the experiences of ‘the English’ in Wales as England's influence over Wales becomes diluted, the role of leader and led reversed, and as the ‘empire begins to bite back’ (with apologies to Paul Gilroy).     

The effect of proximity in perceptual dialectology

This article examines the effect of proximity on perceptual dialectological data gathered in Northern Great Britain. It underlines the key effect that proximity has on respondent mental maps of language variation, and demonstrates this by discussing area recognition levels and map‐based data. The article demonstrates that the effects of physical proximity can be modified by various factors. These factors include the ‘barrier effect’ of national borders such as the Scottish‐English border, along with other, more subjective, psychological boundaries such as the North‐South divide. In addition to demonstrating that these barrier effects increase the effect of proximity, this article will also show that proximity effects can be reduced by factors such as ‘cultural prominence’ (in which culturally important locations feature more prominently in mental maps of dialect areas).