Comparing ‘new speakerhood’: context, positionality, and power in the new sociolinguistic order (original) (raw)

Individually and collectively, the cases gathered in this special issue offer ethnographically rich and theoretically compelling insights into what O'Rourke, Pujolar, and Ramallo (2015) call the 'new sociolinguistic order'. As they explain, this new order is based on linguistic economies undergoing profound transformation 'in which the sources of [linguistic] authority are being displaced as we move towards a … post-national' modernity (2015, 15). Front and centre in this new order are new speakers of minoritised and endangered languages, whose profiles, O'Rourke, Pujolar, and Ramallo stress, 'can no longer be ignored' (2015, 16). As the authors in this special issue show, addressing these new speaker profiles forces us to rethink static labels of 'second-language learner' in order to engage social contexts characterised by communicative hybridity and mobility. Exemplifying this new sociolinguistic scholarship, the authors tackle hegemonic notions of 'nativeness' and authenticity that fossilise speakers in time and space (O'Rourke and Walsh 2017). In so doing they also illuminate the challenges and possibilities in revitalising and sustaining minoritised languages. By definition, language revitalisation is about the cultivation of new speakers, and there are many connections in this work to research and practice in Indigenous language planning and policy (see,