Contesting metro-normativity: Exploring Indigenous language dynamism across the urban-rural divide. (original) (raw)

Languages in motion: Multilingualism and mobility in the linguistic landscape

International Journal of Bilingualism, 2014

This special issue of the International Journal of Bilingualism is concerned with the interplay of multilingualism and mobility in the linguistic landscape (henceforth LL). The various contributors to this special issue view LL studies as offering a way of investigating multilingualism and mobility. The LL is understood herein as an expression of multilingualism in society, a site where language, together with other semiotic resources, is involved in the symbolic construction of multilingual spaces. The LL is a crucial site in which the mobility of language resources can be mapped. This dual attention to multilingualism and mobility is motivated by recent theorising in sociolinguistics, as well as our collective interest in the ever-expanding discipline of LL studies. The aim is to bring together research that addresses complex theoretical and methodological issues within the emerging paradigm of the sociolinguistics of globalisation (Coupland, 2010; Heller, 2007; Pennycook, 2010) in which mobility plays a crucial role in the study of multilingualism (Blommaert, 2010). By investigating language practices in the LL, our focus is specifically on language in motion, a process by which different linguistic resources are in a state of translocality, meaning they are on the move across various trajectories of time and space (cf. Blommaert, 2010; Johnstone, 2010). Such a focus allows us to begin to examine what the consequences for languages may be through these processes of mobility enabled by globalisation. Specifically, we seek to investigate how these processes manifest themselves in the LL. We take an approach to LL research proposed by Stroud and Mpendukana (2009), where the LL embodies the social distribution of multilingual resources that in turn have consequences for language ideologies, discourses and practices. Throughout each of the articles we seek to trace the trajectories of mobile linguistic resources and analyse the consequences of these flows for language ideologies. Recently, there have been calls for a more contextualised, historical and critical approach that can produce a 'greater understanding of the larger socio-political meanings of linguistic landscapes' (Leeman & Modan, 2009, p. 332). Indeed, the LL of a given community has become an influential site of contestation and negotiation, appropriation and resistance of multilingualism. The LL provides important clues to the nature of multilingualism in the community and often provides a more accurate account of the lived sociolinguistic reality of a given community than official language policies do. By viewing the LL in this way we see it as an important site for the investigation of how the processes of mobility are impacting on the linguistic hierarchy of given

Multilingualism, language contact, and urban areas. An introduction.

Multilingualism and Language Contact in Urban Areas. Acquisition – Identities – Space – Education, 2013

The title of this volume describes a key feature of modern urban areas: an increasingly multilingual composition of their populations, and the consequent encounter of language diversity. The driving force underlying this dramatic development is migration. The number of languages that exist in one and the same region has increased immensely over the last five decades -yet, mature, research-based knowledge about this phenomenon and its consequences for language development and learning, language vitality and attrition, as well as language use and change is scarce. This is largely due to the fact that research on the causes and consequences of increasing linguistic diversity addresses a wide range of topics and perspectives. Thus, traditional boundaries between the disciplines that are concerned with language and linguistic diversity need to be crossed. The complexity of issues that must be observed and analyzed calls for joint research activities from different disciplinary perspectives. The contributions to this volume represent an attempt to initiate exchange between researchers from a wide range of specializations and disciplines, exhibiting a shared interest in learning more about linguistic diversity.

F Nuessel-S pietikäinen and H Kelly-Holmses (Eds.)-Multilingualism and the Periphery-2015

Language Problems and Language Planning. Vol. 39, No 1 Pp. 107-109. , 2015

The co-editors of this book state that "The This book is an exploration of the ways in which centre-periphery dynamics shape multilingualism. This exploration focuses on peripheral sites, which are defined as such by relationship (be it geographic, political, economic, etc.) to some perceived centre. Viewing multilingualism through the lens of centre-periphery dynamics helps to bring forth the language ideological tensions which are evident in issues of language boundary-making, language ownership, commodification, and authenticity. It also highlights the ways in which speakers seek novel solutions in adapting their linguistic resources to new situations and developing innovative and creative language practices."

8 LINGUISTIC HYBRIDITY AND GLOBAL MOBILITY

Linguistic hybridity and global mobility. In E. Piccardo, A. Germain-Rutherford & G. Lawrence (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of plurilingual education (pp. 154-170). Routledge. , 2022

It is increasingly acknowledged that multilingualism in society and plurilingualism by individuals are not exceptional phenomena but common ones (Canagarajah, 2009; Piccardo, 2018), perhaps even the norm. Along with this awareness come questions about the reality and permeability of boundaries between languages and populations and the relation to social and physical mobility of individuals and populations. Under conditions of globalization with increased movement of people and peoples, there are issues about language spread, language attrition, and even language death, but also issues concerning the 'mixing' of language varieties. Such linguistic hybridity seems an increasingly common-or perhaps increasingly noticedphenomenon, which is the object of growing academic attention, and even concern. Changes in languages, language varieties and practices are often attributed to mobility of populations, i.e. of speakers of languages, and the resulting increase in social and linguistic contact. The interrelation between movement of people and linguistic mixing involves interconnected change in geographic, social, and linguistic space. This chapter explores such interrelations and their implications for plurilingual education in multilingual societies. The chapter begins with a provisional definition of linguistic hybridity, mobility, and global mobility; then it proceeds to a historical overview of how these phenomena have been dealt with in linguistics, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, geolinguistics, and educational linguistics. The overview discusses several schools or approaches that rarely or never use the terms 'linguistic hybridity' and '(global) mobility', but for whom linguistic change across time, space, and population is of great importance. The overview then proceeds to examine the little-noted significance of linguistic hybridity and mobility in the critical understanding of language, power, and status of prominent theorists, namely Gramsci, Bourdieu and Bakhtin. Based on this overview of the literature, a synthesizing, descriptive framework is provided for the classification and analysis of hybridity of language across time, social and geographic space. This framework encompasses these phenomena in an attempt to resolve terminological and conceptual ambiguities and is then applied to current implicit and explicit contributions to the phenomena of linguistic hybridity and global mobility. The chapter then concludes with an examination of the implications of linguistic hybridity and global mobility for plurilingual education.