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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 127

Thematic Session (Papers belonging to this Thematic Session)

Language outside of the city: centre-periphery dynamics in multilingualism

Authors: Pietikäinen, Sari Päivikki; Kelly-Holmes, Helen
Submitted by: Pietikäinen, Sari Päiviki (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)

 While the focus of SS19 is on language in the city, this thematic session argues that ‘peripheral’ contexts outside of the city or any other perceived centres are also 'crucial sites' (Philips 2000) for understanding the current complexities of multilingualism. These spaces are often neglected sites in research, with the focus predominantly on urban spaces for understanding multilingualism. However, both centre and periphery are one of many geographical and spatial categories used in the imagination, circulation and representation of cultural and linguistic identities and multilingual practices. Further, the centre-periphery relationship is never fixed, but instead constantly renegotiated and mutually constitutive. Thus what is interesting are the processes of peripheralization and of centralization, and their impact on languages and their speakers. The session contributions all deal with the centre-periphery dynamics, which by definition involve thinking of language inside and outside of cities – since cities are sometimes central and sometimes peripheral. As such, the session aims to provide a focus for discussing the key topics of the SS19.

 In this session, we want to explore the ways in which core-periphery dynamics shape multilingualism. We argue that core-periphery dynamics - and how they are imagined – have a significant impact on the way that multilingualism is conceptualized and practised. This focus calls for a reassessment of what linguistic and cultural centres and peripheries are, under globalisation, and an exploration of how people evaluate and work discursively with these reconfigurations. It also highlights the ways in which speakers seek novel solutions in adapting their linguistic resources to new situations and developing novel language practices.              

The aim of this session is to bring together sociolinguistic, ethnographic and discourse analytical research on a variety of practices, spaces and experiences that illustrate centre-periphery dynamics in multilingualism. We are especially interested in minority language contexts, as the minoritization of languages is part of peripheralization processes, and as such subject to the dynamics of renegotiation and contestation characteristic of the centre-periphery relationship. We have observed this dynamics in our research on multilingual minority language practices and spaces, especially in the context of the Peripheral Multilingualism - project. The session contributors all share a common interest in developing concepts and methodologies, while examining situations where multilingual minority language speakers are compelled to take up stances in relation to old and new, traditional and emerging ways of using minority languages and by doing so, to contribute to the making of language boundaries and categories. We aim at providing concrete examples and insights into the various, emerging ways whereby centrality and peripherality are both created and contested by the current flows and mobilities, and circulation of languages and identities, resulting in emerging ways of organising and exploiting linguistic resources. The centre-periphery dynamic opens up new ways of thinking and theorising about multilingualism and cores and peripheries, and necessarily involves a challenge to existing notions of ‘straightforward’ power relations (e.g. majority–minority; centre–periphery etc.)

Discussion questions

1. How are core-periphery dynamics constituted and reconstituted? How are language practices shaped by the core-periphery dynamics?

2. Does centralisation and/or peripheralization lead to particular kinds of multilingual and multimodal practices? What norms are invoked/rebutted in these practices and what ideologies underlie these?

3. What tensions arise between established and emerging linguistic practices? What are the material and symbolic outcomes for speakers of these centralising and peripherilising processes and practices?

4. What kind of methodological issues and innovations examining of centre-periphery dynamics brings up?  

 Key references:

Philips, Susan U. 2000. Constructing a Tongan nation-state through language ideology in the courtroom. In Regimes of language: ideologies, polities and identities, ed. Paul V. Kroskrity, 229-257. Santa Fe: SAR Press.

 Pietikäinen, Sari and Kelly-Holmes, Helen. (2011) The local political economy of languages in a Sámi tourism destination: Authenticity and mobility in the labelling of souvenirs. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15(3): 323-346.