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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 158

Thematic Session (Papers belonging to this Thematic Session)

Language biographies and migration experiences in urban contexts

Authors: Stevenson, Patrick; Mar-Molinero, Clare
Submitted by: Stevenson, Patrick (University of Southampton, United Kingdom)

In an early discussion of a ‘sociolinguistics of globalization’, Blommaert (2003: 608) argues that we should not lose sight of the importance – amongst other things – of trying to understand ‘what language achieves in people’s lives’. This apparently simple exhortation invites us to investigate the implications of recognizing the complex ways in which experiences with language condition and shape individual pathways through social life. Contributions to this workshop will take up this challenge by analyzing ways of telling and reading ‘language biographies’: life stories in which experiences with language play a central role (see, for example, Adamzik and Roos 2002; Burck 2005; Busch et al 2006; Franceschini 2010; Franceschini & Miecznokowski 2004; Pavlenko 2007; Schüpbach 2008; Stevenson and Carl 2010). In particular, they will focus on the language (hi)stories of individuals with experience of migration in a range of urban settings.

 

The key question that each paper will address is: how can we contribute to an understanding of ‘super-diversity’ in contemporary urban contexts by studying ways in which people weave together narratives about language and other salient dimensions of their personal and collective experiences?

 

Returning to his theme more recently, Blommaert (2010: 6-12) points out the descriptive and theoretical challenges of recognising super-diversity in contemporary cities and the inadequacy of conventional 'horizontal' notions of diversity, which tend to invite a discursive homogenization of urban spaces (eg as ‘Turkish areas’ or ‘Polish neighbourhoods’) and reduce local diversity to single dimensions (eg country of origin, language, religion). How then can we account for the coexistence of multiple, complex repertoires resulting from complex migration trajectories? This raises questions about objects of study (eg ethnolects, multilingual styles and practices, language knowledge) and methodological issues (eg observation of interaction, surveys of language use). The aim of the workshop will be to show how the construction and analysis of language biographies offer one means of responding to these questions by generating and exploring metalinguistic reflections on experiences with language.

 

Indicative questions that contributions to the workshop may address include (but are not restricted to) the following:

 

• How do migrant individuals organise their life stories around encounters with different languages and language regimes?
• How do they give meanings to their life experiences by arranging chosen episodes in relation to language problems, challenges or opportunities?
• How do they characterize and evaluate their sociolinguistic repertoires?
• What similarities and differences are there between language stories narrated by 'new' and 'established' migrants?
• Are relationships between these categories - and other emergent ones, such as transient, circular, commuting, return migrants – relevant in such stories?

 

Papers will be welcomed on a wide range of geographical, social and linguistic contexts.

  

References

Adamzik, Kirsten & Eva Roos (eds) (2002) Biografie linguistiche – Biographies langagières – Biografias linguisticas - Sprachbiographien. Bulletin suisse de linguistique appliquée 76 Winter 2002.

Blommaert, Jan (2003) ‘Commentary: a sociolinguistics of globalization’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7:4, 607–23.

Blommaert, Jan (2010) The Sociolinguistics of Globalization (Cambridge: CUP)

Burck, Charlotte (2005) Multilingual Living: explorations of language and subjectivity (Basingstoke: Palgrave)

Busch, Brigitta, Aziza Jardine & Angelika Tjoutuku (2006) Language Biographies for Multilingual Learning. Cape Town: PREAESA Occasional Papers 24.

Franceschini, Rita (ed)(2010) Sprache und Biographie (Special edition of Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 160)

Franceschini, Rita & Johanna Miecznikowski (eds) (2004). Leben mit mehreren Sprachen - Vivre avec plusieurs langues. Sprachbiographien – Biographies langagières (Bern: Lang)

Pavlenko, Aneta (2007), ‘Autobiographic narratives as data in applied Linguistics’, Applied Linguistics, 28:2, 163–88

Schüpbach, Doris (2008) Shared Languages, Shared Identities, Shared Stories (Frankfurt: Lang)

Stevenson, Patrick & Jenny Carl (2010) Language and Social Change in Central Europe: discourses on policy, identity and the German language (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press)