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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 180

Thematic Session (Papers belonging to this Thematic Session)

New Speakers in the City

Authors: O'Rourke, Bernadette
Submitted by: O'Rourke, Bernadette (Heriot-Watt University, United Kingdom)

In this themed panel entitled ‘New Speakers in the City’, we will examine the linguistic and social practices of new speakers of minority languages and their role in the process of language revitalization. In Europe and in many other parts of the world, traditional communities of minority language speakers are being eroded as a consequence of increased urbanization and economic modernization. At the same time, however, “new speakers” are emerging. This is often in line with more favourable language policies which support better provision for these languages in education, the media and other public domains. It can also be linked to ideological commitment to these languages, which often take on a symbolic role as “identities of resistance” (Castells 1997) for new speakers.

The term “new speakers” refers here to individuals who were not brought up speaking a language in the home but who acquired it as a second language through schooling or some other formal means.  These speakers are frequently characterized by a more urban, middle-class profile, contrasting sharply in social, economic and geographical terms with native speakers from traditional rural ‘heartland’ areas (O’Rourke and Ramallo 2011).  The varieties of language used by new speakers are often very different to the norm associated with traditional speakers. This can be linked to the fact that they tend to adopt the new standardized forms used in educational and other formal contexts. It is also the case that new terminology may be developed (at institutional level or by new speakers themselves) to make the language functional in new (more urban) domains. Additionally, new speakers’ language may show the influence of their first language (typically the dominant state language) in terms of syntax and pronunciation, often developing into more hybridized forms.  

Given the ongoing erosion of the native speaker heartland, new speakers have a key role to play in the process of language revitalization. However, this role can often be undermined by their perceived lack of authenticity as ‘real’ language speakers. They often fall outside of ethnonational discourses which have traditionally focussed on native speaker rights (Pujolar 2007), denying them claims to ownership of the language and recognition as legitimate speakers. While this can lead new speakers to downgrade their own way of speaking, at the same time they often take pride in their more urban varieties, which can come to symbolise an “authentic individuality”, reflecting a heightened concern about their own self-realization and identity (Tovey and Share 2003) allowing them to stand out and exist as a distinct linguistic group. In this context new speakers in the city can be seen to pursue what Giddens (1991) refers to a “project of the self” and use their variety of language as a distinctive way to express and symbolise their individuality.

In this panel we explore these issues through an analysis of the linguistic and social practices of new speakers in the city, focussing on a number of minority language contexts including Irish, Catalan, Breton, Galician, Gaelic and Yiddish.

Bibliography

Castells, M. 1997. The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell.

Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge: Polity.

O’Rourke, B. and Ramallo, F. 2011. The native-non-native dichotomy in minority language contexts: Comparisons between Irish and Galician. Language Problems and Language Planning. 35:2, pp139–159

Pujolar, J. 2007. The future of Catalan: Language endangerment and nationalist discourses in Catalonia. IN: Duchêne, A. and Heller, M. (eds) Discourses of Endangerment. London: Continuum,pp121-148.

Tovey, H. and Share, P. 2003. A sociology of Ireland. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.