Sociolinguistics Symposium 19
Freie Universität Berlin | August 21-24, 2012
Programme: accepted abstracts
Abstract ID: 1037
Part of Session 185: Superdiversity and digital literacy practices (Other abstracts in this session)
Senegalese digital repertoires in superdiversity
Authors: Mc Laughlin, Fiona
Submitted by: Mc Laughlin, Fiona (University of Florida, United States of America)
In revisiting the notion of repertoire in sociolinguistics within the current context of superdiversity (Vertovec 2007), Blommaert & Backus (2011) provide a preliminary scale of linguistic competence to account for the varying degrees of linguistic knowledge that go to make up an individual repertoire. The scale ranges from maximum competence at the top end to partial competence, minimal competence, and finally, at the low end, to what Blommaert & Backus call ‘recognition’ competence. This paper is concerned with how these varying degrees of competence, and especially those at the lower end of the scale, are manifested and deployed in digital writing practices in a Senegalese web portal, Seneweb (www.seneweb.com). As evidenced by a variety of indicators such as advertisements, usernames, local referents, etc., the commentators on Seneweb write primarily from the cities of Senegal, Europe and North America, and thus comprise a diverse international community of urban writers (and readers) whose collective repertoire goes beyond even the kinds of extensive multilingualism that have always existed in Senegal’s cities. The linguistic resources used in the discussions, however, are unevenly distributed among writers, so although a French-Wolof continuum predominates there are also many other ‘bits of language’ (Canut 2008:95) – the byproducts of minimal and recognition competence – that emerge and are deployed, sometimes playfully, as indices of subjectivity and diversity. This paper suggests that a central aspect of superdiversity may in fact be the proliferation of minimal and recognition competence in multiple languages within the individual repertoire, and that the resultant ‘bits of language’ are a salient characteristic of digital discourse in superdiversity and play a crucial role in constructing complex subjectivities in a multifaceted virtual community. Secondly, by drawing parallels between Blommaert & Backus’ recognition competence and a linguistically encoded way of conceptualizing multilingualism in Wolof (i.e.: via the term làkkkat), this paper suggests that superdiversity is only quantitatively and not qualitatively different from diversity of the kind found in urban Africa and elsewhere.
The data used in this study were taken from the heteroglossic commentaries that follow French-language news stories on Seneweb, and were collected over the course of a particularly volatile two-month time period preceding the highly contested presidential elections of February 2012. Most of the discussions are thus political in nature, but the presidential candidacy of popular singer Youssou N’Dour also provoked heated discussions about his perceived deficiency in French and occasioned reflection on Senegalese language practices. These discussions prove to be a rich source of data on language ideology that help shed light on how members of this virtual community imagine their own language practices.
References
Blommaert, Jan & Ad Backus. 2011. Repertoires revisited: ‘Knowing language’ in superdiversity. Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies 67.
Blommaert, Jan & Ben Rampton. 2011. Language and superdiversity. Diversities 13(2):1-21.
Canut, Cécile. 2008. Discourse, community, identity: processes of linguistic homogenization in Bamako. In Fiona Mc Laughlin, ed. The languages of urban Africa. London: Continuum.
Vertovec, Steven. 2007. Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30(6):1024-1054.