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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 105

Thematic Session (Papers belonging to this Thematic Session)

Language and Superdiversity

Authors: Blommaert, Jan; Rampton, Ben
Submitted by: Blommaert, Jan (Tilburg University, Netherlands, The)

‘Superdiversity’ is the term introduced by Vertovec (2007) to describe the new forms of sociocultural diversity that has emerged after the end of the Cold War, and has altered the face of large urban centers in the West and elsewhere. It is characterized by two parallel developments: (1) a range of new forms of migration across the world, leading to ‘diversity within diversity’ in about every society, and in particular in large urban centers in the West and elsewhere; (2) the escalation of online cultural and social phenomena since the advent of the internet, leading to new forms of identity performance, new forms of global popular culture and new forms of community formation. All these developments are shot through with new sociolinguistic phenomena of tremendous complexity, defying current ways of understanding and description. The struggle to come to terms with these developments has led to a flurry of terminological innovation, including terms such as ‘languaging’, ‘polylingual languaging’, ‘metrolingualism’, ‘transidiomaticity’ and so forth. This panel seeks to provide a first and tentative summary of the empirical and theoretical challenges of superdiversity for sociolinguistics. Special attention will go towards new forms of language ‘mixing’ in spoken and written discourse, ‘supervernaculars’ and the dynamics of global and local influences in superdiversity, online patterns of language innovation and identity construction, and new challenges for educational contexts in superdiversity. Theoretical and methodological implications will be identified and discussed.