Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1118

Part of Session 197: Urban multilingualism in a context of international mobility (Other abstracts in this session)

The role of practices and norms in the organization of language

Authors: Ag, Astrid
Submitted by: Ag, Astrid (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

In superdiverse societies (Vertovec 2010, Blommaert 2010) people have access to different resources, making their linguistic and cultural repertoires less predictable and more complex. This however is not reflected in Danish society or in the educational institutions where a mono- or double monolingual norm towards linguistic behavior predominates.

This paper studies polylingual (Jørgensen 2010, Møller 2009) behavior among Copenhagen grade school students and their families. In school, media and Danish society in general students are confronted with a demand that they use only one language at a time. This is not the case in several of the students’ homes in which polylingual practices are accepted and even employed by some of the parents. On the other hand the parents often demand that their children - beside their everyday-use of Danish - must be sure to learn “their own language”.

We know that polylingual practices are the result of informal learning among peers, but we do not know much about the role of the families in this process. I approach this matter by raising the following questions: What interactional behavior are the students socialized into by their families? That is, what linguistic resources and norms do they bring along from their homes? To what extent do the interactions of the families contribute to the students’ polylingual practices and how are polylingual behavior enregistered (Agha 2007)? By answering these questions, I discuss the way ideologies affect the metalanguage and the languaging practices of adolescents in their homes and in school, respectively.

I will shed light on this matter by looking at various types of linguistic and conversational data, such as self-recordings, group conversations, interviews, and the adolescents’ essays on language use. The data are part of a collaborative empirical work in a culturally and linguistically diverse urban school (The Amager project e.g. Ag 2010, Stæhr 2010).

References:

Ag, Astrid (2010): Sprogbrug og identitetsarbejde hos senmoderne storbypiger. Københavnerstudier i tosprogethed, vol. 53. Københavns Universitet.
Agha, A. (2007): Language and social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Blommaert, J. (2010): The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press
Jørgensen, J.N. (2010): Languaging. Nine years of poly-lingual development of Turkish-Danish grade school students. Copenhagen Studies in Bilingualism, The Køge Series. Copenhagen: Copenhagen University
Møller, J.S. (2009): Poly-lingual interaction across childhood, youth and adulthood. PhD dissertation, University of Copenhagen
Stæhr, Andreas (2010): "Rappen reddede os" - et studie af senmoderne storbydrenges identitetsarbejde
i fritids- og skolemiljøer. Københavnerstudier i tosprogethed, vol. 54. Københavns Universitet.
Vertovec, S. (2010): Towards post-multiculturalism? Changing communities, conditions and contexts of diversity. In International Social Science Journal 199, pp. 83-95

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

The role of practices and norms in the organization of language