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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 1285

Part of Session 165: Language, Place and Identity (Other abstracts in this session)

Between Local Romanticism and Dangerous Places

Authors: Svendsen, Bente Ailin
Submitted by: Svendsen, Bente Ailin (University of Oslo, Norway)

Between Local Romanticism and Dangerous Places:

Language, Place and Identity in Contemporary Discourses on Young People in Ethnically Mixed Neighborhoods

 

During the last decades there has been a great deal of interest in sociolinguistics regarding ways of speaking in ethnically mixed urban neighborhoods (e.g. Kotsinas, 1988; Rampton, 1995; Quist & Svendsen, 2010). The main foci have been on the description of linguistic features ‘deviant’ from a standard variety to examine an alleged emergence of contact based varieties, and on how various linguistic resources are used in interaction in identity constructions. The symbolic and discursive construction of ‘place’ among these young people is as yet more rarely discussed, such as the dialectic relation between how these young adolescents use ‘place’ as a meaningful tool in self staging and identity constructions, and the way traditional mass media tend to homogenise both the adolescents, their purported ‘language’, and the ethnically mixed neighborhood they are living in (cf. Androutsopoulos, 2010; Milani, 2010). In Oslo, Norway, these areas tend to be located in the inner city and in the outer boroughs (e.g. Gamle Oslo, Holmlia). Holmlia became known for being the scene of the first (officially stated) racist motivated murder in Norway, where the 15 year old boy, Benjamin Hermansen, was killed. (Michael Jackson dedicated his 2001 Invincible album to him.) Holmlia, with its abundant linguistic and cultural heterogeneity, is in focus for this paper. Drawing on interviews, peer conversations, performances and data from traditional mass media, the paper explores the dialectic relation between homogenisation and heterogenisation forces in the construction of language, place and identity by examining how the adolescents at Holmlia represent their local neighborhood discursively; how they both participate in the reproduction of stereotypes and create counter-discourses to public discourses in which Holmlia is projected as a harsh and dangerous place to be and live. This ‘double portraying’ or self staging has pervaded Holmlia and its young people with a certain symbolic and cultural capital, also at the linguistic market (Bourdieu, 1991). The folk linguistically labeled speech style ‘Kebab-Norwegian’ is tied to Holmlia and imbued with prestige in certain contexts (in-group), but definitely not for other stake-holders. The discussion will be anchored in Agha’s (2007) theoretical framework on metapragmatic typification and valorization of registers.

  

References

Agha, A. 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Androutsopoulos, J. 2010. Ideologising Ethnolectal German. In S. Johnson & T. Milani (eds.) Language Ideologies and Media Discourse. London: Continuum,  p. 182-202.

Bourdieu, P. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kotsinas, U.-B. 1988. Immigrant Children’s Swedish – A New Variety? In Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 9, p. 129-141.

Milani, T. 2010. What’s in a Name? Language Ideology and Social Differentiation in a Swedish Print-Mediated Debate. In Journal of Sociolinguistics 14/1, 2010, p. 116–142.

Quist, P. & B. A. Svendsen (eds.) 2010. Multilingual Urban Scandinavia. New Linguistic Practices. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Rampton, B. 1995. Crossing. Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents. London: Longman.