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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 511

Part of Session 119: Prefixing lingualism (Other abstracts in this session)

Prefixing lingualism – or giving up lingualisms? A perspective of heteroglossic languaging

Authors: Dufva, Hannele (1); Pietikäinen, Sari (2)
Submitted by: Dufva, Hannele (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)

This paper discusses ‘heteroglossic languaging’ - that sees language in terms of a dynamic set of interconnecting and shifting language practices - as an alternative of prefixed lingualisms. First, choosing ‘languaging’ over the essentialist notion of unitary monolithic ‘language’ and the entailing conceptualisation of different ‘lingualisms’ as a multiplication of languages we highlight the notion of language as ‘doing’, ‘action’ or ‘activity’(Dufva & Pietikäinen, forthcoming). Second, we draw on the Bakhtinian notion of heteroglossia in defining human semiotic activity; while this conceptualisation calls attention to diversity, it also points out that language practices are characterised by two forces - centrifugal and centripetal ones -, one working towards unification, the other towards diversity, change and creativity.

Informed by contemporary (critical) applied linguistics, (critical) discourse studies and socio-cultural and dialogical approaches, we argue for the need to understand and analyse language practices as inherently connected with time and space. ‘Languaging’, with its emphasis on dynamicity and fluidity, is a wording that rejects the potentially categorising and segmenting perspective present in both ‘language’ and ‘lingualisms’ and helps to portray the spatiality of language practices beyond the prefix ‘trans’, and their temporality beyond ‘post’ (cf. Pennycook 2007). Further, using ‘heteroglossic’, we avoid the view of ‘language’ as countable and the enumerative view of ‘languages’ that is implicitly suggested by prefixes such as ‘multi’, ‘poly’, or ‘super’. Instead, the fundamental multiplicity present in any language practices is emphasised.

At the level of theoretization, we join in the on-going discussion on reconceptualisation, ontological commitments and disciplinary boundaries of contemporary applied linguistic inquiry. The theoretical considerations lead to methodological ones. The focus of empirical studies suggested by the perspective of heteroglossic languaging is to aim at analysing what people do with their (linguistic and semiotic) resources, and what are the conditions and consequences of their doings.

One research avenue that could be opened up is to connect the view of heteroglossic languaging with the Deleuzian concept of rhizome, a construct that sees the processes and events to be analysed in terms of flow and connections that do not have a beginning or an end. Here, the analysis is not reduced to either ‘experiences’ or ‘objectified reality’, but aims at capturing the historicity and becoming of phenomena in time and space. Thus rhizomatic approaches (e.g. multisided ethnography; nexus analysis in discourse studies) seem to be one solution for analysis. On one hand, the aim therein is to trace the changing trajectories and circuits of the language resources, while on the other hand, the approach also captures the connectivity and interaction between and across the resources and the creativity which often is the end result. We illustrate our arguments with examples coming from studies on peripheral multilingualism and indigenous Sámi languages and second/foreign language learning/development.

Dufva, H. & S. Pietikäinen (forthcoming). Unitary language or heteroglossic languaging: On the conceptualization of language in applied linguistics. Submitted.

Pennycook, A. (2007). Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows. Routledge.