Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 586

Part of Session 105: Language and Superdiversity (Other abstracts in this session)

Urban Classrooms, Superdiversity and Sociolinguistic Resources

Authors: Karrebæk, Martha Sif; Madsen, Lian Malai
Submitted by: Karrebæk, Martha Sif (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Contemporary urban sociolinguistic dynamics involve standardisation processes as well as linguistic heterogeneity in particular related to socio-cultural and ethnic differences. Individuals’ possible expressions of identity and affiliations with socio-cultural values have become ever more complex and less predictable. This diversification of diversity is an important part of superdiversity (Vertovec 2010; Blommaert & Rampton 2011) and entails new methodological and theoretical challenges for sociolinguistics as well as for education. Educational institutions have been described as key sites for reproduction of existing sociolinguistic economies and communicative inequalities (e.g. Bourdieu 1991), but also as a site for negotiating and challenging the sociolinguistic order and hegemony (Rampton 2006, Creese & Blackledge 2011, Jaspers 2005).

Managing the balance between communicative inequality and innovative creativity is central to studies of communicative practices in superdiversity where sociolinguistic common ground can not be presumed (Blommaert & Rampton 2011). In this paper we grapple with the relationship between normativity and negotiability in a contemporary urban educational context. We focus on the interplay between education, activities, and sociolinguistic resources, and we include both activities framed as educational (based in schools) and activities framed as ‘fun’.

We discuss and compare examples from two studies on boys with minority background in majority schools. The first study concerns primary school boys’ engagement with football cards. Football cards constitute an important part of contemporary material child culture, and in this study their multimodal semiotic potential and their learning affordances are discussed. These aspects are generally overlooked by educationalists. The second study treats the interplay of hip hop-cultural practices and school activities among teenagers. It discusses the relationship between peer-cultural and academic orientation in leisure contexts as well as formal educational settings. In contrast to football cards the educational potential of hip hop-activities seems acknowledged at least by some teachers and politicians.

We take into consideration how hiphop and football card practices are being appropriated by participants in different settings, how they are connected to other sociolinguistic resources, and, ultimately, to meta-pragmatic models. We also discuss how the indexical links between resources and meaning are established, perceived, understood and negotiated. Thus, through these empirical cases we discuss some of the methodological and theoretical implications for contemporary sociolinguistics in managing the relations between language, local cultural and interactional practices, and global public and political discourses in superdiversity.

References

Blommaert, J. & Rampton, B. 2011. Language and Superdiversity. Diversities 13 (2): 1-20.

Bourdieu, P. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Oxford: Polity.

Creese, A. & Blackledge, A. 2011. Separate and flexible bilingualism in complementary schools: Multiple language practices in interrelationship. Journal of Pragmatics 43: 1196–1208.

Jaspers, J. 2005. Linguistic sabotage in a context of monolingualism and standardization. Language and Communication 25: 279-297.

Rampton, B. 2006. Language in Late Modernity: Interaction in an urban school. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Vertovec, S. 2010. Towards post-multiculturalism? Changing communities, contexts and conditions

of diversity. International Social Science Journal 199: 83-95.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Urban Classrooms, Superdiversity and Sociolinguistic Resources