• The Conference
  • Home
  • Programme
  • Venue & directions
  • Organizing Committee
  • Scientific Committee
  • Exhibitors & sponsors
  • Satellite events
  • Conference Party
• Past & future
  • Previous symposia
  • Finland 2014
  • Spain 2016
• About FU Berlin
  • University homepage
  • Humanities at FU

Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 617

Part of Session 151: Language and Hyperdiversity in the Global City (Other abstracts in this session)

Diversity and the negotiation of identities in urban transactional spaces

Authors: De Fina, Anna
Submitted by: De Fina, Anna (Georgetown University, United States of America)

Recent sociolinguistic research (Collins, Slembrouck and Baynham 2009;  Blommaert, and Rampton 2011) underscores the importance of revisiting traditional conceptualizations of the relations between language, identities and spaces, emphasizing how processes of globalization and new forms of social and linguistic contact have led to increased language diversity and  to the accentuation of hybridity in identities and social practices, particularly in urban centers. The notions of diversity and of new “contact zones” proposed as focal in this session are central for investigating another characteristic element of late-modern urban life: transnationalism.  Immigrant groups and networks within cities continuously create and/or participate in new transnational spaces defined by specific linguistic and communicative practices. The analysis of these practices illuminates ways in which individuals and groups deal with the diverse identities related to their simultaneous participation in different communities and to their everyday contact with different languages and language varieties. In this paper I focus on one such (virtual) space:  a Spanish language radio station in the Washington metropolitan area. Data come from approximately 9 hours of broadcast including news, advertising and call shows, recorded between 2009 and 2011 and from texts published on the station’s webpage. The radio station addresses an audience of mostly first generation Spanish speaking immigrants living and working in the metropolitan area.  I focus on ways in which the contradictions among different attachments and categories of belonging that being transnational involve are negotiated in this environment. I pay particular attention to the strategies used in the construction of a distinct Latino identity by different agents (the radio as a commercial enterprise, the radio hosts and the callers) and on the role of (often hybrid) language practices enacted in different programs and media in the construction of diverse identities.

References:

J. Collins, S. Slembrouck and M. Baynham (eds.) (2009). Globalization and language contact: scale, migration and communicative practices. London: Continuum

J. Blommaert and B. Rampton (2011). Language and superdiversity. Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacy, 70.