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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 938

Part of Session 185: Superdiversity and digital literacy practices (Other abstracts in this session)

Migrant media literacies and linguistic repertoires: how useful is a three-generation model?

Authors: Androutsopoulos, Jannis
Submitted by: Androutsopoulos, Jannis (University of Hamburg, Germany)

Designed as part of the thematic session “Superdiversity and digital literacy practices”, this paper discusses the relation of migrants’ linguistic repertoires and media literacies. The term ‘media literacies’ covers here any productive (listening, watching) and/or receptive (writing, speaking) engagement with ‘both’ mass and ‘new’ media, thus ranging from writing emails and skyping to watching television and reading newspapers. Research evidence from a range of disciplines suggests that media literacies play an important role in the life-projects of migrants and postmigrants (so-called second or subsequent generation people), and contribute to sustaining and developing translocal communication networks. I suggest that migrant media literacies are relevant in sociolinguistic terms insofar as they contribute to the make-up of linguistic repertoire, thereby adopting an inclusive notion of repertoire as the sum of linguistic resources that speakers/writers may draw on in their language practices. 

This paper draws on published and anecdotal evidence from ongoing research in order to sketch out and critically discuss a generational cycle perspective on migrant media literacies and linguistic repertoires. Aligning to the ‘three-generation cycle’ sometimes used in multilingualism research to model the transition from immigrant to majority language, such perspective would assume that each generation of migrants/postmigrants focuses on particular sites of media literacy, which in turn foster engagement with particular linguistic resources in their repertoire. Thus we could hypothesise that first generation immigrants ‘look back’ in terms of their media choices, thereby focusing on media from their home country which, in turn, integrate the ‘home language’ into the immigrant everyday (an example being satellite TV); that second-generation postmigrants seek out media that promote and enable diasporic discourses, such as diasporic publications and online discussion forums, in which various forms of bilingual usage are not only tolerated but legitimised; and that third-generation postmigrants shift to mainstream society media (including new media environments), thereby making selective and strategic use of minority language(s) as ‘metroethnic’ emblems. This approach would map the transition from migrant language over bilingualism to the majority language at the level of media literacy, thereby emphasizing that media usage is a contributing factor to that transition rather than a mere side-effect.

While examples for such distribution are not hard to come by, available evidence also raises caution against assuming too rigid boundaries among generations, media choices, and associated aspects of linguistic repertoire. A few points will be raised, suggesting that the relation between migrants’ media literacies and linguistic repertoires may actually be much more ‘messy’ than a generational model would suggest: the coexistence and layering of media literacies in terms of space (e.g. the household), availability (on the internet), and actual practice, as well as cross- and transnational media literacies which transcend linguistic boundaries. These notwithstanding, this paper suggests viewing media literacies as practices which actively shape people’s linguistic repertoires in superdiversity settings.