Hajek / Kretzenbacher / Norrby Multilingualism and Pluricentricity

A Tale of Many Cities
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5015-1162-2
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 20, 347 Seiten

Reihe: Language and Social Life [LSL]

This volume explores linguistic diversity and complexity in different urban contexts, many of which have never been subject to significant sociolinguistic inquiry. A novel mixture of cities of varying size from around the world is studied, from megacities to smaller cities on the national periphery. All chapters discuss either the multilingualism or the pluricentric aspect of the linguistic diversity in urban areas, most focussing on one urban centre.

The book showcases multiple approaches ranging from a quantitative investigation based partly on census data, to qualitative studies flowing, for example, from extensive ethnographic work or discourse analysis. The diverse theoretical backgrounds and methodological approaches in the individual chapters are complemented by two chapters outlining the current trends and debates in the sociolinguistic research on urban multilingualism and pluricentricity and suggesting some possible directions for future investigations in this field.The book thus provides a broad overview of sociolinguistic research of multilingual places and pluricentric languages.

Zielgruppe

Researchers in Sociolinguistics; Urban Multilingualism; Pluricent

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hajek, John

Kretzenbacher, Heinz L.

Norrby, Catrin

Schuepbach, Doris

Schüpbach, Doris

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften

Leseproben

Introduction: Exploring multilingualism and pluricentricity in diverse urban settings

Catrin Norrby

John Hajek

Heinz L. Kretzenbacher

Doris Schüpbach

Note: We would like to acknowledge and thank Ambrin Hasnain for her invaluable assistance in preparing this chapter.

This volume explores linguistic diversity and complexity in a range of urban contexts, a number of which have been subject to relatively little or no sociolinguistic inquiry, especially in English. It seeks to diversify the sites under investigation in urban multilingualism studies, and advocates an exploration of multilingual practices that is not restricted to the large-scale contemporary Western metropolis. A novel mixture of cities from around the world is therefore studied, from megacities and lesser-known communities within well-researched cities to smaller cities on the national periphery, representing diverse types, sizes, contexts and languages.

We recognise that linguistic diversity and complexity exist beyond urban contexts and their presence in suburban and rural environments also deserve investigation. We are also aware that much current sociolinguistic scholarship may well be skewed towards cities and shaped by what Britain (2017, 2022) terms ‘the urban gaze’, where the notion of ‘the city’ is heavily influenced by preconceptions and ideological discourses of the urban (e.g. the city as diverse, innovative, multicultural etc.). Nevertheless, this volume focuses on urban contexts, viewed not as an explanatory concept but as sites where features under investigation may be more visible, more intensive or more frequent than outside cities and “therefore perhaps more noteworthy, more reportable” (Britain 2022: 70).

All chapters of this volume address multilingual and/or pluricentric aspects of linguistic diversity in urban areas, with the majority focusing on one urban centre. Six contributions investigate cities in Europe, while the remaining six focus on cities located on five other continents, namely Africa, Asia, North America, Oceania and South America. The sites include: Biel/Bienne and Fribourg/Freiburg (Switzerland), Dublin (Ireland), Jakarta (Indonesia), Kotka and Mariehamn (Finland), Melbourne (Australia), Montevideo (Uruguay), Munich (Germany), New York City (USA), Norwich (UK), Padua (Italy), Port Louis (Mauritius), and Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia). Five cities are national capitals, others are state or provincial capitals or regional centres (for further details, see Appendix). They also reflect a variety of ways in which a city’s linguistic profile can evolve, or not, over time.

The researchers who contributed to this volume also come from six continents. It was important to the volume editors to allow them to conduct and write up their research in ways that best reflect their own experiences and understanding of the world. As a result, their research, written in an accessible manner in order also to reach a broader audience, showcases diverse theoretical backgrounds and methodological approaches, ranging from investigations combining quantitative and qualitative methods and qualitative studies drawing on extensive ethnographic work or discourse analysis, to linguistic landscape studies and analyses of actual and reported language use. The chapters thus provide a broad overview of different current trends in sociolinguistic research on multilingual places and pluricentric languages.

1 Urban multilingualism

The study of urban multilingualism is central to much contemporary work in sociolinguistics, evident not least in the number of edited research volumes on the topic published in the last decade (Carson and King 2016; Smakman and Heinrich 2017; Mar-Molinero 2020a among others). However, a focus on language in the city and how different groups of people use and adapt their language repertoires in different situations has been central to much sociolinguistic research since the early days of the discipline. William Labov’s seminal study of English in New York City, for instance, showed that community speech patterns correlated with social variables such as class (Labov 1966). This was the catalyst for a new type of research on urban speech communities, exemplified by Peter Trudgill’s investigation of Norwich English (Trudgill 1974) and Barbara Horvath’s study of the sociolects of English spoken in Sydney, which included ethnicity as a variable (Horvath 1985). Other research was also underway in Australia by Michael Clyne and colleagues who focused on the use and maintenance of languages other than English in multilingual communities (e.g. Clyne 1991; 2005; Kipp and Norrby 2006; Pauwels 1988; Romaine 1991).

The correlation of social characteristics and patterns of language use has greatly enhanced our understanding of how people communicate with one another. However, in today’s mobile and globalising world, “studying sociolinguistics in the city necessitates a move away from the traditional approach of the ‘sociolinguistics of distribution’, where languages, speakers, social class, etc. are both well-defined and permanently fixed” (Smakman and Heinrich 2017: 9). More recent studies of urban multilingualism have been informed by the impact of today’s increased scale of globalisation processes on cities and their inhabitants (Cadier and Mar-Molinero 2014; Wang et al. 2014; Carson and King 2016; Smakman and Heinrich 2017). The transnational movements of people and goods, intensified by large numbers of refugees fleeing their native countries as well as by global capitalism, and the resulting language contact both influence the language use of communities and individuals (Heller 2013). Urban settings have provided fertile contexts for studies of multilingualism as they are often subject to an increasing number of migrants arriving from different locations within a country as well as from other countries, and are typically the primary port of call for immigrants and refugees (Wang et al. 2014; Carson and King 2016). “The city as a site for experimentation and creativity in language practices” (Mar-Molinero 2020b: 12) gives rise to a dynamic linguistic environment, where people from diverse language backgrounds interact and communicate with one another in their everyday lives, thus using a variety of multilingual resources and producing new linguistic codes and repertoires (Otsuji and Pennycook 2010; Cadier and Mar-Molinero 2014).

In addition to complex linguistic practices in-place, the rise of the internet since the 1990s has further increased and diversified communication patterns, transnational interactions and information exchange (Blommaert 2013; Wang et al. 2014). Through increased access to various media, technology and information, as well as interactions through social media and connectivity via the internet and phones, migrants are more easily able to maintain transnational contact with their families and communities in their countries of origins and the wider diaspora. Transnational connectedness also extends to non-migrants, from residents of cosmopolitan cities to rural areas in most parts of the world (Blommaert and Rampton 2011; Dyers 2015). As a result of globalisation processes, migration streams and the internet, people today are able to access and create diverse, innovative language repertoires and communication practices on a daily basis – face-to-face as well as virtually.

‘Superdiversity’, a term coined by Steven Vertovec (2007), was proposed as an approach to the complexity of recent migration patterns resulting from globalisation processes, through a “multi-dimensional perspective on diversity” (p. 1026). It is also reportedly marked by more temporary migration patterns by smaller groups from more places, as opposed to more historical tendencies of larger groups from a limited number of places who settled permanently (Cadier and Mar-Molinero 2014; Li Wei 2018).

Superdiversity was quickly taken up by sociolinguists to describe and reassess linguistic diversity and patterns that are developing in such diverse spaces (Goebel 2018). It has been used as the contextual backdrop in many recent studies of multilingualism, especially in urban spaces and a range of books and edited volumes have been published on the subject in the past few years (Blommaert 2013; Duarte and Gogolin 2013; Goebel 2015; Arnaut et al. 2016a; 2016b; Creese and Blackledge 2018; Mar-Molinero 2020a). However, the concept has also been strongly critiqued for a variety of reasons. Among them are: (a) its Euro-centricity (Flores and Lewis 2016; Goebel 2017; Pavlenko 2019) by largely applying it to Western settings or to other settings through a Euro-centric lens; (b) its rather ahistorical outlook by presenting it as a recent phenomenon (Britain 2016; Piller 2016), thus ignoring cases like Ancient Rome or...

Über Autor(innen)

John Hajek, Heinz L. Kretzenbacher and Doris Schüpbach, University of Melbourne, Australia; CatrinNorrby, Stockholm University, Sweden.