Superdiversity supposes a paradigm shift that sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology are ready to study
This paper will:
define superdiversity
from multiculturalism to superdiversity
emerges from globalization and migration
social, cultural and linguistic diversity
increase in the categories of migrants (nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, motives, patterns, itineraries of migration, etc.)
influenced by the Internet : new media and technologies of communication
Example: text written in two form of Chinese: a mixture of two different scripts found in different parts of Chinese-speaking territories:
suggests that addressee and addressed are from different origins
suggests that the producer is learning the addressee’s script
suggests the change from traditional to a new diaspora which originates in the PRC
suggests that such diaspora takes place in peripheral places too
there are distinctive communicative processes in migration and studying them can make contributions to the debates about superdiversity
people are still connected to their communities of origin
host communities are involved in these transnational connections
changes in both the material world and ways of life
define the most important theoretical and methodological developments in language study:
sociolinguistics has evolved with the humanities and social sciences
before, homogeneity, stability and boundedness; Now: mobility, mixing political dynamics and historical embedding
though these ideas are not new, the ideas they seek to displace are still very much at work
denaturalization of named, distinct languages
named languages are an ideological construct which serves the ideal of nation-estate
however the idea of language as bounded systems linked to bounded communities continues to be taken for granted in our institutions and even sociolinguistic studies which aim at questioning it
although the traditional idea of language is useful or functional in ways the most interesting analysis emerges when the variety of feature combinations
with the notion of language the notion of nation, people and speech community to be deconstructed
idealized speaker versus more flexible group
inequality and innovation: normativity
the communicative event is only possible interaction context
instead, variable resources picked up along an individual’s trajectory: linguistic repertoire
the focus is on the way people use different linguistic forms in different contexts
linguistic is one semiotic among many:
communicative practice
attention turns to indexicality (connotation of choices)
meaning is multimodal
non-shared knowledge replaces the idea of common ground between speakers
the idea of negotiation is questioned
focus on creativity
reflection on language
mobility of texts
comtext is multi layered and multi scalar
traditionally macro components are found at the micro level
methodologically, this means:
investigation of the context
analysis of internal organisation of semiotic data
Defines a research agenda influenced by ethnography
why is linguistic ethnography useful?
alternative to structuralism’s definitive constructs, suggests directions
ideologies are also important
sociolinguistic economy: different speech forms are valued and others are not, thus language plays a role in stratification