Critical sociolinguistics

Language Maintenance and Language Shift - a Contrarian Viewpoint

by Thorold (Thor) May

This short informal paper stems from reflection on an address by Ken Hale, doyen of minority languages (and now sadly... more This short informal paper stems from reflection on an address by Ken Hale, doyen of minority languages (and now sadly deceased). It looks at the role of linguists themselves in the dynamic of language maintenance and the twin phenomena of language loss and language birth. The uniqueness of each language is weighed against the costs and benefits of language homogenization. It is recognized that the majority of speakers are ultimately pragmatists about language choice, yet an argument remains for offering some minority language support to groups struggling with their ethnic identity. Finally, it is asked whether language maintenance or revival can actually pose other risks under certain conditions.

Key figures in Forensic Linguistics: Diana Eades

by Kate Haworth

in C. Chapelle (ed.) (2011) The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, Wiley-Blackwell

Everyday practices, everyday pedagogies: a dialogue on critical transformations in a multilingual HK school (In co-authorship with Carlos Soto)

by Miguel Pérez Milans

In: Julie Byrd Clark & Fred Dervin (Eds.), Reflexivity and Multimodality in Language Education: Rethinking Multilingualism and Interculturality in accelerating, complex and transnational spaces. New York: Routledge.

This chapter provides a reflexive dialogue between a researcher and one of his focused participants, a teacher... more This chapter provides a reflexive dialogue between a researcher and one of his focused participants, a teacher involved in critical pedagogy, in the course of a critical sociolinguistic ethnography carried out in Hong Kong. Data collection was focused on a local school coping with declining enrolment that had recently implemented an International Division aimed at teaching multi-lingual ethnic minority students through English as a medium of instruction, while maintaining a local division serving the school’s majority Chinese student population. In the context of a local pre-university education system traversed by competitiveness, streaming, exam-oriented teaching practices, and reforms aimed at developing a knowledge economy, participants at the research site emphasized the extent to which the International Division provided minority students with opportunities to overcome a marginalised position. However, the fieldwork pointed to institutional tensions over resources and practices. Analysis of classroom and Facebook interactions reveals how all these conditions set up interactional contexts where teachers and students faced difficulties in negotiating meaning, yet were able to achieve transformational forms of resistance. With very different ages and levels of English proficiency in a same classroom, participants constructed meaning by leaning on various languages, modes of communication, voices, genres and registers that allowed them to display not only official knowledge, but also a wide range identities. On the basis of these interactional dynamics, the researcher and his focused teacher engage in a collaborative reflection on what ‘critical’ means to them under those everyday circumstances, with an emphasis on the potentials of a collaborative reflection like this for both critical educators and sociolinguists interested school spaces as sites for empowerment.

Dr. Miguel Pérez-Milans has conducted sociolinguistic ethnography in Spain, London, and China.
Carlos Soto is a doctoral student and has worked as an educator in the United States and Hong Kong.

Keywords: critical research in education, critical sociolinguistics, critical pedagogy, Hong Kong education, multilingualism, ethnic minorities, youth, institutional transformation, social inequality, social agency.

Mapping English linguistic capital: The case of Filipino domestic workers in Singapore

by Beatriz Lorente

Unpublished PhD dissertation, 2007 , National University of Singapore (Basis for book project under contract with Multilingual Matters: "Scripts of servitude: language, labor migration and domestic work")

Excerpt from book proposal:

This book will examine the linguistic practices that constitute the unequal... more Excerpt from book proposal:

This book will examine the linguistic practices that constitute the unequal relationship between sending and receiving countries, between employers and migrant workers, in transnational domestic work. Transnational domestic work is the product of the international division of reproductive labor in which migrant women from developing countries perform the reproductive labor of class-privileged women in industrialized ones even as they leave their own to other women who are too poor to migrate (Parreñas, 2003). As such, it provides a powerful lens with which to look at the inequalities of globalization and the particular ways in which these inequalities are (re)produced and challenged on the terrain of language (Blommaert, 2010, 2005; Heller, 2003). In this book, the linguistic practices that constitute transnational domestic work are examined by tracing the production and performance of scripts of servitude across institutional and subject levels. These scripts of servitude are normative ways of doing language (eg. Cameron, 2000), prescribed for and contested by transnational domestic workers, and embedded in the disciplining processes (Foucault, 1979) that turn women from developing countries into transnationally mobile bodies that serve in domestic work. Through these scripts, global relations of inequality are normalized and embodied in quotidian linguistic practices (Bourdieu, 1977, 1991). These scripts are also central in social processes of flows and stratification.

This book will do this by looking at one of the largest and widest flows of contemporary female migration, that of women from the Philippines who leave the country to work as domestic workers in the affluent economies of Asia, the Middle East, Western Europe and North America (Tyner, 2004). In a departure from a tendency in studies of language and migration to focus on receiving countries viewed as lands of permanent settlement (e.g. Block, 2006; Extra, Spotti & Van Avermaet, 2009; Menard-Warwick, 2009; Slade and Mollering, forthcoming), this book will center on the flow of Filipino domestic workers to Singapore, a highly developed, multilingual city-state where these migrant Filipino women are temporary and disposable labor. It analyzes how institutions, i.e. the Philippine and Singapore states and maid agencies, form globalized and interconnected systems of control that allow the women to be mobile precisely because they are marginal. They condition and regulate the circulation of migrant women by calibrating their linguistic resources to ensure their mobility, flexibility and transience as laboring bodies that can be marketed easily in different countries. Using data from my interviews with Filipino domestic workers in Singapore, this book then delineates how migrant women inhabit these scripts of servitude. It looks at various aspects of the linguistic practices they employ to create spaces of agency and what consequences these practices have.

De l'€™un et du divers. La région Rhône-Alpes et la mise en récit de ses langues.

by James Costa

Costa, J. & Bert, M., 2011. De l'€™un et du divers. La région Rhône-Alpes et la mise en récit de ses langues. Mots. Les langages du politique, 97, pp.45-57.

Languages, Identities, and Accents: Perspectives from the 2010 Linguistic Diversity Conference

by Uju Anya

Book Review: The Idea of English in Japan: Ideology and the Evolution of a Global Language by Philip Seargeant

by Gregory Paul Glasgow

published in World Englishes in 2010

Diglossia (a language and power approach)

by Probal Dasgupta

This text originally appeared as a book chapter, but can be read on its own. It began the work of upscaling the diglossia concept so that a serious take on language and power can use it without embarrassment.

Revitalisation linguistique: Discours, mythe et idéologie. Approche critique de mouvements de revitalisation en Provence et en Ecosse

by James Costa

Costa, J. (2010). Revitalisation linguistique: Discours, mythe et idéologie. Approche critique de mouvements de revitalisation en Provence et en Ecosse. Ph.D. dissertation: Université de Grenoble.

Language Revitalisation: Discourse, Myths and Ideologies
A Critical Approach to Revitalisation Movements in... more Language Revitalisation: Discourse, Myths and Ideologies
A Critical Approach to Revitalisation Movements in Provence and Scotland
This thesis seeks to explore theoretical and practical aspects of language revitalisation (LR), an emerging field of investigation which has been described as under-­‐theorised. We approach the question from a sociolinguistic and anthropological point of view, informed by fieldwork in Provence and Scotland, where both Provençal (or Occitan) and Scots are construed as being under threat. This thesis, which treats LR as a social phenomenon arising in contexts of cultural contact, comprises three parts (seven chapters) organised as follows:
Part One explores how the question of LR arose from works on language death in descriptive linguistics, but also from works in sociolinguistics and anthropology. It then examines the way in which LR is conceptualised in academic literature, particularly in sociolinguistics and documentary linguistics. This part concludes that while works on LR have focused on language, much work needs to be conducted on social actors in order to understand this growing and worldwide phenomenon.
Part Two links works on LR with more ancient findings on cultural revitalisation movements in American anthropology, and suggests links with LR in order to propose a conceptual framework for the description and analysis of LR movements. This framework includes central notions such as mazeway, and adds the categories of myth and ideology as central notions for the understanding of LR movements.
Part Three explores how this conceptual framework can be used to describe and interpret some aspects of language revitalisation movements in Provence and Scotland, looking at how LR is construed in the discourses of language experts, activists, ordinary speakers and pupils. It then looks at how discourses circulate in two schools, which represent particular sites of LR in which orders of discourse and social practice meet.
In our conclusion, we suggest links between current works on language revitalisation theory and globalisation studies. Contemporary LR movements can indeed represent ways of dealing with the uncertainty caused by the increasingly globalised world in which we live

Des derniers locuteurs aux néo-locuteurs : revitalisation linguistique en Europe

by James Costa

Costa, J. (2010). Des derniers locuteurs aux néo-locuteurs : revitalisation linguistique en Europe. Faits de Langues, 35-36, 205-223.

This is from an edited volume of Faits de Langues (eds. Colette Grinevald and Michel Bert) on linguistic fieldwork on endangered languages. See the Faits de Langues website for more info.

Deutsch als Wissenschaftssprache

by Hartmut Haberland

[co-author Klaus Schulte] in: Michael Svendsen Pedersen og Hartmut Haberland, red. Sprogliv – Sprachleben. Festskrift til Karen Sonne Jakobsen. Roskilde: Roskilde Universitet, Institut for Kultur og Identitet. s. 123-134

Domains and domain loss

by Hartmut Haberland

to be quoted as Domains and domain loss. in: Bent Preisler et al., eds., 2008. The Consequences of Mobility: Linguistic and Sociocultural Contact Zones. Roskilde: Roskilde University, Department of Language and Culture pp. 227-237.
The 2005 URL referred to in the paper is a dead link now.

Reseña de Martín Rojo (2010) Constructing Inequality in Multilingual Classrooms

by Simone Belli

"Aviáu enveja de transmetre tres causas": transmission familiale de l'occitan et idéologies de militants en Provence

by James Costa

Costa J. (2010) "Aviáu enveja de transmetre tres causas" : transmission familiale de l’occitan et idéologies de militants en Provence Travaux Neuchâtelois de Linguistique 52: 93-107.

(the copy I uploaded is an almost final version. I will upload the final version later, when the next issue of Tranel is out)

This article wishes to explore the way in which both language and language transmission in the home are conceptualised... more This article wishes to explore the way in which both language and language transmission in the home are conceptualised among language activists. While it might seem obvious they would be most likely to pass the language on to their own children, this appears not to be such a frequent enterprise. Looking at several narratives collected among language activists in Provence in 2009, I wish to analyse what ideologies lie behind the decisions to use the language as a medium of everyday life within the family – or not. What seems to emerge is the absence of consensus about what 'transmission' means, and this may be due to the recent emergence of the question among militants in Provence. I finally suggest that the very term "transmission" is a metaphor which may in fact preclude certain attitudes. Those might in turn be detrimental to other forms of minority language socialisation in the home.

Occasional Paper: Language, Ideology and the 'Scottish Voice'

by James Costa

Costa, J. (2011). Language, ideologies, and the ‘Scottish voice’. International Journal of Scottish Literature, 7.

In this Occasional Paper, I would like to emphasise one way in which language ideological issues permeate literary... more In this Occasional Paper, I would like to emphasise one way in which language ideological issues permeate literary discourse in Scotland. Focusing on issues related to Scots, I will analyse two (in my view complementary) introductions to anthologies of texts in Scots published over the past twenty years, and show how they participate in a wider ideological debate on language and society in Scotland.

El normativismo y el poder

by Scott Sadowsky

With Ricardo Martínez Gamboa

An essay on the pernicious prescriptivism that still plagues some corners of the world. An essay on the pernicious prescriptivism that still plagues some corners of the world.

Sites of possibility: Critical dialogue across educational settings

by Louise Jennings

France and Language(s): Old Policies and New Challenges in Education. Towards a Renewed Framework?

by James Costa

Co-authored with Patricia Lambert

Language history as charter myth? Scots and the (re)invention of Scotland

by James Costa

Costa, J. (2009). "Language History as Charter Myth? Scots and the (Re)invention of Scotland." Scottish Language 28: 1-25.

In this article, I intend to concentrate on one type of process by which Scots has found new legitimation as a... more In this article, I intend to concentrate on one type of process by which Scots has found new legitimation as a language, and how discourses surrounding the issue of Scots might seek to contribute to the creation of a new Scottish society. I whish to show how history is used as a legitimating discursive device by the various components of the Scots language revitalisation movement.

Language in healthcare policy, interaction patterns, and unequal care on the U.S.-Mexico border

by Glenn Martinez

Langauge Policy 7, pp. 345-363