Language and Culture on the Margins

Global/Local Interactions

Sjaak Kroon, Jos Swanenberg, Sjaak Kroon, Jos Swanenberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351244336
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This collection of thirteen essays examines sociolinguistic phenomena in a wide variety of marginal environments, providing both an overview of globalizaiton on the margins and a foundation for an expanded understanding of the processes of linguistic and cultural changes at work in these settings. Taking an expansive conceptual view of margins, the volume is organized in three parts, looking at examples of marginal spaces in the nation-state, in online environments, and in the peripheries of urban locations, globally to call attention to new and changing discursive genres, patterns, practices, and identities emerging in these spaces as a result of contemporary mobilities, the evolving global economy, and socio-political changes. With previous research previously confined to the study of globalization in urban areas, this volume opens the door for further research on the complex sociolinguistic processes resulting from globalization on the margins, making this an ideal resource for students and scholars in sociolinguistics, globalization and heritage studies, new media, anthropology, and cultural studies.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY)

1 Introduction

Language and Culture on the Margins

Sjaak Kroon and Jos Swanenberg

Globalization and Peripheries

Ongoing globalization processes are turning the world into a far more diverse place than it has ever been before. Apart from people and goods, languages and cultures are also crossing borders, thereby creating new superdiverse sociolinguistic environments in which new discursive genres and patterns are emerging, along with new linguistic and cultural practices and identities. These processes are not only at work in situations where people engage in conversations and in written communication in the real world but also in the virtual social environments of the online world where there appear to be no limits in terms of time and space.

Globalization revolves around and across scales in a specific timespace (Blommaert, 2010, 2015). Scales are generally defined in terms of geography, economics and social and institutional hierarchies. There are increasingly complex connections between local phenomena and phenomena occurring at higher, trans-local scale-levels, and the effects of such connections are evident at all scale-levels (Wang, et al., 2014).

Digitalization and globalization are closely intertwined (Castells, 2010). There are new affordances for the circulation of language resources and cultural artefacts (e.g. texts, still and moving images, musical forms etc.). This has increased the importance of language, culture and semiosis in the construction of lifestyles and identities, and in categorizing, distinguishing and positioning different selves. To build a fuller understanding of these complex and rapid processes of social change, and of the local dynamics of linguistic and cultural diversity, we need to pay close attention to locality, region or periphery in ongoing sociolinguistic research into the broader processes of globalization. This, we argue, is a crucial element of the task of forging a new sociolinguistics for our times.

This line of argument goes further than merely espousing the concept of ‘glocalization’. This concept was originally introduced as a marketing strategy in the world of international business (Robertson, 1995) and implied that there is increased uniformity and conformity in particular localities due to globalization processes. Instead, we argue that we need to build an understanding of the immense diversity in various localities that are becoming part of global networks. The nature and scope of contemporary diversity has been described by some scholars as ‘superdiversity’ or ‘the diversification of diversity’ (e.g. Vertovec, 2007). In superdiverse settings, some local linguistic and cultural practices move to a trans-local scale-level (e.g. intense digital communication across new diaspora) but do not necessarily become global, while others remain local. There are also local interpretations, applications and adaptations of global processes and localized translocal forms of meaning-making and communicative practices (e.g. the many examples of ‘be like’ pages on Facebook, studied by Visser, Nortier, & Swanenberg, 2015).

In the course of the last decade or so, research on language, globalization and superdiversity (e.g. Arnaut, Blommaert, Rampton, & Spotti, 2016; Blommaert, Collins, & Slembrouck, 2005; Creese & Blackledge, 2018; Kern & Selting, 2011; Martin-Jones, Blackledge, & Creese, 2012) has addressed a wide variety of topics, such as the spread of (new varieties of) English all over the world; changes in linguistic landscapes; polylingualism, (trans)languaging, transidiomaticity, code-switching and code-mixing; the emergence of new language varieties, new literacies and semiotic resources; language in popular culture, hip hop music and rap; language and new media and computer gaming. However, this research has been mainly concentrated in sites where these sociolinguistic phenomena and these processes of cultural change and creativity are highly visible: that is, in the vast contemporary metropolis with its dynamic and conspicuous social and linguistic diversity, its hypermobility and constant flux. However, new diversities, new mobilities, and new forms of Internet-based communication also constitute a key dimension of social life and social change on the margins of large urban centers and global cities, in the peripheral zones of the world, on the periphery of nation-states and in peripheral institutional spaces. We encounter the traces of globalization and features of superdiversity in unexpected places, literally, at the margins, far away from the well-known vibrant global centers. There is no reason to exclude these margins from analyses of globalization processes (see e.g. Thissen, 2018). Globalization is transforming the entire world system (Wallerstein, 2004). It is not only affecting the metropolitan centers of the world but it is also having an impact on the margins, may be in a different manner, including social spaces that are quite remotely situated with respect to metropolitan centers.

This book focuses on sociolinguistic phenomena occurring in marginal environments, within the wider context of globalization. It presents research carried out in a range of different marginal settings, focusing on polylingualism and situated language and literacy practices, on language, music and popular culture, on linguistic landscapes, on semiotic practices emerging in the context of new forms of economic activity and on the use of new media and communication technologies.

Defining the ‘Margins’

The concept of ‘margins’ that is adopted in this volume is broadly defined (cf. Wang, et al., 2014). We are using it in terms that are synonymous with the notion of ‘peripheries’. In using these terms, we have in mind the small nations in the global south, the margins of large and rapidly growing cities in the global south (such as the townships in South Africa), the margins of nations in the global north (such as dialect or minority language areas), and the margins of the Internet (such as ‘underground’ websites or the dark web). At the same time, different aspects of marginality may be interwoven: people with their own distinct linguistic and cultural resources, living in geographical peripheries, may well be socially marginalized as well (e.g. the Sami in the northern regions of the Nordic countries).

Thus, our broad definition of margins includes a geographical aspect with various scales: the peripheries of the metropolis, the peripheries of the nation state, or the periphery of the new power blocks in today’s multipolar world. We also see geography as intersecting with political economy; thus geographical peripheries are often less privileged economically. This has social consequences: only those within the centers of our multipolar world benefit from economic globalization. The inequalities between centers and margins shape not only economic and social status but also cultural and linguistic practices. Moreover, there is unequal access to the material, cultural and linguistic resources that are available to those in the center (e.g. unequal access to the ‘legitimate language’ ‒ Bourdieu, 1991), and hence, access to opportunities for mobility. Thus, in this volume, our focus is on the cultural, discursive and semiotic processes at work as a consequence of economic and social marginalization in geographical peripheries on various scales (see also Blommaert, 2010).

This volume incorporates examples from different marginal sites across the world and it provides vivid insights into people’s lived experiences of unequal access to resources and opportunities and on their understandings of the positioning. As Wang, et al. (2014, p. 36) have pointed out: ‘people experience a difference between center and periphery’ and ‘those inhabiting the (perceived) periphery feel marginalized economically, politically, culturally, and linguistically by the (perceived) center.’ Since language is a key resource for constructing and representing social identities, it is a key topic in the semiotic study of globalization on the margins. For instance, a national language is often imposed on speakers of nonstandard varieties or other languages (such as regional languages and the languages of minority groups of immigrant origin). Those who include such language resources in their communicative repertoires are negatively stereotyped as ‘uneducated’ and ‘backward’. At the same time, particular linguistic resources, such as nonstandard varieties, minority languages or indigenous languages can serve as emblems of alternative values and as an imagined and cultivated form of unspoiled ‘authenticity’. They can even be subject to commodification (Duchêne & Heller, 2007, 2012). This seems to be the case in many internationally funded projects that are aimed at safeguarding cultural heritage or endangered minority languages.

Margins are by no means isolated places that are characterized by stability. They are closely connected to the rest of the world, and similar processes of social change, ushered in by globalization, can be seen at work. These include: processes set in motion by contemporary mobilities, including outward migration that is oriented to large urban centers and, on occasion, inward migration (e.g. by those seeking work in rural areas) (e.g. Cabral & Martin-Jones, 2017). Margins are also caught up in globalized economic activities such as tourism (especially when local linguistic and cultural resources are commodified). In addition, political and economic changes, regional conflicts or other global processes have an influence on the linguistic and cultural landscapes of peripheral areas. And, last but not least, people on the periphery are linked to the rest of the world through the World Wide Web and the use of digital media such as mobile phones (e.g. the increasingly networked nature of communication between indigenous groups around the world).

Within the margins, specific centers can sometimes emerge. Geographical peripheries will have their own regionally central towns, although these towns will be considered peripheral from the perspective of larger cities within the geoeconomic center. In these cases, geographical and hierarchical scales are intertwined. Furthermore, projects of language conservation and revitalization within the periphery often involve the introduction of new linguistic norms and marginalized languages or dialects undergo standardization, and even commodification, as part of these projects (Lane, Costa, & De Korne, 2018; Wang, et al., 2014). Such projects are funded by regional governments and legitimized by international conventions on the preservation of cultural heritage. However, any project of this kind runs the risk of becoming prescriptive and normative. This inevitably leaves local speakers who do not conform to the newly introduced norms (twice) marginalized. In that way, a new center of symbolic power might arise within the periphery (Lane, et al., 2018).

Such forms of globalization on the margins trigger complex processes of sociolinguistic and cultural reordering and invite examination of emerging language and literacy practices. In-depth investigation of such practices can contribute to the development of a fuller, critical understanding of the processes of change occurring on the margins (in the past and the present). This kind of research allows us to compare and contrast the changes taking place on the margins with those being documented for metropolitan centers. The margins of the world system did not appear just like that: they have histories, presents and futures. It is by considering factors of infrastructure and the way that they are shaping local sociocultural economies that we can begin to understand contemporary processes of inequality and marginalization.

Overview of the Volume

This volume has been organized into three broad sections, bringing together chapters that foreground particular aspects of social, linguistic and cultural change associated with globalization on the margins. The first section is entitled: Center-periphery dynamics in the discursive (re-)construction of nation-states. It includes contributions by scholars working in the global south and in the global north and west. These contributions all focus on moments of social and political change within particular nation-states, and on linguistic, social, ideological and cultural changes resulting from centralized or decentralizing language regimes, or from new patterns of inward migration triggered by global changes.

The first chapter in this section is by Jan Blommaert. It focuses on national language policy in postcolonial Tanzania. Reviewing the research on language planning and policy in Tanzania, Blommaert notes that the main narrative that has been developed relates to the relative success of postcolonial language policy in establishing – from the center – a particular sociolinguistic order in which Kiswahili figures as the main emblem of nationhood. He also notes that one of the limitations of this research narrative is that the analytic focus is on ‘language’, which is seen as a bounded, countable object. He argues instead for a focus on language resources such as registers as a means of capturing the center-periphery dynamics at play in this postcolonial situation and the resistance that has emerged, on different scales, to the new sociolinguistic order. He indicates that the contemporary consequences of this language policy and ‘the polycentric system of competing registers’ can only be understood by employing a register-based approach.

The second chapter, by Zane Goebel, examines the social, cultural and linguistic changes taking place in the 21st century in Indonesia in the wake of the political shift in this nation-state toward decentralization and devolution of political power. Focusing on the formation of one new province – called Cirebon – through the merger of five districts, Goebel reveals the current tensions at play between centralization and fragmentation in this particular context. He also shows how local language varieties, of Sundanese and Javanese, are characterized in discussions of regional identity and of the content of local school curricula. In addition, he draws attention to new, smaller scale moves toward centralizing, standardizing and the forging of new norms for local language varieties and the debates generated by these moves.

The third chapter, by Sjaak Kroon, Jenny-Louise Van der Aa, and Yonas Mesfun Asfaha deals with Eritrea, a peripheral country in the Horn of Africa. It aims to show that in spite of its alleged international isolation and stagnating technological development, the people in Eritrea are digitally more connected than ever. This is shown by taking a look at English, one of the main drivers of globalization, as reflected in the linguistic landscape of Eritrea’s capital Asmara, more specifically its main street Harnet Avenue. Longitudinal linguistic landscape data collected between 2001 and 2016 show a slow but sure development of digital affordances and infrastructures and witness a move from analogue text to a complex on/offline semiotics. This leads to the conclusion that a country’s marginality and isolation does not necessarily prevent its inhabitants from participating digitally in globalization.

The second section of this volume is entitled: Marginalized language and literacy resources online and in digital media. This section includes four chapters. The first chapter, by Shaila Sultana, explores how young women in a peripheral South Asian country (Bangladesh) challenge the predefined gendered identity attributes in their transglossic language practices in virtual space. Based on the analysis of conversations on Facebook drawn from a three-month long ethnographic research project, Sultana shows that young women actively and reflexively take advantage of linguistic and cultural resources in virtual space. First, they challenge the accepted norm in relation to marriage, sex and the linguistic appropriacy and propriety expected from them as women in the Bangladeshi society. Second, they seem to be in control of their sexuality. They also enjoy a certain level of freedom from social and cultural boundaries when they disrupt the gendered norms. Thus, virtual space, with its immense multimodal potency, gives young women opportunities for newer forms of communication and novel ways of engaging in gender performativity. Nevertheless, these emerging new online voices are continually in tension with and confronted by the social and cultural ideologies and values that circulate in offline environments.

The second chapter, by Jos Swanenberg, deals with the role that digital media, such as YouTube, play in identification processes among young people in Noord-Brabant, a province in the central southern region of the Netherlands. His chapter draws on recent sociolinguistic research into the use of features of the local language variety (Brabantish). The data analysis focused on a series of video clips called New Kids that were recorded in a small hamlet in Noord-Brabant and that gained considerable popularity when the series was posted on YouTube. New Kids portrays stereotypical regional identities, antisocial attitudes and corresponding linguistic practices. Swanenberg’s chapter draws attention to the processes of identification at work in this peripheral context, highlighting in particular the use of linguistic and cultural resources in the construction of stereotypes and, at the same time, in the construction of a sense of belonging and a sense of authenticity and heritage.

In the third chapter in this section, Fie Velghe reports on research that she carried out in a South African township (Wesbank), on the outskirts of Cape Town. She shows that the levels of poverty, unemployment and social marginalization in the township make it virtually impossible for local residents to gain access to literacy or to develop rudimentary literacy skills. In her chapter, Velghe argues that the high uptake of mobile phone technology in global south contexts such as this one can play a vital part in reaching those who do not have access to formal schooling and can offer an orientation to nonformal learning practices, out-of-school, even for those who are living at the very bottom of the income pyramid. The use of mobile technology can provide access to certain digital literacies and can open up opportunities for sustaining newly-acquired digital literacy skills. Velghe illustrates her argument with reference to the case of a 60-year-old woman (Sarah) who participated in her study and who described herself as ‘illiterate’, but who nevertheless learned to write and send text messages. Velghe recounts in detail the learning processes experienced by Sarah, along with the efforts she put into the acquisition and conso...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1 Introduction: Language and Culture on the Margins
• 2 Redefining the Sociolinguistic ‘local’: Examples from Tanzania
• 3 Reterritorialization and the Construction of Margins and Centers through Imitation in Indonesia
• 4 English in Asmara as a Changing Reflection of Online Globalization
• 5 Gender Performativity in Virtual Space: Transglossic Language Practices of Young Women in Bangladesh
• 6 The Language and Culture of New Kids: Appreciation of and Familiarity with Online Brabantish Identities
• 7 Literacy Acquisition and Mobile Phones in a South African Township: The Story of Sarah
• 8 Scaling Queer Performativities of Genders and Sexualities in the Periphery of Rio de Janeiro in Digital and Face-to-Face Semiotic Encounters
• 9 Expanding Marginality: Linguascaping a Transcarpathian Spa in South-Western Ukraine
• 10 Globalized Linguistic Resources at Work: A Case Study of a Local Supermarket in Finnish Lapland
• 11 Calypso Music, Globalization and Plurilingualism in the Dutch Caribbean
• 12 Consuming English in Rural China: Lookalike Language and the Semiotics of Aspiration
• List of Contributors
• Index