Previous Activities

28 August 2020, 10-12, Zoom
https://gu-se.zoom.us/j/68876476591

Chair: Dr. Giulia Messina Dahlberg

Dr. Rafael Lomeu Gomes, Doctoral Research Fellow
https://www.hf.uio.no/multiling/english/people/phd-fellows/rafaellg/

Faculty of Humanities
University of Oslo, Norway

Title: Family multilingualism through a ‘translingual lens’: Current theoretical orientations and challenges

Seminar reading:

1. Bagga-Gupta, Sangeeta and Giulia Messina Dahlberg. 2018. Meaning-making or Heterogeneity in the Areas of Language and Identity? The Case of Translanguaging and Nyanlända (Newly-arrived) across Time and Space, International Journal of Multilingualism, 15:4, 383-411, DOI: 10.1080/14790718.2018.1468446
2. Lomeu Gomes, Rafael. 2020. Talking Multilingual Families into Being: Language Practices and Ideologies of a Brazilian-Norwegian Family in Norway, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2020.1788037

Family multilingualism through a ‘translingual lens’: Current theoretical orientations and challenges

In the past five years or so, sociolinguistic approaches to family multilingualism have been marked by an ever-increasing diversity of theoretical orientations (Curdt-Christiansen 2018, Lanza and Lomeu Gomes 2020). Among these orientations, one that has received particular attention takes a practice-based perspective and draws on understandings of languages as fluid, dynamic, and localised (as opposed to abstract entities that can be neatly separated, counted, and labelled). Building on this discussion, in the first part of this seminar, I point to the ways in which the employment of a ‘translingual lens’ can be useful in making sense of the connections between language practices and ideologies of family members in multilingual houses. In particular, I present part of a three-year ethnographically oriented study undertaken in Oslo, Norway to discuss how monoglossic language ideologies may influence parent-child interactions in the home (Lomeu Gomes 2020). This analytical move may illuminate certain questions overlooked by current literature on child bilingualism. Yet, its employment risks reifying taken-for-granted understandings of language and losing its innovative explanatory potential (Bagga-Gupta and Messina Dahlberg 2018, Pennycook 2016). In the second, and final, part of the seminar, the following question is posed: to what extent can the employment of a ‘translingual lens’ be reconciled with the efforts of parents who aim at fostering practices that may lead to the maintenance of the so-called home language(s)? Rather than reaching definite answers, it is expected that the discussion in this seminar triggers reflections concerning the challenging task of doing socially relevant research that may inform practices in the home and in society at large.

References

Bagga-Gupta, Sangeeta and Giulia Messina Dahlberg. 2018. Meaning-making or Heterogeneity in the Areas of Language and Identity? The Case of Translanguaging and Nyanlända (Newly-arrived) across Time and Space, International Journal of Multilingualism, 15:4, 383-411, DOI: 10.1080/14790718.2018.1468446

Curdt-Christiansen, Xiao Lan. 2018. “Family Language Policy.” In The Oxford Handbook of Language Policy and Planning, edited by James Tollefson, and Miguel Perez-Milans, 420–441. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lanza, Elizabeth, and Rafael Lomeu Gomes. 2020. “Family Language Policy: Foundations, Theoretical Perspectives and Critical Approaches.” In Handbook of Home Language Maintenance and Development: Social and Affective Factors, edited by Susana A. Schalley and Susana A. Eisenchlas, 153–173. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Lomeu Gomes, Rafael. 2020. Talking Multilingual Families into Being: Language Practices and Ideologies of a Brazilian-Norwegian Family in Norway, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2020.1788037

Pennycook, Alastair. 2016. “Mobile Times, Mobile Terms: The Trans-super-poly-metro Movement.” In Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates, edited by Nikolas Coupland, 201– 216. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

9 October 2020, 10-12, Zoom:

https://ju-se.zoom.us/j/7262330985

Chair: Dr. Ylva Linderberg

Dr. David Gramling, Associate professor
https://german.arizona.edu/people/dgl

College of Humanities
The University of Arizona, USA

Title: What’s happening in Late Monolingualism?

The seminar will discuss multilingualism versus. translanguaging and individual monolingualism versus modern / late modern monolingualism as a historical frame.

Seminar reading:

Introduction and Chapter 1 from Dr. David Gramling’s forthcoming book The Invention of Multilingualism (available from susanne.smithberger@ju.se on request)

20 November 2020, 10-12, Zoom:

https://gu-se.zoom.us/j/69505888606

Chair: Dr. Giulia Messina Dahlberg

Dr. Alan Carneiro, Assistant professor
https://www.unifesp.br/campus/gua/docentes-letras/1647-alan-silvio-ribeiro-carneiro

Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas
Federal University of Sao Paulo, Brazil

Title: Analysing communicative repertoires and social change. The dynamics of language regimes in Timor-Leste

Seminar reading:

Agha, A. (2004). Registers of Language. In: DURANTI, A. (Ed.) A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology (p. 23-45), Oxford: Blackwell. (Available from susanne.smithberger@ju.se on request).

Analysing communicative repertoires and social change. The dynamics of language regimes in Timor-Leste

Timor-Leste is a small Southeast Asian country, which became independent in 2002, its Constitution recognizes two languages as official, Portuguese, which was chosen because of its history in the territory and Tetun, a standardized version of a local language variety. Beyond the official languages, the Constitution gives the status of working languages to English and Indonesian and of national languages to the two dozens of different local indigenous languages. In this multilingual setting, the use of these different languages and the multiple forms of transidiomatic practices - or in other words, transglossic practices (Cox and Assis-Peterson, 2007) - regulate social interactions in diverse social contexts. The main aim of this paper is to characterize hegemonic language ideologies about these languages and these different transglossic practices and their role in the mediation of communicative practices, the construction of linguistic hierarchies and social distinction in the country. This research is based on an ethnographic study about the local language in education policies, which had a focus on the role of Portuguese language teachers in their implementation. The data to be analysed are the metasociolinguistic stances (Jaffe, 2009) of these language teachers in life narratives and the way they position themselves in relation to the different local languages and transglossic practices. Their different stances index the ways the use of different languages are metapragmatically regulated (Wortham, 2001), structuring a specific local language regime (Kroskrity, 2000), but also to the metapragmatics of transglossic practices and the ways they can be part of new processes of enregisterment (Agha, 2004) and the construction of new language regimes. These dynamics of shift in language ideologies in the country points out for a process of social change in the value of languages, language practices and their speakers along the time and the ways that legitimate languages and legitimate speakers are or can be potentially constructed in these different timescales. If by one side, these language regimes can exclude as they are constantly reaffirming borders, by the other side, there are also possibilities for the subversion and redrawing of identities through the creative use of language resources.

References:

Agha, A. (2004). Registers of Language. In: DURANTI, A. (Ed.) A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology (p. 23-45), Oxford: Blackwell.

Assis-Peterson, A.A., & Cox., M. I. P. (2007). Transculturalidade e Transglossia: para compreender o fenômeno das fricções linguístico-culturais em sociedades contemporâneas sem nostalgia. In S. M. Bortoni-Ricardo & M. C. Cavalcanti (Eds.), Transculturalidade, Linguagem e Educação (pp. 23-43). Campinas, SP: Mercado de Letras.

Jaffe, A. (Ed.) (2009). Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kroskrity, P. (Ed.) (2000). Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities and Identities. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press.

Wortham, S. (2001). Language ideology and educational research. Linguistics & Education, 12, p. 253-259.

Alan Carneiro is an Assistant Professor of Language Policy and Planning at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) (2017 to the present). He was a lecturer of Portuguese language at the University of Cape Town (UCT), from 2015 to 2017. He holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics (2014), in the area of Multiculturalism, Multilingualism and Bilingual Education, from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). His thesis is related to the teaching of Portuguese in the multilingual setting of Timor-Leste, where he taught at Universidade Nacional Timor Lorosa’e.