1
Porosity of multilingual spaces
Amsterdam, August 2014
Master thesis Carmen Pérez del Pulgar Frowein (10863060)
carmenppulgar@gmail.com Supervisor: Virginie Mamadouh
Second reader: Nesrin El Ayadi
2 To my participants,
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1. INTRODUCTION ... 5
1.1 Introduction and preliminary research question ... 6
1.2 Language ideologies ... 10
1.2.1 Conceptions of language and multilingualism ... 13
1.2.2 Language and Culture ... 17
1.2.3 Language and Identity ... 20
1.2.4 Language and Space ... 23
1.3 Aim of Research and Research Question ... 26
2. METHODS... 29
2.1 Research design ... 29
2.2 Case selection ... 30
2.3 Operationalisation ... 33
2.4 Secondary data collection for the context ... 35
2.5 Linguistic biography and mental mapping ... 36
2.5.1 Recruitment of respondents for linguistic biography interview ... 38
2.5.2 Data analysis method ... 45
2.6 Limitations and external validity ... 46
2.7 Ethical considerations ... 48
3. CONTEXTUAL DOMINANT LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES ... 50
3.1 Cities and Countries of residence ... 50
3.1.1 Madrid and Spain ... 50
3.1.2 Amsterdam and the Netherlands ... 58
3.2 Countries of origin ... 64
3.2.1 France ... 64
3.2.2 Germany ... 68
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5. IMPORTANCE OF MOTHER TONGUE ... 89
6. REPRODUCTION OF DOMINANT LINGUISTIC IDEOLOGIES ... 98
6.1 Source of the norm and negotiation of linguistic rules ... 98
6.2 Hegemony of dominant language ideology ... 103
7. POROSITY OF PUBLIC SPACES ... 107
8. LANGUAGE AND INTEGRATION ... 116
9. CONCLUSION ... 122
10. BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 132
11. ANNEX 1 ... 136
5 1. INTRODUCTION
Increased migration flows have resulted in an ‘intensifying cultural contact such that linguistic diversity increasingly characterises both local and global contexts’ (Valentine et al. 2008: 384). This tendency is presumably challenging the long assumed Western imagined landscape of discrete monolingual, monocultural and monoidentitarian political spatial units - predominantly the ones of the nation states. This imagined homogeneity within the states regarding the language, culture and identity of its population will be analysed here by using the concept of language ideology, originally used in the field of Linguistic Anthropology (Bauman and Griggs 2003, Ahearn 2012). Language ideologies are ‘cultural presuppositions and metalinguistic notions that name, frame and evaluate linguistic practices, linking them to the political, moral and aesthetic positions of the speakers, and to the institutions that support those positions and practices’ (Gal 2006:163). Whether it is framed as a novel circumstance prompted by globalisation and increased migration flows or as a revival of an old phenomenon of ‘rampant multilingualism and inveterate hybridity in traditional communities, before European modernity suppressed this knowledge in order to develop systems of commonality based on categorisation, classification and codification’ (Canagarajah’s in Otsuji and Pennycook 2010:246) the dominant language ideology of the states is understood to be challenged by the actual heterogeneous practices of multilingual speakers. In any event, it can be agreed that ‘the ideological assertion that one language equals one culture or one nation ignores the complexity of multilingual societies’ (Blackledge and Pavlenko 2001:253).
It becomes more complex if the different approaches to language that are being deployed at diverse scales are acknowledged. At the international and national scales, the dominant language ideology seems to prevail, very often also in multilingual states. This means that the underlying representation of each nation is still very much linked to the claim and adscription of an idiosyncratic language, culture and identity, elements which in turn are meant to be univocally related. This is not always reproduced at the smaller scales of the city. Some cities’ linguistic landscape is becoming linguistically more varied due to the multilingual populations inhabiting in them; the impact these transformation have of the managerial spheres of the city is nevertheless dubious and most of the times varied. There are nevertheless some institutional practices which are committed with the
6 commodification of multilingualism as an asset to attract international tourism, investment and high skilled workers.
The supranational case of the European Union is characterised by the promotion and tolerance of multilingualism, although the link between language, culture, identity, and national territory is still addressing these practices. Language seems to be still very much territorialized (one language, one territory) across all these different administrative and political scales and the adaptation to an ever increasing multilingual world seems to be trapped; not really knowing if and how to transform its institutions from a monolingual paradigm to a multilingual one. At most, parallel monolingual systems have been put into place (e.g. European Union) but a considerable shift away from the modern state has not been jet been taken.
Language ideologies are, as its name indicates, ideologies. Which in turn are deployed to legitimate very different social and political enterprises. In this case it is argued that the described dominant language ideologies are still determining the lenses through which both, the phenomena of multilingualism and the challenge it poses to the traditional arrangement of political units, are being analysed and managed. Blackledge and Pavlenko (2001:97) state in this line that ‘ideologies of language are therefore not about language alone, but are always socially situated and tied to questions of identity and power in societies’. Far from being reduced to the realm of linguistics, the way persons think about language seems to be surprisingly political.
In this chapter an introduction to the topic of language ideologies and the literature on the topic will be developed and a preliminary research question will be explained. Also the term language ideology and its main components will be analysed.
1.1 Introduction and preliminary research question
As has been mentioned, despite – or rather because of – the growing (or awakening) multilingualism of people and places the naturalisation of monolingual spaces and people and their allegiances to a particular state on this basis is still very much present in the current discourses and practices of the nation states, in its institutions and in its assumption that this monolingual norm is being reproduced by its ‘people’. Far from
7 adapting to the existent multilingualism, nation states seem to be somehow reversing the situation and are increasingly framing the growing migrant multilingual population as posing a threat to the viability and identity of the nation state. Of course, it is posing a threat to the traditional modern idea of the monolingual state but the question remains; who has to adapt? The ball seems to be in migrant’s court and migrants are increasingly forced to learn the language of the country of residence. Some states have implemented language and culture test as part of their naturalisation rules and/or applications for residency. Whilst the justification of these policies is varied, they rely on the common assumption that there is a national language (and culture) that all citizens have to master in order to be able to belong and participate in society without threatening the cohesion of the state. It is straightforward to observe how this requisite is anchored in the dominant language ideology which in is based on both, egalitarian liberal values advocating for having a common language that enables everybody to participate in a Habermasian ideal public sphere and the Herderian idea that ‘it is the possession of its own distinctive language that constitutes the touchstone of a people or Volk the sine qua non of its national identity and spirit’ (Bauman and Griggs 2003:169, italics in original). This old discourse which was key in the conformation of the modern nation states is now being mobilised with somehow new ideological purposes that today, as in the past, create structures of inequality and exclusion from the public domain (Cameron 2013, Bauman and Griggs 2003, Wodak and Boukala 2015).
Against this backdrop, this research aims to contribute to the existent body of work that assumes that ‘globalisation results in a reshuffling of sociolinguistic and language ideological patterns to a degree hitherto not fully recognized’ (Collins and Slembrouck 2005:109). At the centre of this body of work is the exploration of alternative understandings of language and of the role these play in the conformation of socio-spatial relations. These works (e.g. Auer 2005, Blackledge and Pavlenko 2001, Busch 2013, Collins and Slembrouck 2005, Gal 2006, Koefoed and Simonsen 2011, Otsuji and Pennycook 2010, Pietikäinen and Kelly-Holmes 2013, Ricento 2014) try to reconsider the assumed isomorphic relation between one language, one culture, one identity and one territory at the core of the ‘imagined communities’ presented by Anderson (1983). The contribution of this research is not focused on reconsidering the dominant language ideologies per se or on abstractly suggesting theoretical alternatives. Rather, its focus is posed on understanding how migrants managing a multilingual life and experiencing very
8 much in person the effects of these language ideologies do rethink or take an alternative look at language and its relation to territory, identity and culture. Particularly the impact of two variables in the conformation of migrant’s language ideologies will be observed. These are first, the dominant language ideologies (both, the ones from their states of origin and the ones of the state/city of residence) and second, the experience of undergoing a migration.
This research is a study of the above mentioned characteristics which will be limited to the study of French and German migrants living in the cities of Amsterdam and Madrid. French and Germans are defined as persons born and raised in the mentioned countries. Data will be collected through the conduction of linguistic biographies, supported by the development of a mental map, and a literature and policy review. The first is to find out the actual language practices and ideologies of participants across scales. Also the ‘important events in life’ that suggest a major shift in participant’s way of thinking about language will be explored during the interviews. The policy and literature review will be aiming at a greater understanding of the dominant language ideologies of the single states and cities in order to be able to identify possible connections with migrant’s reported linguistic ideologies.
If alternative language ideologies are being conformed in the reported linguistic practices and ideologies of this sample of migrants, these will imply different conceptions of language and its link to culture, territory and space. The interesting fact lies in the hypothesis that, if alternative language ideologies are emerging and being performed by some persons (in the case here, French and Germans living in Madrid and Amsterdam) the hegemony of the dominant language ideology of the state is already diminishing and new ways of thinking about language and managing a territory are already on the horizon. Whether this is the case or not, it seems relevant in any event try to understand which factors affect both, the reproduction of dominant language ideologies and the ‘creation’ of alternative ones.
This research is considered to be academically relevant for being deep seated in current literature and debates about language, territoriality, social identity and citizenship. It is in turn regarded as geographically significant for its cause –globalisation – and the very object of inquiry –language and language ideologies – are considered to be so. The
9 apparent challenge to hegemonic language ideologies has been assumed to be triggered by globalisation, ‘a spatial process in which geographical and institutional relations of scale (e.g. local, regional, national, and transnational) are central to understanding the social order’ (Collins and Slembrouck 2005:191)). With regards to language, the perspective taken here acknowledges the spatial dimensions of language and language ideologies. For not only (spoken) language always happens in space but furthermore – following Raffestin’s relational approach of territoriality ‘as a set of relationships rooted in ties to the material environment and other people or groups, and mediated by existing techniques and representations’ (Murphy, 2012:162) – we understand language and language ideologies as one of these ties, mediated techniques and representations which produce and are produced by space.
It is also regarded as socially relevant, given the effects that the different language ideologies have on persons – and especially migrant’s – lives. The dominant monolingual, monocultural language ideology of the state, ‘encourages the stereotyping of individuals based on putative membership in definable collectives with ascribed characteristics; this process can then result in classification schemes that place individuals into categories that reduce them to monolingual members of monocultures’ (Ricento, 2014:365). This affects in turn their negotiation of identity, their perceived competences – ‘immigrants are not multilinguals, they are perpetual language learners’ (Collins and Slembrouck, 2005:192) – and inclusion in the society. Certain language ideologies imply diverse normative understandings of people’s and groups rights of belonging. Therefore they radically affect the notions of membership, citizenship and sense of belonging. In sum, the conditions of exclusion and inclusion: ‘a dominant ideology of homogeneity in heterogeneous societies raises questions of social justice, as such an ideology potentially excludes and discriminates against those who are either unable or unwilling to fit the norm’ (Blackledge and Pavlenko, 2001:243)
The response to these questions can also provide some insights regarding policy developments in relation to these issues. The challenge posed to the hegemonic language ideology is not happening merely in migrant’s perceptions and representations. It is experienced also by locals and institutions on a daily basis. As Bloomaert et al. (2005:201) explain, it ‘not only affects the multilingual repertoires of the immigrants (confronted with the task of acquiring the communicative resources of the autochthonous population), but also those of the autochthonous population (confronted with
linguistic-10 communicative processes and resources previously alien to their environment) and of local and national institutions (now facing administrative subjects with widely varying degrees of competence in the required communicative skills for administrative practice). It affects, in sum, the sociolinguistic economy of the place. Inspired by Bauman (2002: 104) statement that ‘the carrying power of a bridge is not the average strength of the pillars, but the strength of the weakest pillar’ (own translation) it can be assumed that by trying to find ways to include a greater tolerance of linguistic diversity into the ‘sociolinguistic economy of the place, not only of the individuals living in or using it’ (Bloomaert et al. 2005: 201), not only migrants, but the whole of the society inhabiting this spaces will be better off.
1.2 Language ideologies
Following the literature review, language ideologies have been here conceptualised as having four basic components which are closely intertwined and reinforcing. First, they entail a conception of the nature of language. As will be explored bellow, the understandings of the nature of language range from considering it a fixed and static set of grammatical rules and vocabulary – which for some is situated somewhere outside of human interaction – to consider language as a practice in constant flux, a pure tool of communication in which the importance is posed on the know how to do (Collins and Slembrouck 2005).
This in turn points to the second and third elements, which are the extent to which language is conceived to determine and/or express the identity and the worldview/ culture and thought of its speakers. With regards to culture, language ideologies imply a greater or lesser influence of a language – considering both its fixed/structural and fluid/perfomative elements – on one’s culture, worldview or even mental structure. Some advocate that language is determinant for the conformation of mental structures and others consider that language does not shape the culture and thought of its speaker. The relation between language and identity refers to the role that language is assumed to have in both, self-identification and identification by or of others. It fluctuates between suggestions that persons are what they talk; that is: subjects’ identity is expressed in how and in what language they use; and ideas of the relation between language use and negotiation of identity which are not that straightforward.
11 The last constituent of a language ideology is its understanding of the relation between space and language. We will review the interplay between spatial determinations and agency in language use.
Disaggregating the language ideologies into these elements will render the analysis of them easier, as these are at the core of the perceived disconnection between the dominant language ideologies and what is assumed to be ‘really’ experienced by persons. When Valentine et al. (2008:384) state that ‘while monolingual societies like the UK tend to assume that monolingualism is a natural state of affairs, to stigmatise second language users and to perceive bilingualism as exotic or unusual, young persons appear to perceive language diversity as a normal part of everyday life’, or when Collins and Slembrouck (2005) affirm that ‘there is a wide gap between commonly voiced representations of language, person and place and actual practices of language use, identity assertion, and spatial occupation’ (2005: 189), what seems to be essential to this perceived divergence is the tolerance/intolerance of difference with regards to language, identity and culture within a given (political) territory and in turn, the different notions of language combined with the understanding of the conformation of the culture, identity and spatial provenience and adequacy of its speakers.
It seems pertinent then to try to comprehend the origin of this hegemonic, and for some mislead, understanding of the relation between language, identity, culture and territory. Ahearn (2012: 126) explains that ‘the myth – a very powerful language ideology – of the necessity of “one nation, one language” goes back at least several hundred years to German philosophers such as Johann Gottfried Herder, but it is belied by the reality of so many multilingual nations and multilinguals around the world’. This dominant ideology is then situated at the core of the construction of European modernity (Auer, 2005). Nevertheless it would be difficult to make sense of the powerful reach of this ideology if only the ‘cultural nationalism’ of Herder is taken into account. As Mamadouh (2002:338) reminds, ‘nationalism and its motto “one language, one nation, one state” have much to do with egalitarianism in an ‘imagined community’. In this line it is helpful to consider Bauman and Griggs (2003) reading of the role of language in the construction of modernity. They argue that is was precisely the combination of Locke’s rationalisation and purification of a standard language –detached from culture, language and identity – which would enable the conformation of a universal and rational public discourse and Herder’s defence of vernacular languages as Volkgeist, ‘their linkage to the worldview
12 and ways of thinking and feeling of a people, and their essential role in maintaining national identity and cohesion’ (2003:191) which was so powerful. Bauman and Griggs (2003:195) conclude that Locke’s and Herder’s ‘respective visions of political community and national interest have in common a principled insistence on linguistic and discursive standardisation and regimes of purification: social and political cohesion demands one language, one metadiscursive order, one voice’. Hence, both philosophical traditions – although seemingly in contradiction – converge in the understanding of language as a fixed system distributed along countries in a discrete fashion. Locke conceived language as a set of signs linked to ideas and positioned it outside of human interaction as a matter of principle. Herder took a quiet different starting point and conceived language as emerging from society –and thus as purely within it – but rapidly advocated for its protection by educated (male) intellectuals (2003:193). This notion of languages as discrete standardised systems is thus based on the – somehow paradoxical – simultaneous claim of authenticity and universalism. The former refers to the claim that each language 'represents the spirit of its speakers in contrast to speakers of other standards’ and the latter refers to the ‘universality that comes from supposedly being the property of all citizens, unbiased because it is no one’s in particular, and hence represents a socially neutral, supposedly anonymous voice’ (Gal 2006: 166).
The dominant language ideology therefore focuses on the construction of one’s people’s identity (‘us’) at the expense of constructing the other (‘them’) as essentially different basing this distinction heavily on the different languages being spoken by each group. The four core elements identified above are present in this conception. This is: a conception of language as a fixed and discrete system; the association of language with identity and culture – as an isomorphic deterministic relation –, and the assignment of one language to one space – in the case of the nation state sometimes even as emerging from its bounded territory. Each nation state has a sui generis version of this ‘standard’ dominant ideology, but the common features described above are to a lesser or greater extend usually expressed. The specific cases of the states of France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, will be examined bellow by looking at the specific language ideologies that are being reproduced by these states. The reproduction of a certain language ideology by these nation states can potentially become hegemonic in a Gramscian sense and thus naturalised as the regular order of things. The importance of regarding these resides in part in Blackledge and Pavlenko’s (2001: 254) statement:
13 ‘Hegemonic ideologies create the conditions for symbolic domination in a range of institutional and everyday practices, including for example education, the workplace, the mass media, the law and politics. In the face of a hegemonic ideology of homogenization which is reproduced in these several contexts, it is not surprising that those who are subject to the “symbolic violence” of the monoglot standardisation appear to comply with their symbolic domination’.
Alternative language ideologies might be emerging from individual’s actual practices. It is worth mentioning that the relation between the four elements described above is not always straightforward. In addition to the intuitive extreme language ideologies ranging from the dominant described above: fixed mono-language, mono-culture, mono-identity and mono-space; to a very loose and fluid conception of language with no deterministic connection to identity, culture and space there are many other possible understandings of this relation (e.g. fixed conceptions of language as a structure that don’t necessarily draw a connection between language identity, culture and space or fluid conceptions of language that nevertheless equate hybrid language with hybrid identity (cf. Auer 2005) , etc.)
In the following sections, what have been understood as being the four components of the language ideologies: notion of language, language and culture, language and identity and language and space will be analysed more in detail.
1.2.1 Conceptions of language and multilingualism
When analysing the different conceptions of language that lie at the heart of diverse language ideologies, the debate is somehow reflected in the difference between ‘influential structuralist linguistic theories that are based on ideas of “languages” as “things” that reside separately and completely self-contained within the mind and/or outside of human interaction’ (Zentz 2015:69) and notions of language as a set of communicative capabilities that configure peoples’ ‘communicative repertoires’ (Zentz 2015:68).
14 The first is usually ascribed to the Saussure’s structural linguistics theory that introduced the idea of languages as static systems of interconnected units. Although this structuralism was subsequently challenged by the Chomskian idea of transformational and ‘creative’ grammar, both are limited to the study of languages as systems, with little or no attention to its actual practice. Ahearn (2012: 9) explains that ‘in both the Chomskian and Saussurean approaches, it is the abstract knowledge of a language system (competence or langue) that is of primary, or even sole, interest for a science of language; performance or parole is irrelevant’. This omission of the performance of language and to how language is actually being used as a means of communication has two main consequences for the topic analysed here: first, it clearly discards speaker’s capacity to shape the language through changing patterns of interaction and second, it leads to the implicit imagination of standard monolingual speakers and societies. It thus evokes what Brubaker (1998:274) names a ‘Modiglianesque vision of the social world’ in which the world is composed by ‘internally homogeneous and externally bounded collectivities’ (Brubaker 1998: 292). This metaphor is borrowed from Gellner’s (1983) comparison between the paintings of Kokoschka – representing the ancient1 world with loads of brushstrokes – and Modigliani – representing the modern world with monochromatic, clearly demarcated boundaries –. (Examples of both paintings can be seen in the cover). In this line, Ricento’s observation that
‘the theory of language as an autonomous system and the ‘normal’ ‘native’ speaker possessing an intact named ‘Language’ fit well with the idea of the nation state as a bounded entity unified in large measure by the sharing of a common (standard) national language and culture, even though with about 200 states and around 6-7000 named oral languages, all states are in fact linguistically and culturally diverse’. (Ricento, 2014: 632)
Thus, regarding languages as Modiglianesque fixed and bounded structures does not allows for the comprehension of the sociolinguistic phenomena that are assumed to be present in multilingual societies such as code-switching and code-mixing but as a sort of pathology of the speaker. At most, these theories would enable the consideration of
15 multilingualism as a patchwork of different discrete languages cohabiting in the same social space. Otsuji and Pennycook (2010:251) note that
‘current approaches to diversity and multilingualism frequently start with the enumerative strategy of counting languages and romanticising a plurality based on these putative language counts, a presupposition that ‘clear borders exist between languages, that they can be counted, catalogued with certainty and that, above all, their vitality can be promoted and their disappearance prevented’
and conclude that
‘by rendering diversity a quantitative question of language enumeration, such approaches overlook the qualitative question of where diversity lies while continuing to support those very language ideologies that we need to supersede’.
An alternative notion of language emerges affirming that ‘current conditions have put to the test the conceptualisations of languages as unified, bounded entities separate from the social world’ (Pietikäinen and Kelly-Holmes 2013). Instead of understanding language primarily as a linguistic structured form or ‘set of labels that can be placed on pre-existing concepts, objects, or relationships’ (Ahearn 2012: 8) language is seen as an inherently social, fluid and open for change repertoire whose main purpose is communication. It is the acknowledgment of this that inspires scholars like Gal (2006) to take a different perspective on language.
‘Instead of named languages as a point of departure, it approaches communication as social practice, encompassing all the linguistic variety in speakers’ linguistic repertoires, including sometimes trivial-seeming features of utterances: accent, intonation, lexical choice, register differences, contrasts in genre or variety. The variegated linguistic forms in any speaker’s linguistic repertoire are seen to work in opposition to forces of standardisation’ (Gal, 2006:165).
Conceiving language as a social practice or repertoire whose primary goal is communication enables the inclusion of hybrid and mixed daily forms of speaking as legitimate languages. Thus, it leaves aside the consideration of official standard language
16 speakers as having ‘greater moral and intellectual worth than speakers of unofficial languages or nonstandard varieties’ (Blackledge and Pavlenko 2001:247).
Whilst referring to discrete standard languages when discussing language is almost inescapable – ‘language labels are essential points of social and political reference’ (Zentz 2015: 70) – an inquiry centred on how language and communication is being actually performed and not so much on what constitutes a standard language is necessary to better grasp what speaking actually does; to what extend it actually contributes to the negotiation of identity, conformation of worldviews and production of space. Most importantly, this notion of language works against the naturalisation of monolingualism and monolingual places. In a sort of reaffirmation of a Kokoschkan vision of the social world, it is perceived that,
‘the language repertoire of individuals living in heteroglossic communities (…) has shown that complex patterns of language mixing and code switching are not unusual, and do not comport with common sense (or some theoretical) views about “normal” linguistic competence. In fact, such “ways of doing language”, rather than aberrations from the “norm”, are widely attested throughout the world’ (Ricento, 2014: 362)
As was mentioned before, these ideas try to escape the framing of multilingualism in quantitative terms as the acquisition of many standard languages that are somehow clearly separated in individual’s minds and usages. Pietikäinen and Kelly-Holmes acknowledge the difficulty of trying to escape from a fixed conception of language when observing that language practices ‘(...) on the one hand, challenge and disregard the centrist ideology and the normativity of parallel monolingualism, whilst, on the other hand, relying on it as a necessary resource’ (2013:2). While the standard languages traditionally studied are understood to be spoken by ideal speakers, multilingual speakers are assumed to perform varieties which go beyond these boundaries, creating new grammars, vocabularies and repertoires of interaction which although mainly fluid and in constant change include some fixed ingredients: pure fluidity would presumably invalidate the very goal of linguistics interaction which is communication. Otsuji and Pennycook (2010: 244) introduce the concept of metrolingualism to include this fluid-fixed conception, suggesting that:
17 ‘it is important not to construe fixity and fluidity as dichotomous, or even as opposite ends of a spectrum, but rather to view them as symbiotically (re)constituting each other. In talking of metrolingualism, therefore we also intend to address the ways in which any struggle around new language, culture and identity inevitably confronts the fixed traditions of place and being’.
1.2.2 Language and Culture
The concept of culture which will be used here refers to the set of knowledge, lifestyles and traditions from where persons build their interpretative frameworks of reality. It refers to people’s mental structures to interpret life events. In the particular case of language ideologies the interest in culture is limited to the extent to which language is conceived to influence the speaker’s worldview and culture, and the extent to which language and culture are identified as almost being the same thing. These conceptions are connected to but not determined by the different notions of language explained above. Intuitively, a structured and fixed approach to language seems to be more prone to the configuration of deterministic conceptions in which a specific structure and elements of a language are assumed to determine the speaker’s thought and perception of the world. Nevertheless, as will be reviewed bellow there are also fluid conceptions of language that draw strong connections between language and culture as well as fixed notions of language that deny this link.
Processes of standardisation and unification of languages went hand by hand with the nation building process (Anderson 1987). There is an indisputable role of communication and egalitarianism in the unification of a language across a political territory as well as the belief that the bond of a common language helps to create unity, a common imaginary. Nevertheless, there are different ways of assuming this connection. Anderson (1987) assumed that a common language enabled the access to common cultural and social goods, which in turn created a common imaginary. There is another version of this, which relies rather in language per se creating certain mental structures which end up bonding a community. This presumed impact that the operating language has on the structure and worldview of the speakers is explained by Bourdieu (1991) when he describes how this idea was also present in the building of a ‘new’ nation in times of the French Revolution:
18 ‘The imposition of the legitimate language in opposition to the dialects and patois was an integral part of the political strategies aimed at perpetuating the gains of the Revolution through the production and the reproduction of the “new” man…the conflict between the French of the revolutionary intelligentsia and the dialects or patois was a struggle for symbolic power in which what was at stake was the formation and re-formation of mental structures’ (Bourdieu 1991:47-48).
Salzmann (2004) explains that there are strong and weak versions of this understanding. The former would assume that the ‘grammatical categories of a language determine how its speakers perceive the world around them’ and the latter that ‘there is simply some sort of correlation between a language and its speakers’ worldview (the philosophical dimension of a society’s culture)’ (Salzmann, 2004: 50). Ahearn (2012: 65) states Whorf’s (1956) assertion with regards to the relation between culture and language: ‘in this partnership the nature of the language is the factor that limits free plasticity and rigidifies channels of development in the more automatic way’, and notes that many studies echo this assessment. Also in studies that aim to a broader public, a deterministic vision of language is flourishing. Some of the endless examples are Keith Chen’s research presentation Could your language affect your ability to save money?2 presented in the popular TED talks, Athanasopoulos et al. (2015) study of the impact of different languages on the behaviour of their speakers (2015: 518) which was reviewed in the online journal The Conversation3, Grommen’s article in De Morgen In een andere taal
2 http://www.ted.com/talks/keith_chen_could_your_language_affect_your_ability_to_save_money (last
access 16/08/2015),
Chen suggests that futureless language speakers, in which there is no different grammatical form for expressing actions in the future, (e.g. Dutch present form: ‘het regent’ and future form: ‘morgen regent het’) are more connected to their future and thus tend to save more than speakers of futured languages (e.g. English present from: ‘it rains’ and future form: ‘it will rain’) that are assumed to have a more distant feeling towards the future and thus show lower saving rates. There is a futured formulation in Dutch (het zal morgen regenen) but it is true that it is not often used.
3 http://theconversation.com/how-the-language-you-speak-changes-your-view-of-the-world-40721 (last
access 16/08/2015),
Athanasopoulos et al. (2015) conclude that speaking different languages, resulted in different worldviews, for the case of German and English speakers. The findings point that speaking in German prompts speakers to have a more holistic view of the event, whilst doing it in English would incite an on the action focused understandings of the event
19 wordt u ook een ander mens 4 or Johnson’s article in The Economist Do different
languages confer different personalities?5. The aim here moves away from discussing
these specific researches and is focused on describing the sort of rationales about the impact of language in culture that are available. Despite the growing interest in the kind of arguments presented above which point to a very deterministic vision of language, Ahearn (2012) states that,
‘linguistic anthropologist working in this area maintain that the influence of language on culture and thought is more likely to be predispositional rather than determinative –in other words, the particular language you speak might predispose you to view the world a certain way, but it will not prevent you from challenging that view’ (italics in original). (Ahearn 2012: 65)
A very determinist vision of language on speaker’s worldview implies a challenge to human agency which is certainly difficult to accept and this promotes more moderate views on the power of language to change individual’s way of thinking.
‘Language might facilitate certain types of thinking and could provide a valuable way of understanding unconscious patterns of culture and thought, [Franz] Boas declared, but it would not prevent people from thinking in a way that differed from the categories presented most conveniently in their language’ (Ahearn 2012:67)
Authors like Salzmann (2004) think that the assumption that individuals who speak different languages have different cultures and that ‘therefore the boundaries between different societies coincide with lines separating mutually unintelligible languages’ (2004: 170) is far too simplistic. What determines culture is rather the set of communicative codes and repertoires of a given group (Salzman 2004: 170). This indicates that, not only fixed notions of language establish deterministic or predispositional relations between language and culture: also fluid conception of language as a set of communicative repertoires can lead to a similar conclusion. That is,
4 http://www.demorgen.be/wetenschap/in-een-andere-taal-wordt-u-ook-een-ander-mens-a2302498/ (last
access 16/08/2015)
20 the way language is used and embodied might affect, or be informed by speaker’s culture and worldview.
All in all, these different understanding of the relation between language and culture are likely to impact persons prejudices of ‘what categories of person speak what languages and, upon using a given language, what communities they stand for, what kinds of competences non-natives are likely to have and what problems they pose for a normatively monolingual speaker’ (Collins and Slembrouck 2005:192). Social and mental spaces are expected to be (re)produced differently depending on these different perceptions. These perceptions are basically based on stereotypes which are constantly created in order to make sense of the world around us. The interest here relies then in the study of the extent to which these stereotypes are being reproduced and justified by relying on the spoken or native language of a person.
1.2.3 Language and Identity
Social identity will be understood as the features of people or groups that characterize them vis a vis others. The notion taken here is relational, understood as being constantly being made and contested by oneself – ‘reflective positioning’– and others – ‘interactive positioning’ (Blackledge and Pavlenko 2001:249) – through multiple encounters. Koefoed and Simonsen (2011: 335) refer to it as ‘the internal and external moments of the dialectic of identification: how we identify ourselves, how others identify us and the ongoing interplay of these in processes of social identification’.
Blackledge and Pavlenko (2001) question the pillars of traditional approaches to the understanding of the negotiation of identity in linguistic interaction in the field of variationist socio-linguistics and sociopsychological paradigms. The first, for assuming that ‘people are taken to express –rather than negotiate-identities’ (2001: 244) and the second, for the ‘monolingual and monocultural bias underlying sociopsychological approaches’ (2001:244) which renders its use for the study of multilingual societies problematic. If these theories assume that the already existing social structure (of a monolingual society) is simply expressed in talk, the application of these theories to multilingual societies very easily slippers into the assumption of a direct correlation between a world social structure composed by collective representations of national identities which are just reflected in the language of the speaker.
21 ‘Related to this essential equation of one language with one “people” is an insistence on the significance of the “mother tongue” as the only authentic language of a speaker, as if only the language learned at the mother’s knee could convey the true self of a speaker’ (Blackledge and Pavlenko 2001:246) In the literature that attempts to analyse the role of language in the negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts, two factors appear to be crucial. First, the limitation of the concept of ‘negotiation’ of identity in some instances has to be taken into account as power relations are into play and it certainly is not always possible for every speaker to choose the preferred language use. Different environments attribute very different levels of agency to multilingual individuals.
‘It is important to recognize the limitations of the notion of “negotiation of identities” and to distinguish between instances of positioning where the power differential is such that resistance is impossible, instances of positioning which evoke resistance, and instances of negotiation where the interlocutors or the negotiating parties may enjoy a relatively equal power balance’. (Blackledge and Pavlenko 2001: 250)
In situations where resistance is impossible, e.g. when the preferably spoken language (variety) of a person cannot be understood by anyone, to study the role that the person’s choice and use of language play in the negotiations of its identity would make little sense. Nevertheless this person might be performing identity in the eyes of its audience. Gal (2006: 165) explains these possible ‘contradictions created by standard ideology for non-elite speakers whose practices diverge from the ideals of standardisation, but who nevertheless find themselves judged by those ideals’. In the case of migrants Ricento (2014:361) notes that ‘throughout life, a person’s social status can be greatly affected when they migrate and relocate to other places, where their identities and linguistic repertoires may lead to recategorisation and often diminution of their personhood in their new environment’. Also specific language use can eventually be interpreted as a contestation or resistance towards a given linguistic homogeneity or as a voluntary way of performing identity and it can be wrongly done so if the power relations and the agency possibilities of the speakers are not taken into account.
The dominant language ideologies assume that persons express identity through talk in a unidirectional and straightforward way: speaking one standard language is the expression
22 of a standard homogeneous identity. By speaking one language or another one is positioned in a certain social category. Ahearn (2012: 125) affirms that
‘in multilingual communities, the languages, dialects, or registers that are spoken are often linked to social hierarchies. In other words, linguistic practices index status, and language ideologies develop as a result’.
There is indeed little negotiation in this statement. As true as this lack of agency might be in some instances where the speaker has apparently no power to decide which language to speak or how to perform it, this hegemony of the dominant language ideology is never absolute or total. In addition there are many instances in which a possibility for resistance or even an almost equal relation may exist between the speakers. A context and place sensitive analysis of the negotiation of identity through language use seems pertinent then in order to make sense of the meaning – both, for the performer and its audience – that patterns like language switching, language omissions or code mixing have in the daily negotiations of identities. Bloomaert et al. (2005: 202) refer to this dynamic with the concept of negotiation and repair, meaning that ‘these should be understood as including the common processes in everyday conversation in which participants adjust what they say in light of expectations and responses.’ This means that both, language use and also identification of others might change after repeated experiences of frustrated communications of identity. Multilinguals that often experience this frustrated negotiation of identity and putative adscription of identity might resist against a traditional way of identifying others when interpreting the identity of third parties.
The second dimension which seems pertinent to acknowledge points to the question: what is exactly expected to have a role in the negotiation of identity? Some authors look at the standard language being deployed (e.g. Valentine et al. 2008) whilst others look at code switching/mixing practice as connected to the production of identity (e.g. Auer 2005), at the conversational structure (e.g. Cashman 2005), or at indexical signals in talk (e.g. Gal 2006). The importance of these different language uses will be highly determined by the context and possibilities offered by the speaker, its audience and the place in which these are situated. In this context Auer (2005: 403) warns us nevertheless against the simplistic switch towards a ‘rash equation of “hybrid” language use with
23 “hybrid” social identity; such an equation may be as essentialist as that of nation and language which underlies traditional European language ideologies’.
1.2.4 Language and Space
Space is transversal to the whole analysis undertaken above and a central category when it comes to the analysis of language and language ideologies as ‘every instance of human communication has an intrinsic spatiality to it as well as an intrinsic temporality’ (Bloomaert et al. 2005: 203). First of all, spoken language is inevitably always situated somewhere in space. In turn, every of these locations or spaces generally carry a set of limits with regards to what is possible in terms of linguistic performance within its borders. This linguistic rules and norms are informed by a set of discourses and practices that refer to different scales. In the scales that will be taken into account here, two dimensions have to be considered: the specific linguistic practices that are taking place and are common in a specific place (e.g. a café, a home, etc.) and the discourses, values and judgements attached to these uses of language, that generally are conformed in a bigger scale (e.g. the city, or the nation). Practices and representations at different scales influence each other: ‘the notion of scale precisely emphasizes the idea that spaces are ordered and organized in relation to one another, stratified and layered, with processes belonging to one scale entering processes at another scale’ (Bloomaert et al. 2005:203). Dominant language ideologies usually generate a monolingual norm in spaces and places, in which by using a different language one would be expected to be ‘out of place’. These rules and norms which build a so called linguistic hegemony of the place (Valentine et al. 2008) are never total and indeed malleable to some extent. Practices of communication can affect these and here is where agency comes into play. Bloomaert et al. (2005: 211) assume that ‘agency results from the interplay between peoples situated intentions and the way the environment imposes particular regimes of language’. By performing a specific language use, new spaces are also created. Space and linguistic practices are thus constantly producing and reinforcing each other. ‘Spaces might shape hegemonic communicative practices but language can also (re)order space’ (Valentine et al. 2008:385). It is worth to notice though, that not all spaces and places are equally flexible and that as a result not all speakers’ linguistic resources are similarly valued in all regimes of language.
24 ‘People have varying language abilities –repertoires and skills with languages –but (that) the function and value of those repertoires and skills change as the space of language contact changes’ (Bloomaert et al. 2005:211).
These linguistic regimes organised by space potentially generate actual exclusions and inclusions, outsiders and insiders. As Collins and Slembrouck (2005:191) note, ‘grappling with questions of space forces us to confront the obverse of belonging, that of displacedness, of semiotic forms and meaning making practices “out of place”’. This exclusion/inclusion dynamic is not only imposed by space but also by the use of a certain set of communicative practices (including different standard languages, but also code-mixing practices, accents, etc.). Spaces are created by these practices in which certain language habits might be valued and others not.
‘Encounters between embodied others hence involve spatial negotiations around the constitution of spaces of familiarity and strangeness and the boundaries and bridges involved in this constitution’. (Koefoed and Simonsen, 2011:346)
The possibility to be included in spaces where linguistic rules are not flexible requires the possession of and adaptation to the linguistic abilities valued by the linguistic regime at issue: ‘how people use language is strongly influenced by the situation in which they find themselves’ (Bloomaert et al. 2005: 205). Also, how people use language strongly influences the environment in which it is performed.
This points to an approach to the spatiality of language which resembles Raffestin’s relational approach to territoriality viewed as a ‘set of relationships rooted in ties to the material environment and other people or groups, and mediated by existing techniques and representations’ (Murphy 2012: 162). Bordered linguistic spaces emerge as an outcome of these relationships, ‘contacts and practices’ (Collins and Slembrouck 2005: 191) or ‘embodied encounters’ (Koefoed and Simonsen, 2011:346). These approaches to the generation of linguistic borders seem to endow speakers with considerable agency and are extensively useful for the understanding of daily encounters and production of spaces and places. Nevertheless, not all linguistic territories, ‘as a product of social positioning and of sharing representations of space, which results in the construction of territoriality’ (Bush 2013:199) are equally powerful and enduring in time.
25 ‘Some sociospatial processes have a greater degree of functional and perceptual fixity across time than others. No sociospatial process is ever truly fixed, of course, since fluidity and change are always present. But not all processes are equally fluid or changeable because institutional arrangements promoting fixity develop in their wake constellations of policies, approaches to political economy, and sets of territorial relationships that endure over time and shape the ways processes and events unfold’(Murphy 2012:167)
The nation state is such a perdurable and sticky territory and the imagined monolingualism within it is not easily resisted. A relational approach to the negotiation of the linguistic use within this space would thus often elude the greater hegemony of the statist monolingualism vis a vis other suggested and/ or practiced linguistic practices. It is in this context that Bloomaert et al. (2005:203) stimulate to consider that the context has effects on ‘what people can or cannot do (it legitimizes some forms of behaviours while disqualifying or constraining other forms)’, ‘the value and function of their sociolinguistic repertoires’ and ‘their identities, both self-constructed (inhabited) and ascribed by others’. In hegemonic monolingual contexts agency might be very constrained. In sticky spaces such as the monolingual imagined states, the space rules and norms can impact person’s linguistic practices greatly.
Summing up, whilst a relational approach will be used to analyse the daily micro encounters of multilingual people and its capacity to create spaces, the larger hegemony of the state shall not be omitted. For the scale of the state multilingualism will be conceived as characteristic of the space. That is the possibilities that ‘the environment, as structured determination and interactional emergence, enables and disables them to deploy’ (Bloomaert et al. 2005: 213) rather than a competence of the speaker.
Through the reported practices of the participants it is expected to better understand the different linguistic practices in environments where the presence of the hegemonic linguistic regime of the state is strong, and environments in which its impact is weaker and a greater capacity to determine their preferred language use exists (e.g. sometimes at home). It is interesting to observe whether in these places they reproduce the dominant national monolingual norm or if different rules, norms and practices take place.
The term porosity will be used in order to describe the extent to which languages are conceived and used in these spaces as different and separated systems which should not
26 be used at the same time (non-porosity) or if as opposed to that the space is porous and tolerates less aware uses of language which somehow let go the control of the speaker over using only a single standard code at a time; letting the speaker just deploy its entire linguistic repertoire. Also in non-porous spaces the establishment of connections between one language and a certain mental system or culture is more likely than in porous spaces, where language tends to be conceived as a tool for communication. Taking up the metaphor used by Gellner (1983) again, porous spaces would resemble a Kokoschkan world, while non-porous spaces would be aligned with a Modigliani-like view on the linguistic variety: multilingualism conceived in quantitative terms and languages kept alongside but separated.
The literature reviewed indicates that language performance is informed by the crossover of language ideologies working at different scales which imply different readings and conceptions of what a language is, how it is determined by and determines culture, how it is deployed in the negotiation of identities and how its use is limited by space and in turn delimits spatial arrangements. These different conceptions or ideas contribute to the conformation of a ‘system of thought’ about languages which will be referred to as the discourse. Not only does this discourse informs the linguistic practice of a person, but the very practice has the ability to contribute to the conformation of language ideologies and discourses about languages. This interplay between practice and discourse, was described similarly by Bourdieu (1991) referring to the concept of habitus as a ‘set of dispositions which incline agents to act and react in certain ways. The dispositions generate practices, perceptions and attitudes which are “regular” without being consciously co-ordinated or governed by any “rule”’ (Bourdieu 1991:12). The discourses and practices shaping this habitus will be analysed in order to better understand to what extent the dominant language ideologies are being challenged or reproduced both, in their daily (reported) practices and in their way of understanding the notion and meaning of language.
1.3 Aim of Research and Research Question
The aim of this research is to understand the language ideologies of participants –German and French migrants living in the cities of Madrid and Amsterdam –. That is, how they understand language and its relation to territory, identity and culture. Particularly the
27 impact of two variables in the conformation of migrant’s language ideologies – how they use and think about language – will be analyzed. The first variable is the dominant language ideology of both, their state of origin and the state/city where they are currently living, which have been labelled contextual dominant language ideologies. The second variable is the experience of migration.
In order to be able to answer the research question, migrants language uses and intrinsic rules and norms across scales will be first analyzed and the implicit notions of language, culture, identity and territory across these scales will be considered. Also, the impact of the dominant language idoleogies on the participants language uses will be considered. Finally recurrent episodes in migrant’s lives – in addition to the experience of migration – that are perceived as having a great impact on their language ideologies will be included in the analisis as they emerge form the interviews.
Research Question
To what extent do the contextual dominant language ideologies and the experience of migration inform the language ideologies of the migrants?
Sub-questions
What do migrants report about their language uses across different scales and what implicit assumptions about the relation between language, culture, identity and space do these suggest?
How do the dominant language ideologies of their ‘home’ and ‘host’ countries influence migrants’ actual uses of language?
Are there emerging and recurrent episodes in migrant’s lives – such as the very experience of migration – that are perceived as having a greater impact on their way of thinking about language?
28 In the following, the research design and methodology used for this research will be explained in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 will revise the key elements that have been understood to shape the dominant language ideologies of the two cities and two states that have been chosen for this study. In Chapter 4-8 different findings will be presented and analysed. Chapter 4 will draw on the concept of the porosity of spaces and on the factors determining its appearance. Chapter 5 will revise the common importance of the mother tongue among participants and investigate possible explanatory factors. Chapter 6 will study the micro context of the home and the working place and the extent to which participants convey to the dominant language ideology of the state within these spaces. Chapter 7 will focus on the public spaces of the cities of residence and Chapter 8 will focus on the relation between the learning of the language and the integration into a community. Conclusions will be drawn in Chapter 9. The translations of all the quotes from participants are to be found in Annex 2 (Translations).
29 2. METHODS
2.1 Research design
This research is a comparative analysis in which the impact on the conformation of migrant’s language ideologies of the dominant language ideologies of the ‘home’ and ‘host’ countries and cities are going to be compared to the impact of the participant’s experience of migration. The case of French and German nationals living in the cities of Amsterdam and Madrid are analysed. (Figure 1 What, Where? And Who?)
Figure 1. Visualisation of research design
In addition to the literature review carried out above, additional secondary and primary data collection needs to be undertaken in order to be able to answer the research questions for the cases of German and French migrants living in the cities of Madrid and Amsterdam.
The dominant language ideologies of the migrant’s countries of origin (Germany and France) as well as the ones of the destinations states (Spain and the Netherlands) and
30 cities (Madrid and Amsterdam) have been analysed through secondary data investigation (Figure 1 How? Secondary Data collection). The aim was to understand the basis of the dominant language ideologies in order to be able to draw connections between these and participant’s uses and notions of language. A clearer vision of these dominant language ideologies enabled the identification of some of its constitutive elements in participant’s narratives.
Also linguistic biographies were undertaken supported by a mental map. The aim was to get a first hand description of the actual practices and notions of language across scales of the selected participants, to see what live events – including the experience of migration – might have determine the most their notions of language and to what extend these notions where informed by the linguistic hegemonies of their countries of origin and their cities/countries of residence (Figure 1 How? Primary data collection).
2.2 Case selection
The sample was defined as German and French individuals, meaning particularly people that were born and raised in Germany or France and that have been living in Madrid or in Amsterdam for at least one and a half years.
The selection of the two cities of current residence of the participants –Madrid and Amsterdam – is based on the coupled assertions of Otsuji and Pennycook (2010:245) that ‘metrolingualism … is a product typically of modern, urban, interaction’ and of Bloomaert et al. (2005) assertion that ‘multilingualism is not what individuals have and don’t have, but the environment, as structured determinations and interactional emergence, enables or disables’ (Bloomaert et al. 2005: 197). The location of study was decided to be a city for the former –metrolingualism is supposed to be an urban phenomenon- and the cities of Madrid and Amsterdam in particular for the latter. Both cities resulted to have a highly multilingual language use in the internet platform ‘Twitter’ in a preliminary study carried out in February 2015 in which the language diversity of geocoded tweets published in the time laps between the 31st of January and the 7th of February 2015 was tracked and mapped (Annex 1). This indicator does not necessarily indicates a similarly high level of multilingual practices in real ‘on site’ life, but as a starting point it points to Madrid and Amsterdam as environments that potentially enable multi or metrolingual practices. The outcome of the map (Annex 1) nevertheless appeared
31 counterintuitive to the researcher’s expectations and thus more interesting. The researcher’s perception is that Amsterdam is a more multilingual – or at least English speaking – city than Madrid and that, while in the first it is possible to get along, interact and participate in the city without learning Dutch, this is not possible in the second without learning Spanish. The researcher’s perceptions are nevertheless just an explanation of an additional reason for finally selecting these cities. Equally relevant are the pragmatic reasons of the selection of these two cities; the researcher residence is Amsterdam and Madrid its city of origin. The convenience of an already established network and background information cannot be dismissed.
Additionally, the states in which the cities of Madrid an Amsterdam are located present also similarities and differences which are expected to have an impact on migrant’s limitations, possibilities and strategies to cope with the host societies, especially with regards to their linguistic practices. Both states are officially multilingual (as opposed to the countries of origin of Germany and France) with the Netherlands recognising Frisian, English and Papiamento as co-official languages recognised in the provinces of Friesland (Frisian), in the special municipalities of Saba and Sint Eustatius in the Dutch Caribbean/ BES Islands (English) and in the special municipality of Bonaire (Papiamento); in addition to Dutch. Spain recognising Catalan, Valencian, Euskera and Galician in the respective autonomous communities of Catalonia, Valencian Community, Basque Country and Galicia, in addition to Castilian (Spanish). Spain is a state of autonomies (a quasi-federal state) and the Netherlands is a decentralised unitary state. Their migration history and migration, linguistic and educational policies differ considerably and this is expected to have effects on migrant’s strategy for coping with the new linguistic practices of the ‘host’ country, the importance of language proficiency in this endeavour and thus the impact of the new context on the (re)conformation of their language ideologies.
The chosen migrant’s states of origin have been selected due to the preliminary assumption –confirmed by the secondary data analysis hereafter – that there are major differences between the respective linguistic uses and dominant ideologies of these states. While both, France and Germany, are officially monolingual states and both have been longstanding immigration countries; their migration, linguistic and educational policies differ considerably. In addition, Germany is a federal state, whilst France is a Unitarian state. Although this does not ensure great differences in their respective dominant
32 language ideologies, a federal system certainly enables greater alterations between the institutionalised linguistic practices across its territory than a Unitarian one. One of the striking differences relates to the educational system and the treatment of dialects and minority languages. Whilst in Germany the Educational System is a competence granted to the Länder, which in turn tend to cultivate and promote linguistic production and permission of regional dialects, in France it is the centralised Ministry of Education who has the competence. Linguistic policy in France posed a strong emphasis on the protection of French linguistic heritage as can be derived from its presence not only in the Constitution but further by the Toubon Law of 1994, prescribing the use of French in most of the public contexts such as advertisements, workplaces, commercial contracts, communications, government financed schools, etc.6 The institutional arrangement differences between France and Germany will be further developed bellow; nevertheless it is important to note that the cases where chosen for considering that these major differences could have an impact on migrants language ideologies in the case that the impact of the national dominant language ideologies proves relevant.
The unit of analysis is going to be the individual migrant given that the focus of the research is on understanding individual language ideologies, uses and feelings/experiences and the extent to which these are informed by contextual dominant language ideologies and the experience of migration. Individual migrants are considered to be an interesting unit of analysis mainly for two reasons: First because of the different context in which they are put in and for the varied dominant contextual language ideologies to which they are exposed. Second because migrants are generally ‘painfully self-conscious of their speech’ (Gal, 2006:196) as they are encountered with different language (varieties) and spatial linguistic regimes whose norms and rules they do not necessarily control upon arrival. This experience of migration is expected to be a major drive of change in their respective language ideologies.
