From bilingualism to heteroglossia:
changing paradigms in sociolinguistic research
Presentation at the seminar “Gränser förr och nu”, Helsinki 25/10/2010
Brigitta Busch, University of Vienna
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Brigitta Busch, Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna
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I. The territorial approach: languages as categories
II. The speaking subject: experiencing language and the representation
of heteroglossic repertoires
III. Heteroglossic spaces: linguistic practices and local language
regimes
Brigitta Busch, University of Vienna
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The territorial approach: languages as categories
Linguistic minorities in different situations:
•minorities with a kin state - without a kin state
•minorities within one single state - in several states
•minorities with in a compact settlement area - in dispersed settlement
•with recognized status - without official status
•forming regionally/locally a majority
• ...
Brigitta Busch, University of Vienna
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The territorial approach: languages as categories
European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (Art. 1 a and b)
a."regional or minority languages" means languages that are:
i. traditionally used within a given territory of a State by nationals of that
State who form a group numerically smaller than the rest of the State's
population; and
ii. different from the official language(s) of that State;
a."territory in which the regional or minority language is used" means the geographical
area in which the said language is the mode of expression of a number of people justifying
the adoption of the various protective and promotional measures provided for in this
Charter;
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Minority with a kin state: the Austro-Slovenian border region
1918
drawing of the border → minorities on either side; two centres
with their standard; the option of Windisch as a ‘mixed’ dialect
1945
border between two different ideological systems; dialects seen
as ‘Carinthian’, standard as nationalist and communist
1980s
increasing transborder contacts, economic interests, increasing
number of learners of Slovenian
1990s
arrival of refugees from former Yugoslavia, later also from other
countries, linguistic diversification
2004
Slovenia joins the EU; German and Slovenian official languages
in the EU (Schengen border until 2007)
Brigitta Busch, University of Vienna
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Decreasing number of speakers - increasing number of learners
children in bilingual classes
number of speakers
Percentage
0% - 5%
05% - 10%
10% - 20%
20% - 30%
>30%
Census 2001
year
1910
66.463
1934
24.857
1939
43.179
1951
42.095
1981
16.552
2001
12.554
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Territorial concept
• linked to the notion of a (homogenous) autochthonous ethnic group
• speakers within this group divided into a core and a marginal circle
• orientation towards two competing centres (conflict of loyalty)
– from the perspective of the centres: suspicion of linguistic equivocation
undermining the monolingual paradigm; outpost defending (cultural / territorial)
claims based on linguistic belonging
– from the perspective of the periphery: fear of being monopolized and abandoned by
the respective centres
• on the linguistic level:
– languages seen as bounded units (language ideologies)
– bilingualism seen as ‘additive monolingualism’
– dichotomy pure - impure
– the ideal of the unattainable native speaker across the border in the ‘motherland’
– deficit oriented view
Brigitta Busch, University of Vienna
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Deterritorialisation (language under the condition of globalisation)
• speakers on the move:
– migration and mobility also as a temporary phenomenon
– multiple local affiliations,
– translocal links ...
• minority language speakers beyond the ‘bilingual area’ (especially in urban centres)
• linguistic diversification of the ‘bilingual area’
• ‘new’ speakers of minority languages (‘non-ethnic’)
Brigitta Busch, University of Vienna
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I. The speaking subject: experiencing language and the representation of
heteroglossic repertoires
Multimodal biographic approach:
de-constructing preconceived
linguistic categories and dichotomies
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Language portrait: exploring the entire linguistic repertoire as a resource
One leg is German (my father) and one leg is
Slovenian (my mother), these are the two pillars. In
these there is also the Selsko (Slovenian) dialect and
the Carinthian dialect and these are actually more
important.
In my head German prevails, because in Carinthia
almost everything is German, the media and so on.
Therefore I mainly think in German, unfortunately.
On my shoulders I have Italien and English (learnt in
school). This rucksack I can unpack when I need it,
but it is also a burden on the shoulders.
Podjunsko dialect I speak with my cousin to tend him
my hand.
Imitations (parody) and my own mixtures and
creations, the open space is for things to come.
Roman, 17 yrs.
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Experiencing heteroglossia: a multimodal approach
Motives
•deconstructing categories
conceiving language as split into
bounded and countable units
•overcoming the concept of a monoor bilingual ‘norm’ biography
•exploring the complexity of
heteroglossic biographies and LifeWorlds
•exploring dispositions, experiences,
practices and desires linked to
language
•valorizing the entire language
repertoire
Research group ‘Spracherleben’
University of Vienna
www.cis.or.at
Krumm 2001
Busch 2006, 2008
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‘New’ speakers of the minority language
Evi began to learn Slovenian after her marriage 20
years ago, studies now Slovenian at university
... , dass ich zuerst den gailtaler dialekt kennengelernt hab
und dann auf der andere seite durch freunde sozusagen auf
der italienischen seite den dialekt, das ist auch eine
slowenische minderheit noch, das ist der uggowitzer dialekt
und d‚ie zwei kann ich also sehr gut. (...) wenn ich switche,
dann zwischen deutsch, slowenischen dialekt, uggowitzer
dialekt und zwischen der slowenischen hochsprache. Ich find
das eigentlich sehr spannend, dass, dass es/ im kopf, da
gehen sie schon ein bisschen ineinander über.
German
Slovenian
“po domače”
English
French
Italian (right arm)
..., that I learnt first the gailtal dialect and then on the other
side through friends so to say, the dialect of the italian side,
there is another slovenian minority, the uggowitz dialect
and these two I do speak really well. (...) when I switch,
then between german, slovenian dialect, uggowitz dialect
and the slovenian standard language. I think this is really
interesting, that, that this/ in the head, there they are
already blending a little.
Brigitta Busch, University of Vienna
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‘New’ speakers of the minority language
Ljubo came as a refugee in the 1990ies from Bosnia,
learnt first Slovenian and then German
meine ersten kontakte mit der slowenischen sprache waren
in XXX, wo ich mit den einheimischen/ oder besser gesagt,
wo die einheimischen mit uns hauptsächlich im slowenischen
dialekt kommuniziert haben, weil wir kein deutsch konnten.
my fist contact with the slovenian language was in XXX,
where I communicated/ or rather where the locals
communicated with us mainly in the slovene
dialect, because we did not speak german.
in diesem land durch die deutschkenntnisse ist das schon ein
schutz. ja, weil jeder, der die sprache nicht so gut bewältigen,
wird diskiminiert.
Serbocroatian
Russian
English
Slovenian
German
in this country through the knowledge of geman is a
protection. yes, because everyone who cannot speak the
language well, is being discriminated.
Brigitta Busch, University of Vienna
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Valorising linguistic resources
Tim attended bilingual primary and secondary school
Eine Zeit lang hab ich sehr versucht, mich zu identifizieren mit
dem Slowenischen. (...) Und da hab ich mir auch immer
gewünscht, dass ich den Dialekt könnte und --- Verstehen
können hab ich ihn gut, aber wenn ich probiert hab ihn zu
reden, bin ich eher belächelt worden.
For some time I tried hard to identify with Slovenian. (...) And
then I always wanted to know the dialect and --- I could
understand it well, but when I tried to speak it, I was smiled at.
German
Slovenian
French
English
Swedish
Latin
Malagasy
Spanish
Brigitta Busch, University of Vienna
Dann haben wir unsere komplett eigene slowenische Sprache
entwickelt. Und da hat dann Dialekt keine Rolle gespielt. Und -- eeh, --- also das war eine Sprache, die nirgends irgendwie
gesprochen wird sonst. Das war wirklich nur für uns aus der
Klasse und die Parallelklasse. Man hat problemlos
codegeswitcht.
Then we developed our completely own Slovenian
language.And then the dialect did not play a role anymore.
And --- eeh, --- yes, this was a language which was nowhere
else spoken. That was only for us in our class and for the
parallel class. We code switched without any problems.
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Concept of linguistic/communicative repertoire
•marks a change in perspective from particular languages/varieties to groups of speakers and
their linguistic choices (Charles Ferguson & John Gumperz, 1960)
•designates the totality of linguistic and communicative possibilities that speakers can refer to in
specific contexts
•includes registers, styles, dialects etc. as well as the pragmatic knowledge of their adequate use
•refers to Husserlʼs phenomenological approach which foregrounds the notions of »experience«
(Erleben) and »lifeworld« (Lebenswelt)
•brings back the speaking subject into linguistics
»What is needed is a sociolinguistics of speech and of resources, of the real bits and chunks of
language that make up a repertoire, and of real ways of using this repertoire in communication.«
(Dell Hymes 1996)
Brigitta Busch, University of Vienna
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Heteroglossic repertoires
evolves by experiencing language in interaction on a emotional and cognitive level
•draws on a broad range of earlier voices, discourses and codes (heteroglossia, Mikhail Bakhtin)
•it is not only a cognitive phenomenon but is inscribed into the body (corporal memory, Maurice
Merleau-Ponty)
•corporality includes traces of hegemonic power relations (habitus, Pierre Bourdieu)
•reverts back to the conditions of its evolution and forward to a contingent space of potentialities
including imaginations and desires (Claire Kramsch, Rita Franceschini)
Brigitta Busch, University of Vienna
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Problems in connection with biographic narratives
• driven by genre expectations and conventions of narration (linear, time axis,
retrospective, dramatization ...)
• autobiographic accounts linked to ‘techniques of the self’ (Foucault): confession as
the expression of a deep ‘inner self’; construction of diachronic continuity and
synchronic coherence
• the narrative is not the reconstruction of a life history but a situational presentation of
self (Goffman)
• the narrative reverts to other texts and discursive constructions in order to relate the
narrated biography to a larger (social) context, reinterpret and legitimize it
• foregrounds the subject and not the interaction in which positioning is realized
Brigitta Busch, University of Vienna
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Expanding the biographic approach
combining biographical narratives with:
•ethnographic observation to understand to relate the narrative form of sense-making
with practices of acting in specific contexts
•critical discourse analysis to understand how personal narratives are related to or
shaped by discourses structuring the public realm
•narration analysis to understand how the narrative evolves in the interaction between
(present and absent) participants
•creative visualizations to supply a mode of sense-making less linked to genre
expectations and conventions
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III. Heteroglossic spaces: linguistic practices and local language
regimes
Linguistic landscape Slovenian secondary school Klagenfurt / Celovec
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Linguistic landscape Slovenian secondary school Klagenfurt / Celovec
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Linguistic landscape Slovenian secondary school Klagenfurt / Celovec
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Local language regimes (interactional regimes, communicative regimes)
A language regime can be described as a set of constraints on individual language choices. As I
understand the term, it consists of habits (Oakeshott 1991), legal provisions (Gauthier et al. 1993),
and ideologies (Kroskrity 2000). These three components interact in complex ways.
Coulmas (2005: 12)
By interactional regime, we understand minimally a set of behavioral expectations regarding
physical conduct, including language. (...) Some of these regimes are elaborations of
longestablished ‘old’ regimes, which have been challenged by conditions of ethnolinguistic
diversity. (...) Other regimes have surfaced locally as a direct result of contact (...) They often
originate exclusively in practice, in the sense that they are quite removed from state-supported
institutions with an official language policy. (...) We insist on using the term ‘regime’ in order to
emphasize not only a condition, a normative, taken-for-granted dimension which regiments
situated understandings of language, but also the importance of inequality of resources and
power. Regimes involve the production of subjectivities and may be transitory.
Blommaert, Collins, Slembrouck (2005: 211f)
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Local language regime
relies on:
frames and frame analysis (Irving Goffman) for the analysis of interactional regimes
understanding spaces as interactional arenas of (organized) activities unfold
Interactions follow certain scripts (parts, routines) in which the kind of exchange that is taking
place is constantly negotiated and renegotiated
Frame analysis allows to understand interaction by distinguishing between
dominant/subordinate, frontstage/backstage, focused involvement/loose co-presence etc.
concept of language ideologies:
“for linguistic anthropology it is increasingly important to understand how microprocesses and
their analysis (speech events, sequencing ...) are related to political-economic macroprocesses.
(...) Regime evokes the display of political domination in all its many forms, including what
Gramsci distinguished as the coercive force of the state and the hegemonic influence of the
state-endorsed-culture of society.”
Paul Koskrity (2000: 3)
“Ideology is discovered in metalinguistic and metapragmatic discourse, in linguistic practice
itself and in the regimentation of of language use through more implicit metapragmatics that
indicate how to interpret that language-in-use.”
Kathryn Woolard (1998: 9)
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Language and space
Linguistic market - value attributed to codes, languages ...; space constituted by symbolic power
(Pierre Bourdieu 1982)
Place and non-place - anthropological places as “formed by individual identities, through
complicities of language, local references, the unformulated rules of living know-how (...) defined
as relational, historical and concerned with identity". Non-places, in contrast, "a world
surrendered to solitary individuality, to the fleeting, the temporary and ephemeral" while they
“create solitary contractuality" (Marc Augé 1995)
Power geometries of space - feminist perspective; notion on “Out of place” - disturbing
practicies (Doreen Massey)
Heterotopia - is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several
sites with their respective discursive practices, that are in themselves incompatible; a
kind of counter-space (Michel Foucault 1984)
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Nexus of practice
“We will use the term 'nexus of practice' to focus on the point at which historical
trajectories of people, places, discourses, ideas, and objects come together to enable
some action which in itself alters those history trajectories in some way as these
trajectories emanate from this moment of social action.”
Scollon & Scollon 2004
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Heteroglossic space
in the Bakhtinian sense:
•Heterogeneity of individual voices (social background, age, gender, style, selfrepresentation ...)
•heterogeneity of discourses (linked to social movements, music scenes, commercial
enterprises, ethnic organizations with their geographic referential contexts ...)
•heterogeneity of linguistic practices (language purism, standard languages, jargons,
language crossing ...)
Brigitta Busch, University of Vienna
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