Language, Languaging, and Power — A Critical Evaluation Paper

Guest Authors: Vikentsi (Vincent) Shpakouski, Łukasz Luty, Michalina Kozłowska, Artem Velychko, and Natalia Liszewska
1st Year Students at the MA in English Philology, University of Białystok, Poland

Article 1: Jacquemet, M. 2005. Transidiomatic practices: Language and power in the age of globalization. Language & Communication, 25, 257–277

The article concerns the interaction of languages and cultures. The author begins with harsh criticism over two set bipolar notions of interactions of languages to be still dominant. There are two master metaphors to be regarded: spread of language and flow of culture. According to grounded beliefs, on the one hand this leads to a complete standardisation of language. On the other hand, frightened scientists see an alien language penetration as a threat to both language and culture. Such understanding is based on the old confined views on language and culture boundaries. Jacquemet underlines the problem of the assumption of bounded entities (culture, language and territory) as a closed homogeneous structure that has no “crevasses” to be infiltrated. Nevertheless, the rise of sophisticated technologies has shifted the concept of culture recently. Currently it started to be investigated as deterritorialised, i.e., not attached to a particular territory. As society becomes more dynamic — use and mix, and intermix languages — it invents [e]xpressions in the creolised, mixed idioms of polyglottism (p. 263). This deterritorialised practice leads further to reterritorialisation — acceptance for everyday usage in their indigenous code, or communicative practice.

Regarding communicative practice as no longer attached to any restraint, the author introduces a new term — transidiomatic practice. This transidiomatic practice is subordinated to people present in transnational environments. Moreover, it has its own corporate ladder: cosmopolitan elite and semiotic operators. This ‘‘mobile sovereignty’’ (Sassen, 1996; Cheah & Robbins, 1998; Hardt & Negri, 2000) rules the order in the transidiomatic practice. Thus, pushing forward the deterritorialised discourse and inventing a reterritorialised variety in the local environment, they remain key figures that have the impact of globalisation on languages.

The last part of the article is devoted to providing evidence of such a movement in the Adriatic region. The central point is inferred that the locals possess a “full control of a foreign language and show their own superior social position.” Drawing inferences, the author comes to the reasoning for “late modern communication as the tactical deployment of transidiomatic practices” which does not intend to cause any harm, but instead coexist and coevolve.

Article 2: Kubota, R. (2020). Confronting epistemological racism, decolonizing scholarly knowledge: Race and gender in applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics, 41(5), 712–732. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amz033

Ryuko Kubota tells about how language and race intersect and writes about the influence of racism on language and educational practices. She describes raising the issue of race, age and gender in the field of linguistics. But when we talk about racism in literature, two main domains should be taken into account, namely sociolinguistics, including linguistic anthropology, which van Dijk focused on, and linguistic education, described by the aforementioned Kubota. They focus on the racist discourse created by people of different skin color. We can distinguish between two forms of racism here. Individual and institutional racism, when individual racism refers to small groups of people, in the case of institutional racism we deal with offending certain racial and also gifted groups of people in certain areas of education.

Kubota, quoting all three forms of racism (individual, institutional and epistemological), points to the fact that it is most felt in countries such as the USA or Canada due to the dominant societies of white settlers. The author draws attention to the fact that due to white domination in North America, many black people fell in love with white literature, however they rejected black heritage, culture and literature. Racism meant that in such a multicultural country as the USA, language and culture did not intersect with each other, but black inhabitants submitted to the culture of whites.

Kubota points out that the victims are not only non-white, non-European people, but also women. They are omitted from many publications because the more important white male publications are mainly cited at conferences.

Article 3: Blommaert, J. (2013). Language and the study of diversity. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, 74

Blommaert depicts language as a means to operate diversity, as a way to adapt different language repertoires in different linguistic events. In this article he focuses on three developments in recent studies: the shift from language to infra-language, the shift in the notion of the speaker and the study of societal and institutional responses to diversity.

Societal diversity was included under the term ‘multilingualism’, meaning the co-occurrence of many languages in one space. One of its effects being codeswitching. The mixed language proved to be the only language spoken by people, and not a result of multilingual competence. Moreover, it is affected by other features of speech, for instance genre, style or topic, also various aspects involve the use of English terminology. Therefore, the distinction between Languages is not the most crucial element in the mixed code. What also occurs is the presence of accents, dialects and registers in the process of code-switching. The modern theory of infra-language states that people use resources for communication rather than ‘Languages’ with which they are language-ideologically connected. The effects of resources are indexical, described as ‘norms’ or ‘speech conventions’ and bring about linguistic interpretations. All resources used in communication comprise the repertoire. In this case languages are ideological constructs. It’s what enables more detailed analysis of the usage of language. This new view reveals numerous sociocultural patterns and relationships outside of language, showing the access to specific bits of language and a vast world of diversity rather than one ‘speech community’.

Because of heterogeneity of social life people have to resort to different registers, styles and genres in their repertoire. Furthermore, there is no ‘perfect’ speaker, meaning the repertoires are limited and vary depending on the forms of language. This insight challenges the traditional views of Linguistics and the assumptions deep-rooted in language learning and testing systems. The influence of globalization and superdiversity is visible in the real and online world, as it is no longer possible to determine the English ‘speech community’ due to new forms of communities and connections between language and its users. Speech communities form when the communicative resources applied are recognized as meaningful by others. Given that every person moves in and out of numerous speech communities there are more of them than there are speakers. Also, different positions occupied in these social spaces depend on the degree to which a person acquired sets of resources. Those communities are scalar, they require complex resources that differ from each other. All of us belong to various communities, may they be integrated and organized or temporary and flexible. In a need to pass from one scale level to another we are able to obtain and deploy resources. If it comes to mobility, it comprises movements across scales, namely people engage in multiscale, complex situations at all times since social environment is polycentric. Considering one social system consists of linguistic, sociolinguistic and sociocultural diversity, we can be described as multilingual as well as multicultural.

In terms of institutional stance, it falls back to denials of diversity. Being multilingual is seen as a threat to ‘normal’ identity progress and social mobility, while people are considered ‘naturally’ monolingual. Additionally, special attention is paid to knowledge of the ‘standard’ variety of the ‘national Language’. Identity and social future are believed to hinge on language proficiency. It may be observed in regulation of immigration through language testing, either to investigate the refugees’ identity or their integration process. The

solutions of old, Modernist ideologies are implemented globally whilst the actual repertoires of individuals refer not only to national origins but also many life experiences and social arenas. What really matters is the discovery of diverse forms of communicative events in many different contexts.

Article 4: Makoni, S. (2012). A critique of language, languaging and supervernacular. Muitas vozes, 1(2), 189–199

Sinfree B. Makoni is reasoning about Blommaert and Rampton’s project (2011, 2012) which involves the creation of new sociolinguistic terms. He discusses language division into autonomous, clearly-defined languages and endeavours to elucidate differences between languaging and supervernacular as well as their relations with one another. Focusing on the African context, the author claims that currently, new sociolinguistic frameworks fail to reflect the political reality.

Makoni provides two observations regarding the ambiguous nature of languages. First, in the sociolinguistic literature cited languages are given single names. On the one hand, it aids to avoid ambiguity of term use but on the other hand, this method fails to reflect political and social reality intrinsic to a particular area where a language or languages are spoken. The Berber/Amazigh language serves as a clear illustration of this. The second observation is related to the notion of language since languages can be given names only if language exists as such. According to Harris (2009: 430), languages are not natural objects but rather, ‘a metalinguistic extrapolation that has become attached to a particular language name…’.

Then the term languaging is introduced. It has been given many definitions depending on many views on language. For example, Creese and Blackledge (2010) and Garcia approach languaging from the mechanical view of language and claim that languaging and its types, such as translanguaging and polylanguaging, are characterised by a code or codes and imply the utilization of any semiotic resources to deliver meaning, which, in its turn, exists independently of languaging. The other two authors define languaging pursuant to political view on language. Ramanathan (1996) describes languaging as a rebellious act of resistance to being silenced at one point in history, whereas Mignolo regards languaging as communication disruption caused by a colonial or elite interruption in pre-colonial communication. Even though the latter approach is more appropriate with regard to postcolonial linguistic scholarship, it still implies the existence of languages. Consequently, this interpretation of languaging fails to escape the idea of codes, which are called languages in the process of translanguaging.

What can be associated with translanguaging and polylanguaging is the notion of supervernacular. The term implies that sociolinguistic resources are widely used without regard to ‘territorial fixedness, physical proximity, sociocultural sharedness and common background’ (Blommaert, 2011, p. 3). Semiotic codes, chat codes, gaming codes, standard codes, mobile texting, mini-languages, or a global medialect of condensed abbreviated English are examples of supervernaculars (McIntosh, 2010). The prefix super here can be interpreted as trans which can refer to ‘movements across regions and semiotic boundaries’. The term is presented by Vertovec (2006, 2007) and is based on his notion of superdiversity defined by him as ‘diversification of diversity’. However, in this case, super means hyper and therefore the two terms do not denote the same. Makoni argues that what should be handled is the differences between the prefix super in the two terms in order to avoid ambiguity, even though, he still claims that supervernacular may refer to both hyper and trans.

There is uncertainty as to how the term vernacular in supervernaculars should be treated. According to Mufwene (1998), vernacular can be understood in many ways — a primary language, native language, indigenous language variety, non-standard language varieties, etc. When combining the prefix super meaning trans with the term vernacular

meaning, for instance, non-standard, the author construes then the notion of supervernacular as ‘manifestations of non-standard language varieties that can either be spoken or written’. If the prefix super is understood as “hype”, then supervernaculars would have all the features commonly attributed to “languages,” or would only occur as dialects, or would have their dialects.

One more problematic issue concerns the understanding of supervernacular as codes. Makoni argues that since the term involves rapid and complex language variabilities, it cannot be examined in terms of conventional code-based views of language whose ideologies, by their nature, entail the search for invariant rules in establishing fixed meanings and consolidating form-meaning relationships, which makes it practically impossible to predict the discourse meanings in supervernaculars. In contrast, efforts to analyse supervernaculars beyond code-based framing of language may either restate characteristics of code elements or lead to hybridisation in the description of language elements. Consequently, Makoni underlines the importance of developing a model that would successfully deal with the vagueness and unpredictability practiced within mass movements discourse as well as would be efficient beyond the framing of code-based views of language.

The last concern is related to polylanguaging, which is also called polylinguistic. Taking into account the fact that it can be situated in superdiversity (Jørgensen, et al. 2011), Makoni poses a question about what the postulated relationship between polylanguaging and supervernaculars is. To provide an answer, different interpretations of languaging should be considered. For instance, polylanguaging, translanguaging, and others may be treated as equivalents.

Critical Evaluation Summary

The articles by Kubota, Blommeart, Makoni, and Jacquemet might present different views and opinions, but all of them are focusing on the same topic: society and language. Jacquemet described the general interaction of culture and languages, showing two predictions of how culture can influence the language. In his work, Makoni argues with Blommeart, thus agreeing with the need to sometimes create new sociological terms. Bloomaert writes about how culture influences language not only in real life but also online. Kubota in described cultures and languages influenced by race and racism.

Even though those four articles describe different problems they have a lot in common. All of the authors are concerned about the future of languages which are heavily influenced by the culture. All of them are looking for the solution, creating new terms in order to keep up with the changes. In my opinion this topic is very important because of how dynamically languages change because of culture. This phenomenon is being noticed not only by sociologists but also by normal people who have to adjust to the changes. That’s why finding new terms is so important — it will help people understand the changes. All four articles are very educational and touch on very important matters.