25.2362, Review: Sociolinguistics: Du Bois & Baumgarten (2013)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-25-2362. Fri May 30 2014. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 25.2362, Review: Sociolinguistics: Du Bois & Baumgarten (2013)

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Date: Fri, 30 May 2014 23:57:21
From: Zuzana Elliott [zuzana.elliott at ed.ac.uk]
Subject: Multilingual Identities: New Global Perspectives

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-5098.html

EDITOR: Inke C. Du Bois
EDITOR: Nicole  Baumgarten
TITLE: Multilingual Identities: New Global Perspectives
PUBLISHER: Peter Lang AG
YEAR: 2013

REVIEWER: Zuzana Elliott, University of Edinburgh

SUMMARY

Inke Du Bois and Nicole Baumgarten’s volume brings new approaches in
understanding and analysing multilingual migrants’ backgrounds and identities.
This collection of essays investigates migrants’ “linguistic-ethnic-national”
(p. 8) identities performed in different cultural societies. The studies shed
new light on multilingualism around the globe, focusing primarily on identity
construction in urban settings of less-documented languages in Europe, the
United States, and the Middle East.

The chapters are organised thematically, where the first three chapters deal
with multilingual identity of children and adolescents and the last four are
concerned with multilingual identity construction of adults. Each chapter
includes a brief literature review and references, which inspire opportunities
for further research. In the introduction, the editors combine the materials
from subsequent chapters and apply them to global perspectives.

The first chapter in this volume (‘Communicative practices among migrant youth
in Germany: “Insulting address forms” as a multi-functional activity’, by
Susanne Günthner) explores functions of insulting address forms among 2nd and
3rd generation male youths of German and Turkish origin residing in Germany.
The data were collected in youth centres via informal interactions between 17-
to 23-year-old men of migrant backgrounds in four different regions in
Germany. The author analyses adolescents’ everyday interactions and identities
in mixed-speech communities to uncover the meaning of insulting terms and
their usage. Following the previous studies by Eckert & McConnel-Ginet (1998)
and Bucholtz (2007), Günthner found that insulting forms are predominantly
used “as resources for asserting particular positions within the group and for
establishing hierarchy and status” (p. 26). In addition, Günther found that
there are other purposes behind insult use, from creating group identity to
forming (or breaking) social ideologies. The study suggests that the use of
insults is therefore not limited to any specific purpose, and that their use
varies according to the social functions associated with each one.

In the second chapter, ‘Made in Berlin: Bilingualism and identity among
immigrant and German-background children,’ Janet M. Fuller analyses the
concepts of ideologies and identities of pre-teen bilingual children in
Berlin. The chapter investigates how children perceive what it means to ‘be
German’ when positioned between two or more languages with various social
backgrounds. This study was based on ethnographic research conducted in
Berlin’s two English-German bilingual schools, the Charles Dickens School and
the John F. Kennedy School. More than 100 hours of audio recordings of
classroom activities were collected, along with participants’ observations and
questionnaires, which examined “children’s backgrounds, language use,
attitudes, self-identification, and views on what it means to be German” (p.
37). The first part of the methodology featured a survey exploring children’s
attitudes towards their own bilingualism and choice in language use. The
author argues that while policy changes define German-ness in terms of
language and culture instead of descent, there is some ambiguity about how the
changes are reflected in the bilingual classroom setting. The data for the
second part of the methodology were obtained through multilingual classroom
interactions, and revealed that code-switching was still prevalent among
immigrant students who identified themselves as German. The results of this
study showed that “‘being German’ is accessible to anyone who is culturally
part of Germany” (p. 48), demonstrating that language use was not the sole
factor involved in cultural identification. Particularly interesting is the
discussion of multilingual language ideologies and self-representations
through the eyes of children. As Fuller rightly points out, the data collected
were not objective, as they reflected mere behaviours and feelings, of which
children might not be well aware.

A. Lane Igoudin’s short chapter, ‘Asian American girls who speak African
American English: A subcultural language identity’, investigates language use
and attitudes among three first-generation Asian-American teenage girls (two
Filipino-American and one Cambodian-American) who use African American
Vernacular English (AAVE) in their everyday speech. Based on three recorded
group interviews, the researcher observed that the girls appeared to adopt “a
wide variety of phonological, morphosyntactic and lexical features of AAVE”
(p. 54). Interestingly, as Igoudin points, the results did not correlate with
a previous study by Wardhaugh (2002), who claimed that “the less standard the
variety of English spoken [is], the more successfully formal education appears
to be resisted” (p. 55). The academic performances of the girls were above
average, but they frequently switched between AAVE and Standard American
English (SAE) (and their home languages Khmer and Tagalog) based on different
situations. The girls’ code choices appeared to be very unconventional because
the AAVE dialect “more than any other dialect of American English, has been
stigmatized as a socially unacceptable code -- something, we learned, the
girls were well aware of” (p. 60). The chapter includes useful examples of
phonological and morphosyntactic AAVE features of the subjects’ speech, thus
providing a clear understanding of the identity construction and sensitivity
of the subjects.

Katharina Meng and Ekaterina Protassova’s chapter, ‘Deutsche or rusaki?
Transformation of the cultural self-conceptions after (r)emigration’, seeks to
answer questions regarding ‘cultural self-conceptions’ of immigrants in
Germany. This interesting study provides insight into Russia-Germans, or
ethnic Germans who emigrated from the Soviet Union to Germany. Using analyses
from interviews, newspapers and internet forums, the authors compared the
complex societies’ attitudes towards Germans and Russians. They identified two
terms which represent the migrants’ multilingual identities: Deutscher
(German) and rusaki. Both terms mark integration in Germany to varying
degrees. While Deutscher marks immigrants’ German-ness through accepting their
German ancestries or names, or even decisions to be registered as Germans in
their Soviet passports (p. 70), rusaki defines “[a] group of Russians and
underlines its specific ethnicity, the Russianness, above all in its rural
appearance” (p. 73).

In her chapter, ‘Loving Bollywood and being Dutch: Language choice and
identity issues among Surinamese-Hindustani women in Amsterdam’, Dipika
Mukherjee shares her findings of women with regard to their language
maintenance and loss, as well as the obstacles they face concerning their own
identity. The author observed twenty-two Surinamese-Hindustani women enrolled
in a Bollywood dance class in Amsterdam for the duration of 16 months. These
women used four languages in their daily lives; however, in the class, they
spoke exclusively Dutch. Mukherjee observed that women who migrated into the
country young had much stronger ties to the Netherlands than to India,
although they identified themselves as ‘Hindustani’ over the other categories
of ‘Dutch’ or ‘Indian’. The author found that these women did not share any
desire to consider India as their home country; however, the notion of
“Hindustaniness” was perceived to be very high, as related to preserving the
language for their children and community. Also, Suriname is “conceived as
‘home,’ [though] they realise that there is no going back” (p. 95). The author
concludes that despite the cultural and language barriers, Bollywood presents
itself as “an accessible means for language retention of a familiar tongue”
(p. 96), thus preserving the strong sense of fellowship among the
Surinamese-Hindustani community.

Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre’s study, ‘The role of public opinion in
argumentation: Immigrants in the French radio broadcast Là-bas si j’y suis’,
seeks to answer how multiple identities shape the cultural notions of speakers
with migrant backgrounds in France. Public opinions are often viewed in light
of politics and culture; therefore, as the author points, analysing them
through the eyes of migrants often creates debatable and controversial
opinions on the acceptance and tolerance of speakers’ communities. In her
study, Baldauf-Quilliatre aimed to identify immigrants’ opinions on
immigration laws and their situation in poor suburbs in relation to the
arguments presented by Nicolas Sarkozy. Her analysis was based on a one-hour
French radio broadcast with a “regular” audience, where she paid particular
attention to radio listeners and their complex contributions left on answering
machines. Although the study didn’t allow for broad generalizations, in her
fifteen contributions, the results seem to differentiate “between European and
South-American migrants on the one side, and African/North-African migrants on
the other” (p. 108). While the first group showed integration and positive
attitudes towards the host country and people, the second group seemed to
resist and instead, showed rather negative attitudes and ‘resignation’ toward
problems faced in their communities. Each group used unique tactics to add
weight to their opinions on the radio show, demonstrating multiple paths to
immigrants’ public integration.

Inke Du Bois’ study, ‘And then I had to hold my first Referat on Beethoven as
a politischer Mensch: Multilingual identities and L1 language loss of US
Americans in Germany’, identifies sociodemographic factors affecting lexical
levels in immigrants’ speech. This study presents quantitative and qualitative
analyses of a corpus of multilingual interviews of thirty American immigrants
who left America for Germany between 1964 and 2001. Investigation of
code-switching and language attrition were analysed statistically. The results
were correlated with extralinguistic variables such as length of residency in
Germany, educational level, and social networks via a demographic
questionnaire. The results indicated that German-American code-switching
appeared more often when Americans were exposed to the society of other
Americans. Thus, Americans who used their first language (L1) tended to
experience fewer problems in retrieving English lexical items. Interestingly,
Du Bois’ study showed that education, length of residence and L1 social
networks were the main factors influencing the varying degrees of “L1
attrition and the intercultural identities of speakers” (p. 134).

The last chapter, ‘Indigenous and immigrant identities in multilingual Israel:
Insights from focus groups and discourse analysis’, by Dafna Yitzhaki, Carmit
Altman, Zhanna Feldman-Burstein, Leor Cohen and Joel Walters, offers a variety
of insights into indigenous and immigrant minority languages. The chapter
consists of a “linguistic taster” in which the authors examine four studies
that focus on identity constructions among immigrants of different ethnic
backgrounds in Israel. The first study analyses a language policy interaction
between indigenous and immigrant language groups of Israeli and Arabic. The
study found that arguments supporting indigenous minority language instruction
rely on two recurring elements: that ‘indigenousness’ is either irrelevant or
hierarchical in deciding language instruction (p. 143). The contradictory
nature of these elements makes for highly complex and volatile debates. The
second study focuses on identity formation in four Russian immigrant adult
parents and their six adolescent children, all of whom are second language
(L2) speakers with high proficiency in Hebrew. The authors offer two excerpts
from interviews of two of the adolescents with different backgrounds. The
first adolescent, Faina, demonstrated a strong attachment to her host country,
including near-total integration into Israeli and secular Jewish culture.
Though she preserved her Russian roots for ‘practical’ reasons and did not
hide her Russian background, she distanced herself from similar immigrants who
self-identified as Russian. The second adolescent, Rina, showed more
attachment towards her Russian identity, but demonstrated a keen awareness of
the complexity of her immigrant identity. Both of these girls held their
opinions without antagonising differing opinions. The third study presents the
complexity of Ethiopian-Israeli identity display, as characterised through
self-perception and ethnicity. Four Ethiopian-Israeli college students were
recorded, showing how their soldier identity conflicts with but also ascends
beyond other social norms. In this way, these students use their soldier
identity to break through or remove limitations imposed by other social
identities (e.g., gender, nationality, religion) and to become more socially
mobile as a result. The fourth study focuses on analysing relationships
between code-switching and identity among twelve English-Hebrew participants
who immigrated to Israel in adulthood from the United States. The research
questions focused on motivations behind code-switching between L1 and L2
narratives, and identifying discourse markers that reflect a variety of
aspects of motivation for code-switching across different identities.

EVALUATION

Researchers interested in discourse analysis and L2 acquisition will certainly
find this small collection of essays to be an interesting and inspiring
resource. This volume investigates new approaches towards global multilingual
migrant identities while addressing various topics in the fields of language
loss, discourse analysis, and code-switching.

Overall, the book provides invaluable reading for anyone interested in the
growing development of global multilingualism, where the primary focus applies
to immigrants’ national and ethnic backgrounds and cultural identities. As a
student who does extensive research on multilingualism and immigrants’
identities, I find this book to be a great contribution to my research. When
compared with similar sources, this volume presents the most recent studies in
a well-structured and cohesive manner, taking into account different
communicative and social interactions of global personae.

Despite the small number of chapters, this book identifies different concepts
of children’s and adults’ multilingual identity constructions while focusing
primarily on lesser-researched languages, such as Israeli, French, or Dutch.
The volume is also highly inclusive, as it considers lesser-known national and
ethnic identities such as Surinamese-Hindustani, German-Croatians, and
German-Americans, among others.

As a researcher focusing on immigrants and their identities, I found Fuller’s
‘Made in Berlin’ and Igoudin’s ‘Asian American girls who speak African
American English’ particularly poignant; both chapters examine
first-generation immigrant children who identify themselves as part of their
local community as a result of strong ideologies and perceptions towards their
peers and cultures. In contrast, Yitzhaki et al.’s ‘Indigenous and immigrant
identities in multilingual Israel’ reviewed four separate studies. Although I
found the section ‘Identity construction in the discourse of Russian-Israeli
immigrant adolescents’ intriguing, I would have appreciated more information,
in general, in each of the sections. This chapter felt constrained, primarily
due to its covering four separate studies in the space of one chapter.

In sum, Du Bois and Baumgarten provide a measured and effective analysis of
increasing global multilingualism, and their book acts as an excellent source
of cutting-edge social research to stimulate discussion in classrooms and
research centres alike.

REFERENCES

Eckert, P. & McConnell-Ginet, S. (1998). Communities of practice. Where
language, gender, and power all live. In J. Coates (Ed.) “Language and gender:
A Reader” (484-494). Mass.: Blackwell.

Bucholtz, M. (2007). Word up. Social meanings of slang in California youth
culture. In L. Monaghan and J. E. Goodman (Eds.) “A Cultural approach to
interpersonal communication. Essential readings” (244-267). Malden, MA:
Blackwell.

Wardhaugh, R. (2002). “An introduction to sociolinguistics.” Malden, MA:
Blackwell Publishers.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Zuzana Elliott is a doctoral student of Linguistics and English Language at
the University of Edinburgh. Her previous research experience examined
literacy in children across five European languages. She is interested in
multilingualism, language identity, and acquisition of linguistic variation in
migrant second language learners. Her current research is investigating
sociolinguistic aspects of long-term Slovak and Czech immigrants who reside in
Scotland.








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