29.2811, Review: Discourse Analysis; Sociolinguistics: Milani (2017)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-2811. Fri Jul 06 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.2811, Review: Discourse Analysis; Sociolinguistics: Milani (2017)

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Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2018 11:08:06
From: Johannes Scherling [johannes.scherling at uni-graz.at]
Subject: Language and Citizenship

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-2992.html

EDITOR: Tommaso M.  Milani
TITLE: Language and Citizenship
SUBTITLE: Broadening the agenda
SERIES TITLE: Benjamins Current Topics 91
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Johannes Scherling, Universität Graz

The book “Language and Citizenship – Broadening the agenda”, edited by Tommaso
M. Milani, the 91st installment in the “Benjamins Current Topics” series, is a
collection of texts focusing on how institutional discourses construct the
relationship between (not only) nationality and citizenship. In doing so, the
volume attempts to present a variety of approaches and issues relating to this
overarching topic, by drawing on various case studies from different
countries. It attempts to show how over the last few decades, what is called
‘moral citizenship’ (sets of values and beliefs) has become more important in
receiving and ascertaining membership than ‘formal citizenship’ (passport,
legal status). This endeavor is discussed from various angles over seven
chapters spanning over 160 pages.

SUMMARY

Chapter 1 by the editor gives an overview of the book’s main theme and
structure, introducing also the main foci and terminology, while embedding the
current volume into recent scholarship. Citizenship, drawing on Isin (2008),
is defined in terms of “status” (a social contract between individuals and
states regarding rights and duties), “habitus” (an embodied practice acquired
via socialization) and “acts” (“performances of radical dissent”), which the
contributions in this book aim to illustrate to various degrees. The main aims
of the book are described as (1) extending the analysis of discourses
regarding the relationship between nationality and citizenship by relating
them to “ethnographically grounded interactions”, (2) identifying the multiple
meanings of citizenship as well as (3) exploring its “different
linguistic/semiotic guises”. (p. 3)

Chapter 2, by Reinhilde Pulinx and Piet Van Avermaet, presents a case study of
how language policies increasingly influence integration and pervade the
notion of citizenship in the case of Flanders in Belgium. While language
competence was not formerly a requirement to attain citizenship, this has
recently changed.  This change is particularly apparent in the region of
Flanders, which sees itself as a “cultural community” (p. 26) and in which,
hence, the local language is an important identity marker, in particular since
Belgium is gradually turning into a “super-diverse society” (p. 27). Recent
legislation makes it clear that citizenship is something that needs to be
continuously achieved, albeit only by migrants, while for non-migrants, their
citizenship status is presupposed. The entirety of integration policies in
Flanders, therefore, appears to be targeted at assimilating, rather than
integrating, migrants, as the goals are “nonreciprocal, nonnegotiable and use
the norms and values of the majority group as a single frame of reference.”
(p. 34)

In Chapter 3, written by Kristine Horner, we are introduced to language
regimes in Luxembourg, where there is a recent trend to portray Luxembourgish
as the national language despite the fact that it is mainly a spoken variety.
Horner argues that there is a certain shift from conceptualizing citizenship
mainly as a legal status towards a foregrounding of social processes including
cultural and linguistic ‘belonging’. The author then presents an analysis of
media and policy documents from the first decade of the 21st century to
illustrate “the construction of Luxembourgish as the language of integration,”
as well as showing  how “the conditions for citizenship status are being
challenged and how such challenges constitute acts of citizenship” (p. 51).
They point out that language can, but should not, act as an excluding factor
in society.

Chapter 4 then shifts the focus on the British citizenship ceremony as a
‘final examination’ in terms of allegiance and language prowess. The authors,
Kamran Khan and Adrian Blackledge, follow a young Yemeni migrant’s journey to
British citizenship through interviews to show  the illusion, disillusion and
reality of such rituals. The authors give an insight into contemporary
citizenship ceremonies in which, besides pledging loyalty and allegiance,
aspiring British citizens’ level of English is also implicitly tested. They
conclude that the ritual serves both as a rite  of initiation into British
society, and also as a final examination of their prowess in English, which
stands as a signifier for their “process of ‘becoming’” (p. 72) British
citizens.

Quentin E. Williams and Christopher Stroud, in Chapter 5, focus on the
discursive construction of citizenship in the multiethnic and multilingual
context of South Africa. Against the backdrop of the breakdown of the
apartheid regime which left a “colonial divide between citizen and subject”
(p. 89) and had forced onto South Africa Western notions of a nation state,
the authors – drawing on Blommaert and Rampton (2011) – maintain that the
intrinsic diversity, as well as the marginalization, of minority groups
remains backgrounded if not ignored. Employing Isin’s notion of “acts of
citizenship” (91), the chapter analyzes how common people use language to
“wrestle control from political institutions of the state” (91) through acts
of “linguistic citizenship” (91) in public performances. The authors’
contention is that through the focus on official discourse, everyday
micro-discourses, in whose performance such acts of citizenship take shape,
are backgrounded.

Chapter 6, another chapter by Milani, deals less with the role of language(s)
in the construction of citizenship; rather it shifts the focus towards what
Milani terms ‘sexual cityzenship’ – proposed in its non-standard spelling as a
“queer, anti-normative tactic […] that seeks to capture the special nature of
sexual politics” (p. 115). This is illustrated through the Pride Parade 2012
in South Africa, where a conflict erupted between parade participants, and an
activist group attempting to draw attention to the ongoing disenfranchisement
of women and blacks in South African society through banners like “no cause
for celebration” and a bodily carpet (i.e. “acts of citizenship”) and claiming
that post-apartheid rights have “mainly benefited white, upper-middle-class
homosexuals” (p. 125). Essentially, the author sees the conflict as being
between the “lawful sexual cityzenship ‘habitus’” of the mainstreamed Pride
parade participants and “an insubordinate and ‘insurgent’ […] act of sexual
cityzenship” and thus a “break with ‘habitus’” (p. 127) of the activist
campaign fighting over the power to speak for the disadvantaged. 

The book’s final chapter, written by Lionel Wee, challenges Isin’s (2008)
distinction between act and habitus in explaining the nature of citizenship,
contending that it constitutes a confusion between disposition to act and the
action itself. In analyzing several speeches by the Singaporean People’s
Action Party leading up to the 2011 General Elections, in which the PAP failed
to achieve the amount of support of previous elections, Wee maintains that
citizenship is a dialogical notion between citizens and the government and
that, as with elections, “acts of citizenship” can emerge without a break in
habitus (which Isin sees as the nature of an act). The chapter therefore
questions what it claims to be the ‘monolithicity’ that Isin’s concept of
citizenship attributes to both citizenry and government.

EVALUATION

As a whole, the book reveals interesting approaches and perspectives on the
linguistic study of citizenship and sheds light on a number of certainly
underrepresented and under-discussed issues such as language testing regimes
for migrants, the effects of normativization on diverse and multilingual
societies or citizen-induced change through everyday practices. As such, it is
of great interest for advanced students (MA or PhD level) as well as for
scholars of linguistics and/or cultural studies focusing on the discursive
construction of citizenship and belonging, and on issues of immigration,
respectively.

One thing that may appear repetitive – but at the same time may have been
designed to add coherence to the collection– is the consistent use of
political theorist Engin Isin’s concept of citizenship (2008); this is cited,
drawn on, and applied in all but two chapters of the book. While this serves
to give a certain theoretical consistency to the volume, some readers might
find it redundant. Chapter 7 here is a welcome exception as it attempts to
critique and expand on Isin’s theory, therefore offering an interesting
alternative perspective that nicely rounds off the volume.

It is clear that the editor and the authors made an effort to offer a diverse
set of illustrations of the multidimensional nature of citizenship, with some
subjects such as ‘sexual cityzenship’ being marginal to the topic, but  in
line with the volume’s intent of “broadening the agenda” (p. 1). What could
arguably have been included to additionally widen the scope would be hotly
debated issues such as the nature and role of Spanish in a US-American context
and the respective roles of Hebrew and Arabic in defining ‘belonging’ in
Israeli citizenship. However, all chapters are highly interesting and relevant
analyses as they stand. They deserve praise for highlighting interesting
topics and discussing small-scale examples in detail to illuminate important
macro-issues and developments regarding immigration, citizenship and/or
belonging.

REFERENCES

Blommaert, Jan and Ben Rampton (2011). “Language and Superdiversity.”
Diversities 13 (2): 1-38.

Isin, Egin F. (2008). “Theorizing Acts of Citizenship.” In Engin F. Isin and
Greg M. Nielsen, eds. Acts of Citizenship. London: Zed Books. 15-43.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Johannes Scherling is a lecturer of linguistics and cultural studies at the
Department of English Studies at the University of Graz, Austria. His research
interests include critical media analysis, language and power as well as
issues of language contact.





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