31.2015, Review: Applied Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Seals (2019)

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Subject: 31.2015, Review: Applied Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Seals (2019)

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Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2020 13:24:19
From: Tracey Adams [traceygadams at utexas.edu]
Subject: Choosing a Mother Tongue

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36601857


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-4777.html

AUTHOR: Corinne A. Seals
TITLE: Choosing a Mother Tongue
SUBTITLE: The Politics of Language and Identity in Ukraine
SERIES TITLE: Multilingual Matters
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2019

REVIEWER: Tracey Adams, University of Texas at Austin

SUMMARY

This book is intended for those who work in the social sciences and/or have a
particular interest in Ukraine. It assesses the issues of studying a
particular ethnic, cultural, and/or national group of people in a manner
accessible to both specialists in sociology, history, linguistics,
anthropology, et cetera as well as the lay person interested in Ukraine or
diaspora communities in general. In this work, Seals informs the reader of the
sociocultural context of Ukraine and Ukranian identity, then concisely
situates her pilot and main study within this context. These studies culminate
in the discovery of a surprising, yet common, narrative amongst Seal’s
participants: changing one’s mother tongue.

She begins with an introduction to Ukraine, the Ukrainian language, and the
modern (re: 20th century) sociohistorical history of the two as it pertains to
linguistic purism, language ideologies and language policies. Having
established a general foundation of her investigation, Seals pauses to
demonstrate the utility of the specific approaches she employs to investigate
identity and its representation in speech.  She describes the
post-structuralist framework as well as its connection to communication
accommodation theory, emphasizing the fluid nature of identity and speakers’
agency in changing their self-representation through conversation. She then
demonstrates the use of these concepts in research with Ukrainians in her 2009
pilot study and highlights the influence of globalization, immigration, and
multiculturality in identity conception and expression as exemplified in her
results. 

In Chapter Three, Seals details the key events of the Ukrainian War and dives
into the grit of discourse analysis, supplemented by practices outlined in
interactional sociolinguistics. Via this method, she identifies four main
discursive strategies that the participants of her main, 2014-2015 study use
to position themselves and their views on the war. Key strategies include the
use of the chronotope of the Ukrainian War and defining what it means to be
Ukrainian, i.e. speaking Ukrainian (“good Ukrainians speak Ukrainian”
discourse) and not being a rebel actor in the war. Then, in Chapter Four,
Seals hones in on the linguistic strategies employed by participants to assign
blame for the war, such as metonymy, juxtaposition and dialogism (Seals’ term
for referencing past events). Finally, in Chapter Five, Seals presents a
recurring commentary within her work, from which this book takes its name: the
changing of one’s mother tongue. 

Importantly, Seals notes that the term ‘mother tongue’ in Ukrainian holds
multiple meanings but that it is used in her study to denote one’s dominant
language (97). For Ukrainians in particular, there exists a strong link
between language and lived experiences. As such, Seals calls upon the
literature on language embodiment for her analysis. She finds that many
participants use dialogism for events in Ukraine to reason their shift to
Ukrainian, i.e., referencing the Orange Revolution, the Ukrainian War, the
specific linguistic experiences of people they know, etc. Even some of her
participants in the diaspora have shifted despite a lack of linguistic
resources for themselves and their families. Notably, while war may certainly
be argued as the catalyst for reassessing one’s identity, participants note
many reasons for their shift. In concluding this chapter, Seals argues that
changing their mother tongue supports the sociolinguistic notion that identity
is expressed via language; however, it contradicts the idea from language
embodiment that one’s identity is inseparable from one’s language (129). 

In Chapters Six and Seven, Seals expounds on the nuances of changing one’s
mother tongue amongst her participants. Chiefly, she proposes an “Immigrant
Identity, Investment and Integration Model” that provides a broad basis for
taking into account home country and host country effects on the identity and
language use of immigrants. Her participants, however, also speak to the
influence of their personal networks and the dynamics of the diaspora in their
respective areas. Then, Seals presents data from her ‘younger’ participants,
in their 20s and early 30s, who participate in a counter-discourse to “good
Ukrainians speak Ukrainian” and appear to support the idea of a multilingual
and multicultural Ukraine.

In her conclusion, Seals emphasizes the need to get to know the community a
researcher is studying, especially if the research question concerns identity.
Moreover, she promotes the use of a post-structuralist framework and the
incorporation of interactional sociolinguistic techniques if one is conducting
discourse analyses. Thirdly, she highlights the importance of taking account
of events in the home country when one is working with a diaspora. Finally, in
restating her key findings she suggests that language embodiment is more
closely tied to indexicality, as seen in her data, then it is often considered
to be in the research literature.

EVALUATION

Seals does an exceptional job of assessing various influences on national,
ethnic, and cultural identity and how diaspora communities echo, but do not
exactly duplicate, discourses on identity and language in the home country.
Importantly, she touches on the effect that the host country as well as a
specific diaspora community, engendered by the idiosyncrasies of its members,
have on diaspora communities. Her work does much to tie together avenues and
methods of linguistic research that have long deserved dialogue with one
another: language embodiment, interactional sociolinguistics, discourse
analysis, and communication accommodation theory. For the most part, it is
written in such a way to be both accessible and engaging to readers of various
backgrounds. In addition, although the visual aids were sometimes confusing in
their monochromatism, particularly in the introduction, comprehension of
material was rarely skewed. One can see multiple routes of research stemming
from this work but it would be worthwhile first to define some of her tools
and analyses further.

Notably, one of the ways in which she depicts the dialogism invoked by her
participants could benefit from a bit more explanation. To begin, discussion
of the strategies used by her participants was strongly tied to the notion of
a chronotope, whose definition she takes from Bakhtin (1992). In her analyses,
Seals explains that many of her participants make use of the chronotope of the
Ukrainian war, beginning with a description of it as a space and time “when
friends become enemies” (48). However, throughout the monograph, Seals’ use of
this term is not limited to this description but appears to tie to any
positioning toward, event during, and result of the war. Since a majority of
the data presented centered around the Ukrainian war, this fluid meaning
becomes a bit muddled in the work, at times indistinguishable from the general
notion of dialogism also used to analyze the data.

In addition, her intuitions on youth counter-discourse merit further
investigation. Though we only get a snapshot of her work, Seals clearly has an
abundance of rich data that speaks to identity conception and negotiation. The
data we see in Chapter 7 raises follow-up research questions. It would be
worth seeing, for instance, if there’s any correlation between these views and
living in Ukraine, or having only recently moved, especially since Seals
already comments upon the differences between language attitudes in the
country versus those advertised to and taken up by the diaspora (Chapter 6).
It also seems important to investigate any correlation between these views and
having Russian-speaking parents while growing up in the West. 

In terms of bridging the divide between linguistic subdisciplines, though not
a major argument in the work, her study fits well within the literature on
communication accommodation theory and should be considered by those
conducting research within this field as well as in other subdisciplines of
linguistics. Her model for immigrant identity conception and negotiation, in
particular, matches well with the model of accommodation and the goal of
context specification proposed by Gallois et al. (2005). Otherwise, that
‘mother tongue’ holds various meanings in Ukrainian poses some methodological
issues for sociolinguists. That is, mother tongue is often used by researchers
in linguistics to refer to the first language that someone speaks. Yet, it is
clear in this work that this is not universally understood by participants.
Instead, as it is used in this monograph, it can refer to the language one
most identifies with and/or one’s dominant language, among many other options.
This poses some evident issues in terms of wording for methods involving
interviews and questionnaires that should be taken into consideration.
Furthermore, the broader argument that, despite common belief about language
embodiment, a people who so strongly link their language with their lived
experiences - in essence, their life and personhood - would voluntarily change
their mother tongue also deserves further discussion. In particular, the
bridge that Seals builds between embodiment and indexicality opens up several
avenues of research. Researchers might consider analyzing this relationship in
places subject to strong language policies and politics. That is, (i) do
citizens in these places embody their ‘mother tongues’, and (ii) do they
change their mother tongue or present it differently to comply with authority
when their nation, or region, undergoes change in language policies or when
conflict with language politics arises? Research on this topic could naturally
be in dialogue with the literature on heritage speakers as well. Though not
mentioned in this monograph, changing one’s mother tongue has long been noted
in the literature concerning immigrants and language maintenance versus shift
(see e.g. Paulston 1986).

In sum, Seals presents a multifaceted and elegantly cohesive depiction of the
linguistic situation in Ukraine and its diaspora communities. In addition,
though speaking about a specific people, she presents a nuanced picture of its
individual members, successfully working around the problem of
essentialization that typically accompanies this type of research. It is
likely that her insistence on a post-structural approach and emphasis on
sociocultural history aids her in this endeavor and should be strongly
considered by others in the field as well as those in history, sociology,
anthropology, and political science. Those who pick up and engage with this
book will surely find it a useful reference in a variety of contexts.

REFERENCES

Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1992. The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin, TX:
University of
Texas Press.

Gallois, Cindy, Tania Ogay & Howard Giles. 2005. Communication accommodation
theory: A
look back and a look ahead. In William B. Gudykunst (ed.), Theorizing about
intercultural communication, 121-148. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Paulston, Christina B. 1986. Linguistic consequences of ethnicity and
nationalism in multilingual
settings. In Bernard Spolsky (ed.), Language and Education in Multilingual
Settings 25, 117-152. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Tracey Adams is a PhD candidate in French Linguistics at the University of
Texas at Austin. Adams' research interests include sociolinguistics,
phonetics, bilingualism and language contact. She is currently researching
Arabic-speaking diaspora communities and the negotiation of identity in
Montreal, Quebec.





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