27.1074, Review: Anthropological Ling; Discourse; Socioling: Schneider (2014)

Tue Mar 1 15:59:56 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-1074. Tue Mar 01 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.1074, Review: Anthropological Ling; Discourse; Socioling: Schneider (2014)

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Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2016 10:59:38
From: In Chull Jang [inchull.jang at mail.utoronto.ca]
Subject: Salsa, Language and Transnationalism

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AUTHOR: Britta  Schneider
TITLE: Salsa, Language and Transnationalism
SERIES TITLE: Encounters
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: In Chull Jang, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Reviews Editor: Robert Arthur Cote

SUMMARY

This monograph, entitled “Salsa, Language and Transnationalism” by Britta
Schneider, is a multi-sited sociolinguistic ethnography of a select group of
three salsa communities located in Frankfurt, Germany, and Sydney, Australia.
In this book, the author explores the practices and ideologies of the Spanish
language and Latin culture and describes the processes of local appropriations
and consumptions of the displaced cultural form. By doing so, she tries to
critically rethink the concept of language and culture as being grounded in
essentialized social categories such as ethnicity, nationality, and
citizenship. The book consists of seven chapters, three of which offer
detailed analysis of ethnographic observations and interviews of three salsa
communities:  Frankfurt’s salsa, Sydney’s LA-style salsa, and Sydney’s
Cuban-style salsa.

Chapter 1, “Salsa, Zombies and Linguistics”, introduces the objectives and
significance of the study as well as methodological considerations. The author
begins the chapter with a sociolinguistic situation in a globalized society.
As the migration of people across nation-state boundaries increases, it is
becoming a more difficult and complex task to capture the intersectionality
among cultures, languages, and nations. The author argues that languages are
an example of a ‘zombie category’ because the notion of linguistic competence
cannot be defined without relying on other social identities, such as
nationalism or ethnicity. More problematic is that such an idea leads to an
assumption that language and culture communities are naturalized as separate,
bounded, and fixed. In overcoming the modern idea of language and culture, the
author views three promising aspects of transnational salsa communities as
sites of research. First, salsa is a part of popular music that is practiced
and consumed transnationally. Second, the transnational contact of locals with
salsa creates a zone for ethnic mixture. Third, in spite of inter-ethnicities
in salsa communities, cultural authenticity of salsa still remains to be
imagined and consumed. In conjunction with these three aspects, the author
points out that although transnational salsa communities assume the global
flows and local settlements of the cultural form, national ideologies still
work in the process. In order to examine locally situated meanings of
participants and their connections to other national and transnational
discourses,  Schneider conducted fieldwork in three salsa communities for four
years, conducting 20 interviews with various stakeholders, which included
salsa learners and teachers. She concludes the chapter by clarifying three
research questions: What are language ideologies within communities? How do
language ideologies interact with other national and transnational ideologies?
And, what implications do such ideological constructions have for a
transnational notion of language? 

Chapter 2, “Transnational Language Discourse”, focuses on theoretical concepts
and approaches underlying this ethnographic research. The author reviews four
social theories: discourse theory, language ideology, transnationalism, and
cosmopolitanism. Although her approach to discourse is based on Foucauldian
understandings, she highlights that discursive construction is made through
both linguistic and non-linguistic resources as well as through the ‘voices’
of social actors. Thus, the author views language ideologies as ‘social
voices’ of languages. Among various strands in language ideology research, her
focus is on national language ideology due to the role of language in modern
nation-state building and its profound consequences for identity formations. 
Another overarching term, transnationalism, is understood as social practices
encompassing not only individual migration but also cultural flows across time
and space. The discussion of cosmopolitanism leans towards Hannerz’s (1990)
notion. Finally, the author gives a sketch of the scholarly development of
sociolinguistic studies that challenge the essentialized view of languages.
Key sociolinguists in such endeavors include Dell Hymes, Mary Louise Pratt,
Ben Rampton, Alastair Pennycook, and Jan Blommaert. In particular, Blommaert’s
sociolinguistic scale is extensively discussed as an analytic tool for the
complex interrelation among local, regional, national, and transnational
language ideologies.

Chapter 3, “Transnational salsa—Cultural reinventions of the global in local
contexts”, offers historical and cultural accounts of the origin and
development of transnational salsa.  It has been argued that as contemporary
salsa is formed through contacts and the blending of various cultural
elements, it is difficult to locate a specific point of origin. However, the
author does attempt to highlight what was a forerunner of salsa. She points
out that salsa emerged in the Caribbean in the 18th and 19th centuries, when
European colonial powers brought Africans to the region through the slave
trade.  Salsa’s forerunner developed in New York City over a long period of
time beginning with Puerto Rican migration in the early 20th century, followed
by a period of Cuban immigration in the mid-20th century. This resulted in a
hybridized style of salsa that represented the two similar but separate
cultures. These were also significant events marking New York as a key
location of contemporary salsa, where Latin music was blended with African and
European genres. In those times, the political messages of criticism against
the materialist culture of middle-class Americans and the celebration of Latin
pride were circulated. Afterwards, such messages were diluted, and a
commercialized version of salsa developed as the market identified the
increasing number of Latino/as in the US as a promising group of consumers.
The author’s major understandings of the salsa history are that the
appropriation of salsa in the Western countries involves a reinvention of
cultural values. Salsa is an imagined cultural practice of ethnic solidarity
and identity politics for Latin immigrants and diasporas, whereas European and
Anglo-Saxon salsa dancers take salsa as a way of creating a certain style of
identity by consuming the Other culture. In particular, the participation in
salsa is perceived as an experience of feeling ‘liberation’ and being ‘cool.’
In such formations of cultural meanings and global success of salsa in the
global North, the hyper-normativity of gender roles make an important
contribution. The differentiated roles of “leading” male dancers and “led”
female dancers contributes to creating nostalgia of past social interactions.
Finally, the author points out that the interaction of local histories and
ideologies has given birth to different styles of salsa across the world.
Considering the research sites, she compares North American salsa with Cuban
style salsa. The former is characteristic of complex, fixed and showy moves
and competition among dancers, whereas the latter focuses on bodily movements
as a whole and a dancer’s own way of dancing, which is linked to the
authentication of imagined Latin culture as free and non-material. 

The title of Chapter 4 is “Das macht mich immer fröhlich wenn ich Spanisch
sprechen kann”translated as “Multilingual longing and class exclusion in
Frankfurt’s salsa community”. This is the first chapter that analyzes the
fieldwork in a salsa community, in particular, a Cuban-style dominant salsa
community in Frankfurt. Generally, dancers and teachers there show positive
attitudes towards Latin cultures and the Spanish language, so that the ethnic
authenticity of Latin America as a cultural value is reproduced and consumed
by the salsa market. Such local perceptions of salsa cultures are constructed
by dancers’ inclination to left-wing discourses. The historical fact that
Latin American migrants in the 1970s were political refugees helps Frankfurt
salsa dancers to have positive perceptions towards Latin cultures and even to
curb the tendency of viewing Latin Americans as a threat to national
integration. Moreover, as authentic Latin cultures are indexed with positive
meanings of social interaction such as warm, emotional, and happy, as opposed
to the stereotypes of Germans, non-Latino individuals enter the salsa
community with the desire to become another self through the performance of
the Other’s culture. More importantly, the passion for embracing authentic
Latin cultures leads to a desire to learn the Spanish language. However,
Frankfurt salsa community members’ conceptualization of language and culture
still remains within the ethnic boundaries. This limitation is revealed in
their ambivalent perfectionism over the command of Spanish; they want to speak
accent-free Spanish but ultimately accept the impossibility. In spite of such
positive constructions of salsa cultures in Frankfurt, ideologies of language
and culture are class-specific. Not only are the dancers elites who are open
to other cultures and familiar to cosmopolitan lifestyles, but they also
stratify Spanish speakers and other immigrants according to their economic
capital and proficiency of the German language. For example, the Colombian and
Turkish populations are considered groups who are not willing to learn German,
a direct opposition to  the national public ideology and practice
characterizing the German language as a key criterion of social integration. 

Chapter 5, “It doesn’t matter what they sing and how sad they are, they always
sound happy’. Evolutionist monolingualism and Latin branding in Sydney’s
LA-style salsa community”, moves to another salsa community, which is in
marked contrast with the former in terms of the use and perception of the
Spanish language. Although the national language ideology of Australia appears
to celebrate multilingualism and multiculturalism, its focus has recently
shifted to highlighting Australia’s English monolingualism as the cause of its
economic prosperity. The most noticeable difference observed in the Sydney
LA-style salsa community is the absence of the Spanish language and Latin
American culture, except for lyrics of dance songs and clichés (e.g., fiesta).
Moreover, dancers’ appearances and performances are showy and stylish.
Informants’ interviews demonstrate that the lack of Latin authenticity in this
salsa community stems from the oppositional construction between Latin people
and English speaking locals; the former’s linguistic and cultural traits are
perceived as ‘left behind’ and ‘outdated’, whereas the latter symbolizes
novelty and modernity. This ideology also recurs on the perception of salsa
styles; for example, LA-style dancers evaluate Colombian salsa, which is
performed not in the center of but away from the city, as not systematic and
taught simply by imitation. Thus, they try to devise more systematic steps and
lines in order to commercialize the style. Furthermore, the author argues that
the commodification of salsa is based on the neutralization of ethnic
differences in the multilingual/multicultural context in the name of social
inclusion, thus casting doubt on whether the local appropriation of salsa
would heighten cosmopolitan awareness. 

In Chapter 6, “’It’s also the cool factor’. Multilingualism and authenticity
in Sydney’s Cuban-style salsa community”, the author examines another local
salsa community in Sydney, which naturally leads to comparisons and contrasts
with the commercialized salsa community of the previous chapter. The
characteristic of Cuban-style salsa is the choreographic stress on the
holistic movement of body, which is in turn associated with the dancers’
lifestyle and perception of Latin culture—that is, anti-commercialism and
cosmopolitanism. This salsa community is a minority in the LA-style dominant
market. Its marketing tends to be amateurish with dancers’ clothing and
greetings more causal. However, most of the participants in the community are
White and well-educated English-speaking Australians, whereas their salsa
instructors have origins in Latin America. For salsa students in this group,
the use of Spanish is perceived as a language of in-group membership and a
token of interest in other cultures. The positive attitude toward the Spanish
language is expanded to the idea that LA style salsa dancers are not “proper”
cosmopolitans who are willing to understand other cultures or have
meta-cultural knowledge. Disentangling linguistic authenticity from ethnic
authenticity, the Australians in the Cuban-style salsa community aspire to
enjoy cosmopolitan lifestyle by being bilinguals of English and Spanish.
However, the author notes that the lifestyle is achievable only for those who
have cultural and educational capital as well as economic resources. 

Chapter 7, entitled “Language in a Transnational Age—Mobile meanings and
multiple modernities”, revisits the research questions and furthers
theoretical discussions. First of all, Blommeart’s (2007) concept of
sociolinguistic scales is reexamined to gain better understanding of the
relationship among multiple scales of discourses and language ideologies of
the three salsa communities (local, national, and transnational). While
pointing out the undiminished domination of national discourses, the author
argues that the order of scales should be represented not hierarchically but
recursively and work not toward the higher but interactively between the local
and the global, and between the contextual and the abstract. In understanding
the multiplicity of scaling, it is also important to recognize the issue of
power and locate blind spots created by the tension of power differences.
Subsequently, the theoretical considerations lead to the reconceptualization
of language competence and communities. Findings of the transnational salsa
communities reveal that the nexus of language and ethnicity is disentangled
and that multiple languages coexist in one’s language repertoire to different
levels of competence and command. However, language as a social and cultural
category still works in a certain context to reproduce the social structure.
In such circumstances, authenticity originating from ethnic communities is
mobilized as a resource for profit or as a symbolic brand. Finally, the author
expands the sociolinguistic discussions to the wider examination of modernity,
drawing on Beck’s distinction of first and second modernity. The intricacies
of the discursive spaces in the salsa communities confirm that language is
still a significant category, but it should be casted as a problematic and
questionable entity. She concludes that relevant effects of modern
understandings of language, such as the concept of native speaker, should be
the object of analysis and that the possibility of a more inclusive vision of
cosmopolitanism should be explored. 

EVALUATION

This book empirically justifies the theoretical necessity to reimagine the
notion of language in the globalizing social system, which leading
sociolinguists have called for in  the last decade. This book demonstrates
several important points that resonate with existing studies of the
sociolinguistics of globalization, such as decoupling of linguistic and
cultural authenticity, multiple layers of language practices and ideologies,
and commodification of language and culture. However, this book does not lose
sight of the nation-states roles in language practices in the transnational
context. As Heller (2008) and da Silva and Heller (2009) show, the practices
and ideologies are often performed beyond the national boundary, but it cannot
be readily denied that the nation-state takes the central role in the local
and transnational appropriation. In this sense, the analysis of German and
Australian national contexts makes a significant contribution to the body of
sociolinguistic knowledge. The comparison among three salsa communities shows
that the erasure of the elements and boundaries relating to the nation-states
would overgeneralize the effects of transnational mobilities on language
practices and ideologies. Furthermore, the innovative research methodology the
author used should be appreciated. Examining the situations in various
locations made it possible for Schneider to draw out the theoretical
significance of this study. The fieldwork in the three salsa communities in
two countries allow for comparative research. It also offers insight into
locally situated processes of constructing perceptions of language and
culture.

In the introduction, the author clarifies that the object of study is
transnational salsa. However, another interesting point of entry would be the
transnational flow of social actors such as dancers and teachers. Their life
trajectories in transnational migration or their connections to imagined
spaces of salsa would provide fascinating narratives of the relationships
between hegemonic ideologies and lived experiences, as well as between social
structure and agency. As the author substantiated in this book, the
investigation should produce findings of language ideologies and practices
formed at multiple scales. 

In addition, because of its multidisciplinary approach, this book will provide
insights into the relationship between language and culture to the readership
beyond sociolinguists.

Finally, I would like to make a suggestion in regards to the editing of this
book: the inclusion of an index would help readers to compare themes and
issues in the three communities more efficiently.

REFERENCES

Blommaert, Jan. 2007. Sociolinguistic scales. Intercultural Pragmatics 4.
1–19. 

Da Silva, Emanuel, & Heller, Monica. 2009. From protector to producer: the
role of the State in the discursive shift from minority rights to economic
development. Language Policy 8(2). 95–116.

Hannerz, Ulf. 1990. Cosmopolitans and locals in world culture. Theory, Culture
& Society 7(2). 237–251. 

Heller, Monica. 2008. Language and the nation-state: Challenges to
sociolinguistic theory and practice. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4).
504–524.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

In Chull JANG is currently a PhD candidate in the Language and Literacies
Education Program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the
University of Toronto (OISE/UT). His thesis research concerns South Korean
English study-abroad, taking critical sociolinguistic ethnography as a
theoretical and methodological framework. His research interests include
critical sociolinguistics, language learner subjectivity, and the issue of
English in late capitalism.

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