31.453, Review: Applied Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Smakman, Heinrich (2017)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-31-453. Thu Jan 30 2020. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 31.453, Review: Applied Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Smakman, Heinrich (2017)

Moderator: Malgorzata E. Cavar (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Student Moderator: Jeremy Coburn
Managing Editor: Becca Morris
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Everett Green, Sarah Robinson, Peace Han, Nils Hjortnaes, Yiwen Zhang, Julian Dietrich
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Jeremy Coburn <jecoburn at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2020 21:36:34
From: Teresa Ong [ongtesa at gmail.com]
Subject: Urban Sociolinguistics

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36583657


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-3754.html

EDITOR: Dick  Smakman
EDITOR: Patrick  Heinrich
TITLE: Urban Sociolinguistics
SUBTITLE: The City as a Linguistic Process and Experience
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Teresa Wai See Ong, Griffith University

SUMMARY

In 1972, Einar Haugen proposed an approach to studying languages in
multilingual societies, which he named ‘language ecology’. His approach gave
birth to the idea of studying language ecologies in cities, where scholars
were invited by Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich, editors of “Urban
Sociolinguistics”, to discuss language issues related to urban ecologies.
Apart from an introduction chapter and a discussion chapter on urbanisation,
the chapters in this volume are divided into two parts: the global south
(megacities) and the global north (world cities). The former section, which
takes a tour from Cairo to Kohima, has five chapters, while the latter section
contains seven chapters, which travel from London to Moscow. The focus of
these chapters is to document what people in the urban ecologies do with
languages in their everyday life and the effects of this language use. 

In the introductory chapter, co-editors Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich
review the development of sociolinguistic research related to language in the
city. Scholars began by studying regional dialects, mainly in the US, Britain,
and Western Europe where nation-building ideology was incorporated, and then
broadened in scope to include non-Western cities where international migration
often takes place. As diversity increases in the ‘new’ cities, the language
issues studied give rise to new theoretical approaches and methods in
capturing interesting facts regarding “inter- and intra-speaker language
variation” (Smakman & Heinrich, 2018, p. 4). Following the introductory
chapter, Florian Coulmas discusses issues related to urbanisation. Large
cities began to develop in Europe before World War I where migration occurred
from countryside to cities. After the 1950s, urbanisation accelerated in the
developing world—more cities began popping up in Asia and Africa. In the 21st
century, cities such as London, Paris, Madrid, and Amsterdam are not like what
they used to be—instead, they have become very diverse due to people from
different backgrounds, languages, and communicative practices interacting
together and bringing social changes that were motivated by technology.
Coulmas concludes that today’s sociolinguistics will continue to be judged
about inequality due to new hierarchies of languages and influences of
migration and technology. 

In the first chapter of Part 1, Reem Bassiouney and Mark Muehlhaeusler locate
their study in Cairo. They begin with a brief history of the development of
Cairo, which now hosts landmarks that contain foreign names. In terms of
economic development, Cairo headquarters many large and international
companies with many malls, which are similar to those in the US, displaying
global brands both in the original Latin alphabets and ‘Arabized’ form. The
focus of this chapter is on linguistic diversity and linguistic
‘centralisation’ in the sociolinguistic ecology of Cairo. Decades ago,
Egyptian Arabic was brought into Cairo due to migration from rural areas.
However, Standard Cairene Arabic is used by government officials and
professionals despite not being the official language of Egypt. Due to
economic pressure, Arabic speakers tend to use Standard Cairene Arabic because
it is associated with the identity of being an Egyptian. This situation
demonstrates the association of Standard Cairene Arabic with political
conflicts in Cairo.

In the second chapter, Roland Terborg and Virna Velázquez look at language
diversity in Mexico City. Mexico has a population of 112 million inhabitants
and a total of 290 living languages. As the capital of Mexico, Mexico City
hosts 8.7 million inhabitants. Migration from the countryside to Mexico City
is popular due to lack of job opportunities in local communities. Terborg and
Velázquez give a brief sociolinguistic history of Mexico City to illustrate
its linguistic, cultural, and social complexity. They then describe the
linguistic situation in a street corner located at Avenida Universidad where
there are many small businesses, such as a butcher shop, a restaurant, stores
for snacks and beer, a French college, and a fruit and vegetables van, but
very little linguistic diversity was observed. They conclude that although
Mexico City is considered a megacity, its multicultural and multilingual
characteristic is weakening due to the growing use of the Spanish language in
the public domain while minority languages are only heard in the private
domain. 

Next Livia Oushiro and Maria del Carmen Parafita Cuto investigate rural speech
variants in São Paulo. São Paulo has 11 million inhabitants and is considered
the largest city in Brazil and in the southern hemisphere. In the early years
of the empire, dialeto caipira (translated as redneck dialect) was commonly
spoken. However, after independence, this Portuguese dialect was considered as
an ‘ugly and flawed’ language in São Paulo. From the 1870s onwards, rapid
migration took place as São Paulo became an important commercial hub.
Paulistas (natives of the state of São Paulo) began to speak Brazilian
Portuguese. In this chapter, the authors analyse two linguistic features,
nonstandard subject-verb agreement and code /r/ retroflexion, using native
Paulistanos’ speech. They found that both features are still present in the
speech of certain groups of working-class youth, predominantly those living
near the surrounding countryside and the Northeast. They conclude that these
features are part of the community’s 19th century linguistic repertoire. 

>From backwater to global city, Dubai is often described as the “world’s
fastest city” (Krane, 2009, p. np). Locating this chapter in Dubai, Ingrid
Piller examines the forms of urban linguistic practices that enable and
disable racial anxieties and ethnolinguistic hierarchies. She provides an
overview of the development of Dubai as a non-liberal modern city-state and a
free-market economy. In terms of its population, it has the highest percentage
of migrants, which is approximately 85% of the total population. The migrants
come from various countries, from India to Europe and China. However, the
migrants’ visas are strictly temporary and for employment purposes only.
Despite Arabic being the official language of United Arab Emirates, and
consequently the official language of Dubai, only a small minority of Dubai
residents are proficient in Arabic. In its linguistic landscape, Piller found
that transliterated English words in Arabic script and Arabic words in Latin
script are common . English is increasingly becoming popular among the UAE’s
younger generation and acts as the lingua franca for the migrants. Piller sums
up the reality of multilingualism in Dubai as complicated yet unique. 

The last chapter in Part 1, authored by Shobha Satyanath, attempts to
understand the ongoing linguistic changes in Kohima. Kohima is a hill-town
located in the multilingual and multicultural Kohima district of Nagaland in
India. Its existence was a result of the British establishing their
administration centre in Kohima and turning Nagaland into part of the Assam
province. Hence, Assamese acts as the language of administration and education
in Kohima. Nevertheless, as inter-ethnic marriages become popular, Nagamese is
used as the common language to tie all ethnolinguistic groups together. Data
was collected through interviews with 55 speakers aged 5 to 64 years in the
northern part of Kohima, and qualitative analysis of variation and change
across groups and individuals was conducted. Satyanath found changes in first
person pronouns and possessive morpheme in both Assamese and Nagamese, which
she concludes are consequences of urbanisation and mobility. 

In Part 2 of this volume, the first chapter by Susan Fox and Devyani Sharma
compares the sociolinguistic dynamics of two Asian-dominant micro-ecologies in
the metropolis of London. The first is Tower Hamlets, which hosts two dominant
ethnic groups—Bangladeshi/British Bangladeshi (32%) and White British (31%).
As the Bangladeshi population is concentrated in the west side of Tower
Hamlets, there is evidence of young Bangladeshi leading language change and
Multicultural London English (MLE) emerging in this area. The second ecology
is Ealing, where the population is multiethnic. As this neighbourhood hosts
ethnic groups coming from the lower middle-class, MLE is not their dominant
variety. Instead, many choose to speak British Asian English. Using two
individuals’ lived experiences for analysis, Fox and Sharma found that
although they demonstrate individual diversity, their language practices do
not challenge large-scale sociolinguistic models. They conclude that despite
dialect change being a concern in London, continual focus on the local groups’
dialect use would present a deep understanding of London’s process variation. 

The second chapter presents a case study of language diversity in Tokyo by
Patrick Heinrich and Rika Yamashita. The authors explain the geographical
location of Tokyo and that Tokyo grew bigger due to large waves of internal
migration in the past. Tokyo was known as a monolingual country but as the
2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics are approaching, translation technology
has been used to manage the large number of non-Japanese speaking visitors.
After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Yamanote speech was modernised to form
Standard Japanese, which serves all Japanese nationals including those in
Taiwan, Korea, and the South Pacific. However, the standard language was
interrupted by the process of language destandardisation. Tokyoites also
playfully decorated their speech  in a way that  that led to the development
of a new variety, the ‘metropolitan dialect’. In recent years, minority groups
(the Ainu and Ryukyuans), old migrants from China, Hong Kong, and Korea, and
new migrants from Brazil, Peru, and other Asian countries have added language
diversity in Tokyo. 

Employing Otsuji and Pennycook’s (2010) metrolingualism concept, Christine
Deprez describes Paris as a multilingual city where many languages meet
together. She provides a short description of the history of Paris starting
from the 13th century. The French Academy was established in 1635 to
standardise French, where its basis originated from the Parisian dialect.
Deprez continues to talk about the French Revolution of 1789 and popular
French films emerging in the 1930s. She sums up that “history is crucial for
understanding the evolution of multilingualism in Paris” (Deprez, 2018, p.
151). Today’s Paris has about 2.3 million inhabitants and its greater region
has more than 12 million inhabitants. Tourists, students, and refugees are
considered as new categories that contributed to the demographic composition
of Paris. Using parts of a longitudinal ethnographic study, Deprez gives
examples of languages spoken in different suburbs of Paris. She concludes her
study by suggesting the concept of metrolingualism to include the concept of
space. 

The next chapter by Leonie Cornips, Vincent de Rooij, and Dick Smakman
examines identity construction of adolescents’ interactions from three cities
in the Randstad area in the Netherlands. The authors begin the chapter by
introducing the physical, infrastructure, and population characteristics of
the Randstad area. Due to geographical features, the Randstad area was
urbanised in the 20th century with the establishment of major motorways, two
airports, several universities, a parliament building, and major international
centres of peace and justice. The Dutch language was dominant among the 110
languages spoken in the area. With various types of immigration taking place
recently, the role of the Dutch language has changed—the Dutch government
heavily promotes the Dutch culture, custom, and language as key for
integration. Using three case studies in Rotterdam, Utrecht, and Amsterdam,
the authors demonstrate that through complex networks of interactions,
linguistic hybridity for adolescent speakers continuously is being defined due
to Randstad being a dynamic, multiple, and hybridised space. 

In the subsequent chapter, Reynaldo F. Macías, Arturo Díaz, and Ameer Drane
present their sociolinguistic study of the ecology of Los Angeles. Located in
the state of California, Los Angeles is ranked as the eighth largest economy
in the world. Its location is diversely rich; it is surrounded by ocean,
beaches, and mountains. The population of Los Angeles was initially made up of
the indigenous people, followed by the Spanish, Mexicans, Anglo Americans, and
finally migration from the rest of the world. Approximately 34 languages
spoken in Los Angeles are indigenous languages, 62 are of Indo-European
origin, 57 from Asia and the Pacific Islands, and 14 from Africa. As a
language diversified city, it has 15-ethnic linguistic neighbourhoods—Cambodia
Town, Chinatown, Little Armenia, Historic Filipinotown, to name a few. When
Los Angeles’ ecology was closely examined, the authors found that English,
which has an official status, is the dominant single language mostly spoken.
This is followed by Spanish, Armenian, and recently new Euro-Asian immigrant
languages. The authors sum up that despite the fact that the ecology of Los
Angeles is changing, the continuing presence and activities of the indigenous
community should not be forgotten. 

The following chapter by Emi Otsuji and Alastair Pennycook discusses languages
and things in Sydney through everyday interactions. In Sydney, 36.2% of its
inhabitants had parents born in Australia and 52.1% had parents born overseas.
Only 60% of the population speak English at home; the remaining speak a
variety of Asian and European languages. The authors begin their discussion
with a backdrop scene of Chinese immigrants working as market gardeners. An
elderly Chinese couple from Guangdong are among those immigrants who arrived
in the 1990s. Despite speaking colloquial, rural Cantonese with minimal
English, they established their own way of communication, which operates
through codes. They grow Chinese and foreign vegetables for their living.
Networks, connections, and intersections occur when the vegetables travel
across the city to a Lebanese-run fruit and vegetable shop and a Chinese
restaurant. The authors conclude that a different perspective in approaching
the city is demonstrated through their study of interactions between people,
objects, and places. 

The location of the final chapter in this volume is Moscow, where Kapitolina
Fedorova and Vlada Baranova look at sociolinguistic life through analysis of a
range of data. The authors describe the development of Moscow, which began in
the 13th century but was cut short in the 18th century when St Petersburg was
founded. Moscow was pushed aside as being an old-fashioned city. However, in
the 1990s, the situation of Moscow gradually changed as it saw rapid
development in new sectors such as finance and real estate. Shopping malls
with vibrant advertisements and luxury apartment buildings also emerged.
Nevertheless, tighter regulations were implemented in the 2010s, which saw
authorities claiming public spaces and demolishing private stalls. Work
migration in Moscow was divided into two waves; the first immigrants were
former Soviet citizens and migrants from larger cities, while the second were
mainly those living in rural districts. Consequently, the new migrants had a
lower education level, less proficiency in Russian, and less experience living
in the city. Russia’s ‘official minority’ languages and English are now seen
in the linguistic landscape of Moscow, as a result of the new migrant
population. Fedorova and Baranova (2018, p. 234) sum up multilingualism in
Moscow as a “phenomenon of ethnic regions in the periphery”.

EVALUATION 

In this globalised era, international migration is a common phenomenon in many
cities around the world. Consequently, these cities become diversified in
terms of population and languages. Nevertheless, the influences of technology
and social media in these cities are causing minority languages to disappear
and a global identity to be formed. In other words, globalisation is in fact
‘shrinking’ the world. 

In this volume, the editors compiled a set of research studies from different
cities around the globe in which each study attempts to examine language
diversity and multilingualism. The scholars have been successful in their
attempts; many have demonstrated the interactions between language, people,
and the city. They have also discussed how language ideology plays an
important role in the development of a city, which often resulted in one
language being more commonly in use while other languages influence linguistic
changes in that dominant language. The scholars have used different approaches
to capture the fluidity of language lives, ranging from participant
observation to ethnography and interviews. Some conducted qualitative analysis
while others did quantitative analysis. 

Overall, this volume is beneficial to both theoretical and applied linguists
due to the versatility of the approaches used when studying languages in urban
ecologies. A theoretical linguist can investigate variation of certain syntax
and morphology, while applied linguists can examine language policy and
language practices. This volume ends with a proposal for those interested in
studying language lives in the city. 

REFERENCES

Deprez, C. (2018). The city as a result of experience: Paris and its nearby
suburbs. In D. Smakman & P. Heinrich (Eds.), Urban sociolinguistics: The city
as a linguistic process and experience (pp. 148-161). Oxon: Routledge.

Fedorova, K., & Baranova, V. (2018). Moscow: Diversity in disguise. In D.
Smakman & P. Heinrich (Eds.), Urban sociolinguistics: The city as a linguistic
process and experience (pp. 220-236). Oxon: Routledge. 

Krane, J. (2009). Dubai. The story of the world’s fastest city. London:
Atlantic Books. 

Smakman, D., & Heinrich, P. (2018). Introduction: Why cities matter for a
globalising sociolinguistics? In D. Smakman & P. Heinrich (Eds.), Urban
sociolinguistics: The city as a linguistic process and experience (pp. 1-11).
Oxon: Routledge.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Teresa Ong Wai See is a linguist interested in exploring the flow of concepts
and ideas between language and culture. She loves engaging with diverse
communities to better understand how different traditions are practised in
everyday life. Her doctoral thesis examines language maintenance pertaining to
Chinese community languages in Malaysia. In doing so, she develops an
ecological framework to attain a holistic understanding of the sociocultural
role of linguistics.





------------------------------------------------------------------------------

***************************    LINGUIST List Support    ***************************
 The 2019 Fund Drive is under way! Please visit https://funddrive.linguistlist.org
  to find out how to donate and check how your university, country or discipline
     ranks in the fund drive challenges. Or go directly to the donation site:
               https://iufoundation.fundly.com/the-linguist-list-2019

                        Let's make this a short fund drive!
                Please feel free to share the link to our campaign:
                    https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
 


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-31-453	
----------------------------------------------------------