The Sociolinguistics of Globalization (Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact)

"Human language has changed in the age of globalization: no longer tied to stable and resident communities, it moves across the globe, and it changes in the process. The world has become a complex 'web' of villages, towns, neighbourhoods and settlements connected by material and symbolic ties in often unpredictable ways. This phenomenon requires us to revise our understanding of linguistic communication. In The Sociolinguistics of Globalization Jan Blommaert constructs a theory of changing language in a changing society, reconsidering locality, repertoires, competence, history and sociolinguistic inequality"--Provided by publisher. "A Critical Introduction (2005) attempted to sketch these consequences for our understanding of discourse, as well as for our ethos of analysing it. The same approach was applied to literacy in Grassroots Literacy (2008), and I am here bringing the same exercise to the field of sociolinguistics. Each of the books is an attempt, an essai in the classical and original sense of the term, in which I try my best to describe the problem and offer some conceptual and analytical tools for addressing it. And I make this effort because I believe that globalization forces us - whether we like it or not - to an aggiornamento of our theoretical and methodological toolkit"--Provided by publisher. Cover 1 Half-title 3 Series-title 4 Title 5 Copyright 6 Dedication 7 Contents 9 Illustrations 11 Series editor's foreword 13 Preface 15 Acknowledgements 18 1 A critical sociolinguistics of globalization 19 1.1 The challenge 19 1.2 Two paradigms 22 1.3 Globalization, super-diversity and multilingualism 24 Super-diversity 24 Multilingual repertoires and super-diversity 26 Stratified distribution 30 1.4 The start of a tradition 31 1.5 The challenge again 38 2 A messy new marketplace 46 2.1 Nina鈥檚 derri猫re 47 2.2 Sociolinguistic scales 50 The point of departure: horizontal and vertical metaphors 51 Scales as semiotized space and time 52 2.3 Orders of indexicality 55 2.4 Polycentricity 57 2.5 A sociolinguistics of mobile resources 59 Power and mobility 59 Locked in space: on linguistic rights 61 2.6 Selling accent 65 The Internet and the commodification of accent 67 Global indexicals of success 73 Discussion 76 2.7 Conclusion 79 3 Locality, the periphery and images of the world 81 3.1 Writing locality: a globalized Tanzanian novel 82 The invisible enterprises of the patriots 83 The social semiotics of Tanzanian space 86 The repatriation of critique 92 The cultural codes of globalization 94 3.2 Locality and the periphery 96 3.3 The norms of the periphery 98 The field and the issues 100 The error as terror: deviation and normativity in Wesbank High 101 Perceptions of the centre 114 The production of locality 117 3.4 Images from the periphery 119 4 Repertoires and competence 120 4.1 Truncated repertoires 121 4.2 Globalized genres of fraud 124 The data: preliminary observations 126 Knowing your way around the globe: aliases, anonymous providers 131 Constructing genres 133 An orrery of errors 145 Truncated fraud 149 4.3 A world of resources 151 5 Language, globalization and history 155 5.1 Historical concepts 155 5.2 The worlds of golf 158 5.3 Long and short histories 162 5.4 The chaotic shop 166 5.5 Conclusion 169 6 Old and new inequalities 171 6.1 Globalization, the state and inequality 171 6.2 Language, asylum and the national order 172 Joseph鈥檚 life history 174 From a strange life to no life 177 Defying the monoglot ideal 182 Modernist responses 189 6.3 Mainstreaming the migrant learner 191 6.4 The end of the state and inequality? 196 7 Reflections 198 7.1 Sketch of a road map 198 7.2 English in the periphery: imperialism revisited 200 The Tanzanian paradox 201 The state in space and time 202 Fooling around with language 205 What went wrong? 211 Discussion 212 7.3 Conclusions 214 Notes 217 2 A messy new marketplace 217 3 Locality, the periphery and images of the world 217 4 Repertoires and competence 218 5 Language, globalization and history 218 6 Old and new inequalities 218 7 Reflections 219 References 220 Index 227 "A Critical Introduction (2005) attempted to sketch these consequences for our understanding of discourse, as well as for our ethos of analysing it. The same approach was applied to literacy in Grassroots Literacy (2008), and I am here bringing the same exercise to the field of sociolinguistics. Each of the books is an attempt, an essai in the classical and original sense of the term, in which I try my best to describe the problem and offer some conceptual and analytical tools for addressing it. And I make this effort because I believe that globalization forces us - whether we like it or not - to an aggiornamento of our theoretical and methodological toolkit"-- Résumé de l'éditeur "Human language has changed in the age of globalization: no longer tied to stable and resident communities, it moves across the globe, and it changes in the process. The world has become a complex 'web' of villages, towns, neighbourhoods and settlements connected by material and symbolic ties in often unpredictable ways. This phenomenon requires us to revise our understanding of linguistic communication. In The Sociolinguistics of Globalization Jan Blommaert constructs a theory of changing language in a changing society, reconsidering locality, repertoires, competence, history and sociolinguistic inequality"-- Résumé de l'éditeur

Human language has changed in the age of globalization: no longer tied to stable and resident communities, it moves across the globe, and it changes in the process. The world has become a complex 'web' of villages, towns, neighbourhoods and settlements connected by material and symbolic ties in often unpredictable ways. This phenomenon requires us to revise our understanding of linguistic communication. In The Sociolinguistics of Globalization, Jan Blommaert constructs a theory of changing language in a changing society, reconsidering locality, repertoires, competence, history and sociolinguistics inequality.