LINGUIST List 25.2362
Fri
May 30 2014
Review:
Sociolinguistics: Du Bois & Baumgarten
(2013)
Editor for this issue:
Rajiv Rao <rajivlinguistlist.org>
Date: 16-Mar-2014
From: Zuzana Elliott
<zuzana.elliott
ed.ac.uk>
Subject: Multilingual
Identities: New Global Perspectives
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Book announced at
http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-5098.html
EDITOR: Inke C. Du Bois
EDITOR: Nicole Baumgarten
TITLE: Multilingual Identities: New Global
Perspectives
PUBLISHER: Peter Lang AG
YEAR: 2013
REVIEWER: Zuzana Elliott, University of
Edinburgh
SUMMARY
Inke Du Bois and Nicole Baumgarten’s volume
brings new approaches in understanding and
analysing multilingual migrants’ backgrounds
and identities. This collection of essays
investigates migrants’
“linguistic-ethnic-national” (p. 8) identities
performed in different cultural societies. The
studies shed new light on multilingualism
around the globe, focusing primarily on
identity construction in urban settings of
less-documented languages in Europe, the United
States, and the Middle East.
The chapters are organised thematically, where
the first three chapters deal with multilingual
identity of children and adolescents and the
last four are concerned with multilingual
identity construction of adults. Each chapter
includes a brief literature review and
references, which inspire opportunities for
further research. In the introduction, the
editors combine the materials from subsequent
chapters and apply them to global
perspectives.
The first chapter in this volume
(‘Communicative practices among migrant youth
in Germany: “Insulting address forms” as a
multi-functional activity’, by Susanne
Günthner) explores functions of insulting
address forms among 2nd and 3rd generation male
youths of German and Turkish origin residing in
Germany. The data were collected in youth
centres via informal interactions between 17-
to 23-year-old men of migrant backgrounds in
four different regions in Germany. The author
analyses adolescents’ everyday interactions and
identities in mixed-speech communities to
uncover the meaning of insulting terms and
their usage. Following the previous studies by
Eckert & McConnel-Ginet (1998) and Bucholtz
(2007), Günthner found that insulting forms are
predominantly used “as resources for asserting
particular positions within the group and for
establishing hierarchy and status” (p. 26). In
addition, Günther found that there are other
purposes behind insult use, from creating group
identity to forming (or breaking) social
ideologies. The study suggests that the use of
insults is therefore not limited to any
specific purpose, and that their use varies
according to the social functions associated
with each one.
In the second chapter, ‘Made in Berlin:
Bilingualism and identity among immigrant and
German-background children,’ Janet M. Fuller
analyses the concepts of ideologies and
identities of pre-teen bilingual children in
Berlin. The chapter investigates how children
perceive what it means to ‘be German’ when
positioned between two or more languages with
various social backgrounds. This study was
based on ethnographic research conducted in
Berlin’s two English-German bilingual schools,
the Charles Dickens School and the John F.
Kennedy School. More than 100 hours of audio
recordings of classroom activities were
collected, along with participants’
observations and questionnaires, which examined
“children’s backgrounds, language use,
attitudes, self-identification, and views on
what it means to be German” (p. 37). The first
part of the methodology featured a survey
exploring children’s attitudes towards their
own bilingualism and choice in language use.
The author argues that while policy changes
define German-ness in terms of language and
culture instead of descent, there is some
ambiguity about how the changes are reflected
in the bilingual classroom setting. The data
for the second part of the methodology were
obtained through multilingual classroom
interactions, and revealed that code-switching
was still prevalent among immigrant students
who identified themselves as German. The
results of this study showed that “‘being
German’ is accessible to anyone who is
culturally part of Germany” (p. 48),
demonstrating that language use was not the
sole factor involved in cultural
identification. Particularly interesting is the
discussion of multilingual language ideologies
and self-representations through the eyes of
children. As Fuller rightly points out, the
data collected were not objective, as they
reflected mere behaviours and feelings, of
which children might not be well aware.
A. Lane Igoudin’s short chapter, ‘Asian
American girls who speak African American
English: A subcultural language identity’,
investigates language use and attitudes among
three first-generation Asian-American teenage
girls (two Filipino-American and one
Cambodian-American) who use African American
Vernacular English (AAVE) in their everyday
speech. Based on three recorded group
interviews, the researcher observed that the
girls appeared to adopt “a wide variety of
phonological, morphosyntactic and lexical
features of AAVE” (p. 54). Interestingly, as
Igoudin points, the results did not correlate
with a previous study by Wardhaugh (2002), who
claimed that “the less standard the variety of
English spoken [is], the more successfully
formal education appears to be resisted” (p.
55). The academic performances of the girls
were above average, but they frequently
switched between AAVE and Standard American
English (SAE) (and their home languages Khmer
and Tagalog) based on different situations. The
girls’ code choices appeared to be very
unconventional because the AAVE dialect “more
than any other dialect of American English, has
been stigmatized as a socially unacceptable
code -- something, we learned, the girls were
well aware of” (p. 60). The chapter includes
useful examples of phonological and
morphosyntactic AAVE features of the subjects’
speech, thus providing a clear understanding of
the identity construction and sensitivity of
the subjects.
Katharina Meng and Ekaterina Protassova’s
chapter, ‘Deutsche or rusaki? Transformation of
the cultural self-conceptions after
(r)emigration’, seeks to answer questions
regarding ‘cultural self-conceptions’ of
immigrants in Germany. This interesting study
provides insight into Russia-Germans, or ethnic
Germans who emigrated from the Soviet Union to
Germany. Using analyses from interviews,
newspapers and internet forums, the authors
compared the complex societies’ attitudes
towards Germans and Russians. They identified
two terms which represent the migrants’
multilingual identities: Deutscher (German) and
rusaki. Both terms mark integration in Germany
to varying degrees. While Deutscher marks
immigrants’ German-ness through accepting their
German ancestries or names, or even decisions
to be registered as Germans in their Soviet
passports (p. 70), rusaki defines “[a] group of
Russians and underlines its specific ethnicity,
the Russianness, above all in its rural
appearance” (p. 73).
In her chapter, ‘Loving Bollywood and being
Dutch: Language choice and identity issues
among Surinamese-Hindustani women in
Amsterdam’, Dipika Mukherjee shares her
findings of women with regard to their language
maintenance and loss, as well as the obstacles
they face concerning their own identity. The
author observed twenty-two
Surinamese-Hindustani women enrolled in a
Bollywood dance class in Amsterdam for the
duration of 16 months. These women used four
languages in their daily lives; however, in the
class, they spoke exclusively Dutch. Mukherjee
observed that women who migrated into the
country young had much stronger ties to the
Netherlands than to India, although they
identified themselves as ‘Hindustani’ over the
other categories of ‘Dutch’ or ‘Indian’. The
author found that these women did not share any
desire to consider India as their home country;
however, the notion of “Hindustaniness” was
perceived to be very high, as related to
preserving the language for their children and
community. Also, Suriname is “conceived as
‘home,’ [though] they realise that there is no
going back” (p. 95). The author concludes that
despite the cultural and language barriers,
Bollywood presents itself as “an accessible
means for language retention of a familiar
tongue” (p. 96), thus preserving the strong
sense of fellowship among the
Surinamese-Hindustani community.
Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre’s study, ‘The role of
public opinion in argumentation: Immigrants in
the French radio broadcast Là-bas si j’y suis’,
seeks to answer how multiple identities shape
the cultural notions of speakers with migrant
backgrounds in France. Public opinions are
often viewed in light of politics and culture;
therefore, as the author points, analysing them
through the eyes of migrants often creates
debatable and controversial opinions on the
acceptance and tolerance of speakers’
communities. In her study, Baldauf-Quilliatre
aimed to identify immigrants’ opinions on
immigration laws and their situation in poor
suburbs in relation to the arguments presented
by Nicolas Sarkozy. Her analysis was based on a
one-hour French radio broadcast with a
“regular” audience, where she paid particular
attention to radio listeners and their complex
contributions left on answering machines.
Although the study didn’t allow for broad
generalizations, in her fifteen contributions,
the results seem to differentiate “between
European and South-American migrants on the one
side, and African/North-African migrants on the
other” (p. 108). While the first group showed
integration and positive attitudes towards the
host country and people, the second group
seemed to resist and instead, showed rather
negative attitudes and ‘resignation’ toward
problems faced in their communities. Each group
used unique tactics to add weight to their
opinions on the radio show, demonstrating
multiple paths to immigrants’ public
integration.
Inke Du Bois’ study, ‘And then I had to hold my
first Referat on Beethoven as a politischer
Mensch: Multilingual identities and L1 language
loss of US Americans in Germany’, identifies
sociodemographic factors affecting lexical
levels in immigrants’ speech. This study
presents quantitative and qualitative analyses
of a corpus of multilingual interviews of
thirty American immigrants who left America for
Germany between 1964 and 2001. Investigation of
code-switching and language attrition were
analysed statistically. The results were
correlated with extralinguistic variables such
as length of residency in Germany, educational
level, and social networks via a demographic
questionnaire. The results indicated that
German-American code-switching appeared more
often when Americans were exposed to the
society of other Americans. Thus, Americans who
used their first language (L1) tended to
experience fewer problems in retrieving English
lexical items. Interestingly, Du Bois’ study
showed that education, length of residence and
L1 social networks were the main factors
influencing the varying degrees of “L1
attrition and the intercultural identities of
speakers” (p. 134).
The last chapter, ‘Indigenous and immigrant
identities in multilingual Israel: Insights
from focus groups and discourse analysis’, by
Dafna Yitzhaki, Carmit Altman, Zhanna
Feldman-Burstein, Leor Cohen and Joel Walters,
offers a variety of insights into indigenous
and immigrant minority languages. The chapter
consists of a “linguistic taster” in which the
authors examine four studies that focus on
identity constructions among immigrants of
different ethnic backgrounds in Israel. The
first study analyses a language policy
interaction between indigenous and immigrant
language groups of Israeli and Arabic. The
study found that arguments supporting
indigenous minority language instruction rely
on two recurring elements: that
‘indigenousness’ is either irrelevant or
hierarchical in deciding language instruction
(p. 143). The contradictory nature of these
elements makes for highly complex and volatile
debates. The second study focuses on identity
formation in four Russian immigrant adult
parents and their six adolescent children, all
of whom are second language (L2) speakers with
high proficiency in Hebrew. The authors offer
two excerpts from interviews of two of the
adolescents with different backgrounds. The
first adolescent, Faina, demonstrated a strong
attachment to her host country, including
near-total integration into Israeli and secular
Jewish culture. Though she preserved her
Russian roots for ‘practical’ reasons and did
not hide her Russian background, she distanced
herself from similar immigrants who
self-identified as Russian. The second
adolescent, Rina, showed more attachment
towards her Russian identity, but demonstrated
a keen awareness of the complexity of her
immigrant identity. Both of these girls held
their opinions without antagonising differing
opinions. The third study presents the
complexity of Ethiopian-Israeli identity
display, as characterised through
self-perception and ethnicity. Four
Ethiopian-Israeli college students were
recorded, showing how their soldier identity
conflicts with but also ascends beyond other
social norms. In this way, these students use
their soldier identity to break through or
remove limitations imposed by other social
identities (e.g., gender, nationality,
religion) and to become more socially mobile as
a result. The fourth study focuses on analysing
relationships between code-switching and
identity among twelve English-Hebrew
participants who immigrated to Israel in
adulthood from the United States. The research
questions focused on motivations behind
code-switching between L1 and L2 narratives,
and identifying discourse markers that reflect
a variety of aspects of motivation for
code-switching across different identities.
EVALUATION
Researchers interested in discourse analysis
and L2 acquisition will certainly find this
small collection of essays to be an interesting
and inspiring resource. This volume
investigates new approaches towards global
multilingual migrant identities while
addressing various topics in the fields of
language loss, discourse analysis, and
code-switching.
Overall, the book provides invaluable reading
for anyone interested in the growing
development of global multilingualism, where
the primary focus applies to immigrants’
national and ethnic backgrounds and cultural
identities. As a student who does extensive
research on multilingualism and immigrants’
identities, I find this book to be a great
contribution to my research. When compared with
similar sources, this volume presents the most
recent studies in a well-structured and
cohesive manner, taking into account different
communicative and social interactions of global
personae.
Despite the small number of chapters, this book
identifies different concepts of children’s and
adults’ multilingual identity constructions
while focusing primarily on lesser-researched
languages, such as Israeli, French, or Dutch.
The volume is also highly inclusive, as it
considers lesser-known national and ethnic
identities such as Surinamese-Hindustani,
German-Croatians, and German-Americans, among
others.
As a researcher focusing on immigrants and
their identities, I found Fuller’s ‘Made in
Berlin’ and Igoudin’s ‘Asian American girls who
speak African American English’ particularly
poignant; both chapters examine
first-generation immigrant children who
identify themselves as part of their local
community as a result of strong ideologies and
perceptions towards their peers and cultures.
In contrast, Yitzhaki et al.’s ‘Indigenous and
immigrant identities in multilingual Israel’
reviewed four separate studies. Although I
found the section ‘Identity construction in the
discourse of Russian-Israeli immigrant
adolescents’ intriguing, I would have
appreciated more information, in general, in
each of the sections. This chapter felt
constrained, primarily due to its covering four
separate studies in the space of one
chapter.
In sum, Du Bois and Baumgarten provide a
measured and effective analysis of increasing
global multilingualism, and their book acts as
an excellent source of cutting-edge social
research to stimulate discussion in classrooms
and research centres alike.
REFERENCES
Eckert, P. & McConnell-Ginet, S. (1998).
Communities of practice. Where language,
gender, and power all live. In J. Coates (Ed.)
“Language and gender: A Reader” (484-494).
Mass.: Blackwell.
Bucholtz, M. (2007). Word up. Social meanings
of slang in California youth culture. In L.
Monaghan and J. E. Goodman (Eds.) “A Cultural
approach to interpersonal communication.
Essential readings” (244-267). Malden, MA:
Blackwell.
Wardhaugh, R. (2002). “An introduction to
sociolinguistics.” Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishers.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Zuzana Elliott is a doctoral student of
Linguistics and English Language at the
University of Edinburgh. Her previous research
experience examined literacy in children across
five European languages. She is interested in
multilingualism, language identity, and
acquisition of linguistic variation in migrant
second language learners. Her current research
is investigating sociolinguistic aspects of
long-term Slovak and Czech immigrants who
reside in Scotland.
Page Updated: 30-May-2014