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Оглавление1 Researching Multilingual Urban Contexts
Clare Mar-Molinero
Introduction: Multilingual Southampton
Almost all shopkeepers, restaurateurs and hoteliers speak English as their main and only language in Southampton, so do not expect people to be bilingual and fluent in other languages, such as French, Spanish or Italian. All signposts are shown only in English, although attractions and car parks are clearly indicated by symbols. There is a definite south county feel in the London-sounding accents of Southampton locals, although it is easy to understand and there are no unusual or colourful colloquialisms to worry about. If your English is only basic, do bring a translating dictionary or similar, so that you make the most out of your visit. (World Guides)
This extract is from an online tourist guide available for those interested in visiting the city of Southampton in the United Kingdom. As a long-time resident of the city this guide and its instructions to visitors about the language environment of Southampton left me both shocked and yet unsurprised. It emphasised to me the gap that often exists between the imagined and real linguistic environment we live in and how it is perceived by some of its population. Despite the growing volume of research on urban linguistic superdiversity, some of which is discussed below, it is timely to remember that researchers’ observations are not always equally shared by the very populations being investigated, or at least, not by all sections of these populations.
I am, therefore, opening this chapter with some comments on the particular example of urban multilingualism in Southampton which I experience in my daily life in order to bring to the fore some of the challenges that face anyone seeking to analyse and interpret this kind of linguistic environment. In particular, I hope with this example to raise some of the issues that a researcher of urban multilingualism needs to bear in mind as they seek to embed themselves in their chosen environment. I will then follow this with an overview of some of the key theoretical and methodological concepts that underpin the kind of research which is explored throughout this volume.
Returning to the opening extract: firstly, it is, unsurprisingly, not true to say that English is the ‘main and only language’ of ‘shopkeepers, restaurateurs and hoteliers’ in Southampton. As with so many modern urban centres, the city has a large migrant population, who have arrived over the past century from different parts of the world bringing with them their diverse linguistic resources. Again, common to other contemporary high streets and tourist areas, the frontline personnel in restaurants, cafés, bars and shops represent a wide range of ethnicities and linguistic varieties. Indeed, very many of these people will be at least bilingual or multilingual across many languages. It is interesting too that ‘French, Spanish and Italian’, all Western European languages, are those selected as examples of the authors’ expectations in terms of bilingual competence. Why these languages?
It is certainly true that signage is almost entirely in English, which aligns with the beliefs apparently underlying this extract: that Southampton (as with most of the United Kingdom) has an unwritten/unspoken language policy of monolingualism in the use of English in the public domain; that any other language is invisible; that language – the English language – is considered essential to any sense of British identity. All this represents a common language ideology that privileges the dominant state (national) language and encourages monolingualism. Moreover, it demonstrates also an adherence to standard language ideology (see, Lippi-Green, 1997; and in this volume: Gaiser & Matras; Karatsareas; McAuley & Carruthers) as the guide reassures the possibly concerned visitor that the ‘London-sounding accents’ are ‘easy to understand’. The English of the national capital city and affluent Southern (‘south counties’) England surrounding it is considered more likely to be accessible and comprehensible, unlike that of other varieties which might have ‘unusual and colourful colloquialisms’.
In just this one short extract we see unfolding beliefs about and attitudes to language that represent prevalent language ideologies and might be summarised as: considering monolingualism the norm; knowledge of any other language restricted to the kind of European languages taught in UK schools; public language use limited to the dominant language; and placing non-standard forms of the dominant language in a lower status, as difficult to understand and a ‘worry’. All of these beliefs demonstrate a clear ideological positioning, and yet they are not the words of a politician or public policymaker, but of a (anonymous) member of the public attempting to ‘sell’ the city to visitors. Does the author believe that the visitor they seek to attract would prefer the safety of monolingualism and feel more comfortable with standard English? Most likely, yes. What does this really tell us about language(s) in Southampton? As researchers, what do we want to know about language in cities like Southampton? On the one hand we may find this a depressing lack of understanding of language
in Southampton, demonstrating a blindness and deafness to its multilingualism, which begs the question of who is Southampton for the writer of this guide. At the same time, as researchers we will want to unpick the statements in this short extract to help us understand better language ideologies in Southampton (and many other UK cities besides).
Clearly this extract does not represent the kind of source that academic researchers would normally turn to in order to acquire data about language and languages in Southampton. Official statistics of the languages spoken (arrived at largely through counting the languages spoken as mother tongues amongst school children, or self-reporting in national censuses) might be one such source (see, for example, National Statistics Census 2011). However, we should be cautious of ‘official statistics’ which at times reflect the underlying ideologies of those that collect them (see Duchêne & Humbert, 2018). In Chapter 3 of this volume Gaiser and Matras describe a much more nuanced and holistic method of collating statistical data on languages that has been developed in Manchester. Exploring the city’s history of migration and settlement and plotting where this is found in the city might be another (see, for example, Kushner & Knox, 1999; Patterson, 1970, on migration to Southampton). Reviewing other scholarly publications on the subject is necessarily a starting point (for Southampton, see, for example, Cadier, 2013; Cadier & Mar-Molinero, 2012, 2014). And from a more empirical perspective, examining the linguistic and audio landscapes, as well as acting as participant observers, are increasingly favoured methods to build a picture of local multilingualism. These sources would reveal, in contrast to the original extract, an abundance of different languages and an increasing mixing and translanguaging (see below for discussion of this term) among their speakers.
Interviewing policymakers and educators and studying official documents can also explain how a city’s local government sees and reacts to language. When asked what Southampton’s language policy is, different answers from its local government officers and politicians have been given at different points in time, no doubt reflecting contrasting party political regimes, both locally and nationally. In 2010 Southampton City Council drew up an Accessible Communications Position Paper which in terms of translation and interpreting services clearly signalled the need to focus on all Southampton residents learning English.1 This document stated,
… we will NOT [emphasis in original] pro-actively translate informa-tion into community languages. The exception to this is where there is a clear requirement to do so, in view of the specific nature of the information or the intended audience. This position does not negate our commitment to respond to customer requests for information in another language … (Southampton City Council, 2010)
After a lengthy section giving the reasons for not proactively translating council documents, the Position document states,
In addition; the council recognises that translation of information is not a substitute for learning English. The council is committed to working with partners in the city to improve English skills in all communities, through the provision of English as a second language (ESOL) classes and other opportunities. This approach will help to build cohesion and integration of communities in Southampton. (Southampton City Council, 2010)
This ideology was still clearly articulated in 2012, when the then Leader of Southampton City Council remarked:
We made a conscious decision not to publish [documents] in other languages. Promotion of the English language is the key to everything, to better employment, social enrichment. It’s the key to the identity of the UK; it’s the bedrock of our culture. (public communication)
This Herderian idea of one nation-one language (see, for example, Barnard, 1969), as well as endorsing dominant language monolingualism, present also in the opening extract, is certainly not unique to Southampton. In Southampton this sentiment has been somewhat softened and nuanced since the publication of the Position document in 2010 by different political regimes and policies. Nonetheless, a recent reply from a Southampton City Council officer about language policy started with references to the availability of translation and interpreting services for those who do not speak English. Such services are offered purely as support for access to and integration into the public life of the city through English; no such services are available in the other direction for monolingual English speakers to understand the mother tongues of many of their co-residents. Nor would the city’s local government officers, politicians or, indeed, the majority of the city’s educators, even consider the need or desirability of offering services of the latter sort. There are of course also strong financial considerations that motivate what services might be made available, but I would argue that the English-as-integration belief overwhelmingly underpins any local (and national) language policies.
Understanding the language ideologies, attitudes and policies held and practised by a city’s population is of course as important to the research into multilingualism as any collecting of data and statistics, which as already noted, can indeed be affected by the former. For example, it might be argued by those who promote English-as-integration beliefs that monolingual ideologies indicate that there is a need to control language(s), from which it follows, in the strongest interpretation, that multilingualism and those who speak other languages need to be controlled, if not excluded. This cameo of Southampton – often cited as the typical average UK medium-sized city – demonstrates how essential it is for researchers of urban multilingualism to ensure they are employing the most appropriate methods to fully see and hear the environment they are examining, including the need to leave expectations and preconceptions behind as they understand the linguistic attitudes, performances and repertoires through which they wander. As an insider to Southampton’s linguistic environment I have sought to be aware of this need to distance myself from any preconceptions and to engage as researcher with the researched and respect the importance of that relationship (see Cadier & Mar-Molinero, 2014). This awareness and relationship are also underpinning much of the volume edited by Gardner and Martin-Jones (2012), whose focus is more generally on contemporary multilingualism, not specifically superdiverse cities. In their introduction they highlight the need for:
reflection (…) on the role of researchers as socially-situated actors, with their own biographies and subjectivities, within the research process and on the fluid and negotiated nature of the researcher-researched relationships that are formed in and out of the field. (Martin-Jones & Gardner, 2012: 1)
Key Concepts in Urban Superdiverse Mutlilingualism
The research in this volume examines examples of multilingualism in the context of contemporary superdiversity (see below for discussion of this term) in environments that have been and are being transformed by transnational migration. It explores language in urban contexts: the city as a site for experimentation and creativity in language practices. This involves considering theoretical frameworks and appropriate methodologies to examine such practices. Before moving to the specific case studies and critical discussions in the following chapters, some consideration here is given to recurring concepts that underpin the research throughout this volume. Most of these concepts have been widely analysed in the literature by scholars working in the areas, but my aim here is to navigate amongst these discussions to present interpretations that align with the approach we share as authors in this volume. The studies here build on and reference the growing and important literature already available in the area of multilingualism in the city, and related transnational migration, superdiversity and globalisation processes (for example, Blackwood & Tufi, 2015; Block, 2006; Blommaert, 2013; Extra & Yağmur, 2004; Gardner & Martin- Jones, 2012; Gogolin et al., 2013; Holmes et al., 2013; Horner & Weber, 2017; King & Carson, 2016; Mac Giolla Chríost, 2007; Martin-Jones & Martin, 2017; Shohamy et al., 2010; Smakman & Heinrich, 2017; Stevenson, 2017; Yağmur & Extra, 2011).
In the sections below I will consider what we discover the ‘city’ to be in our research and its relationship with language, a term itself which will also be problematised in the context of current so-called superdiversity. I will examine ways of identifying and describing linguistic practices in contemporary superdiverse urban environments and explore the language ideologies that underpin these and the policies that can impact on them. Finally, I will consider the methodological approach that lies at the heart of this volume, exploring how the contributors in this volume examine the range of methods available to them to research this linguistic environment, and how we reflect on our research methods. Throughout, I will thread through examples from my own research in the city of Southampton.
Language and the City
The city is a discourse and this discourse is truly a language: the city speaks to its inhabitants, we speak our city, the city where we are, simply by living in it, by wandering through it and looking at it … it is in relation to personal histories that urban texts are interpreted and reinterpreted. (Barthes, 1997: 168)
As Barthes suggests the relationship between language and the city is and always has been intricately intertwined. Traditionally, criteria to define the city, particularly the global city, have included hosting economic, political, cultural and transport hubs, characterised by the diverse nature of their large populations who originated from many different linguistic and ethnic backgrounds (Sassen, 1991). Sassen, a pioneer in exploring the meaning of the global city, recognises how deterritorialised the modern city has become, creating networks that cross geographical boundaries and bring together what she describes as, ‘the transnationalization of labor and the formation of translocal communities and identities’ (2005: 38). She goes on to write,
The global city and the network of these cities is a space that is both place-centered in that it is embedded in particular and strategic locations; and it is transterritorial because it connects sites that are not geographically proximate yet are intensely connected to each other. If we consider that global cities concentrate both the leading sectors of global capital and a growing share of disadvantaged populations (immigrants, many of the disadvantaged women, people of color generally, and, in the megacities of developing countries, masses of shanty dwellers) then we can see that cities have become a strategic terrain for a whole series of conflicts and contradictions. (Sassen, 2005: 39)
Many of the authors in this volume question the notion of the city, and demonstrate that the ‘city’ – and language in it – is a problematic concept: with the ever-expanding boundaries of the city, the megalopolis versus micro and local, such as the London of ‘villages’ (see Paffey, this volume); and the role of language in making a home and feeling ‘at home’ in the city. Is it merely the order of magnitude, or is it the layers of complexity and diversity, which may also be found in much smaller sites (such as Southampton), that equate to ‘city’? The cross-cutting social categories of work, social life, home and online communications, what Timms describes as a ‘mosaic of social worlds’ (Timms, 1971: 1), also problematise where the ‘city’ is – where it begins, where it ends.
The research in this volume examines languages in contact in volatile, dynamic situations and is looking for and devising methods to capture that. Much of the research here offers a synchronic analysis. This may be because the city has been considered by some commentators as a consequence of modernity and therefore as having ‘less’ history, or that constant innovation or reinvention destroys historical traces. And yet, what is already there is as important as what is brought by members of the community (or communities) to the neighbourhood. Migration experience shaped by a language regime and the lived experience of language (Busch, 2015) and the speaking subject becomes a historical figure (see, for example, Stevenson, 2017; Wells, this volume). Simultaneously language is refashioned and repurposed to respond to the demands of a new environment. At the same time, multilingual resources in the repertoires of the existing inhabitants in cities and urban spaces create a major contributory factor to its superdiversity. The receiving/host community is itself often not monolingual. Instead, it is increasingly diverse, forming part of the complexity of superdiversity.
Nonetheless analysing the multilingual city has over the years been largely driven by research embedded in Western concepts of ‘national’ languages, and indeed ‘bounded’ languages, which I will return to below. As Smakman and Heinrich (2017: 3) argue, referring largely to research published in English,
… sociolinguistic theories were predominantly developed on the basis of case studies conducted in the US, Britain and Western Europe. They thus incorporated influences of European-model nation building ideology in that they studied, for example, speech communities that were typically constituted of people with a shared ethnicity, identity and often locality.
And they conclude from this that,
There exists, in a word, a double bias in the study of language in the city; a ‘Western’ one and a ‘monolingual national’ one in which minorities and migrants ‘disturb’ the dominant language-ethnicity-identity ideology. (Smakman & Heinrich, 2017: 4)
The contributors to this volume seek to avoid this bias and contribute to new understandings of urban multilingualism, accepting the notion of ‘city’ as fluid and changing. Language in the city manifests itself in a wide range of ways, from the existence of an abundance of different and diverse languages, creating traditional multi-lingualism (i.e. many languages living side by side), to more complex mixing and shifting codes, which we will discuss later. It also creates challenges for civic as well as individual communications, with the result as King and Carson note,
… two major communication phenomena affect this diversity in sometimes counterbalancing ways. English is increasingly used as a lingua franca throughout the globe, with an impact on communication choices, language diversity and maintenance, while there is also a remarkable growth in new communication technologies, such as voice recognition and synthesis, and increasingly viable machine translation, digital networked technology and social media. (King & Carson, 2016: 2)
Superdiversity
The city and urban centres generally have been the focus of migration for centuries, creating multi-ethnic and multicultural populations. Sometimes this leads to cities within cities, towns within towns: ‘Little Italy’, Chinatown, ‘Little Havana’, etc. At times cultural spaces can exist in parallel and when they become visible to each other, their ‘contact zones’ can clash and collide (Pratt, 1991) fostered by distrust of the stranger, racism and prejudice. Thus we see the mixing of local and global cultures, languages and communities to create what has recently been labelled superdiversity (e.g. Arnaut et al., 2016; Blommaert & Rampton, 2011; Creese & Blackledge, 2018; Vertovec, 2010).
Superdiversity is a concept that is referred to and is accepted by the majority of this volume’s contributors (see, for example, discussion of the concept in Bradley & Simpson, this volume). While this is now a widely used term, it is not unproblematic and has been hotly contested by some (see Pavlenko, 2018). The main criticism aimed at the term is that it is a vacuous concept used as a fashionable label to describe a phenomenon which is not new and has existed for years, if not centuries. Indeed, the impact of migration, which produces superdiversity, has been felt as long as migration has existed. This impact increased especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. What is largely different, it is argued, with twenty-first century migration and its impact is a series of new characteristics and contexts: firstly, migration nowadays is increasingly by smaller groups of nationals from a far wider range of different countries. The numbers may be similar to those in the past; the diversity is greater. Secondly, the norm whereby migrants arrived at a destination and settled permanently (or for a long time before returning home) has changed to far more transnational migration where new arrivals come and go, passing through or returning home, greatly helped by modern transport options. Linked to this is the role of modern technology which has so dramatically transformed society. It has led to a far higher degree of (often complex) interconnectivity, a ‘compression of time and space’ (Coupland, 2003) and a blurring of boundaries and sense of place (Lynch, 2019). High speed trains, aeroplanes, cars and motorways and telephones and television begun this transformation in the twentieth century. Now the technology brings migrant groups together instantly, able to keep in touch with families and home cultures, in their places of origin or in diasporic communities, through the internet and above all, social media. This has created more complex and ever-changing populations whose effect is both instant and layered. Smakman and Heinrich (2017: 8) taking this further write,
The result of – or the solution to – ever-growing diversity has not simply been a new level of attention towards ‘assimilation’ or ‘ethnic segregation’, but it has also involved a new level of ‘individualisation’. In other words, we are witnessing an increasing independence of individuals from their physical socio-cultural environment – a trend enhanced by virtual communities and new communication technology.
In earlier research into the city of Southampton, we described superdiversity as ‘a mosaic of flows, challenging the traditional connections between ethnic, linguistic, cultural and territorial features’ (Cadier & Mar-Molinero, 2012: 151). We further argued that ‘Such physical and virtual mobility facilitates movement and interactions, allowing individuals to negotiate multiple identities in family, work, social networking, and education, as well as in residential, cultural and religious roles’ (Cadier & Mar-Molinero, 2012). In clear contradiction to the statement with which this chapter began, two informants from our research into multilingualism in Southampton gave us accounts of the daily superdiversity they lived (and delighted in).
I’m talking Portugal, France, Spain, Italy, English, Greek, Turkish, Albanians. It’s a mix, you have no idea it’s incredible, just people from all over the world, just in a little circle, it’s incredible, ‘cos that’s how we started … we sat down at a table, in M’s just all of us eating and drinking and people from, we covered the whole world in one table. (Mario, restaurant worker, interview, 7 March, 2011)
Asian communities keep their connections right across the globe now because, I mean, when I look at myself, I have family in Kenya, I have family in Canada, in America, in Hong Kong, in Japan, in India, in Pakistan, wherever. Yes, I come from Kenya myself. My husband is from Uganda, so we have all this family all over the world. So not only do we link on, every week with everybody, but when there are major decisions to be made in the family we link with them too. (Southampton City Councillor, personal communication, 7 July, 2010)
Language: Translanguaging and (Post) Multilingualism
We have already seen that the notion of the contemporary ‘city’ is a fluid one. Likewise, we will problematise the meaning of ‘language’, especially the idea of a discrete, bounded language, linked to a specific national people. I have previously argued,
[The] constant, intense and complex movement of peoples has destabilised many of the conventional labels that in the past have been considered permanent. Identities and networks shift and adapt to their surroundings, recognising power structures, ideologies and the value of varied cultural and social capital of the context they find themselves in. A significant label that we argue shifts and adapts in transnational migration is that of ‘language’, particularly discrete standard national languages. Just as migrant identities merge and shift during a transnational journey, so too do languages and linguistic practices. These can be positive, creative resources that enable social contact and advancement, or they may be negative contestations within linguistic ideological hierarchies. (Mar-Molinero & Paffey, 2018: 15)
In a similar way Li Wei (2018: 22) writes,
No single nation or community can claim the sole ownership, authority and responsibility for any particular language, and no individual can claim to know an entire language, rather bits of many different languages. What is more, the association between a language and a nation or a community can change over time, just as an individual can also give up a language and adopt another.
Superdiverse environments ‘generate complex multilingual repertoires in which often several (fragments of) ‘migrant’ languages and lingua francas are combined’ (Blommaert & Dong, 2010: 370). This is particularly the case in the modern city as we have noted. As Smakman and Heinrich (2017: 5) remark, ‘Language diversity is not just a large number of languages, but more crucially also the diversity within and amongst these languages’.
Among the linguistic practices that Blommaert and Dong refer to, translanguaging (García & Wei, 2014), transidomatic practices (Jacquemet, 2005) and metrolingualism (Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010) are particularly appropriate approaches to understand transnational and superdiverse repertoires. In order to reflect the increasing complexity and diversity referred to above, these concepts challenge earlier ones such as code switching and code mixing that have long been used to discuss bi- and multilingual contexts, considering these latter too simplistic and reductive.
Translanguaging is identified as a linguistic practice at work in their particular research environment by many of the contributors to this volume, particularly Bradley and Simpson, whose work derives from the ground-breaking research of the AHRC TLang project where translanguaging underpins the linguistic environments studied (see Chapter 2).2 García and Wei (2014: 22), leading early proponents of translanguaging, argue that:
Translanguaging differs from the notion of code-switching in that it refers not simply to a shift or a shuttle between two languages, but to the speakers’ construction and use of original and complex interrelated discursive practices that cannot be easily assigned to one or another traditional definition of language, but that make up the speakers’ complete language repertoire.
Translanguaging questions the basic concept of a named discrete language, normally closely aligned to a specific nation state. Identifying translanguaging challenges the bounded sense of nation and national language and those to whom a language is said to belong.
Otsuji and Pennycook (2010) when observing similar linguistic practices in contemporary urban contexts describe such activity as ‘metrolingualism’, which they understand in the following way,
‘… people from different and mixed backgrounds use, play with and negotiate identities through language: [metrolingualism] does not assume connections between language, culture, ethnicity, nationality and geography, but rather seeks to explore the contingencies of these categories; its focus is not on language systems but on languages as emergent from context of interaction … including a much broader view of contexts of translingual activity’ (Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010: 246).
In previous work on Southampton (Cadier & Mar-Molinero, 2012, 2014) we saw many instances of this kind of use of linguistic resources that Otsuji and Pennycook identify. Interestingly, too, is the awareness (and perceived value) of this kind of linguistic interaction that our informants display. For example,
[Mario, Madeiran restaurant worker] describes what he sees as the common migrant experience, ‘if you don’t understand you ask or you just make fun or you just mix everything, Spanglish, Spanish, Portuguese, English …’ (Mario, personal communication, March 7, 2012)
Like others working in his sector, he shows how this playing with language or ‘performing’ language is essential for work. When working in a Spanish restaurant he comments, ‘you play the game [pretending to be Spanish], it meant they [the customers] were happy. It meant tips … manager happy’ (Mario, personal communication, March 7, 2012) (in Cadier & Mar-Molinero, 2012: 152).
Jacquemet’s concept of transidiomatic practices (2005), is discussed in his findings from his case study of Albanian migrants and complements and echoes the notions of translanguaging and metrolingualism. He argues that,
transidiomatic practices describe the communicative practices of transnational groups that interact using different languages and communicative codes simultaneously present in a range of communicative channels, both local and distant. This triangulation of linguistic activities, indexicality, and semiotic codes needs to be complexified to account for how groups of people, no longer territorially defined, think about themselves, communicate using an array of both face-to-face and long-distance medias, and in so doing produce and reproduce social hierarchies and power asymmetries. (Jacquemet, 2005: 264)
Importantly, such varied and innovative linguistic practices challenge traditional meanings of ‘multilingualism’. No longer should we assume that ‘multilingual’ only encompasses ‘many languages’, if indeed we do, but conveys as well, or instead, the diversity and intensity of linguistic practices and resources referred to above. As Pennycook notes (2010: 2),
The notion of language as practice takes us away from a notion of language as a pre-given entity that may be used in a location, and looks, by contrast, at language as part of diverse social activity.
Li Wei (2018) describes this situation as ‘post-multilingualism’. He argues,
We are therefore entering a post-multilingualism era where simply having many different languages is no longer sufficient either for the individual or for society as a whole, but where multiple ownerships and more complex interweaving of languages and language varieties, and where boundaries between languages, between languages and other communicative means and the relationship between language and the nation-state are being constantly reassessed, broken or adjusted. (2018: 22)
In contemporary superdiverse urban centres to ask (in censuses or to children at school) what languages people speak could ignore this complex and sophisticated range of communicative practices that exists in much modern multilingualism (see also, Gaiser & Matras, this volume). Only counting discrete, bounded languages in investigating a city’s linguistic repertoire ignores the much greater richness and versatility of its speakers, but also sets up limitations of the information accessed and therefore of the potential support on the part of authorities such as local and national governments.
Language Ideologies and Language Policy
Throughout this chapter I am referring to ‘language ideologies’ in the sense first defined by Silverstein (1979: 193) as ‘sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use’. Or, with a more socially oriented focus Irvine (2012) writes,
Language ideologies are conceptualizations about languages, speakers, and discursive practices. Like other kinds of ideologies, language ideologies are pervaded with political and moral interests and are shaped in a cultural setting. To study language ideologies, then, is to explore the nexus of language, culture, and politics. It is to examine how people construe language’s role in a social and cultural world, and how their construals are socially positioned.
Earlier, in the example of Southampton, I have made the link as to how language ideologies, consciously or unconsciously, influence policies that affect language services and attitudes. I have also referred to the lack of an explicit language policy nationally in the United Kingdom, unlike in many other states where language policy is enshrined in national constitutions. The literature on language policy (LPP) is enormous and growing (for a good, if somewhat dated, overview, see, Ricento, 2006), since the early days of rather mechanical notions of Language Planning in postcolonial situations (for example, Haugen, 1959; Rubin & Jernudd, 1977). Recent interesting discussions around concepts of language policy include Shohamy (2006) who emphasises that such policies are implicit as well as explicit and are carried out at informal individual as well as formal societal levels. Barakos and Unger (2016) understand language policy as a discursive space in which valuable resources are at stake, and argue that language policy is an ‘interdisciplinary field of inquiry that offers a variety of theoretical frameworks, methodologies, analytic approaches, and empirical findings’ (2016: 1–2). Their edited volume promotes ‘critical’ language policy (see Johnson, 2017), and emphasises new methods of LPP research, particularly those employing varieties of (critical) discourse analysis (see Escandón, this volume). As one of the contributors to the Barakos and Unger volume, David Cassels Johnson, writes
… both micro and macro discourses, and both structure and agency can emerge in a single discursive event and shape a single policy document. Policy texts, discourses and practices are heterogenerous, and ideologies are multiply layered, and all can change from context to context over time. … [D]iscourse analysis techniques empirically uncover how LPP processes can lead to both social change and hegemony. (Johnson, 2016: 18)
Particularly relevant for research into contemporary superdiverse urban multilingualism is Spolsky (2012) who describes language policy as a ‘chaotic non-hierarchical system’ and suggests that the model of top-down to grass-roots hierarchy is outdated in the negotiation of superdiverse organisational and workplace discourses. He claims,
In essence the classical model [of Language Policy] was a ‘top-down’ only process, tending to ignore any demographic practice. To make this over-simplification work, many scholars tried to identify competing forces, which they labelled ‘bottom up’, perhaps not realising that one is dealing with a complex and chaotic non-hierarchical system. Each domain within a sociolinguistic ecology has its own variety of language policy, and each influences and is influenced by all the other domains. (Spolsky, 2012: 3)
In the case studies presented in this volume some of the authors dig deep to uncover this ‘sociolinguistic ecology’ and to identify the existence of language policies influencing this. In doing so, the researchers are exploring public ideologies, attitudes and beliefs about language and linguistic resources. Engaging with the public thus about the ‘value’ of languages involves influencing public opinion and policymakers about language and developing language sensitisation. We reported how such sensitisation occurred whilst working collaboratively with a range of organisations in Southampton to uncover implicit or explicit language polices in the workplace and/or to introduce such polices (Cadier & Mar-Molinero, 2014).
This approach emerges very strongly in some of the chapters here where there are clear action/participatory research approaches being employed effectively, combining outreach and social responsibility with research that demonstrates high impact, for example, brokering dialogue among stakeholders. Examples are given that emphasise the importance of social justice, and prolonged engagement in projects focusing on poverty and precarity, in some cases producing new communicative and semiotic resources for those without ‘voices’, or without ‘presence’ as I discuss further below (see also, Patiño-Santos, 2020).
Researching Multilingualism; Researching Multilingually
In seeking to bring together yet another, it might be claimed, edited volume about urban multilingualism, I have been influenced by the relatively new research methodological paradigm developed by those proposing the approach of researching ‘multilingually’3 (for example, Holmes et al., 2013, 2016; Stelma et al., 2013). As I have been underlining throughout this chapter, this approach requires the researcher to think intensely about their relationship between the researcher and researched, and in ways that put language at the core. Holmes et al. (2013), in their position paper on this approach, describe what they term ‘relationality’ as considering:
… who is involved, what function or purpose relationships have, how relationships are negotiated and managed; and which languages are in play in these researcher-researched relationships. Researchers rarely work alone, instead sharing multiple relationships (e.g. with supervisors, participants, translators, interpreters, transcribers, editors, funders). How these relationships are managed interpersonally and linguistically, and what languages are privileged within and across these relationships, all influence research processes and outcomes. Researchers exercise linguistic agency as they negotiate trust, ethics, power, and face over questions of who may enter the discourse, who speaks for whom, and how, when and where…
Holmes et al. conclude their paper by posing the following questions where we can see the role of language in multilingual research is linked to many of the concepts mentioned already in this chapter: for example, language as power; language and ideologies/policies; negotiating linguistic resources. They write,
Several questions (…) emerge: questions of power (between researcher and researched in negotiating language choices); questions of inclusion (which participants and which researchers get included in which research processes); questions of meaning-making (particularly concerning the role of mediators and translators as they construct meaning through and across languages); and questions of institutional constraints (where policies, practices, and preferences determine how researchers – and in some instances, which researchers – report and represent the researched). (Holmes et al., 2013)
These questions are reflected upon in different ways throughout the chapters of this volume. Most (for example, Gaiser & Matras; Karatsareas; Paffey; McAuley & Carruthers; Wells, this volume) explicitly address the issue of what language(s) they have conducted their research in and why. This often leads to them considering the power relationship the choice of interview language might signify (Karatsareas, this volume). Others, particularly Bradley and Simpson, and Paffey (this volume), consider these power relationships as an opportunity to give their informants a voice. At the same time we should heed the comments of Patiño-Santos (2020: 216) when she writes,
The dialogical and polyphonic character of ethnography obliges us to search for the ‘fairest’ ways to represent the various voices that we have captured, including our own, as well as the situations that we have documented.
It has led me to reconsider my own research in Southampton in the light of the emphasis on how we can and should research multilingually. With a retrospective look at the research I carried out with a team in 2009–2011 (reported in Cadier & Mar-Molinero, 2012, 2014) I am very aware of the limitations the team had in terms of language competence. While able to operate in many European languages, including besides English, the major ones found in Southampton, such as Polish, Spanish, Portuguese and (to a much lesser extent) Greek, as a team we completely lacked knowledge of and competence in any non-European language. The South Asian languages are those most spoken in Southampton after English and Polish; Chinese is also increasingly apparent. We were not able to develop personal relationships using these languages, and had to depend on interpreters and translators. And yet, our mediators were quite often unexpected and key to our research in that we quickly discovered the linguistic competence and ease of many of our (European) informants to move between languages including, for example, Urdu or Somali, translanguaging with their linguistic skills and resources. We observed and shared in our informants’ practices of translanguaging and metrolingualism, to negotiate understandings between researcher and researched in a fluid and productive way. In this sense, our informants, the researched, became sometimes our gatekeepers and facilitators. As Blommaert writes,
… we see very fragmented and ‘incomplete’ – ‘truncated’ – language repertoires (...). We also see how many communication tasks are accomplished collaboratively, by combining the resources and skills of several people. (2010: 9)
We learned to work collaboratively. We identified the linguistic landscape in terms of whether information was directed generally and therefore in more than one language, or at a specific linguistic client group. We ‘played’ with language as did our informants.
Far more challenging is to consider the issues of power and control that as researchers we may have (and continue to have) over our informants. With senior managers and policymakers we can negotiate a complicated kind of equal footing. I am personally viewed by the latter as an academic and a tax payer, to be engaged with and treated with respect. I can and maybe do exploit this relationship to persuade and cajole for information I seek. I can play the media and invoke my voter status. The ethics clearance I am required to complete by my university to carry out empirical research with informants does not begin to explore these kinds of relationships, or even, perhaps, recognise them as issues (see, Copland, 2018: 136).
On the other hand, surmounting the challenges of inequality in relationships with our informants amongst the migrant communities is much more delicate and difficult if we wish to avoid always seeming to be representing ‘authority’. Clearly, these are challenges all ethnographers face and much has been discussed about the ways of working ethnographically in the fairest and most unobtrusive manner (e.g. Blommaert, 2018; Blommaert & Dong, 2010; Tusting, 2020; Wells, this volume). As Wells reminds us:
While ethnography is often discussed in relation to specific fieldwork practices such as participant observation, it can never be reduced to a fixed set of methods (Blommaert, 2018: 2) due to its emphasis on the negotiation of knowledge as a context-specific process which is shaped by both researcher and those with whom they research (this volume: 134)
Researching ‘multilingually’ does allow us to consider the importance of language in these relationships and how by embracing the opportunities of language, we may actively seek to reduce the more thoughtless and unacceptable arrogance that research into those from different linguistic, social and cultural backgrounds from ours, as researchers, may seem at times to produce. The authors of the following chapters seek throughout to manage the relationships they have with those they are researching through a sensitivity to and respect for their informants’ linguistic skills and resources. The stories that unfold of language practices in this series of cities we believe contribute to furthering our understanding of what happens in the linguistic mosaics of urban environments and how we can explore and analyse them.
Notes
(1) This document was originally drawn up and published internally within Southampton City Council (SCC) and available on their website in 2010 by their Stronger Communities and Equalities Team and Communications Division. The link to SCC’s current website no longer shows this document and the team has had many subsequent iterations. When I asked a SCC official (August 2019) responsible for communications he had not heard of the document and admitted it had ‘probably long since ceased to be available’ [personal communication].
(2) It should be noted that there has recently been significant criticism from certain commentators as to the validity of the concept of translanguaging (Jasper, 2017; Jasper & Madsen, 2019). I have not engaged with this criticism here as it is largely directed at the use of translanguaging to underpin criticial pedagogy and educational practices in multilingual settings.
(3) As with many other concepts reviewed here, such as translanguaging, superdiversity, metrolingualism, to claim them as truly ‘new’ and ‘different’ is wrong. Many of the theoretical and methodological approaches discussed have echoes going back historically and reflect the impact of migration and movement of peoples over centuries, as well as how people have studied them. Finding new names or labels, however, helps identify the contemporary contexts and the snapshot of the moment and challenges us to interrogate the way we most effectively describe linguistic practices.
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