Bente Ailin Svendsen Language, Youth and Identity in Heterogeneous Urban Spaces

Bente Ailin Svendsen Language, youth and identity in heterogeneous urban spaces – Oslo, Norway

Some studies in Europe Kotsinas (1988) Stockholm Aasheim (1995) Oslo Rampton (1995) London Quist (2000) København Nortier (2001) Utrecht Kallmeyer & Keim Mannheim Jaspers (2008, 2011) Antwerpen Wiese (2006) Berlin Svendsen & Røyneland (2008) Oslo Ganuza (2008) Gøteborg, Malmø og Stockholm Opsahl (2009) Oslo Christensen (2010) Århus Quist & Svendsen (2010) Skandinavia Wiese (2012) Berlin Svendsen & Marzo 2015 Oslo and Gent Madsen & Svendsen 2015 Copenhagen and Oslo

Focus:

 The linguistic forms and practices

 Identification and the ascription of values to these alleged ways of speaking and their speakers

 The scholars’ role in the (re)production of these speech styles

‘Kebabnorsk’ (‘Kebab-Norwegian’)

Folk linguistics – emic terms (Pike 1954)

Rinkebysvenska (‘Rinkeby Swedish’) Millionsvenska (‘Million Swedish’) Blattesvenska (‘Blatte Swedish’) Kebabnorsk (‘Kebab Norwegian’) Perker dansk (‘Perker Danish’) Straattaal (‘Street language’)

5 109 056 total population 633 100 ‘immigrants’ (12 % of the total population) 31 % of Oslo’s population 126 075 Norwegian born with immigrant parents

Statistics Norway 1.1.2014

Oslo

More than 150 languages in the Norwegian primary and secondary school and more than 125 in the Oslo school

Oslo

Old Oslo 37,8 % ‘immigrants’ SN, 2013

Southern Nordstrand 50 % ‘immigrants’, SN, 2013

Multicultural Oslo

West End East End

Multicultural Oslo

West End East End middle/upper working class class ’wallah’ soss (’posh’) ’gangsters’ ’Norwegians’ ’foreigners’ lack of street- street-cred cred

Utviklingsprosesser i urbane språkmiljø ‘Linguistic processes in urban spaces’ (2006-2010)

Linguistic practices among adolescents in multiethnic Oslo (UPUS/Oslo) 2006-2009 Data collection period: 2006 -2008 56 respondents between 13 and 19 years old Corpus: Video-recorded interviews and peer conversations

Two situations:

1) Research interview

2)Peer conversation

• Syntactic characteristics (ex. variation in the V2 constraint) • Morphological characteristics (ex. simplification of the grammatical gender system) • Phonological and prosodic characteristics (ex. ‘staccato’ intonation) • The use of ’wallah’ and related discourse markers (see Quist and Svendsen, 2010)

Syntax: V2 variation

Norway (T. Opsahl & I. Nistov 2010)

Hvis noen står og breaker alle stopper opp clause S V

If somebody is dancing break dance everybody will stop

Syntax: V2 variation

Sweden (N. Ganuza 2010)

Sen hon gick till skolan (Sen gick hon till skolan)

Then she went to school

Denmark (P. Quist 2000)

Når man er i puberteten man tænker mere Clause S V

When you are in your puberty you think more

XSV or XVS

Peer conversation: XSV in 38 % of all possible contexts Research interview: XSV in 12 % of all possible contexts

→ Clear situational differences → Sociolinguistically significant

(Opsahl & Nistov, 2010, jf. Ganuza, 2010)

Excerpt 1:

Kebab-Norwegian blocks for employment

Three young people from Holmlia NN (16), NN (19) and NN (17) warn their peers against using Kebab-Norwegian.

"You can't go to a job interview and say: 'Sjof my CV'," says NN (19) shaking his head while explaining that "sjof" means "look at".

His friends NN (17) and NN (16) nod in agreement.

’Kebab-Norwegian blocks for employment’

The ‘Kebab-Norwegian-debate’ 4.-19. June 2009

• NRK Fagdagen 4. June 2009: Det er vi som er Wergeland nå! Performance by the rapper DannyBoy and B. A. Svendsen advocating ’Kebab-Norwegian’ as a ’new’ dialect • Dagsavisen 12. June 2009: Kebabnorsk sperrer for jobb • Dagsavisen 15. June 2009: Krangler om kebaborsk • Dagsavisen 16. June 2009: Sjefer vil ikke sjofe • NRK Television Ikveld, 17. June 2009, debate, Kebab-Norwegian and job opportunities • Dagsavisen 19. June 2009, Op ed

Excerpt 5:

Strand: but first (.) it is called Kebab (.) Norwegian and is a mixture of Norwegian (.) Kurdish (.) Arabic and Urdu (.) speaking this way makes it difficult for many minority- language speakers to get a job (1.0) and this is what this language sounds like (1.0)

Excerpt 6:

DL: here we heard a little Kebab-Norwegian Petter (.) and you represents employers in private sector and you call it a bad thing or not-Norwegian PF: yes DL: what do you mean by that? PF: no ((laughing)) you can interpret yourself if you try to understand what’s being said here ((points to the screen where they broadcasted the video from Holmlia)) (1.0) and it’s for sure- we organize many companies in the service industries and they are struggling with with this to get language and communication to function ((looks at DannyBoy)) (1.0) and ehm then I think it’s very strange if you as a Norwegian or somebody who commands the Norwegian language (lit. sproget) shall de-learn and start to use a tribal language which you can’t use at work (.) then you ask for unemployment

The scholars’ role in the constructions and reproductions of purported ways of speaking among young people in linguistically and culturally heterogeneous urban neighbourhoods

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Figure 1: Number of media articles on ‘kebabnorsk’ (‘Kebab-Norwegian’) after 1 January 1995 in the Norwegian press (Atekst Retriever 26 September 2014, N=506)

Østby

Språkforsker

Svendsen

Røyneland

Uri

Lomheim

Opsahl

Aasheim

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Figure 2: Number of articles after 1 January 1995 in the Norwegian press on ‘kebabnorsk’+various scholars and ‘kebabnorsk’+’language researcher’ (‘språkforsker’) (Retriever 10 September 2014, N=506)

Foto: Ketil Hylland

BAS: kjempebra (.) det (.) men ee jeg driver og BAS: very good (.) that (.) but ee I am undersøker hvordan man snakker i Oslo investigating how people talk in Oslo A: mm A: mm BAS: og har dere noen oppfatning om hvordan BAS: and do you have an opinion about man snakker her på Holmlia ↑ how you talk here at Holmlia ↑ A: kebabnorsk A: Kebab-Norwegian BAS: hva er det ↑ BAS: what is that ↑ A: det er sånn jeg ee jeg vet ikke hvordan jeg A: It is like ee I do not know how to skal forklare explain B: det er en slang B: it is a slang BAS: er det en slang ↑ BAS: is it a slang ↑ C (?): ja C (?): yes BAS: hva er det for noe da (.) hva er liksom slang BAS: what is that (.) what is slang in a ↑ way ↑ C (?): gatespråk for eksempel C (?): street language for example BAS: gatespråk BAS: street language C: ja C: yes BAS: ja hva hvordan er det fordi man snakker på BAS: yes what is it because you talk on gata eller ↑ the street or ↑ C: nei det er sånn man snakker i Holmlia C: no it is the way you talk in Holmlia

‘double hermeneutics’

The intersection of two frames of meaning as a logically necessary part of social science, the meaningful social world as constituted by lay actors and the metalanguages invented by social scientists; there is a constant ’slippage’ from one to the other involved in the practice of the social sciences. (Giddens 1984:374)

[…] sciences which claim “to put forward the criteria that are the most well founded in reality” are merely recording a state of the struggle over classifications, often invoked through a scientific authority (Bourdieu 1991:222).

A semiotic register versus general processes of language change?

Considerations:

 The extent to which the linguistic forms and functions in question are to be found among others. Among whom, and in which contexts?

 The speech styles’ durability over time – language use in different contexts in adulthood (Rampton 2015)

 The need for further investigations of linguistic forms and functions, phonology in particular (Bodén 2010; Hansen and Pharao 2010).

 The extent to which there is a change in the values and ideologies ascribed to these alleged ways of speaking?

 The extent to which this is an urban phenomenon?

 The need to compare recently emerged speech styles with previous ones across time and space – language contact is not a new phenomenon. Merci beaucoup pour votre attention!