Language and Superdiversity By Jan BLOMMAERT (University of Tilburg, the Netherlands) and Ben RAMPTON (King’s College, UK) Abstract This paper explores the scope for research on language and superdiversity.1 Following a protracted process of paradigm shift, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology are well placed to engage with the contemporary social changes associated with superdiversity. After a brief introductory discussion of what superdiversity entails, the paper outlines key theoretical and methodological developments in language study: named languages have now been denaturalized, the linguistic is treated as just one semiotic among many, inequality and innovation are positioned together in a dynamics of pervasive normativity, and the contexts in which people orient their interactions reach far beyond the communicative event itself. From here, this paper moves to a research agenda on superdiversity and language that is strongly embedded in ethnography. The combination of linguistics and ethnography produces an exceptionally powerful and differentiated view of both activity and ideology. After a characterization of what linguistic ethnography offers social science in general, this paper sketches some priorities for research on language and communication in particular, emphasizing the need for cumulative comparison, both as an objective in theory and description and as a resource for practical intervention. 1. Superdiversity11 of motives, patterns and itineraries of migra­ There is a growing awareness that over the past tion, processes of insertion into the labour and two decades, globalization has altered the face housing markets of the host societies, and so of social, cultural and linguistic diversity in socie­ on (cf. Vertovec 2010). The predictability of the ties all over the world. Due to the diffuse nature category of ‘migrant’ and of his/her sociocultural of migration since the early 1990s, the multi­ features has disappeared. An example can start culturalism of an earlier era (captured, mostly, to show some of the communicative effects. in an ‘ethnic minorities’ paradigm) has been This small piece of text was found in the main gradually replaced by what Vertovec (2007) calls street of an inner­city area of Antwerp, Belgium ‘super­diversity’. Super­diversity is characterized (see Blommaert & Huang 2010 for details). It is by a tremendous increase in the categories of handwritten in ‘Chinese’ (though this will need migrants, not only in terms of nationality, eth­ to be qualified). In English translation, the text nicity, language, and religion, but also in terms reads “apartment for rent, first class finish­ ing, water and electricity included, 350 Yuan 1 Blommaert & Rampton drafted this text, but it is per month”, followed by a mobile phone num­ the outcome of substantial discussion and revision ber. The text is mundane, and unless one has involving Karel Arnaut, Adrian Blackledge, Jens Nor­ a particular interest in it (as sociolinguists do), mann Jørgensen, Sirpa Leppänen, Roxy Harris, Max it is easy to overlook. But when we pay closer Spotti, Lian Madsen, Martha Karrebaek, Janus Møller, David Parkin, Kasper Juffermans, Steve Vertovec, Ad attention, we discover a very complex object, Backus and Angela Creese. and here are some of the issues: (1) The text is DIVERSITIES Vol. 13, No. 2, 2011 ISSN 2079-6595, www.unesco.org/shs/diversities/vol13/issue2/art1 © UNESCO DIVERSITIES Vol. 13, No. 2, 2011 • ISSN 2079-6595 Jan Blommaert, Ben Rampton Figure 1: A notice in an Antwerp shop window Source: Jan Blommaert © Jan Blommaert written in two forms of ‘Chinese’: a mixture of traditional diaspora groups towards new émigrés the simplified script which is the norm in the from the PRC; (b) the fact that such a transition is People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the tradi­ articulated in ‘small’ and peripheral places in the tional script widespread in Hong Kong, Taiwan Chinese diaspora, such as the inner city of Ant­ and earlier generations of the Chinese dias­ werp, not only in larger and more conspi cuous pora. (2) The text articulates two different styles ‘Chinatowns’ such as London (Huang 2010). or voices, that of the producer and that of the So this text bears the traces of worldwide addressee(s), and the mixed script suggests that migration flows and their specific demographic, their styles are not identical. In all likelihood, the social and cultural dynamics. Migration makes producer is someone used to writing traditional communicative resources like language varie­ script, while the addressee is probably from the ties and scripts globally mobile, and this affects PRC. (3) The latter point is corroborated by the neighbourhoods in very different corners of the use of ‘Yuan’ rather than ‘Euro’ as the currency, world. In this Antwerp neighbourhood, Chinese and (4) the mixed character of the text suggests people are not a very visible group, and in fact, a process of transition. More specifically, it sug­ this handwritten notice was the very first piece gests that the producer (probably an ‘older’ dias­ of vernacular Chinese writing observed here (the pora Chinese person) is learning the script of the two Chinese restaurants in the area have profes­ PRC, the unfinished learning process leading to sionally manufactured shop signs in Cantonese, the mixing of the scripts. Thus (5) this text points written in traditional calligraphic script). Still, the towards two very large­scale phenomena: (a) a notice shows that the neighbourhood probably gradual change in the Chinese diaspora, in which includes a non­uniform and perhaps small com­ the balance of demographic, political and mate­ munity of Chinese émigrés, and the marks of his­ rial predominance gradually shifts away from the torical struggles over real and symbolic power are 2 Language and Superdiversity DIVERSITIES Vol. 13, No. 2, 2011 • ISSN 2079-6595 being transplanted into the Antwerp inner city. vocabulary of linguistic analysis is no longer suffi­ Plainly, there are distinctive communicative pro­ cient. In fact, the study of language in society has cesses and outcomes involved in migration, and itself participated in the major intellectual shifts this paper argues that the detailed study of these in the humanities and social sciences loosely can make a substantial contribution to debates identified with ‘post­structuralism’ and ‘post­ about the nature and structure of super­diversifi­- modernism’ (see e.g. Bauman 1992). It is worth cation. now turning to this refurbished apparatus, perio­ In fact, these demographic and social changes dically aligning it with questions that the notion are complicated by the emergence of new media of superdiversity raises. and technologies of communication and infor­ mation circulation – and here an orientation to 2. Paradigm shifts in the study of language in communication necessarily introduces further society uncharted dimensions to the idea of superdiver­ Over a period of several decades – and often sity. Historically, migration movements from the emerging in response to issues predating su­ 1990s onwards have coincided with the devel­ perdiversity – there has been ongoing revision opment of the Internet and mobile phones, and of fundamental ideas (a) about languages, (b) these have affected the cultural life of diaspora about language groups and speakers, and (c) communities of all kinds (old and new, black about communication. Rather than working with and white, imperial, trade, labour etc [cf. Cohen homogeneity, stability and boundedness as the 1997]). While emigration used to mean real sepa­ starting assumptions, mobility, mixing, politi­ ration between the emigré and his/her home cal dynamics and historical embedding are now society, involving the loss or dramatic reduction central concerns in the study of languages, lan­ of social, cultural and political roles and impact guage groups and communication. These shifts there, emigrants and dispersed communities have been influenced by the pioneering work now have the potential to retain an active con­ of linguistic anthropologists like John Gumperz, nection by means of an elaborate set of long­dis­ Dell Hymes and Michael Silverstein, the founda­ tance communication technologies.2 These tech­ tional rethinking of social and cultural theorists nologies impact on sedentary ‘host’ communi­ like Bakhtin, Bourdieu, Foucault, Goffman, Hall ties as well, with people getting involved in trans­ and Williams, as well, no doubt, as substantial national networks that offer potentially altered changes in the linguascape in many parts of the forms of identity, community formation and world. In fact with this kind of pedigree, ‘robust cooperation (Baron 2008). In the first instance, and well­established orthodoxy’ might seem these developments are changes in the material more apt as a characterization of these ideas world – new technologies of communication and than ‘paradigm shift’ or ‘developments’. Never­ knowledge as well as new demographies – but theless, superdiversity intensifies the relevance for large numbers of people across the world, of these ideas, and if the exposition below some­ they are also lived experiences and sociocultural times sounds a little gratuitously alternative or modes of life that may be changing in ways and oppositional, this is because the notions they degrees that we have yet to understand. seek to displace continue with such hegemonic If we are to grasp the insight into social trans­ force in public discourse, in bureaucratic and formation that communicative