Oskar Kokoschka 1937, Self-Portrait of a Degenerate Artist Amedeo Modigliani 1917, Jeanne Hébuterne (au chapeau) Porosity of multilingual spaces Amsterdam, August 2014 Master thesis Carmen Pérez del Pulgar Frowein (10863060) [email protected] Supervisor: Virginie Mamadouh Second reader: Nesrin El Ayadi 1 To my participants, 2 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 5 1.1 Introduction and preliminary research question ..................................................... 6 1.2 Language ideologies ............................................................................................. 10 1.2.1 Conceptions of language and multilingualism ............................................... 13 1.2.2 Language and Culture .................................................................................... 17 1.2.3 Language and Identity .................................................................................... 20 1.2.4 Language and Space ....................................................................................... 23 1.3 Aim of Research and Research Question ............................................................. 26 2. METHODS.............................................................................................................. 29 2.1 Research design .................................................................................................... 29 2.2 Case selection ....................................................................................................... 30 2.3 Operationalisation ................................................................................................. 33 2.4 Secondary data collection for the context ............................................................. 35 2.5 Linguistic biography and mental mapping ........................................................... 36 2.5.1 Recruitment of respondents for linguistic biography interview ..................... 38 2.5.2 Data analysis method ..................................................................................... 45 2.6 Limitations and external validity .......................................................................... 46 2.7 Ethical considerations ........................................................................................... 48 3. CONTEXTUAL DOMINANT LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES ............................... 50 3.1 Cities and Countries of residence ......................................................................... 50 3.1.1 Madrid and Spain ........................................................................................... 50 3.1.2 Amsterdam and the Netherlands .................................................................... 58 3.2 Countries of origin ................................................................................................ 64 3.2.1 France ............................................................................................................. 64 3.2.2 Germany ......................................................................................................... 68 4. POROSITY OF PRIVATE SPACES ...................................................................... 73 3 5. IMPORTANCE OF MOTHER TONGUE ............................................................. 89 6. REPRODUCTION OF DOMINANT LINGUISTIC IDEOLOGIES ..................... 98 6.1 Source of the norm and negotiation of linguistic rules ......................................... 98 6.2 Hegemony of dominant language ideology ........................................................ 103 7. POROSITY OF PUBLIC SPACES ...................................................................... 107 8. LANGUAGE AND INTEGRATION ................................................................... 116 9. CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................... 122 10. BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................. 132 11. ANNEX 1 .............................................................................................................. 136 12. ANNEX 2. TRANSLATIONS .............................................................................. 137 4 1. INTRODUCTION Increased migration flows have resulted in an ‘intensifying cultural contact such that linguistic diversity increasingly characterises both local and global contexts’ (Valentine et al. 2008: 384). This tendency is presumably challenging the long assumed Western imagined landscape of discrete monolingual, monocultural and monoidentitarian political spatial units - predominantly the ones of the nation states. This imagined homogeneity within the states regarding the language, culture and identity of its population will be analysed here by using the concept of language ideology, originally used in the field of Linguistic Anthropology (Bauman and Griggs 2003, Ahearn 2012). Language ideologies are ‘cultural presuppositions and metalinguistic notions that name, frame and evaluate linguistic practices, linking them to the political, moral and aesthetic positions of the speakers, and to the institutions that support those positions and practices’ (Gal 2006:163). Whether it is framed as a novel circumstance prompted by globalisation and increased migration flows or as a revival of an old phenomenon of ‘rampant multilingualism and inveterate hybridity in traditional communities, before European modernity suppressed this knowledge in order to develop systems of commonality based on categorisation, classification and codification’ (Canagarajah’s in Otsuji and Pennycook 2010:246) the dominant language ideology of the states is understood to be challenged by the actual heterogeneous practices of multilingual speakers. In any event, it can be agreed that ‘the ideological assertion that one language equals one culture or one nation ignores the complexity of multilingual societies’ (Blackledge and Pavlenko 2001:253). It becomes more complex if the different approaches to language that are being deployed at diverse scales are acknowledged. At the international and national scales, the dominant language ideology seems to prevail, very often also in multilingual states. This means that the underlying representation of each nation is still very much linked to the claim and adscription of an idiosyncratic language, culture and identity, elements which in turn are meant to be univocally related. This is not always reproduced at the smaller scales of the city. Some cities’ linguistic landscape is becoming linguistically more varied due to the multilingual populations inhabiting in them; the impact these transformation have of the managerial spheres of the city is nevertheless dubious and most of the times varied. There are nevertheless some institutional practices which are committed with the 5 commodification of multilingualism as an asset to attract international tourism, investment and high skilled workers. The supranational case of the European Union is characterised by the promotion and tolerance of multilingualism, although the link between language, culture, identity, and national territory is still addressing these practices. Language seems to be still very much territorialized (one language, one territory) across all these different administrative and political scales and the adaptation to an ever increasing multilingual world seems to be trapped; not really knowing if and how to transform its institutions from a monolingual paradigm to a multilingual one. At most, parallel monolingual systems have been put into place (e.g. European Union) but a considerable shift away from the modern state has not been jet been taken. Language ideologies are, as its name indicates, ideologies. Which in turn are deployed to legitimate very different social and political enterprises. In this case it is argued that the described dominant language ideologies are still determining the lenses through which both, the phenomena of multilingualism and the challenge it poses to the traditional arrangement of political units, are being analysed and managed. Blackledge and Pavlenko (2001:97) state in this line that ‘ideologies of language are therefore not about language alone, but are always socially situated and tied to questions of identity and power in societies’. Far from being reduced to the realm of linguistics, the way persons think about language seems to be surprisingly political. In this chapter an introduction to the topic of language ideologies and the literature on the topic will be developed and a preliminary research question will be explained. Also the term language ideology and its main components will be analysed. 1.1 Introduction and preliminary research question As has been mentioned, despite – or rather because of – the growing (or awakening) multilingualism of people and places the naturalisation of monolingual spaces and people and their allegiances to a particular state on this basis is still very much present in the current discourses and practices of the nation states, in its institutions and in its assumption that this monolingual norm is being reproduced by its ‘people’. Far from 6 adapting to the existent multilingualism, nation states seem to be somehow reversing the situation and are increasingly framing the growing migrant multilingual population as posing a threat to the viability and identity of the nation state. Of course, it is posing