Language socialisation and muda: The case of two transnational migrants in Emmaus Barcelona
-
Maria Rosa Garrido
Abstract
This article investigates the relationship between socialisation and the concept of linguistic muda in a community of practice that belongs to a social movement called Emmaus. Based on a long-term ethnography (2008–2017), the article focuses on two transnational migrants who undergo a linguistic muda into functionally bilingual Catalan through participation in communal activities at Emmaus Barcelona. The analysis firstly traces the tensions arising in linguistic negotiation during a migrant novice’s initial participation in assemblies as a “socialising routine”. Although established participants of all origins projected a preferred bilingual stance and routinely code-switched, newly-arrived migrants were initially addressed in Spanish, in line with the commonsensical sociolinguistic behaviour routinely adopted with migrants in Catalonia. Analysis of the two migrants’ socialisation trajectories in Emmaus illuminates the changing sociolinguistic norms in Catalonia that legitimise transnational migrants’ linguistic mudes in this community. In conclusion, acceptance as a legitimate speaker of Catalan at Emmaus Barcelona can be viewed as a means to an end: that of becoming a legitimate member, capable of participating in joint (inter)actions such as assemblies.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the two Special Issue editors and an anonymous reviewer for their useful comments on earlier versions of this article. I am grateful to my anonymous informants for sharing their everyday experiences in Emmaus with me. I am especially indebted to Eva Codó for her encouragement, supervision and conversations about this research. This work was supported by the pre-doctoral research grants 2008UAB 2015 (UAB) and ESTPIF 2010-23 (UAB), and the research projects HUM 2010-26964 (MCINN), 2009 SGR 1340 (AGAUR) and SGR 2014 1508 (AGAUR) awarded to the CIEN research team. Research leading to this article has also benefitted from ongoing discussions on the “new speaker” theme as part of the EU COST Action IS1306 network entitled “New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe: Opportunities and Challenges”.
Appendix: Transcription conventions
The spoken data extracts have been transcribed following a slightly adapted version of LIDES (Language Interaction Data Exchange System) which was proposed by Codó (2008: xi–xiii).
Transcription conventions used
- +ˆ
quick uptake or latching
- + …
trailing off
- xxx
unintelligible material
- #
pause
- #0_1
length of pause in seconds (minimum 1 sec)
- [=! text]
paralinguistics, prosodics
- [>]
overlap follows
- [<]
overlap precedes
- <>
scope symbols
- :
lengthened vowel
- ::
longer lengthening of vowel
- -
abrupt cutoff
- Dependent tiers
- %act:
relevant actions during the exchange
- %com:
researcher’s comments about the main tier
- %tra:
free English translation of the main tier
- %tim:
timing in audio recording
References
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, 3rd edn. London: Verso.Search in Google Scholar
Caglitutuncigil, Tülay. 2014. Constructing inequalities in bilingual spaces: Teaching Catalan to female immigrants. Digithum 16. 75–83.Search in Google Scholar
Codó, Eva. 2008. Immigration and bureaucratic control: Language practices in public administration. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110199086Search in Google Scholar
Corona, Victor, Lucile Nussbaum & Virginia Unamuno. 2013. The emergence of new linguistic repertoires among Barcelona’s youth of Latin American origin. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 16(2). 182–194.10.1080/13670050.2012.720668Search in Google Scholar
Duff, Patricia. 2008. Language socialization, participation and identity: Ethnographic approaches. In Marilyn Martin-Jones, Ana María de Mejía & Nancy H. Hornberger (eds.), Encyclopedia of language and education, 2nd Edition, Volume 3: Discourse and Education, 107–119. New York: Springer.Search in Google Scholar
Garrett, Paul B. & Patricia Baquedano-López. 2002. Language socialization: Reproduction and continuity, transformation and change. Annual Review of Anthropology 31. 339–361.10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.040402.085352Search in Google Scholar
Garrido, Maria Rosa. 2010. “‘If you slept in Catalunya you know that here it’s a paradise’: Multilingual Practices and Ideologies in a Residential Project for Migrants”. Cerdanyola del Vallès: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona MA thesis.Search in Google Scholar
Garrido, Maria Rosa. 2014. Emmaus as a transnational imagined community: Language, interdiscursivity and stratification in a social movement. Cerdanyola del Vallès: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona dissertation. http://www.tdx.cat/handle/10803/285359.Search in Google Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra. 2009a. Stance in a Corsican school: Institutional and ideological orders and the production of bilingual subjects. In Alexandra Jaffe (ed.), Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives, 119–145. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra. 2009b. Introduction: The sociolinguistics of stance. In Alexandra Jaffe (ed.), Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives, 3–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Martín-Rojo, Luisa & Lilia Rebeca Rodríguez. 2016. “Muda” lingüística y movilidad social: Trayectorias de jóvenes migrantes hacia la universidad. Discurso & Sociedad 10(1). 100–133.Search in Google Scholar
O’Rourke, Bernadette, Joan Pujolar & Fernando Ramallo. 2015. New speakers of minority languages: The challenging opportunity – Foreword. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 231. 1–20.10.1515/ijsl-2014-0029Search in Google Scholar
Pries, Ludger. 2001. The approach of transnational social spaces: Responding to new configurations of the social and the spatial. In Ludger Pries (ed.), New transnational social spaces: International migration and transnational companies in the early twenty-first century, 3–29. London and New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Pujolar, Joan. 2007. African women in Catalan language courses: Struggles over class, gender and ethnicity in advanced liberalism. In Bonnie McElhinny (ed.), Words, worlds and material girls: Language, gender, globalisation, 305–348. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar
Pujolar, Joan & Isaac Gonzàlez. 2013. Linguistic “mudes” and the de-ethnicization of language choice in Catalonia. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 16(2). 138–152.10.1080/13670050.2012.720664Search in Google Scholar
Pujolar, Joan & Maite Puigdevall. 2015. Linguistic mudes: How to become a new speaker in Catalonia. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 231. 167–187.10.1515/ijsl-2014-0037Search in Google Scholar
Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511803932Search in Google Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn A. 1989. Double talk: Bilingualism and the politics of ethnicity in Catalonia. Stanford: Stanford University Press.10.1515/9781503624443Search in Google Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn A. 2016. Singular and plural: Ideologies of linguistic authority in twenty-first Century Catalonia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190258610.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn A. & Susan E. Frekko. 2013. Catalan in the twenty-first century: Romantic publics and cosmopolitan communities. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 16. 129–137.10.1080/13670050.2012.720663Search in Google Scholar
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Language and speakerhood in migratory contexts
- Language surveillance: Pressure to follow local models of speakerhood among Latinx students in Madrid
- Biographizing migrant experience
- Unvoicing practices in classroom interaction in Galicia (Spain): The (de)legitimization of linguistic mudes through scaling
- When language mixing is the norm: documenting post-muda language choice in a state school in Barcelona
- Language socialisation and muda: The case of two transnational migrants in Emmaus Barcelona
- Linguistic mudes: An exploration over the linguistic constitution of subjects
- Book Review
- Monica Heller Bonnie McElhinny: Language, capitalism, colonialism: Toward a critical history
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Language and speakerhood in migratory contexts
- Language surveillance: Pressure to follow local models of speakerhood among Latinx students in Madrid
- Biographizing migrant experience
- Unvoicing practices in classroom interaction in Galicia (Spain): The (de)legitimization of linguistic mudes through scaling
- When language mixing is the norm: documenting post-muda language choice in a state school in Barcelona
- Language socialisation and muda: The case of two transnational migrants in Emmaus Barcelona
- Linguistic mudes: An exploration over the linguistic constitution of subjects
- Book Review
- Monica Heller Bonnie McElhinny: Language, capitalism, colonialism: Toward a critical history
