Sámi language mobility: scales and discourses of multilingualism in a polycentric environment
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Sari Pietikäinen
Abstract
In a multilingual Lapland, globalization processes have various sociolinguistic effects. A good example is a change in the functions and values of the indigenous Sámi languages. The once solid community languages were pushed in the margins of the nation states in the early twentieth century. Today, Sámi linguistic and other semiotic resources are used not only for communication and building an indigenous community, but they function also as a commodity in global music markets and tourism, or as a resource for creative identity performance. This kind of a sociolinguistic change calls for an investigation that overcomes the macro–micro gap and concepts that address movements, diversity, and multiplicity in this multilingual situation. To this end, I fuse ethnographic and discourse analytical approaches in an attempt to track movements and conditions of Sámi resource mobility. The data examined in this article comprise multimodal discourse data (photographs, interviews, texts) and observations and recordings from ethnographic fieldwork in the North Calotte area of Lapland.
© 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Introduction
- Analysis of language policy discourses across the scales of space and time
- Rethinking the macro–micro relationship: some insights from the marketing domain
- Bilingualisms-in-practice at the meso level: an example from a bilingual school in Wales
- “We did what we thought was best for our children”: a nexus analysis of language shift in a Kven community
- Sámi language mobility: scales and discourses of multilingualism in a polycentric environment
- Book reviews
- Ethnic-racial reclassification and language revitalization among the Shiwilu from Peruvian Amazonia
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Introduction
- Analysis of language policy discourses across the scales of space and time
- Rethinking the macro–micro relationship: some insights from the marketing domain
- Bilingualisms-in-practice at the meso level: an example from a bilingual school in Wales
- “We did what we thought was best for our children”: a nexus analysis of language shift in a Kven community
- Sámi language mobility: scales and discourses of multilingualism in a polycentric environment
- Book reviews
- Ethnic-racial reclassification and language revitalization among the Shiwilu from Peruvian Amazonia
