Volume 2010, Issue 202

The ecology of language has been put forward as a useful orientation to the holistic investigation of multilingual language policies because it draws attention to relationships among speakers, languages, policies, and social contexts at varying dimensions of social organization. As such, it is an orientation that stands to facilitate the integration of micro- and macro-sociolinguistic inquiry in language policy and planning (LPP); however, it is not a method. An ecological orientation requires the application of specific methods in order to achieve a holistic picture of an LPP situation. To this end, the present article explores how recent discourse analytic theories and methods that focus on ways in which discursive processes operate within and across space and time are especially well suited to the ecological objective of understanding relationships between language policies and the social actions of individuals.

A common concern, and indeed a major driver, of new, multilayered approaches to studying linguistic diversity seems to be a desire to problematize and reframe the notion of a macro–micro hierarchy. In this article, I argue that examining interactions in nontraditional domains, in this case the domain of marketing, can offer valuable insights into the nature of macro–micro relationships. The article begins by describing a number of such relationships and interactions that occur in the marketing domain before going on to focus in detail on one advertising campaign by a global brand (Carlsberg) and its interaction with national and global macro–micro relationships in terms of linguistic diversity in the Irish context.

Bilingualism is to be seen as dynamic bilingualisms-in-practice, which are continually being “performed,” that is, shaped, valued, and constituted, both through discourses which (re)contextualize the notion, as well as through the everyday language practices of bilinguals. To shed light on bilingualisms-in-practice, primarily in the context of one bilingual school in Wales, a range of data is examined to identify prevalent discourses on bilingualism. It is argued here that the meso level of society, especially educational institutions, constitute a key site for the recontextualization of these discourses and thereby play an important mediating role between the micro and macro levels of society.

The loss of intergenerational language transmission can be seen, in part, as a choice parents make, but in reality they do not always have a choice. Their actions are influenced by large-scale social factors such as language policies and attitudes toward minority languages. Issues related to these factors are addressed by an analysis of language shift in Bugønes, a Kven community in Northern Norway. Data come from recordings of conversations and sociolinguistic interviews addressing language choice. Fifteen hours were recorded and transcribed. In order to analyze language shift a theoretical and methodological framework which allows for a historical perspective is essential since people, objects, mediational means, and discourses are seen as having a history and projecting a future (de Saint Georges, From anticipation to performance: Sites of engagement as performance, Routledge, 2005). The framework used here is nexus analysis, which emphasizes that discourses and individual social actors have a history and therefore cannot be analyzed without reference to the past (Scollon and Scollon, Nexus analysis: Discourse and the emerging Internet, Routledge, 2004). Findings about language shift in Bugønes illustrate how large-scale discourses such as the language policies become internalized and later materialized in action through language choice.

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.

The Shiwilu, a.k.a. Jebero, are an Amazonian people from northeastern Peru. Although their population is as high as 2,000, intergenerational transmission of the Shiwilu language ceased decades ago; presently there are only a few elderly speakers. Due to significant loss of traditional culture, language displacement in favor of Spanish, and a high degree of intermarriage with the Mestizo (non-Indian) population, the Shiwilu were undergoing in the twentieth century a process of ethnic disintegration, being even considered part of the Mestizo peasant population. Surprisingly, an internal movement starting in the 1990s promoted the revalorization of Shiwilu identity and led to their reclassification as a distinct indigenous group. The Native language plays a strategic role; it is the only remaining, tangible cultural element that legitimizes the Shiwilu's claim to being an indigenous people and ensures their recognition as such by others. However, this historical moment coincides with what appears to be the imminent disappearance of Shiwilu. This article provides the necessary context to better understand the importance that the Shiwilu place on their ethnic language, and discusses the challenges faced by those working for its survival. Some of the points raised here may be applicable to other peoples in similar situations, both in Amazonia and beyond.