Volume 2014, Issue 227 - Languages and Borders: International Perspectives

My primary objective in this article is to explore what new meaning borderlands research can bring to our understanding of globalization as it is presently framed in sociolinguistic scholarship. As a site of negotiations and transactions in international goods and services in the official and non-official realms they present us with a microcosm of globalised networks. The specific territoriality of a borderland illustrates localization which Waters (2001: 5) says implies ``a reflexive reconstruction of community in the face of the dehumanizing implications of rationalizing and commodifying'', a referencing against global scapes. I also present and explore continentalization as an African social process modeled on globalization by looking at the impact that Nollywood as a cultural industry is having across national boundaries.

In 1992, Transnistria emerged as a de facto independent political entity, not recognized internationally. Russian emerged as a strong marker of a distinct cultural and political identity and as a powerful tool of separation from Moldova. Officially, Transnistria is trilingual in Russian, Ukrainian and Romanian (Moldovan) written in Cyrillic script, yet Russian is the language of choice for most inhabitants. This article presents a linguistic landscape study that sheds light on language use by institutional and private actors in Transnistria, exemplified by signs in the republic's mainly Russian-speaking capital Tiraspol.

This article examines the role of ``borders'' in the writing practices of Santali speakers, who are spread across the states of Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal and Assam in eastern India. A tension between a ``trans-border'' linguistic homogeneity and a ``bordered'' linguistic heterogeneity occurs in discussions around script. Santali is written in the various ``official'' scripts. Together with regional scripts, there is a recently invented script, called Ol Chiki (`writing symbol') in circulation as well as a Roman script invented by Christian missionaries. This article examines the alternating use of Ol Chiki, Roman and regional scripts in Santali language media. I argue that these media simultaneously posit a linguistically homogenous future while at the same time affirming a present that is deeply influenced by differing linguistic environments.

This study centers on the impact of migration on the vitality of San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec (SLQZ) spoken in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico. The data show (a) that children in Los Angeles, whether US- or Mexican-born, are not growing up as active SLQZ speakers and (b) that given sustained travel between the two communities, language use in Los Angeles is replicated in San Lucas, thereby introducing Spanish and English into otherwise Zapotec-only domains such as the home. The case of SLQZ is one in which a language vitality assessment that considers the home community only, would lead to an incorrect evaluation. Signs of language endangerment become evident in a sociolinguistic analysis that crosses borders.

Our work examines the residual effects of three quarters of a century of anti-Haitian propaganda on the language attitudes and ideologies of contemporary children in the northern Dominican Republic. Focused on interviews with 90 Dominican fronterizo children and adolescents, many of whom are descendants of Haitians themselves, our findings reveal that their attitudes towards Haitian Creole mirror broader negative assessments of its speakers. In their reluctance to learn Creole (or French, which they associate almost exclusively with Haiti), these rural Dominicans choose linguistic isolation. Thus, although the number of Haitian immigrants in the northern border region has dramatically increased since the earthquake, the burden of intercultural communication will likely remain on them.

Recent sociolinguistic research adds new economic sectors, such as the service economy, to the list of key forces that shape unequal, dynamic and complex diglossia (e.g., Spanish in the United States). However, little detailed work has been done on the linguistic characteristics of specific labor sectors in the wider contexts of ``debordering'' and ``rebordering''. In this article we develop in depth the market mechanisms and institutional constraints that shape the valuation and social expansion of Spanish in El Paso, Texas. The study finds that in sectors with low skills and low linguistic intensity, linguistic management policies are effectively ``Spanish-only''. However, as skills increase and there is a greater need for regulated communication in the occupational role, more constraints are observed on how Spanish functions in work use and professional careers.

Cross-border workers, who live in the surrounding border regions of France, Belgium and Germany, now make up 44 percent of the workforce in Luxembourg. This increasing presence of ``foreigners'' is prompting substantial change to Luxembourg's traditionally triglossic language situation, where Luxembourgish, French and German have coexisted in public use. In this situation, competing language ideologies emerge reflecting the interests of different groups. Through analysis of metalinguistic discourse in interviews with thirty cross-border workers in Luxembourg, this article examines how the language ideologies of cross-border workers might contribute to competing perspectives on societal multilingualism in Luxembourg.

Despite the growing appeal of transnational perspectives in sociolinguistics, the bordered orderliness of nationalism remains unchallenged in language classrooms. Ethnographic Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is applied to the case of an English language classroom at the Mexico/US border in order to specify the how and why of nationalist border reproduction. Through the conceptual lens of nationalist border practices, analysis first accounts for how class participants organized classroom practice according to clear borders between inter-related and mutually-exclusive mexicano and americano nationalist categories. The classroom site raises the possibility of border transcendence by way of border reinforcement, however, the data available depict students as border crossers who are careful not to disrupt the nationalist borders that legitimize their social and economic privilege.

Relying on narrative analysis, this article examines a case in which largely White, monolingual college students of basic level Spanish position themselves as linguistic subjects in relation to the target language. Further, in consideration of this issue's theme, in tandem with Bucholtz and Hall's (2004) work on intersubjectivity, I submit Davis's (2000) theory of the third border as an organizing tool for understanding how students construct and reaffirm race and linguistic identities within and outside of classroom walls. The application of my empirical data to Davis develops from a recent discussion contrasting students from the US Southwest with that of a private, East coast institution (Pomerantz and Schwartz 2011), of which talk about borders, boundedness and larger dynamics persist as a central theme.

Within the current social scientific trend of studying globalization, border crossing, and cosmopolitanism, we continue to struggle against our own complicity in maintaining an unequal representational economy. This article responds to Blommaert's (2010) proposal for a new approach to ``the sociolinguistics of globalization'' by applying his conceptual framework to the analysis of a multi-vocalic performance in Central Java, Indonesia. Data collected using participant observation and structured interviews demonstrate how vocal performances constructing diverse identities are performed and perceived adequatively in their original context. The mobilization of these examples of naturally occurring cosmopolitanism into an academic text in English provides the opportunity for critical reflection on our practices of presentation and analysis of the semiotics of others' identity practices. This exercise has implications for how to better retain the values and functions accorded to linguistic resources in their local contexts when we mobilize them across representational boundaries in sociolinguistic work.

This article reports on Bajjika, a minority language of the Bihari group of the Indo-Aryan language family. Bajjika is spoken by millions of speakers in the northern part of the north Indian state of Bihar and more than 200,000 speakers in Nepal. Although Bajjika is spoken by a significant segment of the population of Bihar, it has no institutional or educational role in the community or government. Little is known about this language in terms of demographic and ethno-linguistic details, not only to the world but also within India beyond the speech community. This article provides details about the speech community of Bajjika, its language status, functional role in the community and the revival efforts made by exponents of the language. Finally, suggestions for the maintenance of this language are made.