Volume 2023, Issue 283

Racialised bilinguals experience marginalisation all over the world. In South-East Europe, millions of bilingual Roma share this experience alongside emerging aspirations of conviviality, which remain rare. This paper considers marginalisation as a consequence of (in)securitisation. The concept of (in)securitisation addresses discursive techniques of power which advocate the protection of some at the price of excluding others. These discursive techniques are exerted on different levels of social interaction, creating and maintaining uncertainty. The paper discusses individual aspirations to conviviality, or peaceful cohabitation, in (in)securitised local realities in a town in Hungary, where 20 % of the population are bilingual Roma. Furthermore, it explores whether the leveraging of translingual practices can be an effective tool for conviviality. The argument is based on long-term field research, and the data used comes from a series of participatory workshops, attended by academic non-local and local participants. Using the method of Moment Analysis to understand workshop discussions, the article focuses on the ways in which participants negotiate the dependencies of (in)securitisation while trying to forge convivial capabilities. Experience shows that acts of (in)securitisation and racialised social roles define relations even within the research group, and only certain types of capabilities considered convivial are suitable to override them.

The present article examines the relationship between study abroad and the construction of multilingual identities regarded as more marketable in the neoliberal economy. The main objective is to provide an insight on student mobility and dominant visions of the future in line with which languages are chosen to be taught/learned at tertiary level and how this offer mirrors the economized perspective adopted in the higher education system. It focuses on European higher-education students participating in study abroad through the Erasmus program in three contexts across Europe (Finland, Romania, and Catalonia). In the first place, the article delves into the ways neoliberal discourses on the value of study abroad and the skills that are expected to be acquired through the experience – this is, the type of individuals that the participants might become – shape their decision to enroll in a sojourn abroad in a particular context. Secondly, this article analyzes to what extent European youth participating in study abroad eventually perceive they added to their identities the desirable marketable skills they expected and how they consider this is going to materialize in the future. By looking at how multilingual identities are constructed through the Erasmus program, this study hypothesizes that study abroad is another mechanism embedded in educational practices that respond to economic demands in which the marketization of language skills plays a prominent role.

The discourse surrounding transgender people has for a long time been influenced by certain narrative practices necessary to authenticate people’s trans status to medical professionals. This conventional narrative (master narrative), based on ideals of hetero- and cisnormativity, has led to stereotypical representations of trans identities. These largely continue to exist today. Nevertheless, counter-discourse to these stereotypical representations is becoming more prominent. Particularly YouTube has become an increasingly popular platform for counter-discursive action. The current case study therefore focusses on two transgender YouTubers who challenge the normative ideals by creating their own counter-discourse. The YouTubers address four major topics of stereotypical representation: the ideal of binary gender, heterosexuality, the wish to transition in order to pass as cisgender, and the belief that transgender people have always identified as the other gender. The two creators recognise the discursively reproduced stereotypes and use a combination of five different strategies to refute them: Inversion, Parody, Complexification, Shift , and Personal Experience . Making use of these strategies, the subjects’ positive discourse aims at presenting a multi-faceted representation of transgender identities.

This study explores the language maintenance efforts of Turkish heritage-speaker families in Sweden and their relation to state-level language policy from three angles. First, Swedish mainstream language ideology is described as it manifests in legislation, language policy and mother-tongue tuition. Then, the language practices of the families of 105 Turkish/Swedish children (age four to seven) are characterised via a questionnaire survey. This is complemented by findings from a follow-up study two years later, where ten of the families participated in interviews and home observations. Parents preferred to speak Turkish and wanted their child to learn and speak Turkish alongside Swedish. Another common denominator was the children’s early, extensive preschool attendance. Parent-child interaction was predominantly Turkish, although second-generation parents raised in Sweden reported higher uses of the majority language Swedish. Exposure to Swedish increased over time due to schooling, sibling interaction and media use, but third-generation children still spoke Turkish to a considerable degree. In their heritage-language maintenance efforts, many parents enlisted the support of grandparents, mother-tongue tuition, and literacy activities. Parents generally considered Turkish and Swedish equally important and showed low levels of anxiety regarding their children’s bilingualism, unlike what has been reported in studies of the same ethnolinguistic group in other national settings. The interviews revealed that parents who consulted Swedish health professionals and teachers were advised to speak and support the heritage language (Turkish) and maximise exposure to it in the home. Whilst unusual from an international perspective, this is in line with the official multilingual language ideology in Sweden.

This paper seeks to understand how languages are discursively identified and valued within a youth radio station in Solo, Indonesia. This study seeks to contribute to the body of knowledge on the dynamic relationship between the national language, Bahasa Indonesia, and the local language, Javanese, by utilizing a social value and centre-periphery lens to approach continuity and change in present-day Central Java. Valuing practices are observed by examining the situated use of linguistic features and norms of their use within specific social practice (radio programming). From June 2020 to July 2020, a total of 120 h of radio content was recorded for analysis. Analysis showed that valuing practices emerged in response to the use of linguistic features within different radio segments of the program. The formation of participatory frameworks in the periphery and the evaluative commentaries accompanying them contributed to the construction of norms for using these linguistic features. Our analysis shows how paying attention to evaluative practices can highlight how the value of sets of linguistic features emerge, circulate, and are transformed within the media practices in the periphery.

This paper compares two areas of Egypt and Khorāsān in post-Islamic era regarding the loss and maintenance of their mother tongues. While in Egypt, Coptic was gradually removed from both formal and colloquial usages, in Khorāsān , Persian (Farsi or Parsi Dari), though was out of official and governmental services for more than two centuries, was able to finally maintain its status. The most important reason found behind this difference can be attributed to the independence seeking movements in Khorāsān (e.g. Sho’ūbieh ), leading to the establishment of the first post-Islamic independent Iranian governments who supported the revival of Iranian culture and the maintenance of Persian language. Secondly, the migration of Arab tribes and the Arabization of the conquered societies were more successful in Egypt compared to Eastern Iran, which changed the demographic composition of Egypt. Moreover, the role of Persian-speaking epic poets, the social class of dihgāns in Iranian society and the fact that Coptic was not as old a language as Persian are other important reasons. It is argued that language maintenance can happen better in cases where top–down governmental and institutional support exists.

Based on an analysis of a corpus, in this study we examine: (a) the linguistic structure of Muslim personal names, (b) their etymological sources, and (c) some changing patterns among the younger generation. Firstly, we present a typology of the naming patterns by showing that there are four major types – one-part, two-part, three-part, and four-part names. While one-part names are formed from the given name only, the other three types are complex as they are composed of additional names containing honorific titles, caste titles, patronym, and husband’s names in case of married women. Secondly, by examining the linguistic sources of one-part and two part names, we show that Muslim names are primarily derived from Arabic and Persian. Our study further shows that while Indian Muslim names trace their origins to Arabic, the structure of their names differs significantly from Arabs and other Muslims especially those in southern India. Finally, we demonstrate a shift in the naming pattern among the younger generation in that some names and honorific titles are declining. We conclude our paper with some possible social factors that may contribute to the shift.