Isabelle Léglise (CNRS, SeDyL Research Unit)
Documenting multilingual language practices and the erasure of language boundaries
Research on linguistic variation, language contact or codeswitching mostly assumes bounded languages or repertoires. Most studies presuppose the contact between stable ‘communities’ and the identification of specific languages in bilingual (sometimes plurilingual) corpora. Similarly, language annotation in corpus linguistics is based on the principle of univocity of items belonging to specific languages.
On the other hand, in an attempt to avoid referring to bounded languages, a lot of terms have been coined in sociolinguistics or anthropological linguistics – as transidiomatic practices, heteroglossia, polylanguaging, translanguaging, languaging etc. Heterogeneous and hard to classify, multilingual language practices are due to, and at the same time reveal linguistic diversity and the multiplicity of self-identification and positionnings linked to processes of homogeneization and differentiation.
In this talk, I will address the notion of language boundaries, constructed both by linguists and by language users and will consider variation and heterogeneity as linguistic resources for speakers in their everyday multilingual language practices. It needs first a “shift in focus from linguistic systems toward language users [… and their] repertoires drawn from lived experiences that may disrupt presumed connections between language, community, and spaces” (Hall & Nilep, 2015: 615). Second, it needs also a solid methodology to reveal the heterogeneity of language practices through the annotation of corpora. The annotation method I draw on reveals the heterogeneity of language practices and at the same time shows how languages or varieties may overlap making it irrelevant to draw arbitrary lines and boundaries between linguistic resources. This has of course an impact on the way we – as linguist – consider the attribution of language (or variety) labels to linguistic forms.
I will show how ambivalence or a play on boundaries is a common characteristic of communication in highly multilingual contexts. Language users make use of all kinds of linguistic resources in order to communicate and, when they share more or less the same language(s) background (ie in endolingual settings (Lüdi 1987), they sometimes choose ambivalent elements, attributable to various languages or varieties. In doing so, they choose, in a way, not to perform language boundaries but to ‘float’ instead in mid-water. It is particularly obvious in postcolonial contexts (involving for example close language varieties or a Creole and its lexifier in decreolization contexts). The use of bivalent elements may be politicized and controversial (Woolard 1998) or may represent a linguistic resource that is strategically marshaled by language users in their everyday interaction to position themselves, linked to processes of homogeneization and differentiation.
Wilson de Lima Silva (University of Arizona) and Umusĩ Frank J. Carrasquilha Matos (Federal University of Amazonas)
Characterizing small-scale multilingualism in the Vaupés
The multilingualism of the Vaupés Region in Northwest Amazonia has drawn the attention of anthropologists and linguists for decades. In this paper, I discuss a case of small-scale multilingualism in a Desano (Eastern-Tukanoan) community in the Vaupés region of Northwest Amazonia. In this community, speakers of languages of the same family, and of different group affiliations, use several languages in everyday interactions. The three most widely spoken languages in this community (Desano, Siriano, and Tukano) are quite similar, as they belong to the same language family. Speakers make use of multilingual speech without policing themselves, thus ‘violating’ the prescribed norms of language ideology (Silva submitted). This community presents an ideal testing ground for existing claims in the linguistic literature about language practices and language ideologies of indigenous peoples in the Vaupés that led to the constraints and/or ‘non-existence’ of code-mixing (i.e. intra-sentential switches) (Aikhenvald 2002, Epps & Stenzel 2013, etc.). There are aspects of language use in this Desano community that suggest significant differences between language practices and ideologies, and which are similar to other small multilingual community. Small multilingual communities present high diversity of individual linguistic repertoire (cf. Lüpke 2013, 2016). Another characteristic is the pervasiveness of what has been coined by Rehbein et al. (2012) as lingua receptiva, “a mode of multilingual communication in which interlocutors employ a language and/or language variety different from their partner’s and still understand each other without the help of any additional lingua franca” (p.248). Finally, I discuss the language ideologies that may be supporting the multilingual ecology in this community. This study is an account of a possible contemporary variation of linguistic practices of the region, which differ from prior observations. Importantly, the kind of societal multilingualism found in this community is strikingly similar to that found in other small multilingual communities worldwide.
References cited:
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2002. Language Contact in Amazonia. New York: Oxford University Press.
Epps, Patience & Stenzel, Kristine. 2013. Introduction. In Epps, Patience and Kristine Stenzel (eds.), Upper Rio Negro: Cultural and Linguistic Interaction in Northwest Amazonia. Rio de Janeiro: Museu Nacional / Museu do Índio-FUNAI, pp. 13-52.
Lüpke, Friederike. 2013. Multilingualism on the ground. In Friederike Lüpke & Anne Storch (eds.) Repertoires and choices in African languages, 13-76. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Friederike Lüpke. 2016. Pure fiction – the interplay of indexical and essentialist language ideologies and heterogeneous practices. A view from Agnack. In Mandana Seyfeddinipur (ed.) African language documentation: new data, methods and approaches, Special Publication 10 of Language Documentation & Conservation, pp. 8–39. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24650
Rehbein, Jochen, Jan D. ten Thije & Anna Verschik. 2012. Lingua receptiva (LaRa)–remarks on the quintessence of receptive multilingualism. International Journal of Bilingualism 16: 248–264.
Silva, Wilson. Submitted. Multilingual interactions and code-mixing in northwest Amazonia.
Erin Debenport (University of California, Los Angeles)
Language Ideologies, Multilingualism, and Diaspora in Collaborative Pueblo Documentation Projects
As part of indigenous language documentation and revitalization projects, tribal members, linguists and other collaborators navigate complex “language ideological assemblages” (Kroskrity 2018), especially apparent in multi-community projects. In this paper, I use the case study of two ongoing tribal language documentation and revitalization projects at Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, Texas, and Isleta Pueblo, New Mexico to compare how language ideologies involving multilingualism in and across each of these Southern Tiwa-speaking communities influence both discrete and collaborative efforts. Isleta Pueblo is located approximately twenty miles outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and has almost continuously occupied its pre-colonial land base. Descended from community members from Isleta who fled south following the 1682 Pueblo Revolt, Ysleta del Sur is located within the City of El Paso, abutting the U.S.-Mexico border fence in a non-contiguous reservation, gaining federal recognition very recently compared to the nineteen other New Mexico Pueblo Nations. Although both communities are multilingual and employ various code-mixing and code-switching strategies across multiple contexts, community members at Ysleta del Sur positively evaluate their ability to move between English, Spanish, and, thanks to the reintroduction of the language on the reservation, Southern Tiwa, using all three languages to translate, transcribe, and teach the language. Conversely, most Isletas comfortably speak Southern Tiwa and Spanish as well as English, but do not characterize their community as multilingual despite switching between codes in everyday interactions and as part of language revitalization efforts. These differences in metapragmatic awareness (Silverstein 1981) and linguistic ideological evaluations interact in complex ways as these two tribes work both independently and collaboratively to promote the increased use of Southern Tiwa at their respective reservations.
Drawing on my experience working as part of each tribe’s separate language programs, participation in the collaborative language database project, and long-term ethnolinguistic research with speakers and learners of Pueblo languages, I present examples of code-mixing, code-switching, and positive evaluations of multilingualism alongside examples where these strategies are avoided or derided, drawing on discussions of orthographic conventions, borrowed words, neologisms, and the small (but ideologically marked) phonological differences between the two dialects of Southern Tiwa. Across Pueblo communities, language ideologies exist that index the importance of linguistic purism (Kroskrity 1998), and critique indigenous language literacy (Debenport 2015), which help to explain the complex context surrounding tribal documentation efforts, but fail to account for these divergent attitudes towards multilingualism. I argue that by considering linguistic ideological assemblages rather than individual ideologies privileging single linguistic codes, the significance of Ysleta’s diasporic history becomes clear, showing how multilingualism is iconically linked with ideas about geographic and cultural impermanence, an approach that “redirect[s] attention to the interaction of clusters of ideologies that occur within or across linguistic communities” (Kroskrity 2018: 134).
Paul Kroskrity (University of California, Los Angeles)
Indigenous Ideologies of Multilingualism: Their Persistence and Transformation Within Language Ideological Assemblages
Utilizing data from long-term research in two ideologically divergent Native American linguistic communities, I demonstrate the importance, first, of indigenous multilingualisms and, second, of distinctive ideologies of multilingualism in shaping the divergent outcomes and practices of those communities as they adapted to such forces as economic incorporation, colonization, assimilationist policies, and later decolonization and attempted language revitalization. Indigenous ideological differences in these communities were key factors in producing divergent patterns of language shift as well as in community efforts to document and revitalize their respective heritage languages. The Village of Tewa (NE Arizona) still partially retains a multilingual adaptation in all generations except the youth and young adults (Kroskrity, 1993, 2014). The Western Mono (Central California) of such towns as North Fork and Auberry were traditionally multilingual with neighboring languages of the Yokuts and Southern Sierra Miwok groups (Kroskrity 2009). Though both groups were historically multilingual, the practice of multilingualism was differentially influenced by distinctive language ideologies such as those emphasizing purism/syncretism and the expressive/utilitarian functions of language. This observation suggests the importance of understanding Indigenous multilingualisms within their language ideological assemblages (Kroskrity 2018). A further implication of the data from these two Native American communities is the apparent role of language and identity relations as a shaping force affecting historical transformations in their ongoing multilingualisms.
Discussant: Michael Silverstein (University of Chicago)
Pierpaolo Di Carlo (University at Buffalo)
How to document multilingualism? Towards a coherent methodology
The outputs of language documentation projects tell by and large of two main research foci: (i) pure, ancestral codes and (ii) semantico-referential meaning. From this perspective, the inclusion of multilingual behaviors represents a crucial point in the history of language documentation. On the one hand, it provides the first non-occasional stimulus to really face "non-ancestral code" modes of documentation (Woodbury 2005, 2011). On the other, it entails that pragmatic rather than semantico-referential meaning only (Silverstein 1976) is sought after by researchers. This is a welcome development and, for the most part, a rapprochement between the theory (e.g. Himmelmann 1998, 2006) and the practice of documentary linguistics. However, this new course still lacks a coherent methodology. This paper aims to contribute to fill this gap.
Current LD methods may allow one to record multilingual behaviors qua verbal interactions. However, with little if any directions concerning the tools needed to capture their complexity, these recordings risk to become "data graveyards" since creating a corpus of multilingual behaviors that is amenable to further analysis may mean much more than recording people speaking multiple languages and obtain data about speakers' main social coordinates (such as, e.g., gender, age, and occupation).
Drawing from projects led on endangered languages and societies of NW Cameroon over the past nine years, in this paper I will try to offer a preliminary structured view of the types of data our team has needed in order to document multilingualism. In particular, I will illustrate the methods we use to reach greater granularity of data – such as language ideologies and speakers' metadata – that have been generally overlooked in language documentation but that are, in fact, indispensable especially if one is working on multilingualism in a linguistic ecology whose socio-cultural matrix is still poorly known.
References
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 1998. Documentary and descriptive linguistics. Linguistics 36: 161-195.
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 2006. Language documentation: What is it and what is it good for? In Jost Gippert, Nikolaus Himmelmann & Ulrike Mosel (eds.), Essentials of language documentation. 1–30. Berlin-New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Shifters, linguistic categories, and cultural description. In Keith H. Basso and Henry A. Selby (eds.), Meaning in anthropology: 11–55. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Woodbury, Anthony C. (2005). Ancestral languages and (imagined) creolisation. Language documentation and description 3: 252–262.
Woodbury, Anthony C. (2011) Language documentation. In P. K. Austin & J. Sallabank (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages. 159–186. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kristine Stenzel (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) & Nick Williams (University of Colorado)
Documenting multilingualism in everyday interaction
The Vaupés region of the northwest Amazon houses one of South America’s best known small-scale multilingual societies, characterized by long-standing cultural and linguistic contact between speakers of more than twenty languages from four different language families. In this talk we outline our approach to documenting and describing linguistic practices in the Vaupés multilingual context through a project of collaborative language research with members of the Kotiria and Wa’ikhana (Eastern Tukanoan) speech communities. Most of the individuals involved in our project typically speak four to eight languages: father’s language (linked to ethnic group affiliation), mother’s language, Tukano, other East Tukano (or Arawak) languages, as well as Portuguese/Spanish. Yet, we still know very little about how such extensive linguistic repertoires are effectively deployed, in which kinds of speech contexts and for what purposes, and how practices may reflect or refute regional language ideologies.
Our research proposes a radically empirical approach to investigating these questions through documentation of the most frequent and basic arena for language use: everyday interaction. This approach differs from others not only in the types of data collected and the frameworks used to analyze them, but in the level of community engagement in the design and execution of documentation activities. We will describe and illustrate our methods, which include video-based documentation of spontaneous talk in a wide range of everyday interactional contexts, more structured interviews and group discussions that provide extensive metalinguistic commentary on speakers’ multilingual experiences and perspectives on language practices, as well as interactional and structural linguistic analysis of the resulting data. To conclude, we call attention to a few important analytical questions related to investigation of multilingualism and offer some initial findings that both support and challenge previous claims about language use in the fascinating Vaupés multilingual setting.
Pedro Mateo Pedro (LSC-Field Station Guatemala, University of Maryland)
Mayan languages in contact: opportunities and challenges for language documentation
Studies on languages in contact in Mesoamerica have focused on contact between Spanish and indigenous languages or on contact of Mayan with other language families. In this talk I will offer a new perspective on Mayan-to-Mayan contact and discuss the case of K’iche’ and Awakateko, two Mayan languages in contact in Aguacatán, Huehuetenango, Guatemala. In Aguacatán, in addition to Spanish, three Mayan languages are also spoken: Awakateko, K’iche’ and Mam. All three are in constant contact. In bilingual families, two languages are spoken in the home and that has an effect on children’s language acquisition. The contact is fairly recent; it began with the arrival of K’iche’ speakers from Totonicapán (about 150 or 175 years ago).
As evidence of contact between K’iche’ and Awakateko, I will present preliminary results of a study on adults’ use of palatals and children’s acquisition of palatals. In the languages of the K’iche’an and Mamean branches, palatalization has been studied in adult grammar, but not in acquisition. The data come from monolingual children and adults in Awakateko and K’iche’ as well as bilingual children in Awakateko-K’iche’ families. The results show that monolingual and bilingual children go through a same process of acquisition of palatalization: children depalatize before using palatalization. Although there is more palatalization in monolingual children in Awakateko than in bilingual children in K’iche’ as an L1 and Awakateko as an L2, palatalization appears about the same age. This shows that children are exposed to both languages in contact.
I will also discuss the challenges and opportunities of the documentation project. The opportunities include the training of native speakers of Mayan languages in basic linguistic theory and language documentation, as well as close collaboration with community members. Our challenges have to do with making this research relevant to ALMG and to local universities.
Kristine Hildebrandt (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville)
A micro-typology of contact effects and language viability in four Tibeto-Burman languages
When minority languages of different typological profiles are (i) in long-term contact with each other, and (ii) in more recent contact with another unrelated socio-economically dominant language, the variability in outcomes is demonstrably allied to sociolinguistic dynamics rather than purely structural ones. This talk considers the cases of four Tibeto-Burman languages characterized by light-to-heavy within- and cross-family language contact. From a sociolinguistic perspective, these languages occupy a spectrum of viable to endangered, with the most viable language showing more intense and pervasive lexical and structural effects. I consider hypotheses regarding language contact impacts. One position is that contact (with survival) fosters innovation/expansion (Weinreich 1974; Nichols 1992; Matras 2009). Indic clause-chaining and discourse markers in Gurung and the proliferation of code-switching supports this. Another position argues that lexical borrowing precedes non-lexical (Moravscik 1978). Gyalsumdo and Nar contradict this, as they evidence few loanwords, while selected aspects of the phonology, morpho-syntax and discourse strategies show influence from Tibeto-Burman and Indic. Another position is that borrowing is more constrained amongst typologically different languages (Thomason 2001). Nar, Gurung and Nepali are simultaneously typologically distant and similar. Also, the situation witnessed here is one of slow shift, and so the sociolinguistic dynamics play a greater role in different consequences.
Discussant: Jeff Good (University at Buffalo)