The mobility turn in sociolinguistics has served as an impetus to focus on interactional spaces and encounters that emerge through the accelerated circulation of people, information, capital and goods as well as the broader... [ view full abstract ]
The mobility turn in sociolinguistics has served as an impetus to focus on interactional spaces and encounters that emerge through the accelerated circulation of people, information, capital and goods as well as the broader interconnectedness of the globalising economy (Blommaert 2010; Heller 2011). On the one hand, mobility and the blurring of spatial borders opens up what Pratt (1991) refers to as contact zones, sites where social actors bring their experiences, their stakes and agendas and their cultural and linguistic differences. On the other hand, spatial borders are intertwined with socio-political and economic orders and access to mobility is unevenly distributed. In this context, spatial borders may emerge, persist or even become more concrete and they can thus function as economic, sociocultural or linguistic barriers.
This panel takes the interface between borders and (im)mobilities as a springboard for exploring how the social dynamics of horizontal spaces (e.g. countries, regions, neighbourhoods, homes) intersect with multilayered vertical spaces and also, how spatial borders are bound up with senses of identity and (un)belonging. Papers in the first part of the panel focus on the relationship between linguistic resources and the construction, negotiation, contestation and redrawing of spatial borders. Papers in the second part grapple with the (im)mobility of linguistic resources across spatial borders and how this impacts on identity, power and (un)belonging. In this way, the panel examines the interplay between spatial borders and the spatialisation of linguistic resources, drawing on emergent findings from sites in the Global North and Global South. Inspired by the work of Massey (2005) and cognate literature that underlines the relationship between space and (im)mobility in late modernity, the papers open up further avenues for sociolinguistic engagement with the concept of space, and highlight the significance of territoriality, borders and dwelling in relation to social relationships and (im)mobility.
Blommaert, Jan. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of Globalisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heller, Monica. 2011. Paths to Post-Nationalism: A Critical Ethnography of Language and Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. London: Sage.
Pratt, Mary Louise. 1991. ‘Arts of the contact zone.’ Profession 91: 33-40.
