This colloquium brings together studies of intergenerational language maintenance and shift (Pauwels, 2016) in diasporic contexts with the aim to highlight major shifts in theoretical and methodological directions. Globalization has brought about increased mobility and greater fluidity in the transnational movement of people. Therefore, research paradigms that have been developed to investigate language issues in more permanent immigration contexts need to be reassessed in light of the increased permeability of the once more insulated immigrant communities (Blommaert, 2010).
The colloquium will stimulate a discussion around new directions in research that challenge the all too common methodological and conceptual traps that tend to essentialise diasporic communities and treat them as uniform, static and homogenous groups. At the theoretical level, the papers highlight the potential of constructs such as agency and ideology (Sikoli, 2011), linguistic repertoires (Pennycook and Otsuji, 2015) and fluid models of identity (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005) as particularly fruitful to understand how external factors (e.g. language policy, attitudes of host society) interact with internal factors (e.g. individual motivation, agency, ideology and identity) in influencing language outcomes in immigrant communities.
While the colloquium draws on international theoretical perspectives, the case studies explored in the contributing papers are drawn from the Australian context. More specifically, the discussion will focus on comparing the experiences of European post-war migrants (Greeks, Italians and Hungarians) and their descendants, with the experiences of newly arrived refugee groups, specifically the South Sudanese and the East Timorese.
Blommaert, J. 2010. Sociolinguistics of Globalization, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Blommaert, J. & Rampton, B. 2011. Language and superdiversity. Diversities, 13, 1-23.
Bucholtz, M. & Hall, K. 2005. Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies, 7, 585-614.
Pauwels, A. 2016. Language Maintenance and Shift, Cambridge, Cambrdidge University Press.
Pennycook, A. & Otsuji, E. 2015. Metrolingualism: Language in the City, New York, Routledge.
Sikoli, M. A. 2011. Agency and ideology in language shift and language maintenance. In: Granadillo, T. & Orcutt-Gachiri, H. A. (eds.) Ethnographic Contributions to the Study of Endangered Languages. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
