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Talk overview

This talk explores the sociolinguistic and structural factors that influence multilingual discourse in the Joola languages, the largest cluster in the Atlantic group. It examines receptive multilingualism, alignment, and translanguaging practices among Joola speakers.

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Talk overview

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  1. Joola languages and their speakers issues in enumeration, classification and identification sociolinguistic and geographical issues feature based approach forthe analysis of multilingual (multi- Joola) language data Multilingual discourse receptive multilingualism alignment translanguaging sociolinguistic and structural factors Talk overview

  2. Joola languages • Largest cluster in the Atlantic group, belonging to the Bak group • Spoken from Gambia down to Guinea Bissau • A central core of closely related languages with more divergent outliers (e.g. Bayot)

  3. How are they related? Sapir 1971 Segerer and Podzniakov 2018

  4. Solutions • Accept ambiguity • Accept different points of view • Use a feature based approach to idenitfy small but salient points of difference

  5. Prototypical features

  6. Prototypical features

  7. Sociolinguistic and geographical considerations • Joola languages have geographical loci • Every Joola language is a patrimonial language of a given village or group of villages - vernacular • However, they also have additional reach as vehicular languages (to varying degrees) • (Joola) languages play different roles in an individual's repertoire VEHICULAR VERNACULAR limited sociolects necessity/strategy spoken sometimes weak sensibility to ‘standard’ full range of registers identity spoken regularly strong sensibility to ‘standard’ 10

  8. Multilingual conversations • “How do speakers with different Joola languages in their repertoires use those languages in multilingual discourse?”xxxx • All data from the Crossroads project corpus • Naturalistic conversation • Multilingual Joola speakers • Transcribed and translated by the Crossroads transcription team • Three types of multilingual Joola discourse • Receptive multilingualism • Alignment • Translanguaging

  9. Receptive multilingualism • “Receptive multilingual practices involve people speaking to one another in different languages. [T]hey may use different languages while still understanding one another perfectly well. Receptive multilingual practices go against the supposed universal tendency for speakers to accommodate, for multilingual speakers to find those shared parts of their linguistic repertoire as needed.” • (Singer 2018, forthcoming) • Each participant speaks their 'own‘ Joola (i.e. the one that plays the most vernacular role in their repertoires) and understands that of the others

  10. Joola Joola Gubanjalay Joola Kasa Joola Kujireray French Kujireray-Gubanjalay

  11. g

  12. Joola Joola Banjal Joola Kasa Joola Kujireray French Banjal-Kujirerary

  13. Joola Joola Banjal Joola Kasa Joola Kujireray French Kasa

  14. Joola Joola Banjal Joola Kasa Joola Kujireray French Kujireray-Gubanjalay-Kasa

  15. Ease – it is less effort to speak your prominent vernacular • Identity – it is preferable to index your home idenitity • Familiarity – speakers know each other, and the languages (and know that they know) Motivation and facilitation

  16. Alignment • One or more participants tailor their language use to align with the preference – real or rerceived – of one or more other participants. • CfSachdevand Giles ‘bilingual/multilingual convergence’ • “[this phenomenon] is not only confined to situaitons where a bilingual objectively moves toward the language preference of another but, importantly, when they believe they have a accomplished this fact” • Speakers with different multilingual repertoires select a single Joola language as the principal language in a conversation

  17. Alignment • Out of necessity (one or more participants does not speak all the Joolas) • Out of deference (one or more speakers enjoys higher social status)

  18. Speakers use features from different languages in a fluid manner Translanguaging

  19. Joola Joola Gubanjalay Joola Kasa Joola Kujireray French dV-?? -k- h- jak

  20. dV- -k- h-

  21. 35

  22. Summary • Different types of multilingualism can be idenitifed, (but not necessarily kept separate) • Multilingual language use is conditioned by sociolinguistic factors • Complex interplay between structural and soicolinguistic factors

  23. Outlook

  24. References

  25. Thank you

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