Superdiverse repertoires

1. Superdiverse repertoires Jan Blommaert & Ad Backus Babylon, Tilburg University

2. From competence to knowledge • What is it to know a language? • ‘maximal’ knowledge: fluency in multi-genres and varieties, ‘voice’ • ‘intermediate’ knowledge: specific genres, registers, varieties • ‘temporary’ learning (age groups or e.g. via traveling) • ‘minimal’ knowledge: single-word, restricted registers and functions (« sayonara », « hasta la vista »…) • ‘recognizing’ language: attributive identity functions

3. All of this belongs to a repertoire: a biographical complex of functionally organised linguistic resources: repertoire as indexical biography • And is the result of entirely different modes of acquisition • From ‘encountering’ language (in informal learning environment) • To ‘learning’ language (in formal learning environment) • Increasing density of ‘ephemeral’ learning processes (e.g. tourism, Facebook etc)

4. Jan’s repertoire • ‘Maximum’: Dutch, English • ‘Intermediate’: French, German, Latin, Spanish, Swahili • ‘Minimal’: Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Greek, Finnish, Russian, Portuguese, a number of African languages… • ‘Recognising’: Turkish, Arabic, Korean, Northern Sami, Gaelic, Berber, Polish, Albanian, Hungarian, Czech, Serbo-Kroatian, Thai, Vietnamese, Hebrew, Yiddish, Schwytsertüütsch, several African languages…

5. Ephemeral learning modes • You take whatever is (cheaply) available • Assemble it into a functionally adequate variety • Always ‘incomplete’ and by degrees • Functions: • Linguistic, communicative • Indexical • Emblematic • Aesthetic …

6. The point... • Definition of ‘language’ • Definition of ‘competence’ • Understanding specific forms of diversity – not as deviation/transgression/’bad language’/wrong • UG not a great basis for any of this • Usage-based linguistics is

7. My ownperspective Language Contact Theories Linguistic Theories >>>>>>>

8. Usage-based theory about language, including language contact and change

9. Usage-based approach • Typical approach of Cognitive Linguistics • Linguistic competence is usage-based • ‘you are what you say and hear’ • competence is not independent of usage • Linguistic competence is an inventory of specific and schematic units • Basic aim: theory of mental representation • No different from other linguistic theories • Language use results from cognitive processes • Therefore: mental representation is always part of the explanation

10. Usage-based approach • Basic hypothesis: mental representation built up on the basis of usage • Ingredients: human cognitive skills and linguistic experience • Cognitive skills: storage in memory, pattern recognition, focusing joint attention, intention reading, cooperation • Linguistic experience (interaction): exposure (‘input’) and use (‘output’) • Competence is continuously updated; i.e. it is dynamic • Repeated neuromotor routines ease processing: increasing entrenchment • Competence varies between individuals, but not too much (we understand each other)

11. Usage-based approach Two important characteristics: 1) no strict division between lexicon and syntax; 2) diachronic issues (as well as synchronic variation) put back in the center of linguistic theory. Historical linguistics and sociolinguistics not seen as separate disciplines anymore Weinreich, Uriel, William Labov & Marvin Herzog. 1968. Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In Winfried P. Lehmann & Yakov Malkiel (eds.), Directions for Historical Linguistics: A Symposium, 95–195. Austin: University of Texas Press.

12. Entrenchment What determines degree of entrenchment? • Usage frequency (corpus frequencies) Entrenchment (online measures) (e.g. Arnon, 2009; Bannard & Matthews, 2008; Bybee & Scheibman, 1999; Caldwell-Harris & Morris, 2008; Ellis & Simpson-Vlach, 2009; Tremblay, 2009)

13. Usage-based approach Applies: • To language (Langacker, Croft, Bybee, Fillmore, Goldberg, Gries, ...) • To many other things: fashion, trends in TV series, how to order a drink ... (e.g. Bakhtin, Stockwell) Bybee, Joan (2010). Language, usage and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Stockwell, Peter (2002). Cognitive poetics. An introduction. London: Routledge.

14. Beyond Linguistics • Memory is not just for language • Usage-based approach to linguistic representation may morph into usage-based approach to knowledge representation • Including ‘cultural knowledge’ (the ‘brought along’ of anthropology) • Domains would include everything that requires cognitive control

15. Language = Cultural domain Other domains where we establish routines (* = requires communication): • Fixed route to your office • Order a drink in a bar * • Establish a running route • Dance moves * • What to have for breakfast • Where to sit in class * • Crossing a street * • Whether or not to make stupid little jokes during a presentation *

16. Variation Idiolectal and group differences to be expected: Linguists: metathesis, codeswitching, X-bar, usage-based model Mechanics : …. Linguistic competence varies from person to person This is a consequence of: That knowledge is usage-based Our differing lives Requires synchronic and diachronic perspectives combined

17. Synchrony and diachrony in general linguistics • Descriptive linguistics: tends to be strictly synchronic • Sociolinguistics: tends to be synchronic • If change is studied, it’s ‘change in progress’, read off from synchronic variation • Interactional analyses often based on agency: what is someone doing at a particular moment in time (e.g. in a particular communicative situation)? • Usage-based linguistics: both perspectives needed

18. Synchrony and diachrony: change • Example from Dutch Turkish: the Dutch word gedoogpartner • Interference: synchronic phenomenon: first use of the word in Turkish • Continuous selection of the ‘interference’ variant: decreasing sense of cross-linguistic influence: increasing entrenchment • ‘Interference’ variant becomes part of the language: change in progress: any Turkish equivalent is ousted • Endpoint: change (loanword)

19. Communicative factors • Change results from selection in communication • Asymmetry influences communicative decisions • Language choice • Choices within interaction, within utterances • Choices may be • Intentionally creative (‘proposing’ an innovation) • Intentionally marked (propagating a change in progress) • Unintentionally propagating a change in progress, changing the norm without knowing it • Based on entrenchment • Long-term: storage in memory • Short-term: priming; alignment in conversation

20. Propagation • Language Change = change in what is unmarked (in what is the norm) • Norm/Definition of ‘language’: a structured inventory of linguistic (specific and schematic) units • Specific units equivalent to words • Schematic units equivalent to rules • Basic hypothesis: everything is stored • Memory traces that match current update get entrenched further • Disuse leads to decay: degree of entrenchment is lowered • Challenges: • Does storage take place without conscious attention? • Every usage event is unique: when does it count as ‘the same’?

21. Describing a norm • Serious empirical problem! • Language = inventory of linguistic units in the mind of the speaker. • Technically, one could describe one’s complete inventory, no? • Wrong: language is a ‘moving target’. Any complete inventory, if such were possible, would be obsolete the next second. Besides, there is no reason to privilege that one individual. • Better to have a good theory that combines synchrony and diachrony • Better to have a good theory that operates at a more cumulative level: describe the common ground (conventions) that most people (in a community) share.

22. Why study language contact phenomena? The interesting thing about contact phenomena is that they illustrate that languages change all the time, that they are dynamic My claims: Understanding change means understanding how competence or knowledge is formed(usage-based) Understanding how knowledge is formed means understanding normativity

23. Norms and normativity Language change = Change in conventions = Change in norm Interesting thing about linguistic norms: on either side of the border of awareness (or conscious control) (Blommaert, Jan & Ad Backus 2011). Repertoires revisited: ‘Knowing language’ in superdiversity, Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies Paper 67)

24. Kinds of norms/yardsticks • Individual internal norms (entrenchment) • Cumulative shared internal norms (common ground) (Clark, Herbert 1996. Using language. Cambridge University Press) • External norms (‘norm’ in the everyday sense of the word) - often codified

25. What do we have norms about? Any behavior that’s under cognitive control Linguistic examples: • Genre conventions (e.g. fairy tale, school/academic register, service encounters, etc. >> cf. Clark, Bakhtin, Bourdieu) (Briggs, Charles & Bauman, Richard (1992). Genre, intertextuality, and social power. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2 (2): 131-172) • Syntactic structures (jury still out?) • Whether or not it’s okay to use particular foreign word • Anything, really Perhaps best source of evidence: expectancy violations, creativity, discourse about correctness

26. Why do we have norms? Group cohesion, culture, being normal, to belong, ... • ‘Soft’ mechanisms 1: Coercion, Peer pressure, Accommodation, Admiring imitation, ‘just’ imitation (Eckert, Penelope (2012). Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of variation. Annual Review of Anthropology, 41: 87-100) • ‘Hard’ mechanisms: Enforcement of standards (‘policing’) • But: grey area between hard and soft

27. What are linguistic norms like? • Many linguistic norms are adhered to automatically • They are very entrenched • Especially what’s very frequent • Deviations are more or less easily spot • Depends on how set in stone the norm is E.g. Ungrammatical word order, use of ain’t, expressions that are too formal for the situation, ... • Norms can easily be brought to attention

28. Norms in contact situations • So deviation from the norm is easy to spot • Conscious awareness always just around the corner • Interpreted in bilingual settings as: loss/attrition, poor proficiency, influence from another language (interference) • Negative associations cause anxiety

29. Judgment data Asked Dutch Turks acceptability judgments of: • TR-Turkish piyano çalmak (‘hit’); and • NL-Turkish piyano oynamak (‘play’)

30. Judgment data Asked Dutch Turks acceptability judgments of: • TR-Turkish piyano çalmak (‘hit’); and • NL-Turkish piyano oynamak (‘play’) And what did they say?: • It should be piyano oynamak, certainly notpiyano çalmak

31. Judgment data on acceptability of NL-Turkish and TR-Turkish syntactic constructions • Dutch-dominant bilinguals give: • lower ratings to conventional Turkish sentences, and • higher ratings to unconventional sentences.

32. Linguistic external norms and purism Deviations trigger purism. And purism can be annoying, or harmful. • Tariana: you get laughed at if you use a foreign word (Aikhenvald) • Nahuatl: Hispanicized form looked at negatively; result: people hesitate to use the language, and language dies (Hill & Hill) But who cares anymore about French influence on English? Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2002. Language Contact in Amazonia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hill, Jane & Kenneth Hill. 1986. Speaking Mexicano. Dynamics of Syncretic Language in Central Mexico. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

33. Expressions of anxiety (1) Since my Turkish is bad, I can’t express myself very well in Turkish. Some words don’t come to mind. I don’t feel comfortable when I’m talking and I get stuck. I can explain everything in Dutch better than in Turkish, that’s why I prefer to speak Dutch all the time. Backus, Ad, Derya Demirçay & Yeşim Sevinç (Forthc.) Converging evidence on contact effects on second and third generation Immigrant Turkish. To appear in Ad Backus, Carol W. Pfaff & Annette Herkenrath (eds.),Turkish in Northwestern Europe versus Turkish in Turkey. Copenhagen: Copenhagen University.

34. Expressions of anxiety (2) I feel comfortable while talking Dutch. I feel bad when I have to speak only Turkish, I can’t remember the words in Turkish. (Backus, Demirçay & Sevinç forthc.)

35. Expressions of anxiety (3) Sometimes, I try to play with my cousin’s friends there [i.e. in Turkey], and I attempt to say something but I stop. I can’t talk most of the time, because the people there know Turkish very well, but I don’t. And they mostly don’t understand what I say. And it gets worse. When I can’t explain it in Turkish, I call my mother or father and tell them in Dutch. Then, they talk to the people. That happens in Turkey often. (Backus, Demirçay & Sevinç forthc.)

36. What is language? • No such thing as “a language”, as commonly understood. • Knowing Finnish is not the same as knowing all of Finnish • Language is not distinct and discreetly bounded: one’s Finnish may be full of Swedish and English • Talking is a cognitive activity, and since it’s done in interaction it’s also a socio-cultural activity • Relies on wide inventory of resources (conventions) and abilities • Everybody talks a bit differently • Enough similarity safeguards communication, but it’s on a cline: all communication is ‘intercultural’ and all change is ‘contact-induced’ • Abstracting away from differences and imposing artificial boundaries gives us ‘languages’: products of socialization (equally for registers) • But there are also built-in mechanisms that work towards similarity: accommodation, alignment, need to be understood, cooperation (from Grice to Tomasello). Result: speech communities.