Exploring Language in a Multilingual Context: Variation, Interaction and Ideology in Language Documentation

Description

Proposing a new methodological approach to documenting languages spoken in multilingual societies, this book retraces the investigation of one unique linguistic space, the Creole varieties referred to as Takitaki in multilingual French Guiana. It illustrates how interactional sociolinguistic, anthropological linguistic, discourse analytical and quantitative sociolinguistic approaches can be integrated with structural approaches to language in order to resolve rarely discussed questions systematically (what are the outlines of the community, who is a rightful speaker, what speech should be documented) that frequently crop up in projects of language documentation in multilingual contexts. The authors argue that comprehensively documenting complex linguistic phenomena requires taking into account the views of all local social actors (native and non-native speakers, institutions, linguists, non-speakers, etc.), applying a range of complementary data collection and analysis methods and putting issues of ideology, variation, language contact and interaction centre stage. This book will be welcomed by researchers in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, fieldwork studies, language documentation and language variation and change.

Bettina Migge is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at University College Dublin. Isabelle Leglise is a permanent Researcher in Linguistics at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS, Paris) where she heads a programme on Language Contact at the SeDyL/CELIA-CNRS (Structure et Dynamique des Langues/Centre d'Etudes des Langues Indigenes d'Amerique). Since 2000, she has been engaged in research projects in French Guiana, and, more recently, in Suriname and Brazil, with a special focus on multilingualism, contact-induced changes, language and migration, and educational issues. Her main research interests are language contact, language variation and change, discourse analysis, sociology of language and applied linguistics.

'Migge and Leglise have explored several borders in this groundbreaking study: between French Guiana and Suriname, between different ethnic groups, but foremost between critical discourse analysis and descriptive linguistics.' Pieter Muysken, Radboud University Nijmegen 'Migge and Leglise's investigation challenges standard assumptions about language and community. It is invaluable for the fields of language documentation, language contact, Creole studies, and the sociolinguistics of multilingual settings.' John Victor Singler, New York University 'Modern sociolinguistics has been focused, from its 20th century beginnings, on variability and diversity in language. From that perspective, Migge and Leglise's book on TakiTaki in French Guiana and Suriname should be of enormous interest to all sociolinguists - not only because of the surprising degree of linguistic heterogeneity it reveals in a region relatively unknown to most linguists, but also because its emergent, ideology and identity-linked character forces the authors to develop new ways of discovering, conceptualizing and studying it from which sociolinguistics (and Creole studies) could benefit.' John R. Rickford, J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Linguistics and the Humanities, Stanford University, author of Dimensions of a Creole Continuum and co-editor of Sociolinguistics and Variation Theory and Language, Culture and Identity in the Caribbean 'This book makes fascinating reading for linguistics and social anthropologists interested in linguistic and cultural hybridization in linguistically, culturally, and socially complex (post-)colonial societies. It is also an important contribution to the study of the languages of Suriname and French Guiana.' Kofi Yakpo, Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages