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Sociolinguistics of Globalization
Sociolinguistics of Globalization
Commentary: A sociolinguistics
of globalization1
Jan Blommaert
Ghent University, Belgium
1. INTRODUCTION
Johannes Fabian opens his latest book with an essay entitled `With so much
critique and reection around, who needs theory?' (Fabian 2001). The title and
the argument are inspiring and capture the spirit of our times: we live in an age
that of globalization, so to speak in which la pensee and careful analysis have
come under pressure from various sides, yet are more than ever necessary.
There is, on the one hand, pressure from `the eld', where urgent calls for
immediately applicable solutions to burning problems become louder and
louder. And on the other hand, there is pressure from a growing antiintellectualism articulated by politicians, media and other anti-elitist elites.
My argument here, much like Fabian's, is built on the old adage that there is
nothing as practical as good theory. Faced with deep transformations in society
which demonstrate the failure of older paradigms, we need not to abandon ship
but to reconstruct our paradigms, improve them and expand them (Wallerstein
2001). As announced by Nikolas Coupland in his introductory remarks, when
sociolinguistics attempts to address globalization, it will need new theory. The
rst phase of the process is, therefore, the laborious and often unrewarding
phase of trial-and-error: see what works, dene topics, units and elds, and try
some analysis. Two issues are on the table. First I want to comment on the
dierent papers in this issue and try to distil some general points, useful for what
I believe should be our ambition here: to start developing a sociolinguistics of
globalization. Second, I will add two suggestions for incorporating particular
theoretical instruments into such an exercise: the notion of the world system and
that of second linguistic relativity.
2. NECESSARY BUILDING BLOCKS
In general, all the papers in this issue address matters of scale: the macro and the
micro, the global and the local, the dierent levels at which `language' can be
said to exist and at which sociolinguistic processes operate. Various papers treat,
for instance, the relationship between a `world language' English and local
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which claims to contribute to an understanding of society through an understanding of language.6 It is precisely the fragmented but interconnected nature
of the world system that accounts for the niched character of sociolinguistic
globalization: it occurs not everywhere, but in particular dierent yet interconnected places and not in others, and this is a structural and systemic matter
with deep historical roots, not a coincidental one. It is historical, and that means
that we have to situate globalization processes in a wider picture of structural
`becoming', of processes of worldwide inequality that derive their systemic
nature from the long history in which they t. We are never investigating
synchronicity, but always a particular stage in a historical process. In World
Systems analysis, emphasis is placed on issues of scale, layering, and dierential
development within a system dominated by interactions and mutual (though
dierential) inuences. This format looks to me to be a highly applicable
framework for sociolinguistic investigation.
For a sociolinguistics of globalization within a World Systems perspective,
I would suggest that emphasis is needed on the relative value of semiotic
resources value often being connected to translocally realizable functions,
the capacity to perform adequately in and through language in a wide variety of
social and geographical spaces and across linguistic economies (something often
attributed to English, but also to literacy and internet communication). This
capacity is the capacity for mobility, and this emphasis on value as a crucial
aspect of function is due to the fact that globalization raises new issues of
inequality, both locally and translocally, precisely with respect to the capacity
for mobility of resources. Specically, the `weight' of social and cultural
forms of capital across spaces (geographical as well as social) appears to vary
enormously. What works in one place does not appear to work elsewhere, and
the kinds of `ows' usually associated with globalization processes involve
important shifts in value and a reallocation of functions (Appadurai 1990;
also Bourdieu 1990). When people move across physical as well as social space
(and both are usually intertwined), their language practices undergo reevaluation at every step of the trajectory and the functions of their repertoire
are redened. And conversely, movements of others, as in Heller's heritage
tourism, aect the value and function of local speech repertoires. (One can note,
reecting on Heller's case study, that globalization can increase the value of
otherwise minorized varieties; the direction of value changes again appears to
be unpredictable.) This, to me, looks like a prime target for a sociolinguistics of
globalization, and the most adequate way to address it is by looking at the
relative (and shiftable) value of linguistic practices as a component of their
function. This is the topic of the next section.
4. SECOND LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY AND GLOBALIZATION
Let me now introduce a second concept, useful in my opinion for analyses of
sociolinguistic globalization phenomena: Dell Hymes' notion of `second linguistic
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And consequently:
the type [of relativity] associated with Sapir and Whorf in any case is underlain by a
more fundamental kind. The consequences of the relativity of the structure of
language depend on the relativity of the function of language. Take, for example,
the common case of multilingualism. Inferences as to the shaping eect of some one
language on thought and the world must be qualied immediately in terms of the place
of the speaker's languages in his biography and mode of life. Moreover, communities
dier in the role they assign to language itself in socialization, acquisition of cultural
knowledge and performance. . . . This second type of linguistic relativity, concerned
with the functions of languages, has more than a critical, cautionary import. As a
sociolinguistic approach, it calls attention to the organization of linguistic features in
social interaction. Work has begun to show that description of fashions of speaking
can reveal basic cultural values and orientations. The worlds so revealed are not the
ontological and epistemological worlds of physical relationships, of concern to Whorf,
but worlds of social relationships. What are disclosed are not orientations toward
space, time, vibratory phenomena, and the like, but orientations towards persons,
roles, statuses, rights and duties, deference and demeanor . . . (Hymes 1996: 4445;
also Hymes 1980: 38)7
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20/9/1999
Dear !
Uncle Jan
How are you? I hope you
The main aim of this letter is to tell
you that, here in Tanzania, we have
remember you so much. Dady, Mum, Uzuri
Patrick, Furaha, and Veronica and other members
like Kazili, Helena, Bahati, Fatima and
and others. Other people forget to write for you
a letter, geat all your family I don't
have much to say. Sorry if you will
came Tanzania we will go to beach
BYe BYe From VICTORIA MTANGULA
A few comments are in order. Using a punitive reading, the rst thing that
strikes the linguist-observer is the frequency of rather severe errors at the level
of grammar (`we have remember you so much', `to write for you', `if you will
came Tanzania'), as well as at the level of punctuation (absence of periods),
orthography (`geat all your family', the alteration of upper and lower case
symbols in the concluding line), narrative style and control over literary
conventions (the awkward list of names dominating the letter, the separation
of `Dear!' and `Uncle Jan', the unnished sentence `I hope you'). Victoria
struggles with English literacy, her control over the medium is incomplete. At
the same time, her act of writing can best be seen as `language display' in the
sense of Eastman and Stein (1993): the mobilization of the best possible
resources for a particular act of communication. Given the particular relationship I had with Victoria (and given the references to the other family members
not writing to me), the act of writing is loaded with indexicalities, constructing a
relational identity of a `good girl', someone who behaves and performs well, is
probably among the best pupils in her age-group, and is worthy of
compliments from her European Uncle. Her letter also indexicalizes all
kinds of things with regard to writing practices and the use of particular
codes (English) within a local repertoire. In short, Victoria tries to exploit the
semiotic opportunities oered by globalized sociolinguistic phenomena.
But she does so under world-systemic constraints. Victoria mobilizes the
maximum-status resources within her reach: the best possible (school) English,
the language of status and upward social mobility in Tanzania. And it is in that
respect that the errors become important: as soon as the document moves
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across the world system and gets transplanted from a repertoire in the periphery
to a repertoire in the core of the world system, the resources used by Victoria
would fail to index elite status and prestige. The value of this variety of written
English in Europe is deeply dierent from the value it has in Dar es Salaam. The
indexicalities of success and prestige, consequently, only work within a local
economy of signs, that of Tanzania, an economy in which even a little bit of
English could pass as good, prestige-bearing English.
We are witnessing, in the process of intercultural/international transfer, a
shift in indexical and referential aspects of signs from one `placed' system to
another. It is at this point that the critical rereading of Hymes' second
relativity may be added to recent insights on indexicality and linguistic
ideologies. The reallocation of functions for resources proceeds along indexical and referential lines: we allocate functions to resources on the basis of
what we believe to understand by interpreting and contextualizing
indexical and referential meanings of signs. We also see huge discrepancies
between what linguistic resources and ways of using them mean in local
environments that of grassroots literacy in Africa and what they mean
in other, transnational environments in which they get inserted. The kind of
literacy shown here is, I believe, widespread in Africa, and it characterizes
much of what exists in the way of literacy in the sub-elite strata of many
African societies (Blommaert 1999b, 2001b, 2003a, in press a). In these
societies the periphery of the world system it may be quite sucient to
communicate adequately; in fact, it may even be an object of status and
prestige. But lifted out of the periphery and placed into the order of
indexicalities of the core of the world system, these forms of literacy lose
their functions and receive new ones. From a rather high rank in one's own
hierarchies of signs and communication practices, they tumble down to the
lowest ranks of the hierarchies of someone else.
Consequently, we are facing `placed resources' here: resources that are
functional in one particular place but can become dysfunctional as soon as
they are moved into other places. The process of mobility creates dierence in
value, for the resources are being reallocated dierent functions. The indexical
links between signs and modes of communication, and social value scales
allowing, for example, identity construction, status attribution and so forth
these indexical links are severed and new ones are projected onto the signs and
practices. Particular linguistic resources, often those of people in the peripheries
of the world system, do not travel well.8
I would claim that such reallocation processes are central to the kinds of
mobility that characterize globalization: they dene how mobile resources are or
can become and how much opportunity particular resources will oer their
users in various places across the world. Consequently, a sociolinguistics of
globalization should look carefully into such processes of reallocation, the
remapping of forms over function, for it may be central to the various forms
of inequality that also characterize globalization processes. For this we need
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careful ethnographic work, sustained by a social theory which takes the world
system as the highest level of contextualization.
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
The main part of this paper is a written version of a lecture given at Cardi
University, April 2002, during a workshop of the Leverhulme Trust project on
Language and Global Communication. I thank the participants of the workshop, as
well as those of the BAAL-panel in Cardi (September 2002) on which this issue is
based, for rewarding discussions on the ideas outlined here. I substantially rewrote
the rst version during my stay at the Department of Anthropology of the University
of Chicago, JanuaryMarch 2003, probably the most generous and stimulating
research environment I have ever seen. Finally, Nikolas Coupland provided excellent
suggestions and some important caveats that have greatly helped me nalize this
text.
House perceptively notes that this observation `invalidates the claim that English is
an imperialist ``killer language'' which English, we may ask'. The Linguistic Rights
issue, as well as issues of language death or attrition, become something completely
dierent indeed as soon as `Languages' are replaced by language varieties (see e.g.
Silverstein 1998).
I would argue, however, that the story is considerably more complex than the
distinction between `language for communication' and `language for identication'
oered by House. The kind of tolerance for errors in non-native English usage is
driven by an ideological perception of this language usage as `instrumental'. Precisely
this kind of usage of language denes the context and identies the participants as
people who subscribe to this functionalist-referential ideology of language-in-abusiness-setting. See Milroy and Milroy (1985) and Gal and Woolard (2001) for
general discussions.
Mufwene (2002) provides an insightful discussion of this based on language loss and
creolization. He observes, tongue-in-cheek, that `McDonald's outlets around the
world operate in the local lingua francas, if not their vernaculars' (2002: 33).
McDonaldization thus understood acquires a very dierent, more accurate meaning:
the process is exactly that described by Machin and van Leeuwen with regard to
Cosmopolitan.
Thus, the existence of such worldwide `globalized' elites (the readership of
Cosmopolitan, or customers of McDonald's for instance) does not alter the center
periphery structure of the world system, but often reinforces inequalities both locally
and translocally.
I am surprised by the often myopic nature of social-theoretical reections in our
eld. Scholars enthusiastically refer to social theorists such as Habermas and
Giddens theorists of the structure and development of First World societies but
hardly ever to theory that addresses the world system, (under)development and
dependency issues. Wallerstein has already been mentioned, but one could also
think of, for example, Samir Amin, Andre Gunder Frank, Giovanni Arrighi and
others, scholars whose work consistently emphasizes the interconnectedness of
processes across dierent parts of the world, the eects of developments in one part
on other parts, and the structural dierences in value of resources from dierent
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8.
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parts of the world system. It is social theory that addresses the world, not just one
part of it.
The dierence between `real' world and `social' world as directions of orientation in
indexicality is somewhat overstated by Hymes in this quote. Work such as that of
John Haviland and Charles Goodwin has demonstrated how both are inextricably
linked. Hanks (1990) and Gumperz and Levinson (1996) provide excellent
discussions of this issue.
In another paper, we called this phenomenon `pretextual gaps': gaps that originate
when the resources people have fail to match the criteria of expected resources
(Maryns and Blommaert 2002). The example given here is merely meant to
illustrate such dierences in pretextualities, and I cannot address intricate issues
of actual contextual displacement here, the point here being one about potential
value rather than actual value. For fuller discussions, see Blommaert (2003a,
2003b).
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