Adrian Blackledge
Biographic Data
| ID | 115207 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Adrian Blackledge |
| GIVEN NAMES | Adrian |
| FAMILY NAME | Blackledge |
| SIGNATURE | BLACKLEDGE A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Birmingham |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6440-2154 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 398 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
The Potential of Poetry in Sociolinguistics
Research in the field of sociolinguistics has taken a relational and artistic turn, as scholars have developed creative means of showing research findings. Drawing on relational ethics, we explore the capacity of art to reach beyond the indexical. Both in research practice and in the representation of research outcomes, the arts offer imaginative domains which are rich seams of potential. We suggest sociolinguistic ethnographic poetry is equipped…
Translanguaging in performance: An ethnographic drama approach
Translanguaging involves communication through available semiotic resources, including embodied action. In this paper, we report research in which we observed communication in a volleyball team. We also show how we found conventional academic writing to have limited scope in the representation of embodied communicative practice and came to ethnographic drama as a viable alternative. In the theatre, the enaction of everyday communication is laid o…
The potential of ethnographic drama in the representation, interpretation, and democratization of sociolinguistic research
In this paper, we discuss the affordances of an approach to the representation, interpretation, and democratization of sociolinguistic research, which utilizes the tools and methods of the theatre. Taking as an example a team ethnographic research project conducted across four cities in the UK, we discuss the process of creating drama from material observed as social practice. Drawing on observations in a welfare advice centre in a Chinese commun…
Interpretations – An Ethnographic Drama
Recontextualisation and advocacy in the translation zone
This paper reports an element of a team linguistic ethnography which investigated the ways people communicate with each other in the changing, dynamic environments of superdiverse cities in the UK. The particular example examined here is that of a ‘translation zone’ between an advice worker and her Chinese clients in a community centre with a remit to support Chinese people in the city. In the interaction the advice worker, herself a migrant from…
Stereotypes and chronotopes: The peasant and the cosmopolitan in narratives about migration
Stereotypes are chronotopic (Bakhtin, 1994) in the sense that they make good use of character types in time and space to utter identifiable speech forms and make evident other semiotic displays. This paper argues for sociolinguistics to expand its interpretation of the chronotope to encompass the relationship between "character" and "author" in identity texts. It suggests that conflating author and character in identity scholarship, as is the cas…
The Routledge Handbook of Language and Superdiversity: An Interdisciplinary Perspective
Since the 'superdiversity' concept was introduced in the early 2000s (Vertovec 2005), it has been taken up by many different fields, including law, economics, social work, urban planning, linguistics and education (e.g., Valentine 2013). Within the fields of sociolinguistics generally, and multilingual education and language policy in particular, superdiversity has gained traction and coincided with the growing emphasis on understanding how multi…
Translanguaging and translation: The construction of social difference across city spaces
This paper considers the construction of social difference in the interactions of a couple as they communicate at home and work, with one another, their colleagues, and strangers in a superdiverse English city. In our linguistic ethnographic approach we observed, wrote field notes, audio-recorded key participants, took photographs, made video-recordings, and conducted interviews. We documented the role translanguaging and translation played and s…
Routledge Handbook of Language and Superdiversity
Interaction ritual and the body in a city meat market
Service encounters are often fleeting interactions between strangers, which are beset with trip wires and obstacles. The potential for instability in such encounters is often countered by ritual interaction – small ceremonies in which civility is freely given, and transgression is accounted for and forgiven. Service encounters are not conducted through speech alone, but through embodied communication, in which interactants do not only speak, but …
Translanguaging in mobility
This chapter provides an overview of key concepts in relation to language, migration, and mobility. It reviews concepts and terms in relation to the mobility of communicative practices. Recently, a number of terms have emerged, as scholars have sought to describe and analyze linguistic practices in which meaning is made using signs flexibly. The chapter develops an understanding of translanguaging which views mobility in relation to trajectories …
Translanguaging and the body
This article reports communicative interactions with a focus on the body as a dimension of the semiotic repertoire. The research context is a four-year, multi-site linguistic ethnography which investigates how people communicate in superdiverse cities in the UK. In the setting of a butcher’s stall in a city market we consider three interactions at a particular market stall between butchers and their customers. In the first, gesture is deployed as…
The 'other woman' in a mother and daughter relationship: The case of Mami Ji
This article describes the range of discursive strategies in the socializing messages of a mother and daughter interaction. The analysis draws on the work of Bakhtin (1981) and Tannen (2007) to interrogate the role of a physically absent but discursively present sister-in-law, 'Mami Ji', across three speech events. Following Tannen, we show how the characterisation of the sister-in-law, Mami Ji, has chronotopic value that connects mother and daug…
Language, marriage migration and the law
In recent decades one of the most consistent migration routes has been through marriage; that is, where the marriage relationship is the basis of entry rights. From the perspective of government, marriage migration permits the entry of migrants who would not otherwise be admitted. Marriage can pose a fundamental challenge to governments’ attempts to manage migration. This article considers how successive British governments have introduced legisl…
Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations, by Adrian Blackledge
Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations, by Adrian Blackledge." Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 15(1), pp. 59–60
The structure of everyday narrative in a city market: An ethnopoetics approach
This paper considers the value of Hymesian ethnopoetics as a means of analysing everyday narrative in conditions of mobility and change. The paper offers an account of the development of ethnopoetics as a means to make visible and valorize narrative in the Native American oral tradition, and as a method of revealing culturally specific relations of form and meaning. Hymes' ethnopoetic approach viewed narrative structure as a reflection of a cultu…
Discourse and power
Conceptualizing multilingualism under globalization: Membership claims, social categories and emblems of authenticity
The seminar took place on 11 and 12 June 2013 at the MOSAIC Centre for Research on Multilingualism, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham
They look into our lips: Negotiation of the citizenship ceremony as authoritative discourse
The British citizenship ceremony marks the legal endpoint of the naturalisation process. While the citizenship ceremony may be a celebration, it can also be a final examination. Using an ethnographically-informed case study, this article follows one candidate, ‘W’, through the naturalisation process in the UK. W is a migrant Yemeni at the end of the naturalisation process. Bakhtin’s notion of “ideological becoming” offers an analytic orientation …
Heteroglossia as Practice and Pedagogy
Voice, register and social position
In this article the notion of “community” is examined through a lens which focuses on the way people interact and communicate in and around a Panjabi complementary school. Analysis of linguistic ethnographic data contributes to understandings of how identities are produced and reproduced, and how belonging becomes naturalised. The analysis offers a means to develop a nuanced understanding of the complexity, unpredictability and mobility of late m…
Multilingualism and Ideology
Language ideologies include the values, practices, and beliefs associated with language use by speakers, and the discourse which constructs values and beliefs at state, institutional, national, and global levels.
The Routledge handbook of multilingualism
Voice and Meaning-Making in Team Ethnography
Drawing on research on complementary schools in the United Kingdom, this presentation considers some of the issues in the research method used in studying this after-school community site. Processes of analysis employed by the ethnography team are disclosed so as to illuminate the dynamics of theory building in a large research team.[reflexive language, team ethnography, voice, representation
Separate and flexible bilingualism in complementary schools: Multiple language practices in interrelationship
Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts
New theoretical approaches to the study of negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts. The making of an American - negotiation of identities at the turn of the 20th century, Aneta Pavlenko constructions of identity in political discourse in multilingual Britain, Adrian Blackledge negotiating between bourge and racaille - Verlan as youth identity practice in suburban Paris, Meredith Doran (Pennsylvania State University) Black Deaf or Deaf …
Separate and flexible bilingualism in complementary schools: Multiple language practices in interrelationship
Translanguaging and the body
This article reports communicative interactions with a focus on the body as a dimension of the semiotic repertoire. The research context is a four-year, multi-site linguistic ethnography which investigates how people communicate in superdiverse cities in the UK. In the setting of a butcher’s stall in a city market we consider three interactions at a particular market stall between butchers and their customers. In the first, gesture is deployed as…
The Discursive Construction of National Identity in Multilingual Britain
In multilingual, heterogeneous societies language ideologies are constantly constructed and reconstructed in discursive interactions at micro and macro levels. If the dominant, majority group in a society, nation, nation-state, or community considers that the ideal model of society is monolingual, we immediately encounter questions such as "Who is in?" and "Who is out?" A dominant ideology of monolingualism in multilingual societies raises questi…
The racialization of language in British political discourse
In the summer of 2001 there were violent disturbances on the streets of towns and cities in the north of England. These disturbances, popularly described in the British media as 'race riots', principally involved young British Asian men, young White British men, and the police. In November 2002 the Nationality, Immigration, and Asylum Act was granted Royal Assent, and passed into British law, introducing legislation which required spouses of Brit…
Monolingual ideologies in multilingual states: Language, hegemony and social justice in Western liberal democracies
In multilingual, heterogeneous societies language ideologies are constantly constructed and re-constructed in discursive interactions at micro and macro levels. When the dominant, majority group in a society, nation, nation-state or community considers that the ideal model of society is monolingual, monoethnic, monoreligious and monoideological (Blommaert & Verschueren, 1998a), we immediately encounter questions such as 'who is in?' and 'who is o…
Meaning-Making as Dialogic Process: Official and Carnival Lives in the Language Classroom
This article adopts a Bakhtinian analysis to understand the complexities of discourse in language-learning classrooms. Drawing on empirical data from two of four linked case studies in a larger, ESRC-funded project, we argue that students learning in complementary (also known as community language, supplementary, or heritage language) schools create “second lives” in the classroom. They do this through the use of carnivalesque language, introduci…
Because tumi Bangali: Inventing and disinventing the national in multilingual communities in the UK
In this article, we present an analysis of some of the voices we heard as we conducted linguistic ethnographic research in eight complementary (also known as ‘community language’, ‘supplementary’, ‘heritage language’) schools in four British cities. These were the voices of people engaged in teaching and learning languages, including Bengali, Cantonese, Gujarati, Mandarin and Turkish. The content of the language classes frequently reflected the s…
Stereotypes and chronotopes: The peasant and the cosmopolitan in narratives about migration
Stereotypes are chronotopic (Bakhtin, 1994) in the sense that they make good use of character types in time and space to utter identifiable speech forms and make evident other semiotic displays. This paper argues for sociolinguistics to expand its interpretation of the chronotope to encompass the relationship between "character" and "author" in identity texts. It suggests that conflating author and character in identity scholarship, as is the cas…
Discourse and power in a multilingual world
In Discourse and Power in a Multilingual World the discourse of politicians and policy-makers in Britain links languages other than English, and therefore speakers of these languages, with civil disorder and threats to democracy, citizenship and nationhood. These powerful arguments travel along 'chains of discourse' until they gain the legitimacy of the state, and are inscribed in law. The particular focus of this volume is on discourse linking '…
The structure of everyday narrative in a city market: An ethnopoetics approach
This paper considers the value of Hymesian ethnopoetics as a means of analysing everyday narrative in conditions of mobility and change. The paper offers an account of the development of ethnopoetics as a means to make visible and valorize narrative in the Native American oral tradition, and as a method of revealing culturally specific relations of form and meaning. Hymes' ethnopoetic approach viewed narrative structure as a reflection of a cultu…
Voice and Meaning-Making in Team Ethnography
Drawing on research on complementary schools in the United Kingdom, this presentation considers some of the issues in the research method used in studying this after-school community site. Processes of analysis employed by the ethnography team are disclosed so as to illuminate the dynamics of theory building in a large research team.[reflexive language, team ethnography, voice, representation
Imagining a Monocultural Community: Racialization of Cultural Practice in Educational Discourse
In recent times reports into incidents of racist violence in Britain identified a prevailing institutionalized racism and social segregation (Cantle, 2002; MacPherson, 1999). In this article I present an analysis of authoritative educational discourse in the form of school inspection reports, focusing on a single issue: the cultural practice of minority ethnic families visiting their heritage country. Using critical discourse analysis, I suggest …
Interaction ritual and the body in a city meat market
Service encounters are often fleeting interactions between strangers, which are beset with trip wires and obstacles. The potential for instability in such encounters is often countered by ritual interaction – small ceremonies in which civility is freely given, and transgression is accounted for and forgiven. Service encounters are not conducted through speech alone, but through embodied communication, in which interactants do not only speak, but …
They look into our lips: Negotiation of the citizenship ceremony as authoritative discourse
The British citizenship ceremony marks the legal endpoint of the naturalisation process. While the citizenship ceremony may be a celebration, it can also be a final examination. Using an ethnographically-informed case study, this article follows one candidate, ‘W’, through the naturalisation process in the UK. W is a migrant Yemeni at the end of the naturalisation process. Bakhtin’s notion of “ideological becoming” offers an analytic orientation …
The Magical Frontier between the Dominant and the Dominated: Sociolinguistics and Social Justice in a Multilingual World
Research in multilingual societies often attends to the micro level of linguistic interactions, as linguistic minority speakers negotiate their way through a majoritylanguage world. However, this research does not always engage with the social, political and historical contexts that produce and reproduce the conditions within which some linguistic resources have less currency than others. Methodological approaches must be able to make visible tho…
Language, Literacy and Social Justice: The Experiences of Bangladeshi Women in Birmingham, UK
This paper presents a study of the literacy practices and attitudes of Bangladeshi families in Birmingham, UK. In particular, the study focuses on the extent to which the mothers of eighteen six-year-old Bangladeshi children were able to support their children's school-related literacy learning. The paper locates literacy in the context of social justice, and relations of power between majority and minority groups in society. Despite the school's…
The potential of ethnographic drama in the representation, interpretation, and democratization of sociolinguistic research
In this paper, we discuss the affordances of an approach to the representation, interpretation, and democratization of sociolinguistic research, which utilizes the tools and methods of the theatre. Taking as an example a team ethnographic research project conducted across four cities in the UK, we discuss the process of creating drama from material observed as social practice. Drawing on observations in a welfare advice centre in a Chinese commun…
The 'other woman' in a mother and daughter relationship: The case of Mami Ji
This article describes the range of discursive strategies in the socializing messages of a mother and daughter interaction. The analysis draws on the work of Bakhtin (1981) and Tannen (2007) to interrogate the role of a physically absent but discursively present sister-in-law, 'Mami Ji', across three speech events. Following Tannen, we show how the characterisation of the sister-in-law, Mami Ji, has chronotopic value that connects mother and daug…
Voice, register and social position
In this article the notion of “community” is examined through a lens which focuses on the way people interact and communicate in and around a Panjabi complementary school. Analysis of linguistic ethnographic data contributes to understandings of how identities are produced and reproduced, and how belonging becomes naturalised. The analysis offers a means to develop a nuanced understanding of the complexity, unpredictability and mobility of late m…
Translanguaging in performance: An ethnographic drama approach
Translanguaging involves communication through available semiotic resources, including embodied action. In this paper, we report research in which we observed communication in a volleyball team. We also show how we found conventional academic writing to have limited scope in the representation of embodied communicative practice and came to ethnographic drama as a viable alternative. In the theatre, the enaction of everyday communication is laid o…
What sort of people can look at a chicken and think dofednod: Language, ideology and nationalism in public discourse
Article What sort of people can look at a chicken and think dofednod?: Language, ideology and nationalism in public discourse was published on August 28, 2002 in the journal Multilingua (volume 21, issue 2-3)
We can't tell our stories in English’: Language, story and culture in the primary school 1
The paper arises from my experience as a teacher in the multilingual primary classroom. In the course of developing bilingual education strategies I became aware that bilingual children's work would sometimes improve dramatically when they used their home language. This was particularly evident when children were telling stories to each other. Research findings elsewhere have suggested the cognitive benefits of home language work with very young …
We can't tell our stories in English’: Language, story and culture in the primary school 1
The paper arises from my experience as a teacher in the multilingual primary classroom. In the course of developing bilingual education strategies I became aware that bilingual children's work would sometimes improve dramatically when they used their home language. This was particularly evident when children were telling stories to each other. Research findings elsewhere have suggested the cognitive benefits of home language work with very young …
Language, Literacy and Social Justice: The Experiences of Bangladeshi Women in Birmingham, UK
This paper presents a study of the literacy practices and attitudes of Bangladeshi families in Birmingham, UK. In particular, the study focuses on the extent to which the mothers of eighteen six-year-old Bangladeshi children were able to support their children's school-related literacy learning. The paper locates literacy in the context of social justice, and relations of power between majority and minority groups in society. Despite the school's…
Monolingual ideologies in multilingual states: Language, hegemony and social justice in Western liberal democracies
In multilingual, heterogeneous societies language ideologies are constantly constructed and re-constructed in discursive interactions at micro and macro levels. When the dominant, majority group in a society, nation, nation-state or community considers that the ideal model of society is monolingual, monoethnic, monoreligious and monoideological (Blommaert & Verschueren, 1998a), we immediately encounter questions such as 'who is in?' and 'who is o…
The wrong sort of capital? Bangladeshi women and their children's schooling in Birmingham, U.K
The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, to present the findings of a study of Bangladeshi women's relations with their children's school in Birmingham, U.K., and the ways in which languages and literacies were regarded at thresholds of power between the minority-culture women and the dominant-culture institution. Second, to consider the insights which the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu affords in analyzing the power structures e…
Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts
New theoretical approaches to the study of negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts. The making of an American - negotiation of identities at the turn of the 20th century, Aneta Pavlenko constructions of identity in political discourse in multilingual Britain, Adrian Blackledge negotiating between bourge and racaille - Verlan as youth identity practice in suburban Paris, Meredith Doran (Pennsylvania State University) Black Deaf or Deaf …
The Discursive Construction of National Identity in Multilingual Britain
In multilingual, heterogeneous societies language ideologies are constantly constructed and reconstructed in discursive interactions at micro and macro levels. If the dominant, majority group in a society, nation, nation-state, or community considers that the ideal model of society is monolingual, we immediately encounter questions such as "Who is in?" and "Who is out?" A dominant ideology of monolingualism in multilingual societies raises questi…
Imagining a Monocultural Community: Racialization of Cultural Practice in Educational Discourse
In recent times reports into incidents of racist violence in Britain identified a prevailing institutionalized racism and social segregation (Cantle, 2002; MacPherson, 1999). In this article I present an analysis of authoritative educational discourse in the form of school inspection reports, focusing on a single issue: the cultural practice of minority ethnic families visiting their heritage country. Using critical discourse analysis, I suggest …
Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Contexts
The volume highlights the role of language ideologies in the process of negotiation of identities and shows that in different historical and social contexts different identities may be negotiable or non-negotiable. The chapters address various ways in which individuals may be positioned or position themselves in a variety of contexts.
Introduction: New Theoretical Approaches to the Study of Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Contexts
Bilingual Bliss, Bilingual Blues: Reflections by and about Bilingual Writers
Succeeding in Diversity. Culture, Language and Learning in Primary Classrooms. Jean Conteh. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books, 2003. Pp. x+180. ISBN I 85856 294 5
Discourse and power in a multilingual world
In Discourse and Power in a Multilingual World the discourse of politicians and policy-makers in Britain links languages other than English, and therefore speakers of these languages, with civil disorder and threats to democracy, citizenship and nationhood. These powerful arguments travel along 'chains of discourse' until they gain the legitimacy of the state, and are inscribed in law. The particular focus of this volume is on discourse linking '…
The racialization of language in British political discourse
In the summer of 2001 there were violent disturbances on the streets of towns and cities in the north of England. These disturbances, popularly described in the British media as 'race riots', principally involved young British Asian men, young White British men, and the police. In November 2002 the Nationality, Immigration, and Asylum Act was granted Royal Assent, and passed into British law, introducing legislation which required spouses of Brit…
What sort of people can look at a chicken and think dofednod: Language, ideology and nationalism in public discourse
Article What sort of people can look at a chicken and think dofednod?: Language, ideology and nationalism in public discourse was published on August 28, 2002 in the journal Multilingua (volume 21, issue 2-3)
The Magical Frontier between the Dominant and the Dominated: Sociolinguistics and Social Justice in a Multilingual World
Research in multilingual societies often attends to the micro level of linguistic interactions, as linguistic minority speakers negotiate their way through a majoritylanguage world. However, this research does not always engage with the social, political and historical contexts that produce and reproduce the conditions within which some linguistic resources have less currency than others. Methodological approaches must be able to make visible tho…
Contesting 'Language' as 'Heritage': Negotiation of Identities in Late Modernity
In this paper we question key terms which appear frequently in discussions of language teaching and learning: ‘language’ and ‘heritage’. The paper draws on empirical data from one of four linked case studies in a larger project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), ‘Investigating Multilingualism in Complementary Schools in Four Communities’ (RES-000-23-1180). In our analysis we argue that the relationships between ‘languag…
Alastair Pennycook: Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows.
Meaning-Making as Dialogic Process: Official and Carnival Lives in the Language Classroom
This article adopts a Bakhtinian analysis to understand the complexities of discourse in language-learning classrooms. Drawing on empirical data from two of four linked case studies in a larger, ESRC-funded project, we argue that students learning in complementary (also known as community language, supplementary, or heritage language) schools create “second lives” in the classroom. They do this through the use of carnivalesque language, introduci…
Because tumi Bangali: Inventing and disinventing the national in multilingual communities in the UK
In this article, we present an analysis of some of the voices we heard as we conducted linguistic ethnographic research in eight complementary (also known as ‘community language’, ‘supplementary’, ‘heritage language’) schools in four British cities. These were the voices of people engaged in teaching and learning languages, including Bengali, Cantonese, Gujarati, Mandarin and Turkish. The content of the language classes frequently reflected the s…
Translanguaging in the Bilingual Classroom: A Pedagogy for Learning and Teaching?
This article reports on research that questions commonsense understandings of a bilingual pedagogy predicated on what Cummins (2005, 2008) refers to as the “two solitudes” assumption (2008, p. 65). It sets out to describe a flexible bilingual approach to language teaching and learning in Chinese and Gujarati community language schools in the United Kingdom. We argue for a release from monolingual instructional approaches and advocate teaching bil…
Separate and flexible bilingualism in complementary schools: Multiple language practices in interrelationship
Multilingualism and Ideology
Language ideologies include the values, practices, and beliefs associated with language use by speakers, and the discourse which constructs values and beliefs at state, institutional, national, and global levels.
The Routledge handbook of multilingualism
Voice and Meaning-Making in Team Ethnography
Drawing on research on complementary schools in the United Kingdom, this presentation considers some of the issues in the research method used in studying this after-school community site. Processes of analysis employed by the ethnography team are disclosed so as to illuminate the dynamics of theory building in a large research team.[reflexive language, team ethnography, voice, representation
Heteroglossia as Practice and Pedagogy
Voice, register and social position
In this article the notion of “community” is examined through a lens which focuses on the way people interact and communicate in and around a Panjabi complementary school. Analysis of linguistic ethnographic data contributes to understandings of how identities are produced and reproduced, and how belonging becomes naturalised. The analysis offers a means to develop a nuanced understanding of the complexity, unpredictability and mobility of late m…
Sociology (39 works) · Linguistics (36 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (34 works) · Political science (23 works) · Philosophy (19 works) · Pedagogy (17 works) · Anthropology (14 works) · Second Language Learning and Teaching (14 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Law (13 works)