Introduction

Mobility, polylingualism, and change: Toward an updated sociolinguistics of diaspora

Bibliographic Data

ID3613752
AuthorsAmelia Tseng (0000-0002-4961-3321, American University Washington District of Columbia), Lars Hinrichs (0000-0003-3679-1927, University of Texas at Austin Austin Texas)
Year2021
Volume25
Issue5
Pages649-661
Publication date2021-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Sociolinguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1360-6441 • E-ISSN: 1467-9841
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/josl.12532
OpenAlexW4200111300
LanguageEN
Citations received15
References cited41

Diaspora offers a fruitful and narrower approach to language and mobility than the study of globalization. By making the historical footprint of mobility evident, diaspora allows analysts to identify the tension between ideologies of language and ethnonational belonging, and patterns of mobility that destabilize them. This special issue features a series of case studies of that tension and its linguistic manifestations, and adds empirical evidence to the nuances and histories within diversity and mobility that concepts such as "globalization" and "superdiversity" can obscure. Further, the notion of diaspora has not been explored with the same rigor in linguistics as it has in other fields. Sociolinguistics stands to benefit from integrating a more nuanced understanding of diaspora into our key questions and assumptions in order to advance the field's critical capacity to respond to complexity. Diaspora sociolinguistics is able to trace and discuss those social processes that are crucial to shaping linguistic repertoires and linguistic behavior-transnationalism, racialization, negotiation of gender and class dynamics, generational differences, and more-with empirical detail and historical embedding. Increased theorization will contribute to new and perennial guiding questions in the field and allow sociolinguists to define the questions we ask about language in diaspora with rigor

Aotearoa · Diaspora · Globalization · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Racialization · Sociolinguistics · Sociology · Transnationalism · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Gender Studies · Law

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