From Truncated to Sociopolitical Emergence: A Critique of Superdiversity in Sociolinguistics

• In Event: 53.037 - Is Superdiversity the Way Forward for Educational Linguistics?

Abstract

This paper also raises concerns about the erasure of the specific histories of racialized communities in the US who have engaged in the types of fluid language practices that are currently being placed under the umbrella of super-diversity. What this paper adds to this concern is an explicit focus on neoliberalism and its impact on racialized communities in the US. It argues that while neoliberalism has produced super-diverse neighborhoods such as the ones described in the super-diversity literature it has also led to the increased segregation of Black and Latino communities in the United States.

The paper also offers a critique of the ways that language is viewed and treated within the super-diversity literature. In particular, it reject the unproblematic use of terms such as “truncated” that permeate the super-diversity literature and call for an approach to sociolinguistics that resists reifying normative assumptions about language and instead makes the construction of linguistic normativity central to sociolinguistic research. It calls this new approach the study of sociopolitical emergences that include emergent linguistic practices defined as the continuously shifting uses of language of specific communities that are always open to change and emergent linguistic categories defined as the different ways of categorizing these linguistic practices based on the complex interrelationship between historical and contemporary factors.

To illustrate this approach, the paper describes a case study of a hypersegregated Spanish/English dual-language charter school in Philadelphia. This case study begins by situating the school within the history of Latinos in the United States and Philadelphia as well as within the contemporary neoliberal political economy. These historical and contemporary political and economic processes have led to the school being overwhelmingly Latino students with some background in both English and Spanish. However, the ways of using both languages among the students differ based on prior experience with the languages, positioning by their peers and teachers, and their own identity development. The language practices that observed within this school community parallel many of the characteristics of language practices associated with super-diversity. Yet, rather than using universalizing terms such as truncated to describe these language practices, the paper offers an alternative analysis that focuses on emergent linguistic practices and emergent linguistic categories that have been produced within this specific historical and contemporary community context.

The paper ends with a call for a new approach to sociolinguistics that truly rejects the reification of normative assumptions about language. From this alternative framework, the role of a sociolinguist is not to presuppose what people should be doing with language or determining who is most proficient in a language, but rather to analyze the sociopolitical emergence of linguistic practices and categories that are made possible by the specific histories of communities and that are shaped by the contemporary neoliberal political economy. Pushing ourselves to treat the normative assumptions at the core of universalizing labels as data for sociolinguistic inquiry is a prerequisite for developing an approach to sociolinguistics that challenges—as opposed to reifies—dominant language ideologies.

Author

• Nelson Flores, University of Pennsylvania