Language as Material Practice: Exploring Tacit and Embodied Communicative Repertoires in Youth Contexts for Social Justice

• In Event: 31.090 - Productions of Time-Space in Literacy Studies: Scale, Movement, and Texts

Abstract

Objectives/Purpose
The presentation will explore the ways in which young people engage with semiotic repertoires that are present within the material world and are located within practice, and ‘known’ through the hands as well as passed on within families. I look at the processes by which language is materialised within community contexts over time and across spaces. I describe a project called ‘Language as Talisman’ in which young people were encouraged to explore everyday language and particularly dialect as a source of knowledge in their lives. This was then materialised within multimodal material forms that unfolded within and across multiple timescales and spatial frameworks. I explore what kinds of knowledge, skills, and conceptions of time/space are embedded within these material practices.

Theoretical framing
I draw on work by Snell (2013) and Blommaert (2008) to suggest that the conceptual framing of communicative practices needs to be re-thought in relation to ways of knowing and everyday practices in communities. Understandings of young people’s communicative repertoires need a new sociolinguistic framework drawing on Maybin (2013). This would then reposition young people’s skills and knowledge.

Methods
The methodologies used on these studies included collaborative ethnography (Campbell & Lassiter 2010; Lassiter 2005) and relational arts practice (Kester, 2004). Artists worked alongside researchers and youth workers to make sense of practice with the young people. Sites for the research include youth club settings, schools and outdoor settings.

Data sources included engaged projects in community contexts. In ‘Language as Talisman’ we worked with two schools to explore the power of language in everyday life. We worked with youth workers, artists, and young people to research everyday language and dialect. We explored relationships to place, history and identity in a project called “Portals to the Past’ in which young people explored their history and their land through archeological digs, songs, poetry and archival work.

Findings
The findings of these projects show that young people drew on linguistic repertoires that were shaped by intergenerational experience, material knowledge, and place. These historical and spatial understandings of self and place were constructed in relation to people’s everyday material practices and rooted in particular resources. I look at the intersections between local, situated knowledge and ways of knowing that question and critique particular cultural frameworks and understandings.

Scholarly significance
The presentation will conclude by arguing that in order to improve the life chances of young people, an understanding of their communicative repertoires across the life course needs to be re-thought to take account of this diversity (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011). Rather than see these as static and linked to language, these repertories cross the lines between tacit, and materially situated forms of communication. By articulating the relationship between material, situated knowledge and language, a more nuanced understanding of communication emerges, which repositions young people as active communicators situated within particular embedded historical and spatial frameworks.

Author

• Kate Heron Pahl, The University of Sheffield