- Home
- e-Journals
- AILA Review
- Previous Issues
- Volume 29, Issue, 2016
AILA Review - Volume 29, Issue 1, 2016
Volume 29, Issue 1, 2016
-
Troping on prejudice
Author(s): Heini Lehtonenpp.: 15–47 (33)More LessThis paper studies reflexivity in interaction among adolescents in Helsinki in the light of stylised performances that are labelled by participants as “bad Finnish”. Stylised “bad Finnish” can be seen as an enregistered discourse register. It is an emblem in which certain linguistic features are connected to ideas about certain kinds of people and their characteristics. In particular, stylised “bad Finnish” is an indexical for social personae associated with “immigrants”, “foreigners” and non-native Finnish. The participants in this study came to Finland as children and learned Finnish as a second (or third or fourth) language, and they still have to face the excluding attitudes of the society. With their stylised performances and in their reactions to them, the participants position themselves with regard to the social personae indexed by stylised “bad Finnish”, their stereotypical characteristics and the wider societal discourses that touch upon themselves. Stylised “bad Finnish” is sometimes used for expressing distance from stereotypical immigrants, but sometimes for displaying solidarity with those who share the experiences of immigration and learning Finnish. Although it also works as a trope, seemingly detached from ethnicity, in interaction with native Finns it may still be delicate because of its pejorative social indexical potential.
-
Reflexive language and ethnic minority activism in Hong Kong
Author(s): Miguel Pérez-Milans and Carlos Sotopp.: 48–82 (35)More LessThis article engages with Archer’s call to further research on reflexivity and social change under conditions of late modernity ( 2007 , 2010 , 2012 ) from the perspective of existing work on reflexive discourse in the language disciplines ( Silverstein 1976 , Lucy 1993 ). Drawing from a linguistic ethnography of the networked trajectories of a group of working-class South Asian youth in Hong Kong ( Pérez-Milans & Soto 2014 ), we analyze the trajectory of Sita, a Hong Kong-born young female with Nepali background. In her trajectory, performative acts of ethnic minority-based activism emerge as key in the enactment of a given set of values, stances, types of persona and situated forms of alignment/disalignment. That is to say, Sita’s enactment of activism is seen in this article as tied to a discourse register ( Agha 2007 : 147). As such, ‘talking/doing activism’ is inter-textually linked to a speech chain network of a group of secondary school students, teachers, researchers and community-based minority activists engaged with Sita in various interrelated projects for social empowerment. Analysis of interview transcripts, online chats and multimodal artifacts shows the extent to which the coordinated formation of this discourse register proved useful in providing Sita with relevant cultural capital ( Bourdieu 1986 ) with which she shaped her own academic trajectory, from a low-prestige government-subsidized secondary school to an elite international college. Data also point towards the need for further engagement with recent invitations to re-imagining identity and social action under current conditions of diversification ( Blommaert 2013 ).
-
Trapped in a moral order
Author(s): Adriana Patiño-Santospp.: 83–113 (31)More LessThis paper focuses on the forms of reflexivity that emerge in the conversational narratives of Latin American teenage school girls co-produced during sociolinguistic interviews, in a multicultural school in the centre of Madrid. The narratives about confrontation at school portray the girls’ actions and ways of making sense of such behaviours, in the course of their migrant life trajectories. Understanding narratives as communicative repertoires ( Rymes 2014 ) of an interactive and situated nature makes them suitable discursive spaces for revealing the moral identity constructed, and the moral order evoked in these narratives. Herein we analyse stories recounting conflicts with three different groups of opponents: female peers, teachers and parents. It is in recounting and evaluating moments of conflict that social actors call upon their systems of beliefs and values. The failure of the girls’ secondary school and all the negative repercussions of such failure are central to the ethnographic circumstances in which their narratives are produced. Some attention will be given to the researcher’s reflexivity, as a co-teller of the narratives gathered, but also in the interpretations made of the data in the light of expectations built up over time regarding the social actors’ academic trajectories.
-
The reflexive imperative among high-achieving adolescents
Author(s): Inge Van Lanckerpp.: 114–140 (27)More LessThe socio-cultural conditions of late modernity induce a “reflexive imperative” amongst young people, which also results in metapragmatic and metalinguistic behaviour, as has been demonstrated by linguistic ethnographers (LE). However, recent LE studies on reflexivity in Western European settings have mainly focused on how groups of socially low-status, geographically mobile and multilingual youth are involved in creative linguistic processes in which the disapproval of their linguistic hybridity is denounced. In this paper, based on a linguistic-ethnographic study, I will uncover the influence of the reflexive imperative on a different group: six high-achieving, white, elite, male, adolescent pupils in Flemish Belgium. Through a micro-analysis of their metacommentaries and speech practices, I describe the subtle metalinguistic and metapragmatic moves of the pupils, which demonstrate their attitude towards standard language use at school. An analysis of these boys’ linguistic reflexivity demonstrates a complex attitude towards Standard Dutch and Standard Language Ideology: at first sight, they seem to incline towards linguistic equality, resulting in a relaxation of the standard norm. However, an analysis of the more indirect metapragmatic practices of these boys reveals how they strategically use the symbolic capital of Standard Dutch, a practice which echoes the Flemish language-in-education policy and might serve to preserve (or prepare) their (future) elite position in society.
-
Academically elite students in Singapore
Author(s): Luke Lupp.: 141–172 (32)More LessThis paper draws on a Linguistic Ethnography ( Blommaert & Rampton 2011 ) of a group of academically elite students in Singapore. The group comprises locals born in Singapore, as well as immigrants from China and Vietnam. My informants all attended a top-ranked secondary school in Singapore. I present data from interviews and a focus group discussion with them about their aspirations and educational pathways. These academically elite students describe a conventional aspiration amongst their peers involving transnational mobility and attending top-ranked universities in the US and UK. My informants discursively construct this aspiration as preferred, with a sense that they are expected to conform to such a trajectory. I argue that their consistent orientation toward the ideal trajectory and production of discourse about it denotes a collective moral stance ( Ochs & Capps 2002 ), and hence a disposition embedded in a social field ( Hanks 2005 ). In response to Archer’s (2012) theorisations that dominant modes of reflexivity have changed, my informants’ relatively stable orientations and ways of acting demonstrate how Bourdieu’s notion of habitus continues to be relevant in late-modernity. In practical terms, this study also shows a clear link between elite schools, and the aspirations and resultant trajectories of individuals. This has direct implications for policy-makers in Singapore where the Ministry of Education has been attempting to curb elitism in the education system.
-
Reflexivity and transnational habitus
Author(s): Peter I. De Costa, Magda Tigchelaar and Yaqiong Cuipp.: 173–198 (26)More LessFollowing Sayer’s (2010) examination of reflexivity and habitus, we focus on the transnational habitus ( Darvin & Norton 2015 ) of Aaron, a Chinese international student at a U.S. university. Specifically, we examine how he wrestled with being identified as an ESL learner despite having attended a U.S. high school. Also exploring the relationship between reflexivity and emotions ( Flam 2010 ), we draw on his written work, interviews, and his WeChat conversations. Our findings revealed that as a result of positioning himself as being better than the other Chinese students on campus (because of his English proficiency) and distancing himself from domestic U.S. students, Aaron did not capitalize on his Chinese-English bilingualism to extend his local social networks, which exacerbated his growing isolation at his home university. In tracing his emotional trajectory and strategies to cope with his predicament, we problematize the grand narrative of the global elite ( Vandrick 2011 ) that overlooks the challenges encountered by affluent international students.
Volumes & issues
-
Volume 37 (2024)
-
Volume 36 (2023)
-
Volume 35 (2022)
-
Volume 34 (2021)
-
Volume 33 (2020)
-
Volume 32 (2019)
-
Volume 31 (2018)
-
Volume 30 (2017)
-
Volume 29 (2016)
-
Volume 28 (2015)
-
Volume 27 (2014)
-
Volume 26 (2013)
-
Volume 25 (2012)
-
Volume 24 (2011)
-
Volume 23 (2010)
-
Volume 22 (2009)
-
Volume 21 (2008)
-
Volume 20 (2007)
-
Volume 19 (2006)
-
Volume 18 (2005)
-
Volume 17 (2004)
-
Volume 16 (2003)
Most Read This Month

-
-
Input, Interaction and Output: An Overview
Author(s): Susan M. Gass and Alison Mackey
-
-
-
Language and Culture
Author(s): Claire Kramsch
-
- More Less