Brigitta Busch

School language profiles: valorizing linguistic resources in heteroglossic situations in South Africa

Although South Africa is committed to a policy of linguistic diversity, the language-in-education policy is still plagued by the racialization of language issues under apartheid and, more recently, by new challenges posed by internal African migration. Drawing on the experience of a school in the Western Cape Province, this paper explores the role of language profiles in a speaker-centered approach to school language policy. Attention is paid to the ways in which the attribution of learners to clear-cut linguistic categories – in this case English and Afrikaans – and their ‘monolingualization’ within the process of literacy learning are at odds with both their everyday experiences of language and their linguistic aspirations. Using biographic and topological multimodal approaches with 13- to 15-year-old students at the school, it makes a contribution to the growing corpus of research that foregrounds the learner perspective and emphasizes emotional dimensions of literacy and language learning.

Changing Media Spaces: The Transformative Power of Heteroglossic Practices

For many years a central role has been attributed to the medial in the rise of standard and national languages (Innis 1997). Recent developments, however, may well be contributing to the de-centring of national and standard languages. The monolingual habitus of media which address a national audience, their normalizing and standardizing role, is not an inherent feature of particular mass media technologies, but is rather due to the way media technologies are socially appropriated. In the period of the emerging nation-states a process of hierarchization of languages was set in motion through censorship and licensing procedures, which fostered state or national languages. At the same time the media began to fulfil a controlling function through the ‘correct’ use of a unitary language on the one hand and through meta-linguistic discourses on the other. National broadcasting was able to create ‘a sense of unity — and of corresponding boundaries around the nation’, ‘turn previously exclusive social events into mass experiences’ and ‘link the national public into the private lives of citizens’ (Morley 2000: 107).

Media, Politics, and Discourse: Interactions

The article first discusses the correlations between media and politics. It outlines a change from a national to a postnational paradigm that becomes visible in the media order, in conceptions of public sphere, and in media theory more generally. In the second part, it focuses on approaches to the analysis of political discourse in the media. Given that the political field and the media field are both in a process of rapid change, a flexible framework that establishes a close connection between media texts and contexts of production and reception is needed. The article therefore foregrounds approaches developed within critical discourse analysis (CDA).

SHIFTING POLITICAL AND CULTURAL BORDERS: LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY IN THE BORDER REGION OF AUSTRIA AND SLOVENIA

State borders and linguistic borders rarely coincide, and often minorities are ascribed a ‘bridging’ function in cross-border co-operation. However, whether or not they can fulfill such ideal expectations depends not only on bilateral relations between states but also on wider geopolitical constellations. Narratives about a common past and myths related to the foundation of national states play an important role in the construction of national identities, and language often serves as a key marker of identity. Although such narratives and myths are extremely persistent, transformations occur over time, and especially in periods of major geopolitical change. This article presents a case study of such transformations in the border region between Austria and Slovenia. It traces and analyses myths and narratives which have been constitutive of national identities in the two states and which have shaped perceptions of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’, and particularly attitudes towards the Slovene minority in Austria. It focuses on moments of transformation linked to geopolitical changes at the end of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, in the World War II period, and after the fall of the Iron Curtain. It provides a diachronic perspective necessary for understanding present shifts arising from the enlargement of the European Union. The article concludes that the Slovene minority will only fulfill a ‘bridging’ function if diversity within the European project is conceived in an open and inclusive way.

Die Macht präbabylonischer Phantasien

This contribution focuses on a specific aspect of individual language experience (Spracherleben) which can be observed in language biographical narratives in different forms: desires and imaginations linked to early childhood referring to a >language before< which can be mobilized as a resource in situations of crisis.In our multimodal language biographical approach we take the perspective of the speaking subject, this means that not a particular language or variety serves as point of departure, but language experience with its bodily and emotional dimension. We use the term >language experience< to designate an approach exploring how individuals in their heteroglossic lifeworlds (Lebenswelt) perceive and evaluate their linguistic practices, which experiences, emotions and beliefs they tie to these experiences — or how they position and represent themselves as multilingual beings. The focus is on the one hand on the interrelatedness of language experience and individual life trajectories, on the other on socio-historic configurations with their constraints, power formations, orders of discourse and language ideologies. Our multimodal approach which combines creative drawing (language portraits) and biographical narratives as empirical data foregrounds the entire linguistic repertoire in its heteroglossic dimension and can thus contribute to overcoming dichotomies as those between language of origin and target language, of first language and language of integration.

Media and Migration: Exploring the Field

The contributions gathered in the following part present a combination of theoretical and empirical approaches to representations of migrants (as individuals or groups) and migration (as a wider social phenomenon) in the media and in text types related to the media. As such, the following contributions explore similarities and differences between the nationally specific and transnational representations at the times of accelerated sociopolitical change. The latter, as we have seen, has very often resulted with ardent anti-immigration debates which have become prevalent across the public spheres in most of the European countries. Fuelled by the public fears of globalization and insecurity, those debates cut across the traditional political divisions (left and right), both mainstream (national and regional) and minority media as well as both classic media (press, broadcast media) and new media genres.

Reflecting Social Heteroglossia and Accommodating Diverse Audiences — a Challenge to the Media

One aspect of the recent transformation processes in Central and Eastern Europe was the disintegration of larger political entities into states based on a nation principle. Nationalistic ideologies could to some extent fill the void left after the formerly powerful socialist and communist ideologies had disintegrated. The role of media in ethnic polarisations and conflicts and their participation in spreading hate speech became an important topic on an international level in the 1990s. The transformation of the media systems in the former socialist and communist countries was monitored by European and international institutions which mainly used the Western European post-Second World War media order, based on the idea of a dual media system with a strong public-service sector acting within a national public sphere as a blueprint. At the same time on a worldwide scale globalisation processes already accelerated a power shift from state institutions to supranational and to local bodies. In the media and communication sector this reconfiguration became obvious particularly rapidly.

Linguistic rights and language policy: A south–north dialogue

Abstract A central thought, even a guiding principle, in Neville Alexanders work is the affirmation of the right to communicate and learn through ones own home language. In his writings, he embraced language policies that firmly reject all forms of racialisation and ethnicisation. For him, the imposition of one (national) language, along with the fragmentation of society into bounded and ethnicised linguistic groups, can be considered an expression of hierarchical power relations. This article explores Alexanders proposals on inclusive language policies that have resonated in Europe, not only in the scientific community but also with policymakers. Today, in many countries the emphasis on a single national language risks the exclusion of large segments of the population. The focus is here on how linguistic categorisations arising out of language ideologies can determine language policies and, more particularly, language-in-education policies. In highlighting Alexanders conviction that the role of socio...

Language Policies: Policies on Language in Europe

This article considers political measures targeted at individual languages (e.g., the prohibition to use certain terms) as well as policies concerning the relations between different languages. The first part examines different approaches to language policies, language politics, and language planning. Although nation states are still the central players in the field, present trends show that under the influence of the globalized economy, sub-state and supra-state bodies are gaining influence. The second part of the article focuses on language policies in Europe and contextualizes policies on national/official languages and on minority languages with orientations present in the European Union.

Despite and Beyond Cultural Policy

Many cultural activities both at the level of production and consumption take place outside of the realm of public subsidies or private sponsoring. This chapter will address this particular field of cultural practices and their inherent strategies and look into their interrelationship with and relevance for cultural policy. The authors of these practices and strategies are cultural practitioners, producers and consumers, as well as cultural intermediaries who have a vested interest in shaping the cultural landscape of the city and try to do so independently of both the state and the private economy. Many of these emerging initiatives take their origin in the non-commercial and non-governmental realm, referred to as the ‘third sector’. Others have emancipated themselves, however, from the third sector and constitute a novel realm of action in the cultural sphere that is located in yet another non-commercial and nongovernmental realm; we will refer to them as ‘fourth-sector practice’ and discuss their embedding in city cultures based on empirical case studies in Belgrade and Vienna. These two cities offer a number of similarities: above all, their geopolitical position, the historically dominant role of the state in comparison with commercial agencies and the connectivity of the two locations through migration.