J. Normann Jørgensen
University of Copenhagen
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Featured researches published by J. Normann Jørgensen.
International Journal of Multilingualism | 2008
J. Normann Jørgensen
Abstract The uniquely human capacity of using arbitrary signs to transfer concept and experience over great distances in time and place is what we call language. We use language with a purpose, and we use whatever features are at our disposal to achieve our ends, regardless of the fact that some speakers think that certain features should be held together and not used in combination with certain other features. The phenomenon of language is not necessarily a construction, and while all individual languages are constructed, it is not possible to clearly delimit them from each other. The crucial phenomenon is language, not any specific language. While some Some speakers think languages should be kept apart, others combine three, four, or more different sets of features (i.e. so-called ‘languages’) in their linguistic production. This is characteristic of polylingualism (where multilingualism is characterised by the knowledge of several separate languages). These speakers do not choose their features randomly. Particularly in late-modern urban youth groups the simultaneous use of features from many different sources is frequent.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics | 2003
Juni Søderberg Arnfast; J. Normann Jørgensen
The term ‘code-switching’ is used in two related yet different fields of linguistics: second language acquisition and bilingual studies. In the former, code-switching is analyzed in terms of learning strategies, whereas the latter applies a competence view. This article intends to detect the borderline between the two concepts by investigating the use of code-switching in first-year learners of Danish. Our study points out that code-switching appears as a skill used in early attempts of playing with the languages involved in the conversation (Danish/English and Danish/Polish/German/English). Thus we have to acknowledge code-switching as an increasingly sophisticated language skill even at an early stage of SLA.
International Journal of Multilingualism | 2008
J. Normann Jørgensen
Abstract Graffiti constitutes a medium through which the youth express opposition to authorities, as well as desires, dreams, and hopes. Graffiti shows many of the linguistic characteristics of youth language, including playfulness and, first and foremost, polylingual languaging. Graffiti in almost every city, at least in Europe, uses English and one or more local language, and almost everywhere additional languages are involved. The relationship to North American urban graffiti culture is obvious, but at the same time there is clear evidence of the graffiti writers’ affinity to their locality. Examples are included from Estonia, Greenland, Denmark, Catalonia, Germany, Turkey and elsewhere.
Language Culture and Curriculum | 2012
J. Normann Jørgensen
Formulations of linguistic rights in European official documents reveal important ideological characteristics of the thinking about language in European societies. These ideologies have important consequences for the language policies and education policies pursued by authorities and for the norms of language use promoted by education systems and gatekeepers. At the bottom of this is the concept of ‘languages’ as separable entities, a concept which cannot be upheld with respect to the real-life behaviours of speakers. As such, languages are sociocultural constructions, and norms of language use which aim at ‘purity’ are in contrast to everyday linguistic behaviours among speakers. Based on examples from ongoing studies of youth language, I suggest that other norms are more relevant, in particular the so-called poly-languaging, a term which covers the use of various features regardless of their ideologically determined association with ‘languages’. This notion is relevant, particularly in superdiverse societies, not only in accounting for behaviours, but also with respect to education and with respect to language rights.
International Journal of Bilingualism | 2003
J. Normann Jørgensen
The Køge Project is a longitudinal study of the linguistic development of Turkish-Danish grade school children from beginning to end of their school careers. A subgroup of these children has been studied in great detail, and these students have delivered a wide range of data over the years. In the material are included pedagogical(e.g., teacher diaries and teacher questionnaires), sociolinguistic(e.g., parent interviews), and linguistic data (e.g., conversations and tests). Køge was at the time of the data collection some what more open to minorities than Denmark in general, and this is reflected in the sociolinguistic reality of the Turkish-Danes. The project has been particularly rich in bilingualism studies and second language acquisition studies, but also educational studies have been carried out. The main bulk of data consists of sound-tape-recorded conversations and corresponding transcripts. There are group conversations among students and face-to-face conversations with adults. These conversations provide a rich variety of data for codeswitching analyses.
Language and Linguistics Compass | 2010
Ad Backus; J. Normann Jørgensen; Carol Pfaff
Since the 1960s, Western Europe has been host to a large Turkish immigrant community. While many such communities shift to the majority language in the space of a few generations, language maintenance is remarkably successful in this community. This is partially because of continuing immigration, but it is also typical of a transnational identity that characterizes many bilingual communities in modern Europe. The linguistic effects of this on-going contact situation include extensive codeswitching and slowly emerging changes in the lexicon and syntax. These are contained in a range of speech styles that show that in such modern migrant communities, the way in which different subgroups utilize their multilingual repertoire varies considerably, depending on background factors such as gender, locality, age, and socio-political identity.
International Journal of Bilingualism | 2003
J. Normann Jørgensen
Children socialize each other linguistically, and this is very likely their only field for practicing certain linguistic skills which are not accepted by adults (although adults may use these skills themselves), such as swearing and codeswitching. The practicing of these skills goes hand in hand with the negotiation of social relations-perhaps including the celebrated difference in dominance among the gender. This paper studies the development of code-choice patterns and codeswitching skills among boys and girls during their grade school years as a phenomenon related to their social relations. The data are group conversations from grade 1 through grade 9. The conversations in the first grades show clearly Turkish-dominant children introducing Danish words, at first school words, later more generally related words and chunks, into their Turkish. Later again Danish utterances which are not chunks, appear, among the girls earlier than among the boys. In the middle grades, quantitative differences in language choice show that boys gradually introduce Danish into their conversations, but maintain a slight majority of Turkish-based contributions throughout the years. Girls use very little Danish until grade 7, and then much more Danish than Turkish. However, by grade 5 the girls perform differently in girls-only groups from what they do in gendermixed groups. The paper discusses this phenomenon as social group marking. Finally, in the older grades, we see the development of language choice as a means of social exclusion among the girls-something which the boys have not developed as a skill yet, or perhaps never will. When we combine these observations we do not see any evidence of boys acquiring dominant language behavior compared to girls. The girls and the boys seem to develop along the same lines, the boys later than the girls.
Acta Linguistica Hafniensia | 2018
Frans Gregersen; J. Normann Jørgensen; Janus Spindler Møller; Nicolai Pharao; Gert Foget Hansen
Abstract Five interlocking case studies of variation in and between situations are reported. In all cases a sociolinguistic interview is contrasted with another speech event. The material is from the LANCHART panel study of variation in the Danish speech community in real time. Contrasting speech events are characterized using a genre classification and focusing in each case on the genre dispersion as a measure of how varied the speech event was. Two different phonetic variables are studied, the short (æ) and the (ɛŋ) variable. Four of the five case studies involve adults who also participated in interviews approximately 20 years later. For those informants, a comparison is made with the new recordings in order to evaluate claims of change in real time. Both auditory results and acoustic measurements are documented. The fifth case study concerns youngsters recorded in the new round of recordings (the S2), hence there is no newer recording to compare with. In all cases the older (æ) variable is sensitive to a change in situation whereas the newer (ɛŋ) variable only varies with situation for the young informants. In the final section, we discuss possible consequences for comparability and for the methodology of empirical (socio)linguistics.
Code-switching in conversation: language, interaction and identity, 1998, ISBN 0-415-15831-1, págs. 237-258 | 1998
J. Normann Jørgensen
Acta Linguistica Hafniensia | 2009
Janus Spindler Møller; J. Normann Jørgensen