Lian Malai Madsen

High and "low" in urban Danish speech styles

This article approaches on-goingsociolinguistic processes in Copenhagen by focusing on the overt metalinguistic activities of a group of adolescents. The article sheds light on how social power differences are refracted in the metalinsguistic activities of these adolescents in spite of the relatively homogenous (or hegemonic) sociolinguistic conditions of Danish society. In the article, I investigate how social status relations understood as cultural interpretations of societal “high” and “low” are relevant to on-going social value ascriptions to the contrasting ways of speaking labelled “integrated” and “street language.” The metalinguistic data I present points to a sociolinguistic transformation. Linguistic signs that used to be seen as related to migration, on an insider/outsider dimension of comparison, are now related to status on a high/low dimension as well. (Sociolinguistic transformation, ethnicity, social class, enregisterment, metalinguistic reflections)*

Heteroglossia, Voicing and Social Categorisation

Observations of heteroglossic practices have led to questioning of the usefulness of the concepts of “language” or “variety” in research as well as pedagogy, and it has been argued that such concepts are representations of particular language ideologies rather than of linguistic practice. This chapter examines details of what voices are performed with what local purposes in interactions among adolescents in Copenhagen. How are particular stylised voices achieved? How salient are they? And how do they relate to larger scale processes of social categorisation in society?

Un Deux Trois--Speak English! Young Taekwondo-Fighters' Identity Construction through Linguistic Competition.

Abstract From an ethnographic and interaction analytical approach this paper examines how polylingual languaging is used by a group of young male Taekwondo fighters to construct an integrated streetwise and ‘schoolwise’ persona as well as negotiate regional identities. The data discussed were collected in a Taekwondo club in a multicultural area of Copenhagen stereotypically associated with socially underprivileged youth. The analysis focuses on parts of a particular conversation where the boys are engaged in a linguistic competition. They claim linguistic competence by explicitly referring to school success and demonstrate linguistic competence through a creative mixture of playful linguistic activities (among them a spelling competition) in which several different languages and styles are involved. The analysis is discussed in relation to broader discourses about leisure sport as socially integrating, and it is concluded that in the boys’ interaction the stereotypes invoked by these discourses are indeed creatively brought about and renegotiated.

Fighters, girls and other identities : sociolinguistics in a Martial Arts Club

List of Figures List of Tables Transcription Symbols Used Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Preliminaries Chapter 2: Sports, Integration and Participation Chapter 3: Girls, Boys and Interaction Chapter 4: Youth, Language and Ethnic Categorisation Chapter 5: School Orientaton in an Out-Of-School Setting Chapter 6: Perspectives References

Everyday languaging : collaborative research on the language use of children and youth

This book contributes to current theory building within applied linguistics and sociolinguistics by looking at the role of language in the lives, realities, and understandings of real children and youth in an urban setting. Collectively the studies amount to a comprehensive account of how urban children and youth construct, reactivate, negotiate, contest, and navigate between different linguistic and sociocultural norms and resources.

Hip Hop, Education and Polycentricity

Hip hop has been one of the most influential global forms of popular culture among youth during the past two decades (Bucholtz 2011), and it has received increasing attention in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and educational studies. The studies of critical hip hop (language) pedagogies, in particular, has focused on hip hop as a means of drawing out-of-school experiences of language closer to classroom pedagogy and curriculum (Hill 2009; Alim, Ibrahim and Pennycook 2009; Alim 2011). These frameworks often emphasise creative, limitless and counter-hegemonic linguistic practices as a significant part of the pedagogical and political potentials of hip hop culture. In this chapter we focus on the way hip hop practices are appropriated by a group of adolescents in positioning themselves as educationally ambitious. We investigate what local meanings these practices achieve and their relations to wider semiotic models and norms to discuss the interplay between education, activities, and popular cultural resources. Against the background of previous hip hop research, the case study we report from involved some surprising discoveries. The boys we studied formed a rap-group and engaged in various local hip hop events and initiatives led by different mentors. They were certainly creative in enacting streetwise and school-positive personae, but their hip hop literacy and linguistic practices fell short of challenging hegemonic educational norms.

Linguistic Power Wielding and Manipulation Strategies in Group Conversations Between Turkish-Danish Children

The study concerns the linguistic power wielding in group conversations among bilingual children and adolescents. In bilingual conversations one of the pragmatic linguistic means of negotiating power relations and identities is of course the choice of language. This is also the main subject of the study of Jorgensen (1993) who presents a view on the linguistic power wielding in group conversation in which he combines code-switching theories with Kjoller’s (1991) concepts of linguistic power wielding. Kjoller claims that schools ought to teach children how to exercise linguistic power. Jorgensen shows that in spite of this the bilingual children do acquire manipulation skills. He also emphasizes the fact that co-operation is not the only principle that rules the conversations. Jorgensen finds that the manipulation strategies, which Kjoller has established, are useful in the study of bilingual conversations from the Koge Project. Inspired by this, this article describes some of the principles behind the manipulation strategies used by the children in my data. The article focuses on the conflicts in the conversations. The study consists of 1) a qualitative analysis of the manipulation strategies and the power-processes in the negotiations, and 2) a quantitative study of the outcome of the conflicts in the conversations. The study, which is described in Madsen (2001), concerns both linguistic and social parameters. The relationships between linguistic variation and social structures are considered. As a starting point linguistic variation is seen as a means of negotiating power relationships and identities. The linguistic choices bring about social relations in the conversation. The results, however, suggest that linguistic behavior in the conversation to some extent depends on brought-along social factors (Rampton 1995).

“You shouldn’t sound like an uneducated person”: Linguistic diversity and standard ideology in Denmark

language of rational thinking (Briggs and Bauman 2003; Jaspers 2006). It has, of course, by now been thoroughly documented that young speakers in peer practice challenge such hegemonic monolingual and standard language ideologies (Jørgensen et al. 2011; Jørgensen 2010; Møller 2009), and we shall now turn to the everyday speech practices of urban youth. 3 Contemporary urban vernacular Rampton (2011) employs a reconceptualised notion of ‘vernacular’ based on Agha’s (2007) theory of registers and suggests the term ‘contemporary urban vernacular’ to refer to the hybrid speech styles developing in Western European cities. These new forms of speech practices have received increasing attention the past few decades both in public discourse and research. They have been discussed from a range of perspectives including structural linguistic accounts (Kotsinas 1988; Quist 2000; Nortier 2001; Pharao & Hansen 2006; Freywald et al. 2012), discussions of media 204 | Lian Malai Madsen representations (Stroud 2004; Androutsopoulos 2010), attitudinal studies (Aarsæther 2010; Fraurud & Bijvoet 2004; Møller 2009), ethnographic accounts of speakers’ ideologies (Jaspers 2008; Jonsson 2007; Madsen 2013) and interactional studies of situated use (Keim 2007; Madsen 2014, 2015a). Several of these works include the speech styles of youth in culturally heterogeneous areas of Copenhagen. Structurally contemporary urban vernacular in Copenhagen is characterised by a number of lexical and grammatical features, including incorporation of words and expressions associated with minority languages (in particular Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic);1 a tendency to a VSO word order different from standard Danish use of SVO order in the main clause following a subordinate clause;2 a tendency to a nonstandard use of common gender where standard Danish would have the neuter gender3 and a tendency to use prepositions differently from the use in standard Danish and to sometimes leave out prepositions (Madsen 2015a; Quist 2000). Contemporary urban vernacular also involves recognisable pronunciation features. Quist (2000) observes a tendency to omit the Danish ‘stød’ (phonetically a form of laryngealisation or creaky voice), and a prosodic pattern that differ from the majority pronunciation of Copenhagen youth. Inspired by these observations, Pharao & Hansen (2005) compare prosodic features of the speech of young Copenhageners speaking Danish as a mother tongue and young Copenhageners speaking a mother tongue different from Danish. They find systematic differences in the pronunciation of vowels between the two groups involving the contrast between short and long vowels and a distinct tonal pattern (Pharao & Hansen 2005), and this pattern has become a key index of the urban vernacular (Madsen 2015a). Other features associated with this way of speaking are particular pronunciations of prevocalic ‘t’ with affrication and palatalisation and initial uvular ‘r’ pronounced voiceless (Maegaard 2007; Madsen 2015a). Finally we have recently noticed a number of other nonstandard features co-occurring with the forms described above, such as backing of vowels a distinctive trilled r-sound: [ɾ] where we would expect the uvular fricative [ʁ] in standard Danish and a particular post alveolar s-sound: [ʃ] instead of the standard alveolar [s] (Stæhr and Madsen forthcoming). So, from this linguistic point of view the speech of youth in ethnically diverse settings in contemporary Copenhagen involves the use of lexical items rooted in various minority languages mixed with Danish (and other) features. Furthermore, it is characterised by less use of ‘stød’, a particular intonation pattern, characteristic pronunciations of t-, sand r-sounds, backing of vowels, less inversion (VSO), more use of common gender and a different use of prepositions. In these ways the speech || 1 such as eow from Kurdish (‘hey’) or para from Turkish (‘money’) 2 E.g. i går jeg (S) bestilte (V) en Salma (O) (‘yesterday I ordered a Salma’), that in standard Danish would be: i går bestilte (V) jeg (S) en Salma (O). 3 (e.g. ja jeg har stjålet en tyggegummi (‘I have stolen a chewing gum’) that in standard Danish would be ja jeg har stjålet et tyggegummi). “You shouldn’t sound like an uneducated person” | 205 style differs from near to standard Danish speech. The speech style can then be structurally described as hybrid as it blends linguistic resources that have traditionally been associated with different linguistic systems, and the various linguistic resources are sometimes blended to the extent that it become impossible, as a linguist, to ascribe particular resources to particular linguistic systems or codes (Jørgensen et al. 2011, Møller 2009). At the same time it is recognised and enregistered as a style. Enregisterment (Agha 2003, 2007) concerns how we display and enact social functions of language by talking about and employing linguistic resources in particular ways. Through our labels for language use, or through the way we use particular linguistic forms we relate certain ways of speaking to social relations, social practices, and identity categories. Ways of speaking so come to point to, or index, ways of being and acting, because they are repeatedly used in certain types of situations by certain types of speakers or talked about or parodied in certain ways (Silverstein, 2003; Agha, 2003). In tune with the theory of enregisterment an account of the sociolinguistic positioning of the urban hybrid speech practices should take into consideration meta-pragmatic activities on different social scales. The situated use of different linguistic forms (re)creates the stereotypic indexical values of the used forms, and the ascriptions of values to linguistic styles through this use can be more or less explicit. Mass media and popular cultural products, in their turn, play a significant part in the general take up of value ascriptions to linguistic styles. Therefore in addition to explicit typification of these speech practices in overt reflexive language discussion, I will attend to local speaker practices as well as widely circulating media stereotypes related to the language use. 4 Enregisterment of linguistic hybridity From 2009 to 2011, we conducted a collaborative study of linguistic practices in the everyday life of 48 grade-school students in a Copenhagen public school (Madsen et. al 2016). Most of the participants had a linguistic minority background and lived in a highly diverse area of the Danish capital. Over 3 years, we conducted teamethnographic fieldwork, and collected data in a number of different settings both in school, during leisure activities and in the local neighborhood. The data included field diaries, largely unstructured qualitative interviews with participants in groups and individually (as well as with teachers, parents, and club workers). We also recorded different kinds of conversations, both those initiated by researchers and participants’ self-recordings. In addition, we collected written data in the form of protocols, student essays and Facebook interactions. 206 | Lian Malai Madsen 4.1 Metalinguistic accounts In the following I complement analyses of excerpts from the conversational data with quotes from two sets of written essays: ‘Language in my everyday life’ (essay 1) and ‘Rules of language use’ (essay 2) (see also Møller & Jørgensen 2013). These essays were the results of two language-themed seminars held during the first and second year of fieldwork and led by two researchers from our team4. The researchers opened the first seminar by talking about how we relate language use to certain types and values in a general sense. Their introduction to the topic included two examples; the language use of a Danish rapper and a transcript of Facebook comments involving hybrid linguistic practices. In the discussions of these examples the participants came up with labels for this kind of language use and these were noted on the blackboard. The researchers also asked what ‘the opposite’ of this kind of language use could be, and the participants’ terms for this way of speaking were listed on the blackboard too. The second seminar was opened by the researchers showing excerpts from the participants’ essays from the first seminar. The instructions for the essays were in the first case, to write about their everyday language use, and in the second case, to elaborate on some of the themes from the first essay by explaining more about rules of language use5. The first round of interviews was carried out about 5 months into our first year of fieldwork, thus before the first seminar. The adolescents were invited to come to the university in groups that they formed themselves, and we talked to them in one of our offices. These interviews were ethnographic and semi-structured. In all of the interviews, we went through certain topics such as groups of friends in the class, leisure activities and language, but we attempted to let participants lead the conversation in directions of their own choosing. The researcher usually initiated the topic of language by asking ‘in what way’ or ‘how’ the participants talked in various contexts (for instance with teachers, with friends, in the youth club, etc.). During some of the first interviews, the participants introduced labels for different ways of speaking, and described them to us. In this first excerpt Israh explains to the interviewer (Astrid), how they speak outside school. We can see that Israh uses both the terms “slang” and “’perker’ language” to describe the language use outside school. ‘Perker’ is originally a derogative term, typically used about Moslem immigrants of Middle Eastern or North African descent, but currently it is often used with positive, cool and streetwise connotations as an in-group term referring to members of ethnically diverse communities. We can || 4 The seminars were integrated into the curricular activities of the school cla