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Have wireless mobile communication technologies changed the way people talk to one another?What does it mean to be able to speak or write to anyone, anywhere, 24/7/365, and get an immediate response? And what does the current profusion of these technologies mean for the study of language in social life? Do we need to develop new approaches, methodologies and theories?Taking a global perspective, this volume provides readers with a nuanced, ethnographically-informed understanding of mobile communication and sociolinguistics. The text explores a wide range of digital applications, including SMS, email, tweeting, Facebook, YouTube, chatting, blogging, Wikipedia, Second Life and gaming Raising important questions about the nature of language and the creativity of speakers, Ana Deumert examines the role of multimodality and intertextuality in creating meaning, as well as the realities and consequences of digital linguistic inequality.Key features Illustrates core concepts in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology Applies sociolinguistic theories of language from Humboldt and Sapir to post-structuralism to new mediaProvides a global and multilingual perspective on digital communication practices and discusses digital inequality and its consequences for sociolinguistic research Includes a focus on linguistic creativity and poetic language Drawing on examples from across the world, as well as original multilingual data and analyses from South Africa, this innovative book provides undergraduate and postgraduate readers with accessible explanations of sociolinguistic theories as they apply to the growing field of mobile communication

AbstractIn this article, I reflect on the future of macro-sociolinguistic research from a global-south perspective. I discuss the role that activism has played in scholarly work, and how such activism was hampered by persistent ideologies of 'thingification'; that is, ideologies that created languages and nations as 'objects' (to be managed and controlled by states and local/national/global elites). I ground the history of such discourses in colonialism-capitalism. I further explore the global and local regimes of language that were created through the dehumanizing violence of colonialism-capitalism, as well as the alternative futures that have been imagined by all those who resisted – and continue to resist – this violence. I conclude with some thoughts on temporalities, on the different relationships with, and to, time and the urgency of the present.

AbstractThis article explores language ideologies and sociolinguistic scales from the perspective of decolonization. Coloniality is a multi-scalar world system that affects micro-level interactions in multiple locales, both in the metropole and in the former colonies. Not only does coloniality exist on a world scale, resistance to it is scaled up too and engulfs the world. The linguistic tradition that I seek to trace in this article is imaginative, creative and oriented towards alternative decolonial futures. It speaks to the experience of the coloniality of language, of language as alienating and oppressive, and to the corresponding desire, and need, for a different language. It articulates a decolonial philosophy and brings art and politics together to change the world. I show that the global south was, and is, an intellectual-artistic-political vanguard, articulating and shaping discourses about language and revolutionary action. In philosophical, artistic and political practice – stretching from Martinique to Paris, from Cape Town to Kingston – language and revolutionary practice merge into one: language no longer just reflects reality, it can change it.

"This book seeks to imagine a decolonized sociolinguistics. All the chapters are firmly grounded in southern approaches to knowledge production, and invite us to begin to decolonize ourselves and to rethink normative assumptions about everything from academic writing to research methods and language teaching"--

This volume offers a detailed exploration of coloniality in the discipline of linguistics, with case studies drawn from across the world. The chapters provide a nuanced account of the coloniality of linguistics at the level of knowledge and disciplinary practice, and expand their discussion to imagine a decolonial linguistics.

The first comprehensive dictionary of the field of sociolinguistics, this is a valuable reference book for students and teachers of sociolinguistics, others concerned with the socially-oriented study of language and those with a professional interest in language.

"This book offers a fresh perspective on the social life of multilingualism through the lens of linguistic citizenship. Each chapter illuminates how multilingualism (in both theory and practice) should be, or could be, thought of as inclusive when we recognize what multilingual speakers do with language for voice and agency"--

This book addresses a crucial, yet often overlooked dimension of minority language standardisation, namely, how social actors engage with, support, alter, resist and even reject standardisation processes. We look at standardisation processes as a political domain where social actors use standards as semiotic resources for articulating discourses on society. The chapters in this volume are therefore concerned first and foremost with social actors, their ideologies and practices, rather than with language per se. By considering the perspectives and actions of people who participate in or are affected by minority language politics, this volume aims to provide a comparative and nuanced analysis of the complexity and tensions inherent in minority language standardisation processes. Echoing Fasold (1984), this involves a shift in focus from a sociolinguistics of language to a sociolinguistics of people. How do social actors experience and negotiate these predicaments? Why are standards for minoritised languages sometimes sought after and praised and at other times vehemently contested and rejected? What are the consequences of standardisation projects for different people? It is these questions that this volume considers through case studies of minority language standardisation from around the world. The authors, who come from very different backgrounds with respect to involvement in standardisation processes, draw on ethnographic, historical and discourse data in order to examine standardisation projects in diverse settings. In bringing these case studies and analyses together, we aim to provide both empirical and conceptual insights into minority language standardisation. This volume highlights the role of social actors in the creation and negotiation of standards, and the diversity of marginalised or peripheral speech communities in which standardisation efforts occur. Focusing on ground-level processes and participants allows us to illuminate ways in which projects to standardise minoritised languages echo, reinvent, and at times subvert the characteristics of language standardisation established since the 18th century. Beginning with a reflection on language standardisation from a historical perspective (section 2), we then define our focus on minority/ minoritised language communities and discuss the nature of standardisation projects in these settings in particular (section 3). We conclude with an overview of the volume (section 4).

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Part 1 The (Im)mobilization of Language Resources, Repertoires and Practices -- 1 Multilingual Young African Migrants: Between Mobility and Immobility -- 2 Sociolinguistic (Im)mobilities in Spaces of Migration -- 3 Categorization and the Use of English as an (Im)mobile Resource in Service Encounters with Migrants in Flanders -- Part 2 (Im)mobilities, Technologies and Control -- 4 Controlling Migrants' (Im)mobilities through Telecommunications: Technopolitical Governance in Telephony Advertising Discourse -- 5 On Being Enregistered into the Matrix of Online Knowledge: An Ethnographic Exploration of an Internetbased Dismissal in an Asylum-seeking Procedure -- 6 From Language to Politics: Communication, Power and Migration in the Central Mediterranean -- Part 3 Spaces of (Im)mobility and Resistance -- 7 Everyday Communicative Practices and Repertoires in Contexts of Involuntary and Enforced Immobility -- 8 Beachspaces: Racism and Settler-Colonial (Im)mobilities at the Shoreline -- 9 Language and Humanitarian Governmentality in a Refugee Camp on Lesvos Island -- Part 4 (Im)mobilities, Subjectivity, Identity and Agency -- 10 Estrangement and Home in Queer Asylum Stories -- 11 The Power of (Im)mobility: Irish Travellers' Agentive Identities in Transit and Permanency -- 12 Postscript: Immobilities Normalized -- Index