Critical Inquiries in the Sociolinguistics of Globalization (Encounters): 14 - Softcover

Tyler Andrew Barrett; Sender Dovchin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1788922832 ISBN 13: 9781788922838

Publisher: Multilingual Matters, 2019

Synopsis

The studies in this collection seek to examine the notions of 'linguistic diversity' and 'hybridity' through the lenses of new critical theories and theoretical frameworks embedded within the broader discussion of the sociolinguistics of globalization. The chapters include critical inquiries into online/offline languages in society, language users, language learners and language teachers who may operate 'between' languages and are faced with decisions to navigate, negotiate and invent or re-invent languages, local and global and virtual spaces. The research took place in contexts that include linguistic landscapes, schools, classrooms, neighborhoods and virtual spaces of Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Japan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, South Korea and USA.

About this title

About the Author

Tyler Andrew Barrett is an academic who teaches in the Division of Continuing Education at the University of California, Irvine, USA. His research interests include the sociolinguistics of globalization, language ideology, language policy and translingualism. Sender Dovchin is Senior Research Fellow in the School of Education, Curtin University, Australia. Her research interests include translingualism, the sociolinguistics of globalization, critical applied linguistics and bi/multilingualism.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Critical Inquiries in the Sociolinguistics of Globalization

By Tyler Andrew Barrett

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2019 Tyler Andrew Barrett, Sender Dovchin and the authors of individual chapters
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78892-283-8

Contents

Acknowledgements, vii, 
Contributors, ix, 
Preface, xiii, 
1 Linguistic and Multimodal Resources within the Local-Global Interface of the Virtual Space: Critically Aware Youths in Bangladesh Shaila Sultana, 1, 
2 Linguascaping the City: A Phenomenological Inquiry into Linguistic Place-making of Toronto's Chinatown and Kensington Market Neighborhoods Dejan Ivkovic, Violetta Cupial, Jamie Arfin and Tiziana Ceccato, 20, 
3 'That's my Husband's sees the Smoke on this Card Bill he Doesn't like me Smoking': Service Interactions in Persian Shops in Sydney Dariush Izadi, 47, 
4 Language, Scale and Ideologies of the National in Kazakhstan Kara Fleming, 66, 
5 The Politics of Injustice in Translingualism: Linguistic Discrimination Sender Dovchin, 84, 
6 Translingualism as Resistance Against What and for Whom? Jerry Won Lee, 102, 
7 Transgrammaring Bilinguals and 'Ordinary' English in Japanese Ethnic Churchscapes Tyler Barrett, 119, 
8 The Coding Catastrophe: Translingualism and Noh in the Japanese Computer Science EFL Classroom Kim Rockell, 147, 
Index, 168, 

CHAPTER 1

Linguistic and Multimodal Resources within the Local–Global Interface of the Virtual Space: Critically Aware Youths in Bangladesh

Shaila Sultana

Virtual Space and its Significance

Virtual space or the computer-mediated multimodal environment, as a research context, has drawn the interest of applied linguists for a long time. There have been a significant number of research studies, addressing the meaning-making processes in virtual space. Various signs and symbols, such as emoticons, punctuation marks or abbreviations, specific ways of communication used by young adults in specific countries, Facebook statuses and their forms and functions, micro-blogging and individual stances, gamers and their strategies of making meaning in different gaming sites or typographic play have been explored in detail (Androutsopoulos, 2006, 2014; Leppänen & Piirainen-Marsh, 2009; Thurlow & Mroczek, 2011). These research studies allow us to understand the idiosyncrasies of virtual space, which are not solely dependent on linguistic resources, but also depend on other semiotic resources.

Drawing on insights from these research studies, this chapter explores the ways Bangladeshi youths engage with multimodal semiotic resources in virtual space. Virtual space has been chosen as the research context for three specific reasons. First, it has immense meaning potentiality in terms of linguistic and multimodal resources. Multimodal resources in addition to languages, such as images, music videos, photographs, links to online news and tag lines of characters from popular culture play a vital role in meaning-making processes. Interlocutors, even when they have limited linguistic resources, may use other sociocultural semiotic resources in order to express their opinions, values and meanings (Dovchin et al., 2016). They can use dialogues from films or song titles from their favorite albums in order to engage in conversations and perform a 'cool' youth identity (Sultana, 2014). They can also express their affiliation, support and comradery by pressing the like button or sharing posts (Blommaert & Varis, 2017). All of these linguistic and multimodal resources, recontextualized in the virtual space, emerge with new meanings, based on the purposes and communicative functions they serve for the interlocutors.

Second, virtual space is specifically important to understand the agentive role of the interlocutors. Thurlow and Mroczek (2011) identified that the new media, even though it is afforded by technologies, is given social meanings by the users. On a similar note, Varis and Wang (2011: 71) define virtual space as 'a superdiverse space par excellence' that has 'seemingly endless possibilities for self-expression, individual life projects and community formation'. People have freedom and independence in arranging the physical and social environment of the space with specific resources and in selecting interlocutors with whom they want to engage in conversations. Virtual space is thus individually defined and people may express varied individual senses of self and reconfigure relationships with others.

Third, virtual space seems to provide a unique platform for socially, culturally and politically marginalized segments of the society for engaging in alternative discourses and negotiating different facets of identification. Virtual space creates a personal and private space where individuals may express themselves, while they fail to do so in a public space. Virtual space is significant for coming to terms with personal, social, cultural and ideological issues, especially for those who are marginalized in society for any specific reasons, be it socioeconomic condition, gender identity or political affiliation (Karim, 2014; Kee, 2011). Hence, it is important that we understand the process of meaning-making in the virtual space along with the function of linguistic and multimodal resources. The chapter intends to address the research questions given below:

• What kind of linguistic and multimodal resources do young adults in Bangladesh use in virtual space?

• In what ways do they use these resources?

• For what purposes do they use them?

Unraveling the relationship among youth language practices and various multimodal resources, the chapter thus explores the process of meaning-making in virtual space. It contributes to the new trend of sociolinguistics research rather than the linguistic features of these resources, which gives more emphasis on the intentions and purposes of language use and contextual realities that determine the actual meanings of these resources in the newer contexts. The chapter also captures the trajectories of these resources through time, locations, cultures and modalities. This chapter is significant for Bangladesh since virtual space has remained almost an unexplored research site. It intends to bring sociolinguistics insights into the space which has been explored only from a cultural perspective, missing the chance to develop nascent understanding of how language and other semiotic resources work as mediating tools in the meaning-making process.

Virtual Space: Transglossia, Re-entextualization and Resemiotization

In recent times, the linguistic and multimodal resources used in virtual space and the use of different codes, modes and genres in the meaning-making processes have been explored in applied linguistics research. Language is viewed as transglossic, which is an extension of Bakhtin's heteroglossia (see also Sultana, 2015; Sultana et al., 2015; Dovchin et al., 2017). Transglossia underscores the importance of 'voices' and the way voices engender new meanings through linguistic and multimodal resources. These studies show that voices, in mimicking dialogues, allow individuals to transgress linguistic and cultural boundaries. Hence, language no longer remains attached to any specific location and culture.

Voices adopted through the use of various modes of semiotic resources such as quotations, images, links to music videos and photographs in virtual space allow individuals to flout the boundaries of modes. Language no longer remains restricted to one specific mode or multiple modes. Voices with borrowed intonation, stress or paralinguistic features enrich language with new ideological, historical, local, discursive and interpretive elements. Meanings can no longer be deciphered without traversing the restricted meaning of the texts. Similarly, when individuals translate words from one language to another and manipulate the opacity of meaning in different languages, their voices can no longer be interpreted with reference to discreet languages. Interpretation requires thinking across the blurred boundaries between languages, a process that is compelling in translation.

Since linguistic and cultural borrowing and blending are integral to meaning-making processes, it is possible to give a better interpretation of a language by showing that the voices emerge from the mixture of codes and modes and genres. These voices decentralize the language in the complexity of transcultural (drawing on multiple cultural resources), Linguistic and Multimodal Resources within the Local–Global Interface 3 translocal (drawing on linguistic and cultural resources from multiple locations), transmodal (operating across different modalities), transtextual (deploying a range of meaning-making practices across languages) and translational relations of communication (making meaning across and against codifications, manipulating the differences in meaning caused by the opacity of translation; Pennycook, 2007). Here a quotation in Bangla or English without features of any other languages can be transglossic because of its purposive use and shift in meaning.

In order to understand the formal and functional process of how meaning changes with the alteration of location and time, it is important to understand the process of 'decontextualization', 'entextualization' (Bauman & Briggs, 1990) and 'resemiotization' (Iedema, 2003). Transculturation, translocalization, transmodality and transtextualization of these resources occur because they are 'entextualizable' and 'resemiotizable' in virtual space. 'Entextualization' means 'the process of making a stretch of linguistic production into a unit – a text – that can be lifted out of its interactional setting. A text ... is discourse rendered decontextualizable. Entextualization may well incorporate aspects of context, such that the resultant text carries elements of its history of use within it' (Bauman & Briggs, 1990: 73). In other words, entextualization is the extraction of discourse from its original context and recontextualization of it in a newer context through integration, adaption and reorganization. The text trajectories of discourse thus get a newer dimension in recontextualization. Theodoropoulou (2016: 29) stated, 'The notion of entextualization is a useful one in the study of semiotic resources, as it allows us to track down the dynamic trajectory thereof and thus to tap into the complexities associated with meaning making in digital discourse'. On a similar note, Leppänen et al. (2013) identify that entextualization indicates what happens in between the decontextualization, that is, while dissociating the materials from their original context, and recontextualization, that is, during modification and adaptation of them in the newer context. As a result, entextualization allows us to explore how linguistic and multimodal resources are taken out of their original context of use and re-used in the virtual space for distinctly different purposes.

Closely intertwined with the process of entextualization is 'resemiotization'. 'Resemiotization is meant to provide the analytical means for (1) tracing how semiotics are translated from one into the other as social processes unfold, as well as for (2) asking why these semiotics (rather than others) are mobilized to do certain things at certain times' (Iedema, 2003: 29). While entextualization refers to the decontextualization and recontextualization of discourse, resemiotization brings forth the changes that have occurred in meaning because of changes in mode, modality or location and the creation of new semiotic modes and resources. It also unearths the factors that prompt resemiotization. That is why resemiotization ensures the 'socio-historical exploration and understanding of the complex processes' involved in the meaning-making process (Iedema, 2003: 48) and 'resemiotization seeks to underscore the material and historicized dimensions of representation' (Iedema, 2003: 50). Leppänen et al. (2013) and Blommaert and Varis (2015) identify that the meaning-making process in resemiotization can bring distinctly different meaning to the same linguistic and multimodal resources because of the new sets of contextualization conditions. That is why it seems useful in understanding why and how a photograph of a film star with a ridiculous gesture may be used to mock a friend; a song title may be given as an answer to a friend's question; a link to a newspaper article shared may show individual ideological affiliation; and emoticons, 'like' or 'love' buttons on Facebook may indicate sociocultural preferences.

Entextualization and resemiotization seem integral to transculturalization and translocalization too. Leppänen et al. (2013) refer to a Finnish rap video in which entextualization and resemiotization have been used by the artists in order to make the rap that embraces the spirit of the global genre of rap music culture, and make it pertinent to the local music setting and issues of young rappers themselves. They tend to demonstrate themselves as translocal and polycentric music culture members. According to Leppänen et al. (2013), the artifact itself becomes translocal and transcultural in entextualization and resemiotization.

Entextualization and resemiotization also bring to the fore the agency and freedom that individuals enjoy in virtual space. Bauman and Briggs (1990), Leppänen et al. (2013) and Blommaert and Varis (2015) identify the 'authority' people enjoy and the power of the individual agency they exert in their entextualization – 'an act of control', since they decide which resources they want to decontextualize and they show their legitimacy and competence in reusing and assessing differential values associated with various linguistic and multimodal resources. However, this authority is not valueless – it is influenced by sociocultural ideologies, eligibility and accessibility to institutional structures, legitimacy, cultural propriety and the competence to conduct decontextualization and recontextualization (Bauman & Briggs, 1990).

The decisions and choices made during the process of entextualization and resemiotization are closely related to what identity individuals prefer to perform. Since it is their decision what linguistic and multimodal resources they use within the social, cultural, spatial, and historical realities, they have more control over what identity attributes they want to perform in a given moment. On a similar note, Pennycook (2004) considered performitivity as a way of looking at the production of identity in the 'doing'. With reference to the survival strategies used by homeless women in the street for protecting themselves from criminal victimization, it was shown that their gendered performativity depended on situations, contexts and interlocutors and the ways they manipulate the semiotic resources to their favor (Huey & Berndt, 2008). Nevertheless, it should be noted that individual agency in identity performativity does not give individual sole independence in performing whatever identity they prefer. It is negotiated in relation to the ontological realities, such as gender, race and sexuality (Huey & Berndt, 2008).

The chapter adds to it by showing that entextualization and resemiotization are integral aspects of meaning-making and identity performances. These aspects give a nascent understanding of how meaning is transferred from one location to another, what purpose they serve both in formal and functional terms, and with whom and why.

Method, Context, Data Sources and Data Analysis

An ethnographic study was conducted at a university called the University of Excellence (UOE) in the cosmopolitan city of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Twenty-nine participants from a number of different departments volunteered to participate in the research. They were observed outside the classroom in the student cafeteria and lounges, university clubs and favorite hangouts within the university premises. Their face-to-face conversations within their peer groups in different social situations were recorded. Of the 29 participants, 17 gave access to their Facebook (FB) accounts, from which their virtual conversations were collected. To understand the data on FB, a virtual ethnographic method, which Androutsopoulos (2011) defined as 'Internet ethnography', was adapted, and the use of English and Bangla on FB was observed. The virtual ethnography continued for several years with the consent of the research participants.

The data drawn from the Facebook were analyzed through a transglossic framework (Sultana, 2015; Sultana et al., 2015). The data were explored for contextual (physical locations and participants), pretextual (historical trajectories of texts), subtextual (ideologies mobilized by texts), intertextual (meanings that occur across texts) and posttextual interpretations of the data (the ways texts are read, interpreted, resisted and appropriated; cf. also Pennycook, 2007: 53–54). Their responses in post-textual interpretations on why they produced their own language and how they interpreted the language of others made the data analysis not only the researcher's interpretation, but also theirs.

The entextualization and resemiotization of linguistic and multimodal resources were brought to the fore when the contextual and intertextual references were considered. Both of these references unraveled the trajectories of linguistic and multimodal resources from different locations, cultures and changes in meanings that had been brought to them along with changes in their locations and purposes. Pretextual, subtextual and post-textual references, in addition, disentangled the individual, political, social and cultural values that may influence the choices of these resources. Two pieces of FB conversations were selected based on the meanings rendered in and purposes served through entextualization and resemiotization.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1788922832
• ISBN 13: 9781788922838
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192
• Editor: Tyler Andrew Barrett, Sender Dovchin