Key terms - Schlüsselbegriffe
heteroglossia.net is a research network of scientists, working in sociolinguistics, applied linguistics and discourse analysis, drawing on biographical and ethnographical approaches and linking scientific research and its various applications in heteroglossic contexts, such as schools, media, health care etc.
Comprised of several authors, we want to introduce some of our key terms through glimpses into publications - definitions may vary according to field and context of the research, but we hope these short extracts as parts of texts allow for a better understanding and serve as a way to our main frame of reference.
Heteroglossia
Das Netzwerk heteroglossia.net beschäftigt sich mit Mehrsprachigkeitsforschung. Der Begriff Mehrsprachigkeit wird innerhalb der angewandten Sprachwissenschaft zunehmend kritisch hinterfragt. Kritisiert wird dabei vor allem die Vorstellung von Sprachen als voneinander klar abgegrenzte Entitäten. Mit der Orientierung auf Redevielfalt stützen wir uns auf Arbeiten des russischen Literatur- und Sprachwissenschafters Michail Bachtin aus den 1930er Jahren. Jede Äußerung nimmt Bachtin zufolge Bezug auf unterschiedliche sozialideologisch geprägte Diskurse, sie greift auf unterschiedliche individuelle Stimmen zurück und bedient sich sprachlicher Mittel, die auf unterschiedliche geografische, soziale und historische Räume verweisen. [UTB Mehrsprachigkeit, Mehr lesen]
Rather than speaking of multilingualism which somehow suggests the idea of a plurality of individual languages, in the context of the linguistic repertoire I prefer to refer to Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981a) concept of heteroglossia. Following Todorov (1984), this concept encompasses the dimensions of multidiscoursivity, linguistic diversity, and multivoicedness, and it is inherent in any form of living language, establishing a ‘dialog of languages’ (Bakhtin 1981a: 294), regardless of whether this dialog plays out within what is referred to as one language, or between different languages that “have established contact and mutual recognition with each other” (Bakhtin 1981a: 295). [Read more]
Spracherleben / Language experience
... Spracherleben steht für eine subjektorientierte, ganzheitliche Wahrnehmung von Sprache als gestaltetes und gestaltendes Element. Die sprecherInnen-zentrierte Perspektive richtet ihren Blick auf Erlebnisse mit Sprache(n) um die komplexen sprachlichen Repertoires (vgl. Busch 2012) von Sprechenden zu verstehen. ...
Purkarthofer,„Alle Sprachen können wir nicht lernen.“ – Spracherleben als gezielte Intervention in der Lehrendenbildung, in Vetter 2013, 62
... Sprache als etwas, was für Sprechende auf sehr unterschiedlichen Ebenen Bedeutung hat, lässt sich aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln betrachten. Mit dem Fokus auf Spracherleben wird ein Zugang gewählt, der vom Individuum ausgeht und versucht, sprachliche Praktiken und Einstellungen zu fassen. Dies endet nicht bei einer rein individuellen Sichtweise, sondern erschließt durch die soziale und diskursive Einbettung von Sprechenden und ihren Sprachen größere Zusammenhänge, in denen Sprachideologien und gesellschaftliche Verregelungen von Sprachen und Sprachformen sichtbar werden. ...
Purkarthofer,„Alle Sprachen können wir nicht lernen.“ – Spracherleben als gezielte Intervention in der Lehrendenbildung, in Vetter 2013, 62
[T]he meanings that speakers attribute to languages, codes, and linguistic practices are linked with personal experience and life trajectories, especially with the way in which linguistic resources are experienced in the context of discursive constructions of national, ethnic, and social affiliation/non-affiliation. These meanings are subject to changes which involve both biographical discontinuities (through migration, for example) and sociopolitical reconfigurations (e.g. the establishing of boundaries).
Busch, Linguistic Repertoire revisited, in Applied Linguistics, p 18 [Full text, pdf]
... Als ein Ansatz praktischer Forschung kann Spracherleben aber auch dazu genutzt werden, sich über die Verregelung sprachlicher Praktiken innerhalb eines bestimmten Settings bewusst zu werden. Über die individuellen Bedeutungen von Sprachen hinaus stehen ja Sprachen bzw. Sprachformen immer in Aushandlung mit ihrer sozialen und diskursiven Umgebung: Wer spricht wie in welchem Rahmen? Welche Sprachen werden unterstützt und gefördert? Welche Sprachen sind sichtbar? Gerade in institutionellen Zusammenhängen treffen dabei die Vorstellungen und Haltungen der Einzelnen immer wieder auf die Erwartungen bzw. Regelungen der Institution ...
Purkarthofer,„Alle Sprachen können wir nicht lernen.“ – Spracherleben als gezielte Intervention in der Lehrendenbildung, in Vetter 2013, 62
... Der Begriff Spracherleben suggeriert nicht die Abbildung einer außerdiskursiven Realität, sondern unterliegt einer grundlegenden Einschränkung, die ihn von essentialistischen Vorstellungen abhebt: Was wahrnehmbar, denkbar, erzählbar ist, wird durch das Eingebundensein in Diskursformationen geprägt, die ihre zeitlich und räumlich begrenzte Gültigkeit besitzen. ...
Busch, „Wenn ich in der einen Sprache bin, habe ich immer die andere auch im Blick“ – Zum Konnex von Politik und Spracherleben. In: de Cillia/Gruber/Krzyzanowski/Menz (Hrsg.) (2010), 238
... [U]nder the conditions of super-diversity, speakers participate in varying spaces of communication which may be arranged sequentially, in parallel, juxtapositionally, or in overlapping form. Each of these spaces has its own language regime—its own set of rules, orders of discourse, and language ideologies — in which linguistic resources are assessed differently. If speakers participate in a space of communication, they position themselves in relation to the rules that apply therein, either by submitting to them willingly or reluctantly or by transgressing them. In each instance, they bring with them experiences and evaluations from other spaces which they inscribe into the practices involved. ...
Busch, Linguistic Repertoire revisited, in Applied Linguistics, p 18 [Full text, pdf]
Sprachliches Repertoire / Linguistic Repertoire
If one considers the linguistic repertoire from the perspective of poststructuralist thought, it becomes clear that discursively constructed categories, because of the fact that they can always be reinvoked, display their own dynamics. Even if one recognizes them as such and plays with them such as in translanguaging they still retain their power.
Busch, Linguistic Repertoire revisited, in Applied Linguistics, p 17 [Full text, pdf]
Gumperz’s notion of linguistic repertoire still proves to be productive, especially as the repertoire is seen as a whole, encompassing all the accepted ways of formulating messages, thus enabling a move away from thinking languages and codes as bounded entities. A poststructuralist extension of the notion sees linguistic choices not only determined by the situational character of interaction and by grammatical and social rules and conventions, but sees language practices also as subjected to the time-space dimensions of history and biography. The repertoire can thus be seen as a hypothetical structure, which
evolves by experiencing language in interaction on a cognitive and on an emotional level and is inscribed into corporal memory and embodied as linguistic habitus and which includes traces of hegemonic discourses. These discourses are expressed in categorizations that are backed up by inclusive and
exclusive language ideologies. Drawing on a broad range of earlier voices, discourses, and codes, the linguistic repertoire forms a heteroglossic and contingent space of potentialities which includes imagination and desire, and to which speakers revert in specific situations.
Busch, Linguistic Repertoire revisited, in Applied Linguistics, p 19 [Full text, pdf]
Sprachporträts / Language Portraits
|
The Research Group Spracherleben [Experiencing Language] at the Institute of Linguistics at the University of Vienna began a few years ago to use a multimodal biographic method in research on linguistic diversity (Busch 2006). Work with what are known as ‘language portraits’ goes back to research on language awareness in primary school education (Neumann 1991; Krumm and Jenkins 2001).
|
In recent years, the research group at the University of Vienna has collected and evaluated several hundred of these multimodal language portraits in the context of various projects. It is of course true that the metalinguistic commentaries of speakers and the visual and verbal representations of their repertoires, which emerge during the research process are representations produced in a specific interactional situation. We do not consider them an image of the linguistic repertoire ‘the way it really is’, nor as an ‘objective’ reconstruction of the history of language acquisition. Selection, interpretation, and evaluation take place in the visual mode as much as in the verbal mode, and representation and reconstruction do not occur independently of social discourses.
|
Ethnographische Methoden / Ethnography
|
Questioning how education is able to reflect pupils’ multilingual reality presupposes that their heteroglossic repertoire must not be reduced to a dichotomy such as ‘‘the language of origin’’ vs. ‘‘the target language’’. Our speaker-centred approach draws on biographical, ethnographic and participatory methods. ‘‘School language profiles’’ are interested in the situated practices of a school in its particular environment, taking into account the perspectives of students, parents and teachers alike. |
Through this approach, we were not dealing with questions of language competence and linguistic performance, but focused on how speakers think about their talking, about languages and about their language biography. Still, we were not primarily interested in the uniqueness of a particular life story but in the social dimensions of the language practices and ideologies that a speaker is exposed to and hence exposes as well throughout his/her life. The value ascribed to particular language practices can be understood in isolation neither from the people who employ them nor from the larger networks and social relationships which these individuals are engaged in. |
Raum / Space
... [U]nder the conditions of super-diversity, speakers participate in varying spaces of communication which may be arranged sequentially, in parallel, juxtapositionally, or in overlapping form. Each of these spaces has its own language regime—its own set of rules, orders of discourse, and language ideologies — in which linguistic resources are assessed differently. If speakers participate in a space of communication, they position themselves in relation to the rules that apply therein, either by submitting to them willingly or reluctantly or by transgressing them. In each instance, they bring with them experiences and evaluations from other spaces which they inscribe into the practices involved. ...
Busch, Linguistic Repertoire revisited, in Applied Linguistics, p 18 [Full text, pdf]
Multimodality / Multimodalität
In recent years, the research group at the University of Vienna has collected and evaluated several hundred of these multimodal language portraits in the context of various projects. It is of course true that the metalinguistic commentaries of speakers and the visual and verbal representations of their repertoires, which emerge during the research process are representations produced in a specific interactional situation. We do not consider them an image of the linguistic repertoire ‘the way it really is’, nor as an ‘objective’ reconstruction of the history of language acquisition. Selection, interpretation, and evaluation take place in the visual mode as much as in the verbal mode, and representation and reconstruction do not occur independently of social discourses.
Busch, Linguistic Repertoire revisited, in Applied Linguistics, p 9 [Full text, pdf]