Abstract
Work on globalization has been concentrated on typical sites where features and phenomena are abundantly available: the huge contemporary metropolis with its explosive and conspicuous diversity in people and languages, its hyper-mobility and constant flux. Less typical places – peri-urban and rural areas, peripheral areas of countries, peripheral zones of the world, peripheral institutional zones where minorities are relegated – have been less quickly absorbed into current scholarship. Yet, upon closer inspection, there is no reason to exclude these `margins' from analyses of globalization processes and of their sociolinguistic implications. Globalization is a transformation of the entire world system, and it does not only affect the metropolitan centers of the world but also its most remote margins. Thus, we are bound to encounter globalization effects, also in highly unexpected places. A survey of these reifications of globalization at the margins will be the topic of this paper. We shall suggest a specific angle from which such forms of globalization in the margin can be most usefully addressed and we do so by drawing from examples taken from new media and communication technologies, from new forms of economic activity and, last but not least, from the perspective of legitimacy in the contentious struggle between commodification of language and the semiotic construction of authenticity.
About the authors
Xuan Wang is PhD Researcher at Maastricht University and Tilburg University, the Netherlands. She is interested in the ethnographic insight in the sociolinguistic impact of globalization in the margins, with specific reference to heritage tourism, consumer market and social media in the context of China. She also supports the coordination the international research network of Globalization in the Margins (GiM).
Massimiliano Spotti is Assistant Professor at the Department of Culture Studies and Deputy Director of Babylon, Center for the Study of Super-diversity at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. He has published widely on identity construction in multilingual primary school classrooms as well as on the intersection between language learning, ICT and citizenship apprenticeship for migrants. Publications include Developing Identities (Aksant, 2007), Language Testing, Migration and Citizenship: Cross-National Perspectives on Integration Regimes (edited, Continuum, 2009) as well as two special issues of the Diversities Journal (UNESCO/Max Planck) on Language and Super-diversity.
Kasper Juffermans Kasper Juffermans is Post-Doctoral fellow at the Faculty of Language, Literature, Humanities, Art and Education at the University of Luxembourg. Since 2004, he has carried out ethnographic work in the field linguistic inequality in The Gambia. He has recently been awarded a Core Junior project (2014–17) by the Luxembourg Fonds National de la Recherche for research on sociolinguistic trajectories and repertoires in actual and aspired mobilities between Africa (Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde) and Europe (Luxembourg). He has been co-editor of a special issue of Anthropology and Education Quarterly on Analyzing Voice in Educational Discourses (2013).
Leonie Cornips is Professor of Language and Culture in Limburg at Maastricht University and a fellow at the Meertens Institute (Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences) in Amsterdam. Her expertise covers a broad range of disciplines: linguistic construction of local identities; multilingualism; new varieties of Dutch; child language acquisition of dialect and Dutch as L2(L1)At present, she is project leader of the international group ``The construction of identities through language practices'' at NIAS (Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, until July 2014). She has extensively published in international peer-reviewed journals as well as edited several Volumes.
Sjaak Kroon is professor of Multilingualism in the Multicultural Society and head of the Department of Culture Studies at the School of Humanities, Tilburg University. He teaches, conducts research and publishes on multilingualism, language policy and education in the context of globalization and superdiversity. He is a member of Babylon, Center for the study of superdiversity.
Jan Blommaert is Professor of Language, Culture and Globalization and Director of Babylon, Center for the Study of Super-diversity at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, and professor of African Linguistics and Sociolinguistics at Ghent University. He has published widely on language ideologies and language inequality in the context of globalization, focusing on institutional sociolinguistic regimes in fields such as education and immigration. Publications include The Sociolinguistics of Globalization (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Grassroots Literacy (Routledge, 2008), Discourse: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Language Ideological Debates (edited, Mouton de Gruyter, 1999). Jan Blommaert was awarded the 2010 Margaret Metzger Prize by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
