Ethnolinguistic cornering
Norsk som andrespråk inviterer alle interesserte til gjesteforelesning med førsteamanuensis Janus Spindler Møller, University of Copenhagen
Hovedinnhold
Ethnolinguistic cornering
In this talk I present the notion of ethnolinguistic cornering (Møller 2021, 2025) and argue for its relevance in contemporary sociolinguistics. Ethnolinguistic cornering denotes moments in interaction where people ascribe identities to one another based on assumptions about language and social life, and these ascribed identities are rejected or in other ways treated as negatively charged. In this way, the concept combines insights from positioning theory (Davies & Harré 1990) with insights from the field of language ideology – more specifically the ethnolinguistic assumption (Blommaert et al. 2012) denoting the alignment of languages and ethnic identities and the idea of the modern subject as mono-cultural and monolingual.
The notion of ethnolinguistic cornering is an outcome of the Everyday Languaging Project – a long-term cooperation with a Copenhagen school situated in a linguistically diverse area where a team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen has conducted language-centered ethnographic fieldwork with different student groups. In the presentation I analyze examples where minoritized pupils experience ethnolinguistic cornering from teachers and object to being constructed as disadvantaged or when such experiences of being “cornered” influence the pupils' language ideological reflections. On this basis, I argue that instances of ethnolinguistic cornering deserve particular attention in sociolinguistics because they provide a lens for investigating how the paradox of monolingual standard regimes within multilingual societies is constructed, reproduced and challenged in ongoing interaction.
About Janus Spindler Møller:
Janus Spindler Møller is associate professor in sociolinguistics at the University of Copenhagen. His research addresses multilingualism, languaging, language ideology, language and youth, language in educational settings, and the use of digital devices in communication. A particular field of interest is how everyday interaction and language ideologies interrelate in field sites characterized by linguistic diversity. He has recently published about the subjects in Language in Society, International Journal of the Sociology of Language and Routledge Critical Studies in Multilingualism and furthermore contributed to The Routledge Handbook of Language and Youth Culture and the Handbook of Pragmatics.