Superdiverse Repertoires and the Individual

Abstract

Abstract:Repertoire belongs to the core vocabulary of sociolinguistics, yet very little fundamental reflection has been done on the nature and structure of repertoires. In early definitions, repertoires was seen as a triad of language resources, knowledge of language ('competence') and a community. Due to developments in the study of language competence and in the study of social organization, this triad can no longer remain intact. In a super-diversity context, mobile subjects engage with a broad variety of groups, networks and communities, and their language resources are consequently learned through a wide variety of trajectories, tactics and technologies, ranging from fully formal language learning to entirely informal 'encounters' with language. These different learning modes lead to very different degrees of knowledge of language, from very elaborate structural and pragmatic knowledge to elementary 'recognizing' languages, whereby all of these resources in a repertoire are functionally distributed in a patchwork of competences and skills. The origins of repertoires are biographical, and repertoires can in effect be seen as 'indexical biographies'. This, then, allows us to reorient the triad of repertoires away from communities towards subjectivities, and suggest that repertoire analysis can be a privileged road into understanding LateModern subjectivities.

ELF and super-diversity: a case study of ELF multilingual practices from a business context

“…Here, speakers' previous experiences are particularly important as they constantly contribute to updating their repertoire and adapt to different interactional e ncounters. This is a social view of language as repertoire of resources, which are not evenly distributed, but change over time and are socially constructed and enacted in relation to social contexts and individuals' personal histories (Blommaert 2010;Blommaert and Backus 2012;Heller 2007).…”

“…From its beginnings in social sciences, the idea of super-diversity has spread to other areas of inquiry. Lately the term has received the attention of scholars in sociolinguistics (Blommaert and Backus 2012;Blommaert and Rampton 2011;Creese and Blackledge 2010a), who have focused on the multilingual nature of super-diverse communicative contexts.…”

Citizenship, Language, and Superdiversity: Towards Complexity

“…Linguistic resources enter a specific environment, acquire an indexical value relative to existing norms within that environment and, thus, shape new norms and so acquire a potential to perpetually reshuffle the linguistic-symbolic hierarchies. Social lives are thus organized, not in relation to one single complex of norms, but in relation to many competing and/or complementary ones-a feature of sociolinguistic superdiversity we call polycentricity (Blommaert, 2010; individual repertoires bear the traces of such perpetual reshufflings of norms in a polycentric environment (Blommaert & Backus, 2012), and complex forms of identity work can draw on the resources that orient towards the multiple sets of norms present in someone's communicative competence (cf. Rampton, 2006;Jørgensen, Karrebaek, Madsen, & Møller, 2011).…”

'n Perseptuele verslag van Afrikaans in Namibië: Tussen lingua franca en sosiaal-ekslusiewe taal

“…Die idee van taal as 'n etniese attribuut kom sterk na vore in Uittreksel 3, waarin DA-informant 2 'n neerhalende beskrywing gee van wat sy sien as die etnosentriese gedrag van Herero's, waarvan die gebruik van Otjiherero sigbaar deel uitmaak. Blommaert & Backus 2012). Die Herero informante ken enkele Khoekhoegowab-woorde, terwyl die Namas en Damaras enkele Otjiherero-woorde ken, soos ook die geval met een van die wit informante.…”