Urban Sociolinguistics: The City as a Linguistic Process and Experience [1 ed.] 1138200360, 9781138200364

Table of contents :
Dedication
Contents
List of figures
List of tables
List of pictures
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: why cities matter for a globalising sociolinguistics • Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich
2 Urbanisation and linguistic multitude • Florian Coulmas
Part I: The global south
Introduction to part I: megacities
3 Cairo: the linguistic dynamics of a multilingual city • Reem Bassiouney and Mark Muehlhaeusler
4 Mexico City: diversity and homogeneity • Roland Terborg and Virna Velázquez
5 Old variables, new meanings: resignification of rural speech variants in São Paulo’s urban ecology • Livia Oushiro and Maria del Carmen Parafita Couto
6 Dubai: language in the ethnocratic, corporate and mobile city • Ingrid Piller
7 Kohima: language variation and change in a small but diverse city in India • Shobha Satyanath
Part II: The global north
Introduction to part II: world cities
8 The language of London and Londoners • Susan Fox and Devyani Sharma
9 Tokyo: standardization, ludic language use and nascent superdiversity • Patrick Heinrich and Rika Yamashita
10 The city as a result of experience: Paris and its nearby suburbs • Christine Deprez
11 The Randstad area in the Netherlands: emergent and fluid identity-locality production through language in use • Leonie Cornips, Vincent de Rooij and Dick Smakman
12 Notes on the language ecology of the City of Angels: Los Angeles, California, 1965–2015 • Reynaldo F. Macías, Arturo Díaz and Ameer Drane
13 Sydney’s intersecting worlds of languages and things • Emi Otsuji and Alastair Pennycook
14 Moscow: diversity in disguise • Kapitolina Fedorova and Vlada Baranova
Postscript: a proposal for street use surveys
Index

Citation preview

Urban Sociolinguistics

From Los Angeles to Tokyo, Urban Sociolinguistics is a sociolinguistic study of twelve urban settings around the world. Building on William Labov’s famous New York study, the authors demonstrate how language use in these areas is changing based on belief systems, behavioural norms, day-to-day rituals and linguistic practices. All chapters are written by key figures in sociolinguistics and present the personal stories of individuals using linguistic means to go about their daily communications in diverse sociolinguistic systems such as: • • •

extremely large urban conurbations like Cairo, Tokyo and Mexico City smaller areas like Paris and Sydney less urbanised places such as the Western Netherlands Randstad area and Kohima in India.

Providing new perspectives on crucial themes such as language choice and language contact, code-switching and mixing, language and identity, language policy and planning and social networks, this is key reading for students and researchers in the areas of multilingualism and superdiversity within sociolinguistics, applied linguistics and urban studies. Dick Smakman is Lecturer at Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), The Netherlands. Patrick Heinrich is Associate Professor at the Department of Asian and Mediterranean African Studies at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, Italy. Together, they are the co-editors of Globalising Sociolinguistics (2015).

Urban Sociolinguistics The City as a Linguistic Process and Experience

Edited by Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-20036-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-20037-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-3155-1465-9 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

For daughters

Contents

List of figures List of tables List of pictures List of contributors Acknowledgements  1 Introduction: why cities matter for a globalising sociolinguistics

ix x xi xii xvii

1

D I C K S M A K M AN AND PAT RI CK HE I NRI CH

 2 Urbanisation and linguistic multitude

12

F L O R I A N C O U LMAS

PART I

The global south

25

Introduction to part I: megacities  3 Cairo: the linguistic dynamics of a multilingual city

27

R E E M B A S S I O U NE Y AND MARK MUE HL HAE US LER

 4 Mexico City: diversity and homogeneity

45

R O L A N D T E R BORG AND VI RNA VE L ÁZ QUE Z

 5 Old variables, new meanings: resignification of rural speech variants in São Paulo’s urban ecology

58

L I V I A O U S H I R O AND MARI A DE L CARME N PARA FITA CO U TO

 6 Dubai: language in the ethnocratic, corporate and mobile city INGRID PILLER

77

viii Contents  7 Kohima: language variation and change in a small but diverse city in India

95

S H O B H A S AT YANAT H

PART II

The global north

113

Introduction to part II: world cities  8 The language of London and Londoners

115

S U S A N F O X AND DE VYANI S HARMA

 9 Tokyo: standardization, ludic language use and nascent superdiversity

130

PAT R I C K H E I NRI CH AND RI KA YAMAS HI TA

10 The city as a result of experience: Paris and its nearby suburbs

148

C H R I S T I N E DE P RE Z

11 The Randstad area in the Netherlands: emergent and fluid identity-locality production through language in use

162

L E O N I E C O RNI P S , VI NCE NT DE ROOI J AND DIC K SMA K MA N

12 Notes on the language ecology of the City of Angels: Los Angeles, California, 1965–2015

181

R E Y N A L D O F. MACÍ AS , ART URO DÍ AZ AND AMEER D RA N E

13 Sydney’s intersecting worlds of languages and things

204

E M I O T S U J I AND AL AS TAI R P E NNYCOOK

14 Moscow: diversity in disguise

220

K A P I TO L I N A F E DOROVA AND VL ADA BARANO VA

Postscript: a proposal for street use surveys Index

237 240

Figures

4.1 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 7.1 7.2 7.3a 7.3b 7.3c 7.3d 7.4 7.5 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 9.1 9.2 9.3

Ancient lake system of Mexico City Personal pronoun use in central areas Personal pronoun use in peripheral areas Use of retroflex /r/ according to area of residence Use of retroflex /r/ according to social class Use of retroflex /r/ according to age and social class Assessment of “Paulistanity” according to place of residence and place of origin Growth of Kohima town Overall variation and change in apparent time Variation across Angami speakers according to birth year and sex Variation across Ao speakers Variation across Lotha speakers Variation across speakers in four ethnic groups Variation across individuals in different age groups Multiple paths of linguistic shifts Distribution of PRICE variants among different ethnic groups of East London adolescents Distribution of indefinite articles before vowels according to ethnic group Use of Asian features by gender and age Distribution of the PRICE variant [aɪ] among different friendship groups High lectal focusing in a narrative told by Anwar Low lectal focusing in a narrative told by Ravinder Population growth of Metropolitan Tokyo Population growth of Greater Tokyo Umbrella model of language change and spread

48 65 65 68 68 69 71 98 101 103 105 105 106 107 109 117 117 119 122 123 124 131 132 139

Tables

2.1 2.2 5.1 5.2 7.1 7.2 14.1 14.2

The 15 most and least urbanised countries, 2010 The 15 most populous urban agglomerations of the world Realization of coda /r/ according to social variables Realization of coda /r/ according to parents’ place of origin Language change in an Ao family Language change in an Angami family Population growth of Moscow, 1400–2015 Russian and non-Russian population in Moscow, 2002 and 2010

13 15 67 70 102 102 223 226

Pictures

6.1 6.2 6.3 14.1 14.2

Dubai is . . . 195 nationalities to practice your language skills on Signage on Sheikh Zayed Road International conference on bilingualism and bilingual education Armenian café Ayo Stylized “Arabic” using Cyrillic script

77 85 87 232 232

Contributors

Vlada Baranova is Associate Professor at the Higher School of Economics (National Reseach University) in St. Petersburg. She studied linguistics and anthropology at St. Petersburg State University and European University at St. Petersburg. She is the author of Language and Identity: Urums and Rumejs in Priazovye (2010) and has co-edited a volume of Kalmyk Studies (2009). Her current research interests focus on Kalmyk and other Mongolian languages, language contacts among Russian and Kalmyk and languages of labour migrants (strategies of their ethnic language maintenance, language-identity interplay, socialization and competence in Russian). Reem Bassiouney, PhD (Oxon.) is Associate Professor of linguistics at The American University of Cairo. Her publications include Functions of Codeswitching in Egypt (2006), Arabic Sociolinguistics (2008), Language and Identity in Modern Egypt (2014) and the Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics (2018). Her research focuses on topics in Arabic sociolinguistics, including code-switching, language and gender, levelling, register, language policy and discourse analysis. She is also an award-winning novelist. Leonie Cornips is affiliated at the Meertens Institute (KNAW) and Maastricht University where she holds the chair “Language Culture in Limburg”. She has investigated syntactic variation in new developing regional varieties due to induced language contact situations between Dutch and local dialects (coalmining varieties) and emerging new varieties (Moroccan-, Turkish-, SurinameseDutch). Her research also included bilingual child acquisition of word order and grammatical gender in Dutch (with Aafke Hulk). Further, she was responsible for the methodology of eliciting syntactic phenomena in the Dutch dialects (SAND-project). Her latest research is about the construction of regional identities through language practices in Limburg, especially with Vincent de Rooij. Florian Coulmas is Senior Professor at the IN-EAST Institute of East Asian Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Before he was appointed Senior Professor of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Duisburg-Essen in April 2015, he was director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) in Tokyo, from 2004 to 2014. While during these years, his work was focussed

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on social change in Japan, he kept abreast of scholarly developments in sociolinguistics, serving as Associate Editor of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language and publishing about writing in society and the influence of individuals on language change. Christine Deprez is Emeritus Professor at Paris Descartes University (Sorbonne Paris Cité) where she taught sociolinguistics, languages in contact and history of French. In her first book, Les enfants bilingues – langues et familles (1995) she studied bilingual family communication in a migratory context. She was coeditor of the journal Plurilinguismes and is now a member of the scientific committee of Langue et Société and Education et Sociétés plurilingues. Lately, her fields of interest have also includes migrants’ narratives and ethno-education programs in South America. Arturo Díaz is a doctoral student of Hispanic linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on heritage languages with a concentration in Spanish, bilingualism, dialectal variation, language contact, sociolinguistic theory and syntax. He engages in community programs that target heritage speakers of various language groups in Los Angeles through the UCLA Center for World Languages and the National Heritage Language Resource Center. He has co-edited with M. Carreira and O. Kagan National Heritage Language Resource Center. A Locus of Activity in the Field of Heritage Languages in the United States (2016). Ameer Drane is a graduate student of Hispanic linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on the ways in which identity is negotiated and affirmed through language, with an interest in language contact, bilingualism and the intersections between language and gender. Kapitolina Fedorova graduated from St. Petersburg State University and European University at St. Petersburg. She obtained her Candidate of Sciences in Philology degree from St. Petersburg State University in 2002. Currently she is Associate Professor and teaches sociolinguistics at the Department of Anthropology at the European University at St. Petersburg. Among her publications are the book Language, Society and School (2012) and more than 25 articles. Her research interests include language border studies, interethnic communication, ethnic and linguistic stereotypes, sociolinguistics of schooling, register studies and speech practices in historical perspective. Susan Fox is Lecturer in modern English linguistics at the University of Bern, Switzerland. She is a sociolinguist whose research interests are language variation and change, multiethnolects, language and dialect contact, the impact of immigration on language change and the language of adolescents from a variationist perspective. Her research has mainly focused on the social and historical contexts leading to the variety of English that is spoken in present-day London. She is author of The New Cockney: New Ethnicities and Adolescents’ Speech in the Traditional East End of London (2015).

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Patrick Heinrich is Associate Professor at the Department of Asian and Mediterranean African Studies at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. His present research interests focus on sociolinguistics, language endangerment and the sociology of youth. In his research, Heinrich endeavours to incorporate sociological theory and methodology more firmly into the study of language. His regional focus is Japan. Edited books include (with Dick Smakman) Globalising Sociolinguistics (2015) and (with Shinsho Miyara and Michinori Shimoji) Handbook of the Ryukyuan Languages (2015). His latest monograph is The Making of Monolingual Japan (2012). Reynaldo F. Macías is Professor of Chican@ studies, education and sociolinguistics and affiliated with the Faculty of African American Studies and Civic Engagement at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests include the politics of language, language demography and educational sociolinguistics, including literacy and multi-cultural curricular education. His work has appeared in the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, the Review of Research in Education, the Bilingual Research Journal, the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics and many other journals. Mark Muehlhaeusler studied Arabic and Oriental languages at Oxford and Leiden. He currently holds the position of Director of the Center of Excellence for the Middle East and Arab Cultures at The American University in Cairo. His research focuses on the history and transmission of Arabic texts, as evidenced in papyri and manuscripts. Emi Otsuji is Senior Lecturer in International Studies at the University of Technology Sydney. Her research interests include language and globalization (metrolingualism and multilingualism), performativity theory of language and identities and language teaching ideologies. She is a co-author (with Alastair Pennycook) of Metrolingualism. Language in the City (2015), co-editor (with Ikuko Nakane and William Armour) of Languages and Identities in a Transitional Japan: From Internationalization to Globalization (2015) and co-editor (with Hideo Hosokawa and Marcella Mariotti) of Shiminsei keisei to kotoba no kyōiku [Constructing Citizenship and Language Education] (2016). Livia Oushiro is Professor at the Department of Linguistics at the University of Campinas. She received her MA and PhD in linguistics from the University of São Paulo. Her research has focused on the interplay between patterns of variation and group identity in São Paulo, including analyses of lectal cohesion and sociolinguistic perception. More recently, she has worked on processes of lectal accommodation in the speech of national migrants living in São Paulo, evaluating the effect of different variables on their speech, as well as their role in urban language change patterns. Maria del Carmen Parafita Couto (PhD, University of Kansas, 2005) is University Lecturer at the Leiden University Center for Linguistics (Netherlands). Her research program is devoted to empirical investigations of the effect of bilingualism/multilingualism and language contact on linguistic structure.

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Alastair Pennycook is Distinguished Professor of Language, Society and Education at the University of Technology Sydney, Adjunct Professor at the University of Oslo, and a member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He is the author of numerous award-winning books, including Metrolingualism: Language in the City (with Emi Otsuji), Language as a Local Practice, Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows, and The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. Ingrid Piller is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Ingrid’s research expertise is in the sociolinguistics of intercultural communication, multilingualism, language learning and bilingual education in the context of migration and globalization. Ingrid has published, lectured and consulted widely in these areas and most of her publications can be accessed through the sociolinguistics platform Language on the Move at www. languageonthemove.org. Ingrid serves as editor-in-chief of the international sociolinguistics journal Multilingua. Her most recent book is Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice (2016). Vincent de Rooij is Assistant Professor of anthropology at the University of Amsterdam and a member of the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research. His past and present research interests include codeswitching, popular culture, youth language and social stereotyping. In his recent research, he focuses on the role of language ideologies in processes of social identification. With Leonie Cornips, he has been studying the construction of local identities in the Dutch province of Limburg. They also collaborate as editors of the volume The Sociolinguistics of Place and Belonging: Perspectives from the Margins (2017). Shobha Satyanath received her doctoral degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia in 1991. Her doctoral dissertation focused on variation and change in Guyanese Creole English. She is currently Associate Professor at the University of Delhi, India. Her specialization and research interests include variational sociolinguistics, language contact and pidgins and creoles. She is currently working on urban settings in India. She is particularly interested in Bengal, Assam and Nagaland. Shobha Satyanath is also the editor of AsiaPacific Language Variation. Devyani Sharma is Professor of sociolinguistics at Queen Mary University of London. Her research focuses on dialect variation in postcolonial, diaspora and other Englishes, with an interest in sociolinguistic theory and methods, bilingualism, language contact, typology and syntax. She has developed new methodologies for the study of language variation in relation to social networks, style repertoire and real-time quantitative interactional analysis. Recent publications include Research Methods in Linguistics (2013, co-edited with Robert Podesva). Dick Smakman is Lecturer at Leiden University. His interests include pronunciation choices by speakers and the sociolinguistics of second-language acquisition. With Patrick Heinrich, he edited Globalising Sociolinguistics: Challenging and Expanding Theory. He is currently finishing Discovering Sociolinguistics:

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Contributors

From Theory to Practice (2017), which is a practical course-book that introduces the field and the practicalities of doing sociolinguistic research. Roland Terborg is Associate Professor at the Department of Applied Linguistics, Centre of Foreign Languages at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. His research interests are in sociolinguistics, especially language shift of Mexican indigenous languages. He spent some years working on language death in the Mayan region of Yucatan (Mexico) and is directing a team of scholars researching language endangerment. Among other works, he has edited, together with Laura García Landa, Los retos de la planificación del lenguaje en el siglo XXI [The Challenges of Language Planning in the Twenty-first Century] and Muerte y vitalidad de las lenguas indígenas y las presiones sobre sus hablantes [Death and Vitality of Indigenous Languages, The Pressures experienced by Speakers]. Virna Velázquez is Associate Professor at the School of Languages, National Autonomous University of Mexico. She has published articles and chapters related to the indigenous languages in Mexico. Her reseach interests include sociolinguistics and teaching Spanish as a foreign language. Rika Yamashita (PhD, University of Tokyo) is Lecturer at Kanto Gakuin University (Yokohama, Japan). She is the author of Zainichi pakisutanjin jidō no tagengo shiyō (Multilingualism of Pakistani Children in Japan) (2016) and was awarded the Tokugawa Sōken Award from the Japanese Association of Sociolinguistic Sciences in 2016. She combines ethnography with spoken and written discourse in studying multilingualism, language ideologies, race, ethnicity and gender in Japan. Born to a China-born L1 Chinese speaker, she is a second generation Tokyoite who spent her early childhood in Hawai‘i and her teenage years in the East Midlands, UK.

Acknowledgements

The encouraging reception of our first jointly edited book, Globalising Sociolinguistics: Challenging and Expanding Theory, during a symposium on the very same topic in Leiden in 2015 led us to consider editing a second volume. For us, the working title of this book has always been “Globalising Sociolinguistics II”. However, contrary to the first book, we no longer wanted to simply focus on understudied or overlooked cases, languages or settings but chose to add a thematic subject in order to challenge and expand sociolinguistic theory. The first idea that stuck, and survived, was “language ecology”, and while we were discussing ecologies, we ended up increasingly talking about how language ecologies in the cities we knew had changed during our lifetime. This led to the idea to study language ecologies in the city while keeping the original idea of globalising sociolinguistics. As in our first book, we asked both colleagues we know and those whose work we admired but did not know personally to help us produce this book. Their readiness to engage with us in this publication has been admirable, and it speaks volumes about their passion and readiness to tackle new and complex tasks. Every chapter in this book takes a different approach. Reading these chapters made us aware of the breadth of sociolinguistic research, and we learned a lot along the way of producing this volume. Getting to know new cities, and doing so from a sociolinguistic perspective, has been a real treat for us. We are grateful to everyone who contributed to writing and producing this book. As before, it has been a pleasure planning and realising this book with the staff at Routledge. The most important group of people for any book are, however, its readers. In editing this volume, we always imagined a global readership. Ultimately, the litmus test of globalising sociolinguistics is whether it is seen to be relevant and helpful for sociolinguistic studies around the globe. This book is an attempt to produce a volume that may be read everywhere from Tokyo to Mexico City, from Moscow to São Paulo’s and from Cairo to Sydney. Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich Nijmegen and Venice

1

Introduction Why cities matter for a globalising sociolinguistics Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich

Just as with our first jointly edited book, Globalising Sociolinguistics: Challenging and Expanding Theory (Smakman and Heinrich 2015), the aim of this edited volume is to critically examine and readdress sociolinguistic theory. This time, we seek to achieve this by adapting sociolinguistic theory to the language life of individuals in large urban centers. In doing so, we endeavour to shed light on large urban areas as sociolinguistic systems in their own right, on the range and nature of transformations going on there, and on differences and congruencies among the “world cities” and the “megacities” studied in this book. Language in the city provides for ample opportunity to challenge and expand sociolinguistic theory, which has predominantly drawn from western cases and ethnic groups (Smakman 2015). The city is more diverse than mainstream sociolinguistic theories have portrayed it to be, and big cities feature a larger population than many states and most ethnic groups today. Hence the necessity for purposefully concentrating on the study of urban language life around the world.

From groups and correlations to roles and resources Sociolinguistic research, of which William Labov is generally considered one of the influential instigators, has yielded highly useful explanations for the language use of groups of people who share certain characteristics. Research from communities across the world has, since the 1960s, been shaping our understanding of how people communicate and how characteristics of these speakers can be correlated with their linguistic behaviour. The method of grouping and correlating social and linguistic factors has certainly stood the test of time and will be the basis of future research in the field, with big-data approaches as a natural extension. However, some of the conclusions derived from such correlational research run the unfortunate risk of leading to simplifications. Such generalisations tend to be particularly persistent and are the point of departure of future research. Let us briefly consider some examples before shifting attention to language in the city. A good example is research on the language behaviour of women and men. The notion that women are more likely than men to speak the standard language is one of the most persistent in the field. This idea has spread beyond the boundaries of sociolinguistics although women’s preference for progressive, i.e. not traditionally standard, forms has, for a while, been a recurring conclusion

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in research. Meyerhoff (2011: 231) explains some of the drawbacks of the Labovian approach by looking at gender variation studies. This approach has laid bare correlations but failed to explain them. Traditional, quantitative sociolinguistic research tends to treat gender as an established given and treatable as one of several categories, such as social class, that directly account for variation within a community. This categorical approach is increasingly treated as an oversimplification. As an illustration, Sadiqi (2003) considered it not helpful to look at the category of Moroccan women as one entity in view of diversity within Moroccan society. Bassiouney (2015: 126) extended this argument: “If it is an oversimplification to speak about ‘Moroccan women’, then it is also too simple to speak about ‘North African women’ without acknowledging the diversity in their situations and positions.” One might add that the importance of being a stereotypical woman or man is different for each individual, too. In other words, traditional approaches tend to ignore the social sphere of individuals and the many roles they play in it – as well as their sensitivity to the roles. Some of these roles are constrained by biology or culture, while others are subject to an individual’s choice to abide by certain prescribed or proscribed roles and by that individual’s communicative actions towards making their life a better one. Categorical approaches wipe the motivations of individuals under the carpet together with moment-to-moment choices that they make, which lead to changes in the way they speak. Traditional approaches tend to make efforts to capture such motivations in group-oriented, shared motivations and reduce them to a collective characteristic while individualism in a globalising world is constantly making them more idiosyncratic and diverse and harder to capture as a group characteristic. Critical questions have been asked, and these questions are not recent. As for the gender example mentioned above, Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1992, 1999) asked the question whether the women who lead the change are also the women who are more traditionally following the standard language. If these are different women, then there’s no contradiction, so Meyerhoff (2011: 232) explains. An extra categorisation would then be needed, as would insights into individuals’ motivations to actively or passively condone change or reject it. That approach would complement and sharpen the findings of more standard methodology and draw a broader picture of language variation of individuals in groups. What is needed to expand sociolinguistic theory are, therefore, not descriptions of speech communities and other groups, but of the language choices that individuals make from one speech setting to the next. Language life in the city provides a good starting point to engage in such a direction of sociolinguistic research. In this book, all case studies are set to explore large urban areas as sociolinguistic systems in their own right, and these cases all carry equal theoretical relevance.

Language and the city Sociolinguistically, cities have always been extraordinary places. City people come into daily contact with strangers having different belief systems, behavioral norms, day-to-day rituals and linguistic practices, and they must somehow learn

Introduction: why cities matter 3 “to get along” for the city to function. It is also no exaggeration to say that the language of the city crucially inspired the establishment of US sociolinguistics in the 1960s. Pre-1960s sociolinguistics tended not to focus on urban environments; 19th century research in particular was mainly regionally dialectological. Many dialects and other smaller languages were thoroughly documented, amongst others in China, England and France. These studies tended to aim at laying bare historical patterns and cases of disappearing languages. There were severe limits on how language in the city could be studied before sociolinguistics as a mainstream and globally more coherent field was established (Coulmas 2009), resulting in the practice of ignoring a wide range of language issues in the study of language in these cities. Despite mainstream sociolinguistics having its origin in cities, they were usually lumped together in a continuous system with the rural areas into the sociolinguistically less pertinent unity of the nation state. The urban/rural division within a state actually pertains to a more fundamental distinction, namely that between two worlds, and it is less of a continuum than is often claimed. The destination of national but also international migration, for example, is predominantly the city. Cities may act independently of all kinds of continua, and this necessitates a comparison to other, equivalent international cities. City speakers have often been ignored, or the fact that they live in the city has been considered less important than their original heritage. They have been brushed aside, treated as deviant or as less relevant for accounts of national sociolinguistic systems. This is due to the versatility and fluidity of the language lives of the metropolises, with their high levels of mobility in all kinds of ways, which at times cannot easily be captured in dominant (first and second wave) sociolinguistic theory (cf. Eckert 2012). To add to the issue, sociolinguistic theories were predominantly developed on the basis of case studies conducted in the US, Britain and Western Europe. They thus incorporated influences of European-model nation building ideology in that they studied, for example, speech communities that were typically constituted of people with a shared ethnicity, identity and often locality. Thus, language ideological constructs were informed by the language-ethnicity-identity nexus of the post-Renaissance nation-building period. In hindsight, it is safe to state that such approaches were oversimplifying things even back in the 1960s, and even in Western Europe of today, diversity is no longer “what it used to be” (Vertovec 2007: 1024). The distinction between East, West and other mega-regions is based on the wrong premise that people stay in their corner of the world and should not be considered to partake in diversity when moving to another part of the world. The reality is that citizens from various parts of the world meet in various other parts of the world, especially urban ones, and they belong there. Ideas of ownership, belonging and nativeness relative to one’s native part of the world are changing. In other words, they go to another place but that new place is in a way also their own place, their home. The Dutch band “The Scene” articulated this more than a quarter of a century ago in the title of their song called “Iedereen is van de wereld en de wereld is van iedereen” (Everyone belongs to this world and the world belongs to everyone).

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This feeling of joint ownership was a new phenomenon in 1990, when the song was written. It is now a reality for many. Others are struggling with it and resisting it, but despite these efforts, it irrevocably leads to much (and continuous) intercultural movement of people and adds to the existing movement of people due to conflict. There is more to the resultant diversity than new levels of ethnicities thrown together in large urban spaces. Diversity is, in fact, more diverse than it has been assumed. As an effect, “classical sociolinguistic theory” not only ill-fits non-Western cases, but is also difficult to apply to large urban areas in the Western world today. There exists, in a word, a double bias in the study of language in the city; a “Western” one and a “monolingual national” one in which minorities and migrants “disturb” the dominant language-ethnicityidentity ideology. City lives challenge us to find new theoretical approaches and new research methods to capture what is traditionally called “inter- and intra-speaker language variation” but what is really about individuals “applying” language as a commodity to achieve goals and doing so in different ways in different social and communicative situations, constantly adjusting in both conscious and less conscious ways. The city life of first-, second- and third-generation immigrants (often the majority of the population in a city) stir the individual’s relationship with the heritage language and culture, creating a heightened sensitivity to identity. Language is one of the main outlets of this sensitivity. Special ways of expressing, or reshaping, the old authentic culture and language may be patterned and not random. The ensuing creative language play is one of the triggers of urban youth languages, which should thus be treated as naturally embeddable in a larger sociolinguistic system rather than as new phenomena that infrequently spring from immigrant offspring. The interplay of the global and the local also deserves attention. Global phenomena do not “float” on some abstract global level but are locally anchored. The global is inevitably always also local, and in turn local habits could collectively change global developments (Robertson 1995). Such interplay of global trends and local habits and rules results in new forms and entities and new units of research. Speakers adjust to the new city, bringing with them features that are constantly in the process of being adjusted to the new culture. In return, the city’s existing norms also incorporate these individuals’ linguistic contributions to some extent. In another city, these very same features may change shape and norm formation may route differently. Cities are environments featuring multilingual and linguistically resilient speakers. For a number of individuals, a sense of belonging is first and foremost linked to the city, then to the rest of world, and only after that to the nation state. So-called “third culture individuals” (Useem and Useem 1967; Lyttle, Barker and Cornwell 2011) and “global nomads” (Richards and Wilson 2004; Päivi 2014) are growing in number and are less of an “odd exception” than they used to be. They are also in contact with and influencing other city people. All in all, language life in the city today often looks different from what classical sociolinguistic theory would predict. Walking into a New York store and asking

Introduction: why cities matter 5 people the same question is no longer a safe bet for encountering predictable pronunciations by speakers with predictable backgrounds. Non-mobile speakers, staying their entire lives in their urban home society, are becoming increasingly atypical cases in an ever-growing number of cities. So are speakers who use a fixed and settled language repertoire throughout their lives. Instead, the multilingual speaker, who functionally “plays” with language and uses it as a commodity – most of the time neither as their first language nor in their original home environment – can now no longer be considered an exception. In large cities, in particular, it is increasingly difficult to find non-mobile native speakers of the original local dialect. In fact they are becoming increasingly less relevant and representative for sociolinguistic accounts of the language life in these cities. The traditional sociolinguistic approach of finding the Non-mobile Older Rural Male (Chambers and Trudgill 1980) – who holds the most authentic form of the language and who can then be taken to represent a larger group of speakers, as well as what language used to be like in the olden days – can be replaced by the approach of finding agreement amongst the functionalities of individuals’ languages in a constantly changing urban setting. This means focusing less on linguistic agreement amongst speakers who happen to speak the same language at moments in their daily lives. It also entails not distinguishing primarily on the basis of age, gender, status and other such essentialist labels. Rural and urban settings should be distinguished in sociolinguistic theory, and, in particular, the urban settings need to be theorized in new ways in order to do justice to the fluidity and versatility of speakers, their repertoires and everyday language use. Cities are not filled with an anonymous and homogenous population as nation state ideology would claim, but with diverse and concrete actors struggling to achieve things they deem relevant, while seeking a self-identification they perceive to be rewarding. Language plays a very important role in these activities. Language in the city can be viewed as a set of concrete activities of concrete speakers and listeners, who have distinct repertoires and who relate to each other in various ways. All of this influences how city people communicate with each other – it affects language structures and repertoires. Such a perspective on sociolinguistics is not new and has, in fact, been advocated in Japanese studies on language in society since the 1930s in an approach termed “language life” (gengo seikatsu). Kyōsuke Kindaichi (1933: 35), who coined the term, called for a study of language as part of everyday life: “Our life is a harmonious and comprehensive unity, and just as one can imagine that economic life, religious life, social life, intellectual life, esthetic life, sexual life, etc. can be studied holistically, there exists also the possibility to perceive ‘language life’ as such an abstract phenomenon.” The 12 case studies assembled in this book seek to study situated, everyday interaction in the city. It is not about “numbering” or “mapping” the languages spoken in the city, but about what people are doing with language in urban settings and with what effect. Language diversity is not just a large number of languages, but more crucially also the diversity within and amongst these languages.

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World cities and megacities We draw a distinction between “world cities” and “megacities” in this book – two concepts derived from urban geography. While cities have always been the source of social and linguistic innovation, not all large urban centres are alike. It remains a noteworthy fact that European states were controlling as much as 85% of the world’s territory and its natural resources and peoples in 1914 when World War I broke out. This still affects the economies and societies of the former colonizers and the colonized, and this situation has internationally instilled assumptions as to the linguistic workings of cities, states and of language use therein. In his discussion of city history, Archer (2013) departs from these colonial contexts in order to distinguish between what he calls the “global north” and the “global south”. Global north simply refers to affluent and increasingly post-industrial countries, whereas global south refers to relatively poor and often post-colonial countries. Note here that post-colonial does not necessarily imply being poor today, nor does former colonial power imply that the economy there is mainly post-industrial. Urban geographers stress that the difference between the global north and global south has important ramification with regard to the large cities we find there. To start with, in the global north, we find today so-called “world cities”, that is, the “central places where the work of globalization gets done” (Sassen 2007: 289). They contain many headquarters of powerful firms in the global economy and therefore feature a clustering of expertise in management, finance, legal consultation, knowledge production and the cultural industries. This is pulling new waves of migrants into these cities. At the lower stratum of society, a growing number of people find work in the service sector, often on limited contracts and living in precarious conditions. World cities, in short, exhibit a dualistic social structure (elite and precarious class) with a waning middle class between them (Abrahamson 2014: 135–137). In the post-colonial global south, on the other hand, we find so-called “megacities”, whose economies maintain a neo-colonial relationship in the global economy that is dominated by world cities of the global north. Megacities suffer from acute overurbanization. They have small and gentrified islands in a sea of (very) poor neighborhoods or slums. These cities are witnessing a much faster growth in population. As an effect, 13 of the top 20 most populated cities in the world are located in the global south. Typically, the growth of megacities is not an indication of ongoing economic success. Rather, megacities are primarily growing due to population growth, which results in large parts of the population being economically induced to move from rural areas into the megacities. These cities tend to experience a number of social and environmental problems (pollution, shantytowns, violence), they are located around or near costal ports because production of goods is increasingly being offshored from the north to the south, and they are experiencing internal rural-to-urban migration as well as international outmigration to the global north. As an effect, many megacities exhibit an accruing divide in the social structure and, hence, a stronger degree of social inequality between the (global) elite and the rest of the population.

Introduction: why cities matter 7

The study of language life in urban ecologies It is impossible to comprehensively portray the urban language life of any city. We therefore need to share at least some epistemological ground in order to produce a coherent volume. Fortunately, a number of publications have focused on language in the city in recent years (e.g. Duarte and Gogolin 2013, King and Carson 2016, McLaughlin 2009 and others), and we can build on the insights and the results of these books. A useful concept is, for example, the affix “metro”, which has been used in publications on language in the city in recent years. Maher (2005) talks about “metroethnicity”, that is to say, about new forms of playing with notions of ethnicity – a play crucially involving language. Pennycook and Otsuji (2015) use the term “metrolingualism” to denote new forms of linguistic diversity, which can no longer be studied within traditional sociolinguistic methodology because of the diversity within diversity, making established categories sometimes no longer “fit the data”. Hence, they shift to everyday settings in their relation to urban space, thereby avoiding essentialist categories such as “language”, “multilingualism” or “monolingualism” and replacing them by an ethnographic approach depicting how “things are getting done in urban settings”. “Metrolingualism [. . .] takes up the challenge of understanding everyday multilingualism not through the demolinguistic enumeration of mappable multilingualism but through the study of local language practices” (Pennycook and Otsuji 2015: 49). We expand on such a perspective in our book. In more concrete terms, we stress that three specific issues demand particular attention in the study of urban language life. Firstly, large urban centres feature a linguistic and cultural diversity that has not adequately informed sociolinguistic theory. There is diversity within diversity. Steven Vertovec has, therefore, coined the term “superdiversity”. Superdiversity, Vertovec (2007: 1024) writes, “is distinguished by a dynamic interplay of variables among an increased number of new, small and scattered, multiple-origin, transnationally connected, socio-economically differentiated and legally stratified immigrants who have arrived over the last decade.” The phenomenon Vertovec terms superdiversity, and which is being followed up on in recent European sociolinguistics (e.g. Blommaert 2010, 2013), has, however, existed for a long time outside the European context (Pennycook and Otsuji 2015; Piller 2016). Looking for local non-Western theories of language diversity outside Western settings is therefore much more in place than the application of classical models and theories derived from Western settings. Secondly, the metropolis is no longer simply the whole world in one city, as the term itself suggests. Due to new communication technology and to high levels of transmigration, the metropolis is virtually connected to the entire world the whole time. Transmigration and virtual communities transcending time and space can no longer be treated as some kind of “recent trend”, but must be seen as being constitutive of everyday life and of having a central impact on everyday language life. As a matter of fact, language in these virtual communities may often most closely resemble the classical language-ethnicity-identity nexus, just devoid of its original rationale of time and space.

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Thirdly, the fact than humankind cannot but be social has led to intercultural encounters shaped by ethnocentric worldviews for as long as these intercultural encounters have been studied. Although the unprecedented growth of cities nowadays is sometimes portrayed as unique and unmatched, the sudden expansion of cities in the past showed many parallels. For instance, according to some estimates the population of Amsterdam (70,000) almost doubled after the “Fall of Antwerp” in 1585, and the Leiden population (12,000) more than tripled. The long-term effects on language of this sudden wave of (wealthy) refugees, often with a different religious background, were considerable. Nowadays immigrants and refugees still help to shape the size and nature of cities in waves that are the result of political, religious, economic and other turmoil. These waves may be exceptional in their magnitude and they may upset the local language ecology abruptly. The outcome of interpersonal encounters in cities, now and in the past, has usually been that the most powerful imposed their own values and mores as dominant or common-sensical on everybody else. After all, nation building ideology, with its focus on building a socio-culturally homogenous nation, has only known two ways of dealing with diversity: assimilation or exclusion. Linguistic and cultural accommodation or segregation has been the result of such attitudes. Such parallels notwithstanding, there are also important differences in the city life of the past and the present. The large cities we find across the globe today do not simply feature a new level of cultural diversity and an unprecedented complexity in the formation of communities. Rather, the importance of communities has been waning due to waves of individualisation (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1994). The result of – or the solution to – ever-growing diversity has not simply been a new level of attention towards “assimilation” or “ethnic segregation”, but it has also involved a new level of “individualisation”. In other words, we are witnessing an increasing independence of individuals from their physical socio-cultural environment – a trend enhanced by virtual communities and new communication technology. All in all, rather than trying to capture contemporary sociolinguistic situations in large urban settings (exclusively) along established sociolinguistic categories, such as “domain”, “policy”, “speech community”, “H or L code”, etc., we shift attention to the study of the situated language life as it is found in large urban ecologies in this book. We argue that present-day large urban centers constitute a type of sociolinguistic setting that we purposefully need to readdress and explore anew. Large cities are characterized by language diversification through in-migration and efforts of language maintenance through heritage language education and language revitalization. They feature pluricentric languages and language nativisation, novel forms of contact, competition and functional compartmentalisation of languages, exaptation of infrastructures and communication technologies, new communicative needs, and new solutions to meet these (Wendel and Heinrich 2012: 157–158). Language lives in large cities are the upshot of processes such as global management, production and finance, global communication networks and infrastructures, new media, changes in migration patterns, and the emergence

Introduction: why cities matter 9 of a “new kinetic elite” at home in megacities and world cities around the world. Virtual language contact and communities allow smaller and weaker languages to circumvent competition with dominant languages and international lingua francas (Eisenlohr 2004). One major effect of this is not simply a novel level of multilingualism but a widely spread ease of languaging and of handling the various parts that constitute the “language pool” from which city people are drawing in their interactions. According to Nettle, the linguistic pool is an abstract entity analogous to the human gene pool. It contains all the different bits of linguistic structure that are found in human languages. The atomic elements in the pool, then, are not languages but linguistic items [. . .]. A linguistic item is any piece of structure that can be independently learned and therefore transmitted from one speaker to another, or from one language to another. (Nettle 1999: 5) We want to take a fresh start by studying urban language life around the world with this book. In studying situated language life in 12 urban ecologies, we seek to shed light on world cities and megacities as sociolinguistic systems in their own right, the range and nature of transformations going on there, differences and congruencies between the world cities and megacities studied in this book and, last but not least, the lessons to be learned from these case studies for sociolinguistic theory making.

Outlook To sum up, studying sociolinguistics in the city necessitates a move away from the traditional approach of the “sociolinguistics of distribution”, where languages, speakers, social class, etc. are both well defined and permanently fixed. The aspects of mobility, context and access to resources of various kinds move into the center of attention (Blommaert 2010). Such a point of departure requires also that language needs to be “disinvented”, that is to say, dominant language ideologies based on monolingual and Western experiences need to be questioned and expanded in a way to capture the flexible boundaries, transgressions and creative use of language (Makoni and Pennycook 2007). Methodological nationalism – that is, the nation state as the principle frame underlying all social sciences – results in a view that any kind of plurality is seen to constitute “disorder”. Studying sociolinguistics in the city must come to terms with issues of plurality, variation, contingency and ambivalence in a systematic and functional way. The issue of language in the city is discussed on a large canvas, but it is done so purposefully. Departing from Kindaichi’s basic idea of language life, we understand that language is but one facet of city life. It is thus necessary to discuss language in its broad relation with urban ecology. With good reasons, the city is studied by people from many different branches of learning – scholars of film and literature, sociologists, historians, educators, economists, architects, urban

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geographers, etc., and it is necessary to include some of their perspectives and results in our own studies. At the end of the day, the litmus test for the success of this book and for a new wave of city sociolinguistics will be whether or not our accounts of the city will be reflected in their future work.

References Abrahamson, Mark (2014) Urban Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archer, Kevin (2013) The City. The Basics. London: Routledge. Bassiouney, Reem (2015) Gender in a North African Setting. A Sociolinguistic Overview. In: Globalising Sociolinguistics. Challenging and Expanding Theory. Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich (eds), 123–36. London: Routledge. Beck, Ulrich and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim (1994) Riskante Freiheiten. Gesellschaftliche Individualisierungsprozesse in der Moderne. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Blommaert, Jan (2010) The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——— (2013) Ethnography, Superdiversity, and Linguistic Landscapes. Chronicles of Complexity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Chambers, Jack and Peter Trudgill (1980) Dialectology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coulmas, Florian (2009) Linguistic Landscaping and the Seed of the Public Sphere. In: Linguistic Landscape. Expanding the Scenery. Elana Shohamy and Durk Gorter (eds), 13–24. London: Routledge. Duarte, Joana and Ingrid Gogolin (eds) (2013) Linguistic Superdiversity in Urban Areas. Research Approaches. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Eckert, Penelope (2012) Three Waves of Variation Study. The Emergence of Meaning in the Study of Sociolinguistic Variation. Annual Review of Linguistic Anthropology 41: 87–100. Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConnell-Ginet (1992) Think Practically and Look Locally. Language and Gender as Community-Based Practice. Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 461–90. ——— (1999) New Generalizations and Explanations in Language and Gender Research. Language in Society 28(2): 185–202. Eisenlohr, Patrick (2004) Language Revitalization and New Technologies. Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 21–45. Kindaichi, Kyōsuke (1933) Gengo kenkyū. Tokyo: Kawade Shobō. King, Lid and Lorna Carson (eds) (2016) The Multilingual City. Vitality, Conflict and Change. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Lyttle, Allyn D., Gina G. Barker and Terri Lynn Cornwell (2011) Adept Through Adaptation. “Third Culture Individuals” Interpersonal Sensitivity. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 35(5): 686–94. McLaughlin, Fiona (ed.) (2009) The Languages of Urban Africa. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Maher, John C. (2005) Metroethnicity, Language, and the Principle of Cool. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 175/176: 83–102. Makoni, Sinfree and Alastair Pennycook (eds) (2007) Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Introduction: why cities matter 11 Meyerhoff, Miriam (2011) Introducing Sociolinguistics (second edition). London: Routledge. Nettle, David (1999) Linguistic Diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Päivi, Kannisto (2014) Global Nomads. Challenges of Mobility in the Sedentary World. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press. Pennycook, Alastair and Emi Otsuji (2015) Metrolingualism. Language in the City. London: Routledge. Piller, Ingrid (2016) Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Richards, Greg and Julie Wilson (eds) (2004) The Global Nomad. Backpacker Travel in Theory and Practice. Clevedon: Channel View Publications. Robertson, Roland (1995) Glocalization. Time-space and Homogeneity-heterogeneity. In: Global Modernities. Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash and Roland Robertson (eds), 25–44. London: Sage. Sadiqi, Fatima (2003) Women, Gender and Language in Morocco. Leiden: Brill. Sassen, Saskia (2007) Theoretical and Empirical Elements in the Study of Globalization. In: Frontiers of Globalization Research. Ino Rossi (ed.), 287–306. New York: Springer. Smakman, Dick (2015) The Westernising Mechanism in Sociolinguistics. In: Globalising Sociolinguistics. Challenging and Expanding Theory. Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich (eds), 16–35. London: Routledge. Smakman, Dick and Patrick Heinrich (eds) (2015) Globalising Sociolinguistics. Challenging and Expanding Theory. London: Rutledge. Useem, John and Ruth Useem (1967) The Interfaces of a Binational Third Culture. A Study of the American Community in India. Journal of Social Issues 23(1): 130–43. Vertovec, Steven (2007) Super-Diversity and Its Implications. Ethnical and Racial Studies 30(6): 1024–54. Wendel, John and Patrick Heinrich (2012) A Framework for Language Endangerment Dynamics. The Effects of Contact and Social Change on Language Ecologies and Language Diversity. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 212: 145–66.

2

Urbanisation and linguistic multitude Florian Coulmas

A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every breathing heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

Urban sociolinguistics? That sounds a bit like “prepaid in advance” or a “morning sunrise”, a song Bernard Shaw’s Eliza Doolittle, patron saint of sociolinguistics, might have sung – a tautology. Sociolinguistics is and has always been essentially urban. Like one of its parent disciplines, sociology, it came into existence in, and for the analysis of, industrial urban society. Those intending to understand the multiformity of language in modern society had to come to grips with the new insight that geographic space was no longer, as for dialectologists it used to be, the most conspicuous and meaningful dimension of diversity because untold linguistic variety, variation and mixture were present in the tiny expanse of the city. Yet, when Eliza Doolittle, a poor Cockney girl selling flowers at a London street corner, “learnt to speak like a lady”, urbanisation had only just become an object of scholarly attention.1 That was early in the twentieth century.

Urbanisation: beginnings in Europe There were cities in ancient times, to be sure; especially China had big cities long before modern times; and Memphis, Athens and Rome, too, were metropolises in antiquity. In the waning years of feudalism in Japan in the nineteenth century, Edo (Tokyo) had a population of one million and may have been the largest city in the world. However, as a major historical tendency, urbanisation did not begin to occur until the Industrial Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. Before that, humans had been, for the most part, rural dwellers. In 1800, only 3% of the world population lived in cities (Poston and Bouvier 2010: 309), and in Europe there was only one city of more than one million inhabitants – London. On the eve of World War I, there were 12 such cities and the level of urbanisation in Europe had reached 34% (Bairoch and Goertz 1986). The United Kingdom, where industrialization

Urbanisation and linguistic multitude 13 began, was at the forefront. The first half of the twentieth century saw a huge increase of big cities in the developed countries of the northern hemisphere where people migrated from the countryside to urban centres.2 In the rest of the world, the people continued to live in rural areas. In 1950, more than 70% of the world population was rural. Urbanisation is associated with economic development in complex ways. Countries urbanise when they develop, and urban centres stimulate economic growth. Three minimal conditions of urbanisation are the following: (1) agricultural surplus to feed the city; (2) networks and means of transportation to carry agricultural products to the city; and (3) technological means to store and process agricultural products (mills and factories), which also create work opportunities for more people who, in turn, must be fed. Ideally, this cycle of concentrating goods, people and services drives economic development. As a by-product, the drift to urban centres lead to the emergence of metropolitan dialects that, because of the wealth accumulated there, gained prestige and with it more speakers. There is a strong correlation between social wealth and urbanisation even nowadays (Henderson 2010). If we put into one list the 15 most urbanised countries where more than 80% of inhabitants live in towns and cities and the 15 least urbanised countries where the corresponding cipher is below 30%, we are looking, more or less, at the economically richest and poorest countries in terms of per capita GDP (Table 2.1). There are some outliers, such as rural Liechtenstein, which is very high income, but only 14.4% urban and, at the other extreme, urbanised western Sahara, one of the poorest countries of the world, ranking 184 of 228 in terms of per capita GDP (Indexmundi.com), where 91% of the inhabitants live in cities and Table 2.1 The 15 most and least urbanised countries, 2010 More than 80% urban population

Less than 30% urban population

Singapore USA Canada Netherlands Finland Sweden Denmark Luxembourg Belgium France Israel New Zealand Australia Japan South Korea

Chad Eritrea Burkina Faso Tanzania Uganda Malawi Rwanda Ethiopia Niger Cambodia Bangladesh Afghanistan Tajikistan Papua New Guinea Guyana

Source: UN Population Division (2014)

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towns. Until very recently urbanisation was a good predictor of development and wealth. For urbanisation goes hand-in-hand with other demographic transformations, notably lower fertility, longer life expectancy and population ageing, and greater geographic mobility (to which we will return below). Also associated with city life are higher levels of literacy and education, better health care and more varied life chances. In many big cities of developing countries, these advantages are not distributed equitably, in any event much less so than in developed countries. Unhealthy housing conditions, pollution, environmental degradation, deficient infrastructure, unemployment and rampant poverty are characteristic features of these urban agglomerations.

Urban sprawl in the developing world In the developing world, urbanisation has accelerated dramatically since the 1950s (World Bank 2009). The world at large has been becoming more urbanised, while, on the other hand, the wealth discrepancies between northern and southern countries remain unchanged, or even increase. Growth of urban centres in Asia and Africa was driven by different factors than in Europe. In the nineteenth century, European cities grew primarily by building new industries that attracted migrants from rural areas. But in the early decades of industrialisation, mortality rates did not fall. City life was smoky, dirty and afflicted by contagious disease. Living conditions were so dire that in the early phase of urbanising Britain life expectancy actually declined (Halliday 1999). The effects of in-migration on urban growth were thus moderated. In developing countries, urbanisation set in much later but happened much faster and without replicating the course of development of early industrialisers – Western Europe and North America. In the event, the epidemiological transition (diminishing mortality rates) of the twentieth century coupled with the effects of rural exodus led to the appearance of “mushrooming cities” like Karachi, Lagos and Manila located in poor countries that, so far, have not been able to reap full economic benefits of urbanisation. Rather, “urbanisation of poverty” (Jedwab, Christiaensen and Gindelsky 2014) is the result. Slums, shantytowns and favelas proliferated. According to estimates by the United Nations, 54% of the world population in 2014 was urban, while the urbanisation rate is expected to rise further to reach 66% by mid-century. Population growth and continuing urbanisation are projected to add 2.5 billion people to the world’s urban population, 90% of them in Asia and Africa (UN Population Division 2014). Urbanisation in the modern sense of the world began in Europe, and until the middle of the twentieth century, most of the world’s urban centres were located in the northern hemisphere. Meanwhile, 28 megacities with populations in excess of 10 million have come into existence. With almost 38 million inhabitants in the greater metropolitan area, Tokyo is the world’s largest city. What the list of the 15 most populous cities of the world reveals at a glance is that not a single one of them is in Europe (Table 2.2). Expanding cities are overwhelmingly in Asia. China alone has more than 40 cities of more than one million inhabitants.3

Urbanisation and linguistic multitude 15 Table 2.2 The 15 most populous urban agglomerations of the world City

Population

Continent

Tokyo, Japan Jakarta, Indonesia Seoul, South Korea Delhi, India Shanghai, China Manila, Philippines Karachi, Pakistan New York, USA São Paulo, Brazil Mumbai, India Mexico City, Mexico Cairo, Egypt Beijing, China Osaka, Japan Guangzhou, China

37 million 26 million 22 million 22 million 21 million 21 million 21 million 20 million 20 million 20 million 19 million 18 million 17 million 17 million 17 million

Asia Asia Asia Asia Asia Asia Asia North America South America Asia Central America Africa Asia Asia Asia

Source: ONADA, Worldatlas www.worldatlas.com/citypops.htm Note: Numbers shown include population within the recognized metro area of the city, and they also include people living in the immediate surrounding area outside of the administrative border of the city

In the light of the above brief historical sketch of urbanisation and the numbers cited, it stands to reason to conceive of a city not as an object, but as a project or a process. It is incessantly evolving. While urban sprawl continues in Asia and Africa, cities in the northern hemisphere also evolve, being as they are part of a global system that has not only capital, goods and services circulate around the globe but people as well.

Migration and language Since 1990, the number of international migrants moving to advanced countries has increased by some 53 million (OECD and UN-DESA 2013). At the same time, human traffic between northern-hemisphere countries and from northern to southern countries has also intensified. Many countries, including rich Western European countries, are now both immigrant and emigrant countries (Bauman 2013). The flow of migrant labour has changed direction repeatedly, but the overall volume has grown. For instance, Italy was for over a century a labour export country, but in the 1970s began to receive immigrant flows from the southern hemisphere and later from Eastern Europe (Bonifazi, Heins, Strozza and Vitiello 2009). Similarly, Japan began to import labour in the 1980s, but was an exporter of labour before (Goodman, Peach, Takenaka and White 2003). Germany has attracted migrant labour from abroad since the 1960s and continues to do so, while in recent decades the number of German citizens who emigrate has steadily

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grown, turning Germany into a net-emigration country (SSIM 2015). As a result of these and similar developments, the diversity of styles of human existence has intensified and been brought home from the periphery of the colonial and postcolonial developing world to the metropolitan centres of consolidated Western nation states (Modood 2013). Migration is a disruptive experience for the migrants and may involve complex problems for the destination countries. In Western Europe it has changed metropolitan environments out of recognition, giving rise to the notion of “superdiversity” (Vertovec 2007). This concept refers to cities, for it is in urban environments that the multiplicity of lifestyles, ethnicities, religions and languages brought about by international migration is most pronounced. The growth of European towns from medieval to modern times was slow and carefully controlled to protect a measure of homogeneity; for example by merchant and craft guilds that shielded their business against outsiders. Meanwhile, the city walls, which also served to supervise and limit entry, have long disappeared. Today migrants acquire residence permits not for a town, but for a nation state, and they settle where there is work and where their equals are, in towns and cities. Today even many mid-sized European cities are home to dozens of communities and ethnicities. As part of the pressures of globalisation marked by far-reaching economic and technological changes, the resulting difficulties of organising the coexistence of different national and language groups have become a major issue for city administrations. It has become ever more difficult to fully control migration flows, both international and domestic ones. China, the most populous country on earth, experiences unprecedented internal labour migration leading to the expansion of existing and the coming into existence of new cities. Tens of millions of migrant workers from rural areas are moving temporarily or permanently to more highly industrialised urban settlements in the east and at the coast. India has 25 of the 100 fastestgrowing cities worldwide – Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkata being already among the world’s top 20 most populous urban areas. In Japan, while the total population is shrinking, people from rural areas continue to migrate to the three metropolitan centres: Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. At the same time, the flow of south-to-north migration keeps changing the face of cities in Europe and North America. The number of undocumented migrants has been on the rise for decades with several unwelcome effects. Lacking proper papers, they are not recognised by the authorities and, living in the shadow, cannot usually obtain a work permit. As a result, they have to accept the lowest paying jobs and often work in precarious conditions earning hardly enough to sustain themselves. One of the outcomes is a new pattern of social stratification that interacts with ethnic segregation in many European cities (Fenton and Bradley 2002), a tendency familiar from American ghettos and barrios where African-Americans and Hispanics have long been overrepresented on the lower rungs of the social ladder (Mingione 1996). Residential segregation in American cities is not just about Blacks and Hispanic; Asian residents, too, have a tendency to self-segregate into their own cities and towns. “White flight”, the fleeing of white residents from the inner cities to the suburbs, has been observed since the middle of the twentieth

Urbanisation and linguistic multitude 17 century, and the geographic separation of racial groups still shows no signs of abating (Lichter, Parisi and Taquino 2015). In conjunction with continuing in-migration, similar patterns of residential segregation become visible in European cities (Bolt 2009). Brussels, where foreignborn inhabitants account officially for 46%, has 13% of Moroccans, most of whom cluster in the district of Molenbeek. In Milan, with an estimated one-fifth foreign population, among which some 30,000 Chinese, the north-eastern part of the city is becoming known as Chinatown; much like Little-Istanbul (Klein-Istanbul), nickname of Berlin Kreuzberg, which officially recognises a 39% population with a migration background. Barcelona has been the destination of a huge influx of migrants from South America in recent years that now compete with Chinese and Pakistani labourers. Similar stories could be told about almost any sizeable city in Western Europe.4 These are stories about high and low, about Geneva, Zurich and Vienna where international organisations attract many high-income expats, and about Duisburg, Marseille and Naples where destitute men and women form Asian and African countries have drifted in search of a better life. Migration to urban areas continues everywhere and, in many cities, now plays a more important role in population development than birth and death rates. In the Americas, the urbanisation level of the entire population is above 80%, and Europe follows suit with some 75%. Asia (47%) and Africa (40%) are catching up fast and will turn the rural majority into a minority before long (Statista 2015).

Sociolinguistics in the early decades of the twenty-first century So, where would sociolinguists look for work? In the wake of the great population shift described above, even their ethnographer colleagues migrated to the cities, from the rainforest of Mato Grosso and the coral gardens of the Trobriand Islands to Paris banlieues and London’s western boroughs of Harrow and Hounslow. There, in the concrete jungle, they uncover the magic of the tribes of their choice and on occasion run into a brave sociologist studying the ethnification of social class. Boundaries blur as the fashions of the mind in these “liquid times” (Bauman 2007) license much mixing and cross-fertilisation of scientific disciplines, leaving ample space for sociolinguists to do their research. Unlike Professor Higgins, however, a hundred years on today’s sociolinguist in London may not dwell on how a flower girl can be made to speak like a lady, but rather try to determine the variable that betrays the Punjabi influence on a white youngster’s speech. Or she may wonder what it took for a Sri Lanka-born man who went to school in Ghana to speak BBC English and become a BBC news presenter in London. And to go with the tide, she may ask herself whether it is at all politically correct to ask such a question. In other words, London isn’t what it used to be, nor is Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam or any other European city for that matter. Therefore, that “urban sociolinguistics” is a tautology by no means implies that the qualification is meaningless. Like all social sciences, sociolinguistics commenced in industrialised countries

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and – this can well be put in causal terms – it did so because urbanisation was most advanced there. Notwithstanding early attempts at coming to grips with the complex relationships between language and society in other parts of the world, which I have discussed elsewhere (Coulmas 2016), sociolinguistics as we know it today is unthinkable without the linguistic differentiation observed in early studies of European and American cities. Basil Bernstein’s (1971) construct of restricted and elaborated codes was as much about social class as a determiner of speech patterns in urban environments as William Labov’s (1972) classic study Language in the Inner City, Peter Trudgill’s (1974) research in Norwich, Joshua Fishman’s exploration of Bilingualism in the Barrio (Fishman, Cooper and Ma 1968), Walt Wolfram’s (1969) description of “Detroit Negro Speech” and Monica Heller’s (1982) investigation of language choice in Montreal, among many others. However, there are more cities today, and those that have been there for a long time have changed and acquired new dimensions in quantity and quality. When we look at satellite pictures of the continents at night or at the world map, we know where sociolinguists do their fieldwork – where the lights are, as they did when there were no such pictures. But when there were no satellite pictures, there were no text messages, no emails, no chatrooms or any form of computer mediated communication (CMC) either; not even in the cities. CMC itself, it is worth noting, has for many years been mostly an urban phenomenon. For the diffusion of the Internet began in large cities, advancing from there to smaller cities and eventually to rural areas (Moss and Townsend 2000). It has not turned the world into a village. Dense populations generate more and more diverse interaction and hence greater chances for the adoption of everything that is new at an ever-increasing pace. This is quintessentially urbanism (Simmel 1903), rather than the tranquillity of small towns or rural life. Above all, CMC contributes to the diversification of communicative practices today, adding to the complexity of language in the city – and thus sociolinguists’ concerns. It is to the effects of migration, new communications technologies and global economic developments on cities that present-day sociolinguists must turn their attention, for they cannot but underwrite what economic geographers have known for a long time, “cities are communication systems” (Abler 1970: 11). To what extent “system” applied to the assembly of languages in the city is to be understood literally – like urban transport, as a set of interdependent accommodating components – is one of the general questions they should answer, or to put it more modestly, to whose elucidation they ought to contribute. Answers are not as obvious as common sense might suggest. Diversity and systems It is tempting to look at today’s superdiverse cities as a “world society” (Luhmann 1982) writ small. But do we really understand how urbanisation and globalisation interact and what both imply for sociolinguistic arrangements of who says (writes) what to whom, where, how and why? To be sure, the metropolis brings together people with very different backgrounds, habits, languages and communicative practices.

Urbanisation and linguistic multitude 19 Do they form new amalgams? Easier than answering this question affirmatively is it to see that migrants change the world because, drawn to the centres of wealth, they “demonstrate commonality by crossing and thus partially undermining every geographical barrier” (Hardt and Negri 2004: 134, emphasis added). But other barriers are not necessarily suspended in the process. Notably, the language barrier is a fact of life, as almost every migrant knows. Much attention has been directed at codeswitching, semispeakers, heteroglossia, translanguaging, crossing and similar practices that defy traditional categories of description and analysis (García and Li 2014). As boundaries shift, communities emerge and dissolve again, and the “things” taken for granted by former generations of linguists and social scientists – such as languages and ethnolinguistic groups – vanish like sand between the fingers, the multicultural discourse (which again is principally about urban life in Western societies) seeks refuge with renouncing essentialism and integrating everything into an overarching theoretical framework from words and grammatical structures, paralinguistic gestures, contextualisation of communicative acts, symbolic expression and ideologies of language to the worldwide appeal of Hip-Hop (e.g., Blommaert and Rampton 2011). But not so fast, not so fast! Admirable as these attempts at coming to terms with the reality of superdiversity are, the babies called “language” and “ethnic group” – although they never stop transforming themselves – should not be thrown out with the bathwater of theoretical over-rigidity. Because we have unpacked the ideological nature of national languages does not mean languages, and with them language barriers, do not continue to exist. The metropolis of today is a great bazaar of people of any kind of race, faith, language and political views, but if it is a microcosm of the world system, it is not, as stated above, a village, nor is it a melting pot. In the context of this great multitude, a strong tendency persists of people to associate with their “own group” rather than with others, although this does not preclude the possibility of redefining one’s own group and changing allegiance (Sen 2007). Empirical research on both physical migration (Lichter et al. 2015; Bolt 2009) and cyberspace wandering (Zuckerman 2013) has demonstrated that – massive population shifts, globalisation and the (largely) borderless Internet notwithstanding – the orientation of the inhabitants of these geographic and virtual spaces is overwhelmingly local, even parochial. The astounding linguistic diversity in the mediascape (Danet and Herring 2007) and the novel language contact-engendered phenomena of the metropolis are fascinating and, to some extent, pose challenges to established theoretical assumptions about language. But they do not overturn or relativise the general idea of the sociolinguistic enterprise that language is indexed to social categories, serves as a marker of social identity, however defined, and can, in principle if not always in fact, be chosen to this end. Of course, sociolinguistics has to be sensitive to social change, but that is nothing new.

Cityscapes and language The social changes we observe today are driven, for the most part, by demographic shifts and technology. In line with the developments discussed above – growth of cities propelled by migration and diffusion of CMC – the spectrum of languages

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and varieties that come into play has broadened, most visibly in urban environments. Visible it is, indeed, opening up an entirely new subfield of sociolinguistic inquiry: the linguistic landscape (LL). Not to belittle the significance of signage and sometimes very acrimonious conflicts about bilingual road signs in the countryside (cf. Rubdy and Ben Said 2015), but the lion’s share of LL research done so far is about cityscapes (Landry and Bourhis 1997; Backhaus 2007; Shohamy and Gorter 2009), and understandably so. LL refers to texts displayed in public space, which like the “floor” of a conversation is “not neutral but rather a negotiated and contested arena” (Shohamy and Waksman 2009: 314). Whether to tolerate public display of Chinese in Jakarta, Korean in Tokyo or Russian in Tallinn is a matter of power, of acknowledging or denying the existence of a linguistic minority; and whether or not to contest the authorities’ decision is a matter of that minority’s disposition, its strength and the value it attaches to its language. In any event, the structuring of the linguistic cityscape warrants careful analysis of the cultural and socio-political forces acting on its formation. One of the lasting lessons of sociolinguistics is that, in a given space/polity/ society, languages and varieties rarely coexist on equal terms. LL research has reconfirmed this ever since students of writing have been granted, if hesitantly, a place at the table of scholarly discussion about language and society (Sebba 2007; Coulmas 2013). The advent of CMC has made the sociolinguistic investigation of writing an irrefutable desideratum. The display of text in regulated spaces, nationalism, legitimacy, discrimination, language contact and competition, variation, deviation, destandardisation, minority language speakers’ networks and CMC as a means of support for lesser-used languages are just some of the wider topics to be empirically examined and made the object of a comprehensive theory of the social existence of language.

Weakening linguistic standards In one of the few books on sociolinguistic theory building, Chambers (1995) dismisses the status of co-existent languages and the choice of languages as “codes” in multilingual societies as “largely sociological in importance” and, hence, outside the core area of sociolinguistic theory. Bilingualism, codeswitching, diglossia, etc. are to him topics that “tail off into linguistically extrinsic matters” (Chambers 1995: 10). This view is predicated on the assumption that languages are separate systems that can be delimited clearly and unequivocally. Had we followed this lead, sociolinguistics would today be a narrow field largely concerned with the quality of Eliza Doolittle’s vowels, while leaving the various manifestations of language contact mentioned above to – well, to whom? Sociologists, political scientists or cultural psychologists do not seem to be inclined to take issue with these matters. To them, there is no question that languages exist. Granted, languages do exist, but sociolinguists have learnt from observing language behaviour in urban settings that their speakers make use of them in their own ways, using them as parts of their linguistic repertoires without asking permission before transgressing any boundaries, real or imagined.

Urbanisation and linguistic multitude 21 The increase of urban multilingualism and the provision in many European countries of mother-tongue education to immigrant minorities notwithstanding, the privileged position of the national languages has hardly been called into question in these countries and, as such, dominates the conceptualisation of language in the social sciences. Indeed, the national language proves to be one of the most enduring features of the nation state. While this is usually portrayed as a matter of practicality, it also testifies to the highly ideological conceptualisation of language in Europe (and derived from there, in other parts of the world). It so happens that this bounded idea of language coincides with that of grammar teaching and, ironically, with that of variationist sociolinguistics. However, a language conceived of as an autonomous, hermetic system isolated from other such systems and following, as if controlled by natural laws, its proper lines of variation and evolution is an abstraction that can, and in the past did, help to erect the fences that supposedly existed and thus separate “natural” languages one from another. But “these fences, it cannot be emphasised enough, are artificial” (van der Horst 2009: 148). This conception, therefore, does little to illuminate the co-existence, intermingling, manipulation and mutual impact of languages in the city and their selective processing in its inhabitants’ heads. Sociolinguists have not been very successful in communicating to other social scientists that named languages – French, Japanese, Greek – rather than being natural species are constructs that constantly gain and lose speakers with various degrees of proficiency and, in the process, are adapted by them to their current communication needs. In today’s evolving cities that are home or stopover to so many migrants and Internet nomads in the globalising world, this constant giveand-take is accelerating, much like the spread of viruses, which provided the metaphor to describe the sudden and rapid diffusion of texts and pictures through the Internet. The IT revolution is still too young to measure its influence on the pace of language change, but it would be careless to assume that there is none. Rather, since continuing urbanisation and CMC both make for speeding up the pace of everyday life, their combined effects on language change are a worthy object of sociolinguistic research. Who – which groups of speakers – and what – which institutions and technologies – are in this day and age the drivers of linguistic change? What are the effects of superdiversity on norm-orientation? Are the superdiverse cities today the places from where the destandardisation of national languages unfolds? Do population movements and technological innovations make language change accelerate? Are these two, as argued in this paper, the main forces that change the dynamic interaction of structure and agency in the multilingual city of today? If these are reasonable questions to ask, then “urban sociolinguistics” may be a tautology, but it is a meaningful one.

Conclusion As a field of study, urban sociolinguistics cannot but put multilingualism in all its shapes and appearances centre stage. In this chapter, I have argued that this must be because what speakers do with language to suit their communicative

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needs happens in the city, whose inhabitants increasingly rely on CMC. Fed by on-going migration flows, many a big city, notably in Europe, has been transformed in the course of the past half century from reference point of a dominant national language into a linguatope of increasing diversity whose inhabitants keep getting used to and producing ever new speech forms drawing from the linguistic resources available in their physical and media environment. Sociolinguistics always has been and continues to be about inequality, but the relevant parameters of inequality nowadays are not the same as when urbanisation began in earnest. They have to do with new hierarchies of languages and the influence of south-to-north migration and technology on life and communication in the city.

Notes 1 Actually, she didn’t sing about the morning sunrise, but about ðə ræɪn ɪn spæɪn and then, after being instructed by Professor Henry Higgins, a phonetician, about ðə reɪn ɪn speɪn. Eiza Doolittle and Professor Henry Higgins are the main characters of Shaw’s play “Pygmalion”, which was first performed in 1913. In it, Higgins bets his friend that he can make the Cockney girl, who utters horrible sounds “like a bilious pigeon”, pass as a lady. And he won his bet. The song about the rain in Spain was added when, in 1938, a film was made of the play. 2 There is no uniform global definition of what constitutes an urban settlement. The publications of the United Nations Population Division on which this paper largely relies, use, for the most part, national census statistics. There is much variation across countries in this regard, as acknowledged by the UN: “No attempt is made to impose consistency in definitions across countries” (UN Population Division 2014). 3 Three different definitions of “city” are commonly used in China referring to administrative unit, built up area and urban area. In terms of population they are not always congruent. However, for the purpose at hand of illustrating the extent of urbanization in China, we can dispense with more precise data. 4 See, for instance, the Intercultural Cities Index, a programme of the Council of Europe designed “to help [cities] to manage diversity positively and realise the diversity advantage.”

References Abler, Ronald (1970) What Makes Cities Important. Bell Telephone Magazine 49: 10–15. Backhaus, Peter (2007) Linguistic Landscapes. A Comparative Study of Urban Multilingualism in Tokyo. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Bairoch, Paul and Gary Goertz (1986) Factors of Urbanisation in the Nineteenth Century Developed Countries. Urban Studies 23: 285–305. Bauman, Zygmunt (2007) Liquid Times. Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bauman, Zygmunt (2013) Migration and Identities in the Globalized World. Reset Dialogues on Civilizations. Online available at: www.resetdoc.org/story/00000022240 (accessed 19 October 2016). Bernstein, Basil (1971) Class, Codes and Control (volume 1). London: Paladin. Blommaert, Jan and Ben Rampton (2011) Language and Superdiversity. Diversities 13(2): 1–21.

Urbanisation and linguistic multitude 23 Bolt, Gideon (2009) Combating Residential Segregation of Ethnic Minorities in European Cities. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 24: 397–405. Bonifazi, C., F. Heins, S. Strozza and M. Vitiello (2009) The Italian Transition from an Emigration to Immigration Country. IDEA Working Paper 5. Online available at: www. idea6fp.uw.edu.pl/pliki/WP5_Italy.pdf (accessed 19 October 2016). Chambers, J. K. (1995) Sociolinguistic Theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Coulmas, Florian (2013) Writing and Society. An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——— (2016) Language and Society: Historical Overview and Emergence of a Field of Study. In: Oxford Handbook of Language and Society. Ofelia Garcia, Nelson Flores and Max Spotti (eds), 17–34. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Danet, Brenda and Susan C. Herring (2007) The Multilingual Internet. Language, Culture, and Communication Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fenton, Steven and Harriet Bradley (eds) (2002) Ethnicity and Economy. “Race and Class” Revisited. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Fishman, Joshua A., Robert L. Cooper and Rozanna Ma (1968) Bilingualism in the Barrio. New York: Yeshiva University. García, Ofelia and Li Wei (2014) Translanguaging. Language, Bilingualism and Education. Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan. Goodman, Roger, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White (2003) The Experience of Japan’s New Migrants. In: Global Japan. Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White (eds), 1–20. London: RoutledgeCurzon. Halliday, Stephen (1999) The Great Stink of London. Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Capital. Phoenix Mill: Sutton. Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri (2004) Multitude. War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin Books. Heller, Monica (1982) Negotiations of Language Choice in Montreal. In: Language and Social Identity. John Gumperz (ed.), 108–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Henderson, J. Vernon (2010) Cities and Development. Journal of Regional Science 50(1): 515–40. Jedwab, Remi, Luc Christiaensen and Marina Gindelsky (2014) Demography, Urbanisation and Development: Rural Push, Urban Pull and . . . Urban Push? NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management Working Paper 15. Online available at: http://marroninstitute. nyu.edu/uploads/content/Demography,_Urbanisation_and_Development_Remi_ Jedwab.pdf (accessed 19 October 2016). Labov, William (1972) Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia University Press. Landry, Rodrigue and Richard Bourhis (1997) Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality. an Empirical Study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 12(1): 23–39. Lichter, Daniel T., Domenico Parisi and Michael C. Taquino (2015) Toward a New MacroSegregation? Decomposing Segregation Within and Between Metropolitan Cities and Suburbs. American Sociological Review 80: 843–73. Luhmann, Niklas (1982) The World Society as a Social System. International Journal of General Systems 8(3): 131–8. Mingione, Enzo (1996) Urban Poverty and the Underclass. A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Modood, Tariq (2013) Multiculturalism (second edition). Cambridge: Polity Press. Moss, Mitchell and Anthony Townsend (2000) The Role of the Real City in Cyberspace. In: Information, Place, and Cyberspace Issues in Accessibility. Donald G. Janelle and David C. Hodge (eds), 171–86. Berlin: Springer.

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OECD and UN-DESA (2013) World Migration in Figures. Online available at: www.oecd. org/els/mig/World-Migration-in-Figures.pdf (accessed 19 October 2016). Poston, Dudley L. and Leon F. Bouvier (2010) Population and Society. An Introduction to Demography. New York: Cambridge University Press. Rubdy, Rani and Selim Ben Said (eds) (2015) Conflict, Exclusion and Dissent in the Linguistic Landscape. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Sebba, Mark (2007) Spelling and Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sen, Amartya (2007) Identity and Violence. The Illusion of Destiny. New York: Norton. Shohamy, Elana and Durk Gorter (eds) (2009) Linguistic Landscape. Expanding the Scenery. London: Routledge. Shohamy, Elana and Shoshi Waksman (2009) Linguistic Landscape as an Ecological Arena. In: Linguistic Landscape. Expanding the Scenery. Shohamy, Elana and Durk Gorter (eds), 313–31. London: Routledge. Simmel, Georg (1903) Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben. Jahrbuch der Gehe-Stiftung Dresden 9: 185–206. SSIM = Sachverständigenrat deutscher Stiftungen für Integration und Migration (2015) International Mobil. Motive, Rahmenbedingungen und Folgen der Aus- und Rückwanderung deutscher Staatsbürger. Online available at: www.svr-migration.de/wp-content/ uploads/2015/03/Studie_International-Mobil_Web.pdf (accessed 19 October 2016). Statista (2015) Degree of Urbanisation (Percentage of Urban Population in Total Population) by Continent in 2015. Online available at: www.statista.com/statistics/270860/ urbanisation-by-continent/ (accessed 19 October 2016). Trudgill, Peter (1974) The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. UN Population Division (2014) World Urbanisation Prospects. The 2014 Revision. Online available at: http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/ (accessed 19 October 2016). van der Horst, Joo (2009) Het einde van de standaardtaal. Een wisseling van Europese taalcultuur. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff. Vertovec, Steven (2007) Super-Diversity and Its Implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 29(6): 1024–54. Wolfram, Walt (1969) A Sociolinguistic Description of Detroit Negro Speech. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. World Bank (2009) World Development Report 2009. Reshaping Economic Geography. Washington, DC: World Bank Publications. Zuckerman, Ethan (2013) Digital Cosmopolitans. Why We Think the Internet Connects Us, Why It Doesn’t, and How to Rewire It. New York: Norton.

Part I

The global south

INTRODUCTION TO PART I Megacities Megacities are “mega” due to the large number of people arriving there every year. Cities of enormous size were almost exclusively located in the global north a hundred years ago. Now the global south is urbanizing, and it is doing so with great speed. This affects the language life of many. The single most distinctive feature that sets large cities apart from smaller cities, towns and villages is the high frequency with which city people come into contact with strangers. As an effect, city people may feel less estranged in another, distant city than they may do in a nearby-located village. On the other hand, if you are from a smaller place you have to learn to live the city life. Life in the city implies interaction that most often does not rely on kinship, tradition or acquaintance. It is based on a routine of dealing with strangers in everyday life. Contact is fleeting, routinised and often predictable. Living in a large city will affect the way individuals talk and interact with others. Those moving to the megacity will change their linguistic behaviour, but they will also affect the linguistic behavior of those already present because so many newcomers move to megacities. Large cities, and the ways to study them, remains mostly associated with “classic studies” of industrialised Western cities in the global north, whether in urban studies (e.g. Chicago) or in sociolinguistics (e.g. New York). Sociolinguistic theory and methodology was not developed on, say, the study of Cairo, but it would certainly look different if it had done so. Megacities are urban areas with population numbers that exceed eight to ten million. They are growing at a much faster rate than the world cities discussed in the second part. Dubai, an unusual city in many aspects, is the world’s fastest-growing city today. The sheer number of newcomers to megacities matters. Megacities incorporate several hundred thousand new speakers every year. Newcomers often find work in the major manufacturing centers there. Common trade, like vending, is also a typical occupation in megacities. New language contact takes place there, and such settings constitute important cases to be explored for the sociolinguistics of megacities.

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Megacities are cemeteries of languages and birthplaces of new language diversity. We find minority languages and dialects there, but they tend to not be valued and make few appearances in public space. Megacities are like a punctured tire, remaining diverse by permanently adding new diversity. This incoming diversity affects what is already present. City languages emerge, but some remain linguistic outsiders. The cities have prototypical and marginal speakers. While linguistic assimilation is the order of the day, the population is so diverse, and keeps growing so quickly, that new uses and structures of the dominant language result from linguistic assimilation. Even after the language shifts, subtle differences remain. The resultant variation indexes occupation, social status and ethnic or original regional background. There is no teleological end to which megacities must exclusively function as melting pots. Differentiation remains in case it serves some function. This is the very reason why the incorporation of ever-new inhabitants results in processes of linguistic homogenisation and differentiation at the same time. How that is done and with what effect differs. People in megacities come up with different solutions on how to manage their daily linguistic interaction. The first part of this book reports on five cases in the global south. The chapters in this part are ordered along two factors: the age and the size of the cities in question. We start with Cairo, the oldest and largest city of Part I, and we conclude with Kohima, the smallest and newest of the cities studied here.

3

Cairo The linguistic dynamics of a multilingual city Reem Bassiouney and Mark Muehlhaeusler

The city and its people Cairo is the capital of the Arab Republic of Egypt. It is located at the latitude of approximately 30 degrees north (similar to New Orleans), at the northern end of the fertile Nile valley. This valley, which runs the length of the country, is enclosed on either side by escarpments that delimitate the border between agricultural land and the surrounding desert. In many parts of the country the valley is only a few kilometers across, but just south of Cairo it begins to widen, while to the north of the city the Nile fans out to form a large, flat delta.1 City morphology and development The large urban area that is commonly called “Cairo” is regarded as Africa’s most populous city, and indeed as one of the largest urban areas in the world. Exact figures for its population are difficult to come by, partly because Greater Cairo encompasses urban areas belonging to different governorates (such as Cairo proper, on the East bank of the Nile, Giza on the West bank, as well as urban areas in the Qaliyubi:yah governorate). In May 2016, the official population counts for the Cairo and Giza governorates were 9.5 million and 7.8 million, respectively, yielding a total of at least 17.3 million inhabitants. One might query the accuracy of these official figures given the presence of many densely settled informal areas within the perimeters of Greater Cairo. This notwithstanding, it is undisputable that a significant part of the population of Egypt lives in Greater Cairo.2 This urban area has been settled since antiquity. The oldest surviving and inhabited parts of the city are the areas known as Maṣr al-Qadi:mah (Old Cairo): close to the earliest Islamic settlement of Fustat on the East bank of the Nile, the quarters of medieval Cairo (i.e., the walled city founded by the Fatimids in the tenth century), the Citadel of Saladin and the sprawling cemeteries to the east of the walled city. These areas are now considered low-income areas, but yet attract steady streams of local and foreign tourists that flock to see the countless monuments located there. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, new areas were built up between the walled city and the Nile, along the east bank of the river and spreading northeast

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into the desert. These areas are subdivided into districts or quarters, which (in common parlance) are only vaguely defined and carry a mixture of Arabic and foreign names. The upscale quarter of Garden City houses several important embassies and is only known by its English name. To the north along the Nile are the areas of Tahrir (liberation) Square, Maspero (after Egyptologist Gaston Maspero) and Bulaq – the latter being a popular quarter. Across the river lies the island of Zamalek (Arabic al-Zama:lik, said to be derived from Turkish), which is considered to be one of the most affluent quarters of Cairo. Like Garden City, Zamalek is home to a number of foreign embassies and has a substantial proportion of foreign residents. The quarters of Ramsis, Ghamrah and Abbasiyah extend to the northeast of the downtown area, up until Heliopolis, also known in Arabic as Maṣr al-Gadi:dah (New Cairo, literally New Egypt). In the governorate of Gizah on the west bank of the Nile, the affluent districts of Muhandiseen and Dokki spread along the banks of the river after the 1970s. Much of the agricultural land on the west bank has fallen prey to the sprawling development of planned and unplanned districts, including popular quarters such as Imbabah and al-Muneeb. Informal developments are a very important aspect of the urban landscape of Greater Cairo, despite the government’s efforts to stem their growth (cf. Séjourné 2009). All these various sections of the city are enclosed within a ring road. Beyond the ring road to the south lies the quarter of Maadi (Arabic al-Maʕa:di:), once the location of British army barracks, which since morphed into a green and affluent suburban quarter popular with expatriates. Also beyond the ring road are the desert developments of the Gizah governorate in the west and of the Cairo governorate in the East. These developments were designed as commuter communities to absorb Greater Cairo’s expanding population but triggered a process of aggressive property development aimed at affluent urbanites seeking a cleaner, safer environment. Most of Egypt’s new, gated communities are located in these desert cities, which are built with the help of cheap labourers from rural areas who are bussed in daily from remote locations. The foreign nationals who are employed by schools, embassies and foreign institutions tend to reside in Zamalek and Maadi, and increasingly also in gated communities such as Qattamiya in New Cairo. Many of the new developments and gated communities have foreign names. For example, the residential developments around the American University in New Cairo are called (counter-clockwise, from the north): Emerald Park, Maxim Country Club, Villar Compound, Moon Valley, 90 Avenue and Midtown. Most names are derived from English, French (Le Rêve), Spanish (La Quinta) or Italian (Stella di Mare). On maps, these names are represented in their original form and transliterated into Arabic letters. Billboards with advertisements for new developments are dotted along the ring road. The text of these is either in English, or presupposes knowledge of English. For example, the billboards of the Baron Compound show images with captions in Arabic letters that read: bu:li:fa:rd alba:ru:n ru:ya:l ta:wirz (the boulevard, Baron Royal Towers); ji:m (gym); sima:rt hu:m (smart home).

Cairo: linguistic dynamics 29 The names of the city and its parts are significant. While the English name “Cairo” derives from the Arabic al-Qa:hirah (the Victorious), this name applied originally only to the medieval walled city. In modern times, al-Qa:hirah is used to refer to Greater Cairo as a whole, but the term Maṣr (Egypt) is used synonymously, hence the names of Maṣr al-Qadi:mah and Maṣr al-Gadi:dah. Since the latter was already in use as a name for Heliopolis (the Greek form is used mostly when speaking in languages other than Arabic), it was not available as an equivalent to the new desert development known in English as “New Cairo”. In Arabic, the administrative name al-Tagammu (settlement, conglomerate) is used instead. Economy Egypt is the largest single market in the Arab world and has a sizeable economy. Its merchandise exports ranked 46th in the world in 2014, its commercial services exports 24th. At the same time, Egypt has a large foreign trade deficit (US $5.8 billion in 2014), and low GDP per capita. According to data by the World Bank (2016a), Egypt’s GDP per capita was US $3,365 in 2014; compare Turkey’s GDP at US $10,515 and the EU average of US $36,447. Major export industries are petroleum, agriculture, cotton, chemicals and manufacturing. Egypt’s main trade partners are the European Union, Saudi Arabia, India, Turkey and the US. The country imports merchandise from the European Union and China, and, to a lesser extent, from the US, Kuwait and the Ukraine. Because Egypt is highly centralized – economically, administratively and politically – most large companies are headquartered in Greater Cairo. The wealth generated by Egyptian industry is also concentrated there. In the service sector, two significant sources of income are tourism and the Suez Canal. Tourism declined dramatically between 2010 (14 million visitors) and 2014 (9.6 million), which directly affected the population in tourist areas of Cairo, such as the Pyramids of Giza, downtown Cairo and Islamic Cairo (World Bank 2016b). Most tourists arrive from Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy and France, but the proportions vary considerably, as travel warnings are issued or lifted in the various countries. It may be as a result of the varying numbers of different nationalities that the workers in the tourist industry acquire a basic knowledge of several languages. In Khan al-Khalili, the tourist area of Islamic Cairo and around the Pyramids of Giza, it is not uncommon to find shop assistants and guides who are able to strike up a simple conversation and sell their wares in English, French, German, Russian, Japanese and even Finnish. It should be noted that many agricultural, real estate and commercial development projects are financed, or indeed owned, by large holding companies in the Gulf, specifically in the Emirates. Several iconic mall complexes are owned and operated by the Al-Futtaim Group, such as City Centre Maadi Mall or Cairo Festival City Mall. Both incorporate retail outlets of international brands and Carrefour supermarkets (operated as a joint venture between Carrefour, S.A. and the Al-Futtaim group). Like other large-scale mall projects, they are located on the Cairo ring road in relative proximity to upscale residential areas. These impeccably

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clean, climate-controlled spaces contain food courts and entertainment areas. It is not an overstatement to say that malls have revolutionized consumption and leisure habits. This is true not only of the affluent urban classes in Cairo, but malls even attract day-trippers from the periphery of Cairo and beyond. Visually, these malls are indistinguishable from malls in the US. With regard to language use, it is noticeable that some, if not all of the global brands that are represented in these malls display their name both in the original Latin letters and in an “Arabized” form. That, notwithstanding, advertisement, signage and terminology within the mall absolutely presuppose knowledge of some English. For example, the cleaners in Festival City mall have one sack on their cart labeled as “trash” – in Arabic script. Social composition The population of Greater Cairo (and Egypt’s urban population in general) grew rapidly between the 1960s and the 1980s, even more so than the rural population in the country. In the 1960s and early 1970s, a substantial part of the population growth of Cairo was due to rural-urban migration from villages to the capital. By the mid-1990s, the pattern had changed, as the majority of migrants now came from other urban areas within Egypt (Zinkina and Korotayev 2013: 34). In the UN Human Development Report for 2015, Egypt occupies the 110th rank, before Paraguay and Gabon. Its Income Gini coefficient is given as 30.8, similar to that of the Netherlands (30.9), which might suggest that income distribution is fairly equal. However, this obscures that fact that there are vast differences in wealth among Cairenes. For example, while the inhabitants of Manshiyat Nasir, where much of Cairo’s trash is sorted and recycled, subsist on minimal incomes, the concentrated wealth of Cairo’s elite provides a market for real estate developments where single-family houses sell for millions of US dollars – and are bought in cash. Though titles of nobility (bey, pasha) were abolished following the 1952 revolution under Nasser, the established families of the Cairene aristocracy continue to command wealth and power. Redistribution of land and nationalization of companies led to the decline of some families, it is true, while economic liberalization under Sadat (1918–1981) allowed the rise of a new elite of business people. Despite these shifts, Egyptian society remains very stratified and class-conscious. This became apparent in a recent debate about the question whether the children of uneducated parents should be allowed to become judges.3 Traditionally, even the most upmarket quarters in Cairo, like Zamalek and Garden City, had a fair share of residents belonging to the lower classes because most buildings employ a doorman who resides in the basement with his family. These are often recruited from villages in Upper Egypt, the Fayyum or from the Delta (and therefore speak their own regional dialect). In addition, there would be small shopkeepers, dry cleaners or grocers working and living in these areas. Grocery merchants from the countryside and garbage collectors from Manshiyat Nasir can be found in almost any area of Cairo. That said, the emergence of gated

Cairo: linguistic dynamics 31 communities has emphasized social divisions, since these communities are offlimits to anyone but residents and professional security personnel. In Arabic, Egyptians distinguish elegant quarters (ḥayy ra:qi) from popular ones (ḥayy shaʕbi:); the word for “quarter” (ḥa:rah) in itself denotes a lower-class area typically inhabited by a close-knit community of long-time residents. The word for “gated community” is kombawnd (compound). Sociolinguistic ecology Arabic The linguistic map of Egypt is varied as a result of centuries of migration and contact. A general account of languages in Egypt can be found in Wilmsen (2012) and Doss and Miller (1996), and there are detailed descriptions and maps in Behnstedt and Woidich’s (1985–1999) work on Egyptian dialects. For example, certain linguistic features of Upper Egyptian dialects can be traced back to the resettlement of the area after its population had been decimated by the plague in the fifteenth century. Some features in the colloquial Arabic of Alexandria are said to be of North African origin, as a result of trade contacts. Likewise, it has been shown that similar dialectal features developed in a corridor between Cairo and Damietta, along a busy trading route. With migration to Cairo from rural areas, speakers of other forms of Egyptian Arabic have been brought to the capital for decades. At the same time, Cairene Arabic has been carried to the provinces by government officials and professionals who are frequently posted outside the capital. More important, however, is the role of the media, which broadcast almost exclusively in Cairene Arabic, to the extent that this variety can be described as an official standard. There is no term in common use to denote Cairene Arabic. All varieties of Egyptian Arabic are indiscriminately referred to as ʕa:mmiyah (language of the common people). The term maṣra:wi: (Cairene) is sometimes heard, but mostly in reference to people, not language. Conversely, there are specific names for non-Cairene forms of Arabic, such as saʕi:di: (Upper Egyptian), or iskandara:ni: (Alexandrian), both of which are used to refer to language and people. To say huwa bi-yitkallim maṣri (he speaks Egyptian) is almost synonymous with saying “he speaks Cairene”. Speakers of regional varieties of Egyptian Arabic (or of varieties of other Arab countries) are often fluent speakers of Cairene Arabic, to which they accommodate in varying degrees (but not vice versa). The dynamics of accommodation and change are complex and will be discussed in detail in the second half of this chapter. It will suffice to point to the preliminary study by Miller (2005) about the language of Upper Egyptian migrants in Cairo. In areas with large numbers of foreign residents, even uneducated speakers of regional varieties may have a basic knowledge of English. The authors of this chapter recently observed the doorman of a building in Maadi saying: bi-surʕah, aw, bil-lughah al-ʕarabi:yah al-fuṣḥa, “kwikli:” (quickly).

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Other languages Exact figures for the speakers of languages other than Arabic who are living in Cairo are impossible to obtain. Still, some figures are available for some subsets of the foreign population, which make it possible to extrapolate some information. First, the figures published by the UNHCR (2016) show an estimate of some 250,000 refugees and asylum-seekers living in Egypt in December 2015. Among these, refugees from Syria were the largest group, numbering 120,000. Anecdotal evidence has it that most of the Syrians – speakers of Syrian colloquial Arabic – reside in large numbers in the Rehab district of New Cairo and in Nasr city, though this is difficult to verify. Other prominent groups of refugees and asylum seekers include Sudanese (31,000), Somalis (8,400) and Ethiopians (2,800). The figures given by UNHCR are for all of Egypt, and there is no indication where the refugees are housed. However, it may be assumed that a significant proportion resides in Cairo. Indeed, there are some charitable organizations in Cairo that cater specifically to refugees from Africa, such as the African Hope Learning Center, a Christian charity that maintains a school in Maadi. The number of foreign students at Al-Azhar University, the largest institution of Islamic higher education in Egypt, is also relevant. In October 2015, the university reported a foreign student body of 39,694, among which Asians were the most prominent group (16,487 students, probably mostly from Malaysia and Indonesia). As a consequence, a selection of (religious) books in Malay and Bahasa Indonesia are available for sale at bookstores in the vicinity of al-Azhar. Other universities in greater Cairo host foreign student populations, too, though far fewer than al-Azhar. Foreign institutions are concentrated in specific parts of Greater Cairo. Embassies and representative offices of governmental institutions are concentrated in Garden City, Zamalek and Doqqi, and a few also in Maadi. The US embassy is one of the largest US diplomatic missions in the world; together with the British embassy, it occupies a large area just south of Tahrir Square, the administrative epicenter of Cairo. European cultural centres and research institutes are mostly located in Zamalek and around Tahrir Square. Administrative offices of multinational companies operating in Egypt can also be found in those areas, as well as in Maadi (particularly petrochemical companies) and in specially designated areas in the periphery. In areas where large numbers of foreigners reside, such as Maadi, it is not uncommon to see shop signs in languages other than Arabic and English, for example in French, German, Chinese and Korean. Education in languages other than Arabic The education system in Egypt has been privatized to a considerable extent, in the sense that only low-income families that cannot afford private schools will send their children to state schools. Sayed (2006) provides for a fairly recent account of the education system and educational reforms. Private schools teach English as a foreign language from grade one, with French, German or Spanish as second foreign language in the higher grades. Within the system of public education there

Cairo: linguistic dynamics 33 are so-called “mada:ris tagri:bi:yah” (experimental schools), in which a part of the syllabus is taught in English. The quality of education at state schools is often perceived to be poor. This has led to the creation of a huge market for private education at all levels and a steady increase in the number of private schools.4 There are several German schools, including Deutsche Schule der Borromäerinnen (in Alexandria established in 1884 and in Cairo established in 1904), Deutsche Evangelische Oberschule Kairo (established in 1873) and Europaschule Kairo licensed in 2013. The German University in Cairo, founded in 2003 and located in New Cairo, currently has an enrollment of ca. 10,000; while the language of instruction is English, German is also taught, and a significant proportion of the student body (around 20%) are exposed to German through travel and internships, which are integrated in the curriculum. Among the French Schools, there are long-established institutions like Collège du Sacre Coeur, (established in 1904) in Ghamrah and Heliopolis, and the Lycée Français du Caire, affiliated with the French Embassy and located in Maadi, with branches in Zamalek and the New Cairo district of Rehab. At the postsecondary level, the l’Université Française d’Egypte, established in 2002, offers degrees in a limited number of subjects, though their student body is small (ca. 300 in 2014). The German and French schools in Cairo are vastly outnumbered by English schools. The official list of secondary schools granting foreign-accredited American high school diplomas or equivalents lists 134 schools for all of Egypt, and the overwhelming majority of these are located in Cairo. In addition, there are many more schools that are not foreign-accredited and where the language of instruction is still English. Among the English schools, there are some well-established institutions, such as Victoria College (an offshoot of Victoria College, Alexandria, established in 1906) or Cairo American College (established in 1947), but most of the schools were founded within the last decade or so as commercial ventures. In addition to American diplomas, English schools offer a variety of other curricula and certificates, such as the International Baccalaureate or British and Canadian certificates. At the University level, English is officially used as the medium of instruction in the sciences and medicine in public universities, though in practice Arabic is also used in labs and lectures. One private university, the American University in Cairo, has been offering college education in English since 1919, but recent years have seen an explosion in the number of private universities where courses are taught (at least partly) in English. In addition to the German University, there is now a British University in Cairo, Canadian International College, Ahram Canadian University, and so forth. Though student numbers at private universities are relatively small, it appears that a significant proportion of the total student body in Cairo are educated in English (cf. Schaub 2000). The non-Arabic press The French language historically occupied a special place in Egypt as the lingua franca of the educated upper classes. This was reflected in a varied and lively

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francophone press, which thrived in the first half of the twentieth century, but has dwindled away since. Today, only two weeklies remain of this once vibrant sector of Egyptian journalism (Ahram Hebdo and Le Progrès Egyptien). These two titles, as well as imported French newspapers and magazines (such as Le Monde, Le Monde Diplomatique), can only be found in select newsagents and in upscale bookstores like those of the Diwan chain. The local weekly Ahram Hebdo is sometimes available for customers in locations frequented by foreigners, like Cilantro or Costa Cafe. The Anglophone press, by contrast, has a much stronger presence in Cairo. There is one English-language daily published in Cairo, Ahram Weekly, which is widely read, and there are a good number of English-language magazines which appear to be aimed primarily at an Egyptian audience. Some of these magazines are short-lived, but there are a few titles that are substantial and follow a sustained publication pattern. The majority of articles published in these newspapers seem to be written by Egyptians for Egyptians, since they address concerns that are specific to Egypt (e.g. energy policies, legislation or local customs). Although they are available online, they are also widely available in print. A selection of such local English-language publications and of imported titles can be found at many newsagents (even in areas not heavily frequented by foreigners), in waiting rooms and in cafes. In addition, there are also some community magazines, mostly issued by social clubs and associations for expatriates, which address a primary audience of expats living in Cairo. These publications are typically distributed for free inside the clubs, at foreign schools or in cafes and restaurants in Maadi and Zamalek. Another distinct category of non-Arabic publications in Cairo is the newspapers and newsletters of established communities like the Armenians of Cairo. Though numerically insignificant, this community continues to publish two dailies and one weekly.

The juxtaposition between linguistic diversity and linguistic “centralization” in Cairo: the case of Standard Cairene Arabic (SCA) Plumlee (2017) describes Cairo as a city that both “absorbs” and “accommodates” diversity. In her study, Plumlee examines the linguistic landscape of Cairo – public road signs, advertisements and commercial shop signs in two local areas of Cairo (Maadi and Madinat Nasr). Plumlee argues that the linguistic landscape of Cairo has been influenced by the arrival of a significant number of East Asians. These include Muslim students from South Asia, refugees from Syria, Iraq and a number of countries in Africa including Sudan, in addition to Europeans and Americans. The increased status of English as a global language is also apparent in Cairo’s signposts, as Plumlee explains. This is apparent in signs in these districts that include Chinese, Korean, Somali, Malay, English, French, Standard Arabic (SA) and Standard Cairene Arabic (SCA). However, she concludes her study by positing that this linguistic diversity in Cairo does not affect the status of Arabic that still quantitatively dominates the landscape.

Cairo: linguistic dynamics 35 Standard Cairene Arabic as a resource According to Heller’s (2007) social process and practice approach, languages are not whole, independent systems but are considered linguistic resources that speakers draw upon under specific conditions and circumstances. Therefore, languages have to be studied in relation to ideology, social practice and social organization (Heller 2007: 1–2). Accordingly, language can be defined as a set of resources that, like all resources, is distributed in unequal ways, depending on the social networks and “discursive spaces” of individuals. Blommaert (2010: 180) adopts a similar approach to Heller, and contends that sociolinguists need to start examining language as a resource in which “language events and experiences” preside over “language-as-form-and-meaning”. Given the economic advantage of Cairo as well as its political and cultural dominance, SCA is an indispensable resource for any Egyptian or Arab residing in Cairo or aspiring to hold status in Egypt more generally. Before discussing this in detail, we would like to explain the challenges of defining SCA first. Miller (2005: 915) posits that SCA is difficult to define since it is not the official language of Egypt, and therefore not regularized like Standard Arabic (see Ferguson 1959). There are also few, if any, attitudinal studies on SCA. That is, there is no agreed upon “linguistic criteria” for considering a speech sample SCA (Miller 2005: 915). For the purpose of this work, we define SCA as the Cairene code that is not saliently marked for sociolinguistic variables such as social class, gender or age. It is the code used in media discourse in Cairo and by Egyptian media producers in both private and public channels that broadcast in Egyptian Arabic inside or outside Egypt. It is, in fact, on the abstract level similar to Standard American English, rather than standard British English, which is more overtly and elaborately marked for social class. Standard American English is usually seen to be a “mainstream accent” associated with the “levelled dialects of the Northern Midwest” and it is described and perceived as “colourless” or “characterless” (Wolfram 1991: 210). The same is true for SCA, although as with all definitions of a standard one has to acknowledge the vagueness and abstraction attached to it. Smakman (2012) points out to the challenges of defining a standard, especially the challenges speakers have in defining what a standard is. SCA, Cairo and political and cultural hegemony Egyptian politics and SCA: Cairo as the local point The political system in Egypt has for a long time been focused in Cairo. Since the turn of the twentieth century, Cairo has developed into the focal point of political and cultural renaissance in the Arab world. See Bassiouney (2014) for its linguistic history. Along with the central role played by Cairo in both the political arena and in the sphere of culture, came the rise of SCA as the code that indexes power, cultural and political superiority and authenticity in Egypt. Because the government system is highly centralized and the area around Tahrir Square is the seat of

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the main government offices, the 2011 revolution (and other protest movements throughout the history of Cairo) naturally focused on Tahrir Square. By blocking these offices, the revolutionaries were effectively blocking the government. On a symbolic level, Tahrir Square is central Cairo, as is SCA. During and after the 2011 revolution, large demonstrations were held in other cities in Egypt, but media coverage all over the world concentrated on Tahrir Square. In fact, the political regime at the time realized that Cairo was a significant key holder to political power in Egypt. This is evidenced in the action of the government at the time, which cut railway connections from any part of Egypt to Cairo, in a bid to assure that protesters would not arrive in Cairo. This suggests that the government assumed that non-Cairenes would want to make the trip to Cairo (for some, a trip of 10 hours or more) in order to demonstrate in Tahrir Square, because this would make their cause more legitimate and more visible. It is indeed true that a huge number of protestors succeeded in making the trip to Cairo. As a place, Cairo was the centre of different political groups, for and against the government. Government media outlets made the most interesting claims from a linguistic viewpoint during the Rabaa Square sit-in in 2013. The anti-Muslim brotherhood groups claimed that the people in Rabaa Square did not speak SCA, but “a dialect”, whether from the Delta or the south. Not only were they said to speak dialects but their dress code and demeanor were said to show that they were from the countryside. With this claim came the associations of dialects with the countryside, which also indexes illiteracy, ignorance, poverty and, at times, even unethical behaviour. The image conjured was that of paid thugs who were presumably paid by the Muslim brotherhood to come to Cairo to demonstrate. Whether this claim was true or not is not the point. But two facts emerge from it. First, that speaking a dialect almost necessarily presumes that those speakers do not have the same rights as Cairenes, that they are poorer and easier to manipulate. Second, that demonstrating in their own local areas was not enough for these dialect-speaking Egyptians, and the importance of Cairo as a location that gives legitimacy is again underpinned. This is just one example of indexes of SCA as the unmarked, “natural” way of speaking. The positive associations of SCA in public discourse: establishing legitimacy Before we delve into a discussion of the positive associations of accommodating to SCA and its forced use in Egyptian media, we would like to first shed light on the definition of indexicality, an essential concept to understand the pressure suffered by non-speakers of SCA to accommodate their speech. According to Johnstone (2010: 31), indexical forms can imply and construct identity. The concept of indexicality refers to the creation of semiotic links between linguistic forms and social meanings (Ochs 1992; Silverstein 2003). In our opinion these forms can be different codes as well as phonological, lexical or morphosyntactic forms. Codes carry associations. By understanding the associations of SCA, Standard Arabic (SA) and other local dialects, we can reach a better understanding of the

Cairo: linguistic dynamics 37 mechanism of the pressure exerted on individuals to accommodate to SCA. Silverstein (2003: 193–194) argues that any order of indexicality presupposes that there is a context with a contextual entailment that is understood relative to ideologies and schematization. It is understood in accordance to an ethno-metapragmatic framework. That is, one needs to understand the ideological and contextual schematisation associated with SCA in order to grasp its social and political role in a highly centralised country like Egypt. Below we give examples of the process of indexing SCA as the authentic code of all Egyptians, if not of all Arabs. In a study of 34 patriotic songs that were composed during the span of 70 years, Bassiouney (2014) found that about a third of all patriotic songs are sung by nonEgyptians, but are still performed in SCA. That is, these non-Egyptians accommodate their local dialect to SCA. In fact, the study also concluded that all patriotic songs examined were in SCA. In other words, there is clearly a process of associating the national identity of Egyptians with SCA. For example, in 2001 the Tunisian singer Latifah sang a patriotic song in which she defined the “real Egyptian”. The song is significant in SCA. Below are the first lines of this song in English translation: Do you know how to call out in Arabic, In the name of God and my country, – Then surely you are the Egyptian! (from the song Yibʔa ʔinta ʔaki:d il-masri: (“Surely you are the Egyptian”), by Laṭīfah.) In her SCA definition of the “real Egyptian” she uses metalinguistic discourse to refer to Arabic and, in that case, SCA specifically. An Egyptian is one who can say in SCA, “in the name of God and my country”. SCA is not just used to index a national identity but to authenticate it as well. There are other examples in which Egyptian media associates SCA with authenticity. For example, consider some recent films that focus on an individual’s authentic Egyptian identity. These films include Ḥasan wa-Murquṣ (2008), Ti:r inta (2009), ʕAsal aswad (2010), Thala:thah yashtaghalu:na-ha: (2010), La: tara:juʕ wa-la: istisla:m (2010) and others. The dominant theme in all these films is the search for an identity on the individual level. In their quest for an Egyptian identity, the protagonists of these films manipulate their linguistic resources. From a linguistic viewpoint, these films provide insights to the associations of different codes. While experimenting with the available linguistic resources, including SA, English with SCA, local dialects, other Arab dialects and SCA, all protagonists in their search for identity fall back on the characterless, unmarked SCA. To give a detailed example in the film Thala:thah yashtaghalu:na-ha: (The three manipulate her, 2010), Nagibah, a young Egyptian girl, is manipulated by different political groups. Nagibah is a hard-working lower middle-class Egyptian girl who scores 101 over 100 in her secondary school exam. The film focuses on her journey to find an identity as she enrolls in university. Nagibah – which

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means “intelligent” in Arabic – never learned to think for herself or make her own choices. She memorizes all of her schoolbooks and recites them on more than one occasion without understanding them, sometimes even in inappropriate linguistic situations. When Nagibah is confronted with university life, she is manipulated by three men, one after another, each with different political affiliations and aims. The first man she is attracted to is a liberal upper-class student who makes a habit of failing his exams; the second is a communist; and the third is a religious fundamentalist. One by one, Nagibah adopts three different identities, each with its own linguistic choices. When Nagibah adopts the identity of a liberal upper-class girl, her language changes to constant code-switching between English and SCA, enriched with slang expressions. Her style of dress also changes, and she starts wearing fashionable but revealing Western clothes. As a communist political activist, she quotes books in SA and switches between SA and SCA. Her dress code is jeans and a T-shirt. Finally, when Nagibah adopts the identity of a religious fanatic, she employs mostly SA and covers herself in a black aba:yah (robe-like over-garment). Ultimately, the protagonist realizes that these borrowed identities are not “her” and decides to choose for herself what she really is. When she declares that she has finally found herself, her linguistic choice is pure SCA. The film clearly establishes a link between SCA and authenticity, for while Nagibah pretends to be something she is not, she uses more SA and English. In the movie Ṭi:r inta (You fly, 2009), the same theme is adopted. This time, the protagonist is a shy veterinarian who uses magic to adopt different identities in order to please the girl he loves. As in the previous film, his language changes from one code to another as his character changes, from code-switching between ECA, a levelled version of Gulf Arabic and English, to the dialect of Upper Egypt, and so on. It is only when he “finds” himself – and speaks in SCA – that his love is requited. This idea that in order to be oneself one must speak SCA recurs in all recent films about identity. This is indeed a reflection of a prevalent attitude in Egypt towards SCA. Eltouhamy’s (2016) quantitative study of attitudes towards different local dialects in Egypt is worth mentioning here. Though the study is not representative given the small number of participants, it still touches on the issues discussed so far. Eltouhamy uses a verbal guise technique to investigate language attitudes towards SCA, falla:ḥi dialects (Delta) and ṣaʕi:di: dialects. He finds that SCA is associated with leadership, smartness, even favorability to work with and to marry from, and therefore ranks higher than both falla:ḥi and ṣaʕi:di:. In terms of dialect recognition, participants generally had no problem recognising SCA but had some difficulty in recognizing Delta and ṣaʕi:di: (Upper Egyptian) dialects, respectively. This result, though on a small amount of data, lends support to our argument so far of the centralisation of dialect in Egypt in which Cairo is the focal point. This attitude is not related to recent political development. For example, in her book Ibn al-balad, Sawsan Messiri (1978: 1) explains what this anthropological concept means, historically, from the beginning of the twentieth century, if not before. She argues: “In some contexts, “Ibn al-Balad” (son of the country) is

Cairo: linguistic dynamics 39 employed by Egyptians to refer to themselves as Egyptians. In this use the word seems to be synonymous with the term miṣrī (Egyptian).” She goes even further by claiming that not all Egyptians are ibn balad “sons of the country” and that the Egyptian nationality, though a necessary prerequisite, is not sufficient to make someone ibn balad. In her view, there is a tacit understanding that a true ibn balad has no foreign ancestors up to three generations in the past and speaks Egyptian Arabic, meaning SCA (not foreign languages, broken Arabic or SA). She also refers to the expression kallimni: bil-baladi: (speak to me baladi) – that is, speak to me in a clear language that is not ambiguous or convoluted, not philosophical, not marked and not in SA, a language understood by everyone (Messiri 1978: 2; also Bassiouney 2014). Note that metalinguistic discourse, as Rampton (2015: 26) and Agha (2007) argue, is essential in understanding or even differentiating between registers, styles, codes and dialects. As Johnstone argues (2014), when individuals engage in metalinguistic discourse, and in doing so reflect on language and emphasise the indexes and associations (be they social or political), they support the process that could lead to language change. In other words, studies of patterns of language change need to incorporate both performance and metalinguistic discourse to better understand perceptions, attitudes and linguistic practices (cf. Coupland 2002; Johnstone 2014; Rampton 2015). In his metalinguistic discourse about SCA, the historian Fahmy also elaborates on the concept of ibn al-balad by arguing that: Only an authentic ibn or bint al-balad (son or daughter of the country) would use Egyptian Arabic and grasp its multiple meanings and nuances and hence participate in this new-produced colloquial culture. (Fahmy 2011: 170) Note the use of the term “authentic” by Fahmy. Both Messiri and Fahmy – although not linguists – associate Egyptian Arabic with SCA, as if SCA were the only variety of Arabic in Egypt, and, consequently, Cairo stood for all of Egypt. They in turn equate SCA with authenticity and with being a “real, local Egyptian”, as opposed to being a foreigner or a fake. In other words, associations of SCA with authenticity appear not only in popular culture, but have been argued from both an anthropological and historical viewpoint, not only a linguistic one. Note that from a linguistic viewpoint, authenticity is, however, a complex concept (Coupland 2007). One last example, to illustrate the associations of SCA with Egyptian identity comes from an essential interview with a Jewish Egyptian that took place in 2013. On the program Bi-tawqi:t al-Qa:hirah (Cairo time), broadcast on the Dream Channel in January 2013, the announcer spoke, and invited Egyptian Jews to speak, about their “Egyptian identity”. In fluent SCA, the Jews that were interviewed spoke about their quintessential Egyptian identity and referred to language as a resource that they share with all Egyptians, in addition to other resources. Albir Aryeh, a senior member of the dwindling Jewish community in Egypt, declared

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in SCA: “Some Jews were Egyptians before 1948; they speak Egyptian and eat Egyptian.” Aryeh’s reference to linguistic habits and food is highly relevant. His code is clearly SCA, and it is also SCA that he indexes with his statement given that it is the code he uses. Magdah Harun was also interviewed in the same program. Harun, who was then 63 years old, is one of the few Jews left in Egypt. Her father was a well-known Egyptian nationalist and author of a book on the Jews of Egypt. She declared in SCA that: “My grandfather did not even speak any language except Arabic.” Her father’s lack of access to any other code is a clear marker of his authentic Egyptian identity. Access to SCA can also be essential for a political figure, as the satirical female poet Iman Bakri claims in her famous SCA poem “Qualities of the future president”. The poem was recited weeks before the presidential election in Egypt in May 2012. The poet Iman Bakri had a different expectation on the coming president. In her poem of 2012, the satirical poet says: Yiku:n maṣra:wi:/ w-mi? bara:ni manaʕrafu:? Yurṭun waya:ya tirya:ni/lawindi:/ wida:ni matifhamhu:? We want him Egyptian, not a fake outsider we do not know. Who would then speak to us in whatever gibberish/language that my ears would not understand. What she means is that she wants to have access to his ideas and thoughts. She wants his code to be “inclusive” for all those who master SCA, not just for those who master SA or a foreign language. She also wants him to be an ibn balad – that is, a typical Egyptian who speaks clearly, so that “all” have access and understand. Again SCA is referenced as the authentic code of all Egyptians and not just the local Cairenes who acquire it as their native language. In fact, this perception of SCA as the prevalent and authentic code has a significant effect on linguistic change and language use in all Egypt. Adhering to SCA is not just exclusive to Egyptians – non-Egyptian celebrities working in Cairo are pressurized to adhere to SCA. Bassiouney (2015) gives examples of Syrian and Jordanian actors who perform in SCA and are also forced to take a stance and answer interview questions on Egyptian channels by Egyptian announcers in SCA and not in their local dialects; not because their dialects are incomprehensible but simply because Egyptians associate their own SCA with a history of media and cultural dominance and would like to maintain that in a highly mediatized and globalised context in which they face fierce competition. In this section, performance of SCA and talk about SCA were discussed. The importance of performance and metalinguistic discourse in identifying a dialect has been underscored. Schilling-Estes (1998: 53) defines performance as the “register” speakers use to “display” to others a linguistic code/variety, whether this code is their own or that of another speech community. That is when a linguistic code or dialect is objectified and displayed in relation to forms of speaking when it is performed. Bauman (2000: 1) contends that performance as “an act of expression” is displayed, objectified by the performer and then scrutinised and evaluated by an

Cairo: linguistic dynamics 41 audience. The importance of performed speech or texts in research on language variation lies in the fact that it illuminates speakers’ “perceptions” of linguistic variables. Performance lends insights into the process of identity construction and the shared cultural associations the performer aims to display by using salient features of a given code (Bauman 2000: 4). As is, clear SCA is equated with Egyptian Arabic and an Egyptian identity more generally. Patterns of variation and change towards SCA: the case of upper Egyptians After examining both performance and metalinguistic discourse in the previous section, we now discuss the pressure on speakers of local dialects in Egypt to accommodate to SCA. Since Egypt is highly centralized, accommodating to SCA becomes a target for many immigrants from Delta and southern Egypt to Cairo. Miller’s (2004, 2005) seminal studies on the accommodation patterns of Upper Egyptian migrants in Cairo is worth mentioning here for a number of reasons. Upper Egypt (al-Ṣaʕi:d), the local area examined below, is geographically considered the cultivated Valley of the Nile from Cairo to Aswan in the south and stretches to about 860 kilometers (Hopkins and Saad 2004: 1). In public discourse, films, songs and soap operas, Upper Egypt is always juxtaposed with Cairo as a distinct and remote area where people are portrayed to be more conservative, violent and often narrow-minded and dumb (cf. Miller 2005; Hopkins and Saad 2004). The dialects of Upper Egypt are indeed distinct from those of the Delta valley and the urban cities, such as Cairo and Alexandria (Woidich 1997). Upper Egyptian dialects are highly stigmatised and ridiculed because of the indexes associated with the identity of Upper Egyptians. During her field research in 1994–1998, Miller (2005: 909) examined patterns of linguistic change and accommodation among Upper Egyptian migrants to Greater Cairo, especially those from the governorates of Sohag and Qena living in Giza. Miller examined the relation between Upper Egyptian dialects, SCA and the migrants’ social networks, economic and social status as well as perceptions of identity. Miller (2005: 931) argues that because of the stigma associated with Upper Egyptian Arabic, all migrants acknowledge the inevitability of acquiring SCA and using it in interactions with Cairenes to avoid discrimination. While accommodating to SCA is neither an easy nor always successful task to many immigrants and even their children, the mere belief that this is a life necessity is significant. As noted above, Cairo is not just the capital; it is considered synonymous with Egypt and called maṣr (from standard Arabic miṣr, Egypt) by non-Cairenes, including Alexandrians, while Cairenes are called maṣarwa by non-Cairenes, meaning “Egyptians”. Miller’s emphasis on the indexes of SCA is essential for a full understanding of patterns of linguistic change across Egypt. The fact that she highlights that language change in Egypt is not a binary process in which SA is juxtaposed with colloquial Arabic but rather reveals a more complex relation between different dialects and, more often than not, reveals patterns of variation and change. It is noteworthy that Coupland (2002: 186), in his discussion of style and sociolinguistic variation,

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contends that language variation does not entail a binary relation between a standard and a dialect and that variation on the level of the individual is more intricate and multidimensional as it is related to identity relations, context and discourse. While the standard mentioned by Miller is indeed different from that meant by Coupland, and while Miller did not explicitly discuss indexicality in her work, her research can be studied in relation to identity and indexicality. In fact, the stigma indexed by Upper Egyptian Arabic may have been the main reason why the announcers of the local channel of Aswan, Upper Egypt adhere to SCA in their programmes and do not use their own dialects. This may indeed index their sophistication and disassociation with all negative indexes of the local dialect or dialects.

Conclusions In spite of the fact that Cairo is, for all intents and purposes, a cosmopolitan city in which different foreign languages, especially English, are visible, there is enormous pressure for Arabic speakers to adhere to SCA. The highly centralized political and cultural makeup of Egypt makes Cairo a unique city in more than one way and SCA a unique dialect. First, being Cairene is referenced by non-Cairenes as being Egyptian. Speaking SCA is also referenced by non-Cairenes as speaking Egyptian. There is considerable pressure in Cairo on non-Cairenes to accommodate to SCA, particularly in public spaces. The indexes of SCA mean that public speakers, when speaking about Egypt, have to resort to SCA, not their local dialect, even in a local setting. In the face of urbanization and a highly globalised media, dialects are endangered, especially in urban centres that now adhere more or less to SCA. On a broader scale, SCA is associated not only with authenticity, but also with other social resources. It is manipulated in political conflicts to cast doubt on the affiliations of specific political groups and as an inclusion and exclusion device.

Notes 1 For details on Cairo’s morphology and development see Sims (2012), Singerman (2009) and Peterson (2011). 2 See Kipper, Howeidy and Wiens (2009) for an overview on informal areas. 3 In 2014, the head judge of the Cairo Court of Appeals declared that he would not accept the son of one of the cleaning staff at the court as a judge or an attorney. 4 According to statistics published by the Ministry of Education, the number of private schools at all levels increased from 5,662 to 6,899 (+21%) in the period between 2010/11 and 2014/15, while the number of state schools rose from 40,111 to 43,854 (+9%) in the same period. At the same time, the number of students enrolled in private schools rose from 1,530,656 to 1,829,020 (8.8% and 9.5%, respectively, of the total student population).

References Agha, Asif (2007) Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bassiouney, Reem (2014) Language and Identity in Modern Egypt. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Cairo: linguistic dynamics 43 Bassiouney, Reem (2015) Dialect and Stance-Taking by Non-Egyptian Celebrities in Egypt. Open Linguistics 1(1): 614–33. Bauman, Richard (2000) Language, Identity, Performance. Pragmatics 10(1): 1–6. Behnstedt, Peter and Manfred Woidich (1985–1999) Die ägyptisch-arabischen Dialekte. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Blommaert, Jan (2010) The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coupland, Nikolas (2002) Language, Situation, and the Relational Self: Theorizing Dialectstyle in Sociolinguistics. In: Style and Sociolinguistic Variation. Penelope Eckert and John R. Rickford (eds), 185–210. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——— (2007) Style. Language Variation and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Doss, Madiha, and Catherine Miller (1996) Les langues en Égypte: Introduction. Égypte/ Monde arabe 27/28. Online available at: http://ema.revues.org/1023 (accessed 25 October 2016). Eltouhamy, Ibrahim (2016) Language Attitudes Towards Rural Dialects of Arabic in Egypt. MA thesis, American University in Cairo. Fahmy, Ziad (2011) Ordinary Egyptians. Creating the Modern Nation Through Popular Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ferguson, Charles (1959) Diglossia. Word 15: 325–40. Heller, Monica (2007) Bilingualism. A Social Approach. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hopkins, Nicholas and Reem Saad (2004) Upper Egypt. Identity and Change. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Johnstone, Barbara (2010) Locating Language in Identity. In: Language and Identity. Carmen Llamas and Dominic Watt (eds), 29–36. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ——— (2014) Speaking Pittsburghese. The Story of a Dialect. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kipper, Regina, Amira Howeidy and Claudia Wiens (2009) Cairo’s Informal Areas. Between Urban Challenges and Hidden Potentials. Cairo: GTZ. Messiri, Sawsan (1978) Ibn al-balad. A Concept of Egyptian Identity. Leiden: Brill. Miller, Catharine (2004) Between Myth and Reality. The Construction of a Sa’idi Identity in Cairo. In: Upper Egypt. Identity and Change. Nicholas Hopkins and Reem Saad (eds), 25–54. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. ——— (2005) Between Accommodation and Resistance. Upper Egyptian Migrants in Cairo. Linguistics 43(5): 903–56. Ochs, Elinor (1992) Indexing Gender. In: Rethinking Context. Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin (eds), 335–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peterson, Mark Allen (2011) Connected in Cairo. Growing Up Cosmopolitan in the Modern Middle East. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Plumlee, Marilyn (2017) The Linguistic Landscape of Cairo. In: Applied Linguistics in the Middle East and North Africa. Atta Gebril (ed.), 115–160. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Rampton, Ben (2015) Contemporary Urban Vernaculars. In: Language, Youth and Identity in the 21st Century. Linguistic Practices Across Urban Spaces. Jacomine Nortier and Bente A. Svendsen (eds), 24–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sayed, Fatma (2006) Transforming Education in Egypt. Western Influence and Domestic Policy Reform. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Schaub, Mark (2000) English in the Arab Republic of Egypt. World Englishes 19(2): 225–38.

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Schilling-Estes, Natalie (1998) Investigating “Self-Conscious” Speech. The Performance Register in Ocracoke English. Language in Society 27(1): 53–83. Séjourné, Marion (2009) The History of Informal Settlements. In: Cairo’s Informal Areas. Between Urban Challenges and Hidden Potentials. Facts, Voices, Visions. Regina Kipper, Amira Howeidy and Claudia Wiens (eds), 16–9. Cairo: GTZ. Silverstein, Michael (2003) Indexical Order and the Dialectics of Sociolinguistic Life. Language & Communication 23(3/4): 193–229. Sims, David (2012) Understanding Cairo: The Logic of a City Out of Control. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press. Singerman, Diane (2009) Cairo Contested Governance, Urban Space, and Global Modernity. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Smakman, Dick (2012) The Definition of the Standard Language. A Survey in Seven Countries. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 218: 25–58. UNHCR (2016) Egypt. Online available at: www.unhcr.org/pages/49e486356.html (accessed 24 October 2016). Wilmsen, David (2012) Egypt. In: Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics. Lutz Edzard and Rudolf de Jong (eds), Leiden: Brill. Online available at: http://referenceworks. brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia -of-arabic-language-and-linguistics/egypt-com_ vol2_0001 (accessed 18 May 2017). Woidich, Manfred (1997) Rural Dialects of Egyptian Arabic. An Overview. Égypte/Monde arabe 27/28: 325–54. Wolfram, Walt (1991) Dialects and American English. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. World Bank (2016a) GDP per Capita. Online available at: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ NY.GDP.PCAP.CD (accessed 24 October 2016). World Bank (2016b) International Tourism, Number of Arrivals. Online available at: http:// data.worldbank.org/indicator/ST.INT.ARVL (accessed 24 October 2016). Zinkina, Julia and Andrey Korotayev (2013) Urbanization Dynamics in Egypt. Factors, Trends, Perspectives. Arab Studies Quarterly 35(1): 20–38.

4

Mexico City Diversity and homogeneity Roland Terborg and Virna Velázquez

Mexico is a country with high cultural and linguistic diversity. Just as with most other countries around the world, the capital city has attracted migrants from all over the country. It should thus be clear from the outset that Mexico City is considered a multicultural and multilingual city just like New York, Paris, London, Amsterdam or Berlin. In the following, we will, however, question the assumption that Mexico City is multicultural and multilingual in the same way as other very large cities are.

Mexico City: capital of a multilingual country Mexico City is one of the biggest cities of the world. The country has a population of 112 million inhabitants, and a large part of this population is living in the capital. In 2010, the national census counted 8.7 million inhabitants in Mexico City, a number that amounts to 7.5% of the total Mexican population (INEGI 2010a). However, if the surrounding conurbation is included, the number of people reaches 20 million, or 18% of the total population of the country. Like other megacities in the world, it has mainly grown over the past 100 years. In order to understand the cultural situation and the social dynamics of Mexico City, we will first consider the situation of the country, because most of the migration to the capital city originates from there. Although multiculturalism is a fact across the history of Mexico, many Mexicans have largely ignored it.1 In general, the Mexican population has shown little interest in works addressing linguistic diversity. Usually, people refer to languages as “dialects”, even though there is a considerable linguistic distance between the languages spoken in Mexico. There are, for example, languages like Mayan Yucatec spoken on the peninsula of Yucatan and Otomi, spoken mostly north of Mexico City. These two languages differ from one another as much as English and Chinese do. Terborg, Garcia Landa and Moore sum up the history of Mexico’s linguistic modernization as follows: In the 19th century, a bilingual education programme was introduced in each town. The purpose was to incorporate the indigenous population into the

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Roland Terborg and Virna Velázquez democratic process. A monolingual education programme was established throughout the country; however, the lack of infrastructure in the programme limited the impact on the 80% of the population living in rural areas. This practice favored the maintenance of many indigenous languages [. . .]. But by 1917, coincident with the Mexican Revolution, Spanish became the official language of education and unification in Mexico. Although there have been bilingual schools in indigenous regions since the 1980s [. . .] and foreign languages were introduced throughout Mexico from the end of the 19th century, Spanish is the language taught at most schools (except indigenous monolingual ones) at primary, middle and higher levels of education. However, the level of competence of teachers and students varies from school to school, from community to community and from individual to individual. (Terborg, Garcı́a Landa and Moore 2006: 154)

As an effect of linguistic modernization efforts, people not speaking Spanish well were considered ignorant. Speakers without full proficiency in Spanish are still often called “monolinguals” today, despite the fact that they obviously speak another language besides Spanish. Note also in this context that monolingual speakers of Spanish are not associated with “monolingualism”. Spanish is taken for granted, and speakers not speaking it well are seen to not (really) belong to the Spanish speech community. Hence, “monolingual” in this context means speaking other national Mexican languages than Spanish. Cultural diversity became more visible only after the outbreak of the Zapatist rebellion of indigenous people in the south of Mexico in the mid-1990s (Carbó and Salgado Andrade 2010). The media reported extensively about this rebellion. All the insurgents were speakers of indigenous languages. Their poverty and dire life conditions became a topic of discussion, too. It was only in 2003 that the Mexican government recognized indigenous languages and called to ensure that all governmental services would also be offered in these languages. This is not done in practice, though. This notwithstanding, it was around this time that the majority of the population became aware of Mexico’s language diversity and that the dominant view that these languages constituted “dialects without any grammar” started being challenged. According to the UNESCO Atlas of the Worlds Languages in Danger (Moseley 2010), Mexico ranks fifth among all countries with a total of 143 endangered languages. This number is only surpassed by India (197), the US (191), Brazil (190) and China (144). Hence, even without considering the recent immigration from abroad, we find a complex mosaic of cultures and languages in Mexico. The Ethnologue database has a total count of 290 living languages for Mexico (Lewis, Simons and Fenning 2016). Linguistic diversity has been defined quite differently from the Summer Institute of Linguistics, which is responsible for the database, and from Mexican linguists at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). Following the adoption of linguistic rights in 2003 by the Mexican Government and the foundation of the National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI), a group of linguists started to work out a catalog of Mexico’s indigenous languages. According to this catalog, indigenous languages are divided

Mexico City: diversity and homogeneity 47 into 11 linguistic families. Since the concept of “language” is not always easily applicable, the INALI (2009) prefers the term “linguistic group” over “language”. For Mexico’s indigenous population, 68 such linguistic groups have been identified. These are further divided into 364 “linguistic varieties”, which refer to uses of languages with the same denomination but with structural and social differences and without mutual intelligibility between them. Among Mexico’s many indigenous languages, two stand out for their large number of speakers, Nahuatl with about 1.5 million speakers and Yucatec Mayan with about 1 million speakers. The Yucatec Mayan are concentrated in the north of the peninsula of Yucatan, while Nahuatl speakers are scattered in Central Mexico. Yucatec Mayan is not heard much in Mexico City, but Nahuatl is present in some districts, and there are a lot of temporal immigrants to the city from regions where Nahuatl is spoken. Migration from the countryside to Mexico City is common because economic opportunities are lacking in surrounding regions. Vicinity to the capital thus provides for opportunities that do not exist in other local communities. Hence, indigenous people, too, migrate to the capital city. Nahuatl and Yucatec Mayan aside, many more languages are used in Mexico City, including Zapoteco, Mixteco, Chinanteco, Mazateco, Mixe, Tlapaneco, Otomi, Mazahua, Totonaco, Huasteco, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Chol and Purépecha. Each of these languages has more than 100,000 speakers. Most indigenous migrants to Mexico City, regardless of being temporal or permanent, originate from the surrounding State of Mexico or from the nearby states of Guerrero, Oaxaca and Veracruz. Indigenous people can often already be recognized by their way of dressing. Most ethnic groups have special garbs, particularly women. However, those who have migrated a long time ago and who have settled permanently, are usually blending in to the capital’s population. Other than occasionally wearing their ethnic dresses, it is practically impossible to identify them as indigenous. Often, the sole remaining distinction is that they use indigenous languages in the family or among their peers.

A brief sociolinguistic history of Mexico City We encountered a number of problems when we started looking for information we could present for this chapter. First of all, how could we illustrate the linguistic, cultural and social complexity in one of the biggest cities in the world? Secondly, when we started reviewing the existing literature on the city, we found a vast number of articles, studies and websites that describe the city in general, but we found little information on the sociolinguistic dynamics of the city. Finally, our own knowledge of the number of languages used in the city, their vitality, uses and speakers was clearly limited. In spite of these difficulties and limitations, we provide a brief panorama of the history as it relates to the sociolinguistic situation of Mexico City in this section. Before the city became to be known as Mexico City it had been the center of the Aztec empire and was called Tenochtilán. Tenochtilán was an island in a system of lakes. This system comprised the lakes of Zumpango, Xaltocan, Texcoco, Xochimilco and Chalco. These lakes formed from the waters of rivers flowing

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down from the surrounding mountains into a large plain that has no outflow. When the Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortez besieged Tenochtilán in 1521, he found an impressive religious center with pyramids and temples on the island. The system of lakes was about 60 kilometers long, and since these lakes were not very deep, people had created many artificial islands, resulting in an environment that proved very effective for agriculture. These islands are called “chinampas”, from Nahuatl “chinamitl” (hedge or near reeds). The remains of these islands can still be seen in the district of Xochimilco today, in the south of Mexico City. Many places looked like Venice then, since the chinampas were so close together that there remained only narrow channels between them. During the last centuries, most of the lakes have dried out, which means that a large part of Mexico City is built on the mud ground of the former lakes. This condition became fatal during the earthquake of 1985, and the biggest calamities occurred in the area where the lakes had been. We can see the system of lakes in Figure 4.1. The historic center of Mexico City is on an island where Tenochtilan’s and Tlatelolco’s pyramids and temples had

Figure 4.1 Ancient lake system of Mexico City

Mexico City: diversity and homogeneity 49 been built. Today, Chapultepec, Coyoacán, Iztapalapa, Cerro de la Estrella and Xochimilco are part of the administrative unit of Mexico City. The surrounding towns of Chalco, Texcoco and Ecatepec are cities of the State of Mexico. These towns were all located at the edges of the lakes. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the city continued to maintain the traditional use of land (Chandèze 2012: 98), but distinctive craft and commercial activities developed also. These activities tended to be concentrated in specific areas. Population growth set in. The population grew, for example, by 60% in the second half on the nineteenth century.2 But that was little compared to what was to follow. In the twentieth century, Mexico City experienced an explosion in the number of inhabitants, growing from 200,000 people to a multi-million-inhabitant megacity. A great part of the lakes was dried out, and the former chinampas were urbanized in order to make space for this immense influx of people. Martín-Butragueño and Lastra describe the city today as an urban area in which about twenty million people live. [. . .] It consists of 75 entities, of which 16 are branches of the Federal District and the neighboring municipalities located in the State of Mexico [. . .]. (Martín-Butragueño and Lastra 2011: 13, translation ours) With respect to growth and urban development, the city is not homogeneous. There exist a number of wealthy areas with residential houses and excellent public services, such as Polanco, Roma and La Condesa. Yet other areas, such as Santa Úrsula, Avante, CTM Culhuacán and Aviación, have serious social problems and are plagued by crime, drug trafficking, theft and lack of public services. The prevalent number of neighborhoods is, however, a mixture of wealthy and poor households (Martín-Butragueño 2009). One of the authors has lived in a low middle-class neighborhood for many years where one can find residential houses side-by-side to small apartments in which up to ten people live together. The patched character of many neighborhoods in Mexico City reflects the sociolinguistic situation of the city. One can find different Spanish sociolects in one and the same quarter, ranging all the way from posh speech to varieties associated with the lower social spheres. In spite of such differences, all inhabitants are called “chilangos”, which means something like “person from central Mexico City”. While the population in the rest of the country often negatively perceives the speech of the chilangos, language use somehow identifies inhabitants of central Mexico City. One can, however, also encounter people who use different languages or different regional varieties of Spanish. You may find them at traffic lights, asking drivers for a coin or something to eat. Also, among construction workers, car washers and other temporary workers, languages other than Spanish can often be heard. In tourist areas, such as in the historic center, in museums, near important monuments or in the Xochimilco borough, which still features the ancient canals and landscapes, English can be heard, but also French, German or Italian. From January to May of 2016, Mexico City had 1.5 million foreign visitors. However, it is uncommon for most people to be exposed to languages other than Spanish

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and English in daily life. English is transmitted in part by Mexicans who have lived in the United States and have moved back to Mexico. A different language, Plattdeutsch, originally from northern Germany, is spoken by Mennonites who are selling cheese in the city. They, too, are part of the sociolinguistic dynamics of the city. They receive more attention than other minorities due to the way they dress and also because they are Caucasians. They are living in the nearby countryside and commute to the city in order to sell their dairy products. While the Mexican government confirms now that Mexico is a multicultural and multilingual state, actual support for other languages and speakers is mostly absent. According to national census data (INEGI 2010b), the number of indigenous people in Mexico City who are older than five and speak an indigenous language stands currently at 141,710. The largest indigenous language in the city is Nahuatl with 37,450 speakers; the second is Otomi with 17,083 speakers, followed by Mixteco with 15,968 speakers. Barriga Villanueva (2008) has a point in stating that multiculturalism in Mexico City remains utopian. None of these languages are the medium of school education, and although there are quarters where minority speakers concentrate, their languages remain largely invisible in the linguistic landscape, too. There are also a considerable number of foreign migrants living in the city. In addition to the large-scale migration from the US, Mexico has always had a constant inflow of foreign people since the nineteenth century. According to the Organization of America States, foreign migration – at a lesser scale – has always been present in the 200 years of existence of the Mexican state, but without ever reaching 1% of the national population. The three nationalities that historically have had the greatest presence in the country are Spanish, Guatemalan and US nationals. The latter represent a major component since 1930, amounting to 77% of the foreign population in the national census of 2010. In addition, it should be noted that Mexico has historically played an important role in hosting diverse groups of asylum seekers and refugees, among them Spanish, Guatemalan and South Americans. These asylum seekers and refugees have left an important mark on Mexican culture and society over the past 50 years [. . .]. (OEA 2011, translation ours) In 2000, the total number of international immigrants registered in Mexico stood at 492,617 people. 90 percent are from either North- or South America. The largest number of migrants comes from the US, followed by Spain, France and Germany. US citizens come to Mexico because it is the neighboring country. Many Spaniards came after the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and later during the regime of Franco (until 1975). Germans came to Mexico during the Nazi regime (1933–1945). Japanese, Korean, Jewish, Greek, Danish, Swedish, Russian, Lebanese and Chinese communities are also present in Mexico City. The reasons why they have migrated to Mexico is so diverse that it is impossible to describe them all here. In the most general terms, these migrants arrived in Mexico in order to

Mexico City: diversity and homogeneity 51 escape war or religious persecution or to seek business or artistic opportunities they did not find in their home countries. Despite the constant inflow of foreign migrants, Mexico’s government recognizes that the amount of foreign migrants in the country is insignificant in comparison to that of the native population. Most foreign migrants are living close to the border with the US. Mexico City does not attract the same amount of migrants. Therefore, the only people speaking European languages other than Spanish are usually Mexican returnees from the US or tourists.

Language at a street corner in Coyoacán Although the borough of Coyoacán once was a traditional town with a prehispanic history, large parts of its area were sparsely inhabited in the past. There is a great zone covered by lava flow from Xitle volcano located in the south of Mexico City. Coyoacán then was at the lakefront, and this rugged lava area hosted little villages. Some 60 years ago, however, the government started to build a new campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico there, which up to then had been located in the city center, close to the cathedral. Not far from the colonial village of Chimalistac, a large area of woodland was used to build the new campus. As an effect, the city was extended into this area, and the government started building condominiums there. This was an act of planned urbanization organized by the government. On the other hand, many unskilled people were attracted by the extension of the city to Coyoacán. They settled mostly south of the campus, without much planning being involved there. Avenida universidad The street corner we discuss in the following is located at Avenida Universidad, a very busy avenue. It starts some meters before the entrance to the housing unit Altillo Universidad and the street Cerro Acasculco. The sidewalk we studied is about 60 meters long and wider than in other places in this neighborhood. Several small businesses are located there: a butcher shop, a poulterer’s shop, two stores for soda, snacks and beer which are open 24 hours, a small fast food restaurant where you can eat Mexican tacos and a place where you can drink fresh water or eat ice cream during the day. Flower beds in the middle divide the sidewalk, which is surrounded by bars. On the street, there are stands with sales assistants, who are mostly not living in the quarter but arrive by car, motorcycle or tricycle. They arrive on different days and at different times of the day in order to sell vegetables and fruit, cheese, sandwiches, sweetbread and other different kinds of food to be consumed there. These stands change between the day and the evening, and there are a lot of stalls with traditional food like tacos. In about 100 meters, there is a French college, and when parents come to pick up their children they often buy meat and vegetables in the nearby stores and stands. Sometimes it is also possible that English or other languages can

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be heard. Also Chinese and Japanese may be used on Avenida Universidad. However, these languages are usually only heard when a group of them strolls down the street in a group. Otherwise, Chinese and Japanese can often be identified because they have some difficulties in speaking Spanish. The same happens when families of indigenous people are selling products or are begging on the street. Sometimes it is possible to overhear them speaking a different language, but they do not do so when they notice that they are being observed. This is a typical behavior. People are afraid of being marginalized for speaking an indigenous language. The sole exceptions are small children. They speak their heritage language in a carefree manner. At Avenida Universidad, these minority languages often originate from the adjacent state of Oaxaca, located southwest of Mexico City. A family regularly occupies one of the places on the street that arrives with a van full of fruit and vegetables from Texcoco, in the southeast of Mexico City. It is a large and traditional family from a poor settlement. There are no specific days when they sell their produce, but when they arrive they always put up their stand in front of the butcher shop. It seems that there exists some kind of relationship between the family from Texcoco and some of the staff of the butcher shop. Both have more or less regular customers, and it is normal to have a chat with both those working at the butcher and those selling fruit and vegetables. Minority languages in Mexico are predominantly used in private domains. Since this setting is in a public space, very little language diversity is observable. We therefore chose to concentrate on how people addressed each other and how this reflected their diverse ethnic, social and geographic backgrounds. The mode of address is to some extent prompted by the origin of the addressees. Thus, studying how people address each other should give us some information about the language ecology and how it is changing. There are different ways in which sales assistants address their clients. In most stores, sellers turn to clients with “señor/ señorita” (sir/miss). The expressions “don/doña” (Mr./Mrs.), which are not so common in the business domain, may also be used. Other forms of address include forms such as “marchanta/marchante” (literally, market person), “jefe/jefa” (boss [informal]), “patrón” (boss [formal]) only to men and “señito” (affective and informal for señora) only to women, “güero/güera” (light-skinned or light-haired person) or the diminutive form “güerito/güerita”, which may be considered being part of making compliments since it is not really important if the addressee really is fair-haired or light-skinned. As a matter of fact, one of the authors has dark hair but is also addressed as “güerita” in the markets. A very common way to address customers on the markets is “marchanta” for women and “marchante” for men, or the diminutive “marchantita” to women. Also many clients address the salesperson this way. However, such form of address cannot be heard in supermarkets or regular shops where, for example, shoes or clothes are sold. This form of address indexes the context of street stands. Furthermore, people using this form of address have usually a traditional background in a rural-urban setting. Rural-urban is not contradictory since great areas of the city have been absorbed by the permanently growing urban sprawl in the last century.

Mexico City: diversity and homogeneity 53 Former villages, which are now part of the city, have existed for centuries in these places. The original inhabitants now face difficulties in making a living on the basis of agriculture due to the urbanization of their native living space. Only a few families keep livestock such as pigs and cows any more. They still live in rural networks, organizing their lives by religious events that have been passed down from the former village days, despite the fact that they are now living in an urban neighborhood. The first stand at Avenida Universidad is a typical market stall. It is run by an extended family that puts their van with the merchandise on the sidewalk then ties a tarpaulin at the trees over the sidewalk under which they place their fruits and vegetables on wooden structures or simply on crates and boxes. The stall is mainly operated by a couple of about 50 years who come together with their two adult daughters, one already married, the husband of that daughter and two younger boys who are all helping. At the same time, they look after the little girl of the married daughter and her husband. There are always at least four members of the family serving, sharing one scale for weighing the fruits. They usually serve a lot of clients simultaneously and they are very efficient in their work. “Marchanta” and “marchantita” is the general form of address at this stand. The parents and the married daughter are predominantly using these forms. This identifies them as merchants who come from the rural-urban part of the city. They do not sell their own crops because their village is now urbanized and they can no longer engage in agriculture. They buy their merchandise in the central supply market of Mexico City, just like most other vendors in this street. The family is living in Texcoco, bordering southeast to Mexico City. It is one of the prehispanic localities with a long Nahuatl tradition. The indigenous language is still partly spoken in Texcoco, and social networks are organized by kinship and religion as in most traditional communities in Mexico (Carrasco 1975: 196–197). The family is self-catering. All work together. They do not have a set schedule and are not present on specific weekdays at Avenida Universidad. Their presence there depends on the availability of the van, which they share with other people of their hometown. Sometimes they do not appear for a week or more. However, whenever they are present, there are a lot of people who buy their merchandise. It is not cheap but of good quality and this secures them good business every time they are around. It is not a problem for them to sell their merchandise irregularly. They come only when they need to earn money. Some 50 years ago, language shift from Nahuatl to Spanish had not yet been completed. There was at least one bilingual generation. A Nahuatl speaker reported at the time (Horcasitas 1968: 21, translation ours): “Nohtata, nonan – my father, my mother – spoke Spanish well. In this time, different than now, nobody was ashamed of speaking Mexicano (Nahuatl). Many did not know any Spanish.” By now, however, most of the young and middle-aged generation have abandoned Nahuatl and speak only Spanish. But they are still recognizable on the basis of their culture or their socioeconomic background. Most of them have received little formal schooling, and formal education is also not necessarily important for their jobs. Children are learning what their parents are doing, and the income is just

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about enough for everyone to carry on with their daily lives. But those working in the family businesses do not necessarily address the clients in the same way. The younger are found to often avoid addressing their customers directly. One reason for this may be that it is not respectful to have younger people address older people directly, but it may also be the case that patterns of interaction are changing among the young. It is much more frequent nowadays that young people from these families have graduated from high school, too. In some rare cases, some will even advance their studies further and study at university. A very different stand is about 20 meters away. There, a woman of about 40 years is sitting on the sidewalk. She has much less merchandise than the stand discussed before. She is from the municipality of Ixtlahuaca, north of Toluca, the capital city of the State of Mexico. This municipality is part of the Mazahuaspeaking region. Mazahua is a tonal language related to Otomi. Both belong to the Otomangue language group of Mexico. As people from indigenous villages generally do, the woman is sitting on the ground while selling her merchandise. At first, she had her merchandise on a blanket on the ground of the sidewalk. After some time she got herself a flat table where she now places her products. The vegetables and fruits she is selling are partly from her own and her neighbors’ gardens, but she also buys part of her merchandise in retail. She speaks Spanish, but her accent and her behavior reveal her indigenous background. Her merchandise is also of good quality, and she has a lot of clients as well. She turns to everybody very formally by saying “señora” or “señor”. She has never said “señito”, “güerito”, or anything like that. She does not use the informal terms of address that are widely spread among those from the rural-urban part of the city. Rather, she tries to conduct her communication in a way she thinks is appropriate for the city. At the same time, she has adapted to some of the culture here. For example, in order to pray for a good income she now shares with the sellers of the former stand the practice of making the sign of the cross with the money of the first sale of the day in her right hand. Another example we would like to discuss here is the butcher shop in the building in front of the family stand we discussed first. There are about ten people working there. The shop is always crowded. Lots of people come to buy meat there, which is then sold on to restaurants and to private clientele. The shop is rather expensive, but the merchandise is excellent, and it is quite common to find middle-class clients there. Since the French college is nearby, parents often buy their meat for lunch there when they pick up their children from school. As a result, French can sometimes be heard in the shop, but also Chinese, Japanese or other foreign languages. There are a considerable number of foreigners living in this part of Mexico City. The salesmen in the butcher shop have again different ways of addressing their customers. You may hear “señor” or “señorita” alongside the very informal “jefe” or “jefa” (boss). This is a form of address that is associated with people of low social status. There is no clearly recognizable pattern what is used. For instance, “señorita” is used with a young female individual, but it may also be used towards an old woman, as a way of being polite or to make compliments.

Mexico City: diversity and homogeneity 55

Conclusions Sociolinguists and other social scientists often believe that there exists some fixed structure of the city, when there is in fact a fluid system of diversity instead. Blommaert tellingly commented about the difficulties he had in writing a book about his neighborhood in Antwerp: The plan was based on my life in the neighborhood [. . .] which increasingly became dominated by a fascination for the bewildering diversity of people and languages I noticed around me. So I started this book many years ago, but was never able to complete it because I never had the impression that I had a complete, comprehensive and definitive image of my neighborhood. My “informants”, to use a weathered anthropological term, were unpleasant enough to change location perpetually, to casually open shops and close, rename or relocate them, to pass them on to people of an entirely different group – in short, my informants simply wouldn’t sit still so that I could comfortably describe them “the way they were”. I was only able to complete this book when I began to understand that this was precisely the point: there is no position that can yield such a comprehensive and definitive picture, no position from where we can completely know whatever there is to be known.” (Blommaert 2013: 113–114) Many people think that society is stable and that change is the exception. Only when changes become more visible are they perceived as having an impact. It is tempting to find and define order and structure in such settings, and in so doing hide the fleeting, changing and fluid ways characterizing this setting. These are unstable situations. On the other hand, stability is also always emergent. As complex systems, societies may attain new levels of stability after some generations, or even after some years (Bastardas-Boada 2013a, 2013b; Massip-Bonet 2013; Terborg and García Landa 2013). It is, therefore, not surprising that diversification and homogenization is happening at the same time. This is also the case for Mexico City. Over the past 100 years, Mexico City has grown from a settlement occupying what is today the city center into a megacity of about 20 million residents, if we include the conurbation in the State of Mexico. During the last century, the city has spread geographically, thereby incorporating a large number of cities and towns. The principal languages spoken there were Spanish and Nahuatl. The latter remains to be used as a first language among some scattered speakers. Migration from the countryside added a lot of new languages to the city, such as Otomi, Mazahua, Zapoteco, Mixteco, Totonaco, Mixe, Puréhpecha and many others. Many of these speakers settled in the same quarter, and some of these minority communities still exist today. But the lingua franca among most of them is, by now, Spanish. In this process of language accommodation and shift, the indigenous languages were called “dialects” and their speakers became associated with negative attitudes and were often stigmatized. Hence, most of the indigenous population assimilated

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linguistically, even when they only stayed temporally in the city and went back to their home villages after some time. This notwithstanding, speakers of languages other than Spanish still live in Mexico City. They include newcomer migrants, but usually not the children of the migrants that arrived a generation ago. The same process of language shift that we can witness in Mexico City also takes place in the traditional settlement places of Mexico’s indigenous people, albeit at a somewhat slower speed. Therefore, migrants speaking a minority language when they arrive in the city will soon no longer be the rule but the exception. The multicultural and multilingual character of Mexico City is weakening. Obviously, when considering the many ethnic groups that arrived in the city in the first half of the twentieth century, mostly from rural parts of the country, the city was not only growing in size but also in diversity. However, if another language than Spanish or English is heard in the street today, people turn around and show surprise how somebody is able to communicate in such a “strange way”. Such patterns of behavior gloss over the fact that the rise and growth of Mexico City has been brought about by a multicultural and multilingual society. Despite the recent recognition and acknowledgement of Mexico’s linguistic diversity by the government, we believe that the highpoint of multilingualism in Mexico City lies in its past, and that the current situation of homogenization under the Spanish language will become even stronger henceforth. Diversity is more an idea than a reality in Mexico City today. Of course, as we tried to show, diversity remains in some way or another. Just as the weakening multilingualism in the city, these differences are relics of the multilingual and multicultural origin of Mexico City.

Notes 1 In linguistics, there has been a long tradition of descriptive studies from Catholic missioners; during the twentieth century there was a strong tradition of Tagmemic studies, of linguistic anthropology, and, in the last four decades, studies in sociolinguistics (Contreras 1985). In addition to such works, there exist a great number of local studies published in university series. A great part of this literature is composed of student theses. 2 Chandèze is referring here to the census of 1882 she consulted: Legislación mexicana o colección completa de las disposiciones legislativas expedidas desde la independencia de la república ordenada por los licenciados [. . .]. México: Imprenta del Comercio, de Dublan y Sánchez, tomo xii, 1882.

References Barriga Villanueva, Rebeca (2008) Miradas a la interculturalidad. El caso de una escuela urbana con niños indígenas. Revista mexicana de investigación educativa 13(39). Online availabe at: www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.phpscript=sci_arttext&pid=S1405-66662008000400009 (accessed 19 July 2016). Bastardas-Boada, Albert (2013a) Sociolinguistics. Towards a Complex Ecological View. In: Complexity Perspectives on Language, Communication and Society. Àngeles Massip-Bonet and Albert Bastardas-Boada (eds), 15–34. Heidelberg: Springer. ——— (2013b) General Linguistics and Communication Sciences. Sociocomplexity as an Integrative Perspective. In: Complexity Perspectives on Language, Communication and

Mexico City: diversity and homogeneity 57 Society. Àngeles Massip-Bonet and Albert Bastardas-Boada (eds), 151–73. Heidelberg: Springer. Blommaert, Jan (2013) Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscape. Chronicles of Complexity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Carbó, Teresa and Eva Salgado Andrade (2010) Invisibilidad de las lenguas indígenas en la prensa nacional mexicana, o el recuento de un ¿olvido? (1989–1995). In: Los retos de la planificación del lenguaje en el siglo XXI. Roland Terborg and Laura García Landa (eds), 517–54. Mexico City: CELE-UNAM. Carrasco, Pedro (1975) La transformación de la cultura indígena durante la colonia. Historia Mexicana 25(2): 175–203. Chandèze, Eliza (2012) La vivienda y los usos del suelo. Estudio de caso de la zona oriente del centro histórico a fines del siglo XIX y la primera década del siglo XX. In: Morfología de la ciudad de México. El catastro de fines del siglo XIX y de 2000. Estudios de caso. Rabiela Hira de Gortari (ed.), 89–116. Mexico City: UNAM. Contreras, Irma (1985) Bibliografía sobre la castellanización de los grupos indígenas de la República Mexicana , Mexico City: UNAM Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas. Horcasitas, Fernando (1968) De Porfirio Díaz a Zapata. Memoria Náhuatl de Milpa Alta. Mexico City: Dirección General de Publicaciones. INALI (2009) Programa de revitalización, fortalecimiento y desarrollo de las lenguas indígenas nacionales 2008–2012. Mexico City: INALI. INEGI (2010a) XIII Censo de población y vivienda 2010. Mexico City: Government of Mexico. ——— (2010b) Los extranjeros en México. Mexico City: Government of Mexico. Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons and Charles D. Fenning (eds) (2016) Ethnologue. Languages of the World (nineteenth edition). Online available at: www.ethnologue.com (accessed 4 December 2016). Martín-Butragueño, Pedro (2009) Inmigración lingüística en la Ciudad de México. Lengua y migración 1(1): 9–37. Martín-Butragueño, Pedro and Yolanda Lastra (eds) (2011) Corpus sociolingüístico de la Ciudad de México (volume 1): Hablantes de instrucción alta. Mexico City: COLMEX. Massip-Bonet, Àngeles (2013) Language as a Complex Adaptive System. Towards an Integrative Linguistics. In: Complexity Perspectives on Language, Communication and Society. Àngeles Massip-Bonet and Albert Bastardas-Boada (eds), 35–60. Heidelberg: Springer. Moseley, Christopher (ed.) (2010) Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (third edition). Online available at: www.unesco.org/culture/en/endangeredlanguages/atlas (accessed 4 December 2016). OEA = Organización de los Estados Americanos (2011) México. Síntesis histórica de la migración internacional en México. Online available at: www.migracionoea.org/index. php/es/sicremi-es/17-sicremi/publicacion-2011/paises-es/128-mexico-1-si-ntesishisto-rica-de-las-migracio-n-internacional-en-me-xico.html (accessed 19 July 2016). Terborg, Roland and Laura García Landa (2013) The Ecology of Pressures. Towards a Tool to Analyze the Complex Process of Language Shift and Maintenance. In: Complexity Perspectives on Language, Communication and Society. Àngeles Massip-Bonet and Albert Bastardas -Boada (eds), 219–39. Heidelberg: Springer. Terborg, Roland, Laura García Landa and Pauline Moore (2006) The Language Situation in Mexico. In: Language Planning and Policy. Latin America (volume 1). Ecuador, Mexico and Paraguay. Richard B. Baldauf and Robert B. Kaplan (eds), 115–217. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

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Old variables, new meanings Resignification of rural speech variants in São Paulo’s urban ecology Livia Oushiro and Maria del Carmen Parafita Couto

While contemporary São Paulo may be considered a modern and cosmopolitan cultural center, its not so distant rural past remains in the speech of today’s socially ascending working-class youth. The stark socioeconomic differences between the working and the upper classes are felt linguistically, both in different rates of usage of certain variants and in diverging apparent time changes. Perhaps this is not surprising in a city hosting 11 million inhabitants (IBGE 2010). São Paulo is today the largest city in Brazil and in the southern hemisphere. It is located at the latitude of the Tropic of Capricorn, in the southeastern state also named São Paulo, bordered by four states: Paraná (to the south), Mato Grosso do Sul (to the west), Minas Gerais (to the northeast) and Rio de Janeiro (to the east). São Paulo’s current population results mainly from the arrival of thousands of foreign and internal migrants throughout the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, following the region’s agricultural and industrial development in this period. The drastic sociodemographic changes in a little over 100 years have had an impact on the city’s geographical landscape, social organization and language variation patterns. This chapter discusses the persistence and vitality in contemporary Paulistano Portuguese of what has been traditionally considered “rural, redneck variants” – both in laymen’s and linguists’ discourse (Amaral 1920) – arguing that the children of migrants from rural areas have brought about changes in these variants’ social meanings within the urban scenario.

São Paulo’s socioeconomic and demographic changes in the twentieth century In the nineteenth century, São Paulo’s language situation was radically different. The Portuguese variety spoken in the city and surrounding areas was named dialeto caipira (roughly, redneck dialect). During the early years of the empire, shortly after Brazil’s independence from Portugal in 1822, the fact that this language variety was stigmatized was used as an argument against the implementation of a law school in the province. Although this college course was eventually implemented in São Paulo in 1827, the argument in the Senate had been that the “many and ugly language flaws” spoken by the common people in the region “tainted” the speech of the small educated elite and “could corrupt the speech of future law

Old variables, new meanings: São Paulo 59 graduates” (Amaral 1920). The “ugly and flawed” language spoken in São Paulo arguably contrasted with Rio de Janeiro’s speech, which was then Brazil’s capital city and home to the imperial court. Until the second half of the nineteenth century, São Paulo, in fact, had had a quite secondary role in the colonial and post-independence economy, but that started to change rapidly from the 1870s onwards. After the installation of the first railways, São Paulo became an important commercial hub that concentrated the banking and industrial sectors (Pereira 2012), closely following the development of coffee plantations in the southeastern region (Beiguelman 1981). The Lei do ventre livre (Free womb law) in 1871, freeing slaves’ newborns, and the Lei áurea (Golden law) in 1888, fully abolishing slave labor, contributed to the importation of new free workers to Brazil. This was further motivated by governmental and landowner policies to bring European immigrants in order to “whiten” the Brazilian population (Beiguelman 1981).1 From 1880 to 1890, about 170,000 immigrants arrived at the province of São Paulo – most notably Italians, Portuguese and Spaniards (Pereira 2012), resulting in more than half of São Paulo’s population (54.6%) being foreign-born. Immigration continued to rise in the early 1900s – there arrived around 360,000 new immigrants between 1900 and 1910 and 446,000 between 1910 and 1919 (Beiguelman 1981: 53). By the turn of the century, new groups of immigrants from Japan had also arrived through the incentive of both the Brazilian and Japanese governments. Though originally destined to substitute the slave workforce in the coffee plantations in rural areas working on land leased by major landowners, part of the immigrant population would buy new land or move to nearby cities as soon as they could. Internal migrants have also played a major role constituting São Paulo’s population, especially from the 1950s onwards. Motivated by the growth of industrial and construction sectors in the city, as well as by precarious living conditions in rural areas (Durham 1984), migrants from within and other states flowed into the city by the thousands. Thus, the city of São Paulo’s population grew from less than 100,000 people in the late 1800s, to about 2 million in the 1950s and to more than 10 million in the early 2000s (IBGE 2010). Such exponential growth led to the formation of a large conurbation, the São Paulo Metropolitan Region (SPMR), which in the early 2010s encompassed 19.5 million people (IBGE 2010) and 39 cities. Although migration to the SPMR has been receding in the past decades – motivated by the problems resulting from overpopulation, by the economic development of other regions in the country, and by changes from an industrial to a tertiary sector economy (Oliveira, Ervatti and O’Neill 2011) – a recent survey by the Research Institute on Applied Economics (IPEA 2011) indicates that a great portion of the metropolitan area’s population is still composed of non-natives – 46% of SPMR’s workforce was born in a different state or country. While foreign immigrants make up only about 1% of today’s population (in sharp contrast to the late nineteenth century), the great majority of migrants have come from other states in Brazil, especially from the Northeast (Bahia 11%, Pernambuco 7%) and from neighboring states (Minas Gerais 8%, Paraná: 4%).2 The 54% of Paulistas (natives of the state of São Paulo) include both those born in the capital city and in the so-called “interior countryside”. This

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results in a scenario where most people are monolingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, but with intense dialect contact. São Paulo’s population is also quite heterogeneous regarding socioeconomic indices. A survey, conducted by the city government in 2000, took into account the head of the family’s income, the infant mortality rate, the literacy rate and the number of years of schooling. It revealed a great disparity between areas within the city. The human development index ranges from .245 in the southern end to .884 in central areas, and it identified areas of higher human development that are surrounded by gradually aggravated living conditions. The clear center-periphery divide, which also reflects differences in social class, is quite apparent for city dwellers, as will be seen in the next section.

How to recognize Paulistanos, non-Paulistanos and groups of Paulistanos A large sociolinguistic data collection project was conducted in São Paulo within the SP2010 Project (Mendes and Oushiro 2012) from 2009 to 2013, in which more than a hundred interviews with native Paulistanos were recorded.3 The interview schedule included questions on the speakers’ neighborhood, childhood, family, education, occupation, their opinions on several aspects of the city and reading tasks. In these interviews, São Paulo is commonly characterized as a place of “mixture” and “diversity”, where one “can find anything”:4 what do you think characterizes here? people say this is the . . . financial center right . . . but I think São Paulo’s main characteristic is its people (. . .) it’s this mixture of people in São Paulo right . . . from the Northeast the South . . . Japanese French Italian Spanish . . . this racial mixture . . . it doesn’t have only one characteristic right . . . you can find anything you want in São Paulo . . . (. . .) in my point of view, it’s the culture mixing . . . that makes the city unique. (2) INTERVIEWER: what do you think characterizes the city of São Paulo? TATIANA M.: first of all it’s a cosmopolitan city . . . because it incorporates countries not only regions in Brazil . . . I think the world is in São Paulo . . . (. . .) it’s the diversity. INTERVIEWER: and the Paulistano? what characterizes the Paulistano? TATIANA M.: well then, it depends ‘cause . . . for example I’m a child of a Northeasterner . . . with a guy from the São Paulo countryside . . . it’s different from a Paulistanos’ child . . . (. . .) I don’t know if we can define the Paulistano (3) INTERVIEWER: and do you think there’s something that characterizes Paulistanos? GIOVANA A.: that characterizes? . . . well, São Paulo is so . . . mixed right? that we’ve lost any characterization . . . (. . .) there’s a lot of mixture uhm many people from the North the South the Southeast other states (1)

INTERVIEWER: WILLIAM A.:

Old variables, new meanings: São Paulo 61 from the Southeast . . . there’s people from other countries ‘cause now you can see many Bolivians Uruguayans Paraguayans . . . uhm Chinese Lebanese . . . (. . .) where I work downtown it’s a place where you could see Koreans Lebanese Syrians Arabs all of that . . . we knew they were there . . . now they’re also coming to the other neighborhoods . . . y’know? so there’s all this mixture and you can’t tell what’s São Paulo’s characteristic anymore. As seen in the previous section, the presence of foreign migrants is limited to about 1% of the population nowadays, but their heritage is still felt in São Paulo through their descendants and racial mixture. But despite São Paulo’s “diversity” (as seen in Paulistanos’ discourse), they seem to have a well-defined sociolinguistic identity within the country. Oushiro (2012) analyzed the answers of 72 speakers to the question: “When you were in (another city visited by the speaker), did people recognize you as a Paulistano? If so, how?” Only six of them answered “no”, and the other 66 (92%) answered positively. In addition to mentioning traits relating to attitudes (such as “always being in a rush”, “exhibiting more economic power”) and looks (“being untanned for spending too much time indoors”, “having tattoos”), most speakers (60/72 = 83%) mentioned their manner of speaking as an index of “Paulistanity”. The Paulistano speech was characterized as “speaking fast”, “with an Italian accent” and “with a nasal voice”. We naturally need to take into account that the interview in itself highlighted a Paulistano identity, regardless of whether each speaker self-identified as a “typical Paulistano”. They had been recruited for an academic study on “São Paulo and Paulistanos” and were selected because they were born in the city; the interview schedule contained many questions about what they thought of their neighborhood, the city and their relation with it. Whether real or imagined, the traits mentioned by the speakers suggest that Paulistanos see themselves as sociolinguistically distinct from other speakers in Brazil. It is curious that 43 of the interviewees (60%) characterized this “distinct” manner of speaking by an “absence of accent”, a speech that would be close to an alleged national standard.5 When asked whether they could recognize if somebody was not a Paulistano, relatively fewer speakers were as certain – 49 (68%) said “yes” and 23 answered “no” or “it depends”. They again relied on manner of speaking, often mentioning accent features and evaluational comments (“Cariocas stretch and hiss their ‘s’”, “people from the countryside speak slowly and stretch their ‘r’”, “any other accent is ugly”), attitudes (“looks lost”, “is less violent”, “is less agitated”) and looks (“dresses more casually”, “is more tanned”). Speakers who did not answer positively observed that looks alone cannot distinguish non-Paulistanos (while speech is often more reliable), or that certain migrants are able to “blend into” the Paulistano manner of speaking. What matters here is not how accurate these characterizations are in reality, but that Paulistanos in the SP2010 corpus discursively elaborate a distinct set of traits for themselves to create a “unique” identity among Brazilians. Among these, speakers often resort to stereotypes of cosmopolitan characteristics, such as “being agitated/in a rush/stressed”, “exhibiting economic power”, and “spending much time indoors”.

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Among Paulistanos, however, the speakers find it harder to name differences, especially in speech. Another question in the interview schedule asked whether they could guess where a person lived in the city. Most answers to this question were similar to Luis A.’s below: (4)

INTERVIEWER:

and here within the city . . . can you tell if a person is from a specific neighborhood or from the North Zone, East Zone . . . West Zone? LUIS A.: oh no . . . whoever says they can is a liar . . . ok in the old days people from Mooca ‘cause there were people with a . . . more Italian accent but this is older than my folks right? . . . like . . . today’s impossible to tell the city is completely mixed . . . and there isn’t a distinct culture I think the city is big but . . . it doesn’t work that way.

Luis A. mentions Mooca, a traditional Italian neighborhood where speakers were said to have a distinct dialect with an Italian prosody, but believes that this has changed. When speakers did provide examples of different groupings and sociolects in São Paulo, they mentioned either social class or center-periphery differences: (5)

PAULO P.:

so you can tell from the social class . . . uhm the working-class speak differently from the upper classes . . . who could go to school and all that. (6) GIOVANA A.: so as you go to the periphery you can see different people . . . you see more humble people . . . right? and humble people don’t have the same . . . talk an educated talk or they don’t know what they can say . . . so if you’re on the bus you’re not supposed to talk loudly . . . not make a mess and scream

When describing São Paulo’s sociolects, most speakers were unable to name specific linguistic features, such as the realization of /r/ and /s/ when describing other regional varieties. But Romulo S.’s opinion is illuminating is this regard: (7)

ROMULO S.:

São Paulo attracts people from all places . . . so you can hear all accents here

Because the city is seen as the place of “diversity”, whatever is considered “nonnative” can be easily dismissed as “migrants’ speech”. But a systematic survey of native Paulistanos’ speech shows that what has traditionally been considered “rural, redneck” variants is well and alive among the city-born.

Old variables, new meanings This section analyzes the persistence of rural variants in native Paulistanos’ speech by describing the social embedding of two linguistic features, nonstandard subjectverb agreement and coda /r/ retroflexion. We argue that the vitality of these variants

Old variables, new meanings: São Paulo 63 follows their acquisition of new social meanings, especially among working-class youth, in constant contact with both the speech of the natives and the migrants. Verb-agreement Variable verb-agreement in first- (1PP) and third-person plural (3PP) are widely studied phenomena in Brazilian Portuguese (e.g. Guy 1981; Bortoni-Ricardo 1985; Naro, Görski and Fernandes 1999; Mendes and Oushiro 2015). The variable consists of the presence or absence of plural morphemes in the verb, as in nós fala-mos (we speak), eles falam (they speak, in the standard variant) and nós fala-Ø/eles fala-Ø (we/they speak, considered nonstandard). In summing up several different sociolinguistic studies on these phenomena, Rubio and Gonçalves (2012: 1020–1024) find that the usage rates of the standard form vary greatly among different communities in Brazil, from 30% to 100% for 1PP and from 17% to 94% for 3PP. The lower end of these continua generally refers to communities of rural and “rurban” speakers (rural migrants living in large cities) with little or no formal education, whereas the upper end corresponds to samples of urban educated speech. In São Paulo, Rodrigues (1987) analyzed variable 1PP and 3PP verb-agreement in the speech of 40 illiterate or barely literate speakers living in an urban favela (shantytown) in the north zone of the city. Contrary to her first intent to record only native speakers, Rodrigues noticed that most dwellers in the favela had come from rural areas, not only from the state of São Paulo, but from all areas in Brazil (Rodrigues 1987: 132). Thus, in addition to native Paulistanos, Rodrigues also interviewed speakers from the countryside of São Paulo, Paraná, Minas Gerais, southern Bahia and other states in the Northeast. They were balanced for their sex/ gender, educational level (none or primary school) and three age groups. The use of nonstandard 1PP was up to 46% (out of 693 tokens), 25 points below the use of the nonstandard 3PP form, which was 71% (out of 1,356 tokens). Regarding the social factors, her logistic regression analyses found that sex/gender and educational level correlated with 1PP, the nonstandard variant being favored by women and illiterate speakers, but not with 3PP. Male older speakers, from 36 years onwards, disfavored the nonstandard variants as they suffer greater normative pressure to adjust to the wider community (as is commonly seen in “rurban” communities, where women tend to stay home or work as housemaids, and men tend to find work outside the local community and have more contact with standard varieties). Speakers from the interior of São Paulo, Paraná and the Northeast favored the nonstandard variant for 1PP, and those from Minas Gerais and southern Bahia favored the nonstandard variant for 3PP. In both cases, native Paulistanos were the group who least tended to employ the nonstandard variant. Based on the patterns of 1PP and 3PP variation and her ethnographic observation of the local community, Rodrigues (1987) concludes that nonstandard 1PP has a different social meaning than nonstandard 3PP; although both are proscribed according to normative grammars and both can be understood as similar syntactic phenomena,

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the “error” in 1PP identifies the rural migrant. However, the author argues that the new generation of migrants’ children would probably adopt patterns reflecting the urban social stratification and move away from their parents’ patterns of usage, due to the fact that they had greater access to formal education. Coelho (2006), approximately 20 years later, investigated the variable use of 1PP pronouns nós versus a gente (literally, we versus the people), as well as variable 1PP verb-agreement, also in a favela community in the north zone of São Paulo. When considering both variables, there are four possibilities for expressing 1PP in Portuguese, the standard forms nós fala-mos, a gente fala-Ø, and the nonstandard nós fala-Ø, a gente fala-mos (we speak). Standardly, agreement with a gente follows 3PS verb morphology, and the presence of 1PP mos is the nonstandard form. From his ethnographic observations, Coelho built a sample of 24 interviews based on relevant social groups within the community: co-op dressmakers, daycare employees, members of the neighborhood association and their children, and the “goal-to-goal manos” (bros, a group of teenage males who hung out at the soccer court). Similar to Rodrigues’s (1987) study, speakers included both migrants and their children born in São Paulo, but Coelho’s sample is unbalanced for gender and age – for instance, all the dressmakers are females older than 25 years of age, and all the “goal-to-goal manos” are males below 25 years. Coelho (2006) observed 70% (out of 345 tokens) of nonstandard 1PP verbagreement with the pronoun nós, a much higher rate than the 46% observed by Rodrigues (1987). In analyzing both the variable pronoun usage and verbagreement, Coelho notes that the standard 1PP with the pronoun nós is not the only assimilation strategy employed by the migrants and argues that the variants’ social meanings are not based solely on the grammar book prescriptions. The two younger teenage groups, namely the “goal-to-goal manos” and the neighborhood association members’ children, differed in regard to their orientation to school, socialization norms in private or public spaces, the consumption of drugs and liquor, dressing styles and perspectives of social ascension. Linguistically, both younger groups favored the use of 3PS verb forms, but differed in their pronoun usage. The manos favored nós vai (nonstandard) while the neighborhood association members’ children favored a gente vai (standard); thus, the latter group’s perspectives of social ascension were paralleled more properly by their substitution of the pronoun nós for a gente than by the adoption of the prescriptive standard nós vamos. This variant was, in turn, favored by the adults, especially those working outside the local community more closely in contact with other linguistic norms. Coelho further notices that this pattern cannot be explained by educational level, since the teenagers had obtained higher degrees than their parents. Thus, differently from Rodrigues (1987), Coelho (2006) concludes that stigmatized nonstandard variants have acquired a new social meaning among urban working-class youth, children of the 1970s and 1980s migrants; they no longer represent “rural speech”, but a social identity of urban periphery. Oushiro (2015), based on the SP2010 Project corpus of interviews, analyzed patterns of 3PP and 1PP (with the pronoun nós) verb-agreement in the speech

Old variables, new meanings: São Paulo 65 of 118 native Paulistanos, balanced for sex/gender, three age groups, two levels of education and two areas of residence (center versus periphery). Although this sample is not directly comparable to either Rodrigues’ or Coelho’s, it helps to visualize more general trends within the community. Figure 5.1 and 5.2 show the result of a multivariate mixed-effects model that included the interaction between age group, area of residence and grammatical person (results for central and peripheral dwellers are separated simply for ease of visualization). Weights in this figure refer to the use of the nonstandard forms. In central areas, there is a clear apparent-time change towards the standard variants, as younger speakers disfavor the nonstandard form relatively to older speakers; this trend is stronger for 1PP than for 3PP. On the other hand, in peripheral areas,

Figure 5.1 Personal pronoun use in central areas

Figure 5.2 Personal pronoun use in peripheral areas

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while 3PP follows a pattern of stable variation, with younger and older speakers favoring the nonstandard variant in relation to the middle-aged group, 1PP usage is relatively more favored by younger speakers than by the middle-aged and older ones (whose weights of .35 and .33 are not significantly different). Previous verb-agreement studies in Brazilian Portuguese had either shown cases of stable variation or change towards the standard variants due to increasing levels of education and urbanization in different communities (Lucchesi 2012). Although it cannot be stated that there is a clear change in progress towards the nonstandard 1PP here, there are signs that working-class youth living in peripheral areas of São Paulo have been using it at a greater rate than could be expected from previous studies. As per Coelho (2006), not all of working-class youth follow the same strategies, as some teenagers adopt a gente + 3PS; it may also be the case that teenage speakers favoring nós fala-Ø will gradually move away from this variant as they grow older and get into the job market. But the vitality of the nonstandard “rural” 1PP can be explained by the fact that it’s being actively used by the peripheral areas’ manos (bros) as an index of working-class urban identity. Coda /r/ Similar to verb-agreement, the variable realization of coda /r/, in words such as porta “door” and mulher “woman” in Brazilian Portuguese, has been extensively described (cf. e.g. Callou, Moraes and Leite 1996; Brandão 2007; Leite 2004). The variable is one of the most salient indices of geographical identity, with several different realizations in the country.6 In an analysis of the speech of educated speakers living in the five largest state capital cities in Brazil, Callou et al. (1996) identified seven variants: trill [r], tap [ɾ], retroflex approximant [ɻ], velar fricatives [χ ɣ], uvular trill [R], glottal fricatives [h ɦ] and deletion. The first three [-back] variants are found in the two most southern state capital cities, Porto Alegre and São Paulo; the following three [+back] are found in the other cities (Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Recife), while deletion occurs in all varieties. In phonetics textbooks (e.g. Cristófaro-Silva 2007), the tap is usually considered the “prototypical Paulistano variant”, and retroflex-/r/, also called “the caipira ‘redneck’ R”, is associated with the state’s countryside and the surrounding states of Paraná and Minas Gerais. Many studies have pointed to the stigmatized status of the retroflex-/r/, even – and especially – in communities where its use is predominant. For instance, Leite (2004) analyzed the speech of college students from São José do Rio Preto who had moved to Campinas (both cities in the state of São Paulo) to attend one of the most prestigious universities in the country. She found that first-year students tended to employ retroflex-/r/ much more often than senior students, who had shifted their coda /r/ realization to vocalized variants. According to Leite, the students themselves regarded retroflex-/r/ as “ugly, lagged, loaded” and signaled a desire to change their own pronunciation to what they called an “intermediate” and “ideal” /r/. But in a recent survey, Oushiro (2015) found that retroflex-/r/ is not so infrequent in native Paulistanos’ speech. In her 118-speaker sample and in a total of

Old variables, new meanings: São Paulo 67 nearly 70,000 tokens, tap-/r/ accounts for about 29.2%; retroflex-/r/ for 14.1%; [+back] variants for a mere .4%; and deletion for 56.3%. Nearly all tokens of deletion refer to the infinitive morpheme, e.g. andar (to walk) or comer (to eat), which can be considered a complete change in Brazilian Portuguese. When disregarding deletion and the few [+back] variants, retroflex-/r/ represents 28.3% of the tokens. Oushiro (2015) analyzed a random sample of 9,226 auditorily coded tokens in a multivariate mixed-effects logistic regression analysis that contrasted tap and retroflex-/r/.7 Among the social factors, socioeconomic class,8 area of residence, mobility and parents’ place of origin played a more important role than sex/gender, educational level and style9 (though these were also significantly correlated). Retroflex-/r/ was found to be favored by lower social classes, speakers living in peripheral areas, with lower mobility (those who had never moved from the original neighborhood), men and those with lower levels of education (see Table 5.1). Most of the observed social correlations are expected considering previous sociolinguistic analyses in a number of different (Western) urban communities, for variables whose variants differ in prestige. Age, on the other hand, did not

Table 5.1 Realization of coda /r/ according to social variables (N = 9,226; [ɻ ]: 28.3%) Weight Social class Upper and upper-middle Middle Upper-working and working Range Area of residence Peripheral Central Range Level of education Up to high school College Range Sex/gender Females Males Range Age group 20–34 y.o. 35–59 y.o. 60+ y.o.

% [ɻ ]

Total N

.27 .41 .68

11.2 27.9 37.4

2,194 2,783 4,249

.67 .31

36.6 19.0

4,881 4,435

.61 .40

35.0 21.9

4,497 4,729

.59 .41

32.7 23.8

4,661 4,565

[.57] [.52] [.40]

36.7 26.0 22.1

3,051 3,256 2,919

41

36

21

18

Input: .203. aχ2 = .32(1), p > .50. [ ] indicate non-significant correlation with variable. Source: Oushiro (2015: 110)

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show a significant correlation overall. However, when crossing age with speakers’ area of residence and socioeconomic class, two clearly distinct patterns emerge (Figures 5.3 and 5.4). The working-class and peripheral area residents, who had been shown to favor retroflex-/r/, exhibit weights above .50 for all age groups. The working and the middle-class, as well as central residents, also exhibit gradually increasing factor weights from the older to the younger speakers, pointing to a change towards the retroflex. The upper class also seemed to be moving towards the same direction, as indicated by the higher weights for the middle-aged group when compared to the older speakers. However, this trend is broken by the upper-class youth. Instead

Figure 5.3 Use of retroflex /r/ according to area of residence

Figure 5.4 Use of retroflex /r/ according to social class

Old variables, new meanings: São Paulo 69 of following the community’s change towards the retroflex, they radically avoid it. The fact that younger speakers of different social strata are moving in opposite directions signals that retroflex-/r/ may have different social meanings for these groups. To better assess retroflex-/r/’s social value, Oushiro (2015) conducted a separate analysis in reading tokens, in which it’s assumed that speakers were paying maximum attention to their speech. In crossing age and social class only within this data subset (N = 1,985), the opposing trends are even clearer. Figure 5.5 shows that older and younger upper-class speakers radically avoid retroflex-/r/ in the word list (.12 and .04 respectively), while middle and working-class speakers show a strong tendency towards retroflex-/r/, even in their more monitored style. It is indeed upper/upper-middle-class youth who, in favoring the tap, have reversed an apparent-time movement towards the retroflex. On the other hand, the respective curves for the middle and working-class groups in Figure 5.5 show that there is still a strong tendency towards retroflex-/r/ among the younger speakers (.87 and .90), even in the word list style. This suggests that, for non-upper-class youth, retroflex-/r/ is not as stigmatized as one might suppose. The relative prestige of retroflex-/r/ among these speakers may be a consequence of the presence of other variants of /r/ in the community. Recall that Northeastern migrants make up about 30% of today’s adult population in São Paulo. In an analysis of the variable realization of coda /r/ in the speech of 12 northeastern migrants living in the city, Mendes (2011) shows that they largely retain the fricative variants – on average, 75.6% of 3,379 tokens. Further, recall that fricative /r/ is virtually nonexistent in native Paulistano Portuguese (.4%), which informs us that these migrants’ children have not kept the fricative variants. The small proportion of [+back] variants in native speakers’ speech is in high contrast with the strong presence of Northeastern migrants.

Figure 5.5 Use of retroflex /r/ according to age and social class

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Table 5.2 Realization of coda /r/ according to parents’ place of origin (N = 9,226; [ɻ ]: 28.3%)

Parents’ place of origin Northeast SP/PR/MG Countryside São Paulo Foreign Range

Weight

% [ɻ ]

Total N

.82 .60 .45 .27 55

57.4 31.0 25.6 16.3

611 2,562 5,193 860

Input: .201. χ2 = .41(1), p > .50. SP = state of São Paulo; MG = Minas Gerais; PR: Paraná Source: Oushiro (2015: 112)

Parents’ place of origin was analyzed in a separate multivariate analysis, as it is not independent from speakers’ age and social class. Table 5.2 shows that retroflex/r/ is favored by children of countryside and northeastern migrants. The correlation with parents’ place of origin revealed a somewhat unexpected direction. While retroflex-/r/ is usually associated with surrounding countryside areas in the states of São Paulo, Paraná and Minas Gerais, northeastern areas in Brazil employ overwhelmingly more [+back] variants. Table 5.2 shows that these migrants’ children do not necessarily adopt what is traditionally considered the prototypical “Paulistano variant” (the tap), but, rather, they tend to use the retroflex, both in terms of frequency (57.4%) and in terms of tendency (.82), even more so than children of migrants from the countryside. Here we put forth two possible reasons for these results: one social and one perceptual in nature. Socially, we have seen the strong divide in the use of retroflex-/r/, which is favored by working and upper-working class speakers, with a lower educational level and living in peripheral areas. According to a survey by the Research Institute on Applied Economics (IPEA 2011), northeastern migrants have, on average, lower educational levels and the lowest income of all social groups, indicative of a lower socioeconomic stratum. Even though their Paulistano children may ascend on the socioeconomic scale, their less privileged opportunities in early life probably help shape these speakers’ social networks. Thus the extensive use of retroflex-/r/ by northeastern migrants’ children may be an indirect consequence of their social status. Evidence for a perceptual basis is given by a matched-guise experiment conducted by Oushiro (2015). She digitally manipulated four excerpts of native Paulistanos’ speech in Praat (Boersma and Weenink 2014), a free software for acoustic analyses, to produce matched stimuli containing only tap or only retroflex-/r/ tokens. Since pairs of stimuli are identical in terms of speech content, pitch, prosody, etc., except for the realization of coda /r/, the rationale is that if one excerpt is rated differently according to scales, such as class or education, depending on which “guise” was heard (tap or retroflex), such differences may be attributed to the variable in question. Participants in that study – 185 residents of São Paulo,

Old variables, new meanings: São Paulo 71 natives and non-natives – rated the speakers in the tap-guise as sounding significantly more Paulistano, as residing in more central areas, as more educated, as members of higher social classes and as more articulate and sophisticated, while rating speakers in the retroflex-guise as sounding more accented, informal, simple, hard-working and “redneck”. However, there were also significant interactions between some of these traits and the social characteristics of the participants. Figure 5.6 shows the difference between the retroflex-/r/’s and tap’s mean ratings in a 5-point scale of “Paulistanity” according to listeners’ area of residence and place of origin, analyzed in a mixed-effects linear regression model. Overall, groups rated the retroflex as sounding “less Paulistano” than the tap, as seen by the bars on the negative side (i.e., the mean rating for retroflex was smaller than the mean rating for the tap). Although dwellers of both central and peripheral areas rate the retroflex as “less Paulistano” than the tap, this difference is not as drastic for those living in peripheral areas (and the difference between the groups is significant to a 5% level). Regarding place of origin, while native Paulistanos rated retroflex-/r/ as significantly “less Paulistano” than the tap, listeners from the northeast rated both at the same degree of “Paulistanity”, i.e., for Northeasterners, the retroflex sounded just as Paulistano as the tap. In other words, for users of [+back] variants, both [-back] variants sound quite similar as an index of Paulistanity. Countrysiders, on the other hand, rated retroflex-/r/ as much less Paulistano than the tap in comparison to the natives, indicating that this difference is much more salient to speakers coming from retroflex-predominant areas than for native Paulistanos themselves. It seems that, from the perspective of working-class youth in contact with a greater number of variants of /r/ in migrants’ speech, retroflex-/r/ is valued for being more Paulistano than [+back] realizations, which in turn are truly rejected in the community.

Paulistanity (R – T) –1.5

–1.0

–0.5

0.0

0.5

*** *

***

***

1.5

Central (R = 2.88; T = 3.86) ***

**

1.0

Peripheral (R = 3.14; T = 3.73)

Sao Paulo (R = 3.06; T = 3.83) **

SPMR (R = 3.00; T = 4.00) Countryside (R = 2.46; T = 3.76) NE states (R = 3.49; T = 3.55)

Figure 5.6 Assessment of “Paulistanity” according to place of residence and place of origin

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In large-scale surveys such as the production and perception analyses reported here it’s hard to know how individual speakers interpret coda /r/’s variants in their daily lives. Nevertheless, some insights are given by speakers themselves during the interviews. Thaissa B. comments on differences in the speech of different social groups by bringing up an example of a former friend:10 (8)

THAISSA B.:

I used to have a friend who lived on this street . . . and now she’s living further ahead not too far from here . . . but her contacts are now upper-middle-class girls, the ones we call “patricinhas” . . . and now she talks like “duuude . . . this is sooo lame” it’s like . . . she didn’t use to speak like this . . . and it seems her environment has totally shaped her . . .

Thaissa B. defines patricinhas as “upper-middle-class girls” and negatively evaluates the changes in the speech of a former neighborhood friend who started hanging out with members of an upper social class. Later on, when asked what she thinks of a certain manner of speaking, e.g. a porta tá aberta (the door is open) realized with the tap, Thaissa B. associates it with patricinhas, clearly contrasting it with the “local” retroflex used in peripheral areas: (9)

INTERVIEWER:

and what do you think of this manner of speaking “a porta [ɾ] tá aberta [ɾ]”? THAISSA B.: oh that’s how patricinhas speak. INTERVIEWER: [laughs] THAISSA B.: “a porta [ɾ] tá [ɾ] aberta” is a patricinha’s thing . . . “a porta [ɻ ] tá aberta [ɻ ]” is more . . . the R is different . . . [speaking in a lower pitch] ‘cuz the system is different here . . . certo? [ɻ ] (=right?)

Thaissa B. speaks in a lowered pitch and uses the expressions esquema (system) and certo (right), this last one with a retroflex-/r/, to allude to a social identity “from the periphery”, possibly associated with manos (bros), as opposed to patricinhas (upper-class clueless girly-girls). In this excerpt, identities associated with the retroflex and tap variants are in agreement with the results from the correlational analyses. There is a relation between men living in the periphery and the retroflex and women living in more central areas and the tap. However, one can infer that the “negative” value, in this case, is attributed to the tap. Naturally, patricinhas and manos are social stereotypes that may not coincide with each central and peripheral speaker’s identity, but they may indirectly play a role in speakers’ use of certain variants. Thaissa B. (a 26-year-old female with a college degree) employs retroflex/r/ in 68% of her tokens, a much higher rate than the one for women in general (23.8%), younger speakers (36.7%), those with a college degree (21.9%) and, in fact, even greater than that for dwellers of peripheral areas (36.6%, cf. Table 5.1). Her high rate of retroflex-/r/ seems to index an identification with her neighborhood and local community, in opposition to “upper-middle-class patricinhas”. Though rarely elaborated in speakers’ discourse, the higher rates of retroflex-/r/ by workingclass, peripheral speakers may also index a sense of local urban identity.

Old variables, new meanings: São Paulo 73

Final words This chapter has shown that traditionally considered “rural, redneck” variants, namely 1PP nonstandard agreement and retroflex coda /r/, are still present in urban São Paulo – mainly in the speech of certain groups of working-class youth living in peripheral areas composed predominantly by internal migrants from the surrounding countryside and the Northeast. On the one hand, this contrasts with Paulistanos’ metapragmatic comments on their own speech, often characterized as distinct from other Brazilian Portuguese varieties, as well as “accent-free” or “standard” – perhaps a consequence of language leveling and standardization, promoted by dialect contact and by greater access to formal education. On the other hand, this can be partially explained by the city’s rapid and exponential growth over the past century. Nonstandard subject-verb agreement and retroflex-/r/ have not simply been imported by the migrants, but are also part of the community’s nineteenth century linguistic repertoire. Interestingly, the very presence of migrants can be employed to explain the use of nonstandard variants, which are easily dismissed as “non-native”. However, their persistence and vitality, in spite of analysts and laymen’s prediction that they would soon “disappear” in face of large scale urbanization and rising levels of education in São Paulo, cannot be explained if one ignores their new social meanings as indices of local urban and working-class identity. Migrants’ children make use of different strategies to either signal social ascension (as is the case of the neighborhood association members’ children, adopting the standard a gente + 3PS for 1PP) or a separate urban periphery identity, as is the case of the manos (bros), re-signifying the rural nós + 3PS. Additionally, coda /r/’s multiple variants allow for their reinterpretation in a cosmopolitan environment: while retroflex-/r/ indexes “rural, redneck” for natives of São Paulo and surrounding areas, it indexes “Paulistanity” for northeastern migrants and their children, a fact that allows for its increasing rates of usage among working-class speakers. Different apparent-time trends for each of these variables denounce the city’s social gap and reminds “modern and cosmopolitan Paulistanos” of its not so distant rural past. As a “place of diversity”, that gathers much of Brazilian Portuguese variants, São Paulo is still a relatively understudied community from a sociolinguistic perspective – a goldmine for the study of language variation, language change and its social meanings. Future research on São Paulo could further explore the social dynamics of language use in specific groups and communities of practice, such as the manos in the periphery or more traditional central neighborhoods or as Mooca (whose sociolect is regarded the stereotypical Paulistano Portuguese). The different trends between central and peripheral dwellers may be a case of social reallocation (Britain and Trudgill 2005), a topic that merits a closer look in the future. Analyzing the intricacies of the relationship between linguistic production, perception and evaluation – i.e., how people speak, how they think they speak, how they evaluate different variants and what social identities they associate with them – is also in high order. Finally, a deep examination of migrants’ speech and different patterns of language accommodation will shed light on language contact

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phenomena, given that internal and external migrants make up most of the population of today’s metropolitan areas.

Notes 1 After an initial period in which the immigrants’ costs of travel were covered by the coffee landowners, this expense was transferred to the Brazilian government supporting immigration (Beiguelman 1981). 2 Recent foreign immigration to São Paulo is mainly composed by Bolivians (Baeninger 2012) and Chinese (Meng Yin 2013). The 2010 Census counts approximately18,000 Bolivians in the city, but the Bolivian Consulate estimates around 100,000, including unregistered immigrants. The Chinese Consulate estimates around 90,000 Chinese living in the city of São Paulo. 3 60 of these interviews are freely available (recordings and transcripts) on the project’s website: http://projetosp2010.fflch.usp.br. 4 See Oushiro (2015: 8–9) for original excerpts in Portuguese. Conventionally, the transcripts in the SP2010 Project follow standard language spelling (i.e., they do not attempt to represent specific phonetic phenomena); on the other hand, they do not include other normative orthographic conventions such as commas, full stops and capitalization at the beginning of sentences, all of which pertain to the realm of writing, not speaking. Ellipses “. . .” represent pauses and “(. . .)” represent redundant excerpts omitted for the sake of concision. 5 Brazilian Portuguese does not have an official standard spoken language. The term “national standard” has been used by the Paulistano interviewees, who often mentioned national TV news broadcast as an example of what they meant. 6 This is actually true in a number of languages, to the point that Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996: 245) state that the “overall unity of the [rhotics] seems to rest mostly on the historical connections between these subgroups, and on the choice of the letter ‘r’ to represent them all.” 7 The internal variables, which are not discussed here, were preceding phonological context, following phonological context, syllable stress, syllable position in the word, word class and lexical item (random effect); see Oushiro (2015: 89–122) for details. 8 Socioeconomic class was determined by a composite index considering speakers’ level of education, type of occupation, monthly income, as well as mother’s and father’s level of education and occupation. 9 Defined as “attention paid to speech” (Labov 2001). 10 See original excerpts in Oushiro (2015: 119).

References Amaral, Amadeu (1920) O dialeto caipira. Online available at: www.projetolivrolivre. com/O%20dialeto%20caipira%20-%20Amadeu%20Amaral%20-%20Iba%20Mendes. pdf (accessed 30 October 2016). Baeninger, Rosana (2012) Imigração boliviana no Brasil. Campinas: Núcleo de Estudos da População. Beiguelman, Paula (1981) A crise do escravismo e a grande imigração. São Paulo: Brasiliense. Boersma, Paul and David Weenink (2014) Praat. Doing Phonetics by Computer. Online available at: www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/ (accessed 30 October 2016). Bortoni-Ricardo, Stella M. (1985) The Urbanization of Rural Dialect Speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Old variables, new meanings: São Paulo 75 Brandão, Silvia (2007) Nas Trilhas do R-Retroflexo. Signum 10(2): 265–83. Britain, David and Peter Trudgill (2005) New Dialect Formation and Contact-Induced Reallocation. Three Case Studies From the English Fens. International Journal of English Studies 5(1): 183–209. Callou, Dinah, João Moraes and Yonne Leite (1996) Variação e diferenciação dialetal. A pronúncia do /r/ no português do Brasil. In: Gramática do Português Falado (volume 6). Ataliba Castilho (ed.), 463–89. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp. Coelho, Rafael F. (2006) É nóis na fita! Duas variáveis linguísticas numa vizinhança da periferia paulistana. Master thesis, University of São Paulo. Cristófaro-Silva, Thaïs (2007) Fonética e fonologia do português. São Paulo: Contexto. Durham, Eunice (1984) A caminho da cidade. A vida rural e a migração para São Paulo. São Paulo: Perspectiva. Guy, Gregory R. (1981) Linguistic Variation in Brazilian Portuguese. Aspects of the Phonology, Syntax and Language History. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. IBGE (2010) Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística – Censo Demográfico 2010. Online available at: www.ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/populacao/censo2010/ (accessed 30 October 2016). IPEA (2011) Comunicados do IPEA 115. Perfil dos migrantes em São Paulo. Online available at: www.ipea.gov.br/portal/images/stories/PDFs/comunicado/111006_comunicadoipea115. pdf (accessed 30 October 2016). Labov, William (2001) The Anatomy of Style-Shifting. In: Style and Sociolinguistic Variation. Penelope Eckert and John R. Rickford (eds), 85–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ladefoged, Peter and Ian Maddieson (1996) The Sounds of World’s Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. Leite, Candida Mara Britto (2004) Atitudes linguísticas. A variante retroflexa em foco. Master thesis, Campinas Unicamp. Lucchesi, D. (2012) A concordância verbal e a polarização linguística no Brasil. Unpublished Manuscript. Mendes, Ronald Beline (2011) A pronúncia retroflexa do /-r/ na fala paulistana. In: Estudos da linguagem. Casamento entre ideias e perspectivas. Dermeval da Hora and Esmeralda Negrão (eds), 282–99. João Pessoa: Ideia. Mendes, Ronald Beline and Livia Oushiro (2012) O paulistano no mapa sociolinguístico brasileiro. Alfa 56(3): 973–1001. ——— (2015) Variable Number Agreement in Brazilian Portuguese. An Overview. Language and Linguistics Compass 9: 358–68. Meng Yin, Bi (2013) Imigração chinesa em São Paulo e seu português falado. Interlíngua e marcadores discursivos. Master thesis, Universidade de São Paulo. Naro, Anthony J., Edai Görski and Eulália Fernandes (1999) Change Without Change. Language Variation and Change 11: 197–211. Oliveira, Antonio Tadeu Ribeiro, Leila Regina Ervatti and Maria Monica Vieira Caetano O’Neill (2011) O panorama dos deslocamentos populacionais no Brasil. PNADs e censos demográficos. In: Reflexões sobre os deslocamentos populacionais no Brasil. Luiz Antonio Pinto di Oliveira and Antonio Tadeu Ribeiro di Oliveira (eds), 28–48. Rio de Janeiro: IBGE. Oushiro, Livia (2012) How to Recognize a Paulistano. Sociolinguistics Symposium 19, Berlin, Germany, 21 August. ——— (2015) Identidade na pluralidade: avaliação, produção e percepção linguística na cidade de São Paulo. PhD dissertation, University of São Paulo.

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Pereira, Hélcius Batista (2012) O caipira sob o olhar da elite paulistana das primeiras décadas do século XX. Língua e Literatura 30: 235–54. Rodrigues, Angela Cecília S. (1987) A concordância verbal no português popular em São Paulo. PhD dissertation, University of São Paulo. Rubio, Cássio Florêncio and Sebastião Carlos Leite Gonçalves (2012) A fala do interior paulista no cenário da sociolinguística brasileira. Panorama da concordância verbal e da alternância pronominal. Alfa 56(3): 1003–34.

6

Dubai Language in the ethnocratic, corporate and mobile city Ingrid Piller

In January 2012, a billboard campaign around Dubai invited viewers to reflect on the urban identity of Dubai. Designed in the style of the “Love is . . .” cartoons, the bilingual billboards contained an Arabic slogan beginning with “. . . ‫”دﺑﻲ‬ (“Dubai . . .”) and an English translation beginning with “Dubai is . . .” underneath. One of these slogans (see Picture 6.1) read: “Dubai is . . . 195 nationalities to practice your language skills on.” The slogan was illustrated by two cartoon images: One depicted three women – two Emirati and one Western – sitting in a café, sipping coffee and chatting animatedly over an Apple-branded notebook computer. The other showed another group of three people in some sort of generic interaction: Two women, one stylized as East Asian and the other as Indian, with an African man. In the background a taxi is visible, with a smiling white male passenger and a Turkish (or possibly “generic Middle Eastern”) male driver. The slogan and the images present Dubai as a multilingual and multicultural cosmopolitan urban space, where people from

Picture 6.1 Dubai is . . . 195 nationalities to practice your language skills on

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around the globe happily mingle and interact but are also clearly marked as racially different. In this poster-case of twenty-first-century urban conviviality, linguistic diversity is not a barrier to communication but constitutes an opportunity to learn and practice new languages. The billboard captures one of the preferred images of Dubai that now circulates globally: Dubai as utopia, including as a multilingual and multicultural utopia. The fact that Dubai is a superlative city – including a “superdiverse” city – makes it an ideal case study to interrogate the vision of contemporary cities as sites of heightened linguistic and cultural diversity and resultant multicultural conviviality. In particular, I examine what forms of urban linguistic practices are enabled or disenabled by racial anxieties and ethnolinguistic hierarchies on the one hand and the classed ability to consume on the other. To do so, the first part of the chapter provides an overview of Dubai as a non-liberal modern city-state with a neoliberal free-market economy and comprised of a highly mobile and strictly stratified population. The second part of the chapter then hones in on the linguistic tensions and dilemmas that can be observed in the ethnocratic, corporate and mobile city; dilemmas related to various forms of Arabic variously associated with the weight of tradition, economic dominance, transnational media and youth practices; tensions between English, as the language of globalization and modernity, and Arabic, the official national language; and, finally, the complexities of lingua franca use and the use of Dubai’s languages other than Arabic and English. I close by suggesting implications of the sociolinguistics of Dubai for urban sociolinguistics more generally. Drawing on an argument put forward by anthropologists Vora and Koch (2015) that Dubai’s unique status as a city of superlatives does not make it exceptional, I argue that Dubai constitutes an extreme example of the inclusions afforded by celebrations of the linguistically flexible neoliberal urbanite and the exclusions they hide (Piller 2016).

Development and political organization Dubai is unique among the cities featured in this volume in that it constitutes a relatively autonomous political unit that is not tightly integrated into a nation-state. Technically, Dubai is part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The UAE is a loose federation of seven emirates – Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras alKhaimah, Sharjah and Umm al-Quwain – of which Dubai is the most populous, although Abu Dhabi, which also serves as capital, is the largest and has the most oil. Furthermore, this union was established only relatively recently, in 1971. Prior to 1971, Dubai constituted one among a number of small sheikhdoms that were administered by Britain in a semi-colonial relationship and collectively known as Trucial Oman. Dubai is also unique among the cities featured in this volume in that it has been a city, and particularly a global city, for only a few decades. This transformation from peripheral backwater to global city is often described as miraculous. For instance, a book describing Dubai as “the world’s fastest city” starts like a fairy tale:

Dubai: language in the corporate city 79 This is the story of a small Arab village that grew into a big city. It was a mud village on the seaside, as poor as any in Africa, and it sat in a region where pirates, holy warriors, and dictators held sway over the years. [. . .] But the village was peaceful, ruled by the same family generation after generation. (Krane 2009: np) The quote points to yet another way in which Dubai is unique among the cities featured here. Even today, Dubai is ruled as an absolute monarchy. The current ruler, Sheikh Muhammad, is a member of the Al Maktoum family, who has ruled Dubai since the early nineteenth century. In fact, the beginning of Dubai is usually dated to 1833, when the Al Maktoum family took power. While archaeological evidence dating back about three millennia exists of human habitation, including activities such as nomadic herding and maritime trade, the corner of the Arabian peninsula where Dubai and the UAE are now located was certainly extremely peripheral until well into the second half of the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century, the British found the area valuable to control access to the Persian Gulf, but not valuable enough to even try to bring it under full imperial control. While indirect rule through a local strongman was not an uncommon arrangement in the British Empire, the way Dubai gained independence was unique yet again. When the British Empire had been swept away in a wave of nationalist anti-colonial movements across the world, Britain decided to retreat from all its military bases east of Suez of its own accord. However, the rulers of Abu Dhabi and Dubai pleaded with Britain to stay and to continue to “protect” them. Although Britain did withdraw, they advised their protégés that they could expect to continue to rule the emirates unchanged as long as they kept a “tribal” structure in place, where the alliance between local elites and Britain would ensure stability (Kanna 2014). In sum, unlike most other global cities, Dubai has only recently entered a nation-state and the relationships within that nation-state are not so much based on national sentiment as they are on tribal affiliations and family relationships. In this context, political movements that might have integrated Dubai into larger socio-political formations, such as the pan-Arab movement of the 1950s and 1960s or some forms of political Islam that highlight the ummah, the community of all Muslims, have been perceived as potential threats to the authority of the ruling family and have been kept in close check.

Economy Instead of seeking political ideological legitimacy, the ruling family pursued economic legitimacy. Guided by a philosophy of economic liberalism that encouraged entrepreneurial activity, Dubai transformed itself from a small village of around 1,000 inhabitants in the first half of the nineteenth century into a hub for pearl diving and Indian Ocean trading by the early twentieth century. 1902 constituted a major milestone in the development of Dubai; that year, Iran imposed high tariffs on merchants operating from its ports. As a result, major merchant enterprises

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diverted their activities from the Iranian side of the Persian Gulf to the Arabian side and particularly Dubai, which became an important Indian Ocean port as a result (Pacione 2005). The discovery of oil in 1966 constituted another turning point in the fortunes of Dubai. The new oil wealth was used to finance numerous industrial and infrastructure projects, including the expansion of the port. While petrodollars constituted an incredible shot in the arm for Dubai’s economy, Dubai’s leaders began to prepare for the post-oil economy relatively early. Dubai’s oil extraction peaked in 1991, and today Dubai, in contrast to neighbouring Abu Dhabi, no longer has oil reserves of its own. Economic diversification has relied on Dubai’s established role as an entrepôt and transhipment hub. Supplying Iran with consumer goods and equipment during the Iran-Iraq war and through various forms of economic sanctions since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 has been particularly profitable to individual traders and Dubai’s economy as a whole (Pacione 2005). More recently, Dubai has also emerged as a hub for Chinese ventures in Africa (The Economist 2015). In addition to serving as a trading and transport hub, tourism and real estate are today central to Dubai’s economy. Mega construction projects, including artificial islands and the world’s tallest tower, undergird both the property and tourism booms and attract capital from around the globe with the lure of tax-free profit in a politically stable and safe environment. Despite the rhetoric of a free-market economy, Dubai constitutes an example of a highly-planned top-down economic model where all kinds of business activities are integrated and undergirded by the political dominance of the ruling family. Political scientist Abdul Khaleq Abdulla has described Dubai’s economic-political model as “al madina al sharika” (the city-corporation, cited in Kanna 2010). Indeed, Sheikh Muhammad, the current ruler, likes to refer to himself as “CEO of Dubai” and often speaks of his efforts to “improve Dubai’s customer service” (Smith 2015: 40). The economic model of Dubai, where the city is essentially a family-owned corporation, has, according to Abdulla, benefitted three specific groups (cited in Kanna 2014): First, the ruling family, who own almost all land in Dubai and thus derive associated profits, such as those from oil-extraction; second, a non-royal “local comprador bourgeoisie” who hold a monopoly over the financial and commercial sectors; and, third, “foreign managers and experts”, particularly Britons, Americans and Western Europeans.

Social composition If three strata can be identified within Dubai’s elite – the ruling family, local merchant houses and (predominantly Western) managers and experts – who constitute the rest of the population? For various reasons, the exact population figure for Dubai is not known, but estimates for 2014 converge at a resident population of around 2.5 million in Dubai proper and around 5 million in the metropolitan area, which also includes the neighbouring emirates of Sharjah and Ajman (Adomaitis 2014). It should be obvious that a village of around 1,000 inhabitants in 1833 could not have grown to such a size by natural population increases alone. In fact, it is

Dubai: language in the corporate city 81 yet another unique feature of Dubai that it is, globally, the city with the highest percentage of migrants in the population. Again, statistics differ somewhat, but UN estimates put the number of migrants in the UAE at around 85% of the population in 2015 (United Arab Emirates 2016). This means that the local Emirati population constitutes a minority of around 15%, and less than 10% in Dubai (Adomaitis 2014; United Arab Emirates 2016). The difference between locals and migrants is clearly enshrined in law. The former have full citizenship rights while the latter’s residency status is always temporary and contingent on their employment. I will now outline the demographics of these two clearly distinct groups of Dubayyans. Emiratis are often seen as a highly homogeneous group by non-Emiratis. Sartorial choice is a key marker that identifies Emiratis in public and sets them apart from migrant groups in public spaces. Men wear a kandoura, a long white robe, and women an abaya, a long black dress, both with associated gender-specific head covers. Relative uniformity of dress code gives rise to the perception of a high level of homogeneity in the local population, as is best evidenced through popular Dubai souvenirs such as a set of salt and pepper shakers in the form of an Emirati couple with the male figurine dispensing salt and the female pepper. Despite the appearance of homogeneity, at least three distinct groups can be identified within the local population (Kanna 2010).1 First, the most elite groups consider themselves “pure” Arabs and can trace their lineage to the Arabian peninsula, particularly the Bani Yas tribe, to which both the ruling Al Maktoum family belong as well as the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, the Al Nahyan. The Ayam constitutes the second group, who trace their lineage to Iran. While excluded from the political top stratum, many of the most powerful trading houses belong to Ayam families. The third, and most numerous, group of Emiratis is constituted by the descendants of naturalized Iranians and Arabs from outside the Peninsula. Unlike the (“pure” Gulf) Arabs and the Ayam, this group is not considered to have “pedigree,” [. . .] this means that they cannot marry either Arabs or Iranians, and, [. . .] are regarded as a “second class” by Emiratis more invested in the pedigree system. (Kanna 2010: 105) This small group of highly internally stratified “locals” sits on top of a large group of migrants in an organizational structure that has been described as “ethnocratic” (Longva 2005). Oil wealth has not changed the internal ethnic and class structure but has simply meant that all locals have collectively been “promoted” and now have a large ethno-class of migrants beneath them. The largest group of migrants hails from South Asia, and South Asians account for around 50% of the overall population of Dubai. Statistics in 2015 identified 25% of the population of the Dubai metropolitan area as Indian nationals, 12% as Pakistani, 7% as Bangladeshi, 3% as Nepali and 3% as Sri Lankan. Iranians and non-Gulf Arabs account for a further quarter of the population. With Emiratis around 10%, the remaining 15% of the population come from East Asia, Europe

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and elsewhere, with Filipinos (5%) and Chinese (2%) as further sizable national origin groups (Khamis 2015; United Arab Emirates 2016). Different origin groups are relatively segregated by residence and occupation. Many neighbourhoods of the city are stereotypically associated with a particular group, such as historic Al Bastakiya with Iranians or exclusive Jumeirah with Westerners, as in the stereotype of “Jumeirah Jane”, the newly-rich trailing wife of a British manager (Garratt 2015). While neighbourhoods are, in fact, much more ethnically diverse than the stereotypes suggest, there can be no doubt that Dubai is segregated by income. This is a kind of segregation that does not need to be enforced but works through consumer self-segregation, as the manager of an upmarket mall explained to anthropologist Ahmed Kanna: [Kanna]: So even with my beat up Honda Civic I can drive up to the valet section without problems? Project Manager: You can. But you’re probably not likely to and that’s the point. You cannot label an area exclusive. You can only make it harder for the people you don’t want to be there. People who have nothing to do there. If I’m driving a Honda Civic, I would go to (that part of the mall) and see an Armani shop and realize that there’s no way that I can afford anything there, so what am I doing there in the first place? (Kanna 2014: 614) While the stratification of city spaces by purchasing power is nothing unusual, this stratification translates more visibly into ethnic stratification in Dubai than in many other places. To begin with, Dubai’s most well-known exploited group, its construction workers, are almost exclusively from South Asia. These men often live in large labour camps, such as the one in Muhaisnah, better known by its Hindi name of Sonapur (“City of Gold”), which houses around 150,000 workers.2 Second, even white collar and middle class workers are remunerated differentially according to country of origin: among migrants, whites can expect to be significantly better paid for the same job than non-whites, and whites are more likely to be hired into senior positions than similarly qualified non-whites. Furthermore, whites tend to receive free housing as part of their remuneration packages while non-whites usually have to pay for housing out of their salaries (Vora 2008). Racial segregation is an inevitable by-product of these racist employment practices. What all migrants irrespective of country of origin and occupation have in common is that their visas are strictly temporary and linked to employment sponsorship in a system known as kafala (sponsorship). There is no legal residency option for adult male migrants other than as a guest worker. Male guest workers may sponsor their wives and children if they meet income thresholds. All migrants have to leave the UAE if they lose their job or once they reach retirement age. There is no path to citizenship even for the children of migrants. Male children have to obtain a job – and an associated sponsor – of their own when they turn 18 or graduate from college; female children can be sponsored by their father until they marry.

Dubai: language in the corporate city 83 As a result of these legal arrangements, the population of Dubai is one of the most transient populations on earth. Statistics from 2000 show that the average length of residency for 40.3% of the male adult population was between one and four years; another 26.5% resided in Dubai for five to nine years, and only 3.9% of the male adult population had resided in Dubai since birth (Pacione 2005: 262). It is against the socio-political, economic and demographic background outlined so far that the sociolinguistics of Dubai, to which I will now turn, must be understood. The ethnocratic organisation of Dubai is, in fact, reproduced in linguistic and other academic research, which tends to focus on language issues of Emirati citizens and tends to ignore Dubai’s “other” residents. My review of the sociolinguistics of Dubai will therefore also start from the perspective of Emirati citizens, who are politically, economically and socially dominant but constitute a numerical minority. By contrast, my review of sociolinguistic research related to the migrant population will predominantly identify gaps and blind spots.

Arabic dilemmas Country overviews of the UAE usually include the simple statement “Arabic is the official language of the UAE”. However, proficiency in Arabic is, by and large, restricted to Emiratis and Arab migrants; the vast majority of non-Arab migrants rarely have the opportunity nor incentive to learn Arabic in Dubai. Furthermore, amongst the Emirati population a situation of rapid language shift away from Arabic can be observed in the younger generation. Apart from the fact that only a small minority of Dubai residents are proficient in Arabic, the statement “Arabic is the official language” is complicated in at least three different ways. First, by the heterogeneity of Arabic and the fact that Emirati Arabic is an extremely peripheral variety; second, by the competition from English, which could be considered the de facto primary public language of Dubai; and, third, by the multilingual proficiencies of both Emiratis and migrants, proficiencies rendered relatively invisible by the ideological dominance of Arabic and English. Arabic has been described as “a singularly political and ideological language” (Findlow 2006: 24) and it is no coincidence that the concept of “diglossia” was first described with reference to Arabic (Ferguson 1959). The literary and written form of the language – Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), a simplified and modernized version of Classical Arabic, the language of the Holy Quran – is contrasted with spoken vernacular versions. The vernacular version of Arabic used in Dubai is commonly referred to as Emirati (Arabic) or Khaleeji (Gulf Language). However, Emirati is not only different from MSA and other vernacular forms of Arabic but also widely considered inferior to other vernacular forms of Arabic (Schulthies 2015). For example, an Arab from the Levant who lectures at a UAE university once tried to explain Khaleeji to me as “some sort of broken pidgin language”. By this he did not mean Gulf Pidgin Arabic, a link language sometimes used between migrants from different linguistic backgrounds or between non-Arab migrants and Arab locals (Bakir 2010; Smart 1990). Rather, the description is evidence of a widespread perception on the part of Arabic speakers – both from within and from outside the UAE – that Emirati

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Arabic is a form of “bad” language, that it incorporates too many Persian, Baluchi and Urdu elements, and that its speakers sound backward, ignorant and uncouth. In the late 2000s, media reports even blamed skyrocketing divorce rates in the UAE on the supposed deficiencies of Gulf Arabic. It was said that women were repelled by their husbands’ “unromantic” Emirati accents and dreamt of being wooed in the “flowery” and “romantic” Arabic of the Levant (Piller 2011: 117). The prestige of Egyptian and Levantine Arabic and the associated lack of prestige of Gulf (and North African) Arabic are undergirded by the weight of tradition. In fact, in the past, speakers of prestige varieties might not have understood speakers of non-prestige varieties. However, the current economic dominance of the Arabian peninsula, and particularly the fact that Dubai (and Doha) are also emerging as important Arabic media and entertainment centres (alongside established Beirut and Cairo), is increasing the familiarity of Emirati Arabic across the Arabic-speaking world and possibly also enhancing its prestige (Nashef 2013; Schulthies 2015). As a result of these language attitudes, language policies aimed at the promotion of Arabic usually do not actually target the home language of Emirati students but MSA (Cook 2016). The tensions that the differentially valued varieties of Arabic may give rise to are poignantly illustrated in a case study of the linguistic choices and dilemmas faced by one young Emirati woman (O’Neill 2017). The daughter of a Moroccan mother and an Emirati father, Shaikha experienced linguistic denigration from a young age when her father would chide her and her sibling for speaking Moroccan Arabic. When she married into a Palestinian family, her in-laws expected her to speak Palestinian Arabic and, in particular, to raise her two sons as speakers of Palestinian Arabic. Shaikha’s experiences with different varieties of Arabic in the family must be understood against the fact that intermarriage between Emiratis and non-Emiratis is widely considered problematic, particularly if it involves an Emirati woman (Al Hashemi 2012). Shaikha today feels that, for her, the most comfortable way to use Arabic is to apply “a mirroring technique”. “Mirroring” involves adjusting to the variety spoken by her interlocutor; the result is a vernacular Arabic that bears few traces of the origin of the speaker. In addition to the complexities of oral variety choice, tensions also emerge over which alphabet to use in writing. In the linguistic landscape of Dubai – as elsewhere in the Arab world – the transliterated use of English words in Arabic script and Arabic words in Latin script is extremely common. As regards the use of English words or expressions in Arabic script, the practice is particularly common in brand names (see Piller 2010, for examples). Additionally, it is not uncommon to find complete expressions transliterated (instead of translated). For instance, in 2013 the escalators in Dubai Mall, Dubai’s most glamorous mall adjacent to the world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa, featured huge signs advertising for “Spicy Tennessee Chicken and Shrimp” in one of the mall’s eateries.3 The sign was spelt entirely in Arabic letters but featured precisely these English words: Back-transliteration: sbāysi tinisi tšikn ‘ānd šrmb4

Dubai: language in the corporate city 85 Transliterations such as these were considered incomprehensible and even offensive by 97% of Saudi respondents in a 2006 survey (Al Agha 2006). While it is reasonable to assume that Emiratis, who are much more likely to be bilingual than Saudis, have higher comprehension rates of English transliterations, the practice periodically stirs controversy in the UAE. However, Arabic transliterations of English expressions cause significantly less controversy than the opposite practice, the use of Arabic in Latin transliteration. The use of Latin transliterations of Arabic has long been a prominent feature of the linguistic landscape of the Arabic-writing world (as in other contexts where non-Latin scripts are used) through the use of Latin transliterations on informational road signs, as stipulated by Article 14 of the international convention on road sign use: The inscription of words on informative signs [. . .] in countries not using the Latin alphabet shall be both in the national language and in the form of a transliteration into the Latin alphabet reproducing as closely as possible the pronunciation in the national language. (Economic Commission for Europe 1968) For example, Picture 6.2 shows signage on Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai’s main thoroughfare: Directions to Jebel Ali, Abu Dhabi and Jumeirah are provided in the Arabic script and a Latin transliteration. Directions to developments known under different names in English and Arabic (“Dubai Pearl” and “The Palm Jumeirah” in English) are given in Arabic and English; as is true for Arabic “‫ ”ﻣﺨﺮج‬and English “exit”. While the existence of Latinized Arabic is thus not new, the spread of computer mediated communication has significantly increased the use of Latinized Arabic

Picture 6.2 Signage on Sheikh Zayed Road

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and secured an entrenched position for Latinized Arabic. In fact, computer mediated communication has resulted in the development of written Latinized varieties of the language as opposed to those using the Arabic alphabet. In the UAE, the practice of texting and chatting in Latin-transliterated Arabic is commonly referred to as “Arabizi” or “Arabish” – portmanteaus of the Arabic and English terms respectively for “Arabic” and “English.” Derived from an original ASCIIconstraint, Arabizi is now widely used in computer-mediated communication, even on devices that are today likely to be Arabic-script enabled. In the UAE, which has one of the highest smartphone penetration rates in the world (Staff Report 2015), Arabizi is immensely popular, particularly among the younger generation (Palfreyman and Khalil 2003; Yaghan 2008). No longer restricted to computer-mediated communication, Arabizi is now also used by young people in offline contexts, including as a way to cheat on tests. They have discovered that their teachers are oftentimes unable to read Arabizi irrespective of whether they know Arabic or not (Palfreyman and Khalil 2003). The use of Arabizi is clearly spreading and younger generations seem to relish the use of Arabizi. Additionally, Arabizi is inspiring a burgeoning bilingual art and design scene. For instance, the director of the Sharjah-based Fikra design studio, which specializes in Arabic-English bilingual graphic design, explicitly credits Arabizi as the inspiration for his work (Alya 2012). However, just as with vernacular Emirati Arabic, Arabizi constitutes a site of significant language anxiety. If not blamed outright for destroying Arabic (Ghanem 2011), attitudes are certainly ambivalent and the media regularly report on Arabizi as a source of errors in Arabic or worry how it will create an obstacle to achieving proficiency in Arabic for the younger generation (Leech 2013). The language panic over Arabizi must be understood against much broader debates about the role of English in Dubai.

English entanglements In 2009, in my then-role as Director of the UAE Center for Bilingualism and Bilingual Education at Zayed University (ZU), I co-chaired a conference on the theme of “Fostering Multiliteracies through Education – Middle Eastern Perspectives” at the American University of Sharjah (AUS). The organizing committee, which included faculty from both AUS and ZU was constituted exclusively by migrants from “the West” (such as myself) or from other Arab countries. We invited two keynote speakers from the US, Suresh Canagarajah and Nancy Hornberger, who are well-known for their expertise in TESOL and bilingual education respectively but have no background in Arabic. All internal and external preparatory communication for the conference as well as the conference itself was conducted almost entirely in English. The minuscule presence of Arabic was restricted to symbolic roles, such as on the conference poster where the imagery included the Arabic and Latin alphabets juxtaposed to each other. The logos of the two organizing institutions also included their names in Arabic but took up only a very small space in the bottom-left corner of the poster (Picture 6.3).

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Picture 6.3 International conference on bilingualism and bilingual education

Organizing and conducting a conference devoted to multilingualism in an Arab country but running it entirely through the medium of English may seem a rather bigoted thing to do. However, given the institutional context in which the conference took place, English was the default option. Both of the organizing universities – AUS, a private institution, and ZU, a public institution – have English as their medium of instruction. Almost all students at ZU are Emirati citizens while the student body at AUS is more diverse and includes the children of migrants, who have grown up in the UAE, and students from other gulf countries and beyond. In both institutions, the overwhelming majority of faculty members are migrants, particularly from the West and other Arab countries. As a matter of fact, no institute of higher education in the UAE has Arabic as its medium of instruction, although some subjects such as Arabic or Islamic Studies may be taught through the medium of Arabic. The situation in the K-12 system is more complex but also favours English; Arabic is used as the medium of instruction in most public schools, which are only open to Emirati nationals. However, the use of English in public schools is increasing, as evidenced through the ever earlier introduction of English instruction and the popularity of content and language integrated learning, where selected content areas are taught through the medium of English. Furthermore, the majority of private schools use English only as their medium of instruction. All non-national students attend private schools and 40% to 50% of the Emirati population also attends private schools. The math is clear; the education system is obviously

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steering the UAE’s young towards English. Furthermore, there is a trend to start English education ever earlier with a boom in English-medium nurseries and preschools. These language-in-education policies create a clear “linguistic dualism”, where Arabic is associated with the private, with childhood and with Islam while English is associated with the public, with adulthood and with modern scientific and technical knowledge (Findlow 2006). Despite the association of English with the public and Arabic with the private, the favouring of English in education means that children increasingly develop an English-dominant linguistic habitus and English is becoming the language of the home, too (O’Neill 2014). A young Emirati woman described the process of language shift as follows (quoted in O’Neill 2014: 14): “I don’t know [. . .] it wasn’t planned [. . .] it was just a natural move towards English, when I started reading books in English [. . .] in fifth or sixth grade.” The increasing preference for English among the younger generation of Emiratis is causing considerable angst and is at the heart of a language panic about the loss of Arabic. Limited proficiency in Arabic among Emirati youths is now commonly referred to as “a new disability” (Salem 2013), and policies that would strengthen the role of Arabic in education are regularly discussed and passed, even if not necessarily implemented (e.g., Salem 2014). Despite the public framing of the relationship between Arabic and English as one of conflict, multilingualism and linguistic heterogeneity are not new in Dubai but constitute a preferred means to express a specific Dubayyan identity, as Kanna (2010) observes when he notes that young Emirati Dubayyans are typically proficient in Arabic, English and Persian. English may fast become the preferred language of Dubai but it is clearly not a monolingual English but one entangled with other languages in complex ways.

Dubai’s other languages The sociolinguistic account of Dubai I have provided so far has focussed on the linguistic dilemmas faced by Emirati nationals – around 10% of the population. This is a reflection of existing sociolinguistic scholarship that helps to reinforce the official account of Dubai as Emirati while neglecting the linguistic practices of Dubai’s non-citizen population. I will now shift focus to review what we know about the language practices and ideologies of Dubai’s mobile residents. I will address lingua franca use and the public role of languages other than Arabic and English. In his classic study of Dubai and other Gulf sheikhdoms in the 1950s, Peter Lienhardt described typical interactions between Baluchi immigrants and their customers as follows: “Baluchi water carriers, poor immigrants who could not understand Arabic and so were treated more or less like imbeciles by their customers, sold water from door to door, carrying it in paraffin tins loaded in panniers on the backs of donkeys” (Al-Shahi 2001: 124). Some sixty years later I observed a similar interaction in a department store in Ajman (a smaller and poorer emirate within the Dubai metropolitan area). An older

Dubai: language in the corporate city 89 Arab woman, clearly a rural visitor to the city, was trying to return a purchase. Unable to communicate in English, she was waved away by the Filipina sales assistant, “treated more or less like an imbecile”. In the same way that the statement “Arabic is the official language of the UAE” hides more than it reveals, the statement “English is the lingua franca of Dubai” equally conceals as much as it reveals. While a number of descriptive linguistic studies of features of English as a lingua franca in the UAE exist (e.g., Boyle 2011), there is a lack of research that investigates actual lingua franca use in interaction. However, anthropological and sociological studies with a non-linguistic focus often present incidental evidence that suggests that interactions across ethno-linguistic boundaries are problematic (as in the examples above) and, overall, relatively fleeting. Ethnographic research with British expatriates, for instance, notes that these migrants almost exclusively socialize amongst themselves or with other Westerners (Walsh 2006, 2007). Furthermore, learning Arabic or another local language is not even contemplated by British residents (Coles and Walsh 2010: 1330): “Differences in religion and language have discouraged and still discourage cross-cultural socialising. Language was a far greater hurdle in the past – now many Emirati nationals speak fluent English.” This remark suggests that the idea that British expatriates might learn Arabic or that there might be opportunities for crosscultural socialising with groups other than Emirati nationals has not occurred either to the informants in this research or to the researchers themselves, two British geographers. While non-English-speaking migrant groups might be more open to language learning in order to be able to interact across ethno-linguistic boundaries, such interactions are unusual for the largest group of Dubai residents, too. Indian nationals feel that Dubai’s racial hierarchies largely preclude socializing across ethnolinguistic boundaries and particularly outside the broad group of South Asians (Vora 2013). Vora (2013) observes that even Indian children, who were born and grew up in Dubai, rarely had any experience of cross-cultural communication until they entered the workplace or university because their schooling had been exclusively in segregated Indian schools. Long-term Indian residents felt that crosscultural interactions had become more rare and more fraught since the 1990s when Westerners started to arrive in sizable numbers. They felt the latter, who Indians referred to as goras (fair-skinned, white in Hindi), had upset an established prior ethno-linguistic balance: Middle-class Indians felt that Emiratis favored them because of cultural similarities, trusted their work ethic, and treated them with respect because of connections with South Asia. But, my informants also felt that the special relationship Indians had with Emiratis was deteriorating. They often told me that many Emiratis have been “corrupted” by Western culture and therefore were mimicking the racist attitudes that whites (and sometimes other non-Gulf Arabs) had against Indians. (Vora 2008: 385)

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That established regional intercultural relationships may more recently have become overlaid with global racial hierarchies can also be deduced from an early study of the intercultural relationship between South Asians and Arabs (Ahmed 1984). In addition to finding that Urdu was widely used as a lingua franca in Dubai at the time of the research in the early 1980s, this study also highlights the important role of class in mediating cross-cultural encounters. For South Asian labourers, who, then as now, constitute the largest group of Dubai residents, the solidarity and support of others in their situation is vital; in a situation where even a minor misfortune can quickly spiral into a life-threatening emergency, trust seems best achieved among people with pre-existing relationships and solidarities. In the 1980s, it was rural and tribal solidarities between people from the same village or tribe that sustained labourers from Baluchistan and Punjab in their “desperately lonely” lives in the UAE (Ahmed 1984). Shared backgrounds continue to be important for solidarity networks. For workers who may not have access to established solidarity networks, sharing the same language background, sometimes along with having the same gender and nationality, is assumed to constitute the most likely route to support (Kathiravelu 2012). In exploring care networks in Dubai, Kathiravelu (2012) recounts a number of incidences where migrant workers helped other migrant workers in distress by guiding them to a co-national. A south Indian man, for instance, encountered a Sri Lankan maid, who had run away from her abusive employer, in a park. Without a common language, he was unable to identify the exact nature of her woes but helped her find another woman from Sri Lanka in the assumption that she would be able to provide support. The existence of language-specific solidarity networks remains relatively hidden in the public space and form outsiders to particular linguistic groups. However, there is one domain where Dubai’s other languages have a strong presence in the public linguistic landscape and that is in the ubiquitous retail outlets of global money transfer service providers. Money transfer businesses in Dubai always seem to be doing a brisk business, and on Fridays long queues can often be observed as migrants use their weekly day off to send remittances back home. There, a significant proportion of the gross domestic product of places such as the southern Indian states of Kerala, Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu comes from remittances from workers in Dubai and elsewhere in the Gulf. In contrast to other businesses whose commercial signage is mostly monolingual or bilingual (in English, Arabic or another language if it is a specific ethnic business), money exchanges advertise their services in many different languages. For example, a flier advertising for a remittance service that comes with simultaneous life insurance is printed in seven languages: English, Hindi, Bangla, Urdu, Telugu, Malayalam and Tamil.5 The prominent presence of migrant languages in money transfer services perhaps most tellingly and poignantly captures their role in Dubai. They serve to sustain a monetized relationship that links migrants back to their places of origin. A Dubayyan from India summed up the dialectical relationship between Dubai and places of origin in a research interview as follows: “Kerala is very much Dubai and Dubai is very much Kerala” (quoted in Vora 2008: 389). In these schizophrenic transnational circuits where migrants have a purely economic identity in Dubai and

Dubai: language in the corporate city 91 sustain community and family relationships elsewhere, Dubai’s other languages provide a link to community and family while English and Arabic provide a link to migratory economic livelihoods.

Unique but not exceptional: implications for sociolinguistics The billboard introducing this case study suggests that “195” nationalities meet on an equal footing in Dubai and that intercultural interactions are commonplace; even more than that, these intercultural interactions are pleasurable and enjoyable. In this case study, I have shown that the reality of multilingual and intercultural communication in Dubai is much more complicated. Dubai is a city of superlatives and unique in many ways. However, unique does not mean exceptional (Vora and Koch 2015). The billboard vision of the contemporary global city as a multilingual and intercultural space where diverse individuals mingle in everyday conviviality is a vision that is widely shared. The complexities hidden behind the multilingual and intercultural mise en scène are equally characteristic of social and linguistic city life elsewhere. I will close this case study of Dubai by suggesting three implications for urban sociolinguistics more generally. First, Dubai is hierarchically organized in the extreme. However, it carries its social inequality on its sleeve so to speak. The structures of inequality in similarly affluent cities tend to be less obvious. To examine how linguistic diversity serves to constitute social inequality remains a central task of sociolinguistics. Sociolinguists are in no way immune to reproducing normative hierarchies in their work, as is evident from the fact that most linguistic research on Dubai I have been able to draw on is concerned with English and/or the linguistic practices of the dominant population group. The most typical Dubayyan – a male South Asian labourer – is absent not only from the billboard image of Dubai but also from sociolinguistic research. Second, Dubai is an unabashedly materialistic place. The same is true of most cities in the world where neoliberal market ideologies have elevated economic concerns above all else. The linguistic habitus of the flexible entrepreneurial urbanite often sits uneasily with practices and ideologies that sustain themselves from other ideological sources, such as, in Dubai’s case, Emirati nationalism, panArabism or Islam. Sociolinguistics can help to illuminate how these ideological tensions produce and reproduce belonging and affiliation but also exclusion and disaffection. As the growing chasm in cities everywhere between the haves and the have-nots is widely misrecognized as a clash of cultures, this is a task of some urgency. Third, Dubai is extremely diverse. However, this “superdiversity” rarely translates into strong networks across ethnolinguistic boundaries. Instead, “parallel social lives involving public tolerance, yet little meaningful interaction, are the norm” (Coles and Walsh 2010: 1322). Yet multilingual and intercultural interactions do take place in the workplace, in malls or in housing complexes. Many of these interactions may indeed be superficial and fleeting; what makes them “meaningful” from a sociolinguistic perspective is not so much how sustained

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they are but whether they reinforce or challenge existing linguistic and cultural stereotypes and hierarchies. Therefore, urban sociolinguistics will have to continue to be based in institutional ethnographies to understand language in the hierarchical, commodified and mobile spaces that make up the city.

Notes 1 There is a fourth group of locals, the stateless Bidoun, who do not enjoy citizenship rights. Bidoun are the descendants of nomads. Their total number in the UAE is estimated to be around 100,000 (Cella 2014). While typically assumed to be rural, Elsheshtawy (2013) describes being harassed by Bidoun youths during fieldwork in Hor Al Anz, a disadvantaged Dubai neighbourhood mostly populated by working class men from South Asia. 2 For a harrowing glimpse into life in Sonapur, view online photo exhibition by Farhad Berahman at www.berahman.com/#/projects/aec7060e37a2ae8da9080ed48f4e75c7?i=595. 3 An image is available at www.languageonthemove.com/linguistic-theory-in-dubai/ 4 Transliteration according to the Wehr (1976) system. 5 An image is available at http://www.languageonthemove.com/linguistic-theory-in-dubai/

References Adomaitis, Kasparas (2014) What Is the True Size of Dubai? In: Euromonitor International (15 March). Online available at: http://blog.euromonitor.com/2014/03/what-is-the-truesize-of-dubai.html (accessed 20 October 2016). Ahmed, Akbar S. (1984) “Dubai Chalo”: Problems in the Ethnic Encounter Between Middle Eastern and South Asian Muslim Societies. Asian Affairs 15(3): 262–76. Al Agha, Bassem A. (2006) The Translation of Fast-Food Advertising Texts From English into Arabic. Master thesis, University of South Africa. Online available at: http://uir. unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/2325/dissertation.pdf?sequence=1 (accessed 20 October 2016). Al Hashemi, Bashra A. (2012) Mixed Marriages Discouraged But Not Banned. In: The National (24 March). Online availabe at: www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/mixed-marriagesdiscouraged-but-not-banned (accessed 20 October 2016). Al-Shahi, Ahmed (ed.) (2001) Peter Lienhardt, Shaikhdoms of Eastern Arabia. London: Palgrave. Alya (2012) Interview with Salem Al Qassimi: Emirati Graphic Designer and Founder of Fikra Design Studio.In: Khaleejesque (12 November). Online available at: www. khaleejesque.com/2012/11/art-design/interview-with-salem-al-qassimi-emirati-graphicdesigner-and-founder-of-fikra-design-studio/ (accessed 16 October 2016). Bakir, Murtadha J. (2010) Notes on the Verbal System of Gulf Pidgin Arabic. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 25(2): 201–28. Boyle, Ronald (2011) Patterns of Change in English as a Lingua Franca in the UAE. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 21(2): 143–61. Cella, Katie (2014) The U.A.E.’s Brewing Crisis. In: Boston Review (3 February). Online available at: https://bostonreview.net/world/katie-cella-united-arab-emirates-statelesscitizens (accessed 16 October 2016). Coles, Anne and Katie Walsh (2010) From “Trucial State” to “Postcolonial” City? The Imaginative Geographies of British Expatriates in Dubai. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36(8): 1317–33.

Dubai: language in the corporate city 93 Cook, William R. A. (2016) More Vision than Renaissance. Arabic as a Language of Science in the UAE. Language Policy: 1–22. Online publication: doi:10.1007/s10993016-9413-3. Economic Commission for Europe (1968) Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals. Online available at: www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/conventn/signalse.pdf (accessed 21 October 2016). The Economist (2015) Growing Up. The Gulf State’s Expansion Is More Sustainable Than Its Previous Boom. In: The Economist (6 June). Online availabe at: www.economist. com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21653621-gulf-states-expansion-more-sustainableits-previous-boom-growing-up (accessed 16 October 2016). Elsheshtawy, Yasser (2013) Where the Sidewalk Ends. Informal Street Corner Encounters in Dubai. Cities 31: 382–93. Ferguson, Charles A. (1959) Diglossia. Word 15: 325–40. Findlow, Sally (2006) Higher Education and Linguistic Dualism in the Arab Gulf. British Journal of Sociology of Education 27(1): 19–36. Garratt, Rob (2015) Dubai Stereotype Jumeirah Jane Comes Alive in Quirky New Comic Book. In: The National (9 November). Online availabe at: www.thenational.ae/arts-life/ books/dubai-stereotype-jumeirah-jane-comes-alive-in-quirky-new-comic-book (acessed 16 October 2016). Ghanem, Renad (2011) Arabizi Is Destroying the Arabic Language. In: Arab News (20 April). Online available at: www.arabnews.com/node/374897 (accessed 20 October 2016). Kanna, Ahmed (2010) Flexible Citizenship in Dubai. Neoliberal Subjectivity in the Emerging “City-Corporation”. Cultural Anthropology 25(1): 100–29. ——— (2014) “A Group of Like-Minded Lads in Heaven”. Everydayness and the Production of Dubai Space. Journal of Urban Affairs 36(s2): 605–20. Kathiravelu, Laavanya (2012) Social Networks in Dubai. Informal Solidarities in an Uncaring State. Journal of Intercultural Studies 33(1): 103–19. Khamis, Jumana (2015) Indians, Pakistanis Make up 37% of Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman Population. In: Gulf News (6 August). Online available at: http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/ society/indians-pakistanis-make-up-37-of-dubai-sharjah-ajman-population-1.1562336 (accessed 16 October 2016). Krane, Jim (2009) Dubai. The Story of the World’s Fastest City. London: Atlantic Books. Leech, Nick (2013) A “Chat” Language Derived From Arabic and English. Progress or Problem? In: The National (31 October). Online availabe at: www.thenational.ae/artsculture/a-chat-language-derived-from-arabic-and-english-progress-or-problem#full (accessed 16 October 2016). Longva, Anh N. (2005) Neither Autocracy nor Democracy but Ethnocracy. Citizens, Expatriates and the Socio-Political System in Kuwait. In: Monarchies and Nations. Globalisation and Identity in the Arab States of the Gulf. Paul Dresch and James Piscatori (eds), 114–35. London: I.B. Tauris. Nashef, Hania A. M. (2013) Ahlan, Hello and Bonjour. A Postcolonial Analysis of Arab Media’s Use of Code Switching and Mixing and Its Ramification on the Identity of the Self in the Arab World. International Journal of Multilingualism 10(3): 313–30. O’Neill, Gary T. (2014) “Just a Natural Move Towards English”. Gulf Youth Attitudes Towards Arabic and English Literacy. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Gulf Perspectives 11(1): 1–21. ——— (2017) “It’s Not Comfortable Being Who I Am”. Multilingual Identity in Superdiverse Dubai. Multilingua.

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Pacione, Michael (2005) Dubai. Cities 22(3): 255–65. Palfreyman, David and Muhamed Khalil (2003) “A Funky Language for Teenzz to Use”. Representing Gulf Arabic in Instant Messaging. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 9(1): 2–24. Piller, Ingrid (2010) Transliterated Brand Names. Online available at: www.languageonthemove. com/transliterated-brand-names/ (accessed 16 October 2016). ——— (2011) Intercultural Communication. A Critical Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ——— (2016) Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice. An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Salem, Ola (2013) Poor Literacy in Arabic Is “The New Disability” in the UAE, FNC Told. In: The National (12 June). Online availabe at: www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/ education/poor-literacy-in-arabic-is-the-new-disability-in-the-uae-fnc-told (accessed 16 October 2016). ——— (2014) Law Planned to Preserve Arabic Language in the UAE. In: The National (24 November). Online availabe at: www.thenational.ae/uae/law-planned-to-preservearabic-language-in-the-uae (accessed 16 October 2016). Schulthies, Becky (2015) Do You Speak Arabic? Managing Axes of Adequation and Difference in Pan-Arab Talent Programs. Language & Communication 44: 59–71. Smart, J. R. (1990) Pidginization in Gulf Arabic. A First Report. Anthropological Linguistics 32(1/2): 83–119. Smith, Benjamin (2015) Market Orientalism. Cultural Economy and the Arab Gulf States. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Staff Report (2015) Smartphone Usage Rockets Across Middle East and Africa. In: Gulf News (16 September). Online availabe at: http://gulfnews.com/business/sectors/ technology/smartphone-usage-rockets-across-middle-east-and-africa-1.1585002 (accessed 16 October 2016). United Arab Emirates (2016) CIA Word Factbook. Online available at: www.cia.gov/ library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/print_ae.html (accessed 16 October 2016). Vora, Neha (2008) Producing Diasporas and Globalization. Indian Middle-Class Migrants in Dubai. Anthropological Quarterly 81(2): 377–406. ——— (2013) Impossible Citizens. Dubai’s Indian Diaspora. Durham, NC/London: Duke University Press. Vora, Neha and Natalie Koch (2015) Everyday Inclusions. Rethinking Ethnocracy, Kafala, and Belonging in the Arabian Peninsula. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 15(3): 540–52. Walsh, Katie (2006) British Expatriate Belongings: Mobile Homes and Transnational Homing. Home Cultures 3(2): 123–4. ——— (2007) “It Got Very Debauched, Very Dubai!” Heterosexual Intimacy Amongst Single British Expatriates. Social & Cultural Geography 8(4): 507–33. Wehr, Hans (1976) Introduction. In: Arabic-English Dictionary. Hans Wehr and Milton J. Cowan (eds), vii–xv. Ithaca, NY: Spoken Language Services. Yaghan, Mohammed Ali (2008) “Arabizi”. A Contemporary Style of Arabic Slang. Design Issues 24(2): 39–52.

7

Kohima Language variation and change in a small but diverse city in India Shobha Satyanath

This chapter is an attempt to understand two ongoing linguistic changes caused by urbanization and mobility in multilingual and multicultural Kohima, the capital of Nagaland in India.1 The changes involve the progressive replacement of possessive laga by la and of the first-person pronoun ami by mui in Nagamese, the inter-ethnic language used in Kohima. By focusing on language change, this study draws attention to the larger question of what can be learned about structured heterogeneity of multilingual spaces by drawing data simultaneously from multiple constituent ethnolinguistic groups and from individuals.2 Nagamese developed as a result of contact between Assamese (Indo-Aryan) and various Naga languages (Tibeto-Burman) in Nagaland after the British annexed it and made it a province of Assam in the nineteenth century. Limited trade contacts have been reported between the Nagas and the Assamese from an earlier period (Sreedhar 1974). It is, however, the developments that took place in the nineteenth century, during the British colonial rule, that were instrumental in the community-wide spread and learning of the language (Satyanath 2014). Several Naga languages are spoken in Nagaland and in the adjoining states. These languages are mutually unintelligible. Urbanization, mobility and increased interaction across linguistic communities facilitated the widespread adoption of Assamese as a new lingua franca in urban areas (for more details on Naga languages, see Kuolie 2015). Even though Labov’s (1963) very first study of language variation and change was located in the rural setting of Martha’s Vineyard, a quick perusal of the field starting from Labov (1966) suggests that sociolinguistics has essentially been urban and monolingual.3 Furthermore, a large number of speech communities studied so far are generally those that speak the dominant single national language, which happens to also be the majority language of those speech communities. The very idea of a speech community itself seems to be inspired by social spaces being structured along dimensions of social status, gender, age, neighborhood and ethnicity (but not along multiple languages) (cf. Sankoff 2015).4 The study of urban structured heterogeneity has led to several important insights with regard to social differentiation, acquisition of local norms, language change, etc. (see Labov 2001, 2012, 2014, amongst others). However, the engagement of sociolinguistics with urbanization as an ongoing process or the consequent study of multilingual speech

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communities has been somewhat limited (cf. Cheshire, Kerswill, Fox and Torgersen 2011; Britain 2002; Kerswill 2010; Kerswill and Williams 2000; Nagy, Moisett and Sankoff 1996; Payne 1980; Sankoff, Cedergren, Thibault and Blondeau 2015; Sankoff 2015; Xu 2015). Not all urban settings are necessarily the same, and there are varieties of speech communities that may differ from each other in many ways (Sankoff 2015), especially in terms of the constituent linguistic and cultural groups. The fact that a large number of studies have been conducted in specific parts of the globe, however, runs the risk of privileging particular viewpoints and findings. We risk building theories, which might be – in one way or another – more exclusive than inclusive (cf. Labov 2015; Smakman 2015; Stanford and Preston 2009; Meyerhoff and Stanford 2015; Satyanath 2015a). In the current discourses on language in the city, the focus is usually on (very) large cities because of the superdiversity they supposedly hold (see e.g. Blommaert 2010). What about smaller urban spaces populated by smaller communities? Do they have anything to contribute to our understanding of diversity in urban spaces shaped by mobility and change? A high diversity index generally implies the presence of numerous relatively smaller communities living together in a shared space. However, in parts of India (and elsewhere) historically inhabited by numerous smaller communities, one usually does not find megacities but smaller cities. These cities are, however, just as diverse or perhaps more diverse both linguistically and culturally than most much larger cities around the world. Such high linguistic densities are often the result of (earlier) itinerant communities in the regions or are found along medieval trade routes. In the case of Nagaland, both conditions apply. In fact, the northeastern part of India where Nagaland is located accounts for over 90% of India’s linguistic and cultural diversity while representing less than 5% of its total population (Census 1991, 2001). In this chapter, I explore urban dynamics of language change in the rather small but highly diverse town of Kohima. I address a number of inter-related issues emerging from mobility and contact as an effect of its recent growth: (1) How does the city balance its newfound multi-linguality and multi-culturality with a non-local hybrid language (Nagamese), which has become an important linguistic resource for communication and socialization, instead of the official state language (English)? (2) In view of the current ongoing linguistic changes in the city, how does one locate innovators in the multicultural space in which Nagamese operates by using parameters other than social status? Can spaces be structured more along multicultural parameters rather than social ones? Current sociolinguistic theory generally finds innovators in spaces defined by socioeconomic hierarchy and gender. Can these existing findings be extended to an urbanized multilingual contact setting in order to understand language change? What is the nature of the relationship between a group and its constituent individuals? (3) How is identity understood in a pluralistic egalitarian setting? How does this relate to language change in Kohima?

Kohima: variation and change in India 97 (4) What are the motivations for language change? It is argued here that language contact itself can be considered a third source of change, in addition to the other two sources, internal and external motivations (cf. Mufwene 2007).

Urbanization and growth of Kohima town Kohima is a hill-town located in the Kohima district of Nagaland. It is the capital of Nagaland state, and it is one of the three urban areas in the Kohima district. It is rather small, with a population estimated to be slightly over 100,000 at present (based on population projections in Census 2001; District Census Handbook 2011). Can a small town of the size of Kohima be a relevant example of urban diversity? In terms of size, it does not come anywhere close to the Indian megacities like Delhi or Bombay. However, small does not necessarily imply less diverse. The smaller population size of Kohima and of the entire state of Nagaland is due to the Naga being itinerant (a process interrupted by British colonization in the eighteenth century). They have historically formed smaller communities, and they remain to do so despite normal population growth.5 In terms of population growth and rate of urbanization, both the Naga population and Kohima town compares pretty much with the rest of India, including its megacities (District Census Handbook 2011). The urban and the linguistic histories of Kohima town are interrelated. Kohima as a town came into existence in 1878 as a result of the British setting up their administration in Kohima and making Nagaland part of the Assam province. Assamese was mainly spread through administration and education (a Baptist mission played an important role in early education). This language spread also resulted in the emergence of the new hybrid language Nagamese (Satyanath 2014; Sreedhar 1974). It is likely that the majority of the earliest administrators in Nagaland were Assamese and Bengalis (Census 1971 records a large population of non-Nagas). By the 1930s there were 167 educational institutions across Nagaland teaching Assamese, Naga vernaculars and English, both as a subject and as a medium of instruction (Roy 1933). Between 1963 and 1964, Nagaland left Assam, becoming a new state of India with Kohima as its capital. English became the official language of the state, and provisions were made for all Naga languages in the school system. Assamese, on the other hand, was removed from school and the public sphere. Though the history of early British contact goes back to 1878, the population of Kohima grew slowly but steadily only after it became the capital of the Nagaland in 1963 (Figure 7.1). People started migrating to Kohima in order to take up jobs in the government sector or to set up trade and businesses there. The economy of the state is dominated by horticulture, agricultural production and small-scale industries. The increase in population was accompanied by internal mobility of people from other districts, resulting in a growing multi-lingual and pluralistic environment as compared to the earlier mainly monolingual and monocultural language ecology. There are at least 17 Naga ethnic groups with distinct languages and cultures which can all be found in Kohima. There are also other Naga groups

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120000 99039

100000 77030

80000 60000

51418 36014

40000 21545

20000 4125

7246

0 1951

1961

1971

1981

1991

2001

2011

Figure 7.1 Growth of Kohima town Source: (Census of India 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001; District Census Handbook 2011; Singh 2004)

from the adjoining states of Manipur and Myanmar with distinct languages and cultures, in addition to miscellaneous Tibeto-Burman communities. Hence, in a small town of about 100,000 inhabitants, more than 20 Naga languages and in total more than 100 languages are attested (Census 2001). A common linguistic bond linking all ethnolinguistic groups in the town is Nagamese. Unlike rural areas in Nagaland, Kohima is not segregated along ethnic lines. Its residential areas are all mixed in nature. There is also a growing trend of interethnic marriages. The increased use of Nagamese in Kohima is the result of the growing diversity of its inhabitants. In the 1960s, the Angami accounted for about half of the total Naga population in town and a quarter of the total town population (Census 1971), but they amounted to less than 25% in 2001. A few older Angami speakers reported that their fathers knew some Nagamese, but not their mothers. As reported by one Angami speaker who was born in the early 1960s and brought up in Kohima, her immediate neighbours were once mostly Angami. In her school there were a few Sema and Ao but they did not mingle much with others. She understood Nagamese from early on, but started speaking it only after she joined the state service in 1979. Her father, a businessman, knew Nagamese. Her husband interacted in Angami with the Angami and in Nagamese with the non-Angami. The use of Nagamese was rather limited in those days. Though English, the official language of the state, displaced Assamese, it could not replace Nagamese. Schools in town had many non-Naga teachers (mostly Malayalees or Nepalese). Nagamese has low (overt) prestige, but due to its rapid spread many see it as a threat to their own language, culture and identity. Nagamese is learned informally by all and functions exclusively as an intergroup language.

Kohima: variation and change in India 99 There are several factors that make Kohima different from the larger urban centers of the Anglo-Western world, many of which are already multicultural or are increasingly becoming multicultural (see e.g., Cheshire et al. 2011). Firstly, the multilingual and multicultural character of Kohima is the result of internal (not international) migration. Secondly, despite its global importance, the official state language, English, is not of any real consequence socially. Thirdly, the various Naga languages – including Angami, the local language of Kohima and the numerically largest of the Naga languages of Kohima – coexist with mutual indifference and without hierarchy. There exists no majority community language that everyone speaks. Inhabitants of Kohima all share Nagamese, which does not belong to any particular ethnolinguistic group. Thus, unlike the Anglo-Western world, the multicultural spaces of Kohima are horizontal (cf. Satyanath 2015b) or “morphological” following Black’s (1976) terminology. It does not involve a vertical hierarchy as a result of power and status differences. The Naga are traditionally clanlectal communities where women marry across clans and continue to speak their own clanlects without accommodating to the clanlects of their husbands. Only in the case of inter-village marriages are women expected to learn the village dialects of their husband. Women in inter-ethnic marriages in Kohima usually learn their husband’s language, and their children grow up speaking the languages of their parents in addition to Nagamese for communication with members of other ethnolinguistic communities. Since the Naga model of patriarchy does not mandate children to acquire the clanlect of their fathers alone, the languages and identities of both parents are relevant for them (Suokhrie 2016). Therefore, multilingualism comes as a normal model for children rather than as an exception. However, in one or two instances of inter-state Naga marriages the speakers reported the use of Nagamese with their spouse, though not with their children. At the level of family and community, Naga languages are spoken as in-group languages. Nagamese is used across communities as an inter-group language. It is rather odd for someone to use Nagamese while interacting with a member of the same ethnic group, and it is equally unusual to not use it when interacting with someone who is not part of one’s own community. As a matter of fact, our interviews in Nagamese were often interrupted by Naga languages – usually whenever speakers addressed a family member. In terms of overall language use in Kohima, one uses more Nagamese in a day than any other language. Be it at schools, offices, restaurants, churches, neighborhoods or other public places, Nagamese constitutes an important language of everyday life for the inhabitants of Kohima.

Data and methodology The analysis presented in this chapter is based on conversational data collected during 2008 to 2009 and again in 2016 through interviews in the northern part of Kohima town. A few speakers were interviewed from Kohima village on the northern boundary of the city, which is largely monoethnic (Angami) and forms a local community. The data used in this chapter is based on interviews with

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55 speakers aged 5 to 64 years. They represent 10 different Naga languages – Angami (16 speakers), Ao (13), Konyak (6), Lotha (8), Mao (3), Marang (1), Tangkhul (1), Sema (2), Sangtam (1) and Zeliang (4). These various ethnolinguistic groups have their regional origin in different districts of Nagaland. The initial survey confirms that Kohima is a “young town”. Its non-Angami population can be broadly divided into five groups: (1) Those above 40 years and born between the 1940s and 1960s. This group includes the local Angamis and those who migrated at the age of 20 or 30 or so for work or for marriage (in the case of women). We could not find many people above 60 years who have been continuously residing in Kohima. It is possible that the older generation moved back to their respective villages after retirement. (2) Those in their 30s and 20s (born during the 1970s and 1980s), who probably migrated at the age of 10 or earlier. (3) Locally born inhabitants, generally aged 15 and younger (born during 1990s and early 2000s to migrant parents). Also some 20-year-olds were born in the city. (4) Recent arrivals, including many short-term migrants for some short-term training. (5) Mixed families involving inter-ethnic marriages. Given the varied histories of individuals, the analysis presented is based on straightforward methods of quantitative analysis.

Variation and change in Kohima Against the above-sketched functionally diversified multilingual ecology of Kohima, I now turn to a discussion on language variation and change in Nagamese. Considering that Nagamese evolved essentially in the multilingual urban ecologies of Nagaland, this language is the outcome of urbanization, mobility and the resulting contact. The focus of discussion is more on social differentiation than on linguistic constraints. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between the group and the constituent individuals, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the way individuals from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds contribute and respond to the innovations. The discussion is centered on two variables. The first concerns the first person singular pronouns, ami and mui, which alternate with each other. Mui has basically replaced ami in the speech of the younger speakers. Ami and mui both have precedents in Assamese, the “introduced language”. In Assamese mui is used as a first person singular and ami as a first person plural pronoun. In Nagamese, both are used as singular. A second hypothesis about the origin of these forms is that ami is of Bengali origin where it functions as a singular. A third possibility is that it has its origin in Nepalese ma (first person singular pronoun) and hami (first person plural). The presence of Nepalese is well attested in Kohima town from

Kohima: variation and change in India 101 the 1960s onwards.6 In any case, the shift from ami to mui is an internal development of Nagamese that took place in Nagaland. The second variable refers to the possessive morpheme laga, which is an innovation of Nagamese. The reduction of laga to la is an internal development and the younger speakers use basically only the clipped variant. The earliest description of Nagamese comes from Sreedhar (1974). It is based on his fieldwork in Nagaland between 1970 and 1973, during which he collected word lists and sentences. Sreedhar (1974: 109, 123) reported mui and ami in free variation, even though much of the data cited in his book contains instances of mui alone (spelled as “moy” by him). Sreedhar (1974: 105, 107, 109) also records the Assamese genitive case marker – r, which was used by the Angami, the Kheza, the Chokri, the Lotha, the Konyak and the Sema at that time. According to him, this genitive construction was absent in plural contexts, where laga was used instead, which was also often deleted (Sreedhar 1974: 138). There is no mention of the clipped variant la by him.

Variation and change across groups The evidence of change concerning the two variables is depicted in Figure 7.2, the result of grouping speakers into age cohorts. Both variables show a similar trend. The two older age cohorts show far more variability and use more ami and laga compared to the variants mui and la. For those in the age cohort of 31 to 40 years, mui and la are the dominant variants accounting for about 80% of the total variation. The two shifts seem to coincide with the high population growth period of Kohima in the 1980s and1990s, during which most of the sample population studied migrated to the town. They were interviewed in 2008, several years after their arrival. Kohima witnessed varied migrant populations in terms of linguistic

100 80 60 40 20 0 51yrs+

41-50 yrs

31-40 yrs

21-30 yrs

11-20 yrs

10 yrs-

1944-1955

1956-1967

1968-1977

1978-1987

1988-1997

1998-

ami

laga

mui

la

Figure 7.2 Overall variation and change in apparent time (showing birth year and age in 2008; all values are in percentage)

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and cultural affiliations as well as age groups. The fast pace of linguistic changes taking place in the 1980s is not surprising given the presence of younger migrant groups and the multifold increase in population as an effect of internal migration. The population had become highly diverse during the 1980s and 1990s, as almost all the 17 to 18 different Naga communities could by then be found in Kohima (of which 13 were recorded in my 2008 fieldwork, though not all of them are discussed here). It follows then that the shifts in favor of mui and la among those aged 30 to 40 were initiated by young adults and adolescents, rather than by those who have been born in Kohima. In my sample, those born between 1968 and 1977 were born in districts outside Kohima, but they had spent at least 15 to 20 years in Kohima when they were interviewed in 2008. The following decades show slow but steady advancement of the shifts in the speech of the next generation. These shifts are completed among the locally born and those arriving at the very young age of one to 10 years. They are also almost completed in the speech of those born in Kohima during the 1990s and later. This is evident from the data given in Table 7.1, which shows shifts across generations in an Ao family. In this Ao family, the husband and the wife migrated in the 1980s when they were 20 and 12, respectively. The husband shows the older pattern characterized by the use of ami and laga, whereas his wife shows near exclusive use of mui and la, i.e. the innovative variants. Their daughter follows her mother’s patterns. A similar trend is attested in the case of an Angami family, the local community of Kohima (Table 7.2). A comparison of the relative shifts from ami to mui and laga to la (Figure 7.2) further suggests that though the two shifts coincide with each other, la seems to have occurred slightly before the shift to mui. The shift to la is nearing completion a decade earlier than mui. Table 7.1 Language change in an Ao family Ao family

Age in 2008

Birth year

mui

la

Years in town

Husband Wife Daughter

45 32 05

1963 1976 2003

7.8% 95.6% 75%

40% 95.1% 100%

20+ 20+ Kohima town born

Table 7.2 Language change in an Angami family Angami family

Age in 2008/(2016)

Birth year

mui

la

Years in town

Husband

49 (57)

1959

94%

0%

Wife Daughter

45 (53) 22 (30)

1963 1986

29% 100%

87% 100%

Kohima village, but educated in town, works in town Kohima town born Kohima village

Kohima: variation and change in India 103

Variation and change across individuals The shifts under discussion could not have been discovered without grouping speakers in terms of their age. However, speakers reveal considerable variation between them also in case they are in the same age cohort or if they share the same ethnolinguistic group. This suggests that the processes of shifts are not as straightforward as they appear to be in Figure 7.2. The questions to be asked are, therefore: How uniform or varied are the patterns of use and shifts across individuals in a given age cohort, and how do these patterns vary across the different Naga ethnolinguistic groups? How can this information be used to identify the agents of innovation and change within the available multicultural space, if they can be identified at all? What mechanisms can be identified for the replacement of ami and laga by mui and la? These issues are addressed next, first by comparing the behavior of individuals separately for each of the 10 ethnolinguistic groups (Figures 7.3a–c) and then by comparing them with the pattern of their respective age cohort. Variation within Angami, the local group In the case of Angami (Figure 7.3a), there is much greater variability among the older speakers than is evident in Figure 7.2. The two oldest speakers aged over 50 (recorded in 2016) use only laga. However, there are differences in their use of pronouns. The man aged 57 during the survey (born in 1959) used almost exclusively mui; the female speaker (born in 1963) uses ami more frequently than mui. In contrast, another 49-year-old speaker recorded in 2016 (born in 1967, 41 years old in 2008) is a heavy user of la, the new variant, and also an exclusive user of

100 80 60 40 20 0 1959

1963

1967

1976-78

1981-98

M

F

M

F

M/F

ami

mui

la

laga

Figure 7.3a Variation across Angami speakers according to birth year and sex (the youngest age group includes 11 speakers; they all share the same pattern, hence not displayed individually)

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ami, the older variant. This would suggest that there is no single uniform pattern of shift across individuals. This makes it difficult to infer which variant is older. The alternation between the two variants for both pronouns and the possessive appears to be much older, provided the older speakers have not substantially changed their ways of speaking. By contrast, the speaker aged 30 (born in 1976–1978) uses mui almost exclusively and also la with a rate of over 80%. This pattern is in line with that of the age cohort 31 to 40 (Figure 7.2). Angami speakers who are 27 years and below (born after 1980) all show the exclusive use of mui and la. There is no noticeable variation in their speech. This implies that the Angami children born in 1981 and later have replaced ami and laga completely by mui and la. This pattern is widespread, at least across the urban Kohima district. If the local majority group (in the early decades) had any linguistic influence, those arriving at a young age from outside Kohima must have aimed at using mui and la variants alone. As for the older generation, the linguistic patterns by the older speakers show variance that is in line with the age-cohort pattern seen in Figure 7.2. Figure 7.3a further suggests that mui and ami were strong competing forms in the 1960s. Possessive forms, too, show the first decisive shift in favour of la in the speech of those born in the late 1960s. On the other hand, ami is decisively replaced by mui among those born during the late 1970s and afterwards. Though Angami once constituted the clear majority in Kohima’s population, it is not clear whether they had a greater role in shaping Nagamese. Variation among Ao The Ao show even greater variability across age cohorts, particularly among those born before 1978 (Figure 7.3b). The oldest speaker, a 64-year-old woman (born in 1944) has spent many years in Kohima. She also lived in Mokokchung (an Ao region) and in Wokha (a Lotha Naga region) for several years before. The three older speakers (born between 1961 and 1971) have all spent more than 20 years in town. Those born between 1972 and 1978 have spent more than 15 to 16 years in Kohima, and they are likely to have arrived there at the age of 18 to 21. The remaining younger speakers are locally born who largely adhere to the new variants, as can be expected of their age cohort (Figure 7.2). There is no similarity between the older Angami speakers and the oldest Ao speaker with respect to the possessive. Considering that two rather young speakers aged 22 and 28, one Ao and one Lotha (from Mokokchung and Wokha who were recorded in 2007 in Delhi and have not lived in Kohima), also use only laga, it is rather surprising to find la in the speech of the 64-year-old woman arriving in town at the age of 45 to 50 years. The next older speaker shares the pattern with the Angami speaker. The use of la is virtually absent in the speech of those born in the 1950s (as in Figure 7.3a). All other Ao speakers show multiple patterns of using the variants: [ami-la ~ ami-laga ~ mui-la ~ mui-laga]. The alternations [laga ~ la] and [ami ~ mui] are widely attested among those born during the 1970s and earlier. This suggests that the shift from ami-laga to mui-la, though it was supposedly completed by gradually reducing the use of ami and laga, did not occur along the same path for everyone. In other words, the final outcome was achieved through multiple

Kohima: variation and change in India 105

100

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100

100

100

100

100

96

80

75

60 40

35

30

20 2 1963

1966-67

1971

1972-73

1976

1976

1978

1985

1990-91

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1998-2003

1998-2003

8

1944

0

20

F

M

M

F

F

F

M

F

F

F

F

F

F

ami

laga

mui

la

Figure 7.3b Variation across Ao speakers

100 80 60 40 20 0 1966-67

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F

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F

F

M

F

40+

40+

40

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30

30

27

13

ami

laga

mui

la

Figure 7.3c Variation across Lotha speakers

pathways of shift by various newcomers to Kohima. On the whole, the use of ami appears to be much more frequent among the older Ao as compared to the Angami. The Angami seem to be ahead in both the shifts, la in the 1960s and also leading the shift to mui in the 1970s. Variation among the Lotha Despite having spent more than 20 years in Kohima, the older Lotha speakers show similar variation as seen in the case of Ao [ami-la; mui-laga~la; mui-la]. The younger

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speakers (13 to 32), most of whom have spent a varying number of years in town (four to 10 years), share the most recent pattern [mui-la]. The only speaker deviating from this pattern is a 30-year-old, who has spent less than five years in Kohima and uses laga alongside la a few times. The Lotha speakers also seem to show a far more systematic increase in the use of both mui and la (except the one 30-year-old speaker). Variation among the Konyak The older Konyak speakers have arrived relatively recently and have now spent about five years in Kohima. The younger speakers were brought up there. Except for one speaker who also uses the older variants, they have all acquired the pattern of those who were locally born. Variation among the Mao, Marrang, Tangkhul, Sangtam, Sema and Zeliang The speakers from the other six ethnolinguistic groups are relatively young, mostly below the age of 30. The Mao show the most recent pattern. Of the three speakers, one (the youngest) is locally born and the other two arrived at the age of 10 years or younger. The Zeliang, too, show the local pattern of their age cohorts even though the two older speakers are new arrivals in Kohima and have spent less than five years there. The deviant young Zeliang speaker was recorded in Kohima village school along with friends, not much information is known about this speaker. The Sema, Sangtam, Marrang and Tangkhul show much greater variability. They all show relatively high use of mui and la but also variability in comparison with their age cohorts from other ethnolinguistic groups. The Marrang and Tangkhul speakers are recent arrivals, whereas the other are either locally born (Sema) or have spent as many as 20 years in Kohima (Sangtam).

100 80 60 40 20

ami

laga

mui

1994

1995

M Sema

1988-93

F

1981-82

F

Sangtm Sema

1986-88

F Marrang

1981

F Tngkhl

1976-78

F Mao

1988-90

M

1981

1983-86

F

1993-95

1972-73

0

M/F

F

F

M

Zeliang

la

Figure 7.3d Variation across speakers in four ethnic groups. (The first three speakers are Mao, followed by one Marang and one Tangkhul speaker. The next three speakers are Sangtam (1) and Sema (2) followed by four Zeliang speakers.)

Kohima: variation and change in India 107 Of the five speakers (barring Mao and Zeliang) reported here, all show variability in possessive forms. Two of them in addition show alternation in pronouns. Though the 27-year-old Sema speaker grew up in Kohima, she frequently travels to Dimapur. The variation across speakers in these groups cannot be explained alone on the basis of the years spent in Kohima nor by the age of arrival there. Though there is not enough information available on geographic variation in Nagamese, the data suggest that there is no particular association between a variant and a particular ethnolinguistic group. The data reveals great uniformity in the speech of those under the age of 30. Results of a perception test (Satyanath 2016) also confirm the absence of ethnolects. Given the multiethnic and multilingual composition of Kohima, one would expect ethnicity to emerge as a factor in linguistic variation. Since Naga languages are used extensively at home and in the ethnolinguistic community, there are no observable phonological (segmental) differences between parents and children. Hence, phonetic differences do not constitute sources for linguistic ethnicity. The results of a perception test designed to test the relationship between ethnicity and language variation (Satyanath 2016) also suggest the absence of ethnolects. In other words, the linguistic-cultural background of speakers cannot be successfully identified based on their use of Nagamese. What is relevant for the present purposes is the fact that while respondents could identify some of the adults belonging to their own community, nobody could do so in the case of younger speakers (aged 20 and below). This provides additional evidence to support the view that the Nagamese as used in Kohima has changed and that younger speakers speak differently from older inhabitants. Amid the presence of several Naga groups, the Naga construct identity in terms of self versus the other (my ethnolinguistic community – not my ethnolinguistic community). They also construct a broader unified identity as Naga that, to some extent, unites different Naga groups. Nagamese also serves this function.

Variation across individuals in older age group I now turn to variation across individuals among older age cohorts (those above 30 years). As is evident in Figure 7.4, considerable variation exists between them. 100 80 60 40 20 0 64

49

49

F

M

F

Ao Angami Ao

47 F Angami

41

40+

40+

40+

M

M

M

F

40

Angami Ao Lotha Lotha

ami

laga

37 F

F

Lotha

Ao

35+ 30+ F

F

32

32

32

30

30

30

F

M

M

F

F

F

Ao Angami Ao

mui

Figure 7.4 Variation across individuals in different age groups

la

Ao Lotha Ao Lotha Lotha

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The oldest speakers (above 45) are either exclusively ami users or mui users, or they use ami more frequently than mui. Likewise they are either laga users or use more laga than la (except for one speaker). One of the two Angami speakers (female) varies only in the use of the pronoun. Similar variation exists among those in their 40s, except that there is also an increase in the use of la with many more speakers favoring la over laga. The Angami and the Lotha are leading this trend in comparison with the Ao. Among those in their 30s, one could see a further shift in the direction of mui and la across a majority of speakers, though not without variation of the shifts themselves. The Ao in their 30s also show a simultaneous increase in the use of mui and la, although a few speakers also lag behind. Even if we consider that the innovations happened a bit earlier as evident in the speech of the Ao women using la, or the Angami woman using mui, there is simply too much variation in the patterns to understand how these shifts developed. The alternations are not giving special preference to any particular variant. Even though there is not enough data to warrant any stronger conclusions, mapping individual (however limited in number) trajectories is suggestive of new insights into how linguistic innovations travel across a multilingual and multicultural space, with the constituent groups themselves acting either as “innovators”, “leaders” or “laggers”. If this is the case, then the constituent ethnolinguistic groups form part of the speech community and should be included in studies of speech communities.

Motivation for change There is little evidence to believe that the pronominal and possessive variants have their origin in geographic dialects. Similarly, there is little evidence to support that the variation is modeled on individual Naga languages so as to warrant ethnolects. The variation in pronouns results from reanalyzing both ami (first person plural) and mui (first person singular) in Assamese as singular in Nagamese and using a single plural for both mui (first person singular in Assamese) and ami (the first person plural). In the case of the possessive, it is the reduction of laga that leads to la. The changes from ami to mui and from laga to la seem to be the result of contact between two typologically different sets of languages. The Naga languages are tonal and have isolating morphologies with predominantly monosyllabic structures favoring CV and CVV. Assamese and Bengali are not tonal, have inflectional morphology and they have more complex syllabic structures. The changes discussed in this chapter are a reflection of changes in the prosodic structure. The resultant structures convert VCV and CVCV structures (ami, laga) into monosyllabic CVV and CV structures (mui, la).

Mechanisms of change in an urban contact setting amid constant flux How congruent are the two perspectives on change – one that emerges from grouping of individuals into age-cohorts and one that looks at individual speakers alone? The variation among the individuals, particularly the older individuals,

Kohima: variation and change in India 109 is not entirely surprising given their varied histories of learning and using Nagamese, their social sphere of interaction and their mobility. Even if the individuals came to Kohima already knowing Assamese or Nagamese, they found themselves using more Nagamese than they did before because they all came from relatively monolingual and monocultural settings. The variation across individuals also provides evidence of an ongoing language change in time as revealed in Figure 7.2. The grouping of speakers into age cohorts helps reveal patterns quickly. These patterns can then be probed further. However, an analysis of age cohorts does not reveal much about mechanisms of change itself. The eventual shift from the alternations of the two pronominal and the two possessive forms seems to have traveled though various paths as is evident in the multiple patterns observed across older speakers. These include (1) shift affecting the possessive alone, (2) shift in possessive reaching completion without a parallel shift in pronouns, (3) shifts affecting both pronouns and possessive with three further possibilities: (a) shift in possessive leading shift in pronouns, (b) shift in pronouns leading shift in possessive, or (c) shifts affecting pronouns and possessives simultaneously and uniformly with little variation. These different pathways of shift are illustrated in Figure 7.5.

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Figure 7.5 Multiple paths of linguistic shifts

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In this sense, the group and the individual provide complementary perspectives to understand variation and change. The variation across individuals belonging to different ethnolinguistic groups also suggests that different groups respond differently to these shifts. Angami, Lotha and Mao are leading the language change. They are followed by the Ao. Some Konyak lag behind. All other groups – the Sema, the Sangtam, the Tangkhul and the Marrang – are clearly lagging behind, albeit in different and distinct ways. This finding suggests that in a multicultural space such as Kohima, ethnolinguistic groups themselves may constitute the agency of language change, responding and contributing to ongoing changes somewhat differently. How does this finding relate to existing insights that locate agency in language change in social strata? In socially stratified societies and relatively stable societies (that is, not marked by constant in-migration and population flux), one is perhaps more likely to find innovators and leaders in language change within a specific social strata. In urban settings differentiated more by ethnolinguistic than socio-economic factors, it is likely that the ethnolinguistic groups themselves are responsible for language change or retention. The greater uniformity among younger speakers also confirms that learning is broadly outward-oriented, as speakers tend to follow the broader pattern of the community. The community patterns themselves emerge because certain speakers respond more favorably towards certain variants. Thus one of the outcomes of change might be the creation of a newer community pattern, even if it disturbs the already existing one.

Conclusions for sociolinguistic theory The current study suggests that the multiple linguistic-cultural (migrant) communities need to be considered as relevant sociolinguistic constituents in studies of speech communities. This calls for a larger sample size, and it may also call for new methods of sampling language in the city. This would bring in the hitherto missing dimension in the study of language diversity and change, and it would also expand the existing insights into this field. While social status is a relevant sociolinguistic factor in stable and highly stratified societies, in a setting like Kohima, different ethnolinguistic groups themselves constitute the multicultural space through which linguistic innovations travel. The innovations diffuse across groups through this multicultural space, with different groups responding to the innovations differently. The key findings thus suggest the following: (1) In spaces marked by a high degree of pluralism as in Kohima, the innovations move through the cultural spaces rather than through social strata (as is usually reported in sociolinguistic literature). (2) By positively responding to the innovations, the young adults from different ethnolinguistic groups help construct a broader local pattern that is followed by the locally born or the youngest speakers. (3) The group and individuals provide two complementary perspectives, though at times these two perspectives are in conflict.

Kohima: variation and change in India 111

Notes 1 There exists no universal definition of “city”. Along criteria defined in the Census of India, a town with a population of 100,000 or more is a class I city/town. The two terms have been used interchangeably. By this standard Kohima is a class I city today as its projected population for 2011–2016 exceeds that number. However, considering continuous growth of population during the period covered in this study, it is best described as a city in the making. 2 The research reported in the study was supported by a Research and Development Grant by the University of Delhi. I am grateful to Kethokhrienuo Belho and Kelhouvinuo Suokhrie for their assistance with fieldwork and transcription. I also acknowledge the help of SS Bhattacharya for help with linguistic population details on Kohima. 3 Labov in his seminal study of departmental stores in New York City (1966) did detect “foreign accents” but focused on the native New Yorkers. The indulgence with the idea of a speech community and native speaker kept studies focused on those born and brought up in the city. 4 See Black’s (1976) theory of social geometry. The idea of speech community, though inspired by urban spaces, is not confined to urban space alone. It may also hold just as well for rural places and other societies not based on social class. 5 Kohima is also a hilly region and therefore has a smaller population compared to Dimapur, located in the plains. Dimapur was carved out of Kohima district in 1997 and Pheren in 2001. 6 The speakers reported the presence of Nepalese and many non-Nagas in the town in the 1950s. Nepalese is also recorded in current Census reports (Census 1991, 2001).

References Black, Donald (1976) The Behavior of Law. New York: Academic Press. Blommaert, Jan (2010) The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Britain, David (2002) Diffusion, Leveling, Simplification and Reallocation in Past Tense Be in the English Fens. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6(1): 16–43. Census of India (1971, 1981, 1991, 2001) Nagaland. Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India. Cheshire, Jenny, Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox, Sue and Eivind Torgersen (2011) Contact, the Feature Pool and the Speech Community. The Emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15(2): 151–96. District Census Handbook of Kohima, Nagaland (2011). Available online at: www.censusindia. gov.in/2011census/dchb/DCHB_Nagaland.html?drpQuick=&drp QuickSelect=&q=kohim a+population+2011 (accessed 15 January 2017). Kerswill, Paul (2010) Contact and New Varieties. In: The Handbook of Language Contact. Raymond Hickey (ed.), 230–51. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Kerswill, Paul and Ann Williams (2000) Creating a New Town Koiné. Children and Language Change in Milton Keynes. Language in Society 29: 65–115. Kuolie, Duovituo (ed.) (2015) The Languages of Nagaland (volume 21, part II). People’s Linguistic Survey of India. Delhi: Orient Blackswan. Labov, William (1963) Social Motivation of a Sound Change. Word 19: 273–309. ——— (1966) The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Centre for Applied Linguistics. ——— (2001) Principles of Linguistic Change (volume 2). External Factors. Oxford: Blackwell. ——— (2012) What Is to Be Learned. The Community as the Focus of Social Cognition. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 10(2): 265–93.

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——— (2014) The Sociophonetic Orientation of the Language Learner. In: Advances in Sociophonetics (volume 15). Chiara Celata and Silvia Calamai (eds), 17–29. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ——— (2015) The Discovery of the Unexpected. Asia-Pacific Language Variation 1(1): 7–22. Meyerhoff, Miriam and James N. Stanford (2015) “Tings Change, all Tings Change”. The Changing Face of Sociolinguistics With a Global Perspective. In: Globalising Sociolinguistics. Challenging and Expanding Theory. Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich (eds), 1–16. London: Routledge. Mufwene, Salikoko S. (2007) Population Movements and Contacts in Language Evolution. Journal of Language Contact 1(1): 63–92. Nagy, Naomy, Christine Moisett and Gillian Sankoff (1996) On the Acquisition of Variable Phonology in L2. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 3(1): 111–26. Payne, Arvilla (1980) Factors Controlling the Acquisition of the Philadelphia Dialect by Out-of-State Children. In: Locating Language in Time and Space. William Labov (ed.), 143–78. New York: Academic Press. Roy, S. C. (1933) Progress of Education in Assam, 1927–28 to 1931–32, Quinquennial Review. Schillong: The Assam Government Press. Sankoff, Gillian (2015) The Speech Community as a Social Fact. Asia-Pacific Language Variation 1(1): 23–51. Sankoff, Gillian, Henrietta J. Cedergren, Pierrette Thibault and Helene Blondeau (2015) Going Through (L) in L2. Anglophone Montrealers Revisited. In: Linguistic Variation. Confronting Fact and Theory. Rena Torres Cacoullos, Nathalie Dion and Andre Lapierre (eds), 211–26. London: Routledge. Satyanath, Shobha (2014) Studying a Restructured Variety in a Multilingual Context. NWAV-AP3. Wellington, New Zealand, 2 May. ——— (2015a). Editorial. Asia-Pacific Language Variation 1(1): 1–5. ——— (2015b) Language Variation and Change. The Indian Experience. In: Globalising Sociolinguistics. Challenging and Expanding Theory. Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich (eds), 95–106. London: Routledge. ——— (2016) Hybridity, Multilingualism, Identity and Change in Nagaland. Language Power and Identity in Asia. Leiden, Netherlands, 15 March. Singh, Rajendra P. (2004) Language Atlas of India 1991. Delhi: Office of the Registrar General. Smakman, Dick (2015) The Westerning Mechanisms in Sociolinguistics. In: Globalising Sociolinguistics. Challenging and Expanding Theory. Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich (eds), 16–35. London: Routledge. Sreedhar, Mangadan Veetil (1974) Naga Pidgin. A Sociolinguistic Study of Inter-Lingual Communication Patterns in Nagaland. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages. Stanford, James N. and Dennis R. Preston (2009) Introduction. The Lire of a Distant Horizon. Variation in Indigenous Minority Languages. In: Variation in Indigenous Minority Languages. James N. Stanford and Dennis Preston (eds), 463–84. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Suokhrie, Kelhouvinuo (2016) Clans and Clanlectal Contact. Variation and Change in Angami. Asia-Pacific Language Variation 2(2): 188–215. Xu, Daming (2015) The Speech Community and Linguistic Urbanization. Sociolinguistic Theories Developed in China. In: Globalising Sociolinguistics. Challenging and Expanding Sociolinguistics. Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich (eds), 95–107. London: Routledge.

Part II

The global north

INTRODUCTION TO PART II World cities World cities are internationally oriented urban areas with much economic and cultural significance and authority. They are often described as the command centres of the global economy, and they are culturally authoritative because they are important tourist hubs and rich. They attract the educated and the progressive, many of whom are cultural forerunners. Centers of manufacturing close to the city are relatively rare, while there is a high level of professionalism focusing on the knowledge industry. In these cities, strangers are more varied than those of the immediate surrounding areas. On average, many city folk are relatively highly educated, but at the same time world cities attract the most poorly educated to work in the service industry. This adds to the degree of diversity. The generally open-minded and open-spirited attitude (either out of principle or necessity) of all of these newcomers intensifies contact amongst city dwellers. Like megacities, world cities face the challenges of overpopulation, infrastructure and pollution. However, their size, economies and demographic composition are more firmly subject to control, which makes these issues less pressing and more manageable. Publications that take a global tour d’horizon on specific issues usually order chapters geographically. Such a procedure would have a number of drawbacks in our case, though. In Asia, for example, we find both world cities and megacities. Furthermore, there is little analytical consideration behind “geographic categorizations” in general. If ideas underlying concepts such as “the West” or “the nation state” are the products of dominant ideology, so are by extension “geographical areas” or “continents”. Larger geographical areas (Asia, Europe, Oceania, etc.) incorporate as many differences as they do similarities. They simply tend to be imagined in similar ways, but it is exactly this kind of dominant imaginations we want to break free. We, therefore, chose to arrange the order of the chapters along insights of the Global Power City Index (Institute for Urban Studies 2016). This index ranks cities with regard to the degree of attraction (“magneticism”) for people and businesses around the world. Hence, the chapters in this book start with the most globally attractive city and then feature a descending order. In 2016, the cities in this part had the following rank: London (1), Tokyo (3), Paris (4),

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Amsterdam/Randstad (8), Los Angeles (13), Sydney (14) and Moscow (35). The Global Power City Index departs from the very fact that world cities are found to have grown quite independent from the countries where they are located. The higher the city ranks, the more this is true. Such rankings are, however, flexible and subject to change, and many of the cities studied here may rank quite differently already in a few years. Moscow, for example, has been dropping considerably in the last decade, and London could very well face the same fate. The necessity of focusing on world cities themselves, rather than the countries where they are located, is confirmed by the sociolinguistic ecologies we find there. All chapters report on the existence of city language and on widely spread knowledge about accents, terminologies, registers, styles and indexical functions, which is specific to the inhabitants of the city. However you define linguistic diversity, and whatever way you look at it, a complicated albeit patterned linguistic (super)diversity is the to-be-expected sociolinguistic setting in world cities. The city people we encounter in these chapters show high awareness thereof and have unique ways to deal with it. All chapters make clear that language in world cities cannot be studied in the classical sociolinguistic fashion. All authors considerably expand attention to features, issues and factors not found in “classical sociolinguistic” approaches. Discussions range, for example, from interrelation between language use and how you tie your shoes in the Randstad area, language choice and where you are likely to sit in a café in Paris, the utility of Spanish for finding Korean products in a supermarket in Los Angeles, and types of conversations which are likely to occur where the fridge stands in a shop in Sydney. Linguistic implications from the history of the city and the specific ways in which it has grown is all over the pages, too.

Reference Institute for Urban Studies (2016) Global Power City Index 2016. Online available at: www.mori-m-foundation.or.jp/pdf/GPCI2016_en.pdf (accessed 25 November 2016).

8

The language of London and Londoners Susan Fox and Devyani Sharma

The backdrop: large-scale urban dynamics in London London is Europe’s largest city. It also has one of the highest proportions of foreign-born residents across cities globally: 3 million (34.9%) of its estimated population of 8.6 million are foreign-born. Over a third of the foreign-born population of the UK lives in London, with inner London boroughs having some of the highest proportions (The Migration Observatory 2016). Migration has fostered rich ethnic and cultural diversity in London, with White British residents comprising less than half of the city’s population (44.9%, ONS 2011). In this chapter, we look at how inter-ethnic contact has influenced styles of English variation and use. The discussion starts with the large-scale picture and moves to individual practice, reflecting on how the two relate to one another and implications for contemporary critiques of sociolinguistic theory. Of course, migration is hardly new to London. The town was established by migrants (Romans) and has since continually attracted in-migration, most notably the French Huguenots in the latter part of the seventeenth century, a large Irish community throughout the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century and, following the persecution of Jews in Russia and Poland, a large swell in the Jewish population in London towards the end of the nineteenth century (cf. Fox 2015 for a fuller discussion). In the post-war era, from the 1950s onwards, London attracted, indeed actively encouraged, large-scale immigration to fill labour shortages, establishing the first large groups of “non-white” peoples in London. These groups included large inflows from former British colonies, such as Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, India and Pakistan (including what is now Bangladesh), as well as double migration of South Asians fleeing East Africa. Since the 1990s there has been a further increase of smaller immigrant groups from places of origin outside of Europe, such as Nigeria, Somalia and Turkey, as well as from the newer EU states, particularly Poland. London at the present time is home to people from no fewer than 179 countries (Vertovec 2007). Among inner London school children, more than half are known or believed to have a first language other than English (Department for Education 2015) and well over 300 languages are spoken within the Greater London area. While the overall picture of London, then, is one of great diversity and multiculturalism, we would emphasise that this is not uniform across the Greater London area. London is divided into 33 boroughs, and the demography of populations within

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boroughs can differ dramatically. Some boroughs have a predominantly White British population – 83% in Havering (the borough furthest east of the City of London), where the second largest ethnic group (African) accounts for just 3% of the total population. Other boroughs are much more ethnically diverse and the diversity is spread more evenly. In Newham (another borough east of the City of London), for example, the top four ethnic groups are White British (17%), Indian or British Indian (14%), African (13%) and Bangladeshi or British Bangladeshi (12%) (all figures from ONS 2011). Within more ethnically diverse boroughs, neighbourhoods can once again either be very mono-ethnic, with a single ethnic group dominating (either White or non-White), or multi-ethnic. In this chapter, we compare the sociolinguistic dynamics of two Asian-dominant “micro-ecologies” within the metropolis. The first is Tower Hamlets, an Inner London borough in the east side of the city; the data taken from this borough come from a working-class, multi-ethnic neighbourhood. The second case is Ealing, an Outer London borough in the west side of the city; the data taken from this borough comes from a lower middle-class, mono-ethnic neighbourhood. The largest ethnic group in both neighbourhoods is Asian, not White, but the neighbourhoods differ in how ethnically diverse they are. As we will see, this dramatically influences the repertoires of variation found, showing diverse outcomes in two Asian-dominant neighbourhoods. We first outline the macro-patterns found for Asian and other groups in these studies, and then, in the next section, we look at what individuals do. Tower Hamlets (East London) The largest ethnic group in Tower Hamlets is Bangladeshi or British Bangladeshi (32%), followed by White British (31%). This information in itself, however, does not provide an accurate picture of the area because the Bangladeshi population tends to be concentrated in the west of the borough and here the Bangladeshi population accounts for over 75% of the total in some neighbourhoods (Fox 2015). Some schools in Tower Hamlets have a 99% Bangladeshi student population. The data presented here from Fox (2015) were gathered from Bangladeshi adolescent males and White British adolescents in a multi-ethnic youth club where youngsters from local schools and estates interacted on a daily basis. Fox (2015) provides evidence that young urban Bangladeshi males are leading language change in this part of London and argues for the effects of language contact and the impact of non-UK language varieties on the language of London. In her study she found that the Bangladeshi males had not acquired the traditional Cockney variety of London English and were leading in innovative variants of PRICE and FACE vowels (Wells 1982) not previously documented for London. Figure 8.1 shows realisations of the PRICE vowel across the different ethnic groups. It can be seen from this figure that the Bangladeshi males have clearly not adopted the traditional local vernacular. The three variants that typify the traditional Cockney or popular London PRICE pronunciation – [ɑ̘ɪ] [ɑɪ] and [ɑː] – are used by the Bangladeshi group only 7% of the time. Fox (2015: 87) shows, similarly, that the two variants that typify the traditional Cockney or popular London FACE pronunciation – [æɪ] and [aɪ] – are realised by the Bangladeshi group only 1% of the time. At the same time, these findings demonstrate that other ethnic

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groups are following in the use of the variants most frequently used by the Bangladeshi males, albeit to a lesser extent. Similarly, the Bangladeshi males were shown to be leading in changes in the allomorphy system of the definite and indefinite articles. Instead of standard an [ən] and standard the [ðiː] before a vowel-initial word such as apple, the Bangladeshi males overwhelmingly use the pre-consonantal forms of a [ə] and the [ðə] in both pre-consonantal and pre-vocalic positions, with other ethnic groups following this pattern to a lesser extent. Figure 8.2 illustrates this distribution of indefinite

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articles before vowels according to ethnic group, and Fox (2015: 167) shows a similar pattern for new uses of the definite article. In dense multi-ethnic enclaves in East London, these types of processes have given rise over the last two decades to Multicultural London English (MLE), a new vernacular dialect originating in East London, displacing the original inner-city domains of Cockney and spoken by young, working-class people of different ethnicities. Though led by non-White speakers, MLE has spread to speakers of all ethnicities in East London and is now more defined by class than ethnicity. Notably, its phonetic, grammatical, discourse and lexical features stem from a very rich feature pool combining numerous heritage languages, L2 speech, creoles, postcolonial Englishes and vernacular British forms (Cheshire, Kerswill, Fox and Torgersen 2011). Ealing (West London) Like Tower Hamlets, the overall composition of Ealing is multi-ethnic, though with different proportions: White British (31%), Indian or British Indian (14%), Polish (6%), African (6%) and Pakistani or British Pakistani (4%, ONS 2011). As with Tower Hamlets, certain neighbourhoods within Ealing have very different ethnic compositions. Sharma, Rampton and Harris (2008–2010) focused on the three neighbourhoods that constitute the town of Southall, within Ealing. Their data came from lowermiddle class Punjabi heritage British Asians who grew up in an increasingly Asian neighbourhood. Over the last 50 years, the area has shifted from having a majority White population to a majority Punjabi Asian population, who often have little contact with other ethnicities. Today over 75% of Southall residents are of South Asian heritage (ONS 2011), a figure that is almost certainly higher if undocumented residents are included. So here, in contrast to the data in Fox (2015), we have a highly mono-ethnic, lower-middle class Asian enclave. The contrast between Southall speech and MLE is dramatic. MLE is spreading beyond East London but is not yet the dominant variety heard in Ealing, though it can now be heard among working class teenagers in multi-ethnic housing estates. Instead, the variety in Southall is British Asian English, with almost all exogenous linguistic features directly traceable to Punjabi (though in many cases with structural shifts and functional reallocation over time). The wider project examined 75 individuals across generations (Sharma and Sankaran 2011; Sharma 2011; Sharma and Rampton 2015). To illustrate the broad character of this local dialect, Figure 8.3 shows the repertoires of four representative second-generation Southall residents differentiated by gender and age. For now, we simply highlight the fact that it is primarily Punjabi-derived phonetic forms (i.e. all from a single heritage language source, unlike MLE) that form the basis of much of the observed variation.1 We explore further details of Figure 8.3 later. Unlike MLE, British Asian English is not widely adopted by other ethnic groups. The situations where this was observed during fieldwork were when minority White British teenagers were in Asian-dominant schools with nearly all Asian friends. In other words, the effect found in Fox (2015) can arise under some circumstances

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in Southall, but the difference in prevailing social arrangements, with more ethnic segregation, means that opportunities for this are far fewer, and so the variety has remained a distinctive ethnic variety with secondary class associations rather than becoming primarily a class variety adopted across ethnic groups. The differences between our Tower Hamlets and Southall data show that the presence of a majority non-White population need not lead to identical outcomes. In fact, ethnic diversity and class interact in a very specific way. In Tower Hamlets, working-class children of different heritage backgrounds live in close quarters in public housing estates, and MLE was born in this crucible. In Southall, we see some limited presence of MLE in precisely these contexts – multi-ethnic, working-class housing estates. But the lower-middle class in Southall is affluent enough to buy homes on streets where their families and same-ethnicity friends live. As class increases in Southall, so does the mono-ethnicity of neighbourhoods and social networks. So far, we have commented little on individuals. How do they fit in? Are these macro-social pictures of variation the whole picture? In the next section we ask: How much do individuals conform to or diverge from these “predicted” ethnic and class behaviours? And are divergences ultimately exceptions that prove the rules or genuine challenges to macro-social analysis?

The spotlight: individual Londoners These questions bring us to the central puzzle of sociolinguistics today: How can we reconcile the fine, fleeting acts of agency we see constantly in the individual with the blindly uniform march of change we see at the community level? The trajectory of city language certainly derives from individual life trajectories (and, therefore, repertoire trajectories), but of course, conversely, individual choices are entirely saturated in, and shaped by, the current ambient state of the city’s overall trajectory of linguistic change (e.g. Eckert 2000). In this second part, we focus on versatile individual language use across settings, highlighting some of the limits of macro-sociolinguistic generalisations, but also – under closer scrutiny – their considerable explanatory power even at the level of the individual. We start with two examples of individuals whose apparent individual divergences turn out to be exceptions that prove rules and support larger patterns of variation. But we end with two further examples that push us to recognise the deep well of lived experience and personality driving each individual. Rather than undermining the enterprise of understanding large group dynamics in cities, this unique flux present in every individual represents the raw material, maybe even the trigger, for language change. Nimmi – a “masculine” wife in Southall? The “macro” pattern presented earlier in Figure 8.3 showed that, among the second generation, older British Asian men had broader style repertoires than older women, and, conversely, younger women had broader repertoires than younger men. Sharma (2011) traces these differences to a change from implicitly Punjabi social (and, therefore,

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gender) roles in the older generation. Despite their being born and raised in Southall, the women tended to remain on the inside of the community through social practices such as local work, early marriage and a family focus, while the men interfaced with other communities through work (Indian business ties) and political activism (engaging with the White British community), and so had wider social networks, leading to a wider linguistic repertoire. By the younger generation, it was the women who had wider social networks, following a well-recognised British, not Indian, gendered class model (Milroy 1987). At the individual level there was considerable conformity to this pattern. But one older woman, Nimmi, had a broad style repertoire, akin to that of men of her generation. She even commented on one end of this range during her interview: When I’m in India, my English is different. I know that because I bring on their accent and there’ll be a certain dialect that they use that I wouldn’t certainly use here. (Interview) Is she choosing a particularly “masculine” repertoire for some reason? Has she simply made different personal choices that contradict the community pattern? In this case, her apparent exceptional behaviour turns out to confirm the macro pattern. As her class status is slightly higher than that the other women of her generation in the study, she has more active transnational family ties, local business ties and marginally more non-Asian British connections, too. So in terms of the underlying factor of social network type, she does conform to the predicted pattern: her network more closely resembles those of men of her generation and her repertoire reflects this.2 Siblings in a Tower Hamlets youth club Social networks – in this case friendship networks – were also found to be key in Fox (2015). Figure 8.4 is a representation of the Tower Hamlets youth club members’ friendship groups in Fox’s dataset. Each numbered circle is an individual speaker, placed within a friendship group according to information given by the speaker about his/her group of friends and also based on close observation of social interaction between the youth club members. Using this sociogram, each variant of the different vowel realisations was examined in turn and each person’s usage of the variant was plotted onto the sociogram. Figure 8.4 shows the distribution of the PRICE variant [aɪ] among the different friendship groups. It can be seen that, overall, this variant is preferred by the Bangladeshi males (as described above). However, there is also a clear difference in its frequency of use among the older and younger Bangladeshi groups, and these linguistic differences seem to reflect the different social practices engaged in by the two groups. The younger Bangladeshi boys were the most tight-knit and self-contained group in the youth club. They happily interacted with the other boys in the club during activities such as table tennis, pool and table football, but

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at other times they maintained social and spatial distance from them. They also focused on activities inside the club itself rather than on the street outside the club. Many of the older Bangladeshi boys, on the other hand, tended to have much more social interaction with the Anglo boys, and, although the activities within the club were still popular with these boys, they also took part in many of the street social practices and this tended to involve much more social mixing between the different groups. These differences between the younger and older Bangladeshi boys were also recorded for realisations of the FACE vowel, with the younger Bangladeshi boys using higher frequencies of innovative raised variants. Similarly, gender differences can be noted in the sociogram, also tied to different social practices. Siblings are of considerable interest in such studies, as to a great extent they share home, school and other inputs, and so represent a very “clean”, controlled comparison of individuals. In Figure 8.4, speakers 1, 18 and 19 are White British siblings. We can see that, despite their shared home and school environments, speakers 1, 18 and 19 do not share their levels of the innovative PRICE variant. We might interpret this as individual choice and a contradiction of global forces, such as parental or school influence. However, Figure 8.4 shows us a very clear basis for their differences: The White boys are more networked to Bangladeshi boys than girls are and acquire more of their features. So, individual differences that arise between otherwise very similar siblings can, in this case, be accounted for by macrosocial factors, as in the case of Nimmi. It is worth noting, nevertheless, that Figure 8.4 also shows that many friendship groups incorporate leaders and followers, showing that individual personality also plays a

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part in the advancement of new forms in the group (Labov 2001: chapters 11 and 12; Stuart-Smith and Timmins 2010). In the remaining two subsections, we turn to data that are more challenging for common “macro” or group-level models of dialect style. Anwar and Ravinder – changing indexicalities All of our analysis so far has dealt in frequencies, even when looking at intraindividual variation in Figure 8.3. We have tended to interpret shared frequency of use as indicating similarity across individuals, e.g. between the brothers (18 and 19). However, Sharma and Rampton (2015) showed that similar overall rates do not always correspond to similar social or indexical meanings in use. Using a method for quantitative tracking of real-time use of lects in discourse – Lectal Focusing in Interaction – they compared individuals’ shifts towards Indian English, Standard British English and Vernacular British English in the course of interacting.3 Figure 8.5 shows a narrative that was produced by Anwar, whose wider repertoire was given above. Here, we see him using a dramatic range of variation across the three ethnic and class styles; although details are not provided here (cf. Sharma and Rampton 2015), these fluctuations are very closely tied to such interactional work as footing, stance, voicing and topic. So Anwar uses his ethnolectal variants to do very fine-tuned indexical work. Crucially, not all individuals in the Southall dataset do this. In particular, although younger men often have similar overall rates of use of Asian features

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Figure 8.5 High lectal focusing in a narrative told by Anwar Source: (Sharma and Rampton 2015: 19)

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such as retracted /t/, the indexical values they ascribe these forms are limited, as is the corresponding lectal focusing. In Figure 8.6, Ravinder, a younger British Asian man, consistently shows relatively “flat” distributions, particularly for variable use of ethnolinguistic features (compare the solid lines in Figures 8.5 and 8.6), i.e. he shows much less evidence of fine-tuned links to interactional moments. This difference is characteristic of men in the two age groups, with older British Asian men continually re-inscribing ethno-political stances in their speech, a practice that arises out of their early life experiences of racial conflict and hostility in the early phase of the community. The younger men, by contrast, experienced a much less conflicted and marginalized status, growing up during a later stage of the community. They still use ethnic pronunciations as an integral part of their British Asian accent, but hardly signal anything beyond community membership. Indeed, one volunteered the view that “it happens unintentionally [. . .] I’ll speak an English word but it’ll come out with an Indian accent” (Sharma and Rampton 2015: 25). So one challenge to standard macro analyses here is that the meaning an individual associates with a form can vary independently of its frequency of use. Nevertheless, these meanings can still be consistent at the group level, as in this case. However, even within his cohort of similar older men, Anwar exhibited the most dramatic range of all. This poses a second challenge to “macro” accounts: why was he the leader in this sort of speech repertoire and style? 1 0.9

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Two brothers’ lived experiences Anwar’s striking range of style performance can be attributed in large part to his position within the macro-social system – his class, ethnicity, age and stage of his community. However, as noted, he is a stylistic leader in this intersection group, and this requires an element of individual personality linked to lived experience. This can be shown quite clearly by returning our focus on siblings as a “controlled” comparison. Anwar has a brother, Naseem, seven years older than him. The two men are identical in many social dimensions – the type of education they had, the level of education they achieved, their occupation (they took over their father’s restaurant business), their housing (they live within minutes of each other) and their families (both married wives who moved from Pakistan and with whom they do not speak English). However, they contrast quite clearly in their personality. Anwar dresses rather casually and slightly showily, while Naseem wears suits and shirts with muted colours. Anwar is a confident extrovert who loves to perform and to engage with community outsiders and the media. He uses his bilectal range constantly while speaking, with a very hybrid “resting” or default setting. Naseem is much more shy and introverted. He has the same bilectal range because of their shared social experiences (habitus), but fluctuates less while speaking and favours a slightly more traditional British vernacular default setting in his speech. Clearly their individual personality differences give rise to different stylistic and performative choices. However, there is also a notable difference in lived experience that may have exacerbated this basic personality difference. The two men grew up during the 1970s and 1980s, at the peak of ethnic hostility as the proportion of Asians was increasing amid a violent backlash from far right political groups. Southall was the site of famous violent clashes between White British fascist groups and Asian community activists (Oates 2002). Here is how Anwar and Naseem describe these experiences as children: (1a) Anwar (second generation man, age 41 at time of research): We had extreme tensions. We had big problems with them. Whenever we would go to the park [. . .] they would hurl abuse at you and [. . .] even you know like even spit at you. But um because we- you know we had our pride. There was absolutely no way we were going to be abused like this. (Describes incident where an “English boy” knocked his friend’s turban off). Now when you knock somebody’s turban off, need I say anymore. You know. That is the ultimate disrespect and [. . .] You know he shed tears, he didn’t retaliate. What I had done, my anger was bursting, that I just got this guy and I just smashed his head over the wall. And I said to him that “You’re not going to do that. That is ultimate disrespect for us.” I’ll probably be the youngest person to get arrested in Southall. [. . .]

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Susan Fox and Devyani Sharma We are Asians, we’re Pakistanis, we’re Indians, you know, we’re proud of this. And the fact is that we had to stick together. Southall was a little cluster that had its own identity and its own ideologies. And if some fascist organisation wants to come into Southall er town hall and to have a meeting, then not over our dead bodies as they say. As then we rebelled.

(2b) Naseem (second generation man, age 48 at time of research): We had to be very very careful. I still remember those days. It was quite frightening [. . .] We used to be bussed [. . .] When I went to Brentside I used to go by [bus] 207 then. So then that was quite difficult travelling, when you’re about twelve thirteen [. . .] You’d be scared to get picked on you know [. . .] We did feel intimidated [. . .] It’s changed now due to race relations laws and everything. It’s changed now a hell of a lot. Although the brothers are describing the same life of ethnic tension in Southall, the affective quality of their reports differs visibly. Anwar speaks of pride, resistance, fighting back and rebellion. Naseem speaks of fear, difficulty, intimidation and being careful. Some of this difference comes out of how an extrovert and an introvert might respond to situations of sustained and aggravated hostility in their life. But poignantly, one detail that Naseem mentions almost certainly also played a part. Southall implemented a highly controversial policy of bussing between 1969 and 1975. The goal was to limit the concentration of Asian children in schools to below one-third by bussing them to non-local schools. The adverse social and psychological effects for children and parents were so apparent that the policy was abandoned within six years. The controversial “Dispersal Policy” even appears as an example in the national curriculum for British History (BBC 2009). During these six years, Anwar was aged 3 to 9 but Naseem was aged 10 to 16, so he experienced what was a brutally frightening experience throughout his secondary schooling. This almost certainly accounts not only for the tone of his narrative in (1b), but possibly also his “safer” use of British dialect and less ethnopolitical style shifting.

A new sociolinguistics? The case of Anwar and Naseem takes us a long way from large-scale patterns of language use. Their shared experiences and similar dialects are clearly embedded in a systematic urban social space and history. But they also emerged as very different individuals, very different speakers. What do such findings mean for sociolinguistics? Although the individuals examined across our data show such a wealth of individual diversity, we do not see their fluid, agentive and ideologically shaped practices as ultimately either special to cities or as fundamentally challenging to large-scale sociolinguistic models. The combinations of linguistic forms found in

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MLE, London Jamaican or British Asian speech are sometimes spectacular and very “London”. But we do not see the processes of variation underpinning their use to be unique to London or to cities. London may well have a richer base of raw materials at a speaker’s disposal, with a wealth of contacts and conditions licensing their use. But in terms of sociolinguistic theory, we see this complexity as calling for refinement rather than rejection of traditional urban models. The research reviewed here has proposed numerous such amendments to existing sociolinguistic assumptions. Among these are: group second language acquisition as a possible major source of new urban dialects (Cheshire et al. 2011), minority groups as a source of change for majority groups (Fox 2015), indexical change as independent of frequency change (Sharma and Rampton 2015), and the role of repertoires and non-peer effects in understanding gradual dialect shift (Sharma 2011; Sharma and Sankaran 2011). But the studies confirm many deep principles of urban sociolinguistics, too. Londoners continue to have vernaculars (Labov 1966), however diverse their use of them may be. They acquire systems, not scattered forms, and their acquisition closely reflects such distinctions as transmission and diffusion (Labov 2007). The individuals in Sharma (2011), for instance, may exhibit complex cross-situational shifting, but they also acquire the precise linguistic systems of their British peers (e.g. constraints on glottaling; Sharma and Sankaran 2011). Practices of bricolage observed in our data exploit refined knowledge of macro-cultural indexicalities (Eckert 2000). And the gender patterns found across our studies conform to established findings relating to political economy, network exposure and the association of vernaculars with masculinity (e.g. Trudgill 1972; Gal 1978; Eckert 1989; Chambers 1995). Certainly, an individual focus, e.g. on Anwar and Naseem, reminds us that aggregate group patterns can never fully capture the individual. But even here, a study of the individual can illuminate, rather than obscure, large-scale processes at the community level. Cheshire et al. (2011: 186) and Fox and Torgersen (2009) comment on Abigail, a thirteen-year-old Albanian immigrant who is a hyper-user of phonetic and grammatical forms of MLE. Her individual usage may reflect a heightened social need (perhaps due to her age, friendship group and migration history) to signal belonging and authenticity. But in the bigger picture, this dynamic systematically boosts the contribution of second language features in the emerging system and speeds up processes of change underway. The presence of a “superdiverse” feature pool in much of our data does not so far seem to demand a new theoretical lens where dialect change is concerned. The speech of London and Londoners has always been an extraordinary space of creativity and change and continues to be, but this does not lead us, yet, to “an epistemological rupture with past approaches” (Blommaert 2013: 621). London is certainly the site of radical fluidity in individual interactional practices, which disrupt modern European ideologies of code boundaries and values (Otsuji and Pennycook 2010; Garcia and Wei 2014). But our studies find that continual focusing in dialect use towards local group norms (only for these to change again, of course) appears to be an equally deep and lasting social imperative.

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Indeed, very similar processes underpinned Middle English in London, as it emerged out of the influence of Norman contact – nearly creole-like and with elaborate translanguaging routinely found in the highest registers (Schendel and Wright 2011) – or Cockney in earlier centuries, as it voraciously absorbed Hindi, Yiddish, French, Romani and many other codes through artful, new performances by individual Londoners. In each case, the outcome was a set of enregistered, focused dialects embedded within elaborate and unique repertoires formed by each Londoner’s personal social world. We see the same processes alive in London today.

Notes 1 Anwar and his generation have a repertoire that also includes elements of London Jamaican influence acquired in his school years in the 1980s (for this mixed style, see Hewitt 1986; Rampton 1995) and maintained in moments with old school friends (Rampton 2011; Sharma and Rampton 2015). However, his primary repertoire deals in Asian, Standard British and Vernacular British forms. 2 In fact, the Indian accent Nimmi adopts sometimes is based on a very current, transnational elite Indian female style, highlighting the contemporary importance of mobile, global social contacts (Sharma 2016; Blommaert and Rampton 2011). 3 In this approach, an interaction or narrative is broken down into chunks based on clausal boundaries and footing shifts, and then, for each chunk, calculate the percentage of use of the three dialect styles. The calculation is based on coding only those accent features that contrast for the three dialect styles. For instance, word-final /t/ would be pronounced in different ways in each of the three dialect styles. The analysis generates a graph of how much the speaker fluctuates in their use of dialect styles in real time during discourse (see Sharma and Rampton 2015 for full details).

References BBC (2009) Dispersal Policy in Southall, 1970. Online available at: www.bbc.co.uk/education/ clips/zm4h34j (accessed 26 October 2016). Blommaert, Jan (2013) Complexity, Accent, and Conviviality. Concluding Comments. Applied Linguistics 34: 613–22. Blommaert, Jan and Ben Rampton (2011) Language and Superdiversity. Diversities 13(1): 1–22. Chambers, Jack (1995) Sociolinguistic Theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Cheshire, Jenny, Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox and Eivind Torgersen (2011) Contact, the Feature Pool and the Speech Community. The Emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15(2): 151–96. Department for Education (2015) Department for Education. Online available at: www.gov. uk/government/organisations/department-for-education (accessed 26 October 2016). Eckert, Penelope (1989) The Whole Woman: Sex and Gender Differences in Variation. Language Variation and Change 1: 245–68. ——— (2000) Linguistic Variation as Social Practice. Oxford: Blackwell. Fox, Susan and Eivind Torgersen (2009) The Acquisition of Multicultural London English: A Case Study. ICLaVE5, Copenhagen, 16 June. Fox, Susan (2015) The New Cockney. New Ethnicities and Adolescent Speech in the Traditional East End of London. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Gal, Susan (1978) Peasant Men Can’t Get Wives. Language Change and Sex Roles in a Bilingual Community. Language in Society 7: 1–16. Garcia, Ofelia and Li Wei (2014) Translanguaging. Language, Bilingualism and Education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hewitt, Roger (1986) White Talk, Black Talk. Inter-Racial Friendship and Communication Amongst Adolescents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Labov, William (1966) The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. ——— (2001) Principles of Linguistic Change (volume 2). Social Factors. Oxford: Blackwell. ——— (2007) Transmission and Diffusion. Language 83(2): 344–87. The Migration Observatory (2016) The Migration Observatory Informs Debates on International Migration and Public Policy. Online available at: www.migrationobservatory. ox.ac.uk (accessed 26 October 2016). Milroy, Lesley (1987) Language and Social Networks (second edition). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Oates, Jonathan (2002) Southall and Hanwell. London: The History Press. ONS (=Office for National Statistics) (2011) Census Aggregate Data (edition June 2016). Online available at: www.ons.gov.uk/census/2011census (accessed 27 October 2016). Otsuji, Emi and Alastair Pennycook (2010) Metrolingualism: Fixity, Fluidity and Language in Flux. International Journal of Multilingualism 7(3): 240–54. Rampton, Ben (1995) Crossing. Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents. London: Longman. ——— (2011) From “Multi-Ethnic Adolescent Heteroglossia” to “Contemporary Urban Vernaculars”. Language & Communication 31(4): 276–94. Schendel, Herbert and Laura Wright (eds) (2011) Code-Switching in Early English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Sharma, Devyani (2011) Style Repertoire and Social Change in British Asian English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15(4): 464–92. ——— (2016) Transnational Elites in British Ideological Space. Plenary Talk at the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL). Cambridge, UK, 3 September. Sharma, Devyani and Ben Rampton (2015) Lectal Focusing in Interaction. A New Methodology for the Study of Style Variation. Journal of English Linguistics 43(1): 3–35. Sharma, Devyani, Ben Rampton and Roxy Harris (2008–2010). Dialect Development and Style in a Diasporic Community (ESRC-funded Project). Sharma, Devyani and Lavanya Sankaran (2011) Cognitive and Social Factors in Dialect Shift. Gradual Change in London Asian Speech. Language Variation and Change 23: 399–428. Stuart-Smith, Jane and Claire Timmins (2010) The Role of the Individual in Language Variation and Change. In: Language and Identities. Carmen Llamas and Dominic Watt (eds), 39–54. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Trudgill, Peter (1972) Sex, Covert Prestige, and Linguistic Change in the Urban British English of Norwich. Language in Society 1: 179–96. Vertovec, Steven (2007) Super-Diversity and Its Implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30(6): 1024–54. Wells, John (1982) Accents in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

9

Tokyo Standardization, ludic language use and nascent superdiversity Patrick Heinrich and Rika Yamashita

The study of language in the city has never been a prominent subject in Japanese sociolinguistics. The negligence of city sociolinguistics in Japan notwithstanding, there is a wide range of issues to be found in Tokyo, which reveal the intricate ways in which language and society relate to one another.1 In this chapter, we discuss two interrelated issues. Firstly, we outline the case of language standardization, which subsequently led to various destandardization phenomena and ludic language use. Secondly, we discuss how language diversity in Tokyo has grown in recent years and how it is no longer swept under the carpet and hidden. Tokyoites, too, are diversifying as an effect. We shall start, though, with a brief sociolinguistic history of Tokyo.

From feudal Edo to Tokyo as a global city There exists no such place as “Tokyo City”. There is “Inner Tokyo”, comprised of 23 wards; there is “Metropolitan Tokyo” made up of the 23 wards and the Tama region; and there is “Greater Tokyo”, which refers to Metropolitan Tokyo plus the surrounding prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama. The Tama region, rural until 1920, is now home to one third of the population of Tokyo Metropolis, while Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama prefecture have doubled their population over the past 50 years. Greater Tokyo comprises more than 35 million inhabitants. It is the largest urban center on earth. One third of the Japanese population lives there on less than 4% of the Japanese territory – and the number of inhabitants continues to grow. Before Tokyo became the capital city of Japan in 1868, it was called Edo. It had been the seat of the last shogunate (1602–1868), and during this time it had grown from a fishing village to a city of 1.2 million inhabitants. Population growth had been triggered by a system of “alternate attendance” (sankin kōtai) of feudal lords from across Japan. All local feudal lords were required to alternate their residence between their local fiefs and Edo, and they also brought their families, servants and a number of soldiers along. Edo was a place of intense dialect contact, and especially the dialect of Japan’s premodern capital, Kyoto, exerted a lasting effect on Edo speech (Frellesvig 2010: 397–402). As a result, the Tokyo dialect constitutes a dialect island in the western Japanese dialect continuum. The geographical origin of Edo/Tokyo lies in what is called Shitamachi (literally, “the low city”), located at the mouth of the Sumida River. Merchants and artisans

Tokyo: standardization and destandardization 131 originally populated Shitamachi. The higher-lying parts of today’s 23 wards are called Yamanote (uptown, literally, “mountain foot”). During the feudal period, the samurai and their entourage resided there. Tokyoites firmly distinguish between these two parts of the city until today, and real “Tokyoness” (tōkyōrashisa) continues to be associated with Shitamachi. Shitamachi was severely affected by the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 and the bombings of World War II. Being completely destroyed twice in two decades led to a gradual shift of the city center to Yamanote. Most of Tokyo’s urban centers are now located there, e.g. Shinjuku, Shibuya or Ikebukuro. However, the Central Business Center remains in Shitamachi, adjacent to Tokyo station. Tokyo experienced several large waves of internal migration. The first peak was during Tokyo’s industrialization from 1910 to 1945, the second during the high economic growth period of the 1960s, and a third during the so-called “bubble economy” period of the 1980s. The first growth period led to an expansion of Tokyo from the 23 wards into the Tama region (Figure 9.1), whereas the second and the third population growth period led to an expansion of the metropolis into the neighboring prefectures (Figure 9.2). The industrialization of Tokyo started in Yamashita along the Sumida River and then expanded northwards towards Senju. A second industrial zone, called Keihin, developed between Tokyo and Yokohama along the Tama River. Both Senju and Keihin subsequently became popular destinations for rural migrants and associated with the working class. The most destitute migrants settled in labor slums near the industrial zones or in neighborhoods where Japan’s pre-modern caste of “untouchables” (eta or hinin) had been confined to live. To this day, extremely

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Figure 9.2 Population growth of Greater Tokyo

poor neighborhoods exist in Sanya in northern Tokyo and in Kotobuki, not far from Yokohama station. Most migrants came from poor rural areas of the Tōhoku region in northeastern Japan. By the turn of the twentieth century, those who had been born in Tokyo were the minority (Cybriwsky 1991: 74), and those who could trace their family history at least three generations back to Tokyo came to proudly refer to themselves as Edokko (literally, “Edo children”). Tokyo is a city with a relatively low level of social inequality. The Gini coefficient has been hovering around 0.3 for the last 10 years. However, the last 20 years – the so-called “lost decades” of economic stasis – have led to an increase of poverty. Low income and unemployment are concentrated in the northern part of Shitamachi (Sano 2012: 152–155). Tokyo also has neighborhoods that are associated with the upper middle class, most notably Minato ward. Affluent neighborhoods are usually the result of new urban developments and not the result of gentrification. The population has been aging for many decades, although social aging is slower than in other parts of Japan. Tokyo is a popular destination for a large number of young people. Of the total net population inflow, more than 90% are aged between 15 and 29 (Japan Times 2016). Young Japanese are moving to the city in order to study or find work there. More than 40% of all university students are studying in the metropolitan area. It contains 138 universities, 49 colleges, 446 vocational training schools and 943 natural science research centers. Some 5% of the working population is employed in the field of education. With a GNP of US$808 billion, Tokyo’s economy is the largest urban economy in the world.2 The economy is centered on the tertiary sector, where 83% of the

Tokyo: standardization and destandardization 133 work force is employed. Tokyo is the center of government in Japan and of finance in Asia. It hosts 51 of the Fortune 500 companies – a number unparalleled by any other city in the world. Tourism is by now a major industry as an effect of the “Visit Japan” campaign launched in 2003. In particular, since 2010 the number of shortterm foreign visitors has been increasing sharply (JNTO 2016a, 2016b). Tourist visa requirements for East and Southeast Asian countries have been eased, and the number of items eligible for duty-free shopping has expanded. In 2015, 20 million foreign tourists visited Japan, 84% of whom were from Asia. Chinese and Korean signs are now ubiquitous in shopping districts in Tokyo. The influx of foreign tourists drastically changed the shopping scene. Certain goods, such as medicine, cosmetics or electric goods, are advertised in foreign languages, Chinese in particular. It is worthy of note that bakugai (shopping spree) was chosen as word of the year in 2015 because it reflects the new trend of Chinese tourists going on shopping binges in downtown Tokyo. Note also that one of the currently most popular nationwide TV shows is You wa nani shi ni nihon e (What brought YOU to Japan?), in which “you” is English and the rest of the title Japanese. In the program, foreign visitors are interviewed at airports. In order to target Chinese customers, who contribute to more than half of the consumption of the foreign visitors as a whole (MLIT 2015), large stores in downtown Tokyo often have at least one shop attendant who speaks Chinese. In some shopping districts, such as Ueno and Akihabara in Shitamachi, sometimes the only shop attendants around are non-native speakers of Japanese. Duty-free shops in the airports have also changed. Until recently, the assumption was that East Asian–looking customers were Japanese. Today, Japanese travelers are sometimes addressed in Chinese or in English, and when the customer responds in Japanese, the shop attendant usually apologizes and switches to Japanese. More than one million foreign visitors are expected for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics in July and August 2020 alone. Its official slogan is “Discover tomorrow” and this also relates to communication. In order to manage the large number of non-Japanese-speaking visitors, great efforts are currently made in revolutionizing instant translation technology for Tokyo’s public space. Once developed, it will permanently be made accessible free of charge via free Internet access across the city.

Language standardization and destandardization The sociolinguistic history of Tokyo has been shaped by the linguistic assimilation of millions of dialect speakers under Standard Japanese. However, Standard Japanese has also undergone processes of language change since its establishment, and the new ways of using Japanese in Tokyo are spreading from there across Japan. Language standardization After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, linguistic variation in Tokyo came to be perceived as a problem. Language standardization was seen to require a modernization of Yamanote speech, where many formally educated residents lived.

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The Standard Japanese that emerged from these efforts was subsequently spread among all Japanese nationals, including Japan’s linguistic minorities and its colonial subjects in Taiwan, Korea and the South Pacific. In line with this endeavor, all existing social and geographic variation in Japanese, as well as all other languages spoken in Japan and its colonies, became earmarked for “correction”, which meant extinction. The ideal of the day was to create a situation where everyone would speak the same uniform standard language and where language would no longer index the social and geographical origin of its speaker (Heinrich 2012). Consider some examples of variation in Tokyo speech then. In 1902, linguist Okano Hisatane lamented the social variation, writing that: In order to unify spoken and written language (genbun itchi), there is first the problem [of deciding] whose language in Tokyo, i.e. which social class, should serve as standard with regard to vocabulary and grammar? Currently, Tokyo language features marked differences according to social class, occupation, age, sex, etc. (Quoted from Tanaka 1999: 91) Okanao went on to illustrate his point by presenting socially stratified variation of Tokyo speech for the utterance “I, too, would like to have this.” Popular language: Boys: Girls: Geishas: Students: Workers:

watashi ni mo, sore o kudasai atai ni mo, sore o okun-na watashi ni mo, sore o chōdai-na watashi ni mo, sore chōdai-yo boku ni mo, sore kuretamae washi ni mo, sore kunnei (Tanaka 1999: 91)

Given such variation, Okano proposed to develop a standardized speech on the basis of the “middle strata” (chūryū kaikyū) of Tokyo society. That middle strata was always associated with Yamanote. Another example of the social stratification can be seen in the variants of the copula in Tokyo. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the following variants were used there. Gozaru: Used by samurai, medical doctors and scholars, also used in public lectures Gozaimasu: Used by the upper strata of society, also used to express politeness Da: Used by the masses, also used in written language Zansu/Zamasu: Used by courtesans and young women in Yamanote Desu: Wildly used by all strata of society, considered to be in terms of politeness between da and de gozaimasu Degesu: Used by Geishas, courtesans, people working in the nightlife business

Tokyo: standardization and destandardization 135 De Aru: Used in written languages and in translations from foreign languages into Japanese. (Sugimoto 2014: 334) The copula de aru has became the unmarked from of written Japanese today, but it was rejected by many Tokyo residents then for not being part of the Edo dialect and, hence, for smacking of provincialism. Several factors led to the transition of Edo speech to Tokyo speech. Contact between the local dialect and dialects spoken by migrants resulted in abandoning some Edo vocabulary for that introduced by migrants. Probably the most famous example for this is the copula de aru and its polite variant desu. Also, both the formal evidential inflexion -rashii (seems like), and its informal variant mitai na, entered Tokyo speech only in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, language contact with foreign languages and translation of foreign words into Japanese preeminently took place in Tokyo. For example, the loanword biru, clipped from “building”, instead of the Japanese term tatemono is a Tokyo innovation and so are the calques shakai (society) or jiyū (liberty). The systematization of the honorific speech system relied heavily on Kyoto speech. The Shitamachi dialect had no system of honorific speech. In the transition from the feudal period to the modern age, it is often said that Yamanote speech was adapted to serve the communicative needs of a modern Japanese society and that this result was Standard Japanese. Reality was more complex, though. To start with, many of the samurai and their entourage left Yamanote after the Meiji Restoration, and in their place moved in a new class of bureaucrats, administrators, police officers, teachers and university students. These migrants to Yamanote were all literate and learned “Tokyo speech” mainly from popular works of modern literature. The origin of Standard Japanese is largely rooted in these works of literature. On the one hand, this new literary language was purposefully crafted in order to reflect ideas about modern Japanese society and, on the other hand, it drew heavily on the Yamanote speech of the Edo period, that is, on polite registers of a language variety heavily influence by the Kyoto dialect (Inoue 2006; Nomura 2013). Hence, while Shitamachi had been a “melting pot of various dialects” (kotoba to rutsubo) in the Edo period, Yamanote speech drew much on the Kyoto dialect and was in addition “systematized” by modern literature. This literature was written in a “spoken style” called genbun itchi (unification of written and spoken language). This new style of writing later received the “stamp of approval” by a National Language Research Council and the Ministry of Education and found entry into the Japanese education system (Heinrich 2005). Standard Japanese had been nobody’s first language. The language spoken in Yamanote and in Shitamachi had always been distinct. Before the completion of the standardization process in Tokyo, Yamanote speech indexed middle class and Shitamachi speech working class belonging (Tanaka 1999: 94–96). Differences between Shitamachi and Yamanote included the palatization of the word-initial bilabial fricative, i.e. “person” being pronounced hito in Yamanote but shito in Shitamachi. Differences existed also with regard to accent.

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In Shitamachi, kaminari (thunderstorm) had, for example, low pitch on the first mora and is then followed by three high pitches. In Yamanote, and subsequently in Standard Japanese, the accent pattern is low on the first two morae and then high. There were initially also differences in morphology, such as in Shitamachi ta-ranai (insufficient), which was replaced by ta-rinai from Yamanote. The dialect atlas of Tokyo shows the replacement of Shitamachi speech at the expense of Standard Japanese from the old to the young generation (Tōkyō-to Kyōiku I’inkai 1986). Examples include shift from furushiki (wrapping cloth) to furoshiki, from shakuen (100 Yen) to hyakuen, or from shitchō (business trip) to shutchō. The atlas also reveals a significant decline in the ratio of young people claiming proficiency in Shitamachi speech that is almost extinct today. In a similar vein, the Tama dialect became displaced by Standard Japanese. For example, Yamanote words such as chichi (my father) replaced otō, and haha (my mother) replaced okā in the Tama region of Metropolitan Tokyo. Put simply, a written variety imitating spoken Yamanote speech grew into Standard Japanese, or Japanese tout court, and Shitamachi speech and the Tama dialects became local dialects and, as such, earmarked for replacement by Standard Japanese (Sugimoto 2014: 309). The most influential person promoting this linguistic unification was the linguist Ueda Kazutoshi, who wrote that “the language used in national language instruction should follow the correct pronunciation and grammar as used mainly by the middle and upper classes in Tokyo” (Monbushō 1901). However, since such language did not exist but referred initially to a literary language, every single Tokyoite, also those of middle- and upper-class background, had to learn to adjust their language to the new Standard Japanese, or otherwise live with the consequences of being a non-standard speaker. Language destandardization The fervent craving for standard language was met with processes of language destandardization from early on. In an important contribution to pre-war “language life studies” (gengo seikatsu), Kindaichi Haruhiko published a study on the velar plosive /g/ and its variants [g] and [ŋ] in 1941. At the time of Kindaichi’s survey, /g/ was to be realized as [ŋ] in word-internal position (e.g. kaŋe, shadow) but as [g] in world initial position (e.g. goma, sesame) in Standard Japanese. In other words, the variants were in complementary distribution. However, Kindaichi noted that his younger sister had started using [g] also word-internally after entering elementary school. This puzzled him because all language change that anyone knew of was the replacement of local dialects by Standard Japanese. Use of non-initial [ŋ] was even an emphasized point of language instruction in school. This pronunciation was considered to be more prestigious – it was the older variant, it was most widely used across Japan and it was perceived to sound more pleasant. Kindaichi, therefore, extended his attention to the classmates of his sister. He made them read word lists, and he gathered social information on them, such as their place of residence and the local origin of their parents. The survey confirmed that the use of the non-standard variant was spreading among students. To his surprise, the local

Tokyo: standardization and destandardization 137 origin of the parents played no role in explaining this. Rather, his data revealed that children living in Yamanote initiated language change. On the basis of these results, Kindaichi correctly predicted that the use of [ŋ] would further decrease (Kindaichi 1967[1941]: 169). Hibiya Junko re-addressed the issue of the velar plosive in Tokyo speech 45 years later. She chose Nezu in Bunkyō Ward as the locus for her study. She confirmed Kindaichi’s insights of language variation as a harbinger of language change and concluded that the shift from [ŋ] to [g] had been almost completed at the end of the 1980s. What is more, Hibiya (1999: 111) confirmed that “those who were born and brought up in in the yamanote area but also those who had daily contact with yamanote in their adolescence definitely favored [. . .] [g].” Hence, the prescribed standard variant had failed to take root in Tokyo. Despite all efforts to create a purely referential standard language, a language variety that would not index the social background of their speakers, Tokyo’s posh Yamanote speakers made sure that they would be associated with the city by shifting from standard [ŋ] to non-standard [g], when everybody else was doing the contrary. Ludic language use The success in language standardization led to a desire for variation. This trend becomes clearer when considering the creation of a new metropolitan dialect. From the 1990s onwards, Japanese sociolinguistics noted different attitudes towards linguistic diversity. By the 1990s, the vast majority of Japanese spoke Standard Japanese, and most of the young and the middle generation spoke only the standard variety (Inoue 2011). Nowhere was this truer than in Tokyo. The high degree of language standardization led Tokyoites to start drawing on all kinds of dialects in order to “decorate their speech” or to “play with language” (cf. Kinsui 2003; Tanaka 2011). These new attitudes have also led to the development of a new variety called the “metropolitan dialect” (shutoken hōgen). Besides the incorporation of elements from other Japanese dialects, the new metropolitan dialect is also characterized by a simplification of the language system. The overall result is perceived to be some kind of “relaxed standard language” (kudaketa hyōjungo) in Tokyo. Consider some prominent changes in the Tokyo variety of the past two decades. On the level of morphology, ra-syllable deletion is probably the most prominent feature (NINJAL 2013). Ra-deletion features in a simplification of potentialis or passive inflexions for type II verbs.3 Hence, type II verb tabe-rareru (can eat, is eaten) becomes tabe-reru, dropping the syllable ra of the passive and potentialis inflection and using the inflectional pattern of type I verbs (-reru), The distinction between verb-type I and type II is collapsed. Ra-deletion has become the de facto standard in Tokyo. A second type of ra-deletion involves dropping syllables starting with the consonant /r/ and replacing them by the moraic nasal /N/ in word internal position. Accordingly, Standard Japanese wakaranai (I don’t know) becomes wakaNnai, or kamoshirenai (might be) becomes kamoshiNnai. Simplification also manifests in polite registers. The elaborate Japanese honorific system involving specific vocabulary and inflections differentiating between

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teineigo (polite speech), sonkeigo (respectful speech) or kenjōgo (humble speech) is often reduced to polite speech only. Polite speech is thereby expressed by the copula desu or the verb inflection -masu. Some expressions of this simplified polite speech have now spread into formal domains. A well-known example is yoroshikatta desu-ka (Is that all?) used by salesperson towards customers in place of Standard Japanese yoroshii deshō-ka. Such forms are termed “part-time workers’ honorifics” (baito keigo) or “convenience store honorifics” (konbini keigo), because they are associated with part-time working students in convenience stores. These forms are, however, widely used all across Tokyo. The new metropolitan dialect also incorporates a number of words, inflexions and grammatical constructions from other Japanese dialects (cf. Inoue 2011). The widely used chiga-katta (was different) has the past tense inflexion of an adjective, despite being a verb (it is chiga-tta in Standard Japanese). This form has entered Tokyo speech from the northern Tochigi prefecture. The adjectival noun mitai (similar to) has now the inflexion of an adjectival verb in adverbial position mita-ku (it is mitai na in Standard Japanese) – this use has also entered from prefectures north of Tokyo. The modal particle jan (isn’t it) and the adverb yappashi (as expected) have entered Tokyo speech from Shizuoka prefecture through Kanagawa prefecture and then Tama before arriving in Inner Tokyo. The metropolitan nominalization of “blue” as aotan (blueness, Standard Japanese aosa) is a feature of the Hokkaido dialect and so is the adjective kattarui (fatigue), which is tsukare in Standard Japanese. Linguistic elements from Metropolitan Tokyo, but from outside of Yamanote, are also entering the new metropolitan speech. The popular uzattai (annoying), also clipped as uzai, has its origin in the Tama dialect. Shitamachi features are also seeing a revival, in particular in informal masculine speech. For example, Yamanote monophthongs are replaced by long vowels, following the system of the now defunct Shitamachi dialect, resulting in new forms such as hidee (Standard Japanese hidoi, terrible), takee (Standard Japanese takai, high, expensive) or, most famously, sugee (Standard Japanese sugoi, awesome). Inoue (2003) demonstrates through extensive empirical research how dialect vocabulary has been spreading along trade routes and railway lines for many centuries. Vocabulary spreads, thereby, with an average speed of 1km per year. There is, however, an entirely new pattern in non-standard language diffusion since the 1990s – the age of ludic language. Once dialect expressions arrive in Tokyo, they are picked up by popular and mass media, which then results in an instant diffusion across Japan. This phenomenon led Inoue (2011: 122) to develop what he calls the “umbrella model of linguistic diffusion” (Figure 9.3). Departing from Trudgill’s “classic model” of language variation, where regional varieties form the base of a triangle while social variation extent all the way to the standard variety at the top, Inoue adds two more elements. Firstly, the influence of internationalization on standard language (depicted by rain on the umbrella in the model) and, secondly – and more importantly – he adds the constant geographical diffusion of non-standard language at the base of the triangle. Once the moving non-standard features enter Tokyo and become part of Tokyo speech, these elements quickly spread across Japan though media and pop culture. Elements of this new metropolitan

Tokyo: standardization and destandardization 139

n tio iza l a n atio ern Int

standard language common language

sta nd ard iza tio n

Tokyo New Dialect South

Tokyo

North

Umbrella model of linguistic diffusion

Figure 9.3 Umbrella model of language change and spread Source: (Inoue 2011: 122)

dialect are thereby not conceived to be dialect outside of Tokyo. Because they have their origin in the capital city, they are rather seen to be part of a more relaxed use of the standard language (Tanaka 2010: 466–468). In the case of Tokyo we see how people make use of linguistic resources or truncated repertoires available to them in order to stylize their language. The advances in language standardization notwithstanding, the permanent influx of young Japanese to Tokyo from all over Japan, and their (partial and hybridized) knowledge of dialects, allows Tokyoites to draw on non-standard elements. Doing so has become the default strategy for communication in Greater Tokyo among the young and middle-aged in informal settings. For them, standard and linguistic homogeneity is out. Stylization drawing on diversity is in. Only the latter allows to creating “cool” self-representations via language (Maher 2005). Since metropolitan Tokyo speakers draw on linguistic elements of dialects that had never been part of their repertoire, the stigma once connected to these varieties does not affect them. It is the loss of the consequences of the “old indexical order” on them that paves the way for creative stylization in Tokyo. Languages other than Japanese are also affected by a new consideration of linguistic diversity.

Minority languages and their speakers Japan is often believed to be a mono-ethnic and monolingual nation with poor English skills. Present-day Tokyo is different from this stereotyped image. Japanese minorities, overseas migrants, bilingual families, a growing number of Japanese speaking foreign languages, cosmopolitan and transnational residents are characteristic features of the city. Tokyo has always harbored diversity, starting with Japan’s own ethnolinguistic minorities.

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Ainu and Ryukyuans Despite all the attention on creating linguistic homogeneity, pockets of diversity have always existed. In the 1920s, economic depression and famine drove thousands of Ryukyuans to Tokyo. Many Ryukyuans settled in the Keihin Industrial Zone, where women mainly worked in factories, and men found work in the reconstruction of the city after the 1923 earthquake and later in the heavy industry in Kanagawa Prefecture (Kawasaki City). The industry is largely gone, but some 50,000 people with ancestors from the Ryukyus remain in Kanagawa Prefecture today. Tsurumi Ward in Kawasaki City has a well-known Okinawa Town and commemorates a popular Okinawa Festival every year. In the past, their languages and cultures were not celebrated. Under the ideology aiming at cultural and linguistic homogeneity, Ryukyuans suffered discrimination for being diverse, and this led them to hiding or denouncing their origin to outsiders (Aniya 1989: 448). When their accents were spotted, the usual answer for their place of origin was simply “from the south” and not “from the Ryukyus”. Ryukyuan languages were only spoken in the home by first-generation migrants, and they were not passed on to the next generation born in Tokyo. Today, it is not easy to find speakers of Ryukyuan languages in Tokyo. However, as an effort of reviving their languages, a “Speak Okinawan Circle” (Okinawago o hanasu-kai) was founded in the 1980s, and a second Okinawan language circle, the so-called “University of a Hundred Rulers” (Momojara daigaku), was established in the new millennium. The history of the Ryukyuan languages neatly fits in the larger sociolinguistic history of Tokyo. Once stigmatized and earmarked for extinction, the Ryukyuan languages are hardly used by anyone in Tokyo anymore, but recollections of the Ryukyuan languages still serve as a source of pride for Ryukyuans in the city. Some set expressions survive due to the now popular Ryukyuan cuisine and folk music in Tokyo’s numerous Ryukyuan restaurants. The Ainu, originally from Hokkaido in the north, started moving to Tokyo in the first half of the twentieth century, and their number rose considerably during the period of high economic growth in the 1960s. Many of them settled in day labor ghettoes such as Sanya, and a number of Ainu women worked in the nightlife entertainment district of Kabukichō in Shinjuku Ward. Just like Ryukyuans, many Ainu tried to pass as “ethnic Japanese” (wajin) in order to escape discrimination. Since this strategy proved unsuccessful, and self-denigrating, Tokyo Ainu formed societies and established meeting places in order to improve their situation. From these settings emerged Ainu culture and language workshops, some of which are still active today (Watson 2014: 102). The Ainu shifted to Japanese language even earlier than Ryukyuans, and the overwhelming number of them no longer spoke Ainu at the time they arrived to Tokyo. This notwithstanding, Ainu study circles and language courses have been offered at some universities in Greater Tokyo since the 1960s. Today, Ainu language and culture is taught at the Foundation for Research and Promotion of Ainu Culture near Tokyo Station. Due to their smaller number, the decade-long presence of Ainu in Tokyo is often overlooked. This notwithstanding, more Ainu may be

Tokyo: standardization and destandardization 141 present in Tokyo than in any other place in Japan, including in any municipality in their native Hokkaido Island. The oldcomer migrants The modern history of foreign migration started in Yokohama (Kanagawa Prefecture) when the last shogun opened the port there in 1859. The first foreign settlements were created, and a Chinese community settled there, mainly merchants from Guangdong and Hong Kong. The first wave of migrants, which started with the opening of Yokohama Port, is called the “oldcomers” (orudokamā). The term was coined in the 1990s when a second wave of migration, the so-called “newcomers” (nyūkamā), arrived in Japan. Many of the oldcomers came involuntarily to Japan during Japan’s colonial period (1895–1945), when they were forced to work as indentured laborers there. The oldcomers are either of Chinese or Korean decent, and their case is well documented (cf. Maher 1995; Maher and Yashiro 1995; Ryang and Lie 2009). At the end of World War II, some 2.5 million migrants from China and Korea lived in Japan. Since Japan had to renounce its colonies after the war, the oldcomers lost their Japanese nationality and their repatriation was subsequently promoted. Nevertheless, more than 800,000 chose to stay in Japan, roughly three quarters of them of Korean descent. The case of Japanese-Korean bilingualism has also been widely studied. There are 98 North Korean affiliated schools in Japan, which range from elementary school to university. There are, in addition, three South Korean affiliated schools. Roughly a quarter of these ethnic schools are located in Greater Tokyo. Today, most Korean oldcomers have been born in Japan, speak Japanese as their first language and they also predominantly use Japanese at home. Many of them no longer speak Korean, and a large number of them have been naturalized or have married Japanese nationals. The shift to Japanese as the default language in the family does not necessarily mean the complete loss of Korean as a community language. The North Korean Schools teach the entire curriculum in Korean (Shikita 2014; Nakajima 2014). Pupils of these schools also use Korean for all the activities at school, including activities outside the classroom (Lee 2012). Studies suggest that pupils at these schools learn to speak a written variety of Korean, which researchers call “Japanese resident variety of Korean” (Miyawaki 1993). At the present, Korean schools are aiming to “grow out” of the ethnic school status and transform themselves in global schools (Tanada 2014: 116). As a consequence, English language education is receiving new attention there. There are also three Chinese ethnic schools in Greater Tokyo today, two in Yokohama and one in Tokyo (Ishikawa 2014). These schools have been receiving much attention due to the economic growth of China in the past two decades. Chinese was once a small ethnic language in Japan, but it is today, in addition, an important lingua franca in Asia and a precious asset for everyone working in Japan’s booming tourist industry. Pupils of the school include oldcomers and newcomers. The latter group is constantly growing. Despite poor funding, these schools are attractive, because, according to Kanno,

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Hence, in the case of the ethnic schools established by the oldcomers, we can also see how the pendulum is swinging from an emphasis on linguistic homogeneity towards diversity. The experiences of the newcomers to Japan are, therefore, quite different from that of the oldcomers and Japan’s autochthonous minorities in Tokyo. Because of the different experiences, occupations and integration into Japanese society, there usually exists little contact between oldcomers and newcomers, even if they share the same nationality. Newcomer migrants Between 1995 and 2015, the foreign population in Japan increased by over 60%. There are currently some 2.2 million foreign nationals in Japan, or 1.8% of the total population (MIAC 2016). Roughly one million of them live in Greater Tokyo. The two largest nationalities in Metropolitan Tokyo today are Chinese (145,320 residents), followed by Koreans (117,567). Koreans tend to be concentrated in Shinjuku ward and outside the 23 wards. Chinese residents are in particular concentrated in Shinjuku ward and Toshima ward. Chinese nationals became the largest foreign population for the first time in modern Japan in 2007, taking that place from the Koreans. Chinese nationals include various Chinese ethnicities and many of them speak local Chinese varieties or ethnic languages in their families or social networks, in addition to Mandarin and Japanese. There are also Chinese nationals speaking non-Sinitic languages such as Mongolian, Tibetan or Uyghur. Chinese and Korean newcomers are more proficient in Chinese and Korean than in Japanese, and newcomer pupils may receive additional Japanese as a second language instruction in the Japanese school system (Fujita-Round 2013). The newcomers also comprise Brazilians and Peruans (300,000) of Japanese descent and, migrants from Asia. China and Korea aside, many of the Asian migrants in Japan come from the Philippines (230,000), Vietnam (147,000) or Nepal (55,000). Southeast Asians tend to live on the periphery of Metropolitan Tokyo.4 There are presently 85,000 Filipinos living in Greater Tokyo (MOJ 2016). There is a gender bias in the Filipino population in Japan with women outnumbering men at a ratio of 3:1 due to the fact that many entered Japan on “entertainer visas”, i.e. are mostly working as dancers and hostesses. Recently, however, a growing number is arriving to Tokyo as an effect of new Economic Partnership Agreements, under which a growing number of Southeast Asian women are trained to work as nurses in Japan (Otomo 2016). Migrants from the Philippines, Vietnam and Nepal are also ethnically and linguistically diverse and often speak an ethnic language in addition to the official language of their country. Newcomers have also been discussed from sociolinguistic perspectives, and, in particular,

Tokyo: standardization and destandardization 143 language problems of newcomer children in school have received much attention (cf. Kawakami 2006; Kojima 2006; Miyajima 2014). With the arrival of the newcomers, Tokyo has been continuously diversifying. Good settings for studying the ongoing super-diversification of Greater Tokyo are mosques (see Yamashita 2016). Mosques gather people across ethnicity, language, occupation and different migration trajectories. You can find there internationaloriented Japanese, Japanese with foreign spouses and binational children, oldcomers and newcomers, visitors to Japan with worker or trainee visas, foreign businessmen, foreign students, visitors with working class and with middle class backgrounds, etc. Also, some non-Muslims visit mosques, attracted to the aesthetics, the gastronomy of Muslim countries or simply the Arabic language. A number of people visiting mosques in Japan (e.g. from Pakistan, Iran or Bangladesh) came to Japan in the 1980s with tourist visas, which they overstayed, working at the time illegally in factories and in construction. Many married Japanese, obtained permanent residential visas and set up their own businesses. They hired Japanese or used their Japanese family members to deal with the documents written in Japanese, and they quickly learned to speak Japanese, including its polite registers. A large number of foreign women visiting the mosque do not work outside the home and many of them do not speak Japanese well. Diverse people employ various languages in the mosques. In a mosque in Greater Tokyo where one of us (Yamashita) has conducted extensive fieldwork, the imam and the manager spoke Urdu to each other, while the shaikh (the main lecturer) spoke either in English or in Japanese with them. All three also spoke Arabic. The homepage of the organization that this mosque belongs to is in English. In formal announcements or speeches, English and Japanese were predominately used. Urdu and Arabic were also used at some occasions. There exists no default language choice for communication between visitors of the mosque. The language to be used has to be negotiated. Accordingly, members of the mosque speak to each other according to their language competences and the nationality or ethnicity of the other. Language boundaries exist between some of the members and this restricts the formation of social networks. English or Japanese are used to fill lexical gaps when speaking languages where speakers have no full competence. Almost all children old enough to attend preschools, nurseries or mainstream schools are fluent in Japanese, regardless of the nationality of their parents. Japanese is the language in which they are most comfortable with, and they also use Japanese among themselves. Mastery of Japanese often gives these children an edge over their teachers and instructors at the mosque. Bilingual pupils, competent in spoken Urdu and written and spoken Japanese, often take up the task of translating daily affairs between the school and the parents, but also the larger purpose of the mosque, such as spreading knowledge about Islam. Diversifying Tokyoites Last but not least, there is a growing number of diversifying Tokyoites. With 1.3 million individuals, the number of Japanese nationals living abroad is at its highest rate ever (MOFA 2015). The top destinations of Japanese living abroad are the

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US, the People’s Republic of China, Australia, UK, Thailand, Canada and Brazil. The vast majority of the Japanese abroad are employees and their families who are dispatched to a foreign country for a few years. As an effect, there is a considerable number of so-called “returnee children” (kikoku shijo) from abroad enrolled in the Japanese education system. These children have a somewhat ambiguous image. On the one hand, they are perceived to be “cool” due to their knowledge of foreign countries and languages. On the other hand, they are also at times negatively portrayed as “semilinguals” who cannot speak any language properly or as being “too outspoken”. Many of the Japanese returnee expat families live in large cities, especially in Tokyo. Japanese of international marriages are becoming more numerous and more positively perceived, especially in large cities. Their children are popularly called hāfu (half), but many reject the term for being discriminatory and propose to replace it by daburu (double). More than 20,000 such children are born every year. Research and activism have revealed how their multiculturalism and multilingualism is often seen as a problem rather than an asset. Their growing visibility has also resulted in a growing attention and sensitivity towards them. However, prejudice and racist discrimination is still part of their lives in a number of social settings (Murphy-Shigematsu 2012). Even for Tokyoites not going abroad or not having foreign relatives, those who speak a foreign language other than English are more widely acknowledged than they were a decade or two ago. Some Japanese parents without foreign roots or experiences abroad are enrolling their children in Chinese and Korean ethnic schools as an alternative to mainstream public and private education and as an alternative to international English medium schools. Two out of three Chinese schools in greater Tokyo have more than 20% Japanese pupils of non-Chinese heritage (Ishikawa 2014). Likewise, more than one third of the pupils in Tokyo’s Indian school are Japanese (Kobayashi 2014). Parents chose these schools for their children because they expect them to acquire the communication skills necessary for successfully participating in a globalizing world.

Outlook Several issues can be learned from the case of Tokyo for the sociolinguistics of urban ecologies. In the past, Tokyo was similar to world cities today (migration patterns, social stratification, settlement patterns), making a historical sociolinguistics of cities approach appear desirable. Cities are sociolinguistic processes. Furthermore, Tokyo stood very much out as a world city for its (emphasis on) linguistic homogeneity. Japan’s peripheral geographical position, its rather brief history as a colonial power and its strong focus on nationalist ideology have shaped a sociolinguistic situation that is distinct from that of other world cities. The strong focus on modernization, i.e. its emphasis on homogeneity, monotony and clarity, has also reduced diversity within the Japanese language and in Tokyo, a city whose population is predominantly made up by rural migrants and their decedents.

Tokyo: standardization and destandardization 145 Tokyo additionally serves as an interesting case where “too much standardization” has been achieved. Following a period of relentless standardization, variation in language that can still be tapped has become “de-identified”, and it is now widely employed in ludic language use. This specific way of language use may very well be more prominent in Tokyo than in any other city in the world. What all of these changes in Tokyo sociolinguistic history will imply for new foreign migrants to Tokyo and for the Tokyoites themselves remains to be seen.

Notes 1 All transcriptions of Japanese terms follow the Revised Hepburn System. Long vowels are not indicted by a macron in words that are widely used in English, e.g. Tokyo. The order of names follows the Japanese order, that is, family name first. All translations from Japanese have been provided by the authors. 2 All statistical information in this part is taken from Tokyo Metropolitan Government (2016) and Tokyo Bureau of Industrial and Labor Affairs (2011). 3 Japanese verbs are distinguished due to their inflectional patterns into two basic types. Type I have a vowel-stem attached to the inflections to one and the same stem, while type II verbs have five different stems. Some inflections differ according to the verb type. 4 There are more newcomers in Osaka than in Tokyo, and more South Americans in Aichi Prefecture, Kanagawa Prefecture and Shizuoka Prefecture, where they are employed in large factories in the industrial belt around Tokyo.

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Japan Times (2016) Population in Tokyo Area Increases Further. In: Japan Times (31 January). JNTO = Japan National Tourism Organization (2016a) Hōnichi-gai kyakusū. Available online at: www.jnto.go.jp/jpn/reference/tourism_data/cq6g7o0000027zc0-att/ cq6g7o0000027zcv.pdf (accessed 10 May 2016). JNTO = Japan National Tourism Organization (2016b) Visitor Arrivals, Japanese Overseas Travelers. Online available at: www.jnto.go.jp/jpn/reference/tourism_data/pdf/ marketingdata_outbound.pdf (accessed 10 May 2016). Kanno, Yasuko (2008) Language and Education in Japan. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kawakami, Ikeo (2006) Idō suru kodomotachi to nihongo kyōiku. Tokyo: Akashi. Kindaichi, Haruhiko (1967 [1941]) Ga-gyō bion-ron, Republished in: Nihongo on’in no kenkyū. 168–97. Tokyo: Tōkyōdō Shuppan. Kinsui, Satoshi (2003) Vācharu nihongo. Tokyo: Iwanami. Kobayashi, Akira (2014) Nihon de indo-shiki kyōiku. In: Nikkei Style (17 October). Online available at: http://style.nikkei.com/article/DGXMZO78410170V11C14A0000000 (accessed 10 May 2016). Kojima, Akira (2006) Nyūkamā no kodomo to gakkō bunka. Tokyo: Keisō Shobō. Lee, Jaeho (2012) Zainichi chōsen gakkō no gakuseitachi ni yoru chōsengo shiyō ni kansuru shakai gengogaku-teki kenkyū. Master thesis, University of Tokyo. Maher, John C. (1995) The Kakyo. Chinese in Japan. Journal of Multilingualism and Multicultural Development 16(1/2): 125–38. ——— (2005) Metroethnicity, Language, and the Principle of Cool. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 175/176: 83–102. Maher, John C. and Kyōko Yashiro (eds) (1995) Multilingual Japan. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. MIAC = Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication (2016) Japan Statistical Yearbook. Online available at: www.stat.go.jp/english/data/nenkan/ (accessed 16 May 2016). Miyajima, Takashi (2014) Gaikokujin no kodomotachi no kyōiku. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppan-kai. Miyawaki, Hiroyuki (1993) Zainichi chōsen gakkō shijo no gengo seitai. Jinbun shakai kagaku ronsō 2: 1–63. MLIT = Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (2015) Hōnichi gaikokujin shōhi dōkō chōsa. Online available at: www.mlit.go.jp/common/001126525.pdf (accessed 16 May 2016). MOFA = Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan (2015) Kaigai zairyū hōjinsū chōsa tōkei. Online available at: www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/files/000086464.pdf (accessed 16 May 2016). MOJ = Ministry of Justice Japan (2016) Kika kyoka shinseisha-sū – kika kyoka shasū oyobi kika fukyokasha-sū no sui’i. Online available at: www.moj.go.jp/content/001180510.pdf (accessed 16 May 2016). Monbushō (1901) Jinjō shōgakkō kokugo-ka jisshi hōhō. Tokyo: Monbushō. Murphy-Shigematsu, Stephen (2012) When Half Is Whole. Multiethnic Asian American Identities. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Nakajima, Tomoko (2014) Koria-kei gaikokujin gakkō no hōkatsuteki na rikai o mezashite. In: Nihon no gaikokujin gakkō. Kōkichi Shimizu, Tomoko Nakajima and Itaru Kaji (eds), 52–7. Tokyo: Akashi. NINJAL = National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (2013) Shutoken no gengo jittai to dōkō ni kansuru kenkyū. Available online at: http://pj.ninjal.ac.jp/shutoken/ (accessed 16 May 2016).

Tokyo: standardization and destandardization 147 Nomura, Takashi (2013) Nihongo sutandādo no rekishi. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Otomo, Ruriko (2016) A New Form of Language Policy? The Case of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) in Japan. The Asia-Pacific Education Research 25(5–6): 735–42. Ryang, Sonia and John Lie (eds) (2009) Diaspora Without Homeland. Koreans in Japan. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley University Press. Sano, Mitsuru (2012) Toshi mondai. In: Shuto-ken (volume 1). Mineaki Kanno (ed.), 151–5. Tokyo: Asakura Shoten. Shikita, Naoko (2014) Gakkō wa jisedai no tonmu no tame ni. In: Nihon no gaikokujin gakkō. Kōkichi Shimizu, Tomoko Nakajima and Itaru Kaji (eds), 58–72. Tokyo: Akashi. Sugimoto, Tsutomu (2014) Tōkyōgo no rekishi. Tokyo: Kōdansha. Tanada, Yohei (2014) Zainichi gakkō to shite no rekishi to mirai. In: Nihon no gaikokujin gakkō. Kōkichi Shimizu, Tomoko Nakajima and Itaru Kaji (eds), 103–17. Tokyo: Akashi Shoten. Tanaka, Akio (1999) Nihongo no isō to isōsa. Tokyo: Meiji Shoin. Tanaka, Yukari (2010) Toshuken ni okeru gengo dōtai no kenkyū. Tokyo: Kasama Shoin. Tanaka, Yukari (2011) Hōgen kosupure no jidai. Tokyo: Iwanami. Tokyo Bureau of Industrial and Labor Affairs (2011) Overview of Tokyo’s Economy. Online available at: www.sangyo-rodo.metro.tokyo.jp/monthly/sangyo/graphic/2011nen/ overview-e.pdf (accessed 16 May 2016). Tokyo Metropolitan Government (2016) Tokyo Statistical Yearbook. Online available at: www.toukei.metro.tokyo.jp/tnenkan/tn-index.htm (accessed 16 May 2016). Tōkyō-to Kyōiku I’inkai (1986) Tōkyō-go gengo chizu. Tokyo: Tōkyō-to Kyōiku I’inkai. Watson, Mark K. (2014) Japan’s Ainu Minority in Tokyo. London: Routledge. Yamashita, Rika (2016) Zainichi Pakisutanjin jidō no tagengo shiyō – kōdo suitchingu to sutairu shifuto no kenkyū. Tokyo: Hituzi Shobō.

10 The city as a result of experience Paris and its nearby suburbs Christine Deprez (translated by Patrick Heinrich)

Paris, like all large European capital cities, is a multilingual city where a large number of languages meet, brought there by speakers from around the world. The use of these languages manifests itself in the family or in local interactions, at work, in the media or on the street. People with different languages and different origins are communicating there, using all the resources available to them – verbal, non-verbal, gestural, mediated through a third party, etc. Such practices, which are observable in everyday places of socialization and increasingly often in public encounters, have been subsumed for several years under the term of “metrolingualism”, as proposed by Otsuji and Pennycook (2010).1 Metrolingualism is not uniform because it manifests in specific urban contexts as a consequence of the particular history and geography of the place in question. Let me, therefore, start with a brief history of Paris and its suburbs as it relates to language issues.

Paris was not made in one day Together with London, Paris, whose original name was Lutetia, is one of the oldest capitals of Europe. The river Seine crosses it from east to west. The city developed in the Middle Ages around two small islands (Ile Saint Louis and Ile de la Cité) that were soon connected by a bridge. There is little space on these two islands, and its winding streets are therefore narrow and often dark. In order to grow, the city had to cross the Seine. To the north, on the right riverbank, extends le Marais (literally “the marshland”), which was for a long time the “Jewish quarter”. To the south, on the left bank, there is the Quartier Latin and the Sorbonne, established in 1253. As a consequence, students from all over Europe stayed there, together with their teachers who taught them texts in Latin – hence the name of this quarter. The fortress of the Louvre started being built on the right bank in the twelfth century. It was around this time that the city was enclosed by a defensive wall, which clearly separated the city from the nearby countryside. Through the erection of the city wall the foundations were laid for a distinction between central Paris, located within the confines of the wall, and its surrounding communities. This distinction remains prominent in the minds of Parisians to this very day and is correlated with different styles of speaking.

Paris: The city as a result of experience 149 By the seventeenth century, Paris hosted the political, administrative, religious and cultural power of France, and it also attracted many foreign traders and travelers. The reputation of the city exerted a strong attraction across France and Europe. Wealthy provincial nobles, ambassadors, students of theology or medicine, senior clergy and pilgrims either spent time in Paris or settled there for good. Many of them left books behind in which they recount their journeys to or sojourns in the city. Market gardeners and farmers supplied Paris from surrounding regions. Most of them were illiterate and spoke patois (Briard, Normand, Picard, etc.). Those providing supplies entered the city through a gate, at which they obtained the right to pass. As an effect of commuting back and forth between their homes and Paris, they maintained their local speech. Along with these farmers came servants and craftsmen (blacksmiths, carpenters, printers, seamstresses, innkeepers, etc.). Since they did not have to engage in farming and gardening, they settled outside the city wall in the faubourg (outskirts) of the city.2 These outskirts originally constituted the first belt around Paris, but they are part of the inner city today. Some of these neighborhoods became characterized by hosting specific professions. Craftsmen used the local speech, which was widely represented in their profession and neighborhood. It was in this way that early linguistic diversity arrived in the city. At the same time, those who lived within the ancient city walls went in a linguistically opposite direction. They homogenized and standardized both the spoken and the written language that they used. For about a thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire around the third century, oral Latin diversified, resulting in a rise of various dialects, which later became what we nowadays call the “Romance languages”. During the Middle Ages, different regional dialects emerged and vaguely took shape as “French”. One such dialect was that of Paris, the uncontested political, economic, intellectual and religious center. Hence, this particular dialect came to be the best known and the most prestigious of all, and it is this specific local dialect that provides the basis for French today. The boundaries between these different dialects were at times fluctuating. The most socially and functionally promising dialects would standardize in order to gain an edge over all other varieties. This happened in the seventeenth century during the reign of Louis XIV. The French Academy was established in 1635 and it published the first edition of its famous dictionary in 1694. Spelling reforms and the promotion of conventions of “good usage” (le bon usage) of written and spoken French also played an important role. A century later, the economic and cultural wealth of the city, capital of the kingdom, attracted diplomats and ambassadors, artists and intellectuals, exiles and refugees of various places of Europe.3 Some of them held a high regard to French and went as far as speaking of an alleged “universality of the French language” (most famously, Rivarol 2013 [1788]). Judged by the rhythm, sentence structure and rich vocabulary, French was claimed to be superior, in every way, to any other European language (English, Italian, Spanish or German). There still exists a palpable tension today that results from this dogma of talking and writing well. Since the elimination of Latin use in the city, this tension has been characterized by a monolingual ideology of academic French supremacy of the elite, on the one hand, and the presence of inherent linguistic variation

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and diversity, on the other hand. This opposition between monolingualism and linguistic diversity was spatially marked by a very visible border – the ancient city walls. Those residing within the confines of the city walls were also linguistically separated from the outside.4 The French Revolution of 1789, which mainly took place in Paris, did nothing to change this situation. Support for the disappearance (eradication) of dialects and regional languages grew further, and French was established as the official language of the country in 1791 (Act II of the Constitution). Thus emerged the monolingual ideology that managed to maintain its influence in France until today and that spread, together with the revolutionary ideas, among the so-called “young nations”. Soon after the revolution, French also started colonizing the Maghreb and large parts of West Africa. As an effect, French was imposed in the administration and in the schools of the colonies, leading to a minorization of the local languages also there. During this time, and little by little, new and increasingly broad circular borders surrounded and defined the boundaries of Paris. The extension of Paris took place through the annexation of neighboring municipalities, and this gradually led to a growth of the capital, all the way to what is today the Boulevards des Maréchaux. This former collection of roads was first provided with a railway line, known as the “small belt” (la petite ceinture), and later by a “ring road” (le périphérique) reserved for cars. Outside of this ring road we find the “inner suburbs”, that is to say, the cities closest to the capital.5 After the French Revolution an increasingly large number of rural people moved to the capital in order to find work. More often than not, they settled in the suburbs, forming clusters of people with similar linguistic and professional backgrounds. In doing so, they left their marks on the quarters where they were settling. The first generation retained their local dialect when speaking among themselves, but they were struggling to pass it on to their children. All the while Parisian-based French was uncontested in the schools, in the administrations and in the courthouses. In this way Paris absorbed the linguistic diversity that the farmers and provincial migrants had brought to the city in only one generation. This is why Louis-Jean Calvet (1994) invoked the image of the city as a centrifuge, in that linguistic homogeneity is created at its center and diversity is pushed to the outside. Following that image, a trajectory of linguistic assimilation in Paris becomes visible, linking the past and the present. While people were shifting to French across the history of the city, new diversity also emerged with local varieties of “Parisian French”. In the suburbs, where artisans, laborers and servants had settled, a popular speech sprung up that differed from that of the middle-class people with higher formal education. We have the first evidences of such a speech through the literature of the late nineteenth century, where writers sought to pen down this popular speech in their works. In the 1930s, this disregarded jargon of the suburbs was featured in popular French films, and some of France’s finest actors, like Arletty, Louis Jouvet or Jean Gabin, gave voice to this suburban speech. It differed from the language of the wealthier inhabitants of the inner city by having a more dragging and guttural accent and by featuring a vocabulary influenced by the professional activities of the speakers. Argot is

Paris: The city as a result of experience 151 the most widely known and stigmatized of these suburban dialects. It is often associated with thieves and other marginalized individuals. Argot also employs Verlan, a strategy to reverse the orders of the syllables in order to blur the meaning. This communication strategy is perpetuated among young people in the suburbs, particularly in rap songs. In the lyrics of Kool Shen’s song “Seine Saint-Denis Style”, tiépi is used for pitié (pity), pe-ra for rap and pe-pon for pompes (shoes). Young people in the suburbs also borrow extensively from other languages, such as English (underground, pop, freestyle, sample, fonky, bizness), Wolof (bab-tou for toubab, white) or German (Achtung, attention). History is crucial for understanding the evolution of multilingualism in Paris. Anthony Lodge (2004), the foremost expert of the sociolinguistic history of Paris, proposes to distinguish two types of urban growth. According to him, some cities constitute ever-expanding networks (e.g. London), while other cities, like Paris, form concentric circles starting from a historical, political, economic and cultural center. The work by Lodge allows us to model the growth of a city, and for understanding on the basis of historical data (archives of parishes, literature, police reports, etc.) how the use of languages in contact have changed over time in specific urban contexts. Such an approach emphasizes power relations and the role of political actors, but it also pays attention to ordinary folks, whose demographic weight must always be taken into account. On such a basis, we can aim to reimagine what daily exchanges and interactions at any given time could have looked like. Such an approach results in what linguistic ethnography observes in vivo, that is, the daily mundane language practices of the inhabitants of a given city or neighborhood. In concluding this historical overview of Paris and its suburbs, it is important to stress three points. Firstly, there exists a structured and dynamic opposition between the forces of monolingualism and the standard language of state, on the one hand, and the diversity and heterogeneity of a growing urban population, on the other hand. Secondly, we find a concentric development of the city resulting in a centralized cultural and political life. This situation remains unchanged today, despite ongoing efforts of decentralization. Finally, there exists social and linguistic discrimination, which has its basis in people’s place of residence and their original regional and professional background. With these three points in mind, let us now turn to the sociolinguistic situation of Paris today.

Paris today The capital city has about 2.3 million residents, but the greater region known in French as Ile de France, which includes the inner and the outer suburbs, amounts to more than 12 million inhabitants. This makes the population five times larger than that of Lyon, France’s second largest city. The rapid growth of Paris is due to the rural exodus of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, which brought many people in search of work from the countryside to the industrial areas of France, but also right into the capital city. The population in the capital remains fairly stable today, but it continues to grow in the suburbs, in particular in the inner suburbs.

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Linguistic assimilation is still operating and does its work of standardization. As an effect, the rural, and for a long time heavily stigmatized, languages and dialects are disappearing. Accents are fading away.6 However, this trend of linguistic unification, which meets the need for communication and is inevitable for the economic and socio-cultural integration of migrants, coexists with an opposing trend, which results in linguistic distancing and differentiation. It leads to new appearances of shared linguistic forms, which give rise to new urban dialects. According to Calvet: The city is, in fact, a melting pot in which differences are blended. Linguistically this fusion produces vehicular language functions, but it also emphasizes existing differences at the same time. Just like a centrifuge, [the city] separates groups. On the level of language, this separation produces shared forms, that is to say, urban dialects that convey identity. Calvet (1994: 62) Let us consider how this is played out with regard to the arrival of foreign migrants at the end of the nineteenth century. At his time, the exodus of rural inhabitants in France was accompanied by the arrivals of foreigners in Paris, predominantly Italians and Poles. Since the sixteenth century, the arrival of foreigners in Paris has been well documented. Today, their presence is regularly updated in official statistics (INSEE 2016). Today, the most clearly visible foreigners are concentrated in parts of northern and eastern Paris, and the most widely foreign spoken languages are those from the Maghreb (Arabic dialects and Berber). These languages are, in particular, prominent in the eighteenth and nineteenth arrondissement (administrative divisions of the city). Chinese are concentrated in the thirteenth arrondissement and in Belleville, gaining ground on North African inhabitants there. Indians have predominantly settled north of the Gare du Nord train station and the tenth arrondissement (in the Passage Brady), while West Africans are prevalent in the tenth district and in Château Rouge. These and similar places have become new centers of attraction for visitors. The tourist office of the city has a program called “Paris, world village” and offers special visits of the cosmopolitan and ethnic places. The most recent studies on the demographic composition of Paris consider three new categories: tourists (who by definition are only temporarily in the city), students (who stand out for their fluency in French) and refugees. Let us consider the refugees only. Pushed to Europe by violent conflicts in their home regions, the arrival of the refugees introduces yet more diversity to the city. Their presence poses a new problem of scope, namely that of finding people who are proficient in the languages they speak, who can transcribe for them and who are capable of understanding them in actual interaction. Researchers stress the novelty of this situation, and present it as a case of “urban superdiversity”. Later refugees came from Syria, Afghanistan, Albania and Ethiopia. About half of them speak English to some extent. Researchers contrast these new contemporary forms of the global movement of people, languages and goods with the traditional migration that had come to characterize Paris in the twentieth century, people from Maghreb, Portugal and Turkey with low formal education.7

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La Porte de Montreuil and Bas-Montreuil In what follows, parts of a longitudinal ethnographic study, which covers about 20 years, in an inner suburb of Paris is presented.8 Montreuil is part of eastern Paris, and it has retained some of its historical population and their historical professions. In recent years, Montreuil has become subject to gentrification, which now results in the coexistence of inhabitants with very different social and geographical backgrounds. Let us look at how people and their languages are represented in a rapidly changing urban landscape and how exchanges and interactions between them take place (or do not take place). Towards this end, we will discuss two vignettes. The first example shows languages that coexist side-by-side without mixing. In this case, the absolute dominance of French marginalizes the other languages. The second example shows the city as a space of drifting utterances, where relations of identity are built through encounters and exchanges. In presenting these two examples, I seek to demonstrate two theoretical and methodological approaches how language in the city can be studied, namely participant observations (ethnography) and interactional analysis. These two examples were also chosen because they contrast different sociolinguistic dynamics of language contacts within one and the same suburb. Briefly consider Montreuil first. It is characterized by its vicinity to the capital, by its past agricultural economy and by its large number of working-class inhabitants. Nowadays, the city is experiencing a gentrification process. After the extension of the adjacent Parisian suburb Saint Antoine towards Montreuil, furniture manufacturers set up their workshops there and mixed with farmers, plasters and construction workers. The city is also associated with movies as Antoine Méliès built his film studios in 1896 and started to produce his first films there. As an effect, Bas-Montreuil came to host a significant number of actors, directors, engineers, producers, photographers, musicians, etc. With about one third of the population now working in the film industry, Montreuil had started to become subject to gentrification. With its currently 104,000 inhabitants, Montreuil is part of the so-called “banlieue rouge” (red suburbs) of Paris. Long governed by the Communist Party, it has always hosted a large number of political refugees. First came the Spanish in 1936, then Algerians, Latino Americans, Bosnians, Chechens and so on. Due to its large population of African workers, Montreuil is also often said to be the second largest Mali city. Montreuil ranks among the top-three towns with regard to immigrant population rate in the Paris region. Most of its older immigrants are from Algeria, Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa. All in all, Montreuil matches the typical model of the rapidly changing original working-class areas that are characteristic of the northern and eastern areas of Greater Paris. For this reason, it constitutes an adequate field for the kind of sociolinguistic studies that are at the heart of this book. Place de la République – worlds apart Located south of a bustling street that has linked for centuries the center of Montreuil to Paris, the Place de la République gives a peaceful impression. The square is rectangle in shape with a public garden in its center, which gives shade to

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benches and a playground. Nearby in the north of the square, we find dormitories of West African workers from countries such as Mali or Senegal. These countries were once colonized by France and kept French as official language after gaining independence. There is a substantial Malian male community in this area that speaks Bambara (called “Bamanakan” by their speakers) and also the Soninke language is widely spoken among them. Soninke was used as either a mother tongue or a lingua franca among the first black workers who arrived in Montreuil in the 1960s. The residents of the overcrowded dormitories can live self-sufficiently. You can find fresh dishes prepared and sold by Malian women there, alongside hairdressers, jewelers, cloth designers, etc. You also find a prayer room there, and you can buy tobacco, kola nuts, mobile phones, football shirts, boubous (wide-sleeved robes), etc. Many activities take place in the central courtyard of the building, but they are also spilling out into the adjacent streets. There, car mechanics do their work in the open air, and the streets are filled with lively conversations. Bambara and/or Soninke are widely used, often interspersed with bits and pieces of French, which the African residents have acquired (to various extents) back in their home country. The other side of the square is mainly occupied by the shops of the biological and ecological supermarket chain Nouveaux Robinsons. They sell organic products that attract affluent customers from Paris and from Montreuil. One usually hears only French there. A market is held on Saturdays, which is attended by the new population of the district, the so-called “bobos” (bourgeois bohèmes). These new “bourgeois bohemians” have bought the old houses with their fruit gardens and the old workshops of the ancient furniture manufactures. These are sold as “charming” or “unconventional” real estate objects. The prices for these types of houses continue to rise, just like the prices for the new residential homes and offices that are being built on the old abandoned industrial areas of the neighborhood. In this part of Montreuil children speak only French in the street and with their parents. That is to say, even if they speak other languages, they do not like to stand out and differ from others by using it. At the same time, the dualistic social structure of the local society remains fully apparent. A café on the square that has small tables directly on the pavement accommodates many chibani, retired Maghreb men. In the very same café, customers who have recently settled in the neighborhood are seated on a wooden terrace. Coexistence is there, but it is lacking compassion. There exists an invisible divide between them, which is also noticeable in their language use. One group (natives) speaks French; the other group (migrants) speaks foreign languages mixed with French borrowings and is code-switching. In an ethnographic approach to language in the city such as illustrated above, we can note both the value and the limitations of this type of sociolinguistic study. So far, we have mostly talked about “languages”, using sociolinguistic categories that are based on the identification, distribution and classification of “language” as we imagined it in the nineteenth century. However, situations of languages in contact undermine such a notion of language. This requires us to rethink this circular approach, where “language” refers only to “language” itself, and which is thereby inevitably detached from all human subjects, including the observer.

Paris: The city as a result of experience 155 Rue de Paris – effervescent experiences Rue de Paris has all the heterogeneous and chaotic aspects of a prototypical Parisian quarter. The street crosses through the neighborhood and is interspersed by several subway stations. The shops there were initially targeting French middleclass customers, but ethnic shops, mainly catering for an Algerian and Moroccan clientele, have replaced them one after the other. Today the street is lined by cafés, grocers, butchers, barbers, merchants of oriental furniture and telephone and Internet providers. The clientele is more or less mixed, using Arabic and Kabyle mixed with French. More recently, Asia shops have been added to the scene. Turks arrived a decade earlier, at the same time as Indians who have set up money transfer agencies such as MoneyGram there. In many fast food stalls, menus with pictures of dishes are displayed in French but they include many borrowings: méchoui, chorba, halal, kebab, etc. You also find young people alongside the old immigrants, the latter now in retirement and playing dice in the old cafés. The second generation of owners has changed the look of the cafés. Their parents originally bought them some 30 years ago from French rural migrants from the Auvergne without ever changing the original fitting of these cafés. The young owners, often university graduates, are now catering to a new clientele. They target the office employees from the nearby companies who arrive every morning by metro in the neighborhood. Hence, the old café called “L’Esperance” opposite the metro entrance, where the owners (husband and wife) spoke Kabyle between them and to their old customers, has turned into “Bo’Bar”. It now has a terrace where salads and Italian inspired bruchetta (slices of grilled bread with tomatoes, garlic and olive oil) are served. At lunchtime French is spoken, but in the late evening the language of the parents reasserts itself in the café. One language can also conceal another one. In a nearby Japanese restaurant, nobody talks Japanese. The manager and the staff are Chinese. They are from the southeastern Whenzhou region. They either speak their local Chinese dialect or Mandarin between them, but they switch to French (and if necessary also to English) when talking to their customers. Rue de Paris also has shops for those living in the African dormitories. Products such as wholesale rice, dried fish, okra, peanut butter and other goods used in West African cuisine are sold there. There are two such shops facing the street. One belongs to a Turkish family native to a region near Syria. The second one belongs to a Chinese family. The owners and the employees of these shops are multilingual. The Turkish family, who also speaks Syrian Arabic, knows some German, too, a “trophy” of their sojourn in Germany before. The Chinese, who speak Mandarin and the Hakka dialect (“one hundred percent”), say that they can also cope with the Cantonese dialect. They have also retained the Lao language and speak some Thai (“a little, because it resembles Lao”), due to the fact that the parents had lived in Indochina for some time. Both stores employ a person from Mali in order to ensure smooth communication with African customers and to serve the owners as interpreters in Bambara. This street features various modes of linguistic exchanges. We find there shift or alternation between languages, use of French or other languages as vehicular

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languages, bilingual talk (most frequently French-Arabic), loans and also hybrids like the name of the combined laundry and Internet point called “cyber-laverie”. This notwithstanding, French is the dominant language of the street. It is either used as a mother tongue or as a lingua franca (as it was once the case in the ancient ports of the Mediterranean). Foreign languages are spoken most frequently when two people, usually of the same sex, walk together or travel together in the metro. Most often, though, you hear bits and pieces of foreign languages in mobile phone conversations. The persistence with which these languages are used in public can be seen as some kind of resistance or indifference to French monolingualism. Proficiency in French varies considerably, ranging from a few greetings among those who have just arrived all the way to native speaker competence among those who were born and raised in France. In the next interaction, we can witness how a problem of miscommunication with a non-French speaking customer in a supermarket is being solved.9 The interactants are: a cashier, a security guard of African origin, a North African woman and a child accompanying her. Other customers are standing in line, waiting for their turn at the cashier. Excerpt 1: Two for the price of one (italicized parts in the conversation were in Arabic) 1 Cashier: Bonjour! . . . Vous avez dû prendre les deux! [Hello! . . . . you should have taken two!] (while holding a cucumber in her hand). C’est le même prix . . . [It’s the same price] 2 Customer: Silence. (She searches for coins in her purse, which she then gives to the cashier without saying a word.) 3 Cashier: Madame, prenez le deuxième d’où vous l’avez pris, hein! [Madam, take a second one from where you took this one, ok!] 4 Customer: xxx (says something in Arabic). 5 Cashier: Vous prenez les deux. C’est le même prix . . . d’un seul. [Take two. It’s the same price. . . . as one] 6 Customer: silence 7 Cashier: Non, elle comprend pas [No, she doesn’t understand] (laughs). 8 Customer (talks to the child who accompanies her in Arabic): Qu’est ce qu’elle veut? [What does she want?] 9 Child: La dame demande si tu veux prendre les deux. [The lady asks if you want to take two] 10 Customer: Non, dieu merci. [No, God thank you] 11 Security guard: Non? c’est gratuit. [No? it’s free] 12 Customer: Ah, ah d’accord! d’accord, merci! [Oh, oh ok! ok, thanks!] 13 Cashier: Merci. Au revoir. [Thank you. Goodbye] 14 Security guard: (turning to the cashier, laughs) Witney, si tu veux je m’assois à côté de toi et je te traduis. [Witney, if you want I sit next to you and translate what you say] 15 Cashier: (laughs) Toi, va apprendre le français d’abord! [You, go and learn French first!]

Paris: The city as a result of experience 157 This type of interaction, where a child uses another language than French in public (the italicized part) is actually rare. The non-French utterance is caused by the total failure of communication between the cashier and the woman. Furthermore, the child responds only after an explicit request for translation (line 8). Consider also the rather brief exchange between the cashier and the security guard. While laughing, he addresses the cashier by her first name, and this then leads to an exchange where the rules of commercial communication retreat. This exchange can be interpreted as an attempt of seduction (real or pretended?). Alluding to the previous exchange, where the child was the translator for the adult, an imaginary situation arises where the child will one day play this role instead of the cashier. This would be a flattering role for the child, legitimized by its mastery of the dominant French language. The situation in question also suggests an image of a woman in need of help, a woman who does not understand what she is being told. Coming closer physically, “I sit next to you”, would be the price for fixing this problem. Such a proposal entails the threat of loss of face for the cashier, especially vis-à-vis the customers who are listening to this conversation. The security guard uses two strategies that allow him to distance himself from such an interpretation and to not take responsibility for it. He first states “if you want”, and he then laughs. The reaction of the cashier follows suit. “You go and learn French first!” In so doing, she puts the allocation of roles in this interaction on its head. She refuses to play the role of the submitted woman and instead commands him (with an imperative) in the tone reminiscent of a schoolmaster towards a student, and she attests the value of speaking a good French. His laughter is answered by her own laughter, and in so doing this exchange is marked as jest. This notwithstanding, the power differences induced by the utterance of the security guard have now been reversed. It now no longer rests on a male – female distinction, but on the question of proficiency in French, the dominant language. Both the cashier and the security guard are Africans. The various shops in Rue de Paris are meeting places that tell us a lot about the use of different languages and registers. In some of them, in bakeries for example, only French is spoken. In other shops only foreign languages are used. An example of the latter type is a small Turkish café where women never enter. Exchanges between employees in stores frequently take place in their common (foreign) language, but they use French with their customers. However, French retreats with some customers if commercial interaction gives way to friendly conversation, or if it is part of more general neighborhood interaction. French never leaves the scene completely, though. It surfaces in a large number of borrowings, some of which are more hybrid than others, in code-switching or code-mixing, etc. Such verbal exchanges require that people know each other well, and that they have been in France for a long time. This pattern of language choice underlines the status and the rules of le bon français (the good French). Divergence from their rule, on the other hand, has the advantage that conversations become opaque for the native French part of the population. When employees eat together before starting their work, or when the family of the owner visits the shop, the space is reconstructed in a twofold way. The family

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language occupies the space (sometimes quite loudly), and this leaves the customers in silence. Contrary to sociolinguistic tradition, which tends to firmly distinguish between “private” and “public”, we encounter here a more shifting or mobile boundary between these two spheres. Excerpt 2: Bread from the village In the evening, a baker is alone with his son in his shop. He speaks Arabic with an old man. They stop their conversation when a French client enters. She is a regular customer there. 1 Customer: (Smiling, greets by nodding her head). Une baguette . . . ah et donnez moi un pain arabe aussi. [A baguette . . . oh and give me an Arab bread also.] 2 Baker: . . . . (surprised, does not understand what she wants) 3 Customer: Un pain arabe [An Arab bread] 4 Baker: J’ai pas de pain arabe [I don’t have Arab bread] 5 Customer: Ça (points with her finger) . . . du pain rond, là! [That . . . . the round bread here] 6 Baker: Ah ça? C’est pas du pain arabe! [Oh, that? That is not Arab bread!] 7 Customer: Ah? . . . (surprised) 8 Baker: C’est le même que ça [It’s the same as this] (gesture). C’est la forme qui change. [It’s the shape that differs] 9 Customer: Ah bon, je croyais que c’était du pain arabe. [I see, I thought it was Arab bread] 10 Baker: Non, nous, on a le pain du bled, mais c’est autre chose, c’est plus lourd. [No, we, we have bread from the village, but that is something else, it’s heavier.] (Turning towards his son): Toi, tu connais le pain du bled! [You, you know bread from the village!] 11 Son: . . . (frowning) 12 Baker (to his son): Le pain que tu manges chez ta grand’mère! [The bread you eat at grandma’s place] 13 Son: J’aime pas aller là’bas. Le bled, c’est l’ennui . . . [I don’t like going there. The village is boring . . .] 14 Baker: Comment ça! [What do you mean!] (Looks at the Algerian customer and lifts his hand laughingly pretending he wants to hit his son). This scene takes place at an intersection of public space (a traditional bakery) with a private space (created by the presence of father and son). The products in this scene (baguette, bread from the village) are strong cultural symbols. They refer to social spaces that are, in principle, foreign to one another. The misunderstanding in this situation arises due to a “round bread”, perceived by the customer to be “Arab

Paris: The city as a result of experience 159 bread”. (Is the owner not Arab after all?). It is perceived to be Arab bread by the customer due to its unusual round shape and the sesame seeds that decorate its top. This perception is rejected by the baker, for whom the material (flour) and not the form (round) makes a bread being “Arab”. In clarifying this, he also displays an expertise on this matter that the client accepts. The baker also places the “Arab bread” into a private and ethnicized space that excludes the French customer. He does so by references to the holiday back home at “grandmother’s place” in Algeria. In addressing his son, he expects a confirmation in mentioning that the son, too, shares the lived experiences of wheat bread when they go on vacation. The son’s provocative use of “le bled” (borrowed from Algerian Arabic bilād, referring pejoratively to “village”) and his refusal to confirm this private world in the public place of the bakery undermines both the statement and the authority of the father. Having lost face in front of another customer, an elderly Algerian, the father tries to repair this situation by humor in that he simulates a corporal punishment of the offender, and then laughs. What we observe is how he manages to combine three different roles at the same time. In the two examples discussed above, we encounter linguistic phenomena that can commonly be observed in urban multicultural and multilingual settings in Paris. No longer are the languages themselves at the center of attention, but the discursive movements of the interlocutors are. The interactants create, without changing place, variable discursive spaces in which their words take on specific meanings. Change is rooted in the discursive displacement of speakers who, in so doing, “redefine interaction by moving it to a different social arena” (Myers Scotton and Ury 1977: 5).

The city as experience The term “polyphony” in the sense as used by Bakhtin is useful to reflect the urban experiences described above. Musical “counterpoint” may be even more adequate. In music, a counterpoint is defined as a superimposition of distinct melodic lines. Counterpoint is the art of singing multiple melodies in a way that they appear to be totally independent. It results in music where simultaneous hearing of the distinct melodies also results in a newly combined melody. The music is borne out of the significance of the linear and malleable individual melodies, to which an extra dimension is added as an effect of combining them. Languages, discourses and voices, too, can be seen and appreciated as such a distinct but coherent whole. Every individual in the city participates in a setting defined by liberty and constraint. The social nature of language and the intersubjective nature of human communication combine for a performance between accommodation and distancing, between convergence and divergence, all in varying degrees, depending on what is at stake. A concept such as “metrolingualism”, which is based on a rupture of the concept of territoriality, needs to introduce a different conception of space and, consequently, different relations between language and space. The texts of the late nineteenth century author Walter Benjamin are interesting towards this end because

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he proposed experiential and semiotic visions of the city at an individual level. Along the lines of such an approach, cities and neighborhoods can be perceived as spaces of “articulation” (énonciation) and of “unplanned and aimless movement” (déambulation), in the sense given to these terms by Michel de Certeau: The ordinary practioners of the city live “down there”, below the thresholds at which visibility begins. They walk – an elementary form of this experience of the city; they are walkers. Wandersmänner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban “text” they write without being able to read it. These practioners make use of spaces that cannot be seen. (Michel de Certeau 1984: 93) Inspired by the perspectives of Walter Benjamin, de Certeau perceives the city as a text that is experienced at the same time in which it is created. Seen from this perspective, residents and visitors practice the city. In doing so, they take ownership of the city. They transform it by introducing their own history, their own needs, their own subjectivity and their own body to the city. Speech accompanies the body put into movement by sometimes unplanned and aimless movements (déambulation). In the space of the Rue de Paris, ornaments are meaningful, gestures often mysterious, music exotic, scripts unknown, foreign voices all of a sudden open and close universes of meanings that are constructed in a blind search. The streets, shops, apartments and schools which line the way of those moving through the city can be considered places of passage and of (re)modeled discursive spaces, which are forever subject to actualization and transformation. The words exchanged in the city constitute – with regard to their form, their content and the relations they establish – a living and moving relation to these popular urban spaces. The words exchanged impose themselves on one another – they settle on top of one another in a form of a palimpsest, like a manuscript page that is reused for writing something new on it. In that way, the city is comparable to artistic collages made by posters glued one on top of the other. And as we walk though the city, we are adding layer upon layer to the city, and every single step adds to the history of the city as a lived experience. In a cosmopolitan city you feel like a stranger even if you are native to the city.

Notes 1 The term was not adopted in French sociolinguistics, though. Perhaps because it evokes for most French le métro (the subway) rather than metro-polis, a term which itself has again a particular use in the former French colonies. 2 Outskirts such as Poissonnières or St. Martin, etc. remain to be mainly working class until this day. 3 Note in this context the publication in 1782 of Guide des Amateurs et des Etrangers Voyageurs à Paris. Description raisonnée de cette Ville et de sa banlieue et de tout ce quelle contient de remarquable. 4 Legacies of this division still characterize the perception of the suburbs. One can, therefore, anticipate from quite early on how this opposition of center versus periphery would

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lead to a stigmatization of dialects, and the popular use of dialects through an association of these marginal speakers with a place of origin and a specific habitat (Bourdieu 1991). Together with the inner city, these cities form the “Greater Paris project” that is currently in progress. So closely related are the two spaces that it is impossible to study Paris without taking these suburbs into consideration today. While local dialects are not transmitted, diversity, nevertheless, reemerges in youth language, albeit in new forms. Cosmopolitan cities already existed in ancient times. Rome is one such example, but also in other major cities of the Mediterranean, such as Alexandria in Egypt or Tangier in Morocco; sailors, merchants, slaves and residents rubbed shoulders and in doing business with one another created a specific way of talking, which came to be known as lingua franca. The historical approach and contextualization of the phenomena studied here is important. It provides us with social and discursive matrices governing, in part, the links and uses between languages and communities. These specific conventions also result in resistance. In this neighborhood multilingual Master students in linguistics have been conducting their surveys. Every year a place (market, association, school, etc.), a family or a language is chosen by students and jointly researched. The results of their studies are archived. These investigations are still ongoing. Excerpt collected and transcribed by Klara Jankowska in 2010.

References Bourdieu, Pierre (1991) Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press. Calvet, Louis-Jean (1994) La voix de la ville. Paris: Payot. De Certeau, Michel (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. INSEE (2016) Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques. Online available at: www.insee.fr (accessed 30 October 2016). Lodge, Anthony R. (2004) A Sociolinguistic History of Parisian French. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Myers Scotton, Carol and William Ury (1977) Bilingual Strategies. The Social Function of Code-Switching. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 13: 5–20. Otsuji, Emi and Alastair Pennycook (2010) Metrolingualism. Fixity, Fluidity and Language in Flux. International Journal of Multilingualism 7(3): 240–254. Rivarol, Antoine (2013[1788]) Discours sur l'universalité de la langue française. Paris: Edition Manucius.

11 The Randstad area in the Netherlands Emergent and fluid identity-locality production through language in use Leonie Cornips, Vincent de Rooij and Dick Smakman In the 1930s, Albert Plesman (1889–1953), founder of the Royal Dutch Airlines, hosted a trip over the west of the Netherlands. Looking out the window, he pointed out to his guests the shape of the sea-sided urban conurbation wrapped around a green area and called out: “Een randstad!” (A ring city!). Plesman’s nickname for the area soon grew into a household name and nowadays refers to the urban area in the western part of the Netherlands. It is used in official and unofficial documentation. It is associated with other terms to refer to the same area, like “Holland” (because most of the area consists of the provinces of North Holland and South Holland), or “the West”. Unlike these other terms, Randstad emphasises the urban parts of the area because it contains the word stad (city). This chapter first introduces the physical, infrastructural and population characteristics of the area in some detail, which explain the specific language variation situation in this area and the challenges it poses in the second part. The final part of the chapter provides specific illustration of urban language contact situations – from the cities of Rotterdam, Utrecht and Amsterdam – which demonstrate the daily language use in the big cities within the region, the mechanisms of identity expression through language, and the coming to existence of language variation in neighbourhoods where speakers with different social orientations meet, interact and assert themselves.

Features of the area Geographical contours The Randstad denotes the semi-ring of built-up area around a less urban area unofficially called the “Groene Hart” (Green Heart) and includes the stretched-out peripheral band of cities by the sea. This C-shaped entity runs from the inland city of Utrecht in the central part of the Netherlands to the smaller city of Dordrecht in the inland southwestern part of the Netherlands. It includes the four largest cities in the Netherlands: Amsterdam (capital city), Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht. Between the four largest cities are two types of other, smaller cities and towns. The first type includes the historical, economically important and relatively

The Randstad area in the Netherlands 163 self-contained cities with strong identities, like Haarlem, Leiden, Dordrecht and Gouda. The other type are the predominantly residential areas that form the “urban glue” between the larger and smaller cities, like Alphen aan den Rijn, Zoetermeer and Zwijndrecht. Infrastructure The nature of Randstad urbanisation has been affected strongly by geographical features. It did not gradually grow from the inside out as one urban entity, because water was often in the way. Lying in the deltas of the Meuse and Rhine rivers and some smaller deltas, and bordered to the West by the North Sea, the area can, according to Warf (2010), be referred to as a “Delta Metropole”. Over the centuries, large-scale land reclamation and water management have made it possible for some formerly separated cities to expand and to physically connect. Reclamations in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries have led to some parts of the area having a relatively short history of population (Hoeksema 2007). Mobility between the various types of urbanised centres gradually developed in the twentieth century between the largest towns and cities: a major motorway system, as well as Rotterdam Airport and Amsterdam/Schiphol Airport. Within the major cities, there is a well-functioning tram and/or bus system and in Amsterdam and Rotterdam a metro system is in operation. Extensive bicycle lanes and the legal protection of cyclists in the Netherlands make this a practical means of transport within and between neighbourhoods in cities and oftentimes also between cities. Living in one urban centre and commuting daily to another is common and so is commuting in and out of the Randstad on a daily basis. There is variation in the degree to which the various populations use transport means. Some non-western newcomers and their offspring, for instance, are known to use bikes less habitually than most Dutchmen do (Verhoeven 2009). The Randstad area as a unity There are several reasons why the area could be viewed as not being united. It consists of several independent cities, is stretched out rather than round-shaped (i.e. without an obvious centre in the middle), and some greener areas interrupt the continuous spread of urbanisation. There is no centralised authority, due to the independent histories of the various cities, and there are no signs that this city autonomy will not continue.1 Inhabitants tend to associate with the city where they live or are from. In fact, a certain rivalry between the cities, perhaps expressed most overtly through soccer club associations and highly recognisable city dialects, is very common. The area is, nevertheless, widely seen as an entity. Foremost, it is historically associated with the formation of the Netherlands as a nation state. Furthermore, major industries and important national institutions in the Netherlands are often situated in this area. The feeling of unity may come from the fact that these institutions are scattered across the area and not located in one of the cities. While Amsterdam is the capital city and the touristic and financial centre of the country, other urban

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centres have important symbolic and practical central functions, too. None of the cities is academically dominant, for one. Leiden University is the oldest university in the country, yet the other Randstad universities (Utrecht, Amsterdam, Delft and Rotterdam) have high-ranking universities as well. The seat of government is in The Hague, and this city is also most strongly associated with the royal family. The Hague is a major international centre of peace and justice and is home to the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice and the Permanent Court of Arbitration, while the port of Rotterdam is amongst the largest in the world. Utrecht has the most geographical central position and forms a natural connection with the rest of the country, which is partly due to Utrecht train station being the busiest train station in the country. The city of Haarlem is popularly associated with “good, standard” Dutch language and so is the western urban region as a whole (Smakman 2003). In other words, each of the four major cities and some of the smaller old cities hold important official and symbolic functions within the area. Randstad is a string of cities that together symbolise an urban way of life, both to its inhabitants and to Dutchmen not living there. Nowadays, the area is referred to as an entity in the media and in general discourse amongst inhabitants. Most national radio and television transmission is from the area and to people from outside the area the language used during much of Dutch broadcasting has a distinctive Randstad ring to it. The people According to Wikipedia (2016a), the Randstad megalopolis roughly housed around 7.1 million inhabitants in 2008, which in that year was roughly 43% of the total population of the Netherlands. The population number in 2015 was 16,900,726, and because the Randstad population is expected to grow slightly faster than that of other areas (CBS 2011, 2013), a reasonable estimate of today’s population of the area is 7.5 million. The Dutch population tripled in the twentieth century (CLO 2016) and it is estimated that the Randstad area will increase by about 1 million in the coming decades and that most of the growth in the country until 2040 will be in the four major cities in the area (De Jong and Daalhuizen 2014). In the 1960s and 1970, immigrants came mostly from Southern Europe, Turkey and Morocco. In the second half of the 1970s, 300,000 immigrants from the former South American Dutch colony of Surinam migrated to the Netherlands. In the 1990s, a considerable number of refugees from former Yugoslavia and various other countries suffering from war or natural disasters came to the Netherlands. The first decade of the twenty-first century brought immigrants from new European Union countries in Eastern Europe. Currently, refugees are entering the country, which adds to the linguistic and cultural heterogeneity of Randstad. Social issues Like in other areas in the Netherlands, poverty exists in Randstad. Cities and towns with high numbers of citizens have the highest risk of suffering from poverty

The Randstad area in the Netherlands 165 (CBS 2015a, 2015b), which makes the area particularly susceptible in this respect. Indeed, the first food bank was opened in Rotterdam in 2002 and the number of Dutch food banks has grown inside and outside the area to 149. Between 2013 and 2014, the number of people making use of this service rose by 30% (Boer 2014). Rotterdam and Amsterdam citizens run the highest risk of suffering from poverty, often leading to social exclusion and ethnic segregation, and in Amsterdam the risk of long-term poverty is the highest. One in four Rotterdam children are growing up in a family on a relatively low income (CBS 2016b). Amsterdam and Rotterdam had a poverty percentage (households) of over 18% in 2013, while the national average was 10.3%. For The Hague, this percentage was 17.6% while for Utrecht it was 12.6% (CBS 2015a, 2015b). Poor families tend to be concentrated in certain neighbourhoods, meaning that a considerable degree of social segregation exists. This degree of segregation rose between 2010 and 2013 in the largest cities while it fell slightly in the smaller towns, making the Randstad particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon. The degree of segregation in the city of The Hague is the highest in the country. Gentrification further reinforces segregation. Non-Western foreigners run the highest risk of poverty (CBS 2015a, 2015b). The number of non-Western homeless people doubled in the 2009 to 2015 period (CBS 2016a). The other side of the coin is that most of the 10 richest towns in the Netherlands are in the Randstad area or on its fringes (CBS 2015c; Quote 2015). Furthermore, the educational level in Dutch cities and the surrounding urbanised areas is higher than in non-urbanised areas, making the Randstad a relatively highly educated region. While the area attracts the rich and highly educated, the difference between rich and poor in the Netherlands is rising (Huygen 2016), and living in cities in particular is becoming increasingly difficult to afford, which adds to the mixed social image of the Randstad area. The area has a high and stable percentage of 75 and older inhabitants but attracts relatively young people. Fielding’s (1992) so-called “escalator function” of large cities seems to apply to Randstad; upwardly mobile young adults move to the city to become highly educated, get work experience and then move out of the city again to start a family. This had, for a long time, also been true in Randstad, but in recent years the tendency to move out of the city has been stagnating (De Jong and Daalhuizen 2014).

The sociolinguistic situation Old-town and new-town languages The historical cities all have strong remnants of historical dialect formation through generations of less mobile speakers residing in the same cities and neighbourhoods. Some of the expanding areas (like Alphen aan den Rijn) can be considered “new towns”. This research could be done in the same vein as research by, for instance, Prompapakorn (2004) and Kerswill and Williams (1992) in neighbourhoods in Bangkok and London, respectively, where people from various regions come together, each bringing with them their own languages and styles.

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In the old towns and the new towns, a certain hybridisation in language use by speakers with various backgrounds and mobilities prevails, and this makes for a colourful pallet of linguistic spaces in the area, in which patterns and categories are constantly being developed and renegotiated. Individuals index and construct ethnicities, and not necessarily their own. The language situation in the Randstad area Dutch is indisputably the most dominant language in Randstad. In 2014, more than 350,000 Moroccans and between 400,000 and 500,000 Turks lived in the Netherlands (Wikipedia 2016b) and this affects the language situation. According to Ethnologue (Lewis, Simons and Fenning 2016), the following immigrant languages are now spoken the most in the Netherlands: Indonesian (300,000), Tarifit (by many Moroccans; 200,000) and Turkish (192,000). In the four largest cities in the Randstad area, at least 110 languages are spoken; the most frequent ones being Turkish, Hindi, Arabic, English and Berber (SAL 2012). Extra, Aarts, Van der Avoird, Broeder and Yagmur (2001) explain that in a city like The Hague more than half of the primary school pupils speak not only Dutch but another language as well in their home environment. In 1999, no fewer than 87 of those “other” home languages were counted (Extra et al. 2001). This number is growing (Extra 2011). English is the most dominant second language, although many firstgeneration immigrants do not have the level of command that people who went through Dutch primary and secondary education typically have. The changed role of Dutch Dutch colonial regimes were aggressive in their approach as any other colonial regime, but imposing Dutch language and culture was not a common in Dutch colonies (Gouda 2007). The Dutch relationship with Dutch culture and language in the face of other cultures is also illustrated by Schrover (2014), who explained how in the 1950s, Australia and Canada favoured Dutch immigrants because they quickly assimilated in the Australian and Canadian society. Extra (1995) indicated that in the literature describing this self-adjustment, authors in Canada, Australia, the US and New Zealand qualify Dutch immigrants as willing to give up their language within a generation. He argued that this shows that when they migrate, Dutchmen do not see the Dutch language as a core value of their cultural identity and that even in official policy there has been a sense of acceptance of the language and culture of immigrants. This is, however, the opposite for migrants entering the Netherlands nowadays, who have to take naturalisation classes in Dutch language and culture in order to get their permit. The way the Dutch government treats Dutch has changed relatively recently. According to Schinkel and Van Houdt (2010), “Dutch identity” is a quality of someone who is an “active citizen” and adheres to a “Dutch and liberal acculturation”. Schinkel (2008) indicates that, according to the Dutch government, acculturation includes speaking Dutch – besides, amongst others, raising one’s

The Randstad area in the Netherlands 167 children according to Dutch customs and gaining curiosity about Dutch culture and passing this on to children. Bjornson (2007) shows how, since the 1990s, “[t] he Dutch language has become the key technology of the Netherlands’ new integration and immigration policy regime”, a regime that resulted from an unlikely mutual reinforcement of linguistic nationalism and Third Way politics. This led to a normalisation of a “language as commodity” ideology. Within this ideology, a good citizen is self-reliant, i.e. no longer dependent on the welfare state. To achieve this, the good citizen should be fully employable, for which proficiency in Dutch is considered a necessary precondition. Conclusion With so many various types of immigration, with recent ones having a particularly strong linguistic impact and with so many cultures and languages in the same place, the social and ethnic position of groups is constantly changing. The typical individual who speaks Dutch as a first language and English as a second language has not been the norm for a while in certain urban areas. There are first-generation immigrants who do not speak English or Dutch, second-generation immigrants who speak Dutch as a first language and English as one of their second languages besides a Western or non-Western language and who are orienting towards their ethnic origins, and many more speaker types who do not fit the dominant picture of the Dutch speaker. The well-known city dialects are developing new shapes and social meanings in settings where newcomers from all over the country and the world come together in these old cities while locally born inhabitants have been moving out of the big cities to smaller commuter towns. The necessity for economic exchange and generally life in the big city brings groups into contact with each other and urges them to assert their identities and distinguish themselves from other groups. They could be viewed as competing not only economically but also culturally, linguistically and symbolically.

Case studies Identity and the production of locality Randstad is a pivotal meeting place for a multiplicity of cultures, orientations and identities (Qian, Qian and Zhu 2012). By means of three case studies, this section will show that the Randstad is a dynamic, multiple and hybridised place of identity in which (groups of) speakers continuously define and redefine social categories in processes of selfing and othering as relational constructs negotiated through the complex networks of interactive relations (Qian et al. 2012). In the Randstad, as everywhere else, local variation is involved in the production of novel meanings and shifting, multiple group membership, as well as ambiguous or uncertain group membership, which are the hallmarks of social life in contemporary societies. This section will show that although the world may have become more complex

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linguistically, allowing much more space for linguistic hybridity, this does not mean that users of new hybridised ways of speaking have stopped thinking in terms of stable (ethno)linguistic categories and no longer have strong feelings of what they consider to be linguistically and culturally theirs (Cornips and De Rooij 2013). The three case-studies below focus on adolescents in Rotterdam (Cornips and De Rooij 2013), Utrecht (Boumans, Dibbits and Dorleijn 2001) and Amsterdam (Cornips 2002). In order to interpret what is going on in the interactions in terms of identity construction, we focus on the indexical processes specified by Bucholtz and Hall (2005), in particular: overt mention of identity categories and labels; [. . .] displayed evaluative and epistemic orientations to ongoing talk, as well as interactional footings and participant roles; and [. . .] the use of linguistic structures and systems that are ideologically associated with specific personas and groups. (Bucholtz and Hall 2005: 594) These processes are most readily identifiable in transcribed recordings of interactions. The three case-studies in Rotterdam, Utrecht and Amsterdam will reveal that, in the various productions of Self versus Other, speakers may rely on categories of place, race, clothing, religion and language that are, more often than not, interlinked (cf. Cornips and De Rooij 2013) and that their specific ideas about Self and Other are defined and redefined in socially negotiated processes at a local level such that the complex relations of difference and otherness are constantly renegotiated and re-imagined (cf. Qian et al. 2012). Rotterdam The first case-study (Cornips and De Rooij 2013) is based on fieldwork carried out in Rotterdam in October 2002 and January 2003 by Merlien Hardenberg, who is of Surinamese Creole origin.2 Through friends she made contact with several adolescents who allowed her to observe and interview them and their group of friends for four months. She also made recordings of these youngsters. The core group consisted of four male adolescents of Surinamese Creole descent between 14 and 18 years old: Ronald, Vincent, Romano and Gerard (all names in this section are pseudonyms). To understand how these young men distinguish between Self and Other, Irvine’s notion of “style” will prove to be helpful: “Style” crucially concerns distinctiveness; though it may characterize an individual; it does so only within a social framework (of witnesses who pay attention); it thus depends upon social evaluation. (Irvine 2001: 21) Elements selected from available linguistic and other semiotic resources, such as clothing, are specially crafted and combined in ways that are recognised

The Randstad area in the Netherlands 169 by insiders and, to varying degrees, by outsiders as distinctively characteristic of a particular group, and invested with socio-cultural significance. Irvine continues: Images of persons considered typical of the group – and the personalities, moods, behavior, activities, and settings, characteristically associated with them – are rationalized and organized in a cultural ideological system, so that these images become available as a frame of reference within which speakers create performances and within which audiences interpret them. (Irvine 2001: 31) The following case studies will show how speakers engage in this process of dynamic and localised meaning making and social identification. In Fragment 1 below, the fieldworker Merlien asks Ronald, Vincent, Romano and Gerard about the clothes they are wearing. Clothing and the way youngsters and others wear it, or are “supposed” to wear it, is an identifying feature of a particular style. The following fragment reveals that a particular way of clothing is identified and recognised as characteristic of a Surinamese style. Fragment 1 1 October 2002, in front of Ronald’s house in Feijenoord (neighbourhood in Rotterdam), between 7 and 10 pm. 1 2 3 4

fieldworker: Gerard: fieldworker: Ronald:

jullie hebben ongeveer dezelfde soort kleding aan hè? ja toch wat voor stijl is dat? Surinaamse stijl

1 2 3 4

fieldworker: Gerard: fieldworker: Ronald:

you wear the same type of clothing, don’t you? yes what kind of style is that? Surinamese style

In Fragment 2 below, the same fieldworker tries to find out whether clothing concerns members’ distinctiveness: “Why do you wear your shoes like that?” The unfolding interaction reveals what is of crucial importance here to these Surinamese youngsters, namely to distinguish themselves from Antilleans (line 13, 19, and 20) and Moroccans (line 9). The unmarked Surinamese style is to wear the “tongue (of the shoe) at the other side” (line 15), unlike the Antilleans do: “Antilleans wear the tongue just overneath it” (line 19–20). The presupposition in the unfolding interaction is that Moroccans will have a clothing style of their own as well (line 9). The Moroccans are brought up in this conversation since the fieldworker has a Moroccan boyfriend.

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Fragment 2 1 October 2002, in front of Ronald’s house in Feijenoord, Rotterdam, between 7 and 10 pm. 1 fieldworker: 2 Ronald: 3 fieldworker: 4 Ronald: 5 Vincent: 6 fieldworker: 7 Gerard: 8 Vincent 9 Gerard: 10 Gerard: 11 fieldworker: 12 fieldworker: 13 Ronald: 14 fieldworker: 15 Gerard: 16 Vincent: 17 fieldworker: 18 Gerard: 19 Ronald: 20 Gerard: 21 fieldworker: 22 Gerard: 23 Ronald:

waarom draag je je schoenen zo? hoe? zo dat is gewoon een Surinaamse stilo dat heb ik haar al gezegd ik heb het nergens anders gezien wat de lippen zo ja maar waar woon je? hoe dragen Marokkanen het hoe dragen Marokkanen het? zeker over die schoenen ik weet het niet maar andere Surinamers heb ik niet zien dragen zo dat zijn Antillianen maar andere Surinamers heb ik het ook zo niet zien dragen bij mij moet die lipje voor dan kan je niet zo waka man zo doen andere mensen jullie ook na? nee joh iedereen zijn eigen style de meeste Surinamers dragen het zo dat zeg ik je de hele tijd Antillianen dragen het d’r over heen het kan niet zo het is gewoon niet mooi en wie begon ermee? dat weet ik echt niet hoor het is gewoon van de Surinamers

1 fieldworker: 2 Ronald: 3 fieldworker: 4 Ronald: 5 Vincent: 6 fieldworker: 7 Gerard: 8 Vincent 9 Gerard: 10 Gerard: 11 fieldworker: 12 fieldworker: 13 Ronald: 14 fieldworker: 15 Gerard: 16 Vincent:

why do you wear your shoes like that? how? like that that is just a Surinamese style I have told her that already I didn’t notice it anywhere else what the tongues [Dutch: lippen, literally “lips”] in this way yes but where do you live? how do Moroccans wear it how do Moroccans wear it? [it is] certainly [worn] over the shoes I don’t know but I haven’t seen other Surinamese wear it in the same way those are Antilleans. but I haven’t seen other Surinamese wear it in the same way that tongue [of the shoe] has to be at the other like this you can’t walk [Sranan: waka] like that man

The Randstad area in the Netherlands 171 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

fieldworker: Gerard: Ronald: Gerard: Fieldworker: Gerard: Ronald:

do other people imitate you? no of course not everyone has his own style the large majority of the Surinamese wear it like that, that’s what I tell you all the time, Antilleans wear the tongue just overneath it that’s just not right, it is just not nice [Dutch: mooi] and who started it? I really don’t know it just belongs to the Surinamese

The opposition constructed in Feijenoord neighbourhood in Rotterdam by a style’s distinctiveness depends on social evaluation and aesthetics such as mooi (nice) (line 20), and it interacts with ideologised representations (Irvine 2001) such as “the Surinamese” (line 23), “the Antilleans” (line 13) and “the Moroccans” (line 9). This means that these four youngsters think in terms of stable ethnic categories in the context of clothing. However, when reflecting about language use, these youngsters may construe Self as including Antilleans, showing that Self and Other are subject to redefinition throughout their interaction (Cornips and De Rooij 2013). Utrecht The second case study involves data from interviews of six male speakers in the neighbourhood of Lombok/Transvaal in Utrecht in the early 2000’s with a sociolinguistic interviewer (Boumans et al. 2001). These speakers are childhood friends. They speak Moroccan Arabic/Berber, Turkish Hindi in addition to Dutch. All speakers are in their early 20s during the interviews (see also Cornips 2002). Fragment 3 shows the reflections of Abdelkalek, who is of Moroccan descent. He reflects on his friends whose ethnic backgrounds differ and on there being two categories that go beyond ethnicity, namely religion (i.e. being Muslim) and language use (i.e. speaking Dutch amongst each other). In line 1 through 5, Abdelkalek observes that socialising with boys with different ethnic backgrounds is not so special, which he confirms in line 6. In line 11, he emphasises that they just talk Dutch among each other, which shows that despite the different ethnicities Self is constructed through language use. Their belief in Islam (line 16) is the second category constructing Self; they are all able to talk about religion-related topics (line 16) and they have the same routine habits such as fasting during Ramadan (line 18). Therefore, Abdelkalek concludes in the last line (line 22) that there is no distinction between them. Fragment 3 Early 2000’s, Lombok/Transvaal (neighbourhood in Utrecht). 1 Abdelkalek: 2 3 4

ehm verder nooit sowieso nooit iemand van ons aan eh rassenhaat gedaan en eh ja zoals ik al zei op uiterlijk afgaan # want het is dat ik het nu weer hoor van allemaal verschillende jongens maar ja normaal ga je heus niet denken van eh hè ik ga met Turkse en

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5 6 Abdelkalek: 7 Interviewer: 8 Abdelkalek: 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Abdelkalek: Abdelkalek: Abdelkalek: Interviewer: Abdelkalek: Abdelkalek:

Abdelkalek:

Abdelkalek:

Abdelkalek: Interviewer: Abdelkalek:

Abdelkalek: Abdelkalek: Abdelkalek: Interviewer: Abdelkalek: Abdelkalek:

19 20 Abdelkalek: 21 22

Surinaamse en en met die om, dus dat is best wel bijzonder. zo denk ik helemaal niet. of ten minste nou ja misschien doordat ( ). ( ) ja het zou wel kunnen van mensen die zeggen van da’s wel bijzonder Marokkanen, Turken en Surinamers allemaal bij elkaar eh heel goed omgaan, maar ik vind ik vind het niet. we praten allemaal gewoon Nederlands met elkaar. en eh we zien elkaar dan. ja ‘t is gewoon iedereen is gewoon precies hetzelfde dan. mm ja is er dan toch iets wat eh wat jullie bindt als groep? ja gewoon het ge& eh gewoon ‘t geloof ook (.) vind ik. eh met z’n allen geloven we gewoon in de islam, hebben we vaak hebben we vaak discussies over, praten we over (.) ehm met de Ramadan we vasten allemaal gelijk dus daarom zie je uberhaupt geen verschil. je ziet je ziet helemaal geen verschil, het is gewoon iedereen vast en eh eh met z’n allen gelijk feest, meestal dan, en ja dat is ja verder is er geen, echt geen onderscheid eigenlijk. uhm no one of us has ever done anything racist or acted on appearance because now I hear it again by various youngsters but yes normally you don’t start thinking like uh I hang out with Turks and Surinamese and with that one, so that is special in a way I don’t think in that way or at least maybe because ( ) ( ) yes it might be that people say like that’s special Moroccans, Turks and Surinamese who get along rather well but I find I don’t agree we all just talk Dutch to one other and uh then we see each other yes, it is just everyone is just similar then mm yes is there something that you binds together as a group? yes just the uh just the religion too I find uh we all just believe in the Islam, we often have we often have discussions about it, we talk about (.) uhm during Ramadan we fast all at the same time thus that’s why you don’t see any difference one sees, one sees no difference at all it is just everyone fasts and uh uh together with everyone celebrate, well, usually, and yes that is yes further there is no, no real distinction actually.

The Randstad area in the Netherlands 173 In the specific context of going out in Utrecht, Anouar, who is one of the adolescents with a Moroccan background, labels himself and is labelled by others (Cornips, Jaspers and De Rooij 2015) as Moroccan. While the label “Moroccan” does not play a role in the context of religion, it becomes important in the context of going out in Utrecht. Anouar feels excluded (line 3 in Fragment 4 below) due to the door policy of discos in Utrecht (line 11 through 13) refusing Moroccans to enter (line 9–10). In this context, Anouar constructs an opposition between Dutchmen Hollanders (line 2) and Moroccans (line 3), which is the same opposition as constructed by the bouncer (line 16). Fragment 4 Early 2000s, Lombok/Transvaal (neighbourhood in Utrecht). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Anouar: Anouar: Anouar: Anouar: Anouar: Anouar: Anouar: Anouar: Anouar: Anouar: Anouar: Anouar: Anouar: Anouar: Anouar: Anouar: Anouar: Anouar:

nou kijk ( ) zoals in Utrecht eh (.) gezellige sfeertje ja, soms hebben de Hollanders wel een gezellige sfeertje, maar die Marokkanen voelen zich dan buitengesloten. niet door het muziek. het is eh gewoon eh een beetje eh te: eh: ja,[?] is best wel racistisch hier. nee zijn gewoon eh, omdat de Marokkanen [wel] een slechte naam hebben, hier in Utrecht. en als ze het iedereen [?] over een kam scheren en niemand komt meer binnen, gewoon. (. . .) toen g-ing ik naar een discotheek toe. en eh (.) ik kom, ik kom naar beneden, en hij zegt tegen mijn eh nou je mag d’r niet naar binnen, ik zeg hoezo niet? de portier. hij zegt jij hoort bij de Marokkaanse jongeren die hier boven staan. now look ( ) like in Utrecht uh (.) cosy little atmosphere yes, sometimes the Hollanders have a cosy atmosphere but those Moroccans feel excluded then. not because of the music. it is uh just uh a bit uh too uh yes is really rather racist here. no just uh because the Moroccans have a bad reputation here in Utrecht. and if they generalise and no one gets in ((in the disco)) any longer, you know. (. . .) then I went to a disco. and uh (.) I walk I walk downstairs and he tells me uh “now you are not allowed to enter”, I say “why not?” the bouncer. he says you belong to the Moroccan youngsters who are upstairs.

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In Fragment 5, Anouar confirms how difficult it is to enter a disco in Utrecht for male adolescents who are labelled by others and by themselves as Moroccan. However, in line 9 and 10 Anouar refers to himself as having “zwarte krullen” (black curls) (line 9–10). Fragment 5 Early 2000s, Lombok/Transvaal (neighbourhood in Utrecht).

Anouar 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

maar Utrecht is echt eh, een hele moeilijke stad om eh om uit te gaan. maar ik vind het ook niet zo supergezellig hier in Utrecht hoor. ik vind het sfeer niet zo. ja dat is meestal de vaste reden altijd, vaste klanten. of je bent te jong. meestal hoor je dat van eh alleen maar vaste klanten of je bent te jong. ze gaan natuurlijk niet zeggen tegen jou ja sorry je hebt zwarte krullen je komt niet binnen.

Anouar 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

but Utrecht really is er, a very difficult city to go out. but also I don’t find it very cosy here in Utrecht. I don’t like the atmosphere very much. yes, most often the reason [for refusing him at the door] is always, “regular customers” or “you are too young.” most often you hear like uh “regular customers only” or “you are too young.” of course they are not going to tell you yes sorry you have black curls. you won’t get in.

Fragment 4 and 5 show that the interviewed youngsters define and redefine social categories in processes of selfing and othering as relational constructs. In the context of religion, they identify themselves using the supra-ethnic label Muslim; in the context of the disco door policy in Utrecht they label themselves as Moroccans in opposition to others who are able to enter the disco without any problems. In addition, Anouar labels himself as “having black curls” to foreground his personal identity backgrounding group identities like Muslim and Moroccan. This exemplifies the way in which speakers construct constantly shifting, layered identities. Amsterdam The next case study involves an interview with Mick by Anne Ridderikhoff for her internship at the Meertens Institute in Anne’s house (Ridderikhoff 2009). Mick was 21 years old at the time of the interview; he had Dutch nationality and was

The Randstad area in the Netherlands 175 from Surinamese Creole descent (through his mother). He attended an intermediate vocational school (MBO in Dutch). Anne lived in the Westerpark neighbourhood in the West of Amsterdam where she met Mick a few years earlier in what she describes as a “restaurant annex dancing”, called “Pacific Parc”, where he was an employee. Since they both lived in Westerpark, they met regularly in the neighbourhood and kept in contact. Mick visited Anne several times at her place. Mick responds to Anne’s question that he grew up in the Bijlmer, a suburb of South-East Amsterdam where many Surinamese and Ghanese inhabitants live. He identifies with the Bijlmer when saying “dat is gewoon mijn ding” (that is just my thing) (line 3). He mentions the alternative name of the Bijlmer, “Bimri”, which stems from Sranan (methathesis of lm or rm > ml or mr or /l/ replaced by /r/) (Daniëls 2004). Fragment 6 4 December 2004, evening, Anne’s house.

Mick 1 2 3

ja dan zeg ik uit de Bijlmer uit Bimri echt waar. (.2) Ik kom uit de Bijlmer, Zuid-Oost, ja daar kom ik vandaan, ik kom uit de Bijlmer daar ben ik opgegroeid, dat is gewoon mijn ding.

Mick 1 2 3

yes, then I say from the Bijlmer from Bimri really. (.2) I am from the Bijlmer, Southeast, yes that’s where I am from, I am from the Bijlmer, that’s where I was raised, that is just my thing.

Mick informs Anne that one and the same verb, djoeken (line 1, Fragment 7 below), which stems from Sranan dyuku (Snijders 2000), can have two different interpretations, depending on which company you are in (line 8) and depending on where the verb djoeken is pronounced (line 8). Mick indicates that djoeken is a death threat in the Bijlmer neighbourhood but not necessarily so in the Westerpark neighbourhood. In the Bijlmer, someone will stab you down and this threat can be executed by various people in the Bijlmer (line 3), which is unlike Westerpark where the person who utters it will also execute the threat (line 5–6). The use of the adverb “gewoon” (just) in line 3 shows that the use of djoeken is more common in the Bijlmer whereas gewoon is absent when Mick talks about Westerpark, which demonstrates that this death threat is more rare in Westerpark than in the Bijlmer. Moreover, in Westerpark djoeken has the meaning of “to prick” (line 7), which sounds less serious than “to stab down” as in the Bijlmer (line 2). Fragment 7 4 December 2004, evening, Anne’s house.

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Mick 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

in de Bijlmer als iemand (.) tegen je zei moest je gewoon bang zijn ik ga je djoeken dan wist je gewoon dat niet die persoon die het zei: zou je steken misschien iemand anders iemand komt gewoon naar je toe en die steekt je gewoon neer. in Westerpark ((lach)) is het gewoon heel anders, iemand komt daar, mensen zeggen het niet en als ie:mand het zegt, bang zijn want alleen die persoon, alleen die persoon komt neerge-(.).((doet ander na)) “ja ik heb hem alleen maar geprikt” Alleen maar geprikt, vast wel. (.3) er is een verschil woorden zijn anders. sommige woorden verschillen met wie: je ‘t zegt (.2) sommige woorden verschillen waa:r je het zegt.

Mick 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

in de Bijlmer when someone tells you you just have to be scared I will stab ((djoeken)) you then you just knew that the person who told you would not stab you but maybe someone else someone else just comes to you and he will just stab you. in Westerpark ((laughs)) it is just completely different, someone comes there, people don’t say it and if someone says it ((viz. djoeken)) to you, be afraid of that person only, only that person comes down . . . ((imitating someone)) “yes but I only pricked him.” Just pricked for sure. there is a difference words are different. some words differ with whom you say them, some words differ where you pronounce them.

Another example of social production of locality through language use is the two localised meanings of the expression “(een) tori zetten” or “(een) tori plegen” in Westerpark and the Bijlmer. The word “tori” (issue) stems from Sranan (tori originally means “story”). Mick again shows how the Bijlmer and Westerpark are produced as place through different meanings of this idiom. If someone in the Bijlmer uses this expression (line 2), it means that people talk about an illegal way of getting money somewhere (line 3). The same expression used in Westerpark (line 6) has the meaning of bothering someone (line 8), which is completely different (line 6) and in the words of Mick much more innocent (line 9). This is the reason why he expresses his idea that “the values are different but the [meaning of the] words have been weakened a bit” (line 1). Fragment 8 4 December 2004, evening, Anne’s house.

Mick 1 2 3 4 5

de waarden zijn hetzelfde, maar de woorden zijn een beetje afgezwakt. als iemand in de Bijlmer tegen je zegt zullen we tori zetten dan hebben we het over van ok we hebben een manier hoe we geld kunnen komen die niet eerlijk is, maar we hebben het wel gewoon over geld, we hebben het over een paar (honderd) (maar ja) in dehuidige tijd zullen we het hebben over

The Randstad area in the Netherlands 177 6 7 8 9

weet ik veel het bedrag is niet belangrijk (.) in Westerpar:k als iemand zegt we gaan een tori zetten dan is het heel anders, dan is het van we gaan eh: we gaan even naar die en die toe want die heeft want die heeft dat en dat gedaan, gewoon eh: even lastig vallen ofzo. dat is heel iets anders. het is iets onschuldigers. Het heeft iets onschuldigs over zich. Het is gewoon heel anders.

Mick 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

the values are the same but the words have been weakened a bit. if someone in the Bijlmer tells you shall we commit tori then we talk about ok we have a way how to get money which is illegal but we just talk about money we talk about a few hundred but yes nowadays we will talk about I don’t know the amount is not important. if someone in Westerpark says we commit a tori then it is completely different, then it means something like uh we go to that one and that one for a minute for he has for he has done this and this just uh bother him or so. That is completely different. it is more innocent. there is some innocence about it. it is just something else.

Mick shows by both fragments that neighbourhoods like Westerpark and Bijlmer in Amsterdam are constructed through language use: the same word “djoeken” and expression “(een) tori zetten/plegen” can have two different meanings depending on where you are and with whom. It shows how social relations and meaning allocation are crosscutting practices in one place.

Conclusion We have argued that the Randstad is not a linguistic or homogeneous entity. It is a dynamic, multiple and hybridised space in which (groups of) speakers constantly define and redefine social categories such as language, religion, clothing, ethnicity and place in processes of selfing and othering as relational constructs. We have shown various groups of speakers who in their orientations and identifications engage in locality production through language use and shifting social categories. In their interactions, the adolescents in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht reveal specific ideas about the context-dependent Self and Other. Their interactions show that local Randstad identities and concepts of the local within the Randstad area are emergent, relational and situated and are discursively constructed. Identities are, above all, local achievements, i.e. they shift and change according to how interactants perceive shifting borders between Self and Other in particular social contexts; influenced by particular aims, ambitions and desires; and constructed with the help of linguistic and cultural resources available.

Key to symbols used in transcription (.1): pause in seconds, often in tenths of a second (.): just noticeable pause ( ): unclear talk

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[ ]: best guess (( )): or transcriber’s comment/clarification, description of paralinguistic phenomena : (colon): indicates lengthening of preceding vowel underline: emphasis

Notes 1 Ritsema van Eck, Van Oort, Raspe, Van Brussel and Daalhuizen (2006) indicate that the lack of a central administration in the Randstad area – combined with the relatively low concentration of urbanisation – affect the economic power of the area as a whole. 2 In Surinam, as well as in the Netherlands, “Creole” is the common term that refers to that part of the population descending from African slaves.

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The Randstad area in the Netherlands 179 Cornips, Leonie (2002) Etnisch Nederlands in Lombok. In: Een buurt in beweging. Talen en culturen in het Utrechtse Lombok en Transvaal. Hans Bennis, Guus Extra, Pieter Muysken and Jacomine Nortier (eds), 285–302. Amsterdam: Stichting Beheer IISG. Cornips, Leonie and Vincent de Rooij (2013) Selfing and Othering Through Categories of Race, Place, and Language Among Minority Youths in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. In: Multilingualism and Language Diversity in Urban Areas. Acquisition, Identities, Space, Education. Peter Siemund, Ingrid Gogolin, Monika E. Schulz and Julia Davydova (eds), 129–64. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Cornips, Leonie, Jürgen Jaspers and Vincent de Rooij (2015) The Politics of Labelling Youth Vernaculars in the Netherlands and Belgium. In: Language, Youth and Identity in the 21st Century. Linguistic Practices Across Urban Spaces. Jacomine Nortier and Bente Ailin Svendsen (eds), 45–68. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cornips, Leonie and Vincent de Rooij (eds.) (2018) The Sociolinguistics of Place and Belonging Perspectives from the Margins. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Daniëls, Wim (2004) Vet! Jongerentaal nu en vroeger. Utrecht: Het Spectrum. De Jong, A., and Daalhuizen, F. (2014) De Nederlandse bevolking in beeld. Verleden, heden, toekomst. Online available at: www.pbl.nl/sites/default/files/cms/publicaties/ PBL_2014_De%20Nederlandse-bevolking-in-beeld_1174.pdf (accessed 4 December 2016). Extra, Guus (1995) The Context of Ethnic Communities and Ethnic Community Languages in the Netherlands. In: Home Language and School in a European Perspective. Ton Vallen, Addie Birkhoff and Tsjalling Buwalda (eds), 85–106. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press. ——— (2011) De Omgang met Taaldiversiteit in de Multiculturele Samenleving. Nederland in Internationaal Vergelijkend Perspectief. Tilburg: Babylon. Extra, Guss, Rian Aarts, T. Van der Avoird, Peter Broeder and Kutlay Yagmur (2001) Meertaligheid in Den Haag. De Status van Allochtone Talen Thuis en op School. Amsterdam: European Cultural Foundation. Fielding, A. J. (1992) Migration and Social Mobility. South East England as an Escalator Region. Regional Studies 26(1): 1–15. Gouda, Frances (2007) Beelden van (on)mannelijkheid in de koloniale cultuur van Nedelands-Indië, 1900–1949. Sociologie 3(1): 64–80. Hoeksema, Robert J. (2007) Three Stages in the History of Land Reclamation in the Netherlands. Irrigation and Drainage 56: 113–26. Huygen, Maarten (2016) Leerlingen met laagopgeleide ouders raken verder achter. NRC Newspaper. Online available at: www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2016/04/13/leerlingen-metlaagopgeleide-ouders-raken-verder-achter-a1407954 (accessed 4 December 2016). Irvine, Judith T. (2001) “Style” as Distinctiveness. The Culture and Ideology of Linguistic Differentiation. In: Style and Sociolinguistic Variation. Penelope Eckert and John R. Rickford (eds), 21–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kerswill, Paul and Ann Williams (1992) Some Principles of Dialect Contact. Evidence from the New Town of Milton Keynes. Working Papers. Occasional papers on General and Applied Linguistics (Department of Linguistic Sciences, University of Reading): 68–90. Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons and Charles D. Fenning (eds) (2016) Ethnologue. Online available at: www.ethnologue.com (acccessed 4 December 2016). Prompapakorn, Praparat (2004) Dialect Contact and New-Dialect Formation in a Thai New Town. PhD dissertation. University of Essex. Qian, Junxi, Liyun Qian and Hong Zhu (2012) Representing the Imagined City. Place and the Politics of Difference During Guangzhou’s 2010 Language Conflict. Geoforum 43(5): 905–15.

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Quote (2015) Top 10. Dit zijn de meest vermogende gemeenten van Nederland. Online available at: www.quotenet.nl/Lijstjes/Top-10-Dit-zijn-de-meest-vermogende-gemeentenvan-Nederland (accessed 4 December 2016). Ridderikhoff, Anne (2009) “Ik ben beter”. Identiteiten als activiteiten. Amsterdam: Meertens Institute. Ritsema van Eck, Jan, Frank Van Oort, Otto Raspe, Judith Van Brussel and Femke Daalhuizen (2006) Vele steden maken nog geen Randstad. The Hague: Ruimtelijk Planbureau. SAL (2012) Talen in Nederland. Online available at: www.multicultureelopleiden.nl/ samenleving/diversiteit/talen-in-nederland/ (accessed 4 December 2016). Schinkel, Willem (2008) The Moralization of Citizenship in Dutch Integration Discourse. Amsterdam Law Forum 1(1): 15–26. Schinkel, Willem and Friso Van Houdt (2010) The Double Helix of Cultural Assimilationism and Neo-Liberalism. Citizenship in Contemporary Governmentality. The British Journal of Sociology 61(4): 696–715. Schrover, Marlou (2014) Dutch Migration History. Looking Back and Moving Forward. Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis 11(2): 199–218. Smakman, Dick (2003) Algemeen Beschaafd Haarlems. Gebruikskenmerken van het Standaardnederlands. In: Waar gaat het Nederlands naartoe? Panorama van een Taal. Jan Stroop (ed.), 120–30. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker. Snijders, Ronald (2000) Surinaams van de straat. Amsterdam: Prometheus. Verhoeven, Roland (2009) Allochtonen onderweg. Vervoerwijzekeuze. Online available at: www.fietsberaad.nl/?lang=nl&repository=Allochtonen+onderweg (accessed 4 December 2016). Warf, Barney (ed.) (2010) Encyclopedia of Human Geography (volume 1). Los Angeles: Sage. Wikipedia (2016a). Randstad. Online available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randstad (accessed 4 December 2016). Wikipedia (2016b) Turken in Nederland. Online available at: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Turken_in_Nederland (accessed 4 December 2016).

12 Notes on the language ecology of the City of Angels Los Angeles, California, 1965–2015 Reynaldo F. Macías, Arturo Díaz and Ameer Drane1 This is a sociolinguistic study of the metropolitan area known as Los Angeles, which has variously been referred to as the “city of the future” (Rolle 1981), “the fragmented metropolis” (Fogelson 1967) and “the capital of the Third World” (Rieff 1991). It is a city, a county, a metropolitan area, a region. It is the politicaleconomic anchor for the southern half of the state of California, which has been ranked as the eighth largest economy in the world. It is each of these things and all of them. Settled in an oceanfront basin, it is diversely, richly inscribed by the Pacific Ocean and the San Gabriel, Santa Monica and the San Bernardino mountain ranges with several peaks over 10,000 feet. Its location, varied topography and contemporary population scale, spread out over more than 4,000 square miles, makes it the largest county in the United States, and its extended regional concentrations of people make it one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the world. The basin region has been populated for over 10,000 years with various configurations of spatial and living arrangements, sustenance and surplus production, cultural diversities, and social-governance organizations (e.g., autochthonous, colonial and constitutional republic, cf. McWilliams 1973[1946]). The basin’s linguistic diversity has historically ebbed and flowed, especially as a result of the human migrations into the area and political governance changes in the region. The socio-cultural and ethnolinguistic composition of the region’s indigenous populations changed over several thousand years; then more like the rest of the Spanish colonial world as mestizo (combined European and Amerindian descent) settlements accelerated after 1781; then more like the Mexican nation after 1821; then more like Anglo America after 1848; then, since the US changed immigration policies in 1965, more like the rest of the world than the rest of the nation. The linguistic diversity of Los Angeles is increasing again, providing for a different multilingualism than the historic bilingualisms the area has known over the longue durée. We know that with these population changes in Los Angeles, there have been, and continue to be, accommodations made by the local populations and the city, county and regional governments to newcomers. We also know that the newcomers made adaptations to their new places, spaces, neighbors, homes and each other. What these specific accommodations and adaptations were, how they related to each other and how they fit historically to the region beg for more elaborations.

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The purpose of this study was to answer the question, “What is the language ecology of Los Angeles?”

How do you study urban language ecologies? In order to answer these questions, we should clarify our approach and some basic concepts that help focus our concerns. We have modified Haugen’s (1972) definition of “language ecology” as “a dynamic network of relationships and interdependencies between the sociocultural, economic, and environmental contingencies that impact on the use, function, structure and meaning of languages” by adding the phrase “over space, location and time”. We also propose that the key word in this definition of ecology is “interdependencies”, and so it is this discussion that must be most clearly understood, along with “dynamic” (versus static), “networks” (rather than discrete categories) and “relationships” (as “contact” and “interaction” versus isolation and essentialism). While “ecology” can implicate “symbiosis” as a steady state of mutual inter-dependence, this becomes an empirical question regarding social control and the resulting sociolinguistic relationships. Human occupation and the resulting linguistic diversity of the region is best understood over time periods or cycles of human political-economic-spatial organization. In many ways these periods and their concomitant changes provide matrices for the personalities of the region (Rios-Bustamante 1992; Giffoyle 1998). We focus in this chapter on the 50-year period between 1965 and 2015. To fully understand the language ecology of the area, it is important to recognize the natural and built environments and their histories. These environments represent the physical, spatial and social matrix of opportunities for people to come into contact with each other, interact and/or live in compact community worlds, and their better understanding should lead to discovery of the mutual sociolinguistic inter-dependencies and relationships. In focusing on language use as what people do with language, we understand that language use requires: (1) shared physical (natural and built) place and social space (other people, social control matrix as voluntary self-regulative mechanisms; opportunity structures); (2) ability to use a language; (3) opportunities to use the languages (interlocutors sans barriers, social valuations); (4) a social purpose or goal (function) achievable with, by or through language; and (5) actual use of the language (e.g., speaking, writing, listening, reading, communication, making sense of the world, acting in the world) with response (interactions, turn-taking) and feedback (valuation) from others as acceptance (cooperative principle) or approbation (language policing). Our focus in this study was to identify speech events and speech networks as key qualitative units of analysis framing the use of speech (qua languages) to accomplish things and do things (functions) in daily living. While we included writing, we did not focus specifically on the written word nor mass media in different languages. Nor did we do an analysis of language uses across the life cycle, but concentrated on adults, often in work or public spaces, with a nod to formalized

Language ecology of the City of Angels 183 rules of social organization and engagement sometimes reflected as language policies. Both secondary sources and qualitative and quantitative approaches were taken to answer our research questions, each used for specific and complementary purposes. Our unit of analysis for the study, the “city,” stands as a metaphor for concentrated urban metropolitan populations with a sensitivity to the interactions between (1) its linguistic diversity, language contacts, speech and social interactions and individual bi- (multi-) lingualisms; (2) social organization, social control, and the creation, use and changes in social space; and (3) place as location and spatial organization of the natural and built environment. We note the task is herculean; that our delimitations align us with critical geographer Edward Soja’s comment about Los Angeles as a unit of analysis, with a slight emendation to our study: I too will try to recollect what I can, knowing well that any totalizing description of [Los Angeles] is impossible. All that can be presented is a succession of fragmentary glimpses, a free association of reflective and interpretive field notes aimed at constructing a postmodern [socio-linguistic] geography of the Los Angeles urban region. (Soja 2014: 62)

Diversity in contemporary Los Angeles: 1965–2015 The changes in racial, immigrant and linguistic diversity between 1965 and 2015 were dramatic for Los Angeles as it was for the state and the nation. In 1960, Los Angeles County had a little over 60 organized municipalities within it; most started as company towns or white bedroom communities and suburbs early in the twentieth century. The City of Los Angeles was the largest in population and land base with 2.5 million (41%) of the County’s 6 million population. In 1960, the population of the City of Los Angeles was 71.9% white. By 1980 the city had become ‘majority-minority’ as persons of African American descent, Latinos, and Asians together comprised 51.1% of the total population. (UCLA Ethnic Studies Centers 1987) A similar proportionality was reflected in the County of Los Angeles. In 1990, the Los Angeles County population was 41% White and 59% other racial groups. By 2010, out of a total population of 9,818,605 in the county, 27.8% were White, 47.7% Latino (4,926,661), 8.7% Black (925,597) and 13.7% Asian and Pacific Islanders (1,523,326), distributed over 88 municipalities within the County (US Census Bureau 2015), with the City of Los Angeles including 39% of the County’s population. Racial segregation, especially in housing, had been legally and socially enforced in Los Angeles since the mid-nineteenth century, when the US acquired Los Angeles as part of the spoils of their war against México. Los Angeles was the first city

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in the country to use restrictive covenants in real estate in the early twentieth century in favor of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. In 1964, California laws legally ended racial and religious covenants in housing, segregated home ownership and racial discrimination in housing, home sales, home mortgage financing and in rentals; this led, over time, to a greater dispersion and spatial distribution of racialized (linguistic) minorities. “Los Angeles County is the only part of Southern California that contains cities balanced among all four [pan-racial] groups, and that number increased from two to nine, between 1980 and 2000” (Myers and Park 2001: 1); 14 other local cities became more racially balanced amongst two, while 11 other cities became racially balanced amongst three, of the racial groups within their borders over these 20 years (López and Espiritu 1990). However, some cities became less multi-racially balanced, and by 2000, there is also evidence of residential racial resegregation of the four major groups in the county, driven largely by wealth disparities and abilities to choose to buy homes in same group neighborhoods and aided by the built environment, especially the freeway system of roads bisecting the region (Ávila 2004, 2014; Guarnizo, Sánchez and Roach 1999; Macías, Flores, Figueroa and Aragon 1973). [Residential] segregation has been increasing faster than integration since the 1960s. Three distinct patterns are clear: (1) Whites have retreated to a periphery and the other principal ethnic groups are less and less likely to have them as neighbors. (2) Blacks are the most isolated racial group; other racial groups have remained highly unlikely to have them as neighbors. (3) Hispanics and Asians are becoming more isolated even as they cause the county as a whole to be more diverse. (Ethington, Frey and Myers 2001) Los Angeles public social space also transformed during this period, making it easier to interact with each other, even if it was not as neighbors (Allen 2005). In the mid-1990s, Robert González, a native of East Los Angeles, was asked about these changes. I think that probably the biggest change is that now we are everywhere. When I was growing up in East LA in the fifties, you knew where the Mexican areas were, and when you wandered out of these, you saw very few of us in places like Santa Monica and the west side. But now, it doesn’t matter where I go in LA, there we are. It feels so different now. When I was a kid sometimes my dad would take me with him on his deliveries over in Culver City, West LA, Santa Monica, even Beverly Hills, and I would feel kind of funny, you know what I mean? I felt out of place; I wouldn’t see any other Mexicans at all. But now, hell, I feel at home almost everywhere because I know there is going to be somebody that looks like me, that talks like me, no matter where I am. (Quoted in: Rocco 1996: 365)

Language ecology of the City of Angels 185 Another significant change in the 1960s was the passage of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Public Law 89–236, enacted 30 June 1968). It rejected the nineteenth-century racial exclusions of Chinese and Japanese; brought into the national quota system all the countries around the world, including the large number established through twentieth-century decolonization and those from the western hemisphere that were previously exempted from the national quota system; and prioritized family reunifications. It expanded the refugee category of immigrants, especially those displaced by US wars (Cuba, Vietnam, Chile) and many displaced and “unauthorized” migrants from US interventions or precipitation of regime change wars (Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador). In its Cold War version, the category of immigrant included anyone coming out of a communist country as a defector seeking asylum, or otherwise showing that “communism didn’t work”. It did not substantially change the English oral and literacy proficiencies required for immigration, residency and naturalization established in the early twentieth century (cf. Leibowitz 1984). A result of these changes was the increase in the number of people who spoke immigrant languages different from those allowed into the US for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Immigrants then came primarily from across the Atlantic Ocean; now, the principal new immigration is from Asia and the Pacific Rim. The historic north-south hemispheric migrations from Mexico and Latin America continued into the twenty-first century. California received the largest part of these new immigrants and migrants between 1970 and 2015, and many of them (re-)settled in Los Angeles, contributing to the changing sociolinguistic demography of the city, county and region. Of the 10,116,705 people in Los Angeles County in 2014, 65.2% (6,598,246) were US born and 34.8% (3,518,459) were foreign born with 5% having immigrated from Europe, 35% from Asia, 2% from Africa and 58% from Latin America. Los Angeles City was similarly proportioned (US Census Bureau 2016). The most frequently cited country of origin for the foreign born who immigrated between 2008 and 2010 were Mexico (41%), El Salvador (7%), Philippines (7%), Guatemala (5%) and Korea (5%). Approximately 20% of the foreign born population in Los Angeles County arrived between 2000 and 2010; another 26% in the prior decade; 31% during the 1980s; and 16% during the 1970s. The Mayor of the City of Los Angeles has an Office of Immigrant Affairs, and the City has declared itself an “ImmigrantFriendly” city (while the status of becoming a “sanctuary city” is battled with the Federal government), clearly signaling a welcome for the “foreign born” and a concern for immigrant integration, regardless of immigrant status (cf. also Paral and Associates 2011; Pastor and Ortíz 2009; McHugh and Morawski 2016; Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California 2005). Of the County’s 2014 population five-years-old and older (for which the Census Bureau reported data), 43% spoke only English at home and 57% spoke a language other than English at home, with a quarter of the latter reporting they also spoke English very well, easily describing them as bilinguals (US Census Bureau 2015). Spanish was the most frequently reported language other than English that was used at home at 39.5% of the county’s population (3,653,910). There were reported at least 34 languages spoken in Los Angeles county that are indigenous to the western hemisphere (27 to north America and seven to central

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and the southern cone); 62 that were of Indo-European origin; 57 from Asia and the Pacific Islands; and 14 from Africa. The largest immigrant languages were proportioned as follows: Chinese languages (3.8%), Tagalog (2.5%), Korean (2.0%), Armenian (1.8%), Vietnamese (0.9%), Persian (0.8%), Japanese (0.6%) and Russian (0.5%) (US Census Bureau 2015). Some of these language groups, in particular the Chinese, Filipino and Japanese languages, have histories in the region dating back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but most of these immigrant languages can trace their significant presence in Los Angeles to the 1970s after the nation’s immigration laws were changed to be racially and geographically more equitable (López 1996; Rumbaut, Massey and Bean 2006). There is also a longstanding diversity represented in the indigenous languages of the region. The indigenous language groups of the region – principally Tongva, Tataviam and Chumash, with obviously a much longer presence in the area and a diminished but slowly increasing population – were joined by a large number of “American Indian” language groups (cf. Forbes 1995 on terminologies) from other parts of California and the US, especially during the 1950s and 1960s when the federal government employed a relocation program for AmerIndians from federal reservations to urban areas like Los Angeles, helping create an urban pan-Indianism for survival and cultural practice in Los Angeles (Blackhawk 1995; Price 1968; Rosenthal 2012). These US indigenous populations were more recently joined by Mexican and central American indigenous groups speaking Nahuatl, Oaxacan and Mayan languages (Popkin 1999; Fox and Rivera-Salgado 2004). The indigenous populations, their relationships to Los Angeles, their concentrations, dispersals and different degrees of socio-linguistic vitality, and bilingualisms have contributed to a more complex language ecology for these groups and, of course, the area (Allen and Turner 2002; Rao 2015). Many names of local places in the region are in the indigenous languages of the basin, albeit having undergone changes in pronunciation, sometimes more than once. For example, the Tongva names of Kawengna, glossed literally into English as the “place of the mountain,” was hispanicized to “Cahuenga,” and adopted into English (it is a street name and the name of a canyon pass); Asukangna (his grandmother) became “Azusa” (a city name); and Topangna, “Topanga” (a street and a canyon pass). Chumash names in use today include: Maliwu (Malibu) and Simj (Simi). Tataviam names still in use include: Kamulos (Camulos) and Kastic (Castaic). Other place names are still remembered for special reasons, such as that of Yang-na (hispanicized version of the Tongva name i’iang na), the major indigenous village located in the vicinity of where the Spanish colonial Pueblo of Los Ángeles was founded in 1781 (about where Los Angeles City Hall is today) (Rios-Bustamante 1992: 21; see also Sánchez 1914). The language politics between 1965 and 2015 in California and the Los Angeles region reflected those across the nation (Macías 2014). A liberalization of the restrictive English-only language policies adopted in the early part of the twentieth century were legally overturned or changed in the 1960s and early 1970s allowing for mandatory transitional bilingual education for those public school students speaking a national origin language who were not proficient in English.

Language ecology of the City of Angels 187 Court decisions allowed for Spanish literacy to satisfy the literacy requirements for voting (Castro versus State of California, 2 Cal.3d 223, 1970). State court interpreters were required in criminal cases newly protecting the due process rights of defendants (California constitutional amendment, 1974). The passage of the Bilingual Services Act for state employees provided a formula for public officials to account for requests in languages other than English by language and modified service personnel to accommodate the need in order to better serve the linguistically diverse population of the state (1973). Beginning in the 1980s, a strong nativist English-only movement, however, welled up in the state. They successfully promoted English as the state’s official language (California constitutional amendment, 1986) and passed three other popular initiatives that were anti-immigrant (1994), anti-racial minority (1996) and anti-bilingual education (California constitutional amendment, 1998). All of these state measures affected the Los Angeles region.

Language ecologies: settlements and networks One of the most concrete actions recognizing this racial, immigrant and language diversity was the official naming by the City of Los Angeles of 15 ethnic-linguistic neighborhoods that bear public signs: Byzantine-Latino Quarter, Cambodia Town, Chinatown, Croatian Place, El Salvador Corridor, Historic Filipinotown, Koreatown, Little Armenia, Little Bangladesh, Little Ethiopia, Little Lithuania, Little Tokyo, Persian Square, Thai Town and Via Italia (cf. Pulido, Barraclough and Cheng 2012; Waldinger and Bozorgmehr 1996; Sandberg 1974; Parodi 2014; Ocampo 2016; Anonymous 1999). These designated communities are not all the same in reflecting a high number of speakers of their respective languages as neighborhood residents or with an ethnic-linguistic commerce. Little Bangladesh is a four-block long commercial strip, in the heart of Koreatown, whose only store with an identifiable connection to Bangladesh is Bengal Liquors. Immediately across from this business is a market that sells Central American and Oaxacan food products, and diagonally across is a mechanic’s workshop with Korean characters on its sign as well as a shopping center with more Korean-based stores and a botica (Mexican-oriented pharmacy). In fact, all along the four blocks you can find restaurants and shops that specifically cater to people from México, El Salvador and China but not to Bangladeshi (ethnic entrepreneurship). Little Bangladesh became an official ethno-linguistic neighborhood district in 2010. Muhammas “Shamim” Hussain, a community leader who came to the US in 1981, said that the sign “Little Bangladesh” was a symbol that served as a start for the community to realize the potential behind the idea (Abdulrahim 2010). Six years after the City’s official recognition, you still could not find many Bangladeshi businesses in the area, but the neighborhood designation at least acknowledges the presence of the local community. Developing ethnic entrepreneurship in addition to residential concentration is a distinct way for ethnic-linguistic groups to exhibit their presence and vitality (Min and Bozorgmehr 2000).

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Although the Korean speech community has had a presence in Los Angeles since at least 1906, it was only after 1965 that they began entering the US in larger numbers (Allen and Turner 1997). The migrants clustered their homes in an area just west and northwest of downtown Los Angeles, which is now known as Koreatown (Cho, Cho and Tse 1997; Jeon 2008). This district is 2.7 square miles and is the center of a host of Korean-oriented businesses, such as banks, accounting offices, real-estate agencies, insurance and law firms, restaurants, boutiques, beauty salons, spas and many more retail stores. The majority of these businesses are marketed to the general public, but many also engage in ethnic-based economies catering to Koreans specifically with Korean related products or services (Min 1996; Min and Bozorgmehr 2000). For example, Wi Spa is a business on Wilshire Boulevard near MacArthur Park where you can find spa services, beauty treatments, a gym, a library and a restaurant. In 2015, the library included only Korean-language literature and one of the spa rooms had a television that aired round-the-clock South Korean soap operas. While people of other ethnicities patronized the establishment (such as one of the authors), the literature and television programs were solely provided in the Korean language. In more recent years, the residential integration, concentration and growth of other speech communities, such as the Spanish-speaking Salvadoran community, has taken place within the spreading Koreatown – a reflection of the dynamism and permeability of these locations and spaces where it is common to see English, Spanish and Korean all used together for advertising. Korean-owned businesses in other areas also cater to other language minorities, but this at times entails miscommunications or racial conflicts. Retail liquor stores existed at 17 times the city average rate in South-Central Los Angeles, and Koreans gained ownership of many of them during the 1980s and 1990s (Allen and Turner 1997; Hunt and Ramón 2010) but did not integrate residentially. During the 1992 Los Angeles “Riots”, or better put, urban unrest, many of the Korean-owned liquor stores in the predominantly Black and Chican@ South Central area of Los Angeles were severely affected because of the murder of a Black female teenager by a Korean female owner of a liquor store that was precipitated, in part, because of a breakdown of communication (Bailey 2000; Stevenson 2013). Korean business owners in these areas felt under siege, even as the Black and Latin@ communities felt victimized by the shooting and the concurrent unrelated acquittal of four white police officers for their beating of Rodney King, a Black motorist, in the San Fernando Valley. One civic response to the urban unrest was a campaign at mutual understanding and even reconciliation called “Days of Dialogue” (Days of Dialogue 1996–2015), during which the city hosted many local conversations amongst small racially mixed groups, moderated by conflict mediators, although they were conducted predominantly in English. In addition to the ethnic-linguistic designations by the City of Los Angeles, there are other patterns of settlement and structural-political integration of, and interactions between, ethnic-linguistic communities (cf. Pulido 2006; Santa Ana 2001). The City of West Hollywood, northwest of downtown and surrounded by the City of Los Angeles, has a large Russian-speaking immigrant community for which it

Language ecology of the City of Angels 189 created an advisory board in 2000, whose function was to provide information on issues relating to the planning, development and coordination of services to the Russian speaking community and to the City Council (City of West Hollywood 2016). Most of the other smaller municipalities are clustered in the San Gabriel Valley, east and northeast of the City of Los Angeles, and in the eastern and southeastern parts of the county. Many of these smaller municipalities were organized as company towns, or white bedroom communities, to the major urban center of Los Angeles City (cf. Carpio, Irazábal and Pulido 2011, for a discussion of the “right to the city” using residence and “cultural citizenship” as an alternative lens to political national citizenship for immigrant integration in these suburbs). In 2010, the San Gabriel Valley had a population of 2 million across 400 square miles of land in 31 municipalities. The population in the San Gabriel Valley has become, in the twenty-first century, 48% Chican@-Latin@, 25% Asian-Pacific Islander, 23% White and 4% African American. Spanish is the most commonly spoken language in 10 of the 31 incorporated cities (Azusa, Baldwin Park, El Monte, Industry, Irwindale, La Puente, Montebello, Pomona, Rosemead, and South El Monte), and Chinese is the most commonly spoken language in three cities (Alhambra, Monterey Park, and San Gabriel). (Preston 2012: 95) The increase and visibility of the Chinese community in the City of Monterey Park has attracted much attention since it was larger than the Chinatown of the City of Los Angeles. Urban planners and others have called Monterey Park the first “suburban Chinatown” (Fong 1994; cf. also Lo 1999; Wu 1975), or, in contrast to the stereotypes raised by “Chinatowns”, an “ethno-burb” (Li 2009; Zhou, Tseng and Kim 2008; Lin and Robinson 2005). Chinese immigrant economic power, in addition to the population increases, was what transformed Monterey Park. The Chinese characters on the signs of numerous businesses, including restaurants, antique stores, bakeries, markets, bookstores, banks and supermarkets, make evident that you have entered a Chinese speaking community. In the 1980s it was already being advertised in Hong Kong and Taiwan newspapers as the “Chinese Beverly Hills” (Allen and Turner 1997). The City of Garden Grove, which lies between Los Angeles and Orange counties, hosts a community and commercial area known as Little Saigon. In 2016, nearly 145,000 people of Vietnamese origin lived and worked in Little Saigon and surrounding neighborhoods. A 2016 Los Angeles Times article (Do 2016) reported how one Latino, employed as a waiter in a Vietnamese restaurant, took it upon himself to learn some Vietnamese to move up in rank. There appeared to be mutual benefit in this situation for the Vietnamese restaurant employer and the Latino worker. The Vietnamese business owners tend to worry less about Chican@ and Latin@ workers, especially the chefs, learning their craft and language and then taking the knowledge they acquired working for them to become their rivals in the restaurant industry; and they enjoy a more linguistically talented or

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skilled workforce. The Chican@ and Latin@ workers gain a higher paying waiting position and greater job satisfaction learning more about another ethno-linguistic culture (cf. Rumbaut 2014, for a detailed discussion of bilingualism in work situations). Immigration from Vietnam has slowed down, and there continues to be a large Latin@ workforce, indicating this language learning may be more frequent than isolated. These language learning and multilingual work situations have implications for our understanding of the impact of ethnic-linguistic entrepreneurship (Loukaitou-Sideris 2002), language policies and practices in work situations (beyond English-only rules) and lingua francas (Godenzzi 2006).

Multilingualisms and panethnicities As a matter of closer examination, let us look at several of the languages as they relate to speech communities, the diversities reflected therein and their language use – English as the dominant single language most spoken in Los Angeles, with official status at the state level; Spanish as the second most spoken language in the area, one that historically predates English (both share the status of colonial languages) and continues to increase in the number of speakers over time; and Armenian, a more recent and new Euro-Asian immigrant language to the area. English English is spoken by the majority of the people in the city, county and region of Los Angeles. It may have been acquired as a native, single language; a “second” language by native born simultaneous or sequential bilinguals; or as a foreign, additional language before immigrating to the US and settling in Los Angeles. It is, as far as we can tell, the language with the greatest number of monolinguals (persons who speak only one language), and the one with the greatest number of persons who speak it as a second language or as bilinguals. It has official status in the state and has reflected the power of Anglo-Americans (and Euro-Americans who pan-ethnically became racially White and linguistically anglified), over the last century. It is the dominant language used in schools as a medium of instruction, and it is a required subject of study throughout compulsory schooling, for graduations and as an admission requirement for higher education. It is the language of the dominant print and broadcast mass media, and “English is the language of business in Los Angeles”, as recently declared by the head of the Central City Association of Los Angeles (established in 1924 and self-promoted as Los Angeles’ premier business advocacy organization). It is also the language of law and government. All told, English is also used as a lingua franca between and amongst speakers of different languages throughout the city, county and region, albeit not without occasional tensions, especially recognizing the segregated sociolinguistic history of the region. A Los Angeles variety of English can also be said to have developed as a result of its location and contact with other languages, especially the historical

Language ecology of the City of Angels 191 interactions with the other lingua franca of the region (Spanish) despite the resultant hierarchies of languages and groups in the area. English speakers arrived in significant numbers in Los Angeles most immediately after the US Mexican war in 1848 and was imposed on the local speakers of the indigenous languages, Spanish and Chinese. In the several overwhelming waves of Anglo- and Euro-Americans to Los Angeles came speakers of various areal varieties of English: The southern English dialects of the US; the midlands English dialects in migrations during the early twentieth century; and dustbowl (Oklahoma and Arkansas) and Appalachian English dialects during the Great Depression of the 1930s. A general, pan-ethnic, White English developed in Los Angeles. Also spoken in the region are Chicano English (Fought 2003; Santa Ana 1991, 1993), Black English and American Indian English (Leap 1993) social linguistic varieties. Creative subgroup ways of speaking, like (San Fernando) Valley speak (especially by Valley girls), surfer talk and West Coast rap, have reflected age, racialized, gendered, and class related varieties of English within a hierarchy often differentiated by stigmatized features (Bailey 2012). We note that as nineteenth-century Anglo-American surveyors mapped Los Angeles, they named new streets in English and often translated or changed street and place names that were in Spanish to English. In addition, there has been a general Anglification in the pronunciation of lexical items in other languages. The pronunciation of place and street names in Spanish have been anglicized and, in many cases, hyper-anglicized (Hill 2008). Thus, popular neighborhoods or street names, such as Los Feliz, Sepúlveda or even Los Ángeles (Harvey 2011), which originated in Spanish, are pronounced in anglicized phonology and prosody in ways that are quite dissimilar from the Spanish pronunciation. For the non-native outsider that has knowledge of both languages, this experience of learning the local pronunciations can be quite disorienting, as one of our co-authors can attest. One must learn to constantly suppress their knowledge of Spanish orthography and pronunciation in order to be understood, especially by English monolinguals. Many Angelinos adopt the anglicized pronunciation and, often unconsciously, contribute to the erasures of the Indigenous-Spanish-Mexican influences on the region. For those that are also Spanish-speakers, the pronunciation may vary depending on context, interlocutors and purpose of the interactions, but active resistance to the hyper-Anglicization process is also common. We also see other results of language engagement and contact, including loan words and lexical borrowing, that are not clear yet in their long-term effects on the English spoken in the area. Some of these “loan” words have managed to cross over into the generalized discourse of Los Angeles, especially about food. Things like ordering Mexican tacos, burritos or Salvadoran pupusas from a local food truck or restaurant may involve some knowledge of Spanish but it is not exclusively required for a successful transaction. Then there is the culinary appropriation of the food, such as a “fusion” of anglified burritos (cold, often with cold cuts and cut in half) alternatively called “wraps” in English. Similarly, Mock-Spanish can be heard throughout the city by Anglos (Hill 2008; Schwartz 2011). No deep understanding of Spanish is required to participate in

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this process that has been aligned with covert racism and so can be heard as a form of English “play” with ethnic Spanish in “White” sociolinguistic spaces (Schwartz 2011). Additionally, passive recognition of other languages occurs regularly due to the multilingual landscape of the city. Business signs and advertisements often include English and Spanish as lingua francas and other languages of small ethnicentrepreneurs in local communities, producing tri-lingual and quadri-lingual linguistic landscaping (principally signage). Even large (multinational) businesses use multiple languages throughout the city and county to market their brands to the general population. The beverage 7-Up soda was advertised on a billboard in the summer of 2016 with a picture of the product and the bilingual text “TÓMALO UP Los Angeles” (with a logo of the NorthGate Market, and their slogan, “¡Te da más!” in the lower right corner). The Anglo-owned Mexican fast food chain, Del Taco, at the same time was also advertising its products with the more clearly bilingual slogan, live más. The Chinese fast food chain, Panda Express, also began a mid-2016 marketing campaign with the slogan tso good, in roman alphabetic writing of the Chinese homonym for English “so”. The multilingualism of Los Angeles continues to affect the use of Los Angeles Englishes in various ways. Spanish Spanish is the second most spoken home language in Los Angeles. In many ways, the city owes its existence to the founding of the Spanish colonial Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles in 1781 amidst the already inhabited area of 45 indigenous villages in the basin. It grew and developed as a colonial, then Mexican town, then city, until the 1848 war with the US when it was acquired as spoils of military conquest. Overwhelmed by the waves of Anglo- and Euro-Americans after 1870, then again in the early 1900s, 1930s and 1950s, Mexicans and other Spanish-speakers enjoyed a period of official state bilingualism between 1850 and 1880; continued, survived and grew in numbers in the ethnic neighborhoods (colonias and barrios); were linguistically nourished by newcomers in the 1910s, 1940s, 1950s and 1980s; and recognized their local history as emblazoned on street name signs, place names and historical sites (De La Loza 2011; Ochoa and Ochoa 2005). Nearly half of the Los Angeles population speaks Spanish. This language functions as the second language of the city in many ways, including as a lingua franca. In 2010, in Los Angeles County, 47.7% of the population spoke Spanish at home; 35.8% of the county’s population was of Mexican origin, 3.7% was from El Salvador and 2.2% from Guatemala. We should keep in mind that many of the (im)migrants from these three countries may be monolingual or bilingual speakers of indigenous languages. Many of these migrants maintain communications and interactions through hometown associations, mutual benefit associations, cooperatives, transnational visits or migrations with their towns, villages and cities of origin (Fox and Rivera-Salgado 2004; Hamilton and Stolz Chinchilla 2001; Popkin 1999; Stoltz Chinchilla and Hamilton 2013).

Language ecology of the City of Angels 193 Continuous immigration and migration of Spanish speakers from different countries keeps salient different varieties of Spanish that often have characteristics that contrast with the Mexican rural and Chicano Spanish varieties of Los Angeles in regards to phonology, lexicon, semantics and morphology (Silva-Corvalán 1986, 1994a, 1994b; Parodi 1993; Lavadenz 2005), or their integrated local indigenous lexicons and influences (Parodi 2004, 2006, 2014). Nonetheless, a large portion of Spanish-speakers in Los Angeles are native born and speak a variety of the language that is distinct from its origin but referential to the local population. Chicano Spanish refers to the variety of the language spoken in Los Angeles, primarily as it developed amongst Mexicans over the last 200 plus years in the area. Parodi (2011) has more recently coined the term “Los Angeles Vernacular Spanish” (LAVS) to refer to the local variety of leveled Spanish that is spoken in Los Angeles with contributions from other varieties of the language and to distinguish it from Chicano Spanish, Mexican and other national, areal and social class varieties of the language. Specifically, Los Angeles Vernacular Spanish is considered to be a koine variant. This means that the variant has been formed as a result of the contact amongst dominant varieties of Spanish in the Latino communities aligning to create a new and distinct variant that is intelligible and acceptable to everyone in the speech community without replacing any. Certain features of existing varieties are accepted as part of the koine variant while others are rejected. For example, speakers of Los Angeles Vernacular Spanish accept the influence of English on both lexical and phonological features as legitimate, whereas most monolingual Spanish-speaking communities stigmatize signs of English influence. On the other hand, the use of the second person pronominal “vos” is stigmatized in Los Angeles even though it is used among the Salvadoran population as a way of expressing familiarity or intimacy. What also makes Los Angeles Vernacular Spanish unique is not only that it is the predominant variant of Spanish in Southern California, but also that EnglishSpanish bilinguals tend to adopt this variety regardless of the speaker’s origin. For adult immigrants, the acquisition of this variety occurs during the process of adapting to their new surroundings and learning to get things done through communication with the local community. Whether it is at sites of work or at community markets, Los Angeles Vernacular Spanish is the variant of choice among the majority of Spanish-speaking Latinos (Parodi 2003, 2006, 2009). Thus, the acquisition of Los Angeles Vernacular Spanish is a form of linguistic accommodation to Los Angeles linguistic culture. Spanish is spoken at the many work sites where Chican@s-Latin@s work either as employees or business owners. Many non-Latino business owners attempt learning a bit of Spanish to communicate with the large Spanish-speaking portion of the work force in Los Angeles. The majority of these workers tend to work bluecollar jobs and shape the language practices of many of these work environments (Rumbaut 2014). Service professionals also adopt limited Spanish to better serve their clientele. This recognition of the benefits of speaking at least work, business or professional Spanish (e.g., medical Spanish, legal Spanish or Spanish to manage your household help), is not only expressed by Anglo or Latino business owners,

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but is often the case for other ethnic minorities that rely on the Spanish-speaking workforce or clientele as well (Valdés, Fishman, Chávez and Pérez 2006; Callahan and Gándara 2014; Parodi 2013, 2014). Language contact situations between Spanish, a variety of different other languages and English occur across the city at many work sites. Spanish has become a language that can be used even outside of its expected domains. For example, Marišhka, a PhD student in Hispanic Linguistics at UCLA, while shopping at S-Mart, a Korean supermarket, struggled to find and identify a container of japchae (sweet potato starch noodles) that her Korean-American boyfriend wanted her to pick up for their date night. Eventually two employees, one of them appearing to be the Korean manager, tried helping her in English. She continued searching, however, after recognizing that the employees had ultimately led her to the wrong product. Around 20 minutes later another employee asked her if she needed help, and she tried explaining what she was looking for again in English. This employee grabbed another employee who was passing by and enlisted his help in Spanish. As a fluent non-native speaker of Spanish, Marišhka was able to step in and provide more detail. Her use of Spanish in this moment helped her to finally find exactly what she was looking to buy. As this employee walked her directly to the japchae, he shared that he was from México. This situation sheds more light on the communicative power of Spanish to get things done in a variety of different settings for both native and non-native speakers in Los Angeles. Spanish functions as a lingua franca in Los Angeles, enhanced by the permeability of the social spaces and domains for uses of the language. Armenian The people of Armenian ancestry have been in Southern California since the early 1890s when students, health seekers and rug merchants from the US East Coast settled in the Los Angeles area they have in several waves from Turkey, the Middle East and Soviet Armenia (Allen and Turner 1997; Bozorgmehr 1997). These waves mainly settled in the East Hollywood area, now known as “Little Armenia”, and as their economic situation improved they moved into the Los Feliz region and the City of Glendale, north of the Los Angeles downtown area and west of neighboring Pasadena. The current wave of immigration peaked after the devastating 1988 earthquake in Spitak, Soviet Armenia and accelerated after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They have preferred the US west coast, particularly Los Angeles County, due to the greater employment opportunities and the presence of an older, multi-generational Armenian community (Karapetian 2014). Armenian immigrants anecdotally refer to the City of Glendale as “Bigger Armenia”, to contrast it with the “Little Armenia” district in the City of Los Angeles near East Hollywood (Karapetian 2014). In 2010, Glendale had the third largest urban Armenian community in the world, behind Yerevan, Armenia’s capital and Moscow, Russia. Almost 40% of the city’s population was foreign born, with 40% of these having immigrated from Armenia, Iran and Lebanon. The mayor, two out of the five city council members, four of the six members who served on

Language ecology of the City of Angels 195 the Board of Education of the Glendale Unified School District and two of the six members of the Board of Trustees of the local community college district were also of Armenian ancestry. Armenian was the most widely spoken language other than English in the city and the sixth in the county. One can easily see the overwhelming presence of this speech community, with businesses, restaurants, churches and cultural centers bearing prominent signs written in Armenian script. How does structural economic integration in an ethno-linguistic-burb get reflected in business when Armenian and English are “dominant” business languages? There are instances of aligning business products and services with clientele and language as in ethnic economies. There is another instance of linguistic economic integration represented by the strategic uses of English in a “transethnic” business – newcomers who position themselves more broadly within the dominant economic structures of the nation in Los Angeles and how their language resources allow them to do things, like carry on business. For example, Alan is an insurance broker in Glendale, who is Armenian, an immigrant and multilingual in Armenian, Farsi and English. He was born into the Armenian community in Isfahan, Iran and came to Glendale, California in the early 1980s after leaving his country due to its political instability. He became an insurance agent for commercial auto transportation and started his own business of brokering insurance by the end of the decade of his arrival. His business has endured and, now close to retirement, he continues operating from his home. If you ask him what his target business sector or clientele is, he will say that it is larger businesses with three or more vehicles, particularly buses, regardless of the owners’ ethnicity or language. The names on his client’s roster denotes that he has a following with business owners who have emigrated from various parts of the world – Armenia, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Japan and México. He does not advertise particularly to these groups and he does have clients who were born in the US. Much of his business comes from word-of-mouth referrals from recent immigrants. It is not that his Armenian and Farsi languages have helped him gain clients from their respective regions because those groups do not constitute his main client base. In fact, he does not always get along with his fellow compatriots, who often call him up hoping to receive service in their language. Alan has a strict, informal policy that all insurance matters should be conducted in English. During a conversation with him, he received a phone call from an Armenian business operator who, upon hearing Alan’s full name, wanted to speak in mayreni lezu (mother tongue in Armenian). Alan insisted on speaking English and when his potential client insisted on the mother tongue, Alan proceeded to instruct him about the appropriate time and place for Armenian. If they were to go out to lunch, they could speak in their language, but since English was the language of the US insurance industry, it behooved them to communicate in that language. Alan explained to us that the underwriters of the insurance companies tended to be East Coast native English speakers with little patience for people whom they presumed did not speak English fluently, or natively, and it was in his clients’ best interest to communicate with their insurers using the language that he expected would expedite the resolution of their insurance claims. He added

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that sometimes even speaking English did not work with these underwriters who acted as if they could not understand his clients’ accents or even, at times, his own. Thus, speaking English for Alan provided “practice” in the language to gain an economic advantage or, rather, not as much of a disadvantage over other languages. In this regard, the use of English can be seen as a language development strategy and a lingua franca shared resource that activates a mutually recognized set of attitudes, forms and conventions when communicating. Alan admits that some of his clients speak a strong Armenian accented English, but he adds that for anyone committed to help a client and make a profit, such barriers are easy to overcome. His clients appreciate his effort, sometimes even deciding to purchase insurance with him even if he does not always offer the most affordable option.

Reflections and conclusions What can we say in answer to our research question, “What is the urban language ecology of Los Angeles?” Initially, we might suggest that the ecology changes over time with the different composition of the linguistic diversities, the changing social-political organizations that govern contact and interactions between peoples with different language resources at their disposal, and the resultant varied, sociolinguistic hierarchies, concentrations and distributions. For the current “time-shot” one can describe the language ecology as varied by the languages, bilingualisms and speech communities that are formed in the various settlement patterns and networks of ethnic linguistic communities – geographic dispersal, compact neighborhoods, commercial districts with and without ethniclinguistic entrepreneurship, ethno-linguistic-burbs and activist claims to the (linguistic) right to the city. We have seen various responses by government in accommodations and adaptations, and how official political recognition and the economic position and proportionality of particular ethnic-linguistic communities may be primary factors that provide groups the necessary resources needed to maintain the language and culture (ethnic-linguistic burbs). We have also reported individual and group multilingualisms from language contact, engagement and multi-language acquisitions; linguistic changes in form and use; specialized pragmatic bilingualisms at work and in print communications; and their relationships to cross-cultural communications and development of pan-ethnicities. Ethnic and linguistic variation within speech communities in multicultural, multilingual settings like a world city should challenge us in studying language ecology. Some of these situations may be called panethnicities; however, the exploration of linguistically based pan-ethnicities, or even those that are based on geographic regions or cultural affinities, is to be noted and elaborated for there are definitely no single or simple correlations between country, culture, race and language. Viewing the development of ethno-burbs as location-based speech communities or lingua francas as network-based speech communities problematizes and complicates the notion of speech community within linguistic diversity (Santa Ana 1993; Santa Ana and Parodi 1999). There

Language ecology of the City of Angels 197 is also the concern of whether and how languages “take root”, are sustained, transmitted inter-generationally and grow in particular settings over time and over the longue durée. What also remains to be seen is the possible differential inter-generational transmissions of the languages with or without stable (productive or receptive) bilingualisms; whether or not there is, will be or not, contributions of new speakers of the language(s) through continuing in-migration; and the differential distribution of bi- and multi-lingual abilities amongst speech communities. Lastly, we have seen the permeability of the distinct languages, their users and their social spaces (domains, fields) that are also otherwise indexed by factors like race, gender, age, work settings and physical and social communities, amongst others. We note the mestizo Latin@ panethnicity, with the colonial Spanish language as a common defining referent, yet one that often ignores the multilingualism of these national origin communities or the strategic (or situational) pragmatic bilingualisms that occur. We also note how the changes in language form and structure resulting from the interactions between different (e.g., national) varieties of the “same” spoken Spanish language by Latin@ sub-groups (“dialectal levelling”) can identify common new ways of speaking (e.g., koines), like Los Angeles Vernacular Spanish that is specific to the region. The multilingual lexical melting pots and potpourris that occur in Los Angeles and the pull to incorporate these into dominant languages (e.g., Anglicization) becomes another example of this permeability and may be a factor in how the two Los Angeles lingua francas of English and Spanish may work together, separately and bilingually. The dynamic interactions and resultant networks between racialized pan-ethnicities and lingua francas also should take into account ideologies, attitudes and sociolinguistic hierarchies as intervening variables. While recognizing the incipient answers to our question, we keep in mind the comment made by Soja (2014) about “the impossibility of completely capturing the essence of a place like Los Angeles, where seemingly all places are combined simultaneously, each separate and distinct while also intertwined and connected”, especially because of immigration. And from every quarter’s teeming shores have poured a pool of cultures so diverse that contemporary Los Angeles represents (re-presents) the world in connected urban microcosms, reproducing in situ the customary colors and confrontations of more than a hundred different homelands. (Soja 2014: 61–62) While this is most apt regarding the immigrant groups that contribute to the current increase in linguistic diversity and is de rigeur regarding effects of globalization, we do not lose sight of the continuing presence, activity and lives of the many indigenous who continue to live, be attracted to and re-settle in Yang-na, for whom language maintenance, revitalization and even reclamation continues to be a high moral, social and political objective and contribution to the language ecology of Los Angeles.

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Note 1 Reynaldo F. Macías, Professor of Chicano studies, Education and Sociolinguistics at UCLA, was born and raised in East Los Angeles, went to public schools and colleges in greater Los Angeles and has lived in the area for over 50 years.  Arturo Díaz, doctoral student in Spanish and Portuguese at UCLA, was born on the eastside of the city of Los Angeles and raised mainly in Atwater Village near Glendale. He has lived in the area over 20 years.  Ameer Drane, doctoral student in Spanish and Portuguese at UCLA, was born and raised in Illinois, has traveled extensively and is new to Los Angeles, having arrived in 2015.  We also thank Elpida Petraki, doctoral student in applied linguistics at UCLA, for her early bibliographic and conceptual research help. Born and raised in Greece, she has been in Los Angeles since 2012.

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Language ecology of the City of Angels 199 Cho, Grace, Kyung-Sook Cho and Lucy Tse (1997) Why Ethnic Minorities Want to Develop Their Heritage Language. The Case of Korean Americans. Language, Culture and Curriculum 10(2): 106–12. City of West Hollywood (2016) Russian Advisory Board. Online available at: www.weho. org/city-hall/boards-commissions/advisory-boards/russian-advisory-board (accessed 22 May 2016). Days of Dialogue (1996–2015) Days of Dialogue. Online available at: www.daysofdialogue. org/ (accessed 12 November 2016). De La Loza, Sandra (2011) The Pocho Research Society Field Guide to L.A. Monuments and Murals of Erased and Invisible Histories. Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. Do, Anh (2016) In Little Saigon, Some Latinos Are Learning Vietnamese to Get Ahead. In: Los Angeles Times (16 May). Online available at: www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-meln-viet-latino-20160516-snap-story.html (accessed 1 June 2016). Ethington, Phillip, William Frey and Dowell Myers (2001) The Racial Resegregation of Los Angeles County, 1940–2000. Los Angeles: USC Price School of Public Policy. Fogelson, Robert M. (1967) The Fragmented Metropolis. Los Angeles, 1850–1930. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fong, Timothy (1994) The First Suburban Chinatown. The Remaking of Monterey Park, California. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Forbes, Jack (1995) The Uses of Racial and Ethnic Terms in America. Management by Manipulation. Wicazo Sa Review 11(2): 53–65. Fought, Carmen (2003) Chicano English in Context. New York: PalgraveMacmillan. Fox, Jonathan and Gaspar Rivera-Salgado (2004) Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the United States. La Jolla: UCSD Centers for US-Mexico Studies & Comparative Migration Studies. Giffoyle, Timothy (1998) White Cities, Linguistic Turns, and Disneyland. The New Paradigm for Urban History. Reviews in American History 26(1): 175–204. Godenzzi, Juan (2006) Spanish as a Lingua Franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 26: 100–22. Guarnizo, Luis, Arturo Sánchez and Elizabeth Roach (1999) Mistrust, Fragmented Solidarity, and Transnational Migration. Columbians in New York City and Los Angeles. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22(2): 367–96. Hamilton, Nora and Norma Stolz Chinchilla (2001) Seeking Community in a Global City. Guatemalans and Salvadorans in Los Angeles. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Harvey, Steve (2011) Devil of a Time With the City of Angels’ Name. In: Los Angeles Times (26 June). Online available at: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/26/ local/la-me-0626-then-20110626 (accessed 12 November 2016). Haugen, Einar (1972) The Ecology of Language. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Hill, Jane (2008) The Everyday Language of White Racism. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Hunt, Darnell and Ana-Christina Ramón (eds) (2010) Black Los Angeles. American Dreams and Racial Realities. New York: New York University Press. Jeon, Mihyon (2008) Korean Heritage Language Maintenance and Language Ideology. Heritage Language Journal 6(2): 54–71. Karapetian, Shushan (2014) How Do I Teach My Kids My Broken Armenian? A Study of Eastern Armenian Heritage Language Speakers in Los Angeles. PhD dissertation, UCLA. Lavadenz, Magaly (2005) Como Hablar En Silencio (Like Speaking in Silence). Issues of Language, Culture, and Identity of Central Americans in Los Angeles. In: Building on

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Strength. Language and Literacy in Latino Families and Communities. Ana Celia Zentella (ed.), 93–109. New York: Teacher’s College Press. Leap, William (1993) American Indian English. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Leibowitz, Arnold (1984) The Official Character of Language in the United States: Literacy Requirements for Immigration, Citizenship, and Entrance into American Life. Aztlán 15(1): 25–70. Li, Wei (2009) Ethno-Burb. The New Ethnic Community in Urban America. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Lin, Jan and Paul Robinson (2005) Spatial Disparities in the Expansion of the Chinese Ethnoburb of Los Angeles. GeoJournal 64(1): 51–61. Lo, Adrienne (1999) Codeswitching, Speech Community Membership, and the Construction of Ethnic Identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3(4): 461–79. López, David (1996) Language. Diversity and Assimilation. In: Ethnic Los Angeles. Roger Waldinger and Mehdi Bozorgmehr (eds), 139–63. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. López, David and Yen Espiritu (1990) Panethnicity in the United States. A Theoretical Framework. Ethnic and Racial Studies 13(2): 198–224. Loukaitou-Sideris, Anastasia (2002) Regeneration of Urban Commercial Strips. Ethnicity and Space in Three Los Angeles Neighborhoods. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 19(4): 334–50. McHugh, Margie and Madeline Morawski (2016) Immigrants and WIOA Services. Comparison of Socio-Demographic Characteristics of Native- and Foreign-Born Adults in Los Angeles County, CA. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute. Macías, Reynaldo F. (2014) Benefits of Bilingualism. In the Eye of the Beholder? In: The Bilingual Advantage. Language, Literacy, and the US Labor Market. Rebecca Callahan and Patricia Gándara (eds), 16–44. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Macías, Reynaldo F., Guillermo Flores, Donaldo Figueroa and Luis Aragon (1973) A Study of Unincorporated East Los Angeles. Los Angeles: Aztlán Publications. McWilliams, Carey (1973[1946]). Southern California. Island on the Land. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith Publisher. Min, Pyong-Gap (1996) Caught in the Middle. Korean Communities in New York and Los Angeles. Berkeley: University of California Press. Min, Pyong-Gap and Mehdi Bozorgmehr (2000) Immigrant Entrepreneurship and Business Patterns. A Comparison of Koreans and Iranians in Los Angeles. The International Review 34(3): 707–38. Myers, Dowell and Julie Park (2001) Racially Balanced Cities in Southern California, 1980–2000. Los Angeles: USC Price School of Public Policy. Ocampo, Anthony (2016) The Latinos of Asia. How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ochoa, Enrique and Gilda Ochoa (eds) (2005) Latino LA. Transformations, Communities, and Activism. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Paral, Rob and Associates (2011) Measures of Immigrant Integration in Los Angeles County. Los Angeles: University of Southern California Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. Parodi, Claudia (1993) Bilingüísmo y préstamo léxico. Español chicano vs. español mexicano. Mester 22(2): 211–25. ——— (2003) Contacto de Dialectos del Español en Los Ángeles. In: Ensayos de lengua y pedagogía. Giorgio Perissinotto (ed.), 23–38. Santa Barbara: University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute.

Language ecology of the City of Angels 201 ——— (2004) Contacto de Dialectos en Los Angeles: Español Chicano y Español Salvadoreño. In: Séptimo Encuentro Internacional de lingüística en el Noroeste (volume 2). Isabel Barreras and Nirna Castro Llamus (eds), 277–93. Sonora: Universidad de Sonora. ——— (2006) Multilinguismo y Diglosia. Los Ángeles. In: El Español en América: Diatopía, Diacronía e Historiografía. Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas (ed.), 433–56. México: UNAM. ——— (2009) Normatividad y Diglosia en Los Ángeles. Un Modelo de Contacto Lingüístico. In: Normatividad y Uso Lingüístico. Fulvia Colombo Airoldi and Ángeles Soler Arrechalde (eds), 47–67. México: UNAM. ——— (2011) El otro México. Español Chicano, Koinezación y Diglosia en Los Angeles, CA. In: Realismo en el Análisis de Corpus Orales. Primer Coloquio de Cambio y Variación Lingüística. Pedro Martín-Butragueño (ed.), 217–43. México: El Colegio de México. ——— (2013) Why Numbers Matter. The Latino Population and Its Latest Expansion in the United States. Voices 1(1): 3–8. ——— (2014) El Español y las Lenguas Indígenas de los Estados Unidos. In: Historia Sociolingüística de Mexico (volume 3). Espacio, Contexto, y Discurso Político. Rebecca Barraga Villanueva and Pedro Martín Butragueño (eds), 1525–68. México: El Colegio de México. ——— (2014) Latinos and Other Minorities in Los Angeles. Their Languages. Voices 2(1): 33–43. Pastor, Manuel and Rhonda Ortiz (2009) Immigrant Integration in Los Angeles. Strategic Directions for Funders. Los Angeles: USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. Popkin, Eric (1999) Guatemalan Mayan Migration to Los Angeles. Constructing Transnational Linkages in the Context of the Settlement Process. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22(2): 267–89. Preston, Steven (2012) Minority-Majority Suburbs Change the San Gabriel Valley. In: Planning Los Angeles. David Sloane (ed.), 92–8. Chicago: American Planning Association. Price, John (1968) The Migration and Adaptation of American Indians to Los Angeles. Human Organization 27(2): 168–75. Pulido, Laura (2006) Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left. Radical Activism in Los Angeles. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pulido, Laura, Laura Barraclough and Wendy Cheng (2012) A People’s Guide to Los Angeles. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rao, Sonya (2015) Language Futures From Uprooted Pasts. Emergent Language Activism in the Mayan Diaspora of the United States. MA thesis, UCLA. Rieff, David (1991) Los Angeles. Capital of the Third World. New York: Simon and Schuster. Rios-Bustamante, Antonio (1992) Mexican Los Angeles. A Narrative and Pictorial History. Encino, CA: Floricanto Press. Rocco, Raymond (1996) Latino Los Angeles. Reframing Boundaries/Borders. In: The City. Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century. Allen Scott and Edward Soja (eds), 365–89. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rolle, Andrew (1981) Los Angeles. From Pueblo to the City of the Future. San Francisco: Boyd & Fraser. Rosenthal, Nicholas (2012) Reimagining Indian Country. Native American Migration and Identity in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

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13 Sydney’s intersecting worlds of languages and things Emi Otsuji and Alastair Pennycook

Sahp 仔, kugua and korola A man of South Asian-background, who has arrived in his white van at the Kyeemagh market gardens to collect vegetables, walks out into the field to pick bitter melons. The suburb of Kyeemagh (with about 10% Greek, 3% Lebanese and 2.5% Cypriot overseas born population) sits at the intersection between the north-south line of older Greek and Lebanese migration in the inner west suburbs of Banksia (8% Macedonian, 4% Chinese, 3% Lebanese) and Arncliffe (8% Lebanese, 5% Macedonian, 3% Chinese) or the older Greek-dominated suburbs that run down the west shore of Botany Bay (Brighton-Le-Sands, Monterey, Ramsgate – the names reflecting their British and other early inhabitants), and the Chinese dominated suburbs to the west (Rockdale – 11% Chinese, 8% Nepalese, 4% Macedonian; Kogarah – 12% Chinese, 7% Nepalese, 5% Bangladeshi; Hurstville – 34% Chinese, 5% Hong Kong, 3% Nepalese) (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016). By mutual and silent agreement with the female farmer of Chinese background, who is busy sorting vegetables at the entrance of a run-down cottage, he picks the bitter melons for 2 dollars a kilo (which he then sells for 4 dollars in his shop). The old wooden workers’ cottage with its brick chimney rising above a rusting corrugated iron roof, broken fly screens on the doors and corrugated iron dunny (toilets) suggests old farms in the Australian outback. Yet the Cantonese radio program cascading through an open window, the Chinese New Year sign above the door – 安平入出 (reading from right to left, chat yap peng on in Cantonese; chu ru ping an in Putonghua [Mandarin Chinese]: safety to those who leave or enter) – the Chinese calendars on the wall, the blackened rice pots and woks in the dark kitchens, the vegetables being washed in the large concrete trough, the conical straw hats of the workers pushing wheelbarrows and digging the rows of vegetables by hand, all suggest rural China. And yet the housing estates nudging the edges of these vegetable strips, the red kangaroo on a Qantas aircraft tailfin moving beyond one of the hedges, the Korean Air Boeing 747 coming in low overhead (in 2015 there were just under 40 million passenger movements through Sydney airport of which 14 million – about one third – were international), the stacks of shipping containers further down the road (total container trade through Port Botany reached 1,058,587 Twenty-Foot

Sydney: intersections of languages 205 Equivalent Units [TEUs] in 2015/2016), remind us that this is neither rural Australia nor rural China: This is only a few kilometres from the centre of Sydney and a busy transport and industrial hub. It is here that these Chinese market gardeners have made their home. This scene immediately raises some questions for how we start to understand a city such as Sydney. It is located in this book as part of the global north, yet it very obviously sits in the physical south. It is a wealthy, global city: Average monthly disposable salary is about A$4,554 (Guangzhou A$1290, Dhaka A$ 465); one-bedroom apartment rent in the city centre: A$2475 (Guangzhou A$926, Dhaka A$203); 1 kg potatoes A$2.82 (Guangzhou A$1.44, Dhaka A$ 0.39) (Numbeo 2016). But equally important, Sydney is a city of long-term migration. Following the European invasion in the late eighteenth century, it is migration that has accounted for much of the population growth of Australia, from involuntary migrants shipped as convicts – about 80,000 people arriving between 1790 and 1840, still vastly outnumbered by the Indigenous population (around 400,000) – to 600,000 new arrivals (from Europe, China and elsewhere) in the 1850s following the discovery of gold. Through the ugly days of the White Australia policy, migration was encouraged from the UK and Ireland or European countries where the population was deemed White. Postwar migration shifted from displaced European victims of World War II (Poles, Yugoslavs, Latvians, Ukrainians, Hungarians) to a broader migration policy after the final dropping of the White Australia policy in the 1970s. Political unrest and other factors in the latter part of the twentieth century led to migration from Vietnam, Lebanon, Yugoslavia and China. In New South Wales today, four out of every ten people are either migrants or the children of migrants. In Sydney, 36.2% of people had both parents born in Australia and 52.1% of people had both parents born overseas. Today, 58.1% of people in Sydney were born in Australia, the most common other countries of birth being China, England, India, New Zealand and Vietnam. Sixty percent of people report speaking only English at home, with other common languages including Arabic (4.4%), Mandarin (3.3%), Cantonese (3.3%), Vietnamese (2.1%) and Greek (2.0%) (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016). Kyeemagh, as we discussed, sits at the intersection of these changing diversities. Different parts of the economy are connected in different ways to their own multilingual networks. From the financial markets and their connections to Tokyo, Beijing, London, Paris and New York, to Pacific island networks that connect migration, labour and music across cities that rim the Pacific (Sydney, Auckland, Los Angeles) and the islands at its centre (Pennycook 2015), Sydney is a site of intersecting trajectories of people, languages and products. The inhabitants and the networks in which they are involved link the city in multiple ways to different regions and economies of the world. As Massey (2005: 154) puts it, cities “are peculiarly large, intense and heterogeneous constellations of trajectories, demanding of complex negotiation.” Here we want to start with some of the ways Chinese, Lebanese and Bangladeshi networks intersect as these Chinese migrants from the geographical North but the global south live out their global south lives in this global north city in the geographical South. As Santos

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(2012: 51) remarks, the south “also exists in the global north in the form of excluded, silenced and marginalised populations, such as undocumented immigrants, the unemployed, ethnic or religious minorities, and victims of sexism, homophobia and racism.” From our perspective, it is the intersections that matter here, the ways in which workers and the things they produce are part of complex webs of interaction between people, linguistic resources, artifacts and places. The bitter melon picker is of Bangladeshi background (although the farmer calls him Yin dou gwai, 印度鬼, Indian foreigner) and, according to the farmer, runs a “sahp 仔” /sh ʌptsai/, a small shop (a localized Cantonese word combining the Cantonised pronunciation of “shop” with a diminutive ending, a common expression among older Cantonese speaking migrants in Australia). As we will argue in this chapter, both the expression – with its history of migration from rural Guangdong province, relocalization in Australia, and its enunciation on a market garden beneath the flight paths into Sydney airport – and the shop itself – with its goods and artifacts and languages in a multiethnic neighborhood – point to moments where multiple trajectories intersect. As much as interlocutors and their linguistic utterances matter, “sahp 仔” and bitter melons matter here, too. These vegetables (kugua 苦瓜 in Chinese; korola, usta or uche in Bangla, depending on both variety of melon and language; see Excerpt 3 for further discussion) are important to both communities, and they will sell well in his shop in Rockdale to the south, with its large immigrant – but particularly Chinese and South Asian – population. It is with such moments of intersection, as people, foods, place and everyday practices cross each other’s paths, that we wish to start this account of metrolingual Sydney. As previous discussions of metrolingualism have suggested (Pennycook and Otsuji 2015a), our approach to the city is not one that starts from above, counting languages and people, mapping the demolinguistic areas of a city. Instead, we have argued, we need to start from below, with everyday interaction, with the ways people and cities interact in their daily lives. This focus on metrolingualism is part of our attempt to understand linguistic resources in relation to the city, to show how everyday multilingualism operates in markets, cafes, streets, shops and other social city spaces and how everyday multilingualism involves the use of mobile linguistic resources in relation to urban space. Metrolingualism makes central the relations between language practices and the city. From this perspective language in the city concerns the interactions between language, people, objects and places, and this is why we need to start this account with the soil, with vegetable growers and with their understanding of their products before showing how these are part of a complex world of linguistic and artifactual networks and intersections.

Western vegetables (鬼佬菜 ) and Chinese market gardens Chinese immigrants started working as market gardeners in the middle of the nineteenth century (taking over lands used by Europeans which in turn had been taken from the Indigenous Eora nation) as they moved into various occupations, from small businesses, such as general stores (often run by families and groups of Chinese) to fishing and market gardening. By the end of the nineteenth century

Sydney: intersections of languages 207 there were, according to the locally produced Tung Wah News (東華新報), about 5,000 Chinese market gardeners in New South Wales (of whom about 2,000 were around Sydney), making up about two thirds of all market gardeners in the state (Williams n.d.: paragraph 5). For expanding cities such as Sydney as well as rural pastoral and mining concerns, Chinese market gardens came to play a significant role in the provision of fresh produce (McGowan 2005). As with the general stores, market gardens provided an independent means of making a livelihood that also similarly relied on cooperative organization, low wages and family or clan control over the business. These market gardens were almost invariably on the edges and outskirts of towns, a result of the marginal and discriminatory position of Chinese workers in Australia (Fitzgerald 2007) as well as the availability of cheap land and water. Yet these peripheries, like the sandy soil round Botany Bay, are no longer on the edge of the city. The gardens at Kyeemagh are now squeezed between the airport and suburban housing, while the gardens at La Perouse are now under threat from container terminals, and, more directly (the subject of an ongoing dispute) an expanding cemetery, itself a diverse and spreading multilingual and multifaith space. While the old Chinese-run gardens, dating back to the nineteenth century, used to supply the Chinatown shops and restaurants around Haymarket in central Sydney, much of their business has now moved to the expanding suburb of Hurstville to the south and needs to be seen in the context of a growing and increasingly affluent Chinese population and changing food tastes in multicultural Sydney. In the Sydney Basin, 80% of market gardeners, as James (2008) notes, are from nonEnglish-speaking backgrounds. Alongside the Chinese are Lebanese, Italian, Maltese, Vietnamese and Cambodian, and these clearly link along trading lines from market gardens to markets, shops and restaurants. Thus these gardens are connected through large social and linguistic networks across these local regions, with many of these ties, for the Chinese and Lebanese (but less for the Cambodians and Vietnamese because of their migration via refugee camps), linking to families, regions and neighbouring villages in China and Lebanon (James 2008). But as local economies change, so, too, do the networks and intersections between them. As the example of the bitter melon picker shows, it may no longer be Chinese growers selling to Chinese markets for Chinese shops and restaurants: Bangladeshi shop owners may also be interested in bitter melons and Lebanese shop owners may come looking for parsley. The elderly Chinese couple working in these market gardens moved to Australia from Baitu (白土镇) in Guangdong – he in the early 1990s, she some years later. He worked for various market gardeners; she worked as a nanny for a Chinese family (for A$150 a week – less than one fifth of the average weekly disposable salary), before being employed briefly as a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant. Eventually they started their own vegetable garden, living in the small, dilapidated cottage by the gardens and working long hours. Both around 60 years old, they are finding the work hard and are suffering from various ailments from their long working history (she shows us the patches she wears to ease her arthritis). Life is not easy for this couple. In the interview, they speak colloquial, rural Cantonese from the Gaoyao (高要) region of Guangdong (there is a long history of migration from

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Gaoyao district to Sydney; see Williams 1999), with minimal English for some names of vegetables and numbers.1 They work almost every day, or whenever merchants come to pick up the vegetables, selling mainly to local grocers, as they don’t have their own vehicle. When the “Sahp” owner of Bangladeshi background arrives to buy vegetables, communication is achieved with remarkably little use of any apparently shared linguistic code (she nods in reply to his “tomorrow, tomorrow”). Over the years, it seems, through their routinized buying and selling, they have established a way of communicating that operates across codes. Their participation in the multilingual networks of Sydney is part of an older, Cantonese community that depends on other linguistic and commercial mediators to survive. Excerpt 1 FF (female farmer), MF (male farmer), R (researcher) Chinese (Cantonese) characters 1

FF: 而家做農民,以前啲菜又係差唔多嗰個單價,嗰啲芥蘭而家又係! (The price of vegetables is nearly the same as before, the price of the gai lan is the same)

2

R: 係呀? 一直都一樣呀,都幾呀年囉喎! (Really? The same as before, it’s been some 20 years already!)

3

FF: 係上海白升咗啲 . (Except for shanghai bok choy, which has gone up a bit.)

4

MF: 廿呀幾年囉. (Some 20 years already.)

5

R: 以前係種乜嘢菜呀? 即係會唔會多啲 . . . 多啲其他 . . . 黎巴嫩呀, (What kind of vegetables did you grow before? Are you growing more . . . other types . . . like Lebanese,)

6

FF: 而家多 . . . 而家好賣. (We grow more now . . . it sells better now.)

7

MF: 而家多 . . . Parsley呀. (We grow more now . . . like parsley.)

8

R: 係呀, 我都中意食 . . . 即係而家同以前有乜嘢唔同呀 . . . 種嘅菜? (yeah, I like it too . . . So what’s the difference between now and before . . . the sort of vegetables you grow?)

9

MF: 唐人菜就差唔多. (Chinese vegetables are similar.)

Sydney: intersections of languages 209 10 R: 唐人菜差唔多呀 (Chinese vegetables are similar to before) 11 MF: 就鬼佬菜而家多 . . . 多 . . . (We’re growing more . . . more . . . western vegetables now) 12 R: 鬼佬菜? 邊啲係鬼佬菜? (Western vegetable? What are western vegetables?) 13 14 15 16 17

MF: Parsley, FF: Parsley, MF: Dill, thyme, mint, R: Dill, thyme, mint, MF: 即是嗰啲香 . . . 香 . . . 香菜. (Those . . . her . . . her . . . herbs.)

They grow a variety of Chinese vegetables including ku gua (bitter melon), een choy (Chinese spinach), bok choy (Chinese cabbage), dong gua (winter melon), taro, choy sum (Chinese flowering cabbage), Shanghai bok choi (Shanghai cabbage), gai lan (Chinese broccoli) and spring onions. The demand for Chinese vegetables has stayed more or less the same over the last decade, but so has the price, and they struggle to make a living. To increase their potential income, they started to grow parsley, dill, thyme and mint, which sell better (“而家好賣”). Despite the long history of Chinese involvement in market gardens, for this couple, residents in Australia for a little over 20 years, there remains an important contrast between Chinese (唐人菜) and Western vegetables (鬼佬菜) (lines 9 and 11). The term gwai lou coi (鬼佬菜) uses the common Cantonese term for foreigner (or more literally “ghost person”, referring to white-skinned foreigners, sometimes also translated as “foreign devil”) and refers to those vegetables and herbs (parsley, mint, dill) that are rarely used in Chinese cooking. At the same time, however, that parsley is a “foreign” vegetable to them, so the shop where their bitter melon will be sold by a Yin dou gwai (印度鬼, Indian-foreigner) is a “sahp”, a local Australian-Cantonese term.

Parsley networks: from growing to distribution and consumption The vegetables the Chinese market gardeners grow, both Chinese (唐人菜) and foreign (鬼佬菜) vegetables, may travel across the city to a Bangladeshi-owned shop, a Lebanese-run fruit and vegetable kiosk in a more affluent northern neighborhood, or a Chinese restaurant in Hurstville to the south. When we asked, “What are western vegetables?” in the previous Excerpt 1, the first item named was “parsley”, whose status as part of Lebanese cuisine gives it a particular role in the local/ foreign dynamics of Sydney. A small family-run Lebanese fruit and vegetable shop in an old shopping plaza on the opposite side of the harbour sells tabouli, a

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traditional Middle Eastern vegetarian dish which requires plenty of finely chopped parsley and mint. The shop is squeezed between a Japanese grocer, a butcher (owned by a young man of Anglo-Saxon background who claimed to use mobile phone translation apps to communicate with his customers), a Vietnamese nail salon, a picture framing shop, a Chinese acupuncture clinic, Indian Bollywood party jewellery and clothes hire shop, and Singaporean, Japanese (rāmen), Himalayan and Ethiopian restaurants. The multilingual, multimodal and multisensory environment (Pennycook and Otsuji 2015b) of this small shopping mall offers different languages, different smells, different people, different artifacts and different practices. Jean, the owner of the store, has gone to Sydney’s main produce market and purchased various fresh vegetables and flowers every day for the last 33 years (except Mondays) and supplies vegetables to various shops within the complex and the local community (Pennycook and Otsuji 2014b). Jean and his sister-in-law, Angela, who runs a little Lebanese bread and sweet kiosk opposite his greengrocer’s shop, started to talk about Chinese market gardeners. Excerpt 2. (J: Jean, A: Angela [Jean’s sister in law], R: Researcher) 1 2 3 4 5

6

R: Do you always go to the Lebanese growers [in the market]? J: No. Not much – doesn’t matter no, I don’t have to go Lebanese. Because in the market, you got all the international. You got the Greek, Lebanese, Italian, Spanish . . . everything, R: Maltese and Chinese J: Yes, yes. Most of the vegetables . . . the herbs, the radish, shallot, all Chinese. All Chinese. A: Nothing beats them. It’s funny, because I live in Bexley and I buy my parsley, shallots ‘cause they come straight from the farm . . . to a Chinese lady . . . and I tried to go to the farm in Brighton and they were dearer, more dear, than hers. J: They [at the market gardens] work very hard. Work very hard.

While the produce sold by Jean is mainly from the produce market, Angela buys the parsley and herbs for her tabouli from local Chinese grocers, who in turn source their goods from Chinese market gardens similar to the one introduced in Excerpt 1. Despite the market gardeners’ lack of transport and limited resources in the gardens under the flight path into the airport, parsley (gwai lou coi 鬼佬菜) travels across and crisscrosses the city and becomes part of the linguistic (gwai lou coi, parsley, パセリ, ‫)ﺑﻘﺪوﻧﺲ‬, artifactual and culinary repertoires of the city. Jean’s remark “You got the Greek, Lebanese, Italian, Spanish . . . everything” also points to the common understanding that “grocery business” is an intersectional site of many mixed and diverse trajectories (Massey 2005) of language, people, price and products.

Sydney: intersections of languages 211 Thus, even seemingly insignificant parsley (or bitter melons as we discuss later) displayed in any ordinary grocery shop may embrace individual, cultural and linguistic trajectories and stories. Parsley, or gwai lou coi, connects people and businesses through many levels, from growing to distribution and consumption. An important element of the way the city is both understood and produced is through the networks that intersect people, languages, places and artifacts/products. For the discussion in this chapter, the importance in the term gwai lou coi lies in the way it locates this particular intersection between the lifeworld of these workers, their language and their understanding of inside and outside worlds; of the “foreign vegetables” that have become more profitable; and the role of such non-foreign vegetables as bitter melon, which is about to head off to a Bangladeshi-run grocery store in another neighbourhood.

Intersections We have made the idea of intersections central to our discussion in this chapter since it emerged as a way of accounting for the ways we started to see people, objects and places interacting. Akin to the notion of intersectionality, it has become clear that we need to focus on the many different elements that come together at any moment of interaction and to focus on those moments when these intersections become most salient. The development of the idea of intersectionality in the social sciences was a result of the realization of the problems of isolating particular aspects of identity at the expense of others. While a focus on gender might shed particular light on certain forms of discrimination, it was always problematic to take gender out of its class, cultural or racial contexts. Arguing against the notion of a “universal basis for feminism, one which must be found in an identity assumed to exist cross-culturally”, Butler (1990: 3) suggests that gender is “not always constituted coherently or consistently in different historical contexts” since it “intersects with racial, class, ethnic, sexual and regional modalities of discursively constituted identities.” According to Block and Corona (2016: 509–510), the current consensus in identity studies is that it is “multilayered and complex” and that “different dimensions of identity cannot be dealt with in isolation from one another.” To insist on separate aspects of identity and to ignore intersectionality, they suggest, “is to produce research that can only ever provide an incomplete portrayal of research informants.” Focusing on intersectionality is not just to pay attention to a multiplicity, a diversity or a range of additional identities, but rather to appreciate that we cannot understand what is going on without seeing the different relational effects of gender, race, class, sexual orientation and so on. It is not just a totality but a shifting set of relations that are different in different moments and different places. In order not to appear to be co-opting this term with its long critical history, we have chosen to talk of intersections rather than intersectionality. We, nonetheless, draw similar lessons from this field, suggesting that we cannot understand an interaction over some bitter melons and gwai lou coi (鬼佬菜) in a market garden without bringing in the history of Chinese migration to Australia, the changing

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economic roles of different generations of Chinese, the significance of different food items for different communities, the linguistic resources of different interactants as they negotiate products and prices, and the history of interactions between these particular people, their understandings of their own locatedness in terms of soil, vegetables and language. From a metrolinguistic perspective, then, we need to focus on the intersections that occur between multiple actors (where actants are not necessarily assumed to be human). From this point of view, rather than being individual, biographical or something that people possess, repertoires are better considered as an emergent property deriving from the interactions between people, artifacts and space. Kell’s (2015: 442) discussion of how “things make people happen” suggests that “objects, in and of themselves, have consequences.” This is to give equal weight to “the vast spillage of things” that become “part of hybrid assemblages: concretions, settings and flows” (Thrift 2007: 9, emphasis in the original). It is to take more seriously the idea that “technological and natural materialities” might themselves be understood as “actors alongside and within us” as “vitalities, trajectories, and powers irreducible to the meanings, intentions, or symbolic values humans invest in them” (Bennett 2010b: 47). Our understanding of the intersectional metrolinguistics of Sydney, therefore, stresses the relations between artifacts (such as bitter melons), places (such as market gardens, or fruit and vegetable shops) and people (such as buyers, sellers, cooks or producers). It is through the locatedness of these intersections that we can understand the shifting moments and assemblages of the city. And it is to another interaction over bitter melons in a Bangladeshi corner store that we now turn.

Usse Usse, have you got usse? Bangladeshi bitter melon Lakemba, a suburb in southwest Sydney, is generally understood as a “Lebanese neighbourhood”, a perception deriving not only from its large Lebanese population but also from its prominent mosque and a sense of Lebanese being the default Arabic community in Sydney. Only 32.4% of people living in the suburb of Lakemba were born in Australia; other top responses for country of birth are 13.4% Bangladesh, 5.2% Lebanon, 4.2% Pakistan, 3.9% Vietnam, 3.8% India, 3.2% China, 3.1% Indonesia, 2.8% Greece, 1.3% Fiji, 1.2% Egypt, 1.2% New Zealand, 1.1% Burma, 1.1% Philippines and 0.9% Iraq. Meanwhile, 18.2% of people living in Lakemba speak Arabic, other widely spoken languages being 16.0% Bengali, 14.4% English only, 7.3% Urdu, 5.0% Greek, 5.0% Vietnamese, 4.2% Indonesian and 3.4% Cantonese (Lakemba 2016). Walking down the street running parallel to the station, we pass shop signs announcing “HUT- BAZAR: fruits & mixed business – Bangladesh, India, Pakistani, Island, Lebanese, African & Asian grocery” and “Bismillah Asian grocery” (bismillah; the first word in the Quran meaning “In the name of Allah” in Arabic). With varied local economies and businesses ranging from travel agents, Internet cafés, fishmongers, butchers (halal), jewelry shops, spice shops and corner grocery shops, people, products/ artifacts and languages are organized around the mosque and Muslim-ness (halal

Sydney: intersections of languages 213 food, prayer times, languages) that hold the area together. There are more complex sets of linguistic, regional and migratory affiliations at play across the neighborhood than simply understanding the area as being a Lebanese precinct. On the opposite side of the station there is a cluster of Bangladeshi-run businesses, such as a restaurant, a men’s hair salon, a spice shop, a few fishmongers (which also sell frozen goat meat and frozen fish). But what stands out most are the small mixed grocery shops – Sahp as a Chinese market gardener might say – and these shops have a distinct spatial and sensory organization (indeed, a Bangladeshi mixed corner shop in Tokyo has a very similar spatial and sensory organization).2 Normally, fresh fruits and vegetables are displayed at the entrance of the shop (bitter melons can often be found here). As we enter one of the shops, we smell spices and dried fish amidst people talking, browsing, touching objects on the shelves and digging up frozen fish from the bottom of the freezer (which makes a very particular “rubbing” noise of plastic bags coming from ice stuck between the products). Almost all the shops of this kind – the sites of multimodal, multilingual and multisensory intersections – have several freezers at the centre of the floor, and conversations are often held around the freezer as people choose frozen fish, frozen halal goat or lamb meat and vegetables. Excerpt 3 takes place around one such freezer at the intersection between different people, food and artifacts during our ethnographic observation at one of the Bangladeshi-owned corner shops. We were following a female customer of Bangladeshi background (FCB) who was shopping in Lakemba. A shop owner (SO) was helping FCB to choose Rui fish (Bangla name for a freshwater fish resembling carp) when the following interaction occurs between a customer (NCB) who had just entered the shop and the shop owner. After walking around checking products (he looked both lost and excited), NCB turned around and spoke to SO, who was taking Rui fish from the bottom of the freezer for FCB. Excerpt 3: (SO: Shop owner, NCB: New customer; Cu Customer)3 English: plain, Bangla: italic, Arabic: bold 1 SO Aa. . . . shokto hoie gese (Fish is stuck. Hard) [to FCB] [trying to dig out the fish packet from the freezer – a lot of noise of packets and ice] Another customer enters 2 Cu: Assalamualaikum [greeting SO] 3 SO: Alaikum-assalam [to the customer]. 4 NCB: Usse Usse, Have you got usse? Like, what is it for English? What is it called? [trying to recall] 5 SO: This one vegetable? 6 NCB: Yes, it’s a sort of vegetables. 7 SO: Usta? 8 NCB: Usta Usta. 9 SO: Yea yea this one have. 10 NCB: Amnar ase? (Do you have?)

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SO: oh, Bangladeshi vai (Bangladeshi Bro)? NCB: Aaa? SO: ha. NCB: You are from Bangladesh? SO: yea. NCB: oh . . . Amake usta den (Can you give me some usta) [to shop assistant]

It was apparently NCB’s first visit to the shop (and perhaps Lakemba) and he was evidently not familiar with the layout and products of the shop or with the area more generally (and compare the customary greeting – assalamualaikum; alaikum-assalam between customer and shop owner in lines 2 and 3). Perhaps because he was deeply immersed in checking a variety of South Asian products, he did not appear to have recognized that SO and FCB were discussing Rui fish in Bangla or that the shop was owned by someone of Bangladeshi background. In line 4, when he decided to ask for bitter melons, NCB spoke in English and struggled to find an English word for a small variety of bitter melon, even struggling too, it seems, for the word in Bangla: “Usse Usse”. He may have conflated Usta and Uche, as they are used interchangeably for one variety of bitter melon. But SO immediately made the right guess and asked if he was looking for “Usta” in line 7, affirmed by NCB “Usta, Usta”. It is this moment, as he notices that SO knows the term “usta”, that NCB finally seems to have registered that SO speaks Bangla and asks in Bangla if the shop has usta (Amnar ase?). Of importance to our analysis here are not only the linguistic resources available here – the conversation in Bangla over the freezer centring around the frozen fish, the assalamualaikum greeting, the confusion over the term for small bitter melon, the negotiation of code between English and Bangla – but also the conditions of possibility that enable this conversation – the material artifacts, the spatial layout, the people moving about. Here in the shop, various individual repertoires (that may include not only people in the shop but also Chinese market gardeners and the bitter melon picker), material objects (fish, fridge, usta), senses (smell of dried fish and spice, rubbing sounds of frozen fish in the fridge), language (Arabic greeting as a default expression in Muslim community, English and Bangla linguistic resources), activities (selling, asking, explaining, digging out frozen fish), more broadly economic and environmental relations (the economy and politics of fishing) and class and gender (who owns the shop, who does the shopping) intermingle, resulting in a particular spatial repertoire: a totality of resources available in and through an integrated activity between language, people and its surroundings (Pennycook and Otsuji 2014a, 2014b, 2015a, 2015b). Metrolingual spatial repertoires refer to the ways in which linguistic resources, everyday tasks and social space are intertwined. Our central focus has not only been on the diversity of linguistic resources in “unusual” combinations, but also on the dynamic relations between semiotic resources, activities, artifacts and space. This allows us to expand the notion of intersections from identity (Block and Corona 2016) to the spatial: the intersecting city. As displayed on one of the shops’

Sydney: intersections of languages 215 signs “fruits & mixed business – Bangladesh, India, Pakistani, Island, Lebanese, African & Asian grocery”, this is indeed the space where people and products of various geo-economical and geo-historical backgrounds intersect. Excerpt 4 shows further that in the same way as Lakemba cannot be simply labeled a Lebanese precinct, a Bangladesh corner shop doesn’t represent merely Bangladeshi cultural and linguistic space. Excerpt 4. (CF: Customer of Fijian background, SO: Shop owner, CB: a customer of Bangladesh background, SA: Shop assistant) English: plain, Bangla: italic, Hindi: bold 1 SO: Hello how can I help you? 2 CF: [inaudible] 3 SO: Ore mach ta dekhaiya den boro mach (Show him the fish, the big one) 4 SA: [Inaudible] 5 SO: This is 5 dollar a kilo 6 CF: What fish is this? 7 SO: This is very tasty fish sweet water fish 8 CF: What is it? 9 SO: Ru rohu, you know rohu [someone laughs probably SA] this is very very tasty fish 10 CF: Where do you get it from? 11 SO: Get it from Myaːːnmar, Myanmar you know 12 CF: Myanmar 13 CB: Chini ki loisen vai (have you weighed the sugar, bro) 14 SO: Nah (no) 15 CB: Baire bair koira nah dile to ditey hoibo (if you don’t keep it outside you’ll have to weigh and give) 16 SO: Arey vai (oh bro) [to the CB] Brother! [to the CF] 17 CF: Hold on 18 SO: Very cheap 19 CB: Very cheap nah? (Very cheap is it?) Ajke bikele asen, nah? (Are you around this afternoon?) 20 SO: Full day full day 21 CB: Full day. Tailey bikele ashtesi daran (Then I’m coming in the afternoon, you’ll see) 22 SA: Thank you brother [to CF] [Sound from the teller machine] 23 24 25 26 27

CF: You from Myanmar ah? SO: No. I am from Bangladesh CF: Oh Bangladesh I though you are from Myanmar . . . SO: You [from? CF: [So you bought the fish from Myanmar

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Emi Otsuji and Alastair Pennycook 28 SO: You are from Fiji? 29 CF: Yeah, Fiji 30 SO: Fiji you like Fiji? [both laugh] 31 32 33 34

SO: Fijian food . . . you know Hindi may be? CF: Hehehe no no no SO: You don’t know Hindi? CF: Thora thora (a little) [laughter]

35 SO: Fantastic At the beginning of the conversation, the customer of Fijian background (CF) is standing by the freezer with the shop owner (SO). Near the freezer, the shop assistant (SA) is dealing with another customer of Bangladeshi background (CB) in Bangla. The two separate transactions often intersect as laughter and conversations overlap (line 4 and lines 8–18). This was CF’s first visit to the shop, and he does not seem to be familiar with the freshwater fish from the region. The shop assistant uses the term Rohu for Rui (an alternative term for the Rui fish the female customer of Bangladeshi background [FCB] was choosing in Excerpt 3), a fish caught and farmed mainly in Myanmar and a popular fish in the Middle East, Bangladesh and Myanmar. The choice of Rohu rather than Rui seems to derive from CF being of non-Bangla speaking background, the same fish becoming part of distinctive linguistic repertoires in the same shop on a different day and time as the same person (SO) engages people of different backgrounds (FCB and CF). This extract also shows how products attract people of various linguistic and cultural backgrounds. While it might be tempting to assume that these fish from Myanmar, popular among the Bangladeshi community, sold in a Bangladeshi-run store, will evoke exchanges in Bangla, it is also clear that in these mixed suburbs there are many cultural, culinary and linguistic possibilities. And here, for a brief moment, Hindi becomes a possibility as the Bangla-speakers seek out an alternative shared code with a Fijian customer, who rejects this possibility since he only speaks Thora thora (a little). These resources also overlap as different customers come and go, and the owner and assistant engage in various multilingual multitasks. Spatial repertoires address the throwntogetherness, the unavoidable challenge of negotiating a here-and-now (itself drawing on a history and a geography of thens and theres); and a negotiation which must take place within and between both human and nonhuman. (Massey 2005: 140) This “throwntogetherness” of linguistic and other semiotic resources in particular places is not merely a collision of individual trajectories but the spatial organization of semiotic resources and the semiotic organization of space. The notion

Sydney: intersections of languages 217 of intersections adds a further dimension to the idea of a spatial repertoire: rather than conceptualizing this as a convergent point where things come together, we can view this as a temporary co-occurrence of different resources. Amongst the various ways recent work has attempted to deal with this notion (such as networks), it is most akin to the notion of assemblages, understood as “ad hoc groupings of diverse elements, of vibrant materials of all sorts” (Bennett 2010a: 23). Such “living, throbbing confederations” with their “uneven topographies” (Bennett 2010a: 24) and some intersecting pathways more heavily trafficked than others are not centrally governed by one material or event: “The effects generated by an assemblage are, rather, emergent properties” (Bennett 2010a: 24). To this understanding of the vibrancy or matter, the importance of things (bitter melon, Rui fish) and the significance of place as the geographical context for the mediation of physical, social and economic processes (Agnew 2011: 317), we have added the key ingredient of linguistic resources. Significant for the vitality of many assemblages is the role of language as mediation since “materiality and mediation are best treated as mutual conditions of possibility and as effects of each other” (Appadurai 2015: 233). In ways that echo the nexus analysis of Scollon and Scollon (2007: 612), shifting the focus away from groups and boundaries, taking “action as the organizing unit of analysis” and focusing on “moments of action rather than on abstractable structures such as cultures and languages” (Scollon and Scollon 2007: 620), we are interested not so much in the identification of an assemblage but in an understanding of the momentary material and semiotic resources that intersect at a given place and time. It is the properties emergent from these intersections that matter since it is these that produce the city. The everyday dynamic intersections of bitter melon, gwai lou coi (鬼佬菜), parsley, Rui fish, people, language, history and economy is what matters in metrolingualism.

Making the city: local intersectional sociolinguistics Following our earlier work (Pennycook and Otsuji 2015a, 2015b) on metrolingualism, we have argued in this chapter that to approach the city from above and attempt demolinguistic mapping of ethnolinguistic communities misses the vitality of the city. From a bird’s eye view, the city appears to be a stable, constructed space with people assigned to particular places and multilingual and intercultural interactions occurring on the borders where communities meet. Of course, without the macro description of the city (population economy, location, migration patterns), one might object this could be anywhere. An interaction in a Bangladeshi corner store and a Chinese market garden could happen in many big cities: What makes this particular to Sydney? But it is indeed the very particularity of these intersections that is important here; the history of Chinese market gardens, the development of Lakemba as a suburb, the role of Bangladeshi corner stores and the goods they import, the intersecting economies of the North and South: All these come together in a very particular here and now. Adopting insights from multi-sited ethnography, which involves “following connections, associations, and putative relationships” (Marcus 1995: 97) and Moment Analysis (Wei 2011: 1224), which shifts the focus “away from frequency and regularity oriented, pattern-seeking approaches to a focus on spontaneous,

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impromptu, and momentary actions and performances”, our focus is not so much on establishing patterns of linguistic use but on understanding practices in place. Thus, although research plans – to look at Chinese market gardens and Bangladeshi corner shops – were quite specific, it was often the chance encounters (usta usta, gwai lou coi 鬼佬菜), connections, networks and intersections that sent us in particular directions. These networks and intersections of people and vegetables, growers and sellers, established through the sharing of objects, space and practices (religious, ethnic, cultural, culinary and business), also became our networks of research. Drawing on nexus analysis (Scollon and Scollon 2007), non-representational theory (Thrift 2007) and new materialisms (Bennett 2010a, 2010b), we have further tried to show how the momentary assemblages of people, things and linguistic resources that happen as different trajectories intersect, are part of the production of the city. It is this view from below, of everyday multilingualism, of the interactions around vegetables and things that are the stuff of metrolingualism.

Notes 1 Transcribing spoken Cantonese is a task with many problems and limits: Not only are there few established conventions, but the status of written Cantonese is also contested. Our representation of this spoken interaction captures some of the colloquial nature of their speech but not enough of the dialectal variation. Our thanks to Angel Lin for advice and to Jo Bu for her assistance with this work. 2 This further data is part of our broader focus on intersectionality and Bangladeshi corner stores in Sydney and Tokyo. We are here only including data from the Sydney part of this project. 3 We would like to thank Mahmud Khan for transcribing conversations held at the Bangla corner store.

References Agnew, John A. (2011) Space and Place. In: The Sage Handbook of Geographical Knowledge. John A. Agnew and David N. Livingstone (eds), 316–31. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Appadurai, Arjun (2015) Mediants, Materiality, Normativity. Public Culture 27(2): 221–37. Australian Bureau of Statistics (2016) Australian Bureau of Statistics. Online available at: www.abs.gov.au/ (accessed 22 July 2016). Bennett, Jane (2010a) Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ——— (2010b) A Vitalist Stopover on the Way to a New Materialism. In: New Materialisms. Ontology, Agency and Politics. Diana Coole and Sarah Frost (eds), 47–69. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Block, David and Victor Corona (2016) Intersectionality in Language and Identity Research. In: The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity. Siân Preece (ed.), 505–22. London: Routledge. Butler, Judith (1990) Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge. Fitzgerald, John (2007) Big White Lie. Chinese Australians in White Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.

Sydney: intersections of languages 219 James, Sarah W. (2008) Market Gardens and McMansions. Contesting the Concept of “Growth” on Sydney’s Peri-urban Fringe. Online available at: http://unisa.edu.au/com/ csaa/onlineproceedings.htm (accessed 26 October 2016). Kell, Catherine (2015) “Making People Happen”. Materiality and Movement in MeaningMaking Trajectories. Social Semiotics 25(4): 423–45. Lakemba (2016) Lakemba Demographics (NSW) Local Stats. Online available at: http:// lakemba.localstats.com.au/demographics/nsw/sydney/canterbury-bankstown/lakemba (accessed 22 July 2016). Li Wei (2011) Moment Analysis and Translanguaging Space. Discursive Construction of Identities by Multilingual Chinese Youth in Britain. Journal of Pragmatics 43: 1222–35. McGowan, Barry (2005) Chinese Market Gardens in Southern and Western New South Wales. Australian Humanities Review 36 (July): n.p. Online available at: www.australian humanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-July-2005/10McGowan.html (accessed 26 October 2016). Marcus, George E. (1995) Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of MultiSited Ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 95–117. Massey, Doreen B. (2005) For Space. London: Sage. Numbeo (2016) Cost of Living. Online available at: www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/ (accessed 22 July 2016). Pennycook, Alastair (2015) Early Literacies and Linguistic Mobilities. In: Language, Literacy and Diversity. Moving Words. Christopher Stroud and Mastin Prinsloo (eds), 187–205. New York: Routledge. Pennycook, Alastair and Emit Otsuji (2014a) Metrolingual Multitasking and Spatial Repertoires. “Pizza mo Two Minutes Coming”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 18(2): 161–84. ——— (2014b) Market Lingos and Metrolingua Francas. International Multilingual Research Journal 8(4): 255–70. ——— (2015a) Metrolingualism. Language in the City. London: Routledge. ——— (2015b) Making Scents of the Landscape. Linguistic Landscape 1(3): 191–212. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2012) Public Sphere and Epistemologies of the South. Africa Development 37(1): 4–67. Scollon, Ron and Suzie Wong Scollon (2007) Nexus Analysis. Refocusing Ethnography on Action. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11(5): 608–25. Thrift, Nigel J. (2007) Non-Representational Theory. Space/ Politics/ Affect. London: Routledge. Williams Michael (1999) Chinese Settlement in NSW. A Thematic History. A Report for the NSW Heritage Office of NSW. Unpublished Report. Williams, Michael (n.d.) Wading 10,000 li to Seek Their Fortune. 東華新報 – Tung Wah News (selections 1898–1901). Chinese Heritage of Australian Federation Project. Online available at: www.chaf.lib.latrobe.edu.au (accessed 26 October 2016).

14 Moscow Diversity in disguise Kapitolina Fedorova and Vlada Baranova

In 1980 the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film was awarded to the Soviet film “Moscow does not believe in tears”. It was set in Moscow in 1958 and 1979 and centered on three young women from province towns moving to Moscow and struggling to improve their social positions and to find personal happiness. The film was (and still is) extremely popular in Russia, and its featured song by Sergey and Tatyana Nikitins, starting with words “Everything doesn’t work out instantly, Moscow was not instantly built – Moscow did not believe in tears but it believed in love” is known to everyone there. These lines reflect the image of Moscow as a cruel and pitiless social scene, demanding from newcomers ultimate efforts to be successful but, of course, without a guaranteed romantic happy end in real life. This image of Moscow prevails in Russia. The city does not favor those who go there and does not make their lives easier. For many centuries, Moscow was a metonymy for Russia – between the fifteenth and the eighteenth century Russia was even called “Moscovia” by many foreigners. Being the political and economic capital, as well as the biggest city and the main scene for activities of any kind, it remains for outsiders emblematic for Russia as a whole. However, inside Russia, Moscow gradually became “foreign”, different from any other place in Russia, and therefore simultaneously admired and despised throughout the country. “Moscow is not Russia” is a set phrase reproduced by Russian speakers every time some discussion on social, economic or political issues arises. Moscow is, beyond any doubt, a world city today, fully integrated into the world economy. It is also the capital of an ethnically and linguistically diverse country and a center of attraction for migrants from various post-Soviet states. This notwithstanding, Moscow, it seems, is still in pains to accept its heterogeneity and multilingualism. It continues to stick to monolingual language policies on official levels and also in everyday communication. In this chapter we will try to describe sociolinguistic life in contemporary Moscow by analyzing several sets of data – legislation, census and governmental statistics, linguistic landscape, and interviews with recent migrants. In so doing, we show how this multilingual and ethnically diverse megalopolis is making numerous efforts to conceal its diversity in order to maintain its image of a “Russian city”.

Moscow: diversity in disguise 221

Moscow was not instantly built A brief history The lyrics quoted in the introduction contain the line put in the title of this part of our chapter. “Moscow was not instantly built” is a popular saying, used long before the film was shot and the song for the film was composed. It basically means that one should not hurry and expect immediate results from any actions. Hence, its literal meaning is close to the idea of this part of our chapter – Moscow’s life as an urban center was always determined by changes in its role in the history of Russia. Moscow was first mentioned in Russian chronicles in 1147, but it did not play an important role until the end of the thirteenth century when a gradual accumulation of wealth and power started in the city. It resulted in two centuries of Moscow’s domination in the heart of the Russian part of the East European Plain and saw the creation of a centralized state, with the Moscow Grand Prince as its head. Another 200 years made the Tsardom of Moscow one of the biggest states at the time, with territories stretching all the way to the Arctic, the Pacific and the Caspian Seas. Moscow’s “success story” was dramatically interrupted in the beginning of the eighteenth century when Peter the Great founded a new city – what was to become St. Petersburg – and soon made this new city the capital of his empire. Moscow was now discarded for being old-fashioned, non-European and backward. For the next 200 years it existed as a type of antithesis to St. Petersburg, and this opposition of two capitals played an important role in Russian culture. Whereas St. Petersburg was seen as male (in Russian the words St. Petersburg and Moscow are of masculine and feminine gender respectively), European, official, stylish and appealing to reason, Moscow was regarded as female, provincial, living a life of ease, vulgar but also close to the heart (Gritsai and van der Wusten 2000; Lilly 2004). It had become the representation of “Mother Russia”, as opposed to the official, bureaucratic and imperial capital, St. Petersburg. But the roles were reversed again in 1918, when the Bolsheviks seized power and moved their capital city back to Moscow. St. Petersburg, now renamed Leningrad, turned into a cultural capital, and ever since then Moscow has come to be associated with money, power and bureaucracy. It is now also seen as being opposed to the “real Russia”, that is to say, the provinces (Parts 2011). City morphology, development and economy Until the eighteenth century Moscow developed without much official planning or restrictions. The city had a circular structure, with the Kremlin at its center and the living quarters growing around it. The first attempts to introduce some planning procedures were implemented in the 1730s and later in the 1770s, but the actual city development still had little to do with these official plans, although some urban structures were designed and built at that time, e.g. the first water supply system or canals to regulate the flow of the Moscow River. In the same period, some parts of the city walls were demolished and replaced with boulevards with adjoining

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gardens. This is why the ring road around the very center of Moscow is still called “Garden ring” (Sadovoe kol’tso). Being mainly a wooden city, Moscow was very susceptible to fires. The fire of 1812, when Napoleon seized the city, destroyed three-quarters of the houses and nearly half of all churches (Birkett 1947). The restoration of the city went parallel with industrial and commercial development and the rise of an economically affluent class. At the same time, industrialization meant an inflow of peasants from rural areas into the city. As an effect, the population doubled between 1861 and 1881, and this again caused many social problems, such as poor housing conditions, sanitary norms and infant mortality. Huge transformations in Moscow’s planning and architecture began after it had become the capital city of Soviet Russia. Moscow was envisioned to turn into an ideal communist city, “the fairyland at the heart of the Stalinist utopia” (Taylor 2003: 212). Many buildings, including cathedrals and churches, were demolished, streets were widened and paved, “Stalinists skyscrapers” (in a combination of Russian Baroque and Gothic styles) were erected, new blocks of offices appeared in the city center, and countless apartments blocks were constructed in the outskirts of the city. These tendencies continued into the 1960s and 1970s when the city acquired its final structure as we know it today. Moscow’s ring-and-radial street pattern, rooted in the Middle Ages (French 1983), became projected on the whole country. The center of the country was seen to be Moscow, despite the fact that Moscow is geographically situated on the edge of Russia, with Russian provinces extending into vast distances in terms of space and time zones. The streets in new residential districts that were built in the 1960s received their names according to directions to geographical places outside Moscow: Amurskaya Street in the eastern part was named after the Amur river in the Far East, Yaltinskaya Street in the southern part got its name after the famous Yalta resort in the Crimea, etc. The rings surrounding the city center of Moscow were thus expanded to remote parts of the USSR in order to embrace the huge territory of the country. In so doing, these remote regions of the country were symbolically integrated in the landscape of Moscow (Sorochkin 2013). The administrative reform of 1991 concluded this process; 33 districts with historical names were replaced by nine administrative “districts” (okrugs), which indicated the geographical extension of the country, central, northern, north-eastern, eastern, etc., thus forming an ideal circle. The expansion of Moscow’s territory was implemented through an inclusion of former rural areas into the city’s infrastructure, creating the so-called “prigorody” (environs). This phenomenon needs to be distinguished from suburbia, as for example in the US where large groups of people leave the limits of cities in search of more comfort in semi-urban areas. The development of environs in Russia is, however, directed inward. People from rural settlements who cannot move to Moscow permanently try to take advantage of the vicinity to the city (going there daily in order to work, shop or receive services). In this sense, prigorod is “a stepping stone to a city, not out of it as in the West” (Ioffe and Nefedova 1998: 1325, emphasis in the original). This situation can be explained if we consider the extreme centralization of all kinds of resources in the Soviet Union and later also in Russia. Another important factor was the Soviet government’s restrictive policy

Moscow: diversity in disguise 223 on issuing residential permits for large cities, especially for Moscow where strict limits on inward migration existed (Pipko and Pucciarelli 1985). This made the citizens of Moscow a privileged class in comparison with the rest of the USSR population. Hence, the growth of industry and population in Moscow (Table 14.1) was shaped but also restrained by official policy due to bureaucratic barriers preventing mass migration into the city. The state controlled all aspects of economic and public life in the USSR. Not only were the production of goods or the construction of buildings planned, any aspect of public space – streets, squares, shops, hospitals, schools, etc. – was state territory marked with symbols of state power (monuments, banners, posters, etc.). These efforts to “control meaning” in the public space, along with the material difficulties of everyday life, “made the urban landscape inhospitable – it belonged to ‘them’, the rulers, not to ‘us’, the people” (Argenbright 1999: 6). In the 1990s, that is, after Perestroika and market reforms, this situation changed radically. Moscow gradually became integrated into the world economy, and the economic life of Moscow became similar to that of Western cities, both in terms of general sectoral structure and of intra-urban landscape (Gritsai 1997). In the early 1980s, industry amounted to more than 30% of the economy in Moscow, but in the 1990s and 2000s the industrial production quickly declined and the city saw the rapid development of new sectors, such as finance, real estate, marketing and small business. These changes are visible in the urban landscape – a building boom transformed both central districts, for example the tower blocks of Moskva City, and residential outskirts of the city. Shopping malls became a ubiquitous part of urban life; advertisements painted the streets in bright colors; new forms of housing such as gated communities and luxury apartment buildings emerged (Blinnikov, Shanin, Sobolev and Volkova 2006). But even now Moscow does not have clear distinctions between poor and rich districts, which is a typical phenomenon

Table 14.1 Population growth of Moscow, 1400–2015 Year

Population

Source

1400 1600 1800 1897 1926 1937 1959 1979 1989 2002 2010 2015

40,000 100,000 250,000 1,039,000 2,080,000 3,802,000 5,045,905 7,830,509 8,769,117 10,382,754 11,503,501 12,197,596

estimated estimated estimated census census census census census census census census Federal State Statistic Service

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for many European and American cities. Representatives of different social strata continue to live in close proximity to each other. Along with all these changes, Moscow became even “more distant” from other Russian cities. In 2015, the average income in Moscow was 85% higher than the average income in Russia as a whole. According to the Forbes billionaires list, Moscow had more billionaire residents than any other city in the world in 2008. More than half of all Russian banks are registered in Moscow, and most offices of industrial companies, including oil- and gas-producing companies, are located – and consequently pay their taxes – in Moscow, despite the fact that their actual economic activity is located thousands of kilometers away from the city. In addition, Moscow handles almost 40% of Russia’s import and almost 30% of the export volume (Brade and Rudolph 2004). The transformations in the urban space were not unidirectional. In the 1990s, when the state left public spaces almost without any control, it was “invaded” by the market, with small shops and street vendors competing for people’s attention with strolling musicians, beggars, con men, missionaries, political activists, etc. populating the scene. But gradually, with the end of “the bandit 1990s” (bandutskie devyanostye) – a popular expression in the Putin era – and the increase of state power, public space was gradually reclaimed by the authorities. Street protest activities were suppressed in 2012 and 2013, and the number of advertising banners is constantly decreasing due to a tightening of regulations. In 2015 and 2016 thousands of private stalls were demolished, leaving behind a lot of empty space, reminiscent of the Soviet period. Even street musicians are now sometimes arrested for “organizing unsanctioned gatherings of people”. Social composition, the role of migration and ethnolinguistic diversity Undoubtedly, the economic growth and the urban transformations from the 1990s to the 2010s in Moscow would have been impossible without the removal of mobility restrictions and the resulting mass migrations from other Russian regions and from abroad. Russia has a visa-free regime with the Commonwealth of Independent States, except for the associate member Turkmenistan. Unsurprisingly, therefore, most of the foreign migrants in Moscow are citizens of the CIS countries, mainly from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and the Ukraine (Zayonchkovskaya 2014). Migrants, nevertheless, need a work permit, a patent or a special working visa in order to attain a legal job in Russia, and experts have noted that migration policy has tended to attract mainly cheap and unskilled workforces (Streltsova 2014). According to Tyuryukanova (2009), migrants are integrated into the economic life of Moscow, but they are excluded from social life. There is an inequality in access to social services such as medicine and education. Most working migrants have no medical insurance and therefore try to avoid medical treatment for themselves and for their family. Foreign children have the possibility to attend school in Russia, but they usually lack information, economic resources and the social capital that is necessary for entering high-ranking schools. In recent years, the system of

Moscow: diversity in disguise 225 school enrollment has changed, making residential requirements compulsory. As a result, some migrant children failed to obtain school education. Males are overrepresented in the migrant labor population of Moscow, 70% or 84% according to different sources, but there has been a tendency towards a feminization of migrants in the last few years (Tyuryukanova 2011). There is evidence that migration leads to transformations of traditional gender norms. In Moscow, a growing number of migrant women give birth to children while not being married, a practice that is still strongly disapproved in many rural parts of Central Asia (Brednikova 2003). It should be noted that in public discourse the issue of adaptation is closely tied with attitudes towards both international immigrants and ethnic minorities in Moscow (Vendina 2002; Shnirel’man 2014). “Internal migrants” from North Caucasus are regarded as “alien migrants” in public discourse. All visible minorities are called “non-locals”, “illegal”, and so on (see Sahadeo 2012 for a discussion of black Soviets). Nowadays, there is no official program of adaptation, and this leads to a separation and marginalization of migrant workers and their families in the city. According to sociological polls, xenophobic and anti-migrant attitudes have constantly been increasing since the start of the twenty-first century (Malakhov 2014; Mukomel 2015), and in 2013 such attitudes became typical for up to 80% of Russian citizens, with Moscow leading this trend. There are a number of radical nationalistic groups involved in numerous cases of violence and also killings of “non-White” people. Political organizations like “The Movement against Illegal Migration” publish books and articles about an alleged “migrant threat” and accuse the government of concealing “the real statistics” about the number of migrants and their impact on crime in the city. Such publications often look like serious analytical works but actually are infiltrated with hate speech of various sorts. For example, an article written in 2012 by a blogger called “feodorff” for the Newsland web-portal stated that data published by the migration service are false and that Russia was “invaded by labor migrants” and that this “labor horde” was deforming the labor market. Widespread negative attitudes about migration and ethnic diversity are also evident in mass media and in the Internet (Dubrovskii and Karpenko 2003; Gladilin 2013). People claim to be afraid of “dangerous Blacks” and complain about Moscow turning into “Moskvabad”. Ethnicity-themed jokes and pictures – e.g. tagged as “Moskvabad” and “soon in Moscow” screenshot from “Game of Thrones” series where blond Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) goes through the crowd of dark-haired olive-skinned people trying to touch her with their hands – receive millions of likes and reposts in social media networks. However, it is more than questionable that a concentration of ethnic minorities in Moscow is taking place. Newcomers usually rent and buy apartments in the environs or near big markets. There is also a well-known tendency for rejecting migrants and of Caucasian ethnic minorities by landlords, and up to 60% of rental ads make this actually explicit (Ashkinazi and Vekshtejn 2009). This fact, along with high rents, make many migrants live in “communes” where one apartment is shared by a dozen or more people, usually tied by work or family relations. Nevertheless, researchers argue that there is no formation of closed ethnic communities with spatial representation in Moscow

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Table 14.2 Russian and non-Russian population in Moscow, 2002 and 2010

Total census Russian Armenian Azerbaijani Georgian Kazakh Kyrgyz Tadjik Uzbek Speak Russian

2002 census

Total population

2010 census

Total population

10,382,754 8,808,009 124,425 95,563 54,387 7,997 4,102 35,385 24,312 10,010,156

84.83% 1.20% 0.92% 0.52% 0.08% 0.04% 0.34% 0.23% 96.41%

11,503,501 9,930,410 106,466 57,123 38,934 9,393 18,736 27,280 35,595 11,102,805

86.33% 0.93% 0.50% 0.34% 0.08% 0.16% 0.24% 0.31% 96.51%

(Vendina 2002, 2009). What is underway, though, is the formation of a “second society” in Moscow (Tyuryukanova 2009), living a parallel non-visible life to outsiders. Varshaver (2014) and his colleagues describe, for example, “Kyrgyz-town” as a vast social network of Kyrgyz migrants in Moscow that is not spatially fixed. Despite the constant influx of migrants making Moscow an ethnically and linguistically heterogeneous global city, official policies ignore this crucial aspect of city life. The official 2010 census data was severely criticized by experts for failing to represent significant numbers of people (e.g. Bogoyavlenskij 2013), especially migrants, and in Moscow in particular. As a result, figures on migrants in the census data were significantly lower than those given in the statistics of the official migration service, and several times lower than the expert evaluations on the number of illegal migrants in Moscow (Mukomel 2013). The proportion of the non-Russian population in Moscow in the 2010 census data actually decreased in comparison with the census data of 2002 (Table 14.2). What is more, more than 11,133,000 individuals (99.7% of the residents) stated that they speak Russian, and only 11,689 people claimed Tajik as their first language. This number is even lower than that of Turkish speakers in Moscow, which stands at 12,920. This blindness to linguistic diversity is not accidental. In what follows, we discuss language use in Moscow and the ways in which linguistic diversity is hidden in order to maintain a monolingual image.

Linguistic diversity versus linguistic dictate Language policy According to Spolsky (2009), language policy includes, apart from official policy, language practice and language ideology, i.e. a system of ideas and beliefs about languages that guide language choices. The official policy (language management) is the most visible part, and it is manifested in laws and regulations, school curricula and textbooks, and reflected and reproduced in discussions in mass media.

Moscow: diversity in disguise 227 However, language practice does not necessarily go hand in hand with official policy, and serious contradictions and mismatches are possible. Moscow is a clear case of such mismatches, in that the dominant language ideology that underlies official policy is quite distinct from the actual language life in Moscow. The public discourse about migration in recent years has started to place attention on migrants’ “bad Russian”, i.e. the perceived lack of language skills necessary for working and living in Russia. The State Duma adopted amendments to the law “On the Legal Position of Foreign Citizens” (no. 161211–6), requiring since 2013 that foreigners must demonstrate knowledge of the Russian language, as well as of Russian history and current legislation in order to obtain work permits. Applicants have to either provide certificates or diplomas to confirm that they have learned Russian at school or university or pass a Russian language test. It was, at first, applied only to foreign citizens entering Russia under a visa-free regime who were planning to work in residential, municipal or personal services or in retail trade and who wished to obtain or extend a working permission for Russia. However, from 2014 onwards this law became effective for all immigrants. There are currently further initiatives of controlling Russian language proficiency that are not yet accepted. For instance, on 12 December 2013, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) proposed an amendment to the law “On the Official Language of the Russian Federation” that would forbid foreign workers to use languages other than Russian at work. The amendment was not considered, and it was heavily criticized in the press for containing mistakes in grammar despite claiming to “defend” the Russian language. But the mere fact of such a proposal is revealing. The LDPR is a populist party famous for its flirtations with nationalist ideas and its initiatives often work as touchstones for less radical official policy. Yet more powerful than the official discourse and legislation are everyday practices of language use. There is a strong tendency of a “Russification process”, which is supported by language attitudes by the Russian-speaking part of society. In what follows, we will consider linguistic diversity and its restrictions in language practice in the domain of the linguistic landscape, in the use of minority languages on the Internet, and in day-to-day communication of migrants in Moscow. These vignettes illustrate the dominant beliefs and ideas underlying the practice of linguistic russification. Linguistic landscape studies are important for the study of language in the city (Blommaert 2013). They not only provide interesting descriptive data, but also allow us to understand differences in status and mutual relations of different languages or verbal codes. Linguistic landscape is an indicator of how a society perceives itself and to which extent it considers the interests of linguistic minorities (Gorter, Marten and van Mensel 2012). Another important data source for the subsequent discussion are 32 interviews with migrants of different generations gathered in the course of several sociological and sociolinguistic projects by the Sociology of Education and Science Laboratory (SESL) at the Higher School of Economics.1 Patterns of verbal behavior represented in this data reveal a complicated situation of language usage in Moscow. It shows that, regardless of their actual linguistic skills, non-native speakers of Russian are expected to use Russian everywhere, despite the fact that their access to and proficiency in Russian is often limited. This notwithstanding, the level of linguistic tolerance towards their use of Russian is extremely low.

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Language practice Pre-migration history: ethnic and linguistic display The work migration to Moscow after Perestroika can be divided into two waves – a first wave in the 1990s and then a more recent one occurring in the 2010s. There are at least three important characteristics distinguishing these two waves. Firstly, in the 1990s the former Soviet citizens still shared a large set of common experiences, which included, to some extent, knowledge of Russian, typically acquired in school or through some other practice of socialization, like service in the Red Army or higher education. Nowadays, however, there is a new migration flow of people born in the mid-1980s to 1990s who have been socialized in the new independent states and in very different circumstances. Secondly, there is a shift from non-visible to visible minorities between the two waves. Twenty years ago, most of the workers were Slavs, i.e., citizens of Ukraine and Belarus, and Russian refugees from republics of Central Asia and Kazakhstan. The third tendency is a prevalence of rural migration today. In the mid-1990s, migrants came mostly from larger cities or the capitals of the former republics. They had higher levels of education and were usually related to Russia through professional or family ties. Soviet specialists returned to their native cities after 10, 20 or 30 years of work in Baku or Tashkent. Sometimes they had to change profession in order to find employment in low-prestige occupation niches. The 2000s and 2010s working migrants, on the other hand, include a large number of deprived people from rural districts. This wave is somewhat reminiscent of the rural migration waves during the Soviet industrialization and urbanization, called “limita” – a term referring to limits determining migration to Moscow, Leningrad and some other major cities. Today’s labor migrants are usually also younger than the local inhabitants with whom they work. They usually take up their jobs directly after – or even before – graduating from school. As a rule, they are less educated than the native population. To sum up, new migrants usually have lower levels of education than migrants of the first wave; they are more visible, and they often have no experience of living in a city. According to our interview data, older generations of migrants often consist of non-dominant ethnic groups. Hence, it is not a given for older migrants that, say, someone from Azerbaijan would be Azeri with Azeri as a native tongue and Islam as religious affiliation. Besides refugees from zones of ethnic conflicts and local wars who migrated after the collapse of the USSR (Nagornyj Karabah, Ferganskaja dolina, Tajikistan, etc.), there are also minority groups of Armenians from Baku, Uzbeks from Kyrgyzia and Azerbaijanis from Georgia migrating to Moscow. Some people have individual trajectories of social mobility and received their education in different parts of the country. For instance, one person (Uzbek female, born in 1971) from Kyrgyzia was educated in Tajikistan, the other Turkmen male (born in 1965) from Ashkhabad (Turkmenistan) studied and worked after graduation at the university in Tashkent (Uzbekistan). When facing the economic crisis and increasing nationalism in some independent states after the disintegration of the USSR, these people often moved to their “titular country”, but not all of them could find a job there. The young generation of migrants tends to have more simple

Moscow: diversity in disguise 229 and straightforward biographies. Their ethnic and religious identity, native language and place of birth usually correspond to one another. The choice of place for moving is strongly influenced by people’s social network and less so by actual job vacancies, prices for rent or living conditions. At the same time, most first-wave migrants from the former Soviet republics have a psychological connection with Moscow due to it having been the capital of the former USSR. People from CIS who were born before 1991 were in fact born in one and the same country. When discussing the decision to move from their previous place of living to Moscow, they actually often reject to label this relocation as “migration” (migratsiia). To be honest, we always considered Moscow as the capital of our native country, and now this [feeling] is deep inside of anyone of us. We even don’t accept [negative] words or attitudes we sometimes meet in the streets, and we just answer: It is our capital. (Interview with an Armenian male born in 1959, who moved to Krasnoyarsky krai in 1992, then to relatives in Bulgaria, and in 1995 to Moscow). Migrants from the recent wave describe their move to Moscow as a result of job searches. Most of them have never been to Moscow before, or in fact anywhere outside their original hometown. They often describe moving to Moscow as a totally new experience: QUESTION:

How did you decide to move to Moscow? We were told there are good places there. That’s why . . .

INFORMANT: QUESTION:

What do you mean “good places”? Our place is a village. We don’t like villages (Interview with an Azeri female born in 1983).

INFORMANT:

But unlike the older generation, recent migrants have to face a number of language problems and have to adopt what may be called “a Russian language dictate” in their everyday language life. Russian language dictate Most of the younger migrants to Moscow do not have full – and at times not even limited – proficiency in Russian, since compulsory teaching of Russian ceased in their home countries after the USSR collapsed. Their contacts with Russian native speakers are usually limited, but there nevertheless remains a strong belief among Russians that people from the former Soviet republics are not “really foreigners”. As an effect, they are therefore treated as “bad speakers” of Russian, rather than non-speakers. Most of their native Russian interlocutors do not try to cooperate and apply simplifying strategies such as foreigner talk, which would usually be expected in such contact situations (Fedorova 2006), demonstrating somewhat

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divergent behaviors in terms of language accommodation theory (Giles, Coupland and Coupland 1991) or under-accommodation (Griffin 2009). In other words, the linguistic host society tends to ignore the communicative needs of migrants and dictates to them strict linguistic norms. This process of russification is also reflected in the practice of “renaming” persons. Thereby, the foreign names of newcomers are substituted with Russian names in a shortened or diminutive form: Ali is replaced by Aleshka or Zhanuza turns into Zhenja. The immigrants’ names are not changed officially in their documents, but they nevertheless tend to introduce themselves by their Russian nicknames and are also addressed in this manner by their employers, colleagues and neighbors. During our own research, it was sometimes only in the middle of an interview that the informant told us her or his real name. Such an adaptation of children’s names for sounding “more Russian” is also a typical practice in schools and kindergartens. As a rule, it is a decision taken by parents and teachers, but one teacher told us that in the beginning of the school year the Russian pupils in class suggested a Russian name for a new migrant student on their own, i.e. they took a collective decision to rename the new participant in order to include him in the class. The default use of Russian in the public space is constantly mentioned in interviews as a general principle that must be obeyed even in communication with one’s relatives or friends. In public transport people look with disapproval, or make negative remarks, in order to restrict the use of the native languages of migrants in Moscow. Consider the following statement about a migrant speaking Russian with her children on the public transport system: [We speak Russian] because when you speak our native language – people look at you. They don’t understand and they think we’re saying something [negative] . . . (Interview with an Armenian female born in 1971) Most of our informants accepted the practice of employers to dictate their choice of language in the working place for all. In explaining why she avoids speaking Kyrgyz and even conceals being Kyrgyz from fellow-countrymen, one informant stated the following: [We speak Russian] because our landlord – the owner of this shop – doesn’t like it when people talk in their own native language. I agree with that. I came to Russia – so let’s speak Russian. In Kyrgyzstan you can speak Kyrgyz. (Interview with a Kyrgyz female born in 1978) Sociological surveys confirm such negative attitudes to migrant languages. According to Social Research Agency Stolitsa, 21% of Moscow residents showed “very negative” and 48% “rather negative” attitudes towards migrants in 2013. They were critical of migrants’ lack of Russian proficiency and also of their alleged “low cultural level”. Taking such attitudes into account, it is not surprising to find that most of our respondents prefer to choose monolingual Russian settings for

Moscow: diversity in disguise 231 their children. In explaining why she does not want many “ethnic” children in her child’s school class, one informant told us: When there are many children of the same nationality, for instance Azeri boys or Azeri girls, children will speak their own language only and won’t speak the language we want them to use. I don’t want to have many of them [children of the same ethnicity] in the class. A small number is OK. (Interview with an Azeri female born in 1973, who has been living in Russia since 1993) The language dictate from the majority is therefore supported by the accommodation of the linguistic minorities. Native languages tend to be viewed, especially in the case of children, as a deficiency rather than a resource. This divides speakers in adequate and inadequate speakers of their language. Signs, notices and advertisements This section briefly discusses how non-Russian languages are symbolically represented in urban spaces in Moscow with regard to languages of both the immigrant population, Russia’s “official minorities” such as Tatar, Kalmyk and Chuvash, as well as international languages like English. It is important to explain that the regulations for public signs issued by the Moscow government prescribe to use Russian in order to “inform consumers”. Texts on signs in foreign languages are permitted only if the size of Russian letters is twice as big or if foreign names have been registered as a trademark (e.g. McDonald’s). Some languages are represented in signs while others are omitted, and special strategies for the symbolic representation of languages and cultures via specific fonts and color have evoked as a reaction (cf. Seargeant 2013 about considering script choice as part of given “languages”). Non-Russian languages are represented quite differently according to districts in Moscow. Most signs containing elements of English and other European languages can be found in the city center. English, French and Italian words are often used for naming restaurants and posh boutiques: “Bocconcino” or “Fashion House Outlet Centre” (cf. Perotto 2015). Despite their official status, the languages of ethnic republics in Russia are usually not used in the linguistic landscape of Moscow. As for the languages of CIS and other neighboring countries, sometimes some words from them can be found written in Cyrillic transcription as in the case of an Armenian café “Ayo” (Yes, Picture 14.1), a Georgian restaurant named “Chito-ra” (small bird), or a Café named “Baracat” (Arabic for “blessing”). According to the rules regulating public signs, the original script can be used inside these establishments, but not on the outside. Often special forms of Cyrillic characters and designs are used to represent foreign language and culture: “Chaikhona” (tea house) can be written in Cyrillic letters but stylized in a way to resemble Arabic script, and such stylized script is often colored in green as well. Thus, the sign on Picture 14.2 uses both types of script – “regular” and “Arabic” in green in the

Picture 14.1 Armenian café Ayo

Picture 14.2 Stylized “Arabic” using Cyrillic script

Moscow: diversity in disguise 233 center. Such examples can be seen as attempts of diversification under a rule of homogeneity. Even in places where no official regulation applies, Russian totally dominates the scene, contradicting often even basic communicative needs. There are a great number of advertisements – at times in handwriting – placed inside wagons in the Moscow subway – distributed near the entrance to metro and railway stations, or printed on the pavements – that are concerned with job vacancies, assistance with registration and work permits, or sexual services. A large part of the target group for these signs are therefore newcomers to the city, many of whom have insufficient language skills for doing the paperwork that translocation implies and even for reading the simple texts. Nevertheless, such advertisements exclusively use Russian. It appears as if nobody considers the language problems of migrants as something worth paying attention to. In the Multifunctional Migration Service Center in Sakharovo, too, only signs and messages in Russian are displayed. In a similar vein, only the Russian language is used on its official website (http://mc.mos.ru/). The same is true for agencies working as mediators between migrants and the Federal Migration Service. The language of institutions supporting migrants not speaking Russian is exclusively Russian. Even in-group communication turns out to be shaped by the presumption that Russian-only is inevitable. Linguistic minorities from ethnic republics in Moscow represent themselves on the Internet mostly in Russian. Our analysis of different forums for the Kalmyk diaspora in Moscow shows that the main language of communication is Russian with some rare exceptions when people discuss magic practices and traditional Buddhist medicine. At the same time, in forums and thematic groups in popular networks like VKontakte, which connect migrants from CIS countries residing in Moscow, both Russian and other languages are used. As a rule, communities like “Caucasian in Moscow” use Russian, while particular ethnic groups (e.g. Armenians) use both Russian and their native language, albeit with a predominance of Russian. Such in-group communication in Russian spoken and written as a second language contains specific linguistic features such as grammar irregularities and “phonetic” spelling: Срочно нужны маналитчики бригада. Желё придостовлаем. [There is an urgent need for brigade working with monoliths. Accommodation is provided] In Standard Russian this advertisement would read: “Срочно нужна бригада монолитчиков. Жилье предоставляем”. The orthographic mistakes in the ad stem from the fact that in modern Standard Russian unstressed /o/ and /e/ are pronounced as /a/ and /i/ respectively, while orthographic norms remain unchanged. Spelling is an important part of school education, but it is not available for most migrants. Linguistically diverse codes are living “undercover” in Moscow and there are new varieties of Russian in the making, which are totally non-approved and ignored by the normatively oriented majority of Moscow’s citizens.

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Conclusions Russian speakers and language planners underestimate the linguistic diversity of Moscow. The city is perceived and promoted as a monolingual megalopolis. Multilingualism in Russia is considered as a phenomenon of ethnic regions in the periphery, while its capital is seen to maintain a monolingual and “stable” character. There is a lack of awareness of potential benefits of mobility and diversity for the city. The municipal government of Moscow is virtually “closing its eyes” to this issue and does not consider migrants and ethnic minorities in its urban development planning. Such a policy may appear “natural” for bureaucracy. According to Blommaert: In the face of super-diversity, governments appear to return quickly to the safe fortresses of modernism, emphasizing homogeneity and uniformity across the population, and using tools to categorize and discriminate in the process. Language has become such a critical tool. (Blommaert 2010: 173) In the case of Moscow, this “modernist” attitude is evidently supported by the practice to elevate the norm of Russian and to disapprove of any non-normative verbal behavior. The social turmoil and the educational experiments of the twentieth century made Russian a very homogeneous language in terms of social variation and shared norms (Fedorova, forthcoming), and concealing the actual diversity under a façade of monolingualism in the process became second nature for the Russian capital. What is more, non-native speakers’ impact on the language situation is not noticed among Russian first language speakers because they adhere to modernist ideas in language policy, i.e. policy implemented from above which does not consider other agents and levels of society (Ricento 2006). The language ideology behind the practice is purist, rigid and strictly monolingual. As a result there is a mismatch between diverse linguistic repertoires and competences, on the one hand, and dominant monolingual ideology on the other. The evolving conflicting language regime inevitably creates social tensions and language problems. Sooner or later Moscow will have to face this problem, and it will then turn into a “global city”, also in terms of acknowledging that the world is part of this city.

Note 1 We would like to express our deep gratitude to Evgeniy Varshaver and other colleagues who worked on these projects; for more information on the data see Baranova (2014).

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Postscript

A proposal for street use surveys This book has shown that much can be learned from studying how people are trying to get along linguistically in urban spaces. At the same time, all authors make clear that they have only scratched the surface and that there is more to be explored in the city they studied. More data exploring the human aspect of language life in the city should be collected. The chapters assembled in this book at one point take the readers by the hand and stroll with them through neighbourhoods, overhearing how individuals get along. We see in mundane encounters in mosques, in supermarkets, in urban farms, etc., how everyone is navigating through their daily lives, and we find structures, patterns and functions linking language to speakers, places and contexts. In concluding this book, we encourage colleagues and students alike to explore what speaking means in “your city”. Towards this end, we would like to make a proposal for further studies of language lives in urban ecologies. It should be clear, though, that this is simply one more approach to study language and society in the city. Here is an idea The current sociolinguistic state of affairs in a certain place can be mapped out through a Street Use Survey. Such a survey applies observation to determine the language in a particular neighbourhood or town (Altuna and Basurto 2013), focusing on places where language is produced, the individuals producing the language, and the time when it is produced. If collected well, then the data reflect the common use of language in a certain geographical and social space. Determining which languages are used (linguistic and stylistic choices of individuals) and whether there is some sort of pattern of usage (by certain people, at certain times, aimed at certain interlocutors) are the aim. Such surveys, based on relatively loose yet systematic observations, can also be repeated, and then trends of usage will arise. The basic idea is to reproduce the kind of work done in linguistic landscape studies (Shohamy and Gorter 2009), but on the basis of spoken language. We should engage in the study of soundscapes in the city.

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How it works Researchers select places where a broad range of people regularly come and a time of day or day in a week when these people tend to be in the designated streets. Busy streets are generally good places, not closed spaces where people with highly specific characteristics meet. Within a limited space (a few streets, not the same spot) and within a predetermined time frame, the researcher collects data about conversations taking place. The researcher inconspicuously walks towards where a conversation is taking place, eavesdrops, walks away, writes down the language or languages used, and then moves on to the next eavesdropping opportunity. Many such sessions should take place over a period of time, possibly by more than one researcher. The same route and time criteria apply, so every observation session should replicate the previous one methodologically. After getting a feel for the chosen public space, the researcher should develop a custom-made form and simply tick boxes of what they are likely to observe. On the form they can indicate, for instance, which language varieties are used, who speaks to whom, why, as well as estimated characteristics of the speakers (age, sex, ethnicity). Categories are used for estimating the age of speakers, while sex is usually easy to determine reliably. Ethnicity can be guessed but these guesses are not usually very reliable. Pairs of researchers could work together; one listens and passes on the information to the other. The data The number of conversations in the limited time frame can be compared or related to the total size of the population (Yurramendi and Altuna, 2009). Such a model should be based on estimates like the average quantity of personal relations (through the average size of an individual’s network), the number of interlocutors in conversations occurring in the street (through the town’s population figure) and the likely number of speakers of certain languages (through the percentage of people that know a certain language in a city/neighbourhood). A simpler method for calculating the desired sample for the street survey research is by looking at the population of a town and the percentage of bilinguals relative to your own observations. You will need to find sources that give you this information explicitly or make a good estimate on the basis of population data such as ethnic and linguistic background of speakers. The result Collecting such data at various spots of a given city will show in detail that the public space of a city, the individuals populating it, their lives and their languages and styles cannot be separated. It will produce a globalising sociolinguistics that is anchored in individual encounters in specific places, which only take shape through these encounters. After the Street Use Survey, which yields relatively general and quantitative data on language use in various places in the city, choices can be made on which places

Street use surveys 239 are worthy of a more in-depth analysis. These would be the meeting places that the Street Use Survey (if performed over time) has shown to be linguistically in transition. Ethnolinguistic fieldwork – involving studying people communicating in a cultural context (mixed, in an urban context, usually) and in which the researcher to a degree participates in communities – in these places could be the next step. Inspired by the work of Dell Hymes, such fieldwork is a useful way to learn more about what Levon (2013: 69) called the “social lives” of members within a community. Blommaert (2007) and Cameron, Frazer, Harvey, Rampton and Richardson (1992) emphasized the importance of the relatedness (amongst others, historically, spatially and temporally) of events in such investigations, the challenge of objectively interpreting them and the importance of how the participants themselves interpret these events. Rather than looking for ethnic sameness of the participants, original ethnicity of the actors as a source of identity as well as the shaping of joint ethnicities through communication could be the focus. This type of research requires patience and social skills on the part of the researcher. Blommaert and Jie (2011) stressed the fact that ethnographic fieldwork can be intensive, frustrating and time-consuming, especially during the actual fieldwork itself. Chaos is intrinsic to this technique of data collecting. Researchers should let the research questions and the research focus develop while doing the fieldwork. The end result is a lively description involving many anecdotes and examples, but few tables and graphs. In the report is the specific nature of the setting and the actors in it, and it gives the researcher’s motivated explanations of the language use and communication, based on what participants have told them and what they saw and heard. Some of these reports can already be found in the current book, and, hopefully, more will be written in the future.

References Altuna, Olatz and Asier Basurto (2013) A Guide to Language Use Observation. Survey Methods. Online available at: www.euskara.euskadi.eus/contenidos/informacion/ argitalpenak/eu_6092/adjuntos/GUIDE.pdf (accessed 16 December 2016). Blommaert, Jan (2007) On Scope and Depth in Linguistic Ethnography. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11: 682–8. Blommaert, Jan and Dong Jie (2011) Ethnographic Fieldwork. A Beginner’s Guide. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Cameron, Deborah, Elizabeth Frazer, Penelope Harvey, Ben Rampton and Kay Richardson (1992) Researching Language. Issues of Power and Method. London: Routledge. Levon, Erez (2013) Ethnographic Fieldwork. In: Data Collection in Sociolinguistics. Methods and Applications. Christine Mallinson, Becky Childs and Gerard van Herk (eds), 69–79. London: Routledge. Shohamy, Elena and Durk Gorter (eds) (2009) Linguistic Landscape. Expanding the Scene. London: Routledge. Yurramendi, Yosu, and O. Altuna. 2009. “Zuzeneko behaketaz hizkuntza-erabilera neurtzeko metodologiaren eredu matematikoa.” Accessed 28 March. www.soziolinguistika. org/files/TXOSTENA.pdf

Index

accommodation 8, 18, 31, 36–7, 41–2, 55, 73, 99, 159, 181, 187, 193, 196, 230–1 age 5, 21, 63–70, 82, 84, 95, 100–9, 118–19, 124–7, 134–5, 138, 191, 197, 238 assimilation 8, 26, 64, 133, 150, 152 attitudes see language (attitudes) bilingualism 18, 20, 46, 53, 77, 85–7, 90, 139, 141, 143, 156, 181, 185–7, 190–3, 196–7, 238 Blommaert, J. 7, 9, 19, 26, 35, 55, 127, 234, 239 borrowing 135, 151, 154–7, 159, 191 caste see social status (caste) city language 114, 120 clan see social status (tribe) class see social status (class) classical language 83 code-mixing 157 code-switching 19–20, 38, 133, 154–5, 157 colonialism 6, 16, 59, 78–9, 95, 118, 134, 141, 144, 166, 181, 186, 190–2, 197 Community of Practice 73 contact see language (contact) continuum: creole 118, 128, 168, 175; dialect 130; standard-non-standard 20–1, 42, 62–6, 73–4, 136–9 cool 139, 144 cosmopolitanism 42, 58, 60–1, 73, 77, 139, 152, 160–1 creole see continuum (creole) destandardization 20–1, 130, 133, 136–7 dialect continuum see continuum (dialect) diglossia 20, 83 discrimination 20, 41, 140, 144, 151, 184, 207, 211, 234 documentation see language (documentation)

education system 32–3, 87–8, 97, 135, 144; school 32–4, 42, 46, 50, 54, 62–4, 67, 87–9, 97–9, 106, 116, 118, 122, 126, 132, 136, 141–4, 150, 160, 166, 175, 186, 190, 223–33; university 32–3, 37–8, 51, 54, 86, 89, 132, 135, 140–1, 164, 227–8 endangered language see language (endangerment) epistemology 7, 127 essentialism 5, 7, 19, 182 ethnicity see identity (ethnic) ethnography 7, 63–4, 89, 92, 151, 153–4, 213, 218, 239 ethnolect 107–8, 123 expats 17, 34 first-wave sociolinguistics see sociolinguistics (waves) Fishman, J. 18, 194 gated community 28, 30–1, 224 gender see identity (gender) gentrification 6, 132, 153, 165 globalisation 2, 6, 16, 18–19, 21, 40, 42, 78, 144, 197, 238 Haugen, E. 182 Heller, M. 18, 35 honorifics see politeness (honorifics) identity: construction 36, 96, 153, 162, 168, 211, 214; ethnic 3, 167, 174, 229, 239; gender 211; national 4, 37, 39–41, 148–61; social 18, 22, 38, 61, 64, 66, 72–3, 77, 88, 90, 98, 107, 126, 152, 166 ideology see language (ideology) illiteracy 36, 63, 149 imperialism 79

Index indexicality 36–7, 42–3, 114, 123–4, 127, 139, 168 industrialization 12, 14, 16–17, 25, 58, 80, 131, 140, 151, 154, 205, 222–3, 228 inequality 6, 22, 91, 132, 224 integration 142, 152, 184–5, 188–9, 195, 224 internet 18–19, 21, 133, 156, 212, 225, 227, 233 Irvine, J.T. 168–9 Kindaichi, K. 5, 9 Labov, W. 1, 18 Labovian approach 95–110, 127 landscape see linguistic landscape language: attitudes 8, 38–9, 55, 84, 86, 137, 196–7, 225, 227; change 2, 21, 25, 31, 38–41, 58, 62, 65–9, 72–3, 96–7, 100–4, 107–10, 114–17, 120, 127, 133, 136–7, 139, 196–7; contact 2, 8–9, 19–20, 25, 60, 63, 73–4, 95–7, 100, 108, 115, 130, 135, 151, 153–4, 162, 183, 190–6; diversity 5, 7, 12, 19, 22, 26, 34, 45–6, 52, 55–6, 73, 78, 91, 96–8, 110, 114, 130, 137, 139–40, 149–50, 181–3, 186–7, 196–7, 214, 220, 224–7, 234; documentation 3; ecology 8–9, 31, 52, 97, 100, 182, 196–7; endangerment 42, 46 see also language (extinction); extinction 134, 140 see also language (endangerment); heritage 3–4, 8, 52, 118; ideology 3–5, 35, 140, 144, 149–50, 167, 226–7, 234; indigenous 45–7, 50, 52–6; life 1–5, 7–9, 25, 91, 136, 220, 227, 229, 237; maintenance 8, 46, 197; minority 4, 20–1, 26, 50, 52, 55–6, 83, 134, 139–43, 184, 227–8, 231, 233; play 4–5, 7, 137, 192; official 35, 46, 74, 78, 83, 89, 97–99, 142, 150; planning 57; policy 8, 166–7, 195, 226–7, 234; repertoire 5, 20, 73, 116, 118, 120–1, 124, 127–8, 139, 212–17, 234; revitalisation 8, 197; shift 26, 53, 55–6, 83, 88, 101–5, 108–10, 123, 127, 136–7, 140–1, 150, 155; utility 114; vitality 47, 58, 62, 66, 73, 186–7, 217; written 34, 83, 86, 134–6, 141, 143, 149, 182, 195, 218, 231, 233; youth 4, 161 languaging 9, 19, 128 levelling 35, 38, 93, 193, 197 lingua franca 9, 33, 55, 78, 88–90, 95, 141, 154, 156, 161, 190–7 linguistic fluency 152 linguistic innovation 6, 100–10, 116, 122, 135

241

linguistic landscape 20, 28, 34, 49–50, 84–5, 90, 153, 192, 220–7, 231, 237 linguistic urbanisation 6, 12–22, 25, 42, 49, 51, 53, 66, 73, 78, 95–7, 100, 163, 165, 228 literacy 14, 36, 60, 185, 187; see also illiteracy loanwords see borrowing locality 3, 162, 167, 176–7 media 8, 19, 22, 31, 35–46, 78, 84–6, 125, 138, 148, 164, 182, 190, 225–6 metrolingualism 7, 148, 159, 206, 212, 214, 217–18 Meyerhoff, M. 2, 96 migration: emigration 16; first generation 15, 140, 167; immigration 46, 59, 115, 167, 181, 185–6, 190, 193–7; second generation 118, 120, 125; third generation 4 Milroy, L. 121 mobility 3, 5, 9, 14, 67, 77–8, 88, 92, 95–7, 100, 109, 128, 163–6, 224, 228, 234 monolingualism 4, 7, 9, 46, 60, 88, 90, 95, 97, 109, 139, 149–51, 156, 190–3, 220, 226, 230, 234 multilingualism 4–5, 7, 9, 12–24, 27–44 national identity see identity (national) nationalism 9, 20, 91, 167, 228 national language 16, 19, 21–2, 78, 85, 95, 136 nation state 3–5, 9, 16, 21, 78–9, 113, 163 network see social network new dialect formation 73, 165, 139 nonstandard 58–74, 138 official language see language (official) oral tradition 84, 149 Other(ing) 167–8, 171, 174, 177; see also Self(ing) pidgin see continuum (creole) planning see language (planning) policy see language (policy) politeness 84, 134–5, 137–8, 143; honorifics 138 poverty 6, 13–14, 46, 49, 79, 132, 164–5, 223 power 20, 35, 99, 113–14, 120, 151, 157, 190, 194, 212, 227 prestige 13, 67, 69, 84 Rampton, B. 19, 39, 118, 123–4, 127–8, 239 revitalisation see language (revitalisation)

242

Index

school see education system (school) second-wave sociolinguistics see sociolinguistics (waves) segregation 8, 16–17, 82, 89, 98, 120, 165, 183–4, 190 Self(ing) 167–8, 171, 174, 177 shift see language (shift) social networks 13, 20, 35, 41, 53, 70, 90–1, 119–22, 127, 142–3, 167, 182, 187, 196–7, 205–11, 217–18, 225–6, 229, 233, 238 social roles 1–2, 121, 157, 159, 168 social status: caste 95–6, 100, 110; class 2, 6, 9, 17–18, 30–1, 33, 35, 37–8, 49, 54, 58–74, 81–2, 89–9, 116, 118–21, 123, 125, 131–6, 143, 150, 153, 155, 160, 193, 211, 214, 222–3; tribe 17, 79, 81 sociolinguistics: systems 1–3, 9, 18–19; waves 3 sociolinguistic systems see sociolinguistics (systems) speech community 8, 40, 46, 95, 108, 188, 193, 196 standardisation 21, 31, 34–6, 41–2, 61–74, 83, 117, 123, 130–45, 149–52, 164, 233 standard language 20–1, 31, 34–6, 41–2, 46, 61–6, 83, 89, 97–8, 117, 124, 130–45, 149–52, 154, 164, 187, 227, 233

stigmatisation 41–2, 55, 58, 64–6, 69, 139–40, 151–2, 161, 191, 193 Street Use Survey 237–9 suburb 16, 28, 148, 150–3, 175, 183, 204, 212, 216–17, 222 superdiversity 7, 16, 18–19, 21, 78, 91, 96, 127, 152 third-wave sociolinguistics see sociolinguistics (waves) tourism 27, 29, 49, 51, 80, 113, 133, 141, 143, 152, 163 transnationalism 7, 78, 121, 128, 139, 192 Trudgill, P. 5, 18, 73, 127, 138 university see education system (university) urbanisation see linguistic urbanisation vernacular 83–6, 97, 116, 118, 123–5, 127, 193–7 Vertovec, S. 3, 7, 16, 115 vitality see language (vitality) waves see sociolinguistics (waves) wealth 13–14, 29–30, 49, 81, 126, 149–50, 184, 221 written language see language (written) youth language see language (youth)