Combining nexus analysis with linguistic ethnography to explore a superdiverse context
In the latest decades of sociolinguistics, scholars have emphasized a need for particular attention to the increasing diversity and complexity of society and social life, often adopting the term superdiversity (Vertovec 2007). It has been argued that fundamental questions need to be raised about what theories and methods are suited to address the forms of multilingual communicative behaviour that characterize these contexts (Blommaert 2013).
This presentation draws on my ongoing dissertation project, which aims to understand and make visible linguistic practices in a Swedish lower secondary school marked by superdiversity, and explore how norms related to multilingualism are expressed and negotiated in these practices. In this presentation, the principal focus is on how the project fuses together nexus analysis and linguistic ethnography, the former seen as an analytical framework, and the latter as a method for constructing rich sociolinguistic data.
The data-set is constructed through a linguistic ethnography on a school marked by superdiversity, as well as by low socio-economic status. The majority of the students have languages associated with migration in their repertoire, among them the project's 13 focal students. The data-set consists of field notes and photographs, recordings of student interaction, ethnographic interviews and policy documents.
This diverse ethnographic data set makes for a challenging task in achieving analytical structure. The framework of nexus analysis (Scollon & Scollon 2004) is a good match since it provides a systematic and structured approach to managing multi-faceted data (Hult 2015).
At the same time, the nexus approach gives prominent space to detailed analyses. This constitutes another strong argument for the pairing of nexus analysis and linguistic ethnography, as one of the strong points of the ethnographic approach is the uniquely local insights afforded by close study. This attention to the local is for example manifested through the strong emphasis in the model on social action, which encourages attention to what is accomplished in the interaction (and how) rather than what linguistic resources are used and why. This generates a specifically local understanding of multilingual language use, eschewing irrelevant labels and generalizations.
In the presentation, this advantage will be shown in relation to sociolinguistic issues emerging in the analysis, for example how students, teachers and other social actors position each other in relation to different languages and linguistic varieties. The argument will be made that the particular combination of linguistic ethnography and nexus analysis is well suited for analysis of sociolinguistic issues in contexts characterized by superdiversity.
References
Blommaert, J. (2013). Ethnography, superdiversity and linguistic landscapes: chronicles of complexity: Bristol : Multilingual Matters.
Hult, F. M. (2015). Making Policy Connections across Scales Using Nexus Analysis. In F. M. Hult & D. C. Johnson (Eds.), Research Methods in Language Policy and Planning (pp. 217-231). Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. W. (2004). Nexus Analysis. Discourse and the emerging internet. London: Routledge.
Vertovec, S. (2007). Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and racial studies, 30(6), 1024-1054.
