Based on ethnographic and interview research this study explores the language practices of four Kabyle families living in the UK in three multilingual spaces, i.e. a cultural organisation, in domestic environment and online platforms. The family's language practices are informed by the parents' diverse socio-economic status and political engagements, and shaped by their migration trajectories, which consequently influence the children's everyday language behaviour. The study's main argument revolves around how the children appropriate their parents' ideologies and aspirations while at the same time navigate their own choices, according to the context. Young Kabyles use language to either distance themselves or to create close relationships, to gain particular positions in the various discourses spaces that they navigate. Put concretely, they resist the use of Arabic and in some cases French to maintain 'Kabyle' during Kabyle gatherings. At the same time, they use French and English in order to secure a socio-economic status in their daily multilingual interactions. The analysis of the Kabyle case allows us to appreciate how children of Kabyle migrants negotiate many "heterogeneous, diverse identities across multiple localities and across the perceptual and physical boundaries" (Beswick, 2020: 31).
Following the pathway of politically active Kabyles, most families involved in this study have worked on revitalising their language variety, which is evidenced on their children's orientations. Parents' wish to create a Kabyle transnational 'imagined community' turned out into involving their children in concrete practices in different discursive spaces, such as social gatherings in a Kabyle Café in London, creation of online chatting spaces and organisation of events within a cultural organisation, creative and artistic activities, poetry, performance of Kabyle theatrical pieces, and music that were inspired by ancient Kabyle and Amazigh history, traditions, and mythology. Their efforts also involved the inclusion of Kabyle in a multilingual online dictionary called Glosbe by young Kabyles active in diaspora. In addition to Numidia's family's plans to open a complementary school to teach Kabyle to children wishing to learn the language in the UK.
The study draws on the notion of discursive space (Heller 2007) to include the participants' orientation towards their heritage language as they engage inside and outside the home as well as online as part of expressing their everyday ethnicity in the UK through language use. However. Children whose linguistic capacity was limited, tend to display their ideologies through Kabyle material culture and food consumption.
In this presentation, two main questions will be addressed:
- To what extent do migration trajectories, and the British environment, as a relatively recent migratory setting, shape the Kabyle families' language choices and practices in diaspora?
- How do political and socio-cultural backgrounds influence how children of Kabyle migrants navigate their parents' aspirations, their social identifications and positionings both offline and online?
Bibliography:
Beswick, J. (2020) Identity, Language and Belonging on Jersey: Migration and the Channel Islands.
Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing AG.
Heller, M. (2007). Distributed knowledge, distributed power: A sociolinguistics of structuration. Text & Talk, 27(5-6), 633-653
