Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-5xszh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T12:58:32.905Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

STUDYING HIGH-LEVEL (L1-L2) DEVELOPMENT AND USE AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE IN MULTILINGUAL STOCKHOLM

The Role of Perceptions of Ambient Sociolinguistic Variation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2012

Ellen Bijvoet*
Affiliation:
Stockholm University
Kari Fraurud
Affiliation:
Stockholm University
*
*Address correspondence to: Ellen Bijvoet, Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Stockholm University, SE 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden; e-mail: ellen.bijvoet@biling.su.se.

Abstract

This article makes a case for studying the perceptions that young people have of the ways of speaking of both themselves and others on the supposition that constructions of ambient sociolinguistic variation have an impact on the language development and use of individual language users. Such a study is particularly relevant in multilingual contexts in which differences with regard to social as well as ethnic and linguistic background may generate significantly different perceptions. In a speaker evaluation study, Swedish speech stimuli from 12 young Stockholmers were evaluated by 343 listeners from different backgrounds. The results show that young people may divide and relate to the linguistic space of Stockholm in very different ways and that they vary in their degree of accuracy regarding linguistic self-perception.

Type
ARTICLES
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aarsaether, F. (2010). The use of multiethnic youth language in Oslo. In Quist, P. & Svendsen, B. A. (Eds.), Multilingual urban Scandinavia: New linguistic practices (pp. 111126). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, W., & Trofimovich, P. (2006). Perceptual paths to accurate production of L2 vowels: The role of individual differences. IRAL, 44, 231250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayley, R., & Regan, V. (2004). Introduction: The acquisition of sociolinguistic competence. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8, 323338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernstein, B. (1958). Some sociological developments of perception. British Journal of Sociology, 9, 159174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bijvoet, E., & Fraurud, K. (2006). Svenska med något utländskt [Foreign sounding Swedish]. Språkvård, 3, 410.Google Scholar
Bijvoet, E., & Fraurud, K. (2008). Svenskan i dagens flerspråkiga storstadsmiljöer: En explorativ pilotstudie av unga stockholmares perceptioner av variation och varieteter [Swedish in today’s multilingual urban settings: An exploratory pilot study of young Stockholmers’ perception of variation and varieties]. Nordand, 3, 738.Google Scholar
Bijvoet, E., & Fraurud, K. (2010). Rinkeby Swedish in the mind of the beholder: Studying listener perceptions of language variation in multilingual Stockholm. In Quist, P. & Svendsen, B. A. (Eds.), Multilingual urban Scandinavia: New linguistic practices (pp. 170188). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bijvoet, E., & Fraurud, K. (2011). Language variation and varieties in contemporary multilingual Stockholm: An exploratory pilot study of young peoples’ perceptions. In Källström, R. & Lindberg, I. (Eds.), Young urban Swedish: Variation and change in multilingual settings (pp. 134). Sweden: University of Gothenburg.Google Scholar
Boyd, S., & Fraurud, K. (2010). Challenging the homogeneity assumption in language variation analysis: Findings from a study of multilingual urban spaces. In Auer, P. & Schmidt, J. E. (Eds.), Language and space: An international handbook of language variation: Vol. 1. Theories and methods (pp. 686706). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Broady, D. (2002). En social karta över gymnasieskolan i Stockholm i slutet av 1990-talet [A social map of the senior high school in Stockholm]. Studies in Educational Policy and Educational Philosophy, 1. Retrieved July 7, 2008, fromhttp://www.upi.artisan.se/publish/docs/Doc161.pdf.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broady, D., & Börjesson, M. (2008). En social karta över gymnasieskolan [A social map of the senior high school]. In Lundgren, U. P. (Ed.), Individ-samhälle-lärande: Åtta exempel på utbildningsvetenskaplig forskning (pp. 2435). Vetenskapsrådets rapportserie 2008: 2. Retrieved March 8, 2012 fromhttp://www.skeptron.uu.se/broady/sec/p-broady-borjesson-080520-social-karta-gymnasieskolan.pdf.Google Scholar
Cheshire, J., Fox, S., Kerswill, P., & Torgersen, E. (2008). Ethnicity, friendship network and social practices as the motor of dialect change: Linguistic innovation in London. Sociolinguistica, 22, 123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christensen, M. V. (2010). One of my kind? Language and ethnicity among Danish adolescents. In Quist, P. & Svendsen, B. A. (Eds.), Multilingual urban Scandinavia: New linguistic practices (pp. 207224). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, V. (1999). Going beyond the native speaker in language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 33, 185209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ekberg, L. (1998). Regeltillämpning kontra lexikonkunskap i svenskan hos invandrarbarn i Malmö [Rule application versus lexical knowledge in the Swedish of immigrant children in Malmö]. In Møller, J., Quist, P., Holmen, A., & Jørgensen, J. N. (Eds.), Nordiske sprog som andetsprog: Københavnerstudier i tosprogethed 30 (pp. 247263). Copenhagen: Danmarks Lærerhøjskole, Institut for humanistiske fag.Google Scholar
Ekberg, L. (2004). Grammatik och lexikon i svenska som andraspråk på nästan infödd nivå [Grammar and lexicon in Swedish as a second language at a near-native level]. In Hyltenstam, K. & Lindberg, I. (Eds.), Svenska som andraspråk—i forskning, undervisning och samhälle (pp. 259276). Lund: Studentlitteratur.Google Scholar
Fraurud, K., & Bijvoet, E. (2004). Multietniska ungdomsspråk och andra varieteter av svenska i flerspråkiga miljöer [Multiethnic youth language and other varieties of Swedish in multilingual settings]. In Hyltenstam, K. & Lindberg, I. (Eds.), Svenska som andraspråk—i forskning, undervisning och samhälle (pp. 377405). Lund: Studentlitteratur.Google Scholar
Fraurud, K., & Boyd, S. (2011). The native-non-native speaker distinction and the diversity of linguistic profiles of young people in multilingual urban contexts in Sweden. In Källström, R. & Lindberg, I. (Eds.), Young urban Swedish: Variation and change in multilingual settings (pp. 6787). Sweden: University of Gothenburg.Google Scholar
Ganuza, N. (2008). Syntactic variation in the Swedish of adolescents in multilingual urban settings: Subject-verb order in declaratives, questions and subordinate clauses. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stockholm University, Sweden.Google Scholar
Garrett, P. (2010). Attitudes to language. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrett, P., Coupland, N., & Williams, A. (2003). Investigating language attitudes: Social meanings of dialect, ethnicity and performance. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.Google Scholar
Haglund, C. (2010). Transnational identifications among adolescents in suburban Sweden. In Quist, P. & Svendsen, B. A. (Eds.), Multilingual urban Scandinavia: New linguistic practices (pp. 96110). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyltenstam, K. (1992). Non-native features of near-native speakers: On the ultimate attainment of childhood L2 learners. In Harris, R. J. (Ed.), Cognitive processing in bilinguals (pp. 351368). Amsterdam: Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyltenstam, K., & Abrahamsson, N. (2003). Maturational constraints in SLA. In Doughty, C. J. & Long, M. H. (Eds.), Handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 539588). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Jaspers, J. (2008). Problematizing ethnolects: Naming linguistic practices in an Antwerp secondary school. International Journal of Bilingualism, 12, 85103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jonsson, R. (2007). Blatte betyder kompis: Om maskulinitet och språk i en högstadieskola [Blatte means mate: On masculinity and language in a junior high school]. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stockholm University, Sweden.Google Scholar
Källström, R., & Lindberg, I. (Eds.). (2011). Young urban Swedish: Variation and change in multilingual settings. Sweden: University of Gothenburg. Electronic version retrievable fromhttp://hdl.handle.net/2077/26570.Google Scholar
Keim, I. (2003). Linguistic variation and the construction of social identity in a German-Turkish setting: A case study of an immigrant youth group in Mannheim, Germany. In Androutsopoulos, J. K. & Georgakopoulou, A. (Eds.), Discourse constructions of youth identities (pp. 2946). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Kotsinas, U.-B. (1988). Rinkebysvenska—en dialekt? [Rinkeby Swedish—a dialect?] In Linell, P., Adelswärd, V., Nilsson, T., & Petersson, P. A. (Eds.), Svenskans beskrivning 16 (pp. 264278). Linköping: Universitetet i Linköping.Google Scholar
Lambert, W. E., Hodgson, R., Gardner, R. C., & Fillenbaum, S. (1960). Evaluational reactions to spoken language. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 60, 4451.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leung, C., Harris, R., & Rampton, B. (1997). The idealised native speaker, reified ethnicities, and classroom realities. TESOL Quarterly, 31, 543576.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Long, D. (Ed.). (2002). Handbook of perceptual dialectology (Vol. 2). Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maegaard, M. (2010). Linguistic practice and stereotypes among Copenhagen adolescents. In Quist, P. & Svendsen, B. A. (Eds.), Multilingual urban Scandinavia: New linguistic practices (pp. 189206). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mougeon, R., Rehner, K., & Nadasdi, T. (2004). The learning of spoken French variation by immersion students from Toronto, Canada. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8, 408432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Niedzielski, N., & Preston, D. R. (2003). Folk linguistics (Rev. ed.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Opsahl, T., & Nistov, I. (2010). On some structural aspects of Norwegian spoken among adolescents in multilingual settings in Oslo. In Quist, P. & Svendsen, B. A. (Eds.), Multilingual urban Scandinavia: New linguistic practices (pp. 4964). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prentice, J. (2010). På rak sak: Om ordförbindelser och konventionaliserade uttryck bland unga språkbrukare i flerspråkiga miljöer [Word combinations and conventionalized expressions among adolescent language users in multilingual environments]. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.Google Scholar
Preston, D. R. (Ed.). (1999). Handbook of perceptual dialectology (Vol. 1). Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quist, P. (2000). Ny kobenhavnsk “multietnolekt”: Om sprogbrug blandt unge i sprogligt og kulturelt heterogene miljoer [New Copenhagen “multilethnlect”: On language use among youth in linguistically and culturally heterogeneous environments]. Danske Talesprog, 1, 143212.Google Scholar
Quist, P. (2005). Stilistiske Praksisser i Storbyens Heterogene Skole: En etnografisk og sociolingvistisk undersøgelse af sproglig variation [Stylistic practices in the urban heterogeneous high school: An ethnographic and sociolinguistic study]. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Copenhagen University, Denmark.Google Scholar
Rampton, B. (1995). Crossing: Language and ethnicity among adolescents. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Sridhar, K. K., & Sridhar, S. N. (1986). Bridging the paradigm gap: Second language acquisition theory and indigenized varieties of English. World Englishes, 5, 314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stroud, C. (1988). Literacy in a second language: A study of text construction in near-native speakers of Swedish. In Holmen, A., Hansen, E., Gimbel, J., & Jørgensen, J. N. (Eds.), Bilingualism and the individual: Copenhagen studies in bilingualism (Vol. 4, pp. 235251). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Svensson, G. (2009). Diskurspartiklar hos ungdomar i mångspråkiga miljöer i Malmö [Discourse particles in youth talk in multilingual settings in Malmö]. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Lund University, Sweden.Google Scholar
Tingsell, S. (2007). Reflexivt och personligt pronomen: Anaforisk syftning hos ungdomar i flerspråkiga storstadsmiljöer [Reflexive and non-reflexive pronouns: The use of anaphors among adolescents in multilingual urban settings]. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.Google Scholar
Torgersen, E., Kerswill, P., & Fox, S. (2006). Ethnicity as a source of changes in the London vowel system. In Hinskens, F. (Ed.), Language Variation—European Perspectives: Selected Papers from the Third International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 3) (pp. 249263). Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, P. (1974). The social differentiation of English in Norwich. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Werndin, M. (2010). Identitetsförhandlingar i det flerspråkiga klassrummet: Om ungdomsspråk, makt och diskurs [Identity negotiations in the multilingual classroom: On youth language, power, and discourse]. In Musk, N. & Wedin, Å. (Eds.), Flerspråkighet, identitet och lärande (pp. 97126). Lund: Studentlitteratur.Google Scholar
Wiese, H. (2006). “Ich mach dich Messer”: Grammatische Produktivität in Kiezdeutsch [“I knife you”: Grammatical productivity in Kiezdeutsch]. Linguistische Berichte, 207, 245273.Google Scholar
Wiese, H. (2009). Grammatical innovation in multiethnic urban Europe: New linguistic practices among adolescents. Lingua, 119, 782806.CrossRefGoogle Scholar