Exploring Language in a Multilingual Context: Variation, Interaction and Ideology in Language Documentation

Proposing a new methodological approach to documenting languages spoken in multilingual societies, this book retraces the investigation of one unique linguistic space, the Creole varieties referred to as Takitaki in multilingual French Guiana. It illustrates how interactional sociolinguistic, anthropological linguistic, discourse analytical and quantitative sociolinguistic approaches can be integrated with structural approaches to language in order to resolve rarely discussed questions systematically (what are the outlines of the community, who is a rightful speaker, what speech should be documented) that frequently crop up in projects of language documentation in multilingual contexts. The authors argue that comprehensively documenting complex linguistic phenomena requires taking into account the views of all local social actors (native and non native speakers, institutions, linguists, non-speakers etc.), applying a range of complementary data collection and analysis methods and putting issues of ideology, variation, language contact and interaction centre stage. This book will be welcomed by researchers in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, fieldwork studies, language documentation and language variation and change.

Bettina Migge is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at University College Dublin.

Isabelle Léglise is a permanent Researcher in Linguistics at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS, Paris) where she heads a programme on Language Contact at the SeDyL/CELIA-CNRS (Structure et Dynamique des Langues/Centre d'Etudes des Langues Indigènes d'Amérique). Since 2000, she has been engaged in research projects in French Guiana, and, more recently, in Suriname and Brazil, with a special focus on multilingualism, contact-induced changes, language and migration, and educational issues. Her main research interests are language contact, language variation and change, discourse analysis, sociology of language and applied linguistics.