Power, Mobility and Voice

Builds on the profound and challenging legacy of sociolinguist Jan Blommaert, one of the most important thinkers in contemporary sociolinguistics, who dismantled the theoretical and ideological orthodoxies of his time.

This volume honours the influential work of Jan Blommaert, furthering his critical and constructive engagement with power dynamics across numerous domains. It takes Blommaert’s work as a starting point to approach the challenges of a changing social world, using his frameworks to explore new contexts and applying new methodologies to established fields of study.

The chapter authors – Jan’s colleagues, students and others inspired by his work – explore four themes of his scholarly legacy, expanding on his work and looking to new contexts. They elaborate on the concept of chronotopes, explore ideologies of language diversity and inequality, address normativities in complex online and offline spaces, and analyse voice as agency in time and space.

Spanning a wide range of academic disciplines and contexts, they share a core commitment to analysing language in relation to society and power, arguably the most pressing legacy of Blommaert’s work.

This book is open access under a CC BY NC ND licence.

Karel Arnaut is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at KU Leuven, Belgium. He teaches on the anthropology of migration as wall as on language, diversity and inequality and co-coordinates a range of migration-related international projects such as AIMEC, ReROOT and ATLAS.

Ico Maly is Associate Professor of Digital Media, Culture and Politics at Tilburg University, The Netherlands. He is editor-in-chief of Diggit Magazine and senior fellow at Far-Right Analysis Network and his research explores digital media, ideology and power.

David Parkin is Professor Emeritus of All Souls College and the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford, UK. His work of over six decades spans urban ethnicity, rural farming practices and multimodal communication.

Massimiliano Spotti is Associate Professor of Ethnography and Digital Literacies at Tilburg University, The Netherlands. His research interests include the (dis)approval of identities via socio-technological platforms in asylum applications and software-based approaches to the learning of Dutch.