Current digital medial lives of young people and adults in different geopolitical spaces and a disparity of experiences within these spaces calls for systematically revisiting some problematic assumptions that frame the Communication and Cultural Sciences, particularly in the global North. With this as point of departure, I will attempt to do the following three things in my presentation. First, I will “make visible” some dimensions of the ways-of-being-with-words and cultural-tools that shape life in the 21st century. Secondly, my presentation will illustrate how analyses in and across virtual-irl timespaces allows for revisiting the ways in which language categories and identity positions have been talked-and-written-into-being since the end of the 20th century. Finally, I will present reflections regarding doing netnographic fieldwork in the 21st century. An overarching aim of this presentation is to contribute to the academic domain of (what is glossed as) bi/multilingual research from bi/multilingual multimodal perspectives.
Taking both a socially oriented perspective and a decolonial framework on languaging and identity positions, my presentation will juxtapose data from ethnographic projects at the CCD research group at Örebro University, Sweden (www.oru.se/humes/ccd). The analysis I will share will include ethnographically framed everyday life (i) data from projects that focus Web 2.0 platforms (like Youtube and facebook), (ii) data from Swedish mass-media (SVT, the national TV and print-digital newspapers) and (iii) archive and policy data related to educational institutions in Sweden. My presentation will problematizes dominating understandings of language, identity and culture generally and the organization of “special” support for “immigrant” individuals as well as “functionally disabled” young people in the global North more specifically.
The analysis presented will highlight that ways of conceptualizing, reporting and “talking about bi/multilingualism” are not in sync with mundane use of cultural-tools, languaging or ways-of-being-with-words, or peoples engagement in “everyday bi/multilingual communication” in and across virtual-irl and media-institutional settings. I will illustrate the incongruence between individuals, institutional and mass-media accountings, as opposed to the performance of language, identity and culture in the global North. The analysis will highlight the reductionistic and problematic “webs-of-understandings” (Bagga-Gupta 2012) that frame the glossed concepts mono-bi-multilingualism and mono-bi-multiculturalism in the global North. Providing emic understandings of how accountings constitute a core dimension of “collective remembering” (Wertsch 2002) of “imagined communities” (Anderson 1991), the work presented here will illustrate “alternative voices” (Hasnain el al 2013) in the multidisciplinary fields such as Communication Studies, Cultural Studies and the Language Sciences (Bagga-Gupta 2013, 2014a, 2014b). This endeavor calls for a major shift in analytical perspectives, where a visual-orientation from ethnographically framed decolonial positions present challenges to northern hegemonies that currently frame discourses of globalization.
References:
Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities. Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.
Bagga-Gupta, S. (2012). Challenging understandings of Bilingualism in the Language Sciences from the lens of research that focuses Social Practices. In Eva Hjörne, Geerdina van der Aalsvoort & Guida de Abreu (Eds.) Learning, social interaction and diversity – exploring school practices. pp 85-102. Rotterdam: Sense.
Bagga-Gupta, S. (2013). The Boundary-Turn. Relocating language, identity and culture through the epistemological lenses of time, space and social interactions. In Imtiaz Hasnain, Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta & Shailendra Mohan (Eds.) Alternative Voices: (Re)searching Language, Culture and Identity... pp 28-49 Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Bagga-Gupta, Sangeeta (2014). Languaging. Ways-of-being-with-words across Disciplinary Boundaries and Empirical Sites. In Heli Paulasto, Lea Meriläinen, Helka Riionheimo & Maria Kok (Eds). Language Contacts at the Crossroads of Disciplines. (89-130). Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Bagga-Gupta, S. (2014). Performing and accounting language and identity: Agency AS actors-in-(inter)action-with-tools. In P. Deters, Xuesong Gao, E. Miller and G. Vitanova-Haralampiev (Eds.) Interdisciplinary approaches to theorizing and analyzing agency and second language learning. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Hasnain, I., Bagga-Gupta, S. & Mohan, S. (Eds.) Alternative Voices: (Re)searching Language, Culture and Identity... Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Wertsch, J. (2002). Voices of Collective Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2015.
Sociocultural perspective, decolonialism, multidisciplinary, multilingualism, multimodality, ethnography, languaging, performativity, chaining, oral language bias, monolingual bias.
Visual Media Culture Conference, KC College, Mumbai University, India, 20-21 February 2015