Cover not available
Part of
Migration and Media: Discourses about identities in crisis
Edited by Lorella Viola and Andreas Musolff
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 81] 2019
► pp. 339–354

Chapter 14
“They have lived in our street for six years now and still don’t speak a work [!] of English”

Scenarios of alleged linguistic underperformance as part of anti-immigrant discourses

Whilst sociolinguistic superdiversity is often viewed as an almost irreversible global development, there may be a question mark over whether the ‘mix of cultures’, which mass migration allegedly fosters, does in fact lead to an acceptance of multilingualism and/or multiculturalism in the respective societies. On the basis of public discourse data from press media and Internet forums, this paper explores popular attitudes the effects of mass immigration, which appear to express an endorsement of monolingual/monocultural societies. Using methods of argumentation theory, pragmatics and discourse-historical triangulation, the article argues that findings of a global rise in superdiversity as regards usage data need to be complemented by studies of divergent perception patterns at local/national levels.
Keywords: computer-mediated communication, culture mix, immigration, migration, multiculturalism, multilingualism, on-line forums, scenario, superdiversity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and methodology
  • 3.Arguments about and scenarios of immigration to Britain
  • 4.Conclusions and tasks for the linguistic investigation of attitudes towards migration-related language issues
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 7 March 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.81.15mus
References (64)
References
Andersson, Lars G., and Peter Trudgill. 1990. Bad Language. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Arnaut Karel, Jan Blommaert, Ben Rampton, Massimiliano Spotti (eds.). 2015. Language and Superdiversity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Arnaut, Karel, Jan Blommaert, Ben Rampton, Massimiliano Spotti. 2015. “Introduction: Superdiversity and sociolinguistics.” In Language and superdiversity, ed. by Karel Arnaut, Jan Blommaert, Ben Rampton, and Massimiliano Spotti, 1–17 London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arnaut, Karel, Martha Sif Karrebæk, Massimiliano Spotti, and Jan Blommaert (eds.). 2016. Engaging Superdiversity: Recombining Spaces, Times and Language Practices. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Auer, Peter. 2011. “Code-switching/mixing.” In The Sage Handbook of Sociolinguistics, ed. by Ruth Wodak, Barbara Johnstone, and Paul Kerswill 460–478. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Richard W. 1992. Images of English. A Cultural History of the Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Balabanova, Ekaterina, and Alex Balch. 2010. “Sending and Receiving: The Ethical Framing of Intra-EU Migration in the European Press.” European Journal of Communication 25(4): 382–397. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Balch, Alex. 2015. “Hard Evidence: how has press coverage of immigration changed?” The Conversation, 21 January 2015. [URL]. Last accessed 2nd April 2017.Google Scholar
Balch, Alex, and Ekaterina Balabanova. 2014. “Ethics, Politics and Migration: Public Debates on the Free Movement of Romanians and Bulgarians in the UK, 2006–2013.” Politics. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barbour, Stephen. 2000. “Britain and Ireland: The Varying Significance of Language for Nationalism.” In Language and Nationalism in Europe, ed. by Stephen Barbour, and Cathie Carmichael, 18–43. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bastardas-Boada, Albert. 2012. Language and identity policies in the 'glocal' age: New processes, effects, and principles of organization. Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis Autonòmics.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie, and Peter Trudgill (eds.). 1998. Language Myths. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
BBC. 2010a. Have your Say: Should politicians be talking about immigration? [URL]. Last accessed 15 th December 2013.Google Scholar
. 2010b. Have your Say: How should immigration be tackled? [URL]. Last accessed 15th December 2013.Google Scholar
. 2010c. Have your Say: Are immigration rules fair? [URL]. Last accessed 15th December 2013.Google Scholar
Bhatia, Tej K., and William C. Ritchie (eds.). 2012. The Handbook of Bilingualism and Multilingualism. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blackledge, Adrian, and Angela Creese. 2010. Multilingualism: A Critical Perspective. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013a. Ethnography, superdiversity, and linguistic landscapes: Chronicles of complexity. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2013b. “Citizenship, Language, and Superdiversity: Towards Complexity.” Journal of Language, Identity & Education 12(3): 193–196. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2015. “Commentary: Superdiversity old and new.” Language & Communication 44: 82–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan, and Ben Rampton. 2015. “Language and superdiversity.” In Language and superdiversity, ed. by Karel Arnaut, Jan Blommaert, Ben Rampton, and Massimiliano Spotti, 21–48. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cadier, Linda, and Clare Mar-Molinero. 2014. “Negotiating networks of communication in a superdiverse environment: urban multilingualism in the city of Southampton.” Multilingua 33 (5-6): 505–524. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cap, Piotr. 2013. Proximization. The pragmatics of symbolic distance crossing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. “Expanding CDS Methodology by Cognitive Pragmatic Tools. Proximisation Theory and Public Space Discourses.” In Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, ed. by Christopher Hart, and Piotr Cap, 189–210. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2006. “Britain as a container: immigration metaphors in the 2005 election campaign.” Discourse & Society 17 (5): 563–581. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cisneros, J. David. 2008. “Contaminated Communities: The Metaphor of ‘Immigrant as Pollutant’ in Media Representations of immigration.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 11 (4): 569–601. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Fina, Anna, Didem Ikizoglu, and Jeremy Wegner (eds.). 2017. Diversity and Super-Diversity: Sociocultural Linguistic Perspectives. Washington: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Duarte, Joana, and Ingrid Gogolin (eds.). 2013. Linguistic superdiversity in urban areas. Research approaches. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duchêne, Alexandre, Melissa Moyer, and Celia Roberts (eds.). 2013. Language, Migration and social Inequalities: A Critical Sociolinguistic Perspective on Institutions and Work. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Giltrow, Janet. 2013. “Genre and computer-mediated communication.” In Pragmatics of Computer-mediated Communication, ed. by Susan Herring, Dieter Stein, and Tuija Virtanen , 717–737. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goebel, Zane. 2015. Language and superdiversity: Indonesians knowledging at home and abroad. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hart, Christopher. 2010. Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Science: New Perspectives on Immigration Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011a. “Moving beyond Metaphor in the Cognitive Linguistic Approach to CDA: Construal Operations in Immigration Discourse.” In Critical Discourse Studies in Context and Cognition, ed. by Christopher Hart, 171–192. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011b. “Legitimising Assertions and the Logico-Rhetorical Module: Evidence and Epistemic Vigilance in Media Discourse on Immigration.” Discourse Studies 13(6): 751–769. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herring, Susan C., Lois Ann Scheidt, Sabrina Bonus, and Elijah Wright. 2004. “Bridging the gap: A genre analysis of weblogs.” In Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences . DOI logo
Holmes, Janet, and Miriam Meyerhoff. 1999. “The Community of Practice: Theories and methodologies.” Language in Society 28: 173–183. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hopkins, Katie. 2016. “I'm totally behind asking Muslim women to learn English but asking me to pay for it is a liberty in any language.” Daily Mail, 19 January 2016.Google Scholar
House of Commons. 2012. Overseas Students and Net Migration. HC 425, Fourth Report of Session 2012–13 – Report, Together with Formal Minutes, Oral and Written Evidence. London: TSO (The Stationery Office). [URL] Last accessed 2nd April 2017.Google Scholar
INTRAN 2018. IN.TRAN. Communication for all. Norwich: Norfolk County Hall. [URL]. Last accessed 10th March 2018.Google Scholar
Johansson, Marjut 2015. “Bravo for this editorial! Users’ comments in discussion forums.” In Follow-ups in Political Discourse, ed. by Elda Weizman, and Anita Fetzer 83–107. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jostes, Brigitte. 2010. “Monolingualism: An Outline of an Unpopular Research Programme.” Language & History 53(1): 27–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
KhosraviNik, Majid. 2010. “The representation of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in British newspapers: a critical discourse analysis.” Journal of Language and Politics 9(1): 1–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
KhosraviNik, Majid, Michał Krzyżanowski, and Ruth Wodak. 2012. “Dynamics of Representations in Discourse: Immigrants in the British Press.” In Migrations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. by Michi Messer, Renée Schroeder, Ruth Wodak, 283–295. Vienna: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
King, Lid, and Lorna Carson (eds.). 2016. The Multilingual City: Vitality, Conflict and Change. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Korenman, Joan, and Nancy Wyatt. 1996. “Group dynamics on an e-mail forum.” In Computer-mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social and Cross-cultural Perspectives, ed. by Susan C. Herring, 225–242. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krumm, Hans-Jürgen. 2012. “Multilingualism, Heterogeneity and the Monolingual Policies of the Linguistic Integration of Immigrants.” In Migrations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. by Michi Messer, Renée Schroeder, and Ruth Wodak, 43–54. Vienna: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kureishi, Hanif. 2014. “The migrant has no face, status or story.” The Guardian 31 May 2014.Google Scholar
Meissner, Fran. 2015. “Migration in migration-related diversity? The nexus between superdiversity and migration studies.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 38(4): 556–567. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meissner, Fran, and Steven Vertovec. 2015. “Comparing super-diversity.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 38 (4): 541–555. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Musolff, Andreas. 2006. “Metaphor Scenarios in Public Discourse. ” Metaphor and Symbol 21(1): 23–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. “Immigrants and Parasites: The History of a Bio-Social Metaphor.” In Migrations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. by Michi Messer, Renée Schroeder, and Ruth Wodak, 249–258. Vienna: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. “Dehumanizing metaphors in UK immigrant debates in press and online media.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 3(1): 41–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Potowski, Kim. 2013. “Sociolinguistic dimensions of immigration to the United States. ” Lengua y migración 5(2): 29–50.Google Scholar
Pavlenko, Aneta. 2014a. The Bilingual Mind: And What It Tells Us about Language and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014b. “Superdiversity and why it isn’t: Reflections on terminological innovation and academic branding.” Paper at Conference on Sloganizations in Language Education Discourse. Humboldt University. Berlin.Google Scholar
Piller, Ingrid, and Kimie Takahashi. 2011. “Language, Migration and Human Rights.“ In The Sage Handbook of Sociolinguistics, ed. by Ruth Wodak, Barbara Johnstone, and Paul Kerswill, 583–597. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rampton, Ben. 2016. “Drilling down to the grain in superdiversity.” In Language and superdiversity, ed. by Karel Arnaut, Jan Blommaert, Ben Rampton, and Massimiliano Spotti, 91–109. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Reyes, Angela. 2014. “Linguistic anthropology in 2013: super-new-big.” American Anthropologist 116(2): 366–378. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2015. “How language communities intersect: Is ‘superdiversity’ an incremental or transformative condition?” Language & Communication 44: 7–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toivanen, Reetta, and Janne Saarikivi (eds.). 2016. Linguistic Genocide or Superdiversity? New and Old Language Diversities. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2011. Sociolinguistic Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistic Complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vertovec, Steven. 2007. “Super-diversity and its implications.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30 (6): 1024–1054. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Watts, Richard J. 2011. Language Myths and the History of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Kisić, Jelena Jorgačević & Aleksandra Salamurović
2023. Migration Discourse in Serbian Media – Analysis of National Dailies Politika, Danas and Vecernje novosti. In The Representation of REFUGEES and MIGRANTS in European National Media Discourses from 2015 to 2017 [Linguistik in Empirie und Theorie/Empirical and Theoretical Linguistics, ], ► pp. 251 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.