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Part of
Catalan Sociolinguistics: State of the art and future challenges
Edited by Miquel Àngel Pradilla Cardona
[IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature 32] 2022
► pp. 275–296

Chapter 18
New speakers

Language and subjectivity

| Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

In this chapter, I argue for the relevance and productivity of research on “new speakers” in sociolinguistics. To this end, I discuss the historical relationships of sociolinguistics with other social sciences in terms of an ongoing adoption of concepts and methods from other disciplines. Accordingly, the concept of new speakers brings up the debates about subjectivity raised by the works of Foucault, Butler, Bhabha and other authors. I illustrate the argument by drawing on data that shows how different profiles of speakers relate to the languages of their repertoires in different ways, and how these different investments shed light on the Catalan sociolinguistic situation and on how it is experienced. I finally argue that attention to subjectivity can help connect sociolinguistics with the scholarly debates taking place around contemporary social movements such as feminism, anti-racism, the LGBT movement and environmentalism.

Keywords: subject, subjectivity, method, methodology, intersectionality, new speaker, native speaker, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, power, applied linguistics, critical, identity, identities, feminism, muda, mudes
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Sociolinguistics: A meeting point
  • Sociolinguistics: Who do we speak to?
  • Language and subjectivity
  • The “problem” of new speakers
  • The “problem” of native speakers
  • The (first) new speakers of Catalan
  • Recapitulation
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 December 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ivitra.32.18puj
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