This article explores how ideologies derived from North African culture are transformed in local expressions of identity among Muslim French adolescents. Naturally-occurring interactional data were collected among adolescents of primarily Algerian descent living in a cité (a low-income housing project) outside Paris. The study shows that the local identity practices of Muslim French teens articulate with transcultural ideologies of identity, but in contradictory rather than wholly consistent ways. Specifically, teens in the study circulate seemingly static cultural ideologies pertaining to generation, gender, and sexuality, but also routinely challenge these ideologies in interactions with their peers. Through the innovative interactional genre of “parental name calling,” adolescents articulate their ambivalent relationship to the North African-derived cultural value they call le respect (‘respect’). In the process, they negotiate their own beliefs and practices regarding generation, gender, and sexuality in accommodation and opposition to their parents’ values.
(1986) Veiled sentiments: Honor and poetry in a Bedouin society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Amit-Talai, Vered
(1995) Conclusion: the “multi” cultural of youth. In Vered Amit Talai and Helena Wulff (eds.), Youth cultures: A cross-cultural perspective. London: Routledge, pp. 223-233.
Androutsopoulos, Jannis, and Alexandra Georgakopoulou
(2000) The language of multiple identities among Dominican Americans. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 10.2: 190-223.
Bakhtin, Mikhail, M
(1981) The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Basso, Keith
(1979) Portraits of “the Whiteman”: Linguistic play and cultural symbols among the Western Apache. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bonnafous, Simone
(1991) L’immigration prise aux mots. Paris: Editions Kimé.
Bourdieu, Pierre
(1984) Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bowen, John
(2007) Why the French don’t like headscarves: Islam, the state, and public space. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Boyer, Henri
(1997) “Nouveau français,” “parler jeune,” ou “langue des cités”?: Femarques sur un object linguistique médiatiquement identifié. Special issue: Les mots des jeunes: Observations et hypothèses. Langue Française 1141: 6-15.
Bucholtz, Mary
(2002) Youth and cultural practice. Annual Review of Anthropology 311: 525-552.
Bucholtz, Mary
(1999) “Why be normal?”: Language and identity practices in a community of nerd girls. Language in Society 281: 203-223.
Coates, Jennifer
(1999) Changing femininities: The talk of teenage girls. In Mary Bucholtz, A.C. Liang, & Laurel A. Sutton (eds.), Reinventing identities: The gendered self in discourse. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 123-139.
Durham, Deborah
(2000) Youth and the social imagination in Africa: Introduction to parts 1 and 2. Special issue: Youth and the social imagination in Africa, Part 1. Anthropological Quarterly 73.3: 113-120.
Eckert, Penelope
(1989) Jocks and burnouts: Social categories and identity in the high school. New York: Teachers College Press.
Eckert, Penelope, and Sally McConnell-Ginet
(1992) Communities of practice: Where language, gender, and power all live. In Kira Hall, Mary Bucholtz, & Birch Moonwomon (eds.), Locating power: Proceedings of the second Berkeley Women and Language Conference. Vol. 11. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group, pp. 89-99.
Giampapa, Frances
(2001) Hyphenated identities: Italian-Canadian youth and the negotiation of ethnic identities in Toronto. International Journal of Bilingualism 51: 279-311.
Goffman, Erving
(1967) Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. New York: Anchor Books. BoP
Goudaillier, Jean-Pierre
(1997) Comment tu tchatches!: Dictionnaire du français contemporain des cités. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose.
Hanks, William F
(1996) Language and communicative practices. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. BoP
Heller, Monica
(1999) Linguistic minorities and modernity: A sociolinguistic ethnography. London: Longman. BoP
Hewitt, Roger
(1986) White talk black talk: Inter-racial friendship and communication amongst adolescents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. BoP
Lefkowitz, Natalie
(1991) Talking backwards, looking forwards: The French language game verlan. Tübingen: Narr Press. BoP
Le Monde
(1991) Le débat sur l’immigration. Le maire de Paris : “Il y a overdose.” June21.
LePoutre, David
(1997) Coeur de banlieue: Codes, rites, et langages. Paris: Odile Jacob.
Lo, Adrienne
(1999) Codeswitching, speech community membership and the construction of ethnic identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 31: 461-479. BoP
Mendoza-Denton, Norma
(2008) Homegirls: Language and cultural practice among Latina youth gangs. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Mitchell-Kernan, Claudia
(1971) Language behavior in a black urban community. Berkeley: University of California Language Behavior Laboratory.
Morgan, Marcyliena
(1999) No woman no cry: Claiming African American women’s place. In Mary Bucholtz, A. C. Liang, & Laurel A. Sutton (eds.), Reinventing identities: The gendered self in discourse. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 27-45.
Pennycook, Alastair
(2003) Global Englishes: Rip Slime and performativity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 71: 513-533.
Pichler, Pia
(2001) The effect of social class and ethnicity on the discursive negotiation of femininities in the talk of British Bangladeshi girls. In Janet Cotterill & Anne E. Ife (eds.), Language across boundaries. London: Continuum, pp. 25-46.
Pierre-Adolphe, Philippe, Max Mamoud, and Georges-Olivier Tzanos
(1995) Le dico de la banlieue. Paris: La Sirène.
Pujolar, Joan
(2001) Gender, heteroglossia, and power: A sociolinguistic study of youth culture. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Rampton, Ben
(1995) Crossing: Language and ethnicity among adolescents. London: Longman. BoP
Seguin, Boris, and Frédéric Teillard
(1996) Les céfrans parlent aux français, chronique de la langue des cités. Paris: Calmann-Lévy.
Skapoulli, Elena
(2004) Gender codes at odds and the linguistic construction of a hybrid identity. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 31: 245-260. BoP
Tannen, Deborah
(1989) Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. New York: Cambridge University Press. BoP
Tetreault, Chantal
(2002) “You call that a girl?”: borderwork in a French cité. In Sarah Benor, Mary Rose, Devyani Sharma, Julie Sweetland, and Qing Zhang (eds.), Gendered practices in language. Stanford University: Center for the Study of Language and Information, pp. 237-254.
Vermeij, Lotte
(2004) “Ya know what I’m sayin?”: The double meaning of language crossing among teenagers in the Netherlands. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 1701: 141-168.
Weil, Patrick
(2004) A nation in diversity: France, Muslims and the headscarf. Open Democracy Website, March 3. [URL]
Cited by
Cited by 12 other publications
Frekko, Susan E.
2009. Signs of Respect: Neighborhood, Public, and Language in Barcelona. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 19:2 ► pp. 227 ff.
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness & Amy Kyratzis
2014. Language and Gender in Peer Interactions among Children and Youth. In The Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality, ► pp. 509 ff.
Kleinman, Julie
2016. ‘All daughters and sons of the Republic’? Producing difference in French education. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 22:2 ► pp. 261 ff.
Lam, Wan Shun Eva, Doris S. Warriner, David Poveda & Norma Gonzalez
2012. Transnationalism and Literacy: Investigating the Mobility of People, Languages, Texts, and Practices in Contexts of Migration. Reading Research Quarterly 47:2 ► pp. 191 ff.
MARCHESSOU, AGNES
2018. Strasbourg, another setting for sociolinguistic variation in contemporary French. Journal of French Language Studies 28:2 ► pp. 265 ff.
Mendoza-Denton, Norma & Aomar Boum
2015. Breached Initiations: Sociopolitical Resources and Conflicts in Emergent Adulthood. Annual Review of Anthropology 44:1 ► pp. 295 ff.
Pang, Myoung Eun
2023. Language and identity of a Korean transnational youth in the U.S.. Applied Linguistics Review 14:6 ► pp. 1673 ff.
Tetreault, Chantal
2010. Collaborative Conflicts: Teens Performing Aggression and Intimacy in a FrenchCité. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 20:1 ► pp. 72 ff.
Tetreault, Chantal
2013. Cultural citizenship in France and le Bled among teens of pan-southern immigrant heritage. Language & Communication 33:4 ► pp. 532 ff.
Tetreault, Chantal
2015. “What do you think about having beauty marks on your—Hashek!”: Innovative and Impolite Uses of an Arabic Politeness Formula among French Teenagers. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 25:3 ► pp. 285 ff.
Vázquez, Gabriela Prego & Luz Zas Varela
2019. Unvoicing practices in classroom interaction in Galicia (Spain): The (de)legitimization of linguistic mudes through scaling. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2019:257 ► pp. 77 ff.
Warriner, Doris S. & Leisy T. Wyman
2013. Experiences of Simultaneity in Complex Linguistic Ecologies: Implications for Theory, Method, and Practice. International Multilingual Research Journal 7:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 april 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.