8 Exploring Multilingualism in Urban Border Areas: The City of Tijuana
Alfredo Escandón
Clare Mar-Molinero
Acknowledgements
This volume is an output of the MEITS project (‘Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies’, www.meits.org), a flagship interdisciplinary project in Modern Languages which is part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s ‘Open World Research Initiative’ (OWRI): AH/N004671/1. The Principal Investigator is Professor Wendy Ayres-Bennett, University of Cambridge. The editor and contributors wish to acknowledge the generous support from the MEITS project which funded both the volume and the conference that underpinned it. The conference was held at the University of Southampton in June 2017.
The MEITS project brings together a substantial team of researchers working in six strands across a range of disciplines (including literary studies, history of ideas, sociolinguistics, education, language acquisition and cognitive neuroscience) and a large number of languages, including major world languages and minoritised languages. The project’s research questions centre on multilingualism, exploring its relationship with identity, culture, politics, history, education, health and wellbeing. More broadly, the project seeks to demonstrate the value of speaking more than one language to individuals, communities and society. The project involves researchers in the University of Cambridge, with partners in Queen’s University Belfast, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Nottingham. This volume and the conference from which is has emerged form part of the work of the sociolinguistic strand of MEITS which is based in Queen’s University Belfast (‘Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Multilingualism: Identity, Diversity and Social Cohesion’) and is led by Professor Janice Carruthers, to whom I would like to express special thanks for having invited me to lead on an aspect of the project. The strand explores linguistic and sociolinguistic questions relating to minoritised languages (notably Irish and Breton) as well as issues around variation and non-standard varieties. A particular focus is contemporary urban vernacular French (see Chapter 7 in this volume). This focus on language in the city in a French context was the original springboard for both this volume and the associated conference.
I would also like to thank particular colleagues for their assistance in bringing this edited volume to fruition: for their support in running the related conference, I would like to thank my former PhD student Daniel Morales, as well as colleagues Adriana Patiño Santos and Dick Vigers for their valuable insights as discussants which have informed ideas in the book. Thanks too to Darren Paffey for his meticulous eye in helping prepare the final manuscript of the volume. My fellow contributors have been extraordinarily cooperative with deadlines and requests from me; without them obviously this book would not have been possible. As ever I am particularly grateful to my former colleague and continuing friend, Patrick Stevenson, for his critical appraisal of early drafts of the book, and his thought-provoking contributions to the conference.
Clare Mar-Molinero
Southampton, 2019
Contributors
Jessica Bradley is Lecturer in Literacies in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield where she co-directs the Literacies Research Cluster. Her research is at the intersection of modern languages, linguistics and creative arts and her AHRC-funded doctoral research investigated translanguaging practices in street arts production and performance. Research projects include ‘Multilingual Streets’ (AHRC-OWRI), which focuses on linguistic landscapes and uses creative arts methods to explore young people’s understandings of everyday multilingualism. She co-edited a volume which explores participatory and creative approaches to translanguaging research, Translanguaging as Transformation: The Collaborative Construction of New Linguistic Realities (2020). She co-convenes the AILA Research Network ‘Creative Inquiry and Applied Linguistics’.
Janice Carruthers is Professor of French Linguistics at Queen’s University Belfast and AHRC Leadership Fellow for Modern Languages. She has published widely on the French language, particularly on orality, temporality (tense, aspect, connectors, frames), corpus linguistics. socio-linguistics, variation and on language policy. In recent years she has led funded projects on temporality in French and Occitan oral narratives (ExpressioNarration, Marie Sklodowska Curie, Horizon 2020), and on language policy in relation to modern foreign languages, indigenous languages and community languages (AHRC Leadership Fellow). She leads the Queen’s strand of the AHRC Open World Project, Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies. Recent publications include the De Gruyter Manual of Romance Sociolinguistics, co-edited with Wendy Ayres-Bennett.
Leonie Gaiser is a PhD student in Linguistics and Research Assistant on the Multilingual Manchester research unit at the University of Manchester. Her PhD project aims to develop an overarching and original approach to profiling and understanding ‘community’ in globalised urban settings, exploring Arabic language practices, language maintenance as well as language provisions for Arabic in Manchester. She has conducted research and co-authored a series of reports and publications on linguistic landscapes, the notion of ‘community’, supplementary schools and language provisions in the healthcare sector.
Alfredo Escandón is Professor of English Linguistics and Gender Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Mexico. He is the author of Género y falocentrismo en la obra de Gabriel García Márquez. He was recently awarded his PhD from the University of Southampton for his work on Linguistic Landscapes and linguistic practices in the city of Tijuana on the US-Mexican border. His current research interests include sociolinguistics, border linguistic landscapes, phonetics and gender studies.
Petros Karatsareas is Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Westminster, with a Ptychion in Greek Philology (University of Athens) and an MPhil and PhD in Linguistics (Cambridge). He researches on London’s Greek Cypriot diaspora and the languages of the UK’s minority ethnic communities, exploring intergenerational transmission and maintenance, specifically ideologies of monolingualism, attitudes towards multilingualism and non-prestigious linguistic varieties, as well as community language teaching and learning in complementary schools and their role in language maintenance and ideology. He is also actively involved in a range of public engagement activities raising awareness of the value of non-standard linguistic varieties and the contribution of the Greek Cypriot community to a multicultural, multilingual London. His research has received financial support from the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust and the AHRC’s Open World Research Initiative.
Clare Mar-Molinero is Professor of Spanish Sociolinguistics and Director of the Centre for Mexico-Southampton Collaboration at the University of Southampton, United Kingdom. She has published books, journal articles and chapters on topics of language polices, global Spanish, language and migration and urban multilingualism, and has edited various journal special issues, focusing on Spain, Mexico and the United Kingdom particularly. She has participated in projects on multilingualism funded by the AHRC, WUN and the EU’s VI Framework. Her monographs and edited volumes include: The Politics of Language in the Spanish-Speaking World (2000); (ed. with Miranda Stewart) Globalization and Language in the Spanish-Speaking World (2006); (ed. with Patrick Stevenson) Language Ideologies, Policies and Practices (2006); (ed. with Gabrielle Hogan-Brun and Patrick Stevenson) Discourses on Language and Integration (2009).
Yaron Matras is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Manchester. His interests include contact linguistics and multilingualism, typology and language documentation. He is the author of Language Contact (CUP, 2009; 2nd edition 2019) and the founder of the Multilingual Manchester research unit. His other books include Romani: A linguistic introduction (CUP, 2002), Romani