Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: In this paper we analyze how adolescents in a Copenhagen school classify and systematicallyorganize the different types of language they come across in their linguistic everyday.Furthermore, we analyse descriptions of how this metapragmatic system affect the adolescents’language use in their daily life. Our primary data consist of 74 essays on language and normsfor its use made by a group of pupils at the age of 14-15. Our analyses show that theparticipants outline systematic metapragmatic organizations that generally can be described byusing three parameters that roughly can be labelled as categorizations, style continua andpersonal attachment or detachment. Traditional accounts of “languages” as countable andcoherent entities play a role in the system but cannot account for all the aspects. Therefore wesuggest viewing the data through the lens of the languaging theory. We conclude that theadolescents’ ways of organizing language reflect (and comment) the societal condition ofsuperdiversity. At the same time the specific competences developed among the adolescentsare not accepted or respected by mainstream society and the educational system and wediscuss possible consequences of this discrepancy.
Institution: University of Copenhagen
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $350
OpenAlex ID: W2117963841