Kursinformation

MA Mehrsprachigkeit und Interaktion Thursdays - from 9 to 11 am The intricate relationship between language and society has helped shape various strands of linguistic research. Sociolinguistics, for instance, embraced the notion of superdiversity (Vertovec, 2010) by acknowledging the influence of migration waves and digital technologies on social and linguistic practices (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011). More recently, the continuous growth in digital communication as well as participation formats and affordances—with an ever-increasing impact on societal structures—led yet to new reflections on how Sociolinguistics, a discipline based on an interest in linguistic practice, could be brought together with Ethnomethodology, a field of studies where the fine-grained analysis of social action is in the spotlight. This represents a shift from “a sociolinguistics of offline areas and communities into a sociolinguistics of digital culture” in the words of the Belgian sociolinguist Jan Blommaert. In this seminar, we will focus on two publications by Blommaert before his sudden death in 2021, Durkheim and the Internet (Blommaert, 2018) and Online with Garfinkel (Blommaert et al., 2019). In the first part of the seminar, we will focus on theoretical considerations, and, in the second part, we will review empirical studies of digital communication which bring together the analytical tools from Sociolinguistics and Ethnomethodology. Finally, in the third part of this seminar, students will engage in their own small case studies by collecting, and analyzing digital-communication data as well as sharing their findings with the whole group. Please note that this is not a hybrid seminar. Students are expected to attend all sessions and participate actively in discussions and group work. Image: Akemi Paz