Rinkeby Swedish and semilingualism in language ideological debates: A Bourdieuean perspective

Abstract

The focus of this paper is on the mechanisms whereby liberal and well‐meaning democratic societies propagate a cycle of disposession where immigrants are constructed as least resourced while the powerful retain their power. Specifically discussed is the semiotic management of traditional hierarchies of privilege and access through language ideological discourses pertaining to second language acquisition, multilingualism and heterogeneity. One notion in particular is discussed in this context, namely Rinkeby Swedish, a potential, imagined, pan‐immigrant contact variety of Swedish. The discussion is framed within a primarily Bourdieuean conceptual apparatus using concepts of symbolic market, explaining the role of language boundaries and their institutional policing, and detailing the semiotic processes of iconization whereby immigrants are positioned as outside of a symbolically reconstituted community of ‘real’ Swedish speakers, in strategic attempts to restrict their access to important linguistic and symbolic resources.

Problematizing ethnolects: Naming linguistic practices in an Antwerp secondary school

“…Kotsinas (1988Kotsinas ( , 1998 does not use the term ethnolect in her work, but is often quoted by others as having described one, namely, Rinkebysvenska ('Rinkeby Swedish'), a variety in suburban Stockholm " [spoken] mainly by teenagers and young people" (1998, p.145) of different ethnic origins and deviating from Standard Swedish in phonological, morphosyntactic and lexical respects (also see Stroud, 2004). Interaction-oriented authors define ethnolect as "a variety of the majority language (or 'host language'), which is used and regarded as a vernacular for speakers of a particular ethnic descent and is marked by certain contact phenomena," or simply, "non-native German" (Androutsopolous, 2001, p. 2).…”

“…Consequently, if one is not alert to this, the analysis risks situating itself within the structures where "ethnolectal" language use already is a sign of deviance or underachievement. As a result of this, even with best intentions, one reproduces the identification of such linguistic uses as nonmainstream or traditional, which rationalizes the exclusion of "ethnolect" speakers on the public floor which is reserved for standard language use (Stroud, 2004, and see Calvet, 2006, p. 241ff.…”

“…Even so, as a concept, ethnolect may not be as unproblematic as its popularity suggests (cf. Stroud, 2004). …”

“This migrants’ babble is not a German dialect!”: The interaction of standard language ideology and ‘us’/‘them’ dichotomies in the public discourse on a multiethnolect

“…The Dialekt framing of the Kiezdeutsch debate in Germany put a special spotlight onto this kind of proxy racism, but as the studies, for example, on Rinkeby Swedish and Spanglish discourse in Sweden and the US, respectively, indicate, the German debate does not constitute a singular case (Stroud 2004;Zentella 2007). Language seems to be one of the final hide-outs where openly racist remarks are still socially acceptable in modern society, and as such, it is a very powerful domain for the construction of social out-groups.…”

State categories, state vision and vernacular woes in Sweden’s language politics

“…As a language political issue of current relevance, Ö vdalsk is interlinked with relatively recent efforts to further unify, centralise and homogenise the regulation of Sweden's linguistic market (see also Wingstedt 1998;Hult 2004;Stroud 2004;Hyltenstam 2005;Elenius 2007;Milani 2007a;Lainio 2015;Salö 2016). In 1995, concurrent with Sweden's European integration, the Swedish government decreed the formation of the Minority Language Committee, a parliamentary commission tasked with investigating 'whether and in what manner' Sweden should espouse the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages.…”