The (im)possibility of sociolinguistic hybridity: Power and scaling in post‐soviet, transnational life

Abstract

This paper contributes to disentangling hybridity from assumptions about marginality, resistance and the dissolution of boundaries in sociolinguistic scholarship. To do so, it examines how speakers make certain types of hybrid identities (im)possible through their discursive practices of scaling. Focusing on post‐soviet, Central Asian migrants in the United States, I demonstrate how their discourses on ethnolinguistic identity rely on multiple scalar perspectives, which (re)make boundaries in different ways that (dis)allow for hybrid identities to emerge. I show that speakers engage in such discourses in order to navigate their marginal transnational positionings, and that their emergent hybrid identities do not ensure resistance to national norms or transcend categorical boundaries. These empirical observations, I argue, have implications for conceptualizing the relationship between power, marginality and hybrid forms more broadly.

Language in the middle: Class and sexuality on the Hinglish continuum

“…Hybrid language varieties like Hinglish have often been interpreted as transgressive by sociolinguists (though see Catedral, 2021 ), particularly when spoken by youth cultures in nationalist contexts that prioritize linguistic purity. Certainly, the hybrid practices discussed throughout this article challenge enduring colonialist and nationalist legacies by shifting the ground of sexuality discourse from English to Hinglish.…”

Investigating Structure and Agency in Chinese Indonesians' Identity Work

“…Several recent studies have utilized chronotope and scale productively to address issues relevant to discussions of structure and agency in identity work, although most have not used the terms "structure" and "agency" explicitly (e.g., Catedral 2018;Catedral 2021;Djuraeva and Catedral 2020;Karimzad 2020Karimzad , 2021Karimzad and Catedral 2018;Kozminska 2020). Such work has argued that socialization, including interaction with certain contexts and discourses, and through particular languages, involves exposure to certain social structures (Catedral 2021;Djuraeva and Catedral 2020;Karimzad 2020).…”

“…The use of structures such as race and ethnicity at higher and more powerful scale levels (e.g., the state) typically projects idealized images of personhood which minimize intracategorical complexity and accentuate uniformity within assigned groups (Blommaert 2007; Catedral 2021; Karimzad 2021). Higher scale use of these categories and associated approved ways of being are frequently imposed through discourse at relatively lower scale levels (e.g., within an institution) and organize not only the individual's membership to a given group but also specify the sociolinguistic behaviors required to reproduce the expected ways of being an in‐group member at progressively lower scale levels (e.g., within the region or neighborhood) (Catedral, 2021).…”

“…The use of structures such as race and ethnicity at higher and more powerful scale levels (e.g., the state) typically projects idealized images of personhood which minimize intracategorical complexity and accentuate uniformity within assigned groups (Blommaert 2007; Catedral 2021; Karimzad 2021). Higher scale use of these categories and associated approved ways of being are frequently imposed through discourse at relatively lower scale levels (e.g., within an institution) and organize not only the individual's membership to a given group but also specify the sociolinguistic behaviors required to reproduce the expected ways of being an in‐group member at progressively lower scale levels (e.g., within the region or neighborhood) (Catedral, 2021). Importantly, communities that have been ascribed membership to one or more social categories can develop competing lower‐scale structures including local identity categories, ideologies, and “value systems” (Baxter 2016, 38) regarding what it means to be a member of one or more social categories that are typically more diverse than those structured at higher scales (Blommaert 2007).…”

“…Building on recent research utilizing chronotopes and scales (e.g., Catedral 2021;Djuraeva and Catedral 2020;Karimzad 2020Karimzad , 2021Karimzad and Catedral 2018;Kozminska 2020), the current paper contributes to more comprehensive engagement with both structure and agency in sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological studies of identity work by combining quantitative variation analysis with chronotopic frame analysis (Blommaert and De Fina, 2017). Specifically, the paper investigates quantitative variation in Chinese Indonesian college students' (non)use of the Chinese discourse particle a-a quintessential feature of the Indonesian vernacular style used by the Pontianak Chinese community in West Kalimantan, Indonesia.…”