The practice of solidarity through the arts: inter-relations and shared moments of creation in Share My Table

Evans, Catrin

doi:10.14439/sjop.2019.0601.03

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 2 publications

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“…to the risk that this type of action might be considered a ‘sufficient’ effort towards ‘integration’, and an excuse not to promote more long-term changes in the lives of participants. Such practices represent, on the other hand, a potential venue for different multilingual inhabitants of a place to contribute, each with their own linguistic repertoire and creative skills, to a shared conversation about community (Evans, 2019; Hirsu, 2020; Phipps and Kay, 2014). From a research standpoint, this type of activity is a very good example of research that can combine input from education, from intercultural communication, from applied linguistics and from literary/theatre/etc.…”

Section: Thinking Multilinguallymentioning

confidence: 99%

Multilingualism and activism in Italian studies

Ciribuco

2023

Forum Italicum: A Journal of Italian Studies

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Near the end of his life, linguist and anthropologist Jan Blommaert gave an interview where he looked back at his career, and at what he had learned about the role of language in society. Talking about his time as a university student in 1980s Belgium, he tells an anecdote that I have started to mention often in my classes. Blommaert recalls opening a book of 'useful' phrases in five African languages, as an eager student, just to find phrases like 'get my car out of the mud', 'get your boss' or 'lazy people will be punished' (Docwerkers, 2021). The book, written under the pretence of helping beginners learn new languages, was obviously steeped in a colonial mentality: its intended readers were students of languages, but they were also expected to hold political and economic power over the native speakers of the languages themselves. I have come to use Blommaert's anecdote to discuss with my students (potentially, future language professionals) how any use of language is never 'innocent' and never disconnected from relations of power within and across societies. In specific contexts, speakers of certain languages (like English or Spanish) have socio-economic advantages over speakers of other languages (like Wolof or Quechua). Many languages have standard varieties and/or high prestige accents which afford concrete advantages to their users. That 'is a problem not just of difference, but of inequality' (Blommaert, 2010: 3). Language, in fact, holds the power to reinforce or subvert the architecture of society.My role as a teacher and researcher in Italian studies depends largely on the perceived 'usefulness' of my native language in a global marketplace, together with the perceived 'importance' of certain canonical works of Italian literature and art. My very status as a native speaker of Italian rests partly on my linguistic proficiency, and partly on sociopolitical divides. The phrase 'native speaker' is partly a descriptor of linguistic profiles and partly 'a personification of the safeguards of unity and continuity that are lodged at critical epistemic boundariesthe boundaries between languages to be exact' (Chow, 2014: 58). The concept of 'native speaker' is often used, for example, to exclude individuals from former colonies from the teaching of English, as several scholars have noted (Canagarajah, 2012;Holliday, 2006). In my case, being a white man with

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Section: Thinking Multilinguallymentioning

confidence: 99%