Language variation among bilinguals:
Expression of multiple identities? Or multiple expressions of one identity?
Spoken language is an important component of culture and therefore
serves as a tool for expression of identity. Interesting situations arise among
people who are bilingual (or multilingual) due to living among two (or more)
cultures, where they must use language to express multiple group memberships.
This talk will explore linguistic variation in three cultures: Franco-Italian (Nagy
1996, Heap & Nagy 1997),
Anglo-Canadian (Blondeau et al.
1996, Nagy et al. 1997, Sankoff
& Thibault 1997), and Franco-American (Ryback-Soucy
1998). In each case, the French language and culture play an important role:
speakers are members of a French culture, but also Italian, Anglo-Canadian, and
American, respectively. Linguistic variation (in the pronunciation, vocabulary
and grammatical structures) allows speakers to express both the French and the
other aspect(s) of their culture. This is manifest in two ways: at the group and
the individual level. At the group level, we find clear patterns of variation by
age, sex, and other social characteristics relevant to being a member of a
multicultural community, such as degree of contact/interaction with each group.
For example, older, more conservative members of the Franco-Italian community
have a higher overall frequency of use of the more French variants in their
language, while younger, more innovative members have a higher overall frequency
of the more Italian variants, both for phonological and morphological aspects of
the language. However, even at the individual level, all speakers can be seen to
waver continually between two targets. Some of this variation may be attributed
to the formality of the situation or the type(s) of interlocutors, but there is
always some degree of free variation. This omnipresent variation can be analyzed
in two ways: as competition between multiple grammars (e.g., a French-like and
an Italian-like grammar) or as one grammar with inherent variation (allowing
both French-like and English-like forms). This second option allows the
"wavering" to be the marker of ONE identity-- the identity of a
bilingual and bicultural person, rather than suggesting that the speaker is
continually (sometimes within a sentence or even a word) switching from one
identity to another. This is more believable in terms of the patterns noted:
very regular frequency patterns can be seen among speakers-- too regular to be
attributed to chance "wavering," and systematic enough that we may
assume them to be controlled from within the grammar. That is, a grammar, in
addition to describing the structure of the language, may also describe how to
interweave the different possible variants of many (all?) parts of the language
in order to communicate information about one's identity simultaneously with the
transfer of overt content.
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