What is it about?
We explore how traditional emic social distinctions, modern states’ language ideologies and emerging discourses in the urban context shape Maroon’s practices and identities in the border zone. We explore people’s alignment with national language ideologies and the nature of distinctive ideologies, identifications and practices that can be observed in the border zone.
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Why is it important?
The Guyana Plateau in Northern South America is a hybrid social space due to historical and recent cross-regional migration, forced population movements under slavery and indentured labour schemes during colonial times. The same or closely related population groups and languages are now part of two or more modern nation states, often straddling the borders of these states. This raises the question of the effects of national borders on language and identity in such transnational contexts and in the border area where national norms and conceptualisations may be weaker.
Perspectives
We show that the border zone constitutes a separate sociolinguistic area, in terms of both language use and ideologies. However, similarities do not preclude sharp differences at other levels because multiple identifications co-exist. The findings support a layered and dynamic perspective of identity and illustrate how contradictory perspectives simultaneously overlap on one or several scales.
Professor Isabelle LEGLISE
CNRS UMR 8202 SeDyL, INALCO, IRD
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Language and identity construction on the French Guiana-Suriname border, International Journal of Multilingualism, July 2019, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/14790718.2019.1633332.
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