Jan BlommaertTilburg University

New communicative environments offer ‘free spaces’: no established rules

Yet we see instant creation of codes, norms, stable patterns

Raise questions of ‘global’, ‘local’, ‘authentic’

Two directions: Super-vernacularization Deglobalization

Globalization creates supergroups Through new communication technologies Long-distance online networks New large-scale communities

Communities develop new vernaculars Based on existing resources: English, standard literacy

Cf pidginization, creolization But superfast, literate and NORMATIVE

Late 1990s: emergence of mobile phone + chat systems as everyday commodity

Large constituencies engage in new forms of communication

Speed + (initially) cost + keyboard structure (mobile phones)

Emergence of global ‘code’ based on English and orthography

@ 2 4 8 B C U Thx Msg Tmrw/2mrw

At To, too For Eight-ate-ait Be See you Thanks Message tomorrow

Nth Sth Grz Bck Btr wry Fwd , etc

Nothing Something Greetings Back Better worry forward

Conventional morphosyntax B4 (‘before’) Ur (‘your’) Mayb (‘maybe’)

The famous 8 L8 (‘late’) W8 (‘wait’) W8 (‘weight’) I 8 (‘I ate’)

Lookin fwd 2 c u @ urs @ 4 NORMATIVE:

Looking fwd 2 s u @ urs @ 4 NOT anything goes But strictly norm-governed Defines genres, styles, topics, identities (like any sociolinguistic variety)

Supervernaculars brought into strictly local economy of meaning

Blending of resources: global code + local ‘accent’

Global becomes hermetic/local group code

Co-existing with supervernacular proper

Dialects of the supervernacular

8 = ‘acht’ (‘eight’) W8 = ‘wacht’ (‘wait’) W817= ‘wacht eens even’ (w-acht een-zeven, ‘wait-one-seven’) = ‘wait a moment’

Kganete = ‘ik ga eten’ (‘I go to eat’); Kweni = ‘ik weet niet’ (‘I don’t know’); kw1 = ‘ik ween’ (I’m crying’) Colloquial variety projected onto sms/chat code

Affordances of code deployed for strictly local/regional writing

Lavli! Til tumorou ten! Lovely! Til tomorrow then!

Sii juu! (see you! Cu!) Häv ö seif flait tu joor nyy houm, Phaia! :-* Have a safe flight to your new home, Piia! :-*

Häpi bööffei! Happy birthday

Global English blended with (a) Finnish accent and (b) Finnish orthographic norms

Outcome: in-group code, ‘localized’ within a globalized Finnish community

A dialect of a supervernacular

Same phenomenon in ALL forms of sociolinguistic globalization

Global supervernaculars blended with local ‘accent’, leading to dialects of supervernacular

‘

Super-vernaculars create and sustain super-speech communities

Indexical orders shared even if common linguistic orders are distorted Global orders: SMS/chat codes, English, literacy conventions: resources offering multiple AFFORDANCES

Local orders can be blended with them: one particular affordance of the supervernacular is deglobalization

The potential to localize global resources expands the scope of ‘authenticity’

E.g. HipHop: global template of HipHop enables new discourses & semiotizations of authenticity

Global stuff makes it globally recognizable as HipHop; local stuff makes it locally significant

Speech communities organized around indexicals of authenticity (not locality)

Authenticity as the ultimate norm?

In open, non-predefined spaces, norms and conventions are created rapidly and spread effectively, forming new vernaculars

Reason: communication requires recognizability of code as basis for understanding

Emergent normativity = emergent culture within a superdiverse context

Focused on authenticity

J.blommaert@uvt.nl

The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010