Discourse, Identity and Language Policy in Multilingual & Multicultural Contexts (DIP)
The working domain DIP (Discourse, Identity & Policy) within the MA program “multi-LEARN” is concerned with processes involved in constructing and maintaining concepts such as “nation”, “ethnicity”, “identity”, “class”, “gender”, “race”, “minority” and the like. Drawing upon Discourse Analysis (DA) in a broader perspective, the DIP-domain problematizes the underlying common-sense notions of language, identity and (language) policy in order to provide a better understanding of their interconnectedness in societal, political, individual media- and community-related discourses and discourse practices. Therefore, all courses and data-driven analyses offered within this strand of the MA multi-LEARN explore actual socially situated discourse by applying and integrating relevant methodologies and theories in a highly practical and implementation-oriented fashion. That is, experts from a particular field of analysis as well as students bring in and document recent phenomena related to DIP-relevant constructions. These are – to name a few examples in terms of illustrating the domain -
- language-identity bound laws or polls in a particular societal/governmental setting,
- language and language testing as an instrument in policy-making (e.g., immigration),
- devices for language planning in a given society (e.g., definition and impact of “languages of integration”),
- actual mappings of common notions in a given societal framework (e.g., schooling and social “exclusion”, bilingualism),
- developing identities across settings (e.g., youth groups) and across the lifespan (e.g., integration, code-mixing).
Methodology driven, data driven and theory driven perspectives are combined in the studies, grounded in the overall methodological stance of a contextualized and informed, ethnographically valid approach to discourse analysis.
Seminars and problem-based study programmes within the DIP-domain therefore focus on actors – individuals, institutions and communities – and ways or settings in which they are confronted with or constructed by discourses in terms of societal realities to be dealt with. Concretely, seminars examine in what ways and to what extent identities are constructed and negotiated in and through discourses and their interaction. Indeed, a number of identity types as they are performed – and therefore revealed – in socially situated practices in discourse can be distinguished: ethnic, ‘racial’, gendered, professional, social, national and language identity. Thus, a processual view of identity and its makings is adopted, avoiding both the limitations of an essentialist and of an extreme constructivist approach by taking an ecologically valid perspective on the individual or the community under investigation. In sum, the DIP-domain not only problematizes the notions of ‘nation’ (vs. ‘state’) and ‘language’ (vs. ‘variety’) but also the area of language policy and language-in-education policy in particular.
By including actual language practices and language ideologies in our policy analyses, we will in effect be studying what could be referred to as the politics of language and multilingualism – and all this in a world where nation-states are subject to increasing pressures both from without (in Europe, e.g., the EU superstructure as well as the global economic order) and from within (faced as they are by the growing demands of minority groups within the nation-state).
Scientific coordinators of the DIP-domain: Prof. Dr. Jean-Jacques Weber / Ass.-Prof. Dr. Gudrun Ziegler
Examples of modules/seminars offered within the DIP-domain
- Language Policy and Globalization – Europe and beyond
- The Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Context
- Language, Citizenship and Globalization – the case of Luxembourg in Europe
- New Ethnicities and Language Use in Luxembourg and the UK
- Multilingual Encounters