Panel : la etnografía sociolingüística : enfoques y resultados. Panel 1 : La etnografia sociolingüística : enfoque y métodos. La construcción de corpus sociolingüísticos en la investigación etnográfica escolar : dilemas asociados

Este texto se presentó como comunicación al II Congreso Internacional de Etnografía y Educación: Migraciones y Ciudadanías. Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, 5-8 Septiembre 2008.Esta presentación muestra algunos de los retos más importantes que se afrontan en la construcción de un corpus digital de datos recogidos a partir de una etnografía sociolingüística de la escuela. Desde la recogida de los datos hasta su tratamiento y gestión, la perspectiva crítica, interaccional y etnográfica con la que miramos al espacio social de la escuela tiene implicaciones directas en la definición de los fenómenos relevantes para nuestra investigación y en la selección de los recursos tecnológicos más idóneos para su estudio. La exploración de las posibilidades que actualmente ofrece el mercado para el diseño de corpus digitales en investigación social nos ha puesto de manifiesto muchas de sus ventajas, aunque también algunas dificultades y dilemas sobre las que es preciso reflexionar. La consideración de unas y otras, y su influencia a lo largo de todo el desarrollo de la investigación, nos servirá como excusa para analizar las principales decisiones que hay que abordar en el proceso y las consecuencias éticas, teórico-analíticas y administrativas de las mismas

Bilingual Education in Hong Kong

The field of bilingual education in Hong Kong provides a perfect window to study the transformation of education in the context of wider processes of economic, institutional, political, sociolinguistic, and cultural changes. As Hong Kong changed from a British colony to a Special Administrative Region (SAR, hereafter) of the People’s Republic of China, the space of language education has seen the overlapping of old and new discourses regarding what languages should be learned or taught, by whom, when, and to what degree. Such discourses and the related policies which have contributed to their institutionalization cannot be detached from shifting conditions as to who gets to decide what language repertoires are attributed value in which sociolinguistic markets vis-à-vis local and translocal processes of destabilization of the modern politics of language and culture. This entry traces major works that have reported and described these processes, with attention to their implications for the existing language-in-education policies and practices in contemporary Hong Kong. Recurrent problems and future directions for research are also discussed

From Madrid to Zhejiang: Globalization, Educational Communities and Second Language Teaching

This paper focuses on how culture is socially constructed within the institutional logic of the school, in relation to different socio-political and economic processes linked to economic globalization in urban areas. The study comes from an ethnography carried out both in the contexts of Madrid (Spain) and Zhejiang (China). Taking critical sociolinguistic ethnography as theoretical/analytical framework, this paper uses interactional and ethnographic data in order to study what cultural resources are being produced, distributed and valued within both institutional spaces according their historical and socio-political conditions (that is, new immigration trends in Spain and the “open doors” economic reforms in China). Particularly, attention is paid to second language teaching practices, so that analysis focuses on what legitimated linguistic competence is constructed, reproduced and resisted in language classrooms.Este artículo se centra en el estudio de los procesos sociales de construcción cultural en el marco de la lógica institución educativa y en relación con los procesos socio-políticos y económicos vinculados a la globalización económica en las áreas urbanas. En concreto, el estudio procede de una etnografía desarrollada en los contextos de Madrid (España) y Zhejiang (China). Partiendo de la etnografía sociolingüística crítica como marco teórico metodológico y analítico, se analizan datos interaccionales y etnográficos con el fin de estudiar qué recursos culturales son producidos, distribuidos y valorados dentro de lo espacios institucionales de ambos contextos de acuerdo con sus condiciones históricas y socio-políticas particulares (los nuevos procesos migratorios en España y las reformas de apertura económica en China). En especial, la atención se centra en las prácticas de enseñanza de segundas lenguas, de modo que el análisis focaliza en el estudio de qué competencia lingüística es construida, reproducida y contestada en las aulas

(Un)doing regimentation in reflexive practices: on-site processes of sociolinguistic differentiation – a commentary

This article discusses Volume 42(6) where the editors (Gilles Merminod and Raymund Vitorio) push for a metapragmatic approach to reflexive practices of sociolinguistic differentiation. With reference to my own trajectory, I review this lens as suitable to accounting for how people affectively take part in the making of difference and similarities between signs, social situations and positions in daily meaning-making practices and the larger inequalities that these practices may contribute to sustain and interrogate. In doing so, I focus on story-telling templates in professional communication, citizenship narratives in research interviews, English-oriented forms of self-evaluation in the workplace and ritualised instances of self-presentation in interaction and evaluations of others’ self-presentation in networking events as indexical signs that articulate a range of moralised meanings and categories of “ideal” versus “non-ideal” social persona upon which arrangements of social life and work get (re)instituted. I also discuss the socioeconomic hierarchies and forms of distinction that such arrangements (re)produce in different settings. Finally, I suggest further epistemological avenues for research exploring linkages across events and for following more closely the consequences that such events have for certain people, with attention to existing disciplinary synergies (and social theories) within and beyond the language disciplines

Hoping for success, becoming a spiritual subject: Converted returnees in China

This article focuses on the entanglement of trajectories of transnational education/work and religious conversion among Chinese overseas students who move to the UK before returning to China. In contrast to the existing literature on returnees where the gaze is only turned on highly prestigious schemes/trajectories of return, we look at those who become involved with Christian evangelical congregations and bible reading groups in response to a general state of disillusion with social beliefs of global competition and success. By drawing on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in London and Beijing, we engage with literature on lived religion, migration and the care of the self through a sociolinguistic lens. We take pressures for successful return as a technology of hope that shaped our participants’ experiences of Christian conversion, and examine religious practices as support-based subject-transformation projects whereby our participants regulate their and others’ practices and feelings through daily semiotic activities as they operate within global spaces of higher education and the labour market. In so doing, we detail a complex interplay of self-transformation experiences, collective practices of refusal, and capitalist logics of market expansion

Barreras interaccionales en aulas multilingües: una aproximación crítica a la comuncación intercultural

In this article we analyse intercultural communication management in student interaction in a culturally and linguistically diverse second year primary school classroom. In order to do so, and trying to overcome culturalist reductionism, we explore how three dimensions of interaction, linguistic, psychosocial and social, are linked. So as to observe how this current socio-educational order might be altered, we decided to conduct research in the classroom by introducing changes to attenuate the asymmetries and differences in values in conversational dynamics. The analysis of communicative practices in the classroom, similarly to that of intercultural situations among adults, indicates that from an early age, in situations where there are large social differences, communicative differences can be (re)constructed and used as a tool reinforce asymmetries as well as the status quo, thereby relegating foreing workers and their descendants to an underprivileged social position .En este artículo analizamos la gestión de la comunicación intercultural en una interacción entre alumnos de un aula lingüística y culturalmente diversa de 2° de Educación Primaria. Para ello, y tratando de superar un reduccionismo culturalista, exploramos cómo se vinculan en la interacción tres dimensiones: una dimensión lingüística, una dimensión psicosocial y una social. Con el fin de observar cómo podía alterarse el presente orden socioeducativo, decidimos realizar una experiencia de aula con la que introducir cambios que atenuaran las asimetrías y las diferencias de valor en la dinámica conversacional. El análisis de estas prácticas comunicativas en el aula nos indica que, al igual que ocurre en las situaciones interculturales entre adultos, ya en edades tempranas las diferencias comunicativas se (re)construyen y pueden utilizarse, en situaciones donde existen profundas diferencias sociales, como instrumento para reforzar las asimetrías y el statu quo, relegando a los trabajadores extranjeros y a sus descendientes a las posiciones sociales más desfavorecidas

Structures of feeling in language policy: The case of Tibetan in China

This article examines the case of minority language education in China, an area of enquiry that has received increasing attention as new studies report on how the lack of institutional recognition that minority languages receive erodes ethnic minority identities and disempowers social actors living in minority areas. Drawing on Williams’ (1977) notion of “structures of feeling”, as well as on Woolard’s (1985) critical take on the concepts of integrated linguistic market and culture hegemony, we empirically analyse individuals’ engagement with normative meanings and values linked to language policies. In particular, we focus on situated practices at a secondary school located in an ethnically diverse city in southwestern China in which Tibetans constitute the largest ethnic minority group. Our data show emergent communicative forms, or “structures of feeling”, through which school actors enact, challenge and shape an institutional logic that marginalizes the Tibetan section within the school while constructing Tibetan language education as a pedagogical space with no room for Tibetan religious content

Pressing times, losing voice: critique and transformative spaces in higher education

In this article, we examine our own doctoral supervisory dialogue as it has been institutionally interrupted due to Ahmad’s application for asylum in the UK. As we find ourselves lacking the conditions of recognisability required for our actions to be institutionally understood (or made intelligible) as part of a doctoral supervisory relationship, we are left with a sense of futility of how scholarly work preoccupied with social justice may confront, let alone transform, the larger sociopolitical realities with which we aim to engage. In the light of calls to turn precarity into a productive pedagogical space for ethical action – often regarded as a ‘pedagogy for precarity’, we draw from Blommaert’s (2005) sociolinguistic theory of voice to account for how we attempted to become recognisable to each other throughout the course of our supervisory meetings. In so doing, we reflect on the implications of our analysis for politically engaged academic research, while linking with wider language scholarship on the possibility for, and imaginability of, social transformation in higher education spaces

Hong Kong Urban Classroom Culture. Local Dilemmas and Opportunities in EMI-based Multilingual Schools

Contemporary classrooms are a major focus of public debate in contemporary world, particularly in the current context of Hong Kong where wide-ranging educational reforms have been undertaken since the early 2000's. In this context of on-going reform, language education policies have been the centre of a controversial debate which involves all administrative levels and societal actors, from politicians to educators, families and youngsters. Thus, official guidelines and public demands are increasingly emphasizing monitoring of curriculum and pedagogy from a top-down perspective. As a result, Hong Kong teachers, students and school heads find themselves under great pressure to apply abstract guidelines designed outside the confines of the schools with no guidance or consideration on how are they supposed to be localised in everyday lives of their specific school communities. Against this background, the aim of this material is to provide a systematic set of classroom-based naturally occurring data, complementary activities and materials for educators to reflect upon (Hong Kong's contemporary reforms of its language education policies, from a bottom-up perspective which takes into consideration real and localised experiences of teachers and students who are supposed to make such reforms a reality. This is not an academic book in which classroom data are analyzed against or in relation to a given theoretical framework; rather, this package attempts to allow Hong Kong teachers to reflect around the provided classroom materials under the guidance of a facilitator, on the basis of which further interpretations and (academic/non-academic) discourses/perspectives available in wider society are progressively brought into being. Indeed, these complementary perspectives are introduced in a way that seeks consolidation / re-consideration / challenging of initial interpretations by teachers and, therefore, opens new paths for discussion and reflection

Modernización, escuelas urbanas y enseñanza de inglés en la China contemporánea: una etnografía socilingüística crítica

Tesis doctoral inédita de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Departamento de Lingüística General, Lenguas Modernas, Lógica y Filosofía de la Ciencia, Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada. Fecha de lectura: 18-12-200