Just returned from a conference in Leiden, The Netherlands. It was on ‚Globalising Sociolinguistics‘ and aimed to address mismatches between mainstream sociolinguistic models and non-Anglo-Western sociolinguistic settings. And of course, Belizean sociolinguistic economy with its complex, sometimes contradictory patterns of language use and social affiliation fitted well into this. I gave a talk on ‚Overcoming methodological nationalism‘, where ‚methodological nationalism‘ is a concept from social anthropology and sociology (see e.g. Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002) that criticises methodological approaches that take territorial entities as given and as unquestioned starting points for analysis.
Particularly interesting I found the research of Pierpaolo Di Carlo who currently works on multilingualism and affiliation in a region in north west Cameroon, where each village has its own language. All inhabitants of the region speak several languages and Pierpaolo interprets their desire to speak many languages as linked to spiritual needs, as each village chief is also a spiritual chief. By being able to speak a village’s language, one is also protected by its chief (see his papers for more).
Indeed, models and methods of Western sociolinguistics are not necessarily apt to study language use in all societies and it was an interesting conference theme that should be followed.
Wimmer, Andreas, and Nina Glick Schiller. „Methodological nationalism and beyond: Nation-state building, migration and the social sciences.“ Global Networks 2.4 (2002): 301-34.
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