Language and Society in Late Modernity is an interdisciplinary research group whose common goal is to contribute to the empirical exploration and theoretical conceptualization of linguistic and social processes that characterize the age of late modernity. We consider the study of language and society to be concerned with all forms of social practice, process or product where language plays a role in shaping, changing, reinforcing, dismantling or challenging social identities and social structures.

From the 1960s and onwards, variationist sociolinguistics, interactional sociolinguistics and neighbouring disciplines such as conversation analysis and linguistic anthropology have provided important insights into the reciprocal relation between language use and social processes. However, due to their provenience and genesis, it may be argued that none of these approaches are in themselves fully equipped to take on and adequately explain the linguistic and social processes that accompany increased transnational mobility and other distinctive features of late modernity.

We believe that a central concern for the study of language and society in late modernity should be to investigate and theorize the linguistic and social practices of transient multilingual communities, while at the same time taking the processes we see unfolding in more traditional, and in theory more stable and homogenous, types of social community into consideration.

In pursuit of the research group’s overall goal, the group members conduct a number of individual and collaborative research projects, organized under the themes described below. At the moment, CALPIU (Cultural and Linguistic Practices in the International University, www.calpiu.dk) and LINGCORP (An Ethnography of Language Encounters: Language and Interaction in the Globalized Corporation, www.lingcorp.ruc.dk) are the two main research projects of the group. Both projects have received substantial funding from the The Danish Council for Independent Research | Humanities. Focussing on plurilingual and intercultural competences, the research group also carries out educational research. This includes the development of language learning and teaching practices in line with Roskilde University’s Language Profile as well as in workplace and academic English.

Language norms, standards and policies

Language variation is indexical of social structures, constructing and maintaining people’s social identities, affinities and differences, power and powerlessness. Every situation plays out according to social roles and conventions inherent in the participants’ use of language. Social and regional oppositions are manifested through language norms, often in the dichotomy between prestigious and non-prestigious usages. Typically, as a speech community evolves into nationhood, the prestigious variety becomes codified to provide a standard for the written form of the language. This “standard language” comes to be generally perceived as (the only “correct” form of) “The Language”. Through legislation minority languages or varieties are included or excluded according to national priorities, through the educational system aims of language learning are defined, and through publishing houses norms for written language are disseminated.

Pronunciation variation and change

Language variation is not only indexical of a number of social positions and processes, it is also dynamic: language change is connected with a number of processes of societal change.  Research in our group has until now been focussed on pronunciation of the English language by the middle and upper classes in England, but could cover other languages as well (e.g., Danish and German). By submitting speech data to scrutiny from a quantitative sociolinguistic angle, we can pose a number of significant research questions such as: Does language change happen in a different way, or along a different trajectory, in different language communities and in different social groups? What influence do standard language ideologies exert on speakers’ productions and perceptions of varying speech forms? Are modern European speech communities homogenizing or diversifying over time?

Social interaction

Under this heading, members of the research group investigate how social interaction unfolds in a variety of contexts, with a view to exploring and theorizing the range of resources that people utilise to bring about and shape the social activities they are engaged in, including the construction of social identities and social relations. The use of language plays a prominent role in such processes, and therefore forms a central object of study. But co-present semiotic modes, including bodily gestures and the use of physical objects in the surrounding environment, also constitute vital aspects of social interaction, and thus form equally important objects of study, often investigated in combination with the study of talk-in-interaction. In particular, the research under this general heading aims to approach an understanding of the processes at play in the –   interlingual and intralingual – interaction between members of transient multilingual communities, such as international study programmes in Higher Education and multilingual workplaces, where English is often used as lingua franca, but never exists in splendid isolation from other languages.

Language ideology and language attitudes

The study of language ideology and language attitudes concerns the exploration of social constructions that constitute links between different forms of language on the one hand, and different kinds of social value on the other. The research that members of Sociolinguistics in Late Modernity conduct in relation to this field includes projects that investigate the hierarchies that exist among languages and language varieties in particular settings, from the level of the individual to the level of general societal discourses, issues of language competition, language promotion and language discrimination. Transient lingua franca communities, for instance comprised by student cohorts at international study programmes, form a special area of interest, where the socio-historical basis for the formation of language attitudes and language ideologies cannot necessarily be assumed to be the same as in more entrenched speech communities. But members of the group also consider the question of language ideology and language attitudes in relation to supposedly more stable social configurations like nation states where prevailing standard language ideologies are in some cases currently challenged by a positive revalorisation of vernaculars and other ‘non-standard’ voices, and/or challenged by the increased influence from English as the professed ‘global language’ or from plurilingualism as a valued (educational) goal. 

Methodologies

The research group does not subscribe to a particular methodological school and is proudly und unabashedly eclecticist. Corresponding to a multitude of forms of data investigated, research in all fields draws on a multitude of established methodologies – at the micro as well as the macro level – including quantitative sociophonetic and sociolinguistic analyses, analyses of data gathered using attitudinal surveys and perception tests, qualitative analyses of language ideologies, ethnography of speaking, interactional sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, discourse analysis, and translation studies.  Furthermore, within the pronunciation-variation-and-change field, the group is working on developing new, specially-tailored analytical and statistical methods, as well as visualization best practices for the relatively newly-defined discipline of sociophonetics.