Abstract
Changes to the global infrastructure have contributed to the growing (linguistic) diversity of large metropolises. However, there have been calls from scholars to explore “emerging superdiversity” (DePalma and Pérez-Caramés 2018) in peripheral regions in order to fully understand the complexities and nuances of the sociolinguistics of globalisation (Wang et al. 2014; Pietikäinen et al. 2016). This article, therefore, explores language ideologies among a purposive sample of five young adults of Cape Verdean origin living in the peripheral region of Galicia, Spain, and draws on interview data to examine the ways in which multilingual migrants engage with the language varieties in their linguistic repertoire. In studying immigration from a former African colony to a bilingual European context, we can see how language ideologies from the migrant community are reflected in local ones. The sociolinguistic dynamics of Cape Verde and Galicia share many similarities: both contexts are officially bilingual (Galician and Spanish in Galicia, Kriolu and Portuguese in Cape Verde), and questions regarding the hierarchisation of languages remain pertinent in both cases. The ideologies about the value and prestige of (minority) languages that Cape Verdean migrants arrive with are thus accommodated by local linguistic ideologies in Galicia, a region which has a history of linguistic minoritisation. This has important implications for the ways in which language, as a symbolic resource, is mobilised by migrants in contexts of transnational migration. The findings of this study show how migrants are key actors in (re)shaping the linguistic dynamics of their host society and how, through their practices and discourses, they challenge long-standing assumptions about language, identity and linguistic legitimacy, and call into question ethno-linguistic boundaries.
Highlights
Changes to the global infrastructure have contributed to the growing diversity of large metropolises
To preserve the anonymity of participants, the article provides a broad outline of their profiles: all the participants came from families who had migrated from Cape Verde to Burela; while some participants migrated to Galicia as children, two of the participants were born in Galicia
The ways in which globalisation and transnational migration are calling into question traditional linguistic paradigms are of key concern to sociolinguistic scholarship
Summary
Changes to the global infrastructure have contributed to the growing (linguistic) diversity of large metropolises. This article takes Cape Verdean migration to Galicia as its focus and addresses an analytical gap in academic scholarship by exploring migration from one peripheral context to another. It draws on language ideologies as a framework to allow for an “unpacking of how speakers understand, view and use language” This article will first provide a theoretical discussion of language ideologies, exploring how this analytical framework can help to shed light on the ways in which processes of transnational migration are calling into question traditional linguistic paradigms and challenging long-standing ideological complexes. The article will examine critically the sociolinguistic contexts of Galicia and Cape Verde to highlight the intersection of colonialism, migration and language in this study. The article will conclude by drawing together the lines of enquiry to argue for an understanding of multilingualism as a phenomenon that is dynamic and deterritorialised, challenging assimilative and one-directional notions of migration
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