Mobilizing voices and evaluations across representational boundaries – equitably and adequatively

Abstract

Within the current social scientific trend of studying globalization, border crossing, and cosmopolitanism, we continue to struggle against our own complicity in maintaining an unequal representational economy. This article responds to Blommaert's (2010) proposal for a new approach to ``the sociolinguistics of globalization'' by applying his conceptual framework to the analysis of a multi-vocalic performance in Central Java, Indonesia. Data collected using participant observation and structured interviews demonstrate how vocal performances constructing diverse identities are performed and perceived adequatively in their original context. The mobilization of these examples of naturally occurring cosmopolitanism into an academic text in English provides the opportunity for critical reflection on our practices of presentation and analysis of the semiotics of others' identity practices. This exercise has implications for how to better retain the values and functions accorded to linguistic resources in their local contexts when we mobilize them across representational boundaries in sociolinguistic work.