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International Journal of Multilingualism

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Polylingual Languaging Around and Among Children and Adolescents

J.Normann Jørgensena
a
University of Copenhagen, Denmark

To cite this Article Jørgensen, J.Normann(2008) 'Polylingual Languaging Around and Among Children and Adolescents',
International Journal of Multilingualism, 5: 3, 161 — 176
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 Introduction
Polylingual Languaging Around and
Among Children and Adolescents
J. Normann Jørgensen
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
The uniquely human capacity of using arbitrary signs to transfer concept and
experience over great distances in time and place is what we call language. We use
language with a purpose, and we use whatever features are at our disposal to achieve
our ends, regardless of the fact that some speakers think that certain features should
be held together and not used in combination with certain other features. The
phenomenon of language is not necessarily a construction, and while all individual
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languages are constructed, it is not possible to clearly delimit them from each other.
The crucial phenomenon is language, not any specific language. While some
speakers think languages should be kept apart, others combine three, four, or
more different sets of features (i.e. so-called ‘languages’) in their linguistic
production. This is characteristic of polylingualism (where multilingualism is
characterised by the knowledge of several separate languages). These speakers do
not choose their features randomly. Particularly in late-modern urban youth groups
the simultaneous use of features from many different sources is frequent.

doi: 10.1080/14790710802387562

Keywords: polylingualism, languaging, late modern urban youth, polylingual

behaviour, norms of language behaviour

Introduction
The relationship between humankind and language is a background, I will
set up and discuss in the following. The argument leads to the necessity of
distinguishing between a language and language. The former is an ideological
construct, while the latter is observable everyday behaviour. This leads to the
distinction between different norms of linguistic behaviour and the suggestion
of the terms polylingual and languaging which are to be understood as based
on the behaviour of language users.

Language and Humankind

Language is often described as the phenomenon that distinguishes
humankind from other species. With language, human beings can transfer
ideas over large distances in space and time. No other species does so. There is
general agreement that several different biological features combine to shape
human language in its present form, among them bipedalism and, as far as
oral language is concerned, the shape and the length of the vocal tract. Much
less agreement can be found about the origins of language, and in particular
whether homo sapiens sapiens are genetically determined to have language.

1479-0718/08/03 161-16 $20.00/0 – 2008 Taylor & Francis

International Journal of Multilingualism Vol. 5, No. 3, 2008

161
 162 International Journal of Multilingualism

Did language develop genetically (perhaps even in a genetic big bang), or did
it develop gradually through learning? There is little disagreement that
humankind is a social animal, and that language is the means by which we
organise our social structures, but it is nevertheless an object of debate
whether language is genetic or strictly social.
It is likewise controversial to ask what is unique about the communicative
system of humankind. Is it vocabulary, syntax, or is it the arbitrary relation
between form and content? Other animals are known to have vocabularies,
arguably even arbitrary ones, and there are indications that rudimentary
syntax can be observed in some apes. So it is not the existence of any of these
features, but rather the size of the vocabulary, or the complexity of syntax and
the pervasive arbitrariness, which sets human language apart from the
communicative systems of other species. Human language is vastly more
complicated and of a vastly bigger size than any other animal communicative
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system, but it is not unique in its very existence or because of any specific
structural quality.
Language is the instrument with which we handle our social relations, from
the close one-to-one relation to the enormously complex structures of a
metropolis or a nation state. Burling (2005) presents the thoroughly realistic
theory that understanding is prior to production and creation of language and
linguistic features. Burling argues that it makes no sense for an individual
proto-human to invent a sign in order to say something to others if all other
individuals would be unprepared to understand. Consequently, the first event
in which a sign produced by one individual was assigned to a meaning must
have been an instance of another individual understanding what this sign
meant, even though it was not intended by the producer. This has important
consequences for our understanding of language as a human phenomenon.
Firstly, it means that we do not have language until an intended message is
understood. Unintended signs can be interpreted and understood, but
language involves intention on the part of the producer of signs. As human
beings we use our arbitrary sign system with intentions. It is crucial that we
understand that what people do with language they do for a reason. If a
speaker chooses one word instead of another word at her or his disposal, it
happens with a purpose. This is no new insight, (Grice 1975), not even with
respect to the choice between different varieties, (Myers-Scotton and Bolonyai,
2001). It has, however, been downplayed, for instance by Labovian socio-
linguistics which emphasises the effect of social structures on the linguistic
choices made by individuals. Traditional Labovian sociolinguistics has given
us enormous insight into patterns of language variation, but in this connection
it is important to observe that the results of variationist sociolinguistics
primarily have been quantitative. We know how often a lower middle-class
speaker from New York uses a postvocalic r-sound, but not what makes her or
him use it. Younger sociolinguistics, however, have offered explanations to
some choices, for instance Coupland (1988); Le Page and Tabouret-Keller
(1985), generally referring to more or less overt intentions of the speakers
(including the negotiation of identities).
In addition, conversation analysis downplays the intention of speakers (for
instance, Steensig (2001: 25), in my translation: ‘To a conversation analyst the
 Polylingual Languaging 163
Table 1 Norms of human linguistic behaviour
The monolingualism norm
Persons with access to more than one language should be sure to master one of them
before getting into contact with the other
The double monolingualism norm
Persons who command two languages will at any given time use one and only one
language, and they use each of their languages in a way that does not in principle
differ from the way monolinguals use the same language
The integrated bilingualism norm
Persons who command two languages will employ their full linguistic competence in
two different languages at any given time adjusted to the needs and the possibilities of
the conversation, including the linguistic skills of the interlocutors
The polylingualism norm
Language users employ whatever linguistic features are at their disposal to achieve
their communicative aims as best they can, regardless of how well they know the
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involved languages; this entails that the language users may know
and use
the fact
that some of the features are perceived by some speakers as not belonging together

real intention and the real motives are inaccessible for analysis’). Conversation
analysis has given us insights into the purely mechanical structures of
conversational interaction. We know what features speakers choose under
certain circumstances, but not why they do so. Conversation analysts insist
that their insights are based on the refusal to take intentions into consideration.
Our scepticism concerns this flat refusal: when we deal with language as a
human phenomenon in general, we must understand that language use is only
possible with intention. There is a designing mind behind all language
production, and we have no chance of understanding the production
processes or the social processes if we disregard the speakers’ intentions. We
end up with descriptions and no explanations.
Secondly, it means that language is social. Language is something that
happens between people. It may be a practical academic arrangement to
consider a language as an entity in itself, but in the larger context it is
impossible to understand language as independent of human beings.
Language is the means with which we form and change our social structures.
We negotiate hierarchies, group memberships, and status. Very rudimentary
phenomena can be found among apes, so again we are not considering a
qualitative difference between humankind and other species, but a very large
quantitative difference.
Thirdly, it means that extreme constructionism has a problem. Put very
simply, if reality is socially constructed through language, what constructs
language? The first meaning was not constructed in production. The first
meaning was there already; it combined with a sign given unintentionally, and
was understood by an individual smart enough to combine the meaning with
the sign. In a sense this created the linguistic meaning of this sign
but it did
not create the meaning which must have been there in advance. So language is
not constructed by language. This is not to say that individual languages are
 164 International Journal of Multilingualism

not constructed (insofar as we can talk about individual languages), only that
language as a human phenomenon is not just a social construction.
And further, constructionism finds that specific languages force our minds:
Language forces me into patterns. I cannot use the rules of German
syntax when I speak English; I cannot use words invented by my three-
year-old son if I want to communicate outside the family; I must take
into account prevailing standards of proper speech for various occa-
sions. (Berger & Luckman, 1966: 53)
But as we shall see, using features from German and English beside each other
is precisely what some language users can do
their minds are not forced by
the ‘prevailing standards of proper speech’. Language users are also actors,
and they act upon, and sometimes against, norms and standards, as we can
here see it with respect to language choice.
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The discussion whether language is genetic or learnt is equally controver-

sial. Is language nature or culture? In fact, this issue leaves the notion of
‘natural language data’ as meaningless. Either any linguistic data produced by
human beings must be natural, or none of the data can be natural. There can be
no such thing as ‘unnaturally’ produced linguistic data as opposed to
‘naturally’ produced data. One can not even distinguish between ‘natural’
languages and ‘artificial’ languages such as Ido or Volapyk. At the most we
can distinguish between languages developed socially and languages invented
or entirely developed by individuals. In this context we insist that language is
primarily social. The human brain may have adapted to language, but this is
unimportant to our main point: language is social.

Language or Languages?
All of this should be kept in mind whenever we discuss the concept of
different languages. It is not the specific language, or any specific language
which makes human communication unique. In fact, it is completely irrelevant
how many different languages are involved in any interaction or used by any
human being. It is even more so as it is in no way evident that it is at all
possible to count languages. Counting languages is an endeavour in which
linguists involve themselves when they label speakers as ‘monolingual’, or
‘bilingual’, or ‘trilingual’, or even ‘multilingual’. These concepts take it for
granted that it is possible and makes sense to separate the human
phenomenon of language into packages which can be counted. They depend
on borders which must be drawn arbitrarily. Distinguishing linguistically
between what is a language and what is a dialect has been given up by
sociolinguistics long ago. Measured by mutual comprehensibility and struc-
tural differences, the Scandinavian languages are closer to each other than
what are usually called different dialects of Kurdish. Nevertheless we call
Swedish and Danish different languages.
Behind this is the 200 year old European national romanticist ideology
which connects the concept of one nation (one national state) with one
language and one people. The Kurds do not have a national state at all
and
all varieties spoken by Kurds are thus dialects. On the other hand, we can just
 Polylingual Languaging 165

as little use the borders between political nation states as a criterion for
distinguishing between languages. English is an official language of several
nation states spread around the globe, but we do not think of English in
Australia and English in South Africa as different languages. Neither can we
draw clear boundaries between neighbour languages using structural differ-
ences as criteria. During the centuries, Bergen Norwegian and Uppsala
Swedish have developed in quite different directions, but in the border areas
of Norway and Sweden it is unclear where Swedish stops and Norwegian
begins. We can not solve the problem by introducing a technical term (like
variety). It does indeed solve the problem of distinguishing between language
and dialect, because it is a cover term. But it will not serve as an analytical
term which enables us to distinguish sharply between individual languages
(or varieties). Since we can not determine with certainty where one language
ends and the other one begins, it follows that we can not always be sure to be
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able to count languages. We can not determine exactly which languages an

individual knows, and consequently we can not tell how many languages this
person knows. We can, however, observe that there is a wide spectrum of
variation available to any individual, and we can also observe that this
spectrum is different from person to person.
This does not mean that we can not tell one language from the other at all. It
is quite easy to observe that Turkish and Danish are different languages with a
long list of differences in structures, vocabulary, etc. But we can not with the
same degree of certainty tell the difference between Copenhagen standard
Danish, Western Jutland Danish, Eastern Jutland Danish, or between west
coast standard Turkish and Black Sea Turkish. It may therefore make sense to
talk about different varieties although we may be unable to determine exactly
which and how many varieties we are dealing with. Therefore it also makes
sense to use cover terms like Turkish and Danish, even if each of these may
comprise several varieties which are used by individual speakers. The concept
of any specific language is prototypical, i.e. it focuses on clear central
characteristics, but at the same time allows vague borders.
We are forced to realise that it makes sense to talk about language, but not
necessarily about a language, at least if we want to base our distinctions on
structural linguistic features. Nevertheless, there is plenty of reason to account
for socially determined languages. Bailey (2007) comments on this in his
‘heteroglossic’ approach to language
. . . approaching monolingualism and bilingualism as socially con-
structed does not change their social force at the level of lived
experience, but it does show that this social force is not a function of
formal, or inherent linguistic differences among what counts as
languages. (Bailey, 2007: 271)
In the concept of language used in this context the central notion is not that
of a language, but language as such. Analytically, we assume that the specific
linguistic feature, and not the specific language, better characterises a given
production.
Makoni and Pennycook (2006) point out that the concept of a language is a
European invention, and one that Europeans have imposed on colonised
 166 International Journal of Multilingualism

peoples in other parts of the world. They observe that many names for
languages have been invented by Europeans, not by those to whom the
languages were ascribed:
While it is interesting at one level to observe simply that the names for
these new entities were invented, the point of greater significance is that
these were not just new names for extant objects (languages pre-existed
the naming), but rather the invention and naming of new objects.
(Makoni & Pennycook, 2006: 10).
Heller (2007: 1) explicitly argues ‘against the notion that languages are
objectively speaking whole, bounded, systems’, and she prefers to understand
language use as the phenomenon that speakers ‘draw on linguistic resources
which are organised in ways that make sense under specific social circum-
stances’. Languages are ideologically defined, not defined by use or users.
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The constant emergence of traces of different languages in the speech of

individual bilinguals goes against the expectation that languages will
neatly correspond to separate domains, and stay put where they are
meant to stay put. (Heller 2007: 11)
The concept of a language is thus bound in time and space (see also Auer &
Wei, 2007: 2), and it is not part of our understanding of the human concept of
language. Features are, however. Speakers use features and not languages.
Features may be ascribed to specific languages (or specific categories which
are called languages). This may be an important quality of a feature, and one
which speakers may know and use as they speak. But what the speaker uses is
a feature.
For instance, Gumperz (1982: 66) has pointed to the use of minority
language as ‘we-code’, i.e. the code which is in opposition to majority
language, and to which the speakers ascribe values such as solidarity,
warmness, and closeness. The specific features of minority languages are
possible signals which refer to these values in interaction which could
conceivably be in majority language as well. A Turkish
Danish grade school
student involved in a group assignment with other Turkish
Danish students
may ask (Danish in recte, Turkish in italics):
jeg har ikke nogen saks, hvor er saksen, makas ver
This utterance literally means ‘I have no scissors, where are the scissors,
give me a pair of scissors’. The student may on the other hand also say:
makasım, makas nerede, giv mig en saks
This utterance would translate into exactly the same English utterance as the
first one. However, in the first version, the beginning is Danish and the rest
Turkish (marked with italics). In the second version it is the opposite. Going
from Danish into Turkish adds an appeal to the togetherness of the students
who are minority kids in an unfriendly majority surrounding. Going from
Turkish into Danish combines the request with the power and status of the
majority. To understand this difference we must know which language is
the minority language and which the majority language, and we must know
 Polylingual Languaging 167

the values ascribed to each of the languages among these particular speakers.
These values may be the same as in society at large, but they may also be
values which are specific for the group to which the students belong. It is part
of the social negotiations for which language is used that meanings and values
may always be changed.

Features
Human beings use linguistic features, words with meanings, morphology,
syntactic restrictions and, as we have seen, values ascribed to them by
speakers. Features which are similar in certain respects can be dissimilar in
other respects among different languages users and in different contexts. This
also pertains to the values ascribed to features or clusters of features which
may be evaluated quite differently by different speakers or groups of speakers.
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A very local dialect feature may signal primitive backwardness among some
speakers, but dependability and solidarity among other speakers.
In other words, language users use features more than structures. They
know that to some people some of these features belong together in sets which
are called specific languages such as Danish and Turkish, but the speakers do
not necessarily separate features from these sets in their linguistic behaviour.
Monolingual behaviour is a term for the phenomenon that an individual uses
only features which belong to one of these sets of features. Bilingual behaviour
is similarly a term for the phenomenon that an individual uses only features
belonging to two such languages. Multilingual behaviour further denotes the
phenomenon that an individual uses features from more than two languages.
Monolingualism is likewise a term which denotes the phenomenon that an
individual human being knows only features belonging to one set of features,
one language. Bilingualism is the phenomenon that a speaker knows features
from two sets, etc.
All of these concepts take for granted that all linguistic features are grouped
into so-called languages, each of which contains only conventions which
belong to the particular language. This is in itself problematic, as we have
seen. But these concepts also take it for granted that a human being at any
given time either uses features from only one language or involves herself or
himself in code switching, i.e. changing from the use of one separate set of
features to the use of another separate set of features. Furthermore, this is often
considered more or less a deviation from typical human behaviour. Features
may flow from one set of features into another through so-called borrowing,
but the borrowed features are considered alien to the loaning language until
some adjustments have taken place, phonetically, morphologically, or other-
wise.
We do not understand the simultaneous use of features from different sets
as a deviation from typical human linguistic behaviour. We observe language
users employing whatever features are at their disposal, regardless of whether
these features are, by some speakers, considered not to belong together.
Language users know what features belong to which language. They may
indeed choose to employ features from only one language in the same
linguistic production. But if they do so, it is because they do not expect to
 168 International Journal of Multilingualism

achieve their aims by using features from more than one set
it is not because
such behaviour is against their human nature in any way.
Rampton (1995) points out how some individuals know features from many
different sets which are considered different languages without having access
to more than quite small parts of these sets. Crossing is the term Rampton
coined for the use of features from languages which the speaker knows only in
small parts. We believe that the use of languages of which the speaker knows
only very little is more common in late modern urban societies than Rampton
lets us know. When we use a Latin phrase, such as Nos morituri te salutamus we
do not expect to be taken for fluent speakers of Latin. When the Englishman
uses a heavy Scottish accent or stereotypical German accent, it is not an
indication that the Englishman commands very much Scottish- or German-
accented English. This use of sets of features such as Scottish-accented English
involves stylisation which is by no means a technique restricted to people
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knowing the varieties involved. In numerous other ways speakers use bits and
pieces from varieties of which they have very little command.

Norms of Linguistic Behaviour

This practice runs counter to an often expressed norm about linguistic
behaviour. Speakers may be capable of using extended parts of two or even
more different sets of features, they may be bilingual, trilingual, etc. But in
schools, media, and elsewhere the bilinguals are confronted with a demand
that they use only one language at a time. This is the double (or triple, etc.)
monolingualism norm (see Table 1). The double monolingualism norm has
substituted the earlier monolingualism norm which is closely connected to a
Herderian ideal of the close relationship between people, nation, and
language. Well into the twentieth century, linguists warned against children
growing up with two languages, unless special conditions were met (e.g.
Jespersen, 1941: 133). Both the monolingualism norm and the double
monolingualism norm stress the ideal of concrete linguistic behaviour being
monolingual. In opposition to this, the integrated bilingualism (or multilingual-
ism) norm emphasises that language users may use features from different
languages in the same production when that is appropriate. But the integrated
bilingualism norm refers to the two (or three or more) languages which the
speaker commands. The different monolingualism norms as well as the
multilingualism norm are all to a large extent essentialist. They depend on a
concept of different languages as nicely packaged sets of features.
We can observe among especially the youth in late modern societies an
entirely different behaviour than these norms prescribe. The young urban
language users have contact with speakers of a wide range of different
languages. The young speakers become acquainted with many different
features from these languages, and they use some of them in their speech
without learning all the other parts of the languages involved. The use of
features from several different languages in the same production has become
frequent, especially in in-group interaction, even when the speakers appar-
ently know very little of several of the involved languages. To mention just a
few, Rampton (1995) quotes the use of Carribean Creole by young white
 Polylingual Languaging 169

Londoners, Christensen (2004) quotes the use of Arabic by young Århus

speakers of Danish
who have a range of different mother tongues, and
Nortier (2001) quotes the use of Sranan among Dutch adolescents in Utrecht.
The behaviour follows the polylingualism norm which is different from the
multilingualism norm. Polylingualism is different from multilingualism, a
term which covers the (more or less ‘full’) command of several languages.
Hewitt (1992): 30) presents the distinction with respect to cultures. On the one
hand, we have multiculturalism, ‘a pluralist order of discrete patches of
culture, all, somehow, ‘‘equally valid’’ within the polity’. On the other hand,
we have polyculture ‘a collection of cultural entities that are not (a) discrete
and complete in themselves; (b) that are not in any sense ‘‘intrinsically’’ equal;
and (c) are active together and hence bound up with change’. Hewitt uses
prehistorical cave paintings with their many layers of additions and super-
imposed features as a metaphor for poly-cultural phenomena. His point is that
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it is impossible to determine which parts belong to the ‘same’ layer so to say,

‘in this fluid chaos’ (Hewitt 1992: 29).
Similarly, it may be difficult to determine where features employed in
polylingual language use originate, i.e. to which linguistic set of features they
‘really’ belong, but this is immaterial. The point is that language users may
know what sets of features their own behaviour dips into
or they may not
know. The use of a Kurdish word in an Oslo youth conversation may
to
some young speakers
be a signal of specifically Kurdish minority status. To
others
who do not know the particular word is considered Kurdish
the
word may signal membership of a particular youth group, and just that.
Polylingual behaviour can be analysed more directly as combinations of
features than as combinations of languages. Speakers employ side by side
different features which some other speakers, and according to older norms,
should be separated. In fact, this type of behaviour is not restricted to late
modern urban youth. The Englishman may use both the Scottish accent and a
single word from German (for instance ‘heraus’) in the same utterance.
Behaviour like that is much more frequent than textbooks let us know. We all
behave against Berger and Luckmann’s (1966: 53) contention that we can not
combine languages, and young urban language users do so consistently and
creatively.

Languaging
We use the term languaging for this behaviour: language users employ
whatever linguistic features are at their disposal with the intention of
achieving their communicative aims. Language users language with all their
skills and knowledge which may involve detailed knowledge of the etymology
of certain words, of the morphological and syntactical possibilities, the values
ascribed to the features by society at large, etc. Or the speakers may know very
little about each feature, except what to use it for under given circumstances.
Language users who have access to features from a wide range of different sets
of features of course also use features from a larger number of different sets
than those who have access to less. The behaviour is fundamentally the same,
we are all languagers. We have language, and that is important. It is less
 170 International Journal of Multilingualism

important that some of us have languages. We use language intentionally in

order to achieve our aims. As one aspect of our language use we may
intentionally employ features about which we know that some people think
that they do not belong together. For instance, we may think that it will help us
achieve our aims if we use features which our interlocutor knows and uses. In
this case we converge. In other cases, we may think it wise to use features
which the interlocutor knows, but does not use, in which case we diverge. We
may even think it is a good idea in certain situations to use features which the
interlocutor does not know. Then we show off. In all cases, we adjust our
behaviour according to our assumptions about the interlocutor. This is
characteristic of linguistic interaction. We include our expectations about our
interlocutors’ competences and patterns of behaviour in our planning. We
even include our assumptions about our interlocutors’ attitudes. This may be
the reason why the monolingual norms, be they single or double or triple, are
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taken for granted, even by people who work professionally with language.
Particularly in language learning theory, the use of different languages in the
same production is considered harmful, a source of interference, and much
more which is almost exclusively negative (see Arnfast & Jørgensen, 2003).
In this context, it is crucial to understand that the use of features from
different sources is something we all do. We just have access to a smaller or
wider range of different sources, and therefore our behaviour involves less or
more varied features. Polylingual languaging is one type of languaging, but
basically it is not different from other types of linguistic behaviour. The
specificities of polylingual languaging may involve the integration of features
from many different sets of features, and it may involve all levels of linguistic
description
including syntax, morphology, pronunciation, etc. When a grade
school student in Denmark says liminizi låne edeyim mi? [may I borrow your
gluestick?], he uses both words, morphemes, and syntax usually taken to belong
to Turkish and Danish respectively, but we can not determine exactly how the
grammars are involved in the utterance as a whole. Polylingual languaging does
not always involve such complicated integration of linguistic levels. It seems to
require rather advanced linguistic skills, or at least language users seem to
develop them gradually (see Hansen, 2004; Jørgensen, 2004b). Frequent use of
features from different languages, polylingualism or not, certainly goes together
with advanced language skills (Jørgensen & Quist, 2001).
Further it is important to understand that polylingual behaviour is not
random. Speakers do not choose words or features completely arbitrarily from
the different sets of features at their disposal. When choosing, speakers are just
as rational as they are when they otherwise choose words and features.
Excerpt 1 (four Turkish
Danish students in grade 5 doing an assignment
involving place names; source: the Køge Project, see Jørgensen, 2004a; Danish
in recte, Turkish in italics, English underlined)

1. ALI: hej benim kartıma bakar mısınız

Eng: hey will you look at my card
2. ESEN: o zaman şöyle kes ya det skal ikke [//] det fylder meget
Eng: in that case cut it like this it is not [//] it is quite big
 Polylingual Languaging 171

3. ALI: Erol bak benim kartım güzel değil mi

Eng Erol look isn’t my card nice
4. EROL: bakayım # arkasına
Eng let me have a look # on the back
5. SELMA: kesti
Eng: he has cut
6. ESEN: Italien
Eng: Italy
7. ALI: şurdan vardı bende koparttım gitti
Eng: I had one of these I tore it
8. EROL: Bşeye sokarsın denersin olur # paran olur o zaman xxx [ ]
Eng: you can put it into that one you can try # then you will have money xxx
9. SEL: Bkopart xxx [B ]
Eng: cut it off xxx
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10. ALI: Bnej shit mand [B ] Jackpot hele verden

Eng: no shit man Jackpot all over the world
11. ESEN: Jackpot takes you there dadadadidu.
Eng: Esen sings
12. SELMA: hele verden
Eng: all the world
13. EROL: are you finish
14. ALI: Jackpot hele verden
Eng: Jackpot all over the world
15. SELMA: Bno I am Danish [ ]
16. EROL: B no I am Danish  [B] reklâmda
Eng: no I am Danish in the ad
17. SELMA: he
Eng: yes
18. ALI: no I am Finnish
19. ESEN: BMorocco []
20. EROL: Bİngilizce [B ] hello
Eng: English hello
21. SELMA: hello I would like a squash
22. ALI: hello I would like a squash # I am Danish

In excerpt 1 we observe four students with a Turkish
Danish background

conversing intensely. Their task is to find pictures of places around the world
and glue them on to a world map the size of the table where they are sitting.
Ali proposes (utterance no. 1) a picture for inclusion in the task, and he does so
in Turkish, but Esen rejects his proposal (utterance no. 2) using Danish. Ali
turns his attention to Erol, asking for support and getting it (utterance no. 4).
Selma agrees with Esen, however, and nothing comes of Ali’s proposal. The
discussion continues, mostly in Turkish, until Ali gets another idea (utterance
no. 10). He finds an advertisement for the SAS airline, developed around the
theme ‘Jackpot takes you there’, and Ali reads it out. This triggers a series of
remarks: the girls immediately join in, Esen even humming the jingle of the
corresponding TV commercial (in English, utterance no. 11), thereby reinfor-
cing the turn of attention away from the task to the advertisement theme. Erol
 172 International Journal of Multilingualism

develops this line further by contributing a line from another TV commercial:

‘are you finished’ (utterance no. 13). In this TV commercial a shop assistant
asks an insisting customer in English: ‘Are you finished?’, and the customer
answers: ‘No, I am Danish’. Ali does not immediately realise that Erol has
changed the subject to a different TV commercial. Ali instead continues with
the jackpot theme (utterance no. 14). Selma has noticed the change of subject,
and she addresses her utterance to Erol. Simultaneously with her reaction Erol
follows up on the new theme. He uses the same words as Selma, but he also
says in Turkish: ‘reklâmda’. He uses Turkish to explain (to Ali) that the
appropriate next line of the TV commercial now in focus is ‘No, I am Danish’.
Ali’s reaction to this is: ‘No, I am Finnish’ (utterance no. 18). This shows that
he is able to construct an English sentence, as this line is not part of the TV
commercial. However, it also shows that he is not entirely in line with the
others. Erol once again uses Turkish to explain what the original TV
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commercial says, i.e. ‘In English it is....’.

With the change of language back and forth between English, Danish, and
Turkish the bilingual adolescents not only play the original punning game, but
extend it further. They also build up an obviously shared attitude to the use of
English. They make fun of the English which is extensively used in ads and
slogans in Denmark. This works partly as sheer fun, partly as an alleviation of
the disagreement which it follows. At a moment where they do not agree, and
being in a situation which may not appeal to them, they use linguistic means
to establish rapport
perhaps even as face-saving mechanisms. They select
linguistic items freely from the languages they meet everyday. They choose
these items and insert them into new combinations which relate to new values
and attitudes. The effect is that they all join in a mutual activity of poking fun
at the world
through the simultaneous use of three different languages. This
unites them in the situation, and it contributes to bringing about and
negotiating shared values which may reach beyond the situation.
Obviously, the languages are not used arbitrarily. Firstly, the use of English
is primarily bound to the texts of the advertisements and TV commercials, but
the children do not restrict their use to verbatim quotations. They also
elaborate on the lines of the ads, still using English. Secondly, Turkish seems to
be used by Erol for asides, particularly to explain (to Ali) what is going on.
Danish also seems to be used by Esen to contradict Ali.
There are more details to observe in this excerpt, but this will suffice to
show that the choice of feature among the available sources may in itself be,
and probably most often is, meaningful. Very good examples of this are
explained in detail by the papers in this volume, and as particularly shown by
Cekaité and Evaldsson the choice not to use features belonging to certain
groups of features may also be highly meaningful.
It would be a gross oversimplification to state that languagers choose their
linguistic features based on the specific semantic content or other structural
characteristics of the available features. In other words, languagers do not just
pick the word that most precisely describes a phenomenon they have set out to
talk about. The reasons which cause languagers to pick features from sets of
features which are generally considered to be different, include their relations
to the monolingualism norms which prevail in society at large. In their article
 Polylingual Languaging 173

in this volume, Cekaité and Evaldsson demonstrate how the grade school
children in their study in some situations use features from several different
languages, and in other situations they pointedly not only refrain from doing
so, but also discourage each other from violating the monolingualism norms.
Cekaité and Evaldsson observe how the linguistic behaviour of the children is
closely related to their identity work. By carefully and demonstratively
referring to the monolingualism norm, a child can invoke an image of the
‘good student’ whereas the violation of the monolingualism norms would
invoke the image of the ‘bilingual troublemaker’. It goes without saying that
the children in this way contribute to the maintenance and the reproduction of
the overt monolingualism norms as norms, while they simultaneously develop
skills in violating the norms in order to achieve specific purposes, for instance,
with respect to self-positioning, as in Cekaité and Evaldsson’s example:
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Rana: du skall prata på svenska: i alla fa:ll!

you should talk in Swedish in any ca:se! ((to Hiwa))

Rana can ‘invoke a ‘‘good student’’ identity by appropriating the monolingual

classroom ideology: implicitly, by switching to Swedish and by explicitly
scolding Hiwa for his ‘‘inappropriate’’ choice of Arabic’. Tholander (2002) cites
a range of ways in which grade school students can take upon themselves a
role of ‘subteaching’: ‘Such subteaching involves repertoires and practices
typically associated with regular teaching’ (Tholander, 2002: 234). Lytra (2007)
shows in her analysis of playful language among minority children in a Greek
school that inter-child socialisation may thus be more influential than the adult
attempts to regulate the linguistic behaviour of children. The choice of a word,
an utterance or an expression from a specific ‘repertoire’ or ‘language’ or ‘set
of features’ is not arbitrary, but serves a purpose. Furthermore, the choice is
not made in a normative vacuum, but often relates explicitly to the norms
heaped upon the children by adults.
Madsen’s contribution to this volume shows how grade school students
may invoke or construct a status of ‘good students’ by directly referring to
their grades
which are of course given by teachers. They may also construct
such a status by showing off their skills, as in the spelling competition extract
analysed by Madsen. She observes that young speakers are perfectly capable
of constructing themselves as a combination a streetwise urban kids and good
students. This is achieved by skilful choice of features and overt meta-language
discussion. In Møller’s (this volume) analysis of a conversation among three
(younger) adult Turkish
Danes, the monolingualism norms are also present.
The participants know they are being recorded and for what purpose, and so
they ask which language they are supposed to speak. Understanding that no
monolingualism norm applies, they juggle with several languages, and several
varieties of at least some of these languages. In addition, they produce
utterances with features which do not necessarily belong to any (known)
language at all, in casu something that sounds Chinese to a European.
All of these contributions show us how the language choices made by
speakers involved in peer group interaction can refer to the norms and values
ascribed to different types of linguistic behaviour in society at large. The
 174 International Journal of Multilingualism

utterances produce situated identities as well as they contribute to the social

cohesion among the contributors. But there is more to it than situated
identities. Hinnenkamp in this volume demonstrates in his analysis of chat
languaging that ‘this kind of languaging is not simply an expression of a
transitional social identity’. Hinnenkamp observes that languaging may
indeed become a norm in its own right: ‘If one can not perform, can not
participate in languaging, one is out of the game’. There are attacks on the
practice of chat languaging, but they are ‘indirectly negotiated away’, and in
general there are no negotiations to introduce, construct or maintain the
specifically polylingual languaging of these Turkish
German youths.
The linguistic behaviour of youths involved in interaction with other young
languagers has drawn increasing attention from sociolinguistics, particularly
with respect to the extended use of features taken to belong to ‘different
languages’, i.e. polylingualism, and its relation to identity work (Hvenekilde &
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Nortier, 2001; Jørgensen, 2003, Kotsinas, 2000; Rampton, 2006; see also
Wortham, 2006). Late modern youth is described as skilled social actors and
negotiators who employ a wide range of linguistic features
accompanied by
values ascribed to them
in their mutual exchanges of utterances, in their
interaction.
It further emanates from all these works, and from the papers in this
volume, that norms of language choice are heavily involved in the background
of the group interactions reported, and sometimes the norms are fore-
grounded. The speakers may explicitly refer to norms, or they may choose
to follow them more or less strictly in their behaviour. In any case, the
behaviour of the speakers participating in peer group interaction involves
negotiations of social identities including power struggles. The choice of
linguistic features from which are sometimes considered different sets of
features is not arbitrary, it is rational (Myers-Scotton & Bolonyai, 2001).
The social aspect is less clear with respect to the graffiti cited in my paper.
However, as Adams and Winter (1997) observe, there is certainly an aspect of
identity construction in graffiti. The graffiti often refer to phenomena in youth
culture, particularly inspired by US American oppositional youth culture (YO
WHA UP ESKIMO??). Beside that graffiti are used to signify group member-
ship by football fans, nationalists, ethnic minorities, and otherwise. The
identities are presented, but much less negotiated than we can observe in the
papers by Cekaité and Evaldsson, Møller, Madsen, and Hinnenkamp. This
does not mean that negotiations are excluded in graffiti (Adams & Winter,
1997). Both the oppositional forms, orthographic, morphological, etc., and the
behaviour which violates the monolingualism norms, serve as statements.
Polylingual behaviour can be observed among and around children and
young people in urban late modern societies, at least in Europe. Polylingual
behaviour is not a weird and unique phenomenon
it is a particular instance
of languaging which all human beings involve themselves in. It is demanding
behaviour, and competent polylingual languagers tend to be competent when
they choose to follow a monolingualism norm. Polylingual linguistic products
are tools and means for achieving communicative purposes just like other
linguistic phenomena.
 Polylingual Languaging 175
Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to J.N. Jørgensen, University of
Copenhagen, Njalsgade 120, DK-2300 Copenhagen (normann@hum.
ku.dk)

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