Multilingualism, Ideologies and Identity Online
Elizabeth Lanza is Professor of Linguistics at the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, and Director of the Center for Multilingualism in Society Across the Lifespan, University of Oslo, Norway. Her main research interests cover bilingualism/multilingualism. Lanza has published on language ideology, linguistic landscape, language policy, identity in migrant narratives, the language socialization of bilingual/multilingual children, and research methodology. She became Elected Fellow of The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 2013 and Elected Head of the Group in Philology and Linguistics, the Humanities and Social Sciences Division, in 2018.
Abstract: In sociolinguistic research, the family has been traditionally considered a private domain for language use. Social space, however, is negotiated between actors with their discursive power, material constraints, and spatial practices. In post-modern European society, international mobility has contributed to a diversity of multilingual transnational families. Ideologies about languages and speakers of various languages are indeed inherent in many media presentations of families with an immigrant background. The family has increasingly come under scrutiny in sociolinguistics as a space for language learning and use through studies of family language policy. Lanza will discuss the transnational family as a space for language (learning) and how this space has become public, with a special emphasis on mediatized discourses on transnational families and online parental blogging sites for multilingual families. She will argue that in the current digital age, there is a growing need to examine the role of technology in studies of family language policy, in order to shed light on issues of multilingualism, ideologies and identity.
This Provost’s Lecture will be held on Thursday, April 11, at 4 pm in the Charles B. Wang Center, Lecture Hall 2.
Co-Sponsors: Run Run Shaw Lecture Series, Department of Asian and Asian American Studies, Center for Multilingual and Intercultural Communication
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