Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici

27 October 2023, 14.00 (Central European Time)
Organiser: Marco Santello (University of Turin)
Lydia Catedral (City University of Hong Kong)
Madina Djuraeva (University of Nebraska at Omaha)
Link

This talk seeks to make an intervention in applied linguistics research through its argument about the limits of academic (re)theorizations of language for creating more just social relations, and its proposal to address these limits through the materially transformative, dialogic inclusion of spatiotemporally marginalized voices. In order to operationalize such dialogic inclusion, we build on theories of chronotopes and scalesand our recent ethnographic  research with migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong to argue that a recognition of materiality has important implications for sociolinguistic research and advocacy. We use illustrative data from the ethnographic case of Filipino migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong, who are often employed by ethnic Chinese parents to care for their children and socialize them into particular ways of using English. This data comes from participant observation and interviews with domestic workers, their employers and domestic worker-led grassroots organizations. We use these data to demonstrate how different stakeholders have unequal abilities to materialize the spatiotemporal imaginaries they voice out, how academic (re)theorizations of language may not always bring about changes to the material spatiotemporal conditions of marginalized stakeholders, and why the collective voices of marginalized groups should be taken into account alongside individual voices. Implications are discussed in terms of action-oriented work that critical applied linguists can engage in to support the inclusion of migrant domestic workers’ voices in particular, and the voices of marginalized stakeholders in our field more generally.

Lydia Catedral is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Translation at City University of Hong Kong. She is a sociolinguist whose research focuses on the intersections between language, identity, and morality across time and space. She has conducted ethnographic research with different groups of transnational migrants, including her current work with progressive organizations led by migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong. In her trajectory as a scholar, she has always been on a search for connections
between sociolinguistic research and social advocacy for marginalized and exploited communities. She has published in Applied Linguistics, Journal of Sociolinguistics and Language in Society and her co-authored book, Chronotopes and Migration: Language, Social Imagination, and Behavior, is published with Routledge.

Madina Djuraeva is an Assistant Professor of ESL and Bilingual Education in the Teacher Education Department at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her research spans Central Asia, Northern Uganda, and North America, centralizing the language, education, and identity of multilingual (migrant) speakers and how to serve them equitably. She has published in Applied Linguistics, International Multilingual Research Journal, and World Englishes, and she has co-edited a book Language Policy and Politics of Language: Re-imagining the role of language in a neoliberal society.