Max Spotti

Bio: Max Spotti is an academic researcher from Tilburg University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Superdiversity & Sociolinguistics. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 20 publications receiving 127 citations.

The Oxford Handbook of Language and Society

Abstract: It challenges the basic tenets of sociolinguistics as we know it. Each chapter provides the strength and limitations of positivist modernist perspective advocatiing for a step toward post-structuralist critical sociolinguistics

Bilingualism, Multilingualism, Globalization and Superdiversity : Toward Sociolinguistic Repertoires

Abstract: A survey of developments in research on sociolinguistic superdiversity, emphasizing the increased relevance of repertoires as focus of research.

Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective

Abstract: This article presents what we term a raciolinguistic perspective, which theorizes the historical and contemporary co-naturalization of language and race. Rather than taking for granted existing categories for parsing and classifying race and language, we seek to understand how and why these categories have been co-naturalized, and to imagine their denaturalization as part of a broader structural project of contesting white supremacy. We explore five key components of a raciolinguistic perspective: (i) historical and contemporary colonial co-naturalizations of race and language; (ii) perceptions of racial and linguistic difference; (iii) regimentations of racial and linguistic categories; (iv) racial and linguistic intersections and assemblages; and (v) contestations of racial and linguistic power formations. These foci reflect our investment in developing a careful theorization of various forms of racial and linguistic inequality on the one hand, and our commitment to the imagination and creation of more just societies on the other. (Race, language ideologies, colonialism, governmentality, enregisterment, structural inequality)*

Beyond languages, beyond modalities: transforming the study of semiotic repertoires

Abstract: This paper presents a critical examination of key concepts in the study of (signed and spoken) language and multimodality. It shows how shifts in conceptual understandings of language use, moving from bilingualism to multilingualism and (trans)languaging, have resulted in the revitalisation of the concept of language repertoires. We discuss key assumptions and analytical developments that have shaped the sociolinguistic study of signed and spoken language multilingualism as separate from different strands of multimodality studies. In most multimodality studies, researchers focus on participants using one named spoken language within broader embodied human action. Thus while attending to multimodal communication, they do not attend to multilingual communication. In translanguaging studies the opposite has happened: scholars have attended to multilingual communication without really paying attention to multimodality and simultaneity, and hierarchies within the simultaneous combination of resources. The (socio)linguistics of sign language has paid attention to multimodality but only very recently have started to focus on multilingual contexts where multiple sign and/or multiple spoken languages are used. There is currently little transaction between these areas of research. We argue that the lens of semiotic repertoires enables synergies to be identified and provides a holistic focus on action that is both multilingual and multimodal.

Translanguaging and Literacies

Abstract: The authors trace the development of the concept of translanguaging, focusing on its relation to literacies. The authors describe its connection to literacy studies, with particular attention to bi/multilingual reading and writing. Then, the authors present the development of translanguaging as a sociolinguistic theory, discuss its formulations, and describe what is unique about translanguaging: its beginnings and grounding in educational practice and attention to the performances of multilinguals. The authors argue that multilingualism and bi/multiliteracies cannot be fully understood as simply the use of separate conventionally named languages or separate modes. Instead, translanguaging in literacies focuses on the actions of multilingual readers and writers, which go beyond traditional understandings of language, literacy, and other concepts, such as bi/multilingualism and bi/multilingual literacy. The authors show how multilinguals do language and literacy and how they do so in school. The authors review case studies that demonstrate how a translanguaging literacies framework is used to deepen multilingual students’ understandings of texts, generate students’ more diverse texts, develop students’ sense of confianza (confidence) in performing literacies, and foster critical metalinguistic awareness. The authors end by discussing implications for literacy pedagogy, as well as literacy research, that centers multilingual students. Almost a quarter century ago, the New London Group (1996) published what has become a manifesto of transformed literacy pedagogy—a pedagogy of multiliteracies consisting of situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice. The scholars associated with the New London Group (see also Cope & Kalantzis, 2000) argued that the multiplicity of new communication channels, as well as the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in the world, meant that literacy had to be viewed in ways that went beyond traditional languagebased approaches. It is significant, however, that despite the authors’ emphases on linguistic and cultural differences, and the impact that this has had in the field of literacy in general, little subsequent work by researchers and educators has addressed the multilingual1 aspect of multiliteracies. Instead, research has focused on the shift from studying literacy to literacies and from the linguistic modes alone to an increased preoccupation in the age of new media with other meaning-making modes, such as vision, sound, and gesture. Despite the New London Group’s support for learners’ multiple languages, subsequent research and pedagogy has turned its gaze away from multilingual readers, writers, and texts. The multilingual was largely excluded from the multimodal (Kleifgen, 2013). Although work quickly Ofelia García Graduate Center of the City University of New York, New York, USA

Reframing language allocation policy in dual language bilingual education

Abstract: This article addresses language allocation policies in what is increasingly called “Dual Language Education” (DLE) in the U.S., offering a challenge to the strict language separation policies in th...