Constructing cosmopolitanism: UK language cafés as transnational spaces for multilingual socialization Hannah King, London Metropolitan University; Dr Nuria Polo-Pérez, Durham University Wednesday, 13th November, 17:00-18:00 GMT Language cafés are one space where people from a wide variety of language and cultural backgrounds voluntarily socialize. Ensuing informal interactions tend to feature a mixture of L1 and LX speakers with multiple national and local ties, making them key spaces for a discussion of transnational and multilingual socialization. While previous studies have explored the pedagogical implications of English-language cafes (e.g., Balçıkanlı, 2017; Murray & Fujishima, 2016; Mynard et al., 2020), recent work is shifting the focus towards multilingual and social perspectives (Polo-Pérez & Holmes, 2022). This talk draws on recorded conversations and interview data from two, qualitative research projects featuring three such groups: two language cafés in the North East of England–one French and one multilingual–and a Spanish language group in central London. Through (micro) discourse analysis and thematic analysis, we explore how participants make use of various discursive strategies in the construction of cosmopolitan identities, which brings them together across diverse nationalities, languages, and cultures. The findings indicate that cosmopolitanism is important not only in establishing speaker and group profiles, but also support a view of cosmopolitanism as “discourse and ideology” (Codó, 2014, p. 154). An examination of these overlapping cosmopolitanisms is particularly relevant for mobile communities increasingly explored within a sociolinguistics of globalization (Blommaert, 2010). By examining discursive practices of the participants themselves, our research aims to challenge essentialist views of culture which often take for granted the intercultural dimension of transnational encounters, thus expanding sociolinguistic understandings of ling…
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Hear us speak together at: Constructing #cosmopolitanism: UK language cafés as #transnational spaces for #multilingual socialization
Online w/ the #Migration, #Identity & #Translation Network (#MITN, @monwarmitn) on 13 Nov 5-6pm GMT
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