Fighters, Girls and Other Identities , livre ebook

Fighters, Girls and Other Identities
ENCOUNTERS
Series Editors : Jan Blommaert , Tilburg University, The Netherlands, Ben Rampton , Kings College London, UK, Anna De Fina , Georgetown University, USA, Sirpa Leppänen , University of Jyväskylä, Finland and James Collins , University at Albany/SUNY, USA
The Encounters series sets out to explore diversity in language from a theoretical and an applied perspective. So the focus is both on the linguistic encounters, inequalities and struggles that characterise post-modern societies and on the development, within sociocultural linguistics, of theoretical instruments to explain them. The series welcomes work dealing with such topics as heterogeneity, mixing, creolization, bricolage, cross-over phenomena, polylingual and polycultural practices. Another high-priority area of study is the investigation of processes through which linguistic resources are negotiated, appropriated and controlled, and the mechanisms leading to the creation and maintenance of sociocultural differences. The series welcomes ethnographically oriented work in which contexts of communication are investigated rather than assumed, as well as research that shows a clear commitment to close analysis of local meaning making processes and the semiotic organisation of texts.
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ENCOUNTERS: 5
Fighters, Girls and Other Identities
Sociolinguistics in a Martial Arts Club
Lian Malai Madsen
MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Buffalo • Toronto
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Madsen, Lian Malai.
Fighters, Girls and Other Identities: Sociolinguistics in a Martial Arts Club/Lian Malai Madsen.
Encounters: 5
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Urban dialects–Denmark–Copenhagen. 2. Urban youth–Social aspects–Denmark–Copenhagen. 3. Urban youth–Recreation–Denmark–Copenhagen. 4. Martial arts for children–Denmark–Copenhagen. 5. Linguistic geography–Denmark–Copenhagen. 6. Language and culture–Denmark–Copenhagen. 7. Copenhagen (Denmark)–Dialects. 8. Copenhagen (Denmark)–Languages. I. Title. II. Title: Sociolinguistics in a Martial Arts Club.
P40.5.U732D34 2015
306.4409489–dc23 2015009686
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-398-4 (hbk)
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Copyright © 2015 Lian Malai Madsen.
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Contents
Figures and Tables
Transcription Symbols Used
Acknowledgements
1 Preliminaries
Cultural Diversity, ‘Counter Culture’ and Integration
Language in Heterogeneous Urban Contexts
Field Methods, Participants and Data
Approaching Identity in Interaction
Outline of the Book
2 Sports, Integration and Participation
The Nørrebro Taekwondo Club
The Field of Association Sports in Denmark
Assumptions About Sports and Integration
The Nørrebro Taekwondo Club as a Community of Practice
Social Practices and Social Positioning in the Club
Integration in a Club Community
3 Girls, Boys and Interaction
Frames, Play and Teasing
Social Relationships and Teasing in Interaction
Peer Monitoring and Gender Categorisation
Competition, Inclusion and Gender Relations
4 Youth, Language and Ethnic Categorisation
The Sociolinguistics of Copenhagen
Youth Style in Heterogeneous Urban Environments
Situated Functions
Stylised Voicing of Ethnic Minorities
Aspects of Ethnicity
Contemporary Urban Speech and Ethnic Categorisation
5 School Orientation in an Out-of-School Setting
Schooling, Standard Language and Monolingual Ideologies
Coolness and Opposition
School Achievements as Symbolic Capital
Micro-integration and Enregisterment
6 Perspectives
Fighters, Girls and Other Identities
Community Sports and Integration
Ethnic Categorisation and Social Inequality
References
Index
Figures and Tables
Figures Figure 1.1 Data collection Figure 2.1 Map of the club Figure 2.2 Hierarchical organisation and activities in the Nørrebro Taekwondo Club Figure 2.3 The groups’ identity positionings Figure 2.4 Girls 1 ‘A day in the club’ Figure 2.5 Translation A day in the club Figure 2.6 Girls 1 ‘Girlish and boyish’ Figure 2.7 Translation Girlish and boyish Figure 2.8 Girls 2 ‘Girlish and boyish’
Tables Table 1.1 Participants listed according to friendship group, gender, age, ethnic background, belt colour and parents’ occupation Table 2.1 Order of belt colours according to World Taekwondo Federation’s rules Table 2.2 Groups’ characteristic practices related to membership status and taekwondo orientation Table 4.1 Percentage of the variants [tʲ] and [ ] out of ten occurrences of the variables (‘t’ and ‘r’)
Transcription Symbols Used [overlap] overlapping speech LOUD louder volume than surrounding utterances °silent° lower volume than surrounding utterances xxx unintelligible speech (questionable) parts I am uncertain about ((comment)) my comments . falling terminal intonation ? rising terminal intonation : prolongation of preceding sound >faster< faster than surrounding utterances ↑ local pitch raise (.) short pause (0.6) timed pause Stress stress hhh laughter breathe
Acknowledgements
I am obliged, in particular, to Ben Rampton, whose work and mentorship continues to be an inspiration for me. I am deeply grateful for the invitation to publish this volume and for your generous engagement and careful editorial feedback. Also I thank Jan Blommaert and the team from Multilingual Matters for helpful editorial advice.
Through discussions and collaboration, several colleagues have had an impact on this work. Asif Agha, Roxy Harris, Karel Arnaut, Jürgen Jaspers, Sine Agergaard, Janus Spindler Møller, Martha Sif Karrebæk, Bente Ailin Svendsen and Andreas Stæhr, I am thankful for how you have in various ways (more or less directly) helped shape the thoughts that I express here.
Thanks to funding from the University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Humanities and the Danish Research Council for Culture and Communication, I have been able to carry out this research and turn it into a book. But my research was only possible because 16 girls and boys from the Nørrebro Taekwondo Club agreed to participate, and I am immensely thankful for that. I have had a great time with you in the club and I have learned a lot from you.
The club would not exist without the committed adults and instructors. You do not only develop excellent young sports talents and achieve impressive results. You also continue to create a recreational space of great importance to a lot of children and you care about all the young members. I thank you for many years of friendship and cooperation in the club and for letting me carry out this study. Especially, I thank you, Lasse, for making a real difference to the children in the club for so many years and for being an important help to me (with research-informational chats as well as neck repairs).
Selma, Ziggy and Leslie, you have not had any direct impact on the writing of this book apart from being a (welcome) disturbance, but nothing is more important than you to its author’s well-being. Thank you for being here.
The support and guidance that I received from Jens Normann Jørgensen at the early stages of this work and far beyond my work life as a mentor, colleague and friend have been invaluable. It has been a privilege to know and work with him, and his sad death in 2013 has left an empty space. I know he would have been pleased that this book has finally been published.
1 Preliminaries
Every week, groups of children and adolescents meet in a building in the northern part of central Copenhagen. Most of them are from the local area. They get together with other young people and adults to engage in particular actions, rituals and bodily movements. They agree that what they practice is the martial art of ‘taekwondo’ and that the collective of people who meet in this locality and carry out these practices together constitutes a ‘taekwondo club’. The children and adolescents formally become members of the club when they have filled in a form and have paid their monthly fee. The club, however, is not constructed by such formalities alone, but by regular repeated practices and interactions between individuals. The members interact physically. They dress in certain ways, they move around, shake hands, hug, push, kick and hit each other. A major part of the practice of the sport consists of demonstration, copying, correction and repetition of bodily movements. Yet, the bodily actions are accompanied by verbal conduct, and as in any human community, significant parts of the interactions between the