Sammendrag
Digital communication remains largely unexplored in sociolinguistic research on diaspora and language. In this paper,
ethnographically collected data from Norway-based families of Senegalese heritage are explored to identify how
family members use digital media to engage with diaspora
concerns and projects, and how this engagement shapes
their multilingual practices online. We re-contextualize the
concept of polycentricity (Blommaert et al.) from the physical setting of a neighbourhood or region to complex ecologies of digital media, and identify four ‘centres’, that is,
distinct orientations for participants’ digital language and
literacy practices, in which linguistic choices are associated with diaspora discourses, genres, and imagery. Each
centre constrains the deployment of linguistic and semiotic
resources in ways that are related both to historically rooted
sociolinguistic hierarchies and affordances of digital media.
The findings support a key claim in language and diaspora
research, that is, the fine-grained patterning of linguistic
resources in diaspora communities. They also underscore
the need to extend the empirical scope of a sociolinguistics
of diaspora from co-present to mediated interaction, and to
explore the interplay between the two.
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