“From Capturing Grammars to Understanding Speaker’s language practices ”

Although sociolinguistic research is dedicated to exploring the sociocultural embeddedness of language, research has traditionally promoted the datafication of language. Languages are forced into predefine models and categories. This has not only produced a narrow empirical base about how language is intertwined with sociocultural conditions, but also constructed particularly non-European languages as referential codes or grammar systems. In this talk, I discuss how I have tried to address this gap in my research on the Creole’s of Suriname and French Guiana. I argue that the only way forward is a broadly ethnographic approach that focuses on speakers’ actual practices and understandings of these practices.

Bettina Migge is professor of linguistics at University College Dublin, Ireland and attached to SeDyL, France. Her research focuses on language contact, sociolinguistics and language documentation and she has published on topics such as African influences in Creole genesis, language variation and change in contexts of migration, urbanization and multilingualism, and minority languages in education. In recent years she has investigated how the rise in digital communication impacts our understanding of language and our languages practices.