Department of Applied Linguistics Seminar Series: Josh dela Rosa-Prada
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street
No booking required
The Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication invites you to our Seminar Series.
Speaker: Josh dela Rosa-Prada,Texas Tech University.
Identity reflexes in translingual linguistic landscapes: the case Hispanic flea markets in Texas
The field of linguistic landscapes explores how languages are publicly displayed in specific geographical units. In situations of ethnolinguistic minority, diaspora, or official bi/multilingualism, the linguistic landscape may provide a valuable window onto issues related to local power dynamics, ethnolinguistic vitality, and linguistic trends, among others. Squarely focused on the Hispanic community of Texas, in this talk I examine the emergence of ethnolinguistic identities through the linguistic landscapes of four Hispanic flea markets located in four major metropolises across the state (i.e., El Paso, Houston, Lubbock, and San Antonio). Flea markets are complex and dynamic socioeconomic institutions whose nature is flexible enough to allow ethnolinguistic minorities to contest and challenge social linguistic conventions and policy.
Adopting a translanguaging approach, I investigate flea markets as sites for identity construction. In so doing, I look at how market users (i.e., vendors and shoppers) perceive the market's linguistic landscape and conceptualize themselves as members of the local ethnolinguistic community. To this end, mixed data were collected in the form of photographs and semistructured interviews with the market users. Results unveil a strong interconnection between the market's linguistic landscapes and the users' linguistic profiles, contesting normative monolingualism as well as language separation, indicating that Hispanic flea markets may serve as a place for ethnolinguistic identity maintenance and reinforcement.
Bio
Josh de la Rosa-Prada (MFLT, Granada; MA, Birkbeck; ABD, Texas Tech) is a Helen DeVitt Jones fellow and a researcher in the Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition Lab at Texas Tech University, where he teaches undergraduate courses. His interests lie in the broad area of bilingualism, and include heritage language acquisition and development, social cognition in minority communities, and heritage language pedagogy. As a doctoral candidate in linguistics, his thesis looks at identity processes in adult heritage language learners. In 2016 he received the Horn Professors Doctoral Achievement Award for his work in bilingualism. Josh is a member of the editorial board of ´Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts´ (John Benjamins).
Click here to book your place.
Contact name:
Applied Linguistics
Contact phone:
2076316356