Language, Youth and Identity in the 21st Century Linguistic Practices across Urban Spaces

The language of young people is central in sociolinguistic research, as it is seen to be innovative and a primary source of knowledge about linguistic change and the role of language. This volume brings together a team of leading scholars to explore and compare linguistic practices of young people in multilingual urban spaces, with analyses ranging from grammar to ideology. It includes fascinating examples from cities in Europe, Africa, Canada and the US to demonstrate how young people express their identities through language, for example in hip-hop lyrics and new social media. This is the first book to cover the topic from a globally diverse perspective, and it investigates how linguistic practices across different communities intersect with age, ethnicity, gender and class. In doing so it shows commonalities and differences in how young people experience, act and relate to the contemporary social, cultural and linguistic complexity of the twenty-first century.

Part I. Content and Concepts: 1. Language, youth and identity in the twenty-first century: content and continuations Bente A. Svendsen; 2. Contemporary urban vernaculars Ben Rampton; 3. The politics of labelling youth vernaculars in the Netherlands and Belgium Leonie Cornips, Jürgen Jaspers and Vincent de Rooij; Part II. Forms and Functions: 4. Beyond verb second – a matter of novel information structural effects? Evidence from Norwegian, Swedish, German and Dutch Ulrike Freywald, Leonie Cornips, Natalia Ganuza, Ingvild Nistov and Toril Opsahl; 5. Functional gains: a cross-linguistic case study on three particles in Swedish, Norwegian and German Lena Ekberg, Toril Opsahl and Heike Wiese; Part III. Language Practice, Values and Identity in Media and Popular Culture: 6. Shooting the subversive: when non-normative linguistic practices go mainstream in the media Tommaso M. Milani, Rickard Jonsson and Innocentia Jabulisile Mhlambi; 7. Where the fuck am I from? Hip-hop youth and the (re)negotiation of language and identity in Norway and the US Cecilia Cutler and Unn Røyneland; Part IV. Language Practice as Emblems of Becoming and Belonging: 8. Emblems of identities in four European urban settings Adrian Blackledge and Angela Creese; 9. Language and language ideologies among Turkish-speaking young people in Athens and London Vally Lytra; Part V. Language Practice and Positioning in Interaction: 10. Stylized voices of ethnicity and social division Lian Malai Madsen and Bente A. Svendsen; 11. Verbal teasing among young people in Køge and Eskişehir Hülya Özcan, Lian Malai Madsen, İlknur Keçik and Jens Normann Jørgensen; Part VI. Language Practice and Urban Space: 12. Indexing locality: contemporary urban vernaculars in Belgium and Norway Finn Aarsæther, Stefania Marzo, Ingvild Nistov and Evy Ceuleers; 13. Urban youth speech styles in Kenya and the Netherlands Margreet Dorleijn, Maarten Mous and Jacomine Nortier; 14. Sociolinguistic practice among multilingual youth: comparing Swedish cities with Toronto Sally Boyd, James A. Walker and Michol F. Hoffman.

Jacomine Nortier is Associate Professor in Sociolinguistics/Multilingualism in the Utrecht Institute of Linguistics at Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Bente A. Svendsen is Professor of Scandinavian Languages and Norwegian as a Second Language and the Deputy Director of MultiLing Centre for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan in the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at Universitetet i Oslo.