Plenary Speakers
 

Jan Blommaert, London Institute of Education
Language, asylum and the national order

Asylum interviews represent a frontline for applied linguistics in the age of globalization. People who by definition have a background of transnational displacement and relocation are required to produce narratives in a context, and in relation to an institutional regime of interpretation that is dominated by the national order of things. This regime focuses on a narrowly interpreted notion of competence of a nationally dominant language, which is tested and which leads to formal attributions of identity. It also involves judgments of plausibility of sociolinguistic features in applicants’ speech, strongly anchored in a sense of normalcy which is ‘ours’, or which projects a sedentary and immobile ‘ideal’ identity onto applicants. On the basis of two cases of applications by Africans in Belgium, I will illustrate these characteristics of the national order in the asylum procedure, and sketch implications for theory and applied practice.

Jan Blommaert is Finland Distinguished Professor at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland, and professor of Linguistic Anthropology at Tilburg University, The Netherlands. Previously, he held professorships at Ghent University (Belgium) and the Institute of Education, London, and visiting appointments in Chicago, Duisburg and Pretoria. He obtained a PhD in African Studies from Ghent University in 1989. His work covers linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, literacy studies and discourse analysis, and focuses on connections between language difference and social inequality in the context of globalization. His research has covered situations and groups in East, Central and Southern Africa, multicultural Europe, and China. His publications include ‘Discourse: A Critical Introduction’ (Cambridge University Press 2005), ‘State Ideology and Language in Tanzania’ (Koeppe 1999), ‘Language Ideological Debates’ (Mouton de Gruyter 1999) and ‘Debating Diversity’ (Routledge 1998). A book entitled ‘Grassroots Literacy’ (Routledge 2008) and one called ‘A Sociolinguistics of Globalisation’ (Cambridge University Press 2008) are forthcoming. He has held executive functions in several professional bodies and serves on editorial boards of international journals. He has directed several major research projects, most recently a collaborative research programme ‘Dynamics of Building a Better Society’ with the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.

Email: j.blommaert@ioe.ac.uk

Web URL: http://ioewebserver.ioe.ac.uk/ioe/cms/get.asp?cid=4441&4441_0=12542