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‘People here speak five languages!’: The reindexicalization of minority language practice among Carinthian Slovenes in Vienna, Austria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2014

Anna Weichselbraun
Anna Weichselbraun*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology 1126 East 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USAweichselbraun@uchicago.edu
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Abstract

This article investigates the transformation of minority language practice in the light of changing European language ideologies. Following a group of young Carinthian Slovenes from their rural hometowns to the capital of Vienna, this article analyzes their metadiscursive commentary about place and language in order to show how local language ideologies structure the indexical orders under which these individuals learn to assign meaning to linguistic practice. The data I present illustrates that these young members of a rurally stigmatized linguistic minority experience a transformation of their language-associated personhood in Vienna. There, their bilingualism allows them to be cosmopolitan participants in a European vision of mobile multilingual citizenship, while simultaneously troubling the language hierarchies erased by European language ideologies. (Linguistic minority, language ideology, indexical order, chronotopes, multilingualism, Carinthian Slovenes, Austria, Europe)

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Language in Society , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , September 2014 , pp. 421 - 444
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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