Encountering Complexity. Hybrid Discourse and Individual Management of Multilingualism and Social Meaning

Abstract

The thesis encompasses six sociolinguistic and discourse analytic case studies on multilingualism and individual agency. Against the complexity of the current sociolinguistic situation of Sámi in Northern Norway, the studies shed light on the active agencies of various individual actors in different communicative settings. The case studies are concerned with three different sites: the global discourse of language endangerment in its encounter with the interests of local actors in the Sámi media; local informants’ individual management of responsibilities and identities in the face of uncertainty and the risk of language loss; and the attitudinal positioning of various actors during the debate on the introduction of the administrative area for the Sámi language in Tromsø. All studies analyse individual strategies of meaning-making, positioning, and metalinguistic contextualization in discourse, with focus on identity, storytelling, stance-taking, and responsibility. In all cases, individual actors, in the roles of, e.g., journalists, experts, local informants, the researcher, and local community members participating in media debates, face a large contextual complexity. Presenting different linguistic strategies of individual self-organization vis-à-vis this sociolinguistic and contextual complexity, I argue that especially hybrid properties of discourse enable individual actors to manage for themselves the challenges and complexities they encounter in social contexts and with respect to their to their (Sámi, Norwegian, and other) language(s).