6 - Acts of Citizen Sociolinguistics

Summary

This chapter develops an account of citizen sociolinguistic acts, as distinct from systemic social movements or organized social action. Citizen sociolinguistic acts are momentary ruptures that reveal tacit assumptions behind our everyday use of language. As such they may lead to change, but they may not. In any case, these acts of talking about language transform subjects into citizen sociolinguists. Acts, as idiosyncratic and situationally specific, have existential qualities of that remain outside typical top-down social theoretical explanations like Marxism’s theory of capital, or a Foucauldian system of discipline. Instead, acts of citizen sociolinguistics, like those we’ve been discussing throughout this volume – acts of sociolinguistic arrest or wonderment – consist simply of encounters with another person. These acts of citizen sociolinguistics do not, on their own, reconfigure systemic relations, ethics, or spoken language, any more than an act of kindness or an act of violence might. They are not large-scale curricular reforms or policy changes. However, they raise our awareness of our humanity and relatedness, and the role of language in it, in ways that can provoke further talk and have a societal impact.