By Jan Blommaert

Abstract

This paper introduces the term ‘supervernacular’ as a descriptor for new forms of semiotic codes emerging in the context of technology-driven globalization processes. Supervernaculars are widespread codes used in communities that do not correspond to ‘traditional’ sociolinguistic speech communities, but as deterritorialized and transidiomatic communites that, nonetheless, appear to create a solid and normative sociolinguistic system. Such systems – we illustrate them by referring to mobile texting codes – can be seen as the outcome of complex processes of englobalizationand-deglobalization, of globally circulating affordances that always and inevitably get taken up within the possibilities and constraints of local sociolinguistic economies. Consequently, they only occur as ‘dialects’ of the supervernacular: instances of locally constratined and ‘accented’ realization that display an orientation to the ideological ‘standard’ supervernacular. Investigating supervernaculars, seen from this angle, illustrate and clarify fundamental sociolinguistic processes of ‘standardization’ and shed light on the cultural dynamics of superdiversity.

Keywords: globalization, superdiversity, supervernaculars, mobile phones, textin

Blommaert, J. (2011). Supervernaculars and their Dialects. (Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies; No. 9).

Read the full working paper here: Supervernaculars and their Dialects.