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Article published In: Pragmatics
Vol. 29:3 (2019) ► pp.332–356

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Language socialization across borders

Producing scalar subjectivities through material-affective semiosis

ORCiD logo with link | Brown University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 11 March 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.18013.arn
Abstract
Recent scholarship on language use has developed a resurgent interest in the complex interrelationship of language and materiality; given its longstanding investigation of both non-verbal communication and political economy, language socialization research is well-positioned to make important contributions to this investigation of language materiality. This paper advances such a project by demonstrating how the discursive processes of language socialization make the material affectively meaningful. Through an exploration of prompting interactions in cross-border conversations within transnational Salvadoran families, the paper elucidates how processes of material-affective semiosis produce subject positions that are made normative for some individuals, in this case, differentiating between migrant and non-migrant kin. Drawing out the role of materiality in such processes thus reveals how language socialization functions as a scale-making resource that turns the inequalities of transnational migration into constitutive features of family life.
Article outline
  • 1.Materiality in language socialization
  • 2.Language socialization, care, and transnational migration
  • 3.Prompting in transnational Salvadoran families
  • 4.Material-affective semiosis in cross-border prompting
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
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