Stockholm university
Centre for Research on Bilingualism

Higher sem. Biling. Muzna Awayed-Bishara: Towards a Sociolinguistics of Potentiality

Seminar

Date: Tuesday 4 March 2025

Time: 15.00 – 16.30

Location: Room D315

Higher seminar in Bilingualism. Towards a Sociolinguistics of Potentiality: Building spaces of otherwise through decolonizing English. Muzna Awayed-Bishara, Tel Aviv University, School of Education (Faculty of Humanities), Israel.

In my talk, I respond to Caroline Kerfoot and Christopher Stroud’s call to expand and Southernize sociolinguistics, through the lenses of Elizabeth Povinelli’s notion of spaces of otherwise. Focusing on multilingual contexts, I examine how colonial languages (e.g., English) could offer minoritized language speakers decolonial possibilities to create new meaning-making spaces. These are spaces of potentiality where alternative social projects embody a complex interplay of utopia and dystopia. Employing the Southern notion of sumud pedagogy as a localized application of Stroud’s notion of Linguistic Citizenship, I examine how Palestinian Arabic-speaking youth in Israel employ English to de-construct social constructs and reject imposed subjectivities. Combining my voice as a Palestinian sociolinguist in Israel with the voices of Palestinian youth from Haifa, I illustrate how English offers decolonial options for constructing new modes of being, belonging, and knowing.

Muzna Awayed-Bishara

About the Higher seminar in Research on Bilingualism

Theme
Language, Literature and Culture - Theme page
Research subject
Multilingualism and society

Last updated: February 20, 2025

Source: Centre for Research on Bilingualism

eventNewsArticle

standard-article

true

{
  "dimensions": [
    {
      "id": "department.categorydimension.subject",
      "name": "Global categories",
      "enumerable": true,
      "entities": [],
      "localizations": {}
    },
    {
      "id": "department.categorydimension.tag.Keywords",
      "name": "Keywords",
      "enumerable": false,
      "entities": [],
      "localizations": {}
    },
    {
      "id": "department.categorydimension.tag.Person",
      "name": "Person",
      "enumerable": false,
      "entities": [],
      "localizations": {}
    },
    {
      "id": "department.categorydimension.tag.Tag",
      "name": "Tag",
      "enumerable": false,
      "entities": [],
      "localizations": {}
    },
    {
      "id": "webb2021.categorydimension.Category.Events",
      "name": "Globala kategorier Kalender (Webb 2021)",
      "enumerable": true,
      "entities": [],
      "localizations": {}
    },
    {
      "id": "webb2021.categorydimension.Label",
      "name": "Tema (Webb 2021)",
      "enumerable": true,
      "entities": [],
      "localizations": {}
    },
    {
      "id": "webb2021.categorydimension.Label.en",
      "name": "Themes (Webb 2021)",
      "enumerable": true,
      "entities": [
        {
          "id": "webb2021.categorydimension.Label.en.Language2",
          "name": "Language, Literature and Culture",
          "entities": [],
          "attributes": [],
          "childrenOmitted": false,
          "localizations": {}
        }
      ],
      "localizations": {}
    },
    {
      "id": "webb2021.categorydimension.Keyword",
      "name": "Keywords (Webb 2021)",
      "enumerable": false,
      "entities": [],
      "localizations": {}
    }
  ]
}