Speaking Ortensvenska in Prestigious Spaces: Contemporary Urban Vernacular and Social Positioning at an Inner-city Stockholm School

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Speaking Ortensvenska in Prestigious Spaces:

Contemporary Urban Vernacular and Social Positioning at an Inner-city Stockholm School

Hannah Botsis , Mari Kronlund Rimfors & Rickard Jonsson

To cite this article: Hannah Botsis , Mari Kronlund Rimfors & Rickard Jonsson (2020):

Speaking Ortensvenska in Prestigious Spaces: Contemporary Urban Vernacular and Social Positioning at an Inner-city Stockholm School, Journal of Language, Identity & Education, DOI:

10.1080/15348458.2020.1777871

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2020.1777871

© 2020 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Published online: 14 Aug 2020.

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Speaking Ortensvenska in Prestigious Spaces: Contemporary Urban Vernacular and Social Positioning at an Inner-city Stockholm School

Hannah Botsis, Mari Kronlund Rimfors, and Rickard Jonsson

Stockholm University

ABSTRACT

This article investigates how a contemporary urban vernacular (CUV) called Ortensvenska is used for social positioning at a prestigious inner-city Stockholm school. Previous studies have indicated that CUV is often a feature of those on the societal margins, but little research has focused on prestigious spaces where high-achieving students challenge these stereo- types. Drawing on linguistically oriented ethnographic fieldwork among students at a prestigious school, we show how Ortensvenska is used to construct space, class, and identity in everyday school life. It was found that the use of Ortensvenska maintains social asymmetries between class, ethnicity, and place among students at the school. The paper also shows how these linguistic practices blur a fixed separation between languages, styles, and places. We suggest, therefore, that space plays an important role in the analysis of youths' language practices.

KEYWORDS Contemporary urban vernacular; Ortensvenska;

prestigious school; social positioning; space

Introduction

Like many other European countries in the advent of global migration, Sweden is becoming more diverse, and as a result new linguistic practices are emerging. This article concerns a style of speaking in Sweden that has come to be referred to as Ortensvenska (directly translated as Suburban Swedish).

The word “Orten” in this instance means the suburb and refers to multi-ethnic settings on the outskirts of the big Swedish cities. It has a non-elite connotation in the Swedish context owing to its use in social housing projects and their distance from the elite city centres. Orten, in its singular definitive form, also refers to a social movement that addresses issues of racism and social inequality connected to segregation in the cities (Sernhede et al., 2019). Thus, Orten gives name to Ortensvenska, which is an example of what Rampton (2015) calls a “contemporary urban vernacular” (CUV) or a “hybrid style” that is seen as “distinctive in ethnically mixed neighbourhoods shaped by immigration and class stratification” and that is “connected-but-distinct” from other modes of speaking such as migrant languages, local dialects, national standards, and second language speaker styles (Rampton, 2015, p. 39).

In this paper we investigate the relationship between CUV, space, and social positioning. The aim is to examine how Ortensvenska is used in the social positioning of high school students at a prestigious inner-city school in Stockholm. We are not concerned with the linguistic features of Ortensvenska per se, but rather what it indexes socially (Agha, 2006). We take Ortensvenska to function as a multivalent symbolic marker of urban youth identity that reveals how power balances are negotiated and how social asymmetries are reproduced and challenged in society more broadly.

Data on the use of CUV in Sweden has historically concerned youth on the outskirts of cities (see Haglund, 2005; Kotsinas, 1988). Academic researchers, media, and the general public have grouped together youth language styles variously referred to as Rinkebysvenska (Rinkeby Swedish),

CONTACT Rickard Jonsson Rickard.Jonsson@buv.su.se Department of Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University, SE- 11419 Stockholm, Sweden.

© 2020 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://

creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the

original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

Förortsslang (Suburban slang), and Ortensvenska (Suburban Swedish), and refer to multilingual urban language practises in an indiscriminate fashion (Bijvoet & Fraurud, 2010; Boyd, 2010; Sundgren, 2002). Ortensvenska, then, is seen as a speech style used by immigrants and those living on the outskirts of the larger Swedish cities. But this is changing. It has been pointed out elsewhere that by focusing solely on immigrant youth situated on the periphery of the city, researchers might in fact reify both CUVs and the speakers of the variety (Madsen & Svendsen, 2015). In this paper, we focus on what Ortensvenska as a language practice is doing across different social spaces and how this might subvert or reinforce existing social hierarchies. Ortensvenska is used, and spoken about, by more than just immigrant youth, and here we examine the use of, and the talk about, Ortensvenska in a highly prestigious Stockholm school—a space where researchers have seldom gone to collect data about these linguistic practices (but see Årman, 2018; Nørreby, 2017). Our emphasis is on the social life of Ortensvenska and how it is used to position students in the school space and in the city more broadly.

At the school under investigation, students from a higher socioeconomic class are the traditional student pool. However, an educational policy where students’ school choices are no longer determined by geographic domicile was introduced in 1992 and has since resulted in an increasing flow of young people commuting from throughout the city in order to attend attractive schools (Bunar, 2010). This movement of students is not only about “moving through a city,” but also involves “moving through a stratified sociolinguistic space” (Blommaert, 2005). As the youth occupy novel physical spaces, different expectations, norms, and opinions surround their language practices (Jonsson et al., 2020).

The stereotypical ideological expectation is that students from the outskirts of the city (of immigrant background) use Ortensvenska, while the wealthier inner-city students use a more highly valued register of “standard Swedish.” In this article we are concerned with understanding how different participants position themselves in relation to the use of Ortensvenska. A second concern is how participants position themselves and each other in metalinguistic discussions focusing on the use of Ortensvenska.

Literature review

Ortensvenska and contemporary urban vernaculars

Ortensvenska and other CUVs have often been described in static and fixed ways—in both public debates and in the literature—as linguistic practices that index a specific location, social class, ethnic grouping, or gendered practice (see Jonsson, 2018; Milani, 2010; Stroud, 2004). In response to this, there has been a move against seeing youth styles as emblematic of socially constructed categories of difference, such as age and ethnicity (Madsen, 2015; Milani & Jonsson, 2012). Rather, language is being treated as a practice that is continuously “constructed and ascribed meaning, when used by partici- pants in mundane talk in various local contexts” (Jonsson et al., 2020, p. 228). The overwhelming impression in the literature on CUV in Sweden is that “immigrant status is automatically associated with social disadvantage” (Behtoui et al., 2019). The literature on media representations surrounding Rinkebysvenska (Stroud, 2004) shows how urban youth linguistic practices have turned speakers of these varieties into icons of social and educational problems, positioning them as aggressive and threatening young immigrant men. This phenomenon of casting users of CUV as a social problem and of ethnic otherness is not limited to Sweden. Madsen (2011), writing about Denmark, has noted that youth of cultural and linguistic minority backgrounds are often focused on for their ethnic identities.

However, her research found that “ethnic identity aspects” are not always “evidently in focus.” For

instance, she foregrounded the ways in which “the negotiations of academic identities and the bringing

together of school-related and out-of-classroom practices (. . .) bring into play aspects of socio-cultural

differences related to social class structures in the sense that educational positioning is linked to

aspects of social class” (Madsen, 2011, p. 64). Other sociolinguistic research has also shown how social

class is constituted through linguistic practices that reference ethnicity in complex ways (Rampton,

2011a, 2011b). Who speaks to whom, how, and where shapes the nature of social relations. Huang

(2017) in her study on language practices of migrant youth in China found that migrant students were constructed as “low quality and a problem for the school” (Huang, 2017, p. 385). This was all at the level of discourse because, as she points out, no “institutional documents provide any statistics to support” this claim (Huang, 2017, p. 386). In fact, echoing Madsen’s (2011) study in Denmark, the opposite was found to be true; migrant students performed well academically and did not necessarily perform any “worse than local students” (Huang, 2017, p. 386).

Theoretical framework Social positioning

This brings us to examine the relationship between Ortensvenska and social positioning. The relevance of examining this relationship is that it provides an account of the flows of power in society. Davies and Harré (1990, p. 89) explain the relation between subject position, discourse, power, and agency as a “constitutive force” of “discursive practice” because this relation allocates people to different subject positions. Participants are positioned in a variety of ways. They can be positioned interactively, “in which what one person says positions another” (Davies & Harré, 1990, p. 91). They can be reflexively positioned, where they position themselves by virtue of how they refer to themselves in their stories. They are also positioned in society prior to data collection. Davies and Harré point out that positioning is not necessarily intentional (Davies & Harré, 1990, p. 91), but this does not exclude the possibility that it can sometimes be used intentionally. What is not explicitly noted in Davies and Harré (1990) theory, but is tacitly invoked, is how power is critical to how one is positioned. A focus on power necessarily has to include a focus on what position the subject is interpellated into as an effect of dominant ideologies and discourses (see Althusser, 2001). Taking this into account, Bamberg (1997) argues that there are three aspects key to subject positioning: the self, the interaction, and the context. Our focus here is on the context or the spaces that socially position students by identifying in their accounts aspects that bring into focus the tension between how they position themselves and how others (present or absent in the conversation) position them (Davies & Harré, 1990).

Space

The very word Ortensvenska immediately alerts us to the importance of space. It flags the “place of origin” of this style of speaking, and its non-elite social connotations. As a label it is already performing positioning work. Space is thus a salient factor in constituting how Ortensvenska is taken up by participants of varying social backgrounds in order to pursue particular social goals.

Space, language, and social class imbue each other with social meaning (Lefebvre, 1991). CUV, as emblematic of both space and social class, is used to index both “high” and “low” social positions and locations (Madsen, 2013). In this way, “style-contrasts act as rather clearly coded orientation points for the navigation of social space and social relations” (Rampton, 2011a, p. 1237). The use of CUV can function as a we-code, or can demarcate some kind of identity practice, and it might also have the capacity to reinforce categories of difference. It is possible that Ortensvenska opens up space for subversive practices, highlighting “the speakers” agency in language change and in questions of linguistic correctness” (Årman, 2018, p. 9).

Social positioning through language practice occurs within particular spaces that make perfor-

mances possible and receivable in different ways by different audiences. By adding space as an

analytical entry point to our discussion, we are able to explore ethnographically what Blommaert

(2010) has termed the “sociolinguistics of mobility”—that is, sociolinguistic movement and mixing

across space, time, and place, acknowledging the “crossings necessary to exist in multiple linguistic

and cultural contexts” (Cantú & Hurtado, 2012). Space is a significant social lens because it takes on

a life of its own; it mediates how social structures such as class, ethnicity, and gender are experienced

by individuals. Physical spaces have histories, cultural norms, and economic values, and movement between spaces necessitates multi-sited linguistic practices and loyalties (McCarty, 2014).

The emphasis on space shows how language practices are site-specific and cannot be referred to in broad brush strokes such as, “immigrants speak Ortensvenska.” As McCarty (2014) shows in her research on native youth language practices in the United States,

In these young people’s words, we glimpse their multi-sited language practices ... as they move from home to school and across geographic and cultural spaces, taking diverse Englishes, Spanishes, and heritage language practices and loyalties with them—and often adding new language varieties to their communicative repertoires.

(McCarty, 2014, p. 264)

A focus on space and language practices illustrates how these practices “facilitate, constrain, and/or mediate experiences of movement within and between communities, locales, practices, and ideological influences” (Warriner & Wyman, 2013, p. 5). The youth’s confrontations with racism, linguistic exclusion, and educational inequality are also seen (McCarty, 2014, p. 265).

Methodology

The material presented here is drawn from four month’s ethnographic fieldwork focusing on everyday language use among students at a prestigious public inner-city school in Stockholm.

A class of students in the natural sciences programme, all over 16 years of age, were followed by Rickard Jonsson both inside and outside the school. The data were collected through participant observations and audio-recordings of both naturally occurring conversations in classrooms and informal conversations among students with the researcher present. At times, the students also borrowed the recorder and taped their own conversations without the researcher’s presence. In these instances, names are not provided and are simply referred to as “boy” or “girl” in the excerpts used. A field diary was used to take notes on contextual information, including the date and time that relevant conversations occurred. Informal talks with teachers were also documented in the field diary.

The selected excerpts in this article are examples of recurring themes in the field notes and the recordings.

We employ a linguistic ethnographic approach to investigate participants’ everyday language use.

Karrebæk and Charalambous (2017) summarise three key epistemological assumptions within this perspective. First, language and social reality are understood as mutually constitutive. Thus, “language is regarded as a contextualized system and understood and studied in context; conversely, language shapes, constrains and influences social meanings” (p. 4). Second, the context of communication should always be investigated rather than assumed (Rampton, 2007). Third, in order to understand how social and historical structures are being reconstructed or challenged in speech we need to undertake fine-grained analyses of interactional data (Rampton et al., 2004, see also Karrebæk &

Charalambous, 2017). The combination of close ethnography and linguistic analysis makes it possible to document change, mobility, and how language creates meaning in everyday interactions.

Setting and participants

We refer to the social organisation of the school space, and how it is imbued with meaning, as the

“socio-geography” of the school. Within the microcosm of the school there are areas that are more or less predominantly frequented by students of immigrant and non-immigrant backgrounds, which also maps onto social class.

References to multi-ethnic suburbs and Ortensvenska are at times used as proxies for referring to

immigrant inhabitants of Stockholm, but this is in no way a neutral or accurate description. Many of

the students who are called “immigrants” were born in Sweden. Despite this factual reality, their social

position within the inner city and school space is demarcated as “non-Swedish” by themselves and

others—but to different ends. The school in question is chosen by students of varying social

backgrounds and geographic areas in their quest for future success. The motivations and experiences surrounding this choice highlight existing social cleavages in the city. The composition of Stockholm schools has shifted over the last ten years, and there has been increased diversity at the school, but social divisions persist. Similar findings on the division of physical spaces in schools were found by Sharif (2017) and Magnusson et al. (2014), making this school far from unique in terms of its socio- geographic tensions.

The architecture of the school, and how the space is used, produces social meanings with differing values (Scollon & Scollon, 2003). For example, one of the teachers reported that most students of “non- ethnic Swedish parents” choose to enrol in the natural science programme. These students hang out in specific parts of the school (“the fourth floor”) and, according to field notes, are labelled the

“immigrant class” by students in other programmes, with the associated stereotype of being ill disciplined. By contrast, the economics and the social sciences programmes are seen as “Swedish.”

How the physical space of the school is divided up is represented in Table 1 based on ethnographic observations and the participants’ emic labels and descriptions of the space. In ethnographic notes, the researcher recorded that the economics students call the natural sciences programme floor “the jungle” because of the large number of immigrant students in this stream. Calling the physical location of this programme “the jungle” performs various types of semantic work. It connotes racism directed at students on the 4th floor, and it constructs social categories out of academic streams and tethers these to physical places in the school. The derogatory label of “the jungle” positions students in this stream as outsiders. Even if they are in actual fact Swedish nationals, within the school they are constructed as exotic others. The word “jungle” connotes notions of “wild” and “uneducated,” the opposite of the urbane citizens the “economics” students position themselves as. However, simulta- neously, if paradoxically, the 4th floor is experienced as a more relaxed space by the “immigrant”

students.

There is a room on the second floor of the school that has been dubbed the “Mafia Room” by students at the school. The researcher was told that the nickname came from a card game popular among the students in the room, but that it soon was ascribed new meanings, including connotations of something “outlawed” and a room for immigrant students. This label was used in both humorous and demeaning ways by students at the school. In line with Bucholtz (1999), it could be said that “the school is racially organized along an ideologically defined black-white dichotomy that structures students’ social worlds.” Similarly, this school is described in the talk of the participants as being organised along immigrant/non-immigrant lines, where both academic choices and the physical geography of the school reinforce these categories. However, there are instances where “students symbolically cross this divide through linguistic and other social practices that index their affiliation”

with students of immigrant background (p. 445).

Finally, we introduce here the main participants present in this article, with a note on their residential areas in the city and their use of CUVs. Aram, Andros, Sacha, Dejan, Hamid, and Kendal all come from ethnically mixed suburbs on the outskirts of Stockholm, while Wille and Fredrik live in posher and less mixed parts of the city. They are friends and all use Ortensvenska, but how and when they use it differs.

Aram, according to interviews and field notes, is of a lower social class and is more aware of how Ortensvenska indexes his subject position in the social hierarchy. He grew up with Ortensvenska, his friends in his neighbourhood use it, but he tries to avoid it. His reasoning is that it does not make a good impression, especially if one wants to do well at school. His mother also discourages his use of

Table 1. Division of physical space of the school.

Floor Habitat

4

Natural science, many students from the outskirts of Stockholm with foreign-born parents.

3

Economics class, many students from white middle and upper class.

2

Social sciences, mostly white middle-upper class.

Also, the location of the “Mafia Room,” referred to by students as a “non-Swedish” space.

Basement Canteen

Ortensvenska. Wille, who is secure in his class position, is able to have a looser, more playful relationship to Ortensvenska. Fredrik is from an upper middle class suburb north of Stockholm. Fredrik and Wille do not call Ortensvenska their own language. They seem to realise that they are not entitled to use it as their own, but they do embrace it, and in that sense, they use it ironically, but with a degree of self-awareness.

This self-awareness might be a way of separating themselves from those who use it in what appears to be an instance of straightforward cultural appropriation (Årman, 2018).

Findings

The socio-geography of the school

The excerpt below exemplifies the socio-geography of the school. Here a conversation is underway from an unstructured interview at a café with the researcher and participants—Dejan, Kendal, and Sascha. In this section, they discuss their impression of their school before they started attending it and now having been there for a while. They are discussing the different stereotypical students who are in each academic stream.

Excerpt 1 (original)

Excerpt 1 (translation)

In this interchange, Dejan is trying to diplomatically explain the types of students he expected to meet at school. Dejan sets up various categories in the school, namely, the “economics programme” (line 5) and

“natural science programme” (line 7). The economics programme was seen as snobbish, with students from posher backgrounds, while students doing the natural science programme seemed more “relaxed”

1 Dejan: När man kom hit på öppet hus till exempel, (ja) då fick man ju 2 se alltså vilka elever som eh, som valt natur, och alltså typ 3 hur dom, ungefär hur det såg ut och då: (.) för jag, min kompis, jag 4 kom hit med min kompis när det var öppet hus och han ville 5 börja på ekonomi, så vi var i ekonomilinjen och då då 6 såg man ju hur personerna va och såntdära, och så 7 kom man upp till natur och då såg man att det var lite mer 8 avslappnat och det var lite me:r (.) eh, hur ska man säga?

9 Kendal: A det var mer invandrare!

10 Sacha, Dejan: (skrattar högt)

1 Dejan: For example, when you came here at open house, (yes) then you got 2 to see which students that, eh, who chose natural science, and like 3 how they, like how it looked and then: (.) because I, my friend, I 4 went here with my friend when it was open house and he wanted to 5 start economics, so we were at the economics programme and then then 6 you could see like how the people were, like that, and then you

7 came up to natural science and then you could see that it was a bit more 8 relaxed and it was a bit mo:re (.) eh, what do you say?

9 Kendal: That there were more immigrants!

10 Sacha, Dejan: (laugh out loud)

(line 8). The physical space was important in his description. For instance, he notes the floors of the school and the look of the students, and as one “came up” (went up a floor, line 7) the space felt more relaxed. In this way he gives meanings to these categories beyond what they obviously signify—he is not just talking about the floors, but that a physical change in space brought about a social change in space. His description of the space as more relaxed reflects his appraisal of his own social position because by implication he sees the economic students as not relaxed, creating a binary of “us and them.” Kendal interrupts Dejan’s apparently euphemistic description, blurting out “there were more immigrants” (line 9), followed by loud laughter. This interruption is the moment when clear social positioning takes place among the discussants.

They erupt into laughter (line 10) to manage the taboo word “immigrants,” revealing that that is what he was thinking all along, but perhaps felt he could not say so bluntly. This admission positions them as socially distinct from the “economics programme,” intimating where and with whom they feel most comfortable.

The Mafia Room: Safe space or singled out?

Running through the excerpt above are class and academic labels acting as proxies for ethnic differences.

What they attempt to keep covert is made explicit in the case of the physical presence of what students have dubbed “The Mafia Room.” This is a room in the school that is frequented by students in the natural science programme. The physical existence of this space in the school and the conversations that surround it highlight the salience of ethnicity as an identity marker. However, it would appear that those who frequent the Mafia Room contest this simple ethnic differentiation and instead point to factors like academic achievement and social class as salient factors for divisions in the school.

Within the school, the Mafia Room is characterised as a multilingual, multicultural space. It is a social room on the second floor of the school, on the same floor as the social sciences stream, about 15 square meters in size with a sofa, some chairs, and a restroom. Students have varying opinions of the room; for instance, one of the participants, Aram, of Armenian descent, finds it a noisy space that is not conducive to work, while Kendal describes it as “multicultural.” Others who hang out there say that some students are “scared” to use the room. Teachers have reportedly also asked students who use the room to make it welcoming for all. This was not well received by users of the Mafia Room because they feel they have not stopped anyone from coming into the room.

In the next excerpt, a discussion is taking place in the Mafia Room about the Högskoleprovet (Swedish Scholastic Aptitude Test).

Excerpt 2 (original)

11 Kille: Abbe fick en komma tjugofem 12 Kendal: Vet du va horungen i min klass,

13 hon fick en komma femtifem (skratt)

14 Dani: Vem?

15 Kendal: Alam

16 Dani: Den där snorungen

17 Kille: Nån annan horunge i min klass fick en komma sju

18 Madel: VEM a Jeppe.

19 Hamid: Driver du, Jeppe mannen?

20 Kille: Han är klar.

21 Kille: FA::n horunge, känns som han är helt bang brau (oklar betydelse) 22 Madel: Hur mycket fick han?

23 Kille: En komma sjuttiofem

24 Kille: Ne::j

25 Madel: Va!?

Excerpt 2 (translation)

This conversation is interesting because the test is voluntary, required only if one wishes to enter university, and an opportunity to improve one’s school grades. In other words, one would have to have an academic interest in taking the test. The maximum possible score is 2.0. In the discussion, the participants are referring to students who are not present and the scores achieved. For example, 1.7 (line 17) is seen as a good score. The overarching sentiment in this discussion is that it is a good thing to do well in school. What is interesting is that there are parts of this discussion that use elements of Ortensvenska, a speech style not usually associated with academic achievement.

Through a process of enregisterment (Agha, 2006), Ortensvenska has become associated with distinct social categories (Milani & Jonsson, 2012; Stroud, 2004). The Ortensvenska words that were used in excerpt 3 have “symbolic meaning and associations” (Årman, 2018, p. 8) that position the speakers socially. What we see in this excerpt is that these examples of Ortensvenska, which earlier research noted as indexing ethnicity, masculinity, toughness, and counter culture on the margins of society (Nortier & Svendsen, 2015; Milani & Jonsson, 2012), are used in this instance to discuss academic achievement in an elite space. This is new and remarkable in terms of existing research on CUV. Later in the conversation, the participants become annoyed at Swedish adults taking the test for fun and thereby making the average score higher, which, according to them, would affect the students’

own possibilities of succeeding in the test. In the students’ discussion, they reflect on their own possibilities of academic success using aspects of Ortensvenska to do so.

From the students’ point of view, the image created of a) Ortensvenska in the school and b) the Mafia Room, is that this style of speech and social space would ordinarily not occasion discussions about academic success. Instead we find the opposite taking place in the Mafia Room. Ortensvenska

26 Kille: Ja lyssna, ett prov, han trodde han skulle få ett komma tre eller ett 27 komma två men han LJÖG inte, han lalla inte alltså, han va:: helt 28 seriös “det här var det sämsta provet jag gjort asså,

29 det kändes verkligen dåligt asså.”

11 Boy: Abbe got one point two five.

12 Kendal: You know the little whore in my class, 13 she got one point five five (laughter)

14 Dani: Who?

15 Kendal: Alam

16 Dani: That snotty kid.

17 Boy: Some other son of a bitch in my class got one point seven!

18 Madel: WHO yes Jeppe

19 Hamid: For real bro, Jeppe?

20 Boy: He’s done

21 Boy: FU::ck son of a bitch feels like he’s totally bang brau (unknown meaning)

22 Madel: How much did he get?

23 Boy: One point seven five

24 Boy: No::

25 Madel: What!?

26 Boy: Yes listen, a test, he thought he would get one point three or one 27 point two but he didn’t LIE, he wasn’t joking, he wa::s totally 28 serious “hey this was my worst test ever,

29 it felt really bad you know”

could be said to “represent informality, non-standard vernacular, and peer-socialising and in this sense contrasts with formal, mainstream-appreciated, and elite-societal connotations” (Madsen, 2011, p. 58). But if one considers this way of speaking coupled with the “safe space” of the Mafia Room, it might serve what Madsen (2011, p. 58) calls “local identity functions.” These two factors—the style of speaking and the social location/space—come together to constitute an identity previously excluded from the social imaginary about immigrant youth. Here we see academically engaged youth using localised forms of speech in their local hangout, and “by using features of the late modern urban youth style in combination with school ambitious practices, the boys manage situated identity constructions as successful, but non-nerdy students” (Madsen, 2011, p. 58). As such they are able to maintain multiple identity loyalties and subject positions.

We are not surprised by the academic success of the students in our research, but rather wish to challenge previous research that hems CUV in, depicting it solely as a linguistic tool of marginal youth. Here, space fuses aspects of their identities that might have previously been at odds with one another. Our findings echo Madsen (2011) findings that “young speakers successfully manage norms of school success and the socio-symbolic value among peers” by using CUV to discuss schoolwork and academic achievements. In doing so these students denaturalise the “cultural hierarchy, disrupting its authority as an interpretive frame” (Rampton, 2009, p. 16). These students perform well academically, while maintaining a “safe” social space through the use of Ortensvenska in particular locations in the school—they do not capitulate or assimilate into expectations of needing to speak “proper Swedish.”

Excerpt 3 below comes from a café conversation between Aram, Wille, Andros, Fredrik, and the researcher. This discussion explicitly refers to whether or not Ortensvenska can be used to discuss intellectual topics.

Excerpt 3 (original)

Excerpt 3 (translation)

In excerpt 3 Andros claims that one cannot use Ortiska to discuss academic or intellectual topics.

The term “Ortiska” is short for “Ortensvenska” and is expressed in a way that emphasises the style as a language of its own. The young men’s discussion is a meta-reflection on the use of Ortensvenska

30 Andros: Alltså man kan inte använda Ortiska för att diskutera intellektuella::

31 Forskare: Samtal?

32 Andros: Det funkar inte.

33 Wille: Det kanske därför som maffiadiskussionerna låter så roliga,

34 (många skratt)

35 Wille: för dom använder såhär ganska förenklat språk för att diskutera 36 såhär skitkomplicerade grejer. (skratt)

30 Andros: Well, you can’t use Ortiska (short for Ortensvenska) to discuss intellectual::

31 Researcher: Conversations?

32 Andros: That does not work.

33 Wille: Maybe that's why the mafia conversations sound so funny,

34 (many laughs)

35 Wille: because they use like rather simplified language to discuss like

36 super complicated stuff. (laughter)

rather than emblematic of the speech style itself. The participants use CUV in ways that highlight the social structures they inhabit, and their language practices are space-specific, where they stylize or shift between ways of speaking (Rampton, 2011a, p. 1239). Where participants of immigrant background felt “safe,” they were able to discuss academic topics in Ortensvenska, while in other spaces they might have felt the need to speak “proper” Swedish in order to display academic competency.

Subverting or reinstating hierarchies?

This theme addresses the issue of the use of CUV and the spaces in which this takes place. Of particular interest is the ironic use of Ortensvenska and who is “permitted” to use it. The idea that there is right or wrong way, place, or speaker of Ortensvenska stands in stark contrast to ideas of boundary crossing and playfulness often found in research on CUV (see Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010).

In excerpt 4, the conversation between Aram, Wille, Fredrik, and the researcher turns to where Ortensvenska is spoken and a contradiction emerges.

Excerpt 4 (original)

Excerpt 4 (translation)

Research on CUV has often positioned this style as being spoken in a generic elsewhere. As Wille says, “Go ten stations in any direction” (line 40) away from the city centre and one is likely to hear it.

Fredrik corrects him and points out that it is in fact spoken right here in the school (line 42), one need only listen for it. The 4

floor (where students from the outskirts of Stockholm with foreign-born parents congregate) and the Mafia Room (on the 2

floor), where Ortensvenska is spoken, are metaphorical of the ideological organisation of space in the wider city.

Ortensvenska derives its social meaning from the spaces in which it is spoken. Fredrik complicates this by saying, no “you can just walk around,” it is audible right here. Fredrik is pointing out that what are considered the practices of the outskirts are actually present in the school itself, turning the expected locale for Ortensvenska on its head. The fact that the style can be heard all over does not mean it is performed or heard in the same way in all spaces and, by all audiences. Its function as a social symbolic marker is dependent on the space in which it is spoken.

For example, in excerpt 5 Wille recounts a school bus trip where he explains how the use of Ortensvenska by those of different class backgrounds frames the speech style in positive or negative terms. Above we saw how Ortensvenska was used to discuss academic success by the natural science

37 Forskare: Vart skulle jag höra det?

38 Alla: (skratt)

39 Aram Du kan höra det här!

40 Wille: Dra tio stationer åt valfritt håll!

41 Alla: (skratt)

42 Fredrik Du behöver inte göra det, du kan bara gå runt.

37 Researcher: Where would I hear it?

38 All: (laughter)

39 Aram You can hear it here!

40 Wille: Go ten stations (subway stations) in any direction!

41 All: (laughter)

42 Fredrik You don't have to do that, you can just walk around.

students, but below we see how it is reportedly used by wealthier students in an ironic, even sarcastic, performance that reinforces its supposed “low” social status.

Excerpt 5 (original)

Excerpt 5 (translation)

In line 49 Wille uses the words “walla bro” (I swear, brother), emblematic of Ortensvenska, to draw our attention to the ironic, or what he considers the offensive, use of the style by the economics students. In line 53 he says that he finds their use of Ortensvenska ambiguous, in that they are using this speech style in order to insult it. It is interesting that Wille claims to also use the style ironically (line 55), and this is also important for how it is used in positioning the various speakers. This is an example of not investigating only the “expected” speakers with immigrant background. Wille is alerting us to the fact that he hears different social groups speaking Ortensvenska, but that the tone is different. Wille distances himself from the insulting way of using Ortensvenska—a use he ascribes to the “economics” students (line 52). Is Wille’s ironic use of Ortensvenska a position he can claim? It begs the question about who the cultural custodian of CUV might be. Hill (2008) argues that when white American English speakers use Mock Spanish (for example, borrowing certain words like cerveza or mañana) in their speech, they perform a humorous or easy-going identity. However, Hill

43 Wille: Even economic-kids, because we had a thirty hour bus trip from 44 Italy on the ski trip (yes) and we didn’t talk that much because 45 we were kind of sick (heh) but you have time to sit and listen to 46 others talk quite a bit. (yes) And there were a lot of economics 47 who spoke and said things behind us, well that class that we described.

48 And they also use Orten like ironically (yes) (.) but then it’s super 49 obvious when they do. They say like “walla, bror” (I swear, 50 brother), then you really notice that they, they are mocking- (.) 51 Researcher: They are making fun of it? [clarifying comment]

52 Wille: But then it’s not ironic, it’s more like they want to insult the 53 Orten culture a bit more. (1.5) Ah yes it’s very (.) ambiguous, 54 when it’s an insult or when it’s ironic. Anyways I’m: (.) sure

55 I use it ironically.

43 Wille: Till och med ekonomiare, för vi hade ju en trettio timmars bussresa 44 från Italien på skidresan (ja) och vi snackade ju inte så mycket för 45 vi mådde ganska illa (he) men man hinner ju sitta och lyssna 46 ganska mycket när andra pratar. (ja) Och det satt en massa 47 ekonomiare och pratade och sånt bakom oss, alltså den klassen som 48 vi beskrev. Och dom använder också Orten så här ironiskt (ja) (.) 49 fast då är det jättetydligt när dom gör det. Dom säger så här “walla, 50 bror,” då märker man verkligen att dom, dom driver- (.)

51 Forskare: Dom driver med det?

52 Wille: Fast då är det inte ironiskt då är det mer att dom vill förolämpa 53 Ortenkuturen lite mer. (1.5) A ja det är väldigt, (.) tvetydligt det där, 54 om när är det en förolämpning och när är det ironiskt. Jag är ändå:

55 (.) säker på att jag använder det ironiskt.

claims that the element of fun in this style is at the expense of Spanish speakers and that it therefore works as a type of covert racist discourse (Hill, 2008, p. 119).

The fact that CUV can be adopted by different groups “blurs a demographic view of the class distribution of this ethnically marked mixed speech” (Rampton, 2011a, p. 1248). According to Wille’s story, CUV is taken up by both Wille and the economic students, but this has different performative effects. Space is also important here—Wille is telling us a story about his perception of the use of Ortensvenska on a ski trip in Italy, as opposed to earlier when he said that to hear the style one has to go “ten stations” along the subway line. These ski trips are expensive and exclusive outings that are not available to students who cannot afford them, and as such they are loaded with social meaning as an elite social activity. Ortensvenska is thus reported to be used in a wealthy social space, however the speakers in this social space are positioned at a distance from “original” Ortensvenska-speaking youth.

Wille’s positioning of the use of Ortensvenska by the economics students shows how the social hierarchy is maintained, rather than subverting it or democratising the speech style. The symbolic marking work of Ortensvenska when used ironically by the economics students protects them from being labelled of lower social class. This leaves those of a lower-class position vulnerable and needing to be “on guard” in their use of both “proper Swedish” and Ortensvenska, as demonstrated in excerpt 6 below.

Excerpt 6 (original)

Excerpt 6 (translation)

56 Kendal: Det kan göra dåligt intryck på nån, det är alltid att man visar sin 57 bredd (.) bra sida först och sen kanske om man känner sig bekväm 58 då kan man få in det här, då kan det uppfattas som skämt men om 59 man först kommer fram sådär kan man ju verka lite (.) outbildad 60 eller så där för det det är ju generellt, för det är till exmepel för mig, 61 eh jag jobar på ICA i (namn på finare del i staden) (ja:a) ok eh 62 ägaren där, han sätter stor vikt vid att man kan prata ordentligt 63 såhär, för när jag gick på intervjun eh så såg han, eller han kunde 64 höra att jag pratade bra svenska, så sa han att det är det, att han 65 tycker att det är jätteviktigt att man kan prata bra svenska (ja) för

66 han sager att det är visa som pratar den här Orten men som inte all-, alltså han sa ju inte 67 det själv men som jag förstod det att man BARA

68 kan prata Ortensvenska (ja) eh vi kan ju prata normalsvenska

69 också eh Ortensvenska är ju bara mer för skoj skull, såhär för nöjes skull, 70 men dom som bara kan prata det dom har ju inte lagt så stor energy 71 och det tycker han, han tycker bara det är la, alltså lathet,

72 såna grejer,så när han ställer frågor så tänker han mycket 73 språket (ok) och det är många ungdomar som inte tänker på sånt.

56 Kendal: It can make a bad impression on someone, it’s always that you show 57 your range (.) good side first and then maybe if you feel comfortable 58 you can get this in, then it can be perceived as a joke, but if you first 59 approach it like that, you can seem a bit (.) like uneducated or like that 60 because it’s it’s generally, because it is for me for example,

61 eh I work at ICA [a store] in [name of the fancier part of the town] (ye:s) ok, eh, the owner there, 62 like he put great importance that you can speak properly, because

63 when I went on the interview, eh, he saw, or he could hear that I

Kendal recounts that it is important to be able to demonstrate that one is competent in desirable Swedish first (“good side first,” line 57) and only once you and your interlocutor are secure in the knowledge that you are competent (not “uneducated,” line 59), can one play around. Students of immigrant background are alert to the complexities of high and low social spaces and the respective appropriate speech styles. One is aware that one should speak “proper” Swedish at school and at work, and can speak Ortensvenska at home in the multilingual suburbs with friends and family. We see here the importance of space in mediating language practice. The store Kendal mentions is in a posher part of town, and this location makes speaking “proper” Swedish to customers very important in order to protect the cultural capital of the space. Kendal makes the distinction between using Ortensvenska for

“fun” (line 69) versus situations that require “proper” Swedish. He notes how he can see the importance of being able to demonstrate this competence to his employer, and thus he has to be alert to the shifting social contexts that make Ortensvenska acceptable or not.

Conclusion

Madsen and Svendsen (2015) have contended that sociolinguistic researchers have played a crucial part in the enregisterment (Agha, 2007) of urban speech styles as an indexical sign of ethnic Otherness (see also Jaspers, 2011; Rampton, 2011b). Our contribution to this critical discussion is to challenge both (a) representations of who the Ortensvenska-speaker is and (b) taken-for-granted ideas of where urban vernaculars are expected to be found (see also Nørreby, 2017). Through the excerpts presented here, we have tried to demonstrate how CUV is used in the social positioning of students at a prestigious school in Stockholm. Ortensvenska is used in the construction of space, class, and identity, but not always to the same effect. The use of CUV by different social groups in the school indexes differing social trajectories; for some it is a practice that unites them with other immigrant youth, while for others it is used ironically, to challenge the status quo, or to insult those of a different social location.

The use of Ortensvenska for the participants in this study appears to allow “renegotiations of stereotypical understandings of the relation between school ambitions and linguistic practice”

(Madsen, 2011, p. 65), where “situated identity work and negotiation of social values” (p. 56) shift across different spaces. The abiding sense is that CUV mediates relationships between spaces and people and can be used to index both “high” and “low” social positions and locations (Madsen, 2013).

In this way “style-contrasts act as rather clearly coded orientation points for the navigation of social space and social relations” (Rampton, 2011a, p. 1237). Wille’s interpretation and positioning of the economics students’ use of Ortensvenska, alludes to the fact that white upper middle-class students use CUV in a “cross-cultural” or a linguistic crossing that “does not necessarily produce meaningful cross- racial alliances” nor does it “break down racial boundaries. Instead it tends to keep the social order

64 spoke good Swedish, so he said that it’s it, that he

65 thinks it’s very important that you can speak good Swedish (yes) 66 because he says there are some who speak this Orten but who can’t 67 – well he did not say so himself but as I understood it that you can 68 ONLY speak Ortensvenska (yes), eh, we can speak normal Swedish 69 as well, eh, Ortensvenska is more for fun, like for entertainment, 70 but those who can only speak that form didn’t put so much energy

[Kendal uses the English word “energy”]

71 and he thinks, he just thinks it’s la-, well lazy, these things, so,

72 when he asks questions he thinks a lot about language (ok) and

73 there are many young people who don’t think about that.

intact by preserving ideologies of . . . ,” in this case, low-status Immigrant Otherness (Bucholtz, 1999, p. 456).

It is because of this fact that students categorised as immigrants need to be “on guard” about their language practices. They need to be alert to spaces that require them to speak “proper” Swedish and spaces that allow them to speak in a more localised fashion. We have demonstrated how students’ ways of speaking, status symbols, and references to specific places index one’s social position. These aspects represent a “social style, that is, a holistic configuration which is perceived as belonging together and which represents a common socio-symbolic meaning” (Deppermann, 2007, p. 327). The language practices that are constitutive of socio-symbolic meaning “invoke” and assess “social identities” and

“accomplish various acts of self- and other-positioning” (p. 327). Space plays an important role in enabling or constraining where these moments of subversion or appropriation take place, and as such we need to keep seeing language practices as multi-sited modalities that index multiple and shifting identities. The use of Ortensvenska in the inner-city school blurs the fixed separation between languages, styles, and places such as the prestigious inner-city and multi-ethnic suburb.

Transcription conventions

(.) a short pause of less than one second (2.0) a longer pause, time in seconds

(reads) comments on context: extended sound:: longer extension here underlined, said with stress

LIED said in a loud voice

? indicates question intonation

! indicates exclamatory intonation

“”quotation marks indicate the speaker’s reference to someone else’s voice, i.e.,

“walla, bror”

När man kom original transcript marked in italics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by the Forskningsrådet om Hälsa, Arbetsliv och Välfärd [Forte 2014-00873].

About the authors

Hannah Botsis holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and is currently a research associate of the Gordan Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria. Her research interests include the social life of language, subjectivity and power.

Mari Kronlund Rimfors is currently pursuing a PhD in Child and Youth Studies at Stockholm University. Her research explores identity work among highschoolers in the context of place, ethnicity and whiteness norms.

Rickard Jonsson is a Professor in Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University. His linguistic ethnographic research concerns masculinity, sexuality, ethnicity and language use in youth’s everyday school lives as well as in media discourses.

ORCID

Rickard Jonsson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2001-6136

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