Regional dialect and multiethnic youth style in a Danish social housing project

• Pia Quist ^[1] ; Astrid Ravn Skovse ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Copenhagen

     University of Copenhagen

     Dinamarca

     
• Localización: Journal of multilingual and multicultural development, ISSN 0143-4632, Vol. 46, Nº. 4, 2025 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Migration and Dialect Acquisition in Europe), págs. 999-1017
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper presents an empirical account of the use of regional dialect and multiethnic youth style by young speakers who are born and have grown up in Vollsmose, an ethnically and linguistically diverse neighbourhood in the city of Odense, Denmark. By combining a quantitative analysis of linguistic variation with insights drawn from ethnographic fieldwork, the paper will demonstrate how multiethnic youth style and regional dialect are used in complex configurations that vary systematically with the social organisation among peers. The article gives an account of these complex linguistic patterns and shows how they form part of the local social order in Vollsmose. Overall, analyses show that linguistic differences run along gendered lines: non-standard features are used primarily by boys with the exception of one ethnically associated feature which girls use more than boys. However, the study points to considerable gender-internal variation as well, since boys’ use of non-standard features corresponds with their social affiliations. One socially prominent group of boys uses a ‘hybrid register’, comprised of both ethnically and regionally associated features; another group uses only ethnically associated features, while the rest use only the regional dialect.