Multilingualism, Chronotopes, and Resolutions: Toward an Analysis of the Total Sociolinguistic Fact

Abstract

In this article, I argue for a chronotopic-scalar system of images and resolutions in the analysis of language use in general and multilingual practices in particular. Drawing on data from Iranian Azerbaijanis, I argue that availability and accessibility of linguistic/semiotic resources, and their categorizations as languages or language varieties, are constrained by participants’ chronotopization histories. That is, the scaled images participants develop through socialization about different time–space frames and the peoples, relations, discourses, and resources therein guide their language use both from and about particular contexts. I discuss the utility of spatiotemporal understandings of repertoires of resources and normalcies in capturing the variability, dynamicity, and complexity of semiotic practices and also in addressing the controversies among scholars regarding the ‘realness’ of languages and hybridity of multilingual practices. Through decentralizing language(s) and foregrounding context(s) and contextualization, I argue, the chronotope enables us to analyze not only social actors’ hybrid utilization of semiotic resources in meaning-making processes, but also their language ideologies and language-ideological practices, which rely heavily on the perceptions of languages as discrete systems.