Introduction: Performative linguistic spaces that make utterances and signs (not) happen

1 Introduction

Words not only describe but also make things happen. Words can start a class or unite people in “holy matrimony.” This is the “performative” aspect of language, effective when the convention is invoked and the appropriate circumstances exist (Austin 1961/1979). In this volume, we apply this “performative” notion to space to investigate the ways space pushes us to produce linguistic acts. We call this productive aspect of space “performative linguistic space,” and trace how individuals activate a performative aspect of space, reflecting their own linguistic trajectories through physical and metaphorical movement.

Researchers have illustrated that space produces perceptions and actions while being produced by them, though not necessarily with the notion of performativity. City and regional planning—e.g., redlining or the gap of investment between highways and public mass transit (Aalbers 2014; Soja 2010)—shapes our daily actions as well as our life chances, while also prompting us to challenge them. Individuals’ movement and dwelling in space also affect, if not guide, others’ actions and perceptions (de Certeau 1984; Egan 2021; Castañeda 2020). This volume adds a linguistic dimension to the notion of performativity of space.

Just as linguistic interactions are temporal and contextual (Voloshinov 1973), so is performativity of space. As will be explained, this performativity is shaped by temporal and contextual interactions not only between the dynamics of the space and interlocutors’ subject positions but also by the ideologies that are being activated. Ideologies are also brought in from the spatial politics of other spaces that interlocutors have inhabited, just like Doerr’s and McGuire’s respective assumptions about space in spoken and sign language mentioned in the preface were imported from their respective ethnographic, disciplinary, and institutional spaces into a new space of comparison. Chapters in this volume explore divergent perspectives and frameworks as they investigate the performative linguistic space that emerges as individuals move between spaces.

Accordingly, this volume examines the ways in which contrasting spatial politics brought in by individuals from other spaces illuminate the taken-for-granted as well as highlight alternative linguistic practices. It demonstrates that linguistic practices are shaped by the language politics “dragged” from various spaces participating individuals traverse. Interlocutors’ past and current mobility must be understood to comprehend their linguistic transactions in a specific space. For instance, as Doerr’s chapter illustrates, analyzing the way a Guatemalan American student spoke Spanish to a Spaniard in Spain can show the traces of language politics across different contours of performative linguistic spaces: (1) the legacy of Spanish colonialism in Guatemala that made Spanish its official language hence the student’s proficiency in it as people were forced to use Spanish, (2) US immigration politics that hinder Spanish speech in mainstream US spaces which, in turn, made speaking Spanish in the study abroad space comforting, and (3) the legacy of Spanish colonialism in Spain that devalued the colonial variant of Spanish in Guatemala, thus discouraging its use. Traces of the language politics from these spaces this Guatemalan American carried with her turned Spain into a performative linguistic space that demanded a specific kind of utterance or lack thereof. In this way, every individual becomes involved in the dynamic spacing process.

That is, performative linguistic space is not a static space but a point of convergence. In performative linguistic space, heterogeneous spatial politics carried over by interlocutors activate new dynamics of linguistic practices. Chapters in this volume investigate such movements between spaces, including colonial spaces, immigrant spaces, and study abroad spaces (Doerr), monolingualist space and “translanguaging” space (Đỗ and Poole), in-person and virtual zoom spaces of language learning (Kumagai), deaf signing and hearing oral communication spaces (McGuire), and uninitiated and experienced voluntourism spaces (Jakubiak). Rather than perceiving language as a bounded unit corresponding to a linguistic community and space, as formulated by the nation-state ideology, we focus on space and linguistic practices that emerge or are inhibited in that specific space in context.

The main contributions of this volume, as will be discussed further in this chapter, are threefold. First, through ethnographic data, we explore the concept of “performative linguistic space” in which space ushers, coaxes, hinders, or silences utterances or signs. Second, we show that the space is not performative on its own. Instead, it becomes performative as a result of the specific intersections of linguistic politics brought by individuals from the various spaces they have traversed. This is because individuals carry with them linguistic politics they experienced in other spaces. Third, by focusing on specific utterances and signs in space linked to individuals’ subject positions, we move away from assuming/reinscribing association of the linguistic community to the space, which allows us to avoid notions of stable and discernible units of language that would reinforce arbitrary scaling practices that assign more importance to a certain scale. This involves us in the discussion of the nation-state ideology as well as debates around “globalization” and scaling, which will be discussed later in the chapter.

In the following sections, we first provide an overview of the notion of place, space and spacing, before introducing this volume’s core concept, “performative linguistic space.” We then question the assumed connection between space and language constructed through the nation-state ideology and its (failed) subversion by ethnic movements and the globalist discussions, as well as the nation-state ideology’s relationship to academic discussions that backgrounds this research. Next, we offer a brief review of some of the existing research on space and language, before ending with an introduction to each chapter.

2 Place, space, and spacing

Contestation of definitions, Bourdieu (1989) argues, is nothing but a contestation of who gets to impose their vision (and division) of the world onto others. This volume primarily focuses on “space” and spacing rather than “place,” and authors use the term “space” variably and do not focus on space and place as a dichotomy. Nonetheless, to loosely position this volume in the ongoing “space” versus “place” debate with Bourdieu’s argument above in mind, we provide a very brief review of how researchers have used these notions variously, followed by the contributors’ usage. We then turn to the key concepts that underpin this volume: space and spacing.

“Space” and “place” are said to be constructs with roots in geography and have spurred extensive theorization in the social sciences and humanities (see summary in Low 2009). De Certeau (1984), for example, views place as meaningful with history, whereas space emerges through people’s actions. Place for him is “fragmentary and inward-turning histories … accumulated times that can be unfolded but like stories held in reserve, remaining in an enigmatic state, symbolizations” (1984: 108). Space, in contrast, is activated by pedestrians’ footsteps and intertwined paths which give shape to spaces by weaving places together. That is, “space is a practiced place … the street geometrically … is transformed into a space by walkers” (1984: 117). In discussing mobility as the dynamic equivalent of place, Cresswell (2006) summarizes “place” as meaningful segments of space. A place is “a center of meaning—we become attached to it, we fight over it and exclude people from it” (Cresswell 2006: 3). It is argued that spaces are not meaningless but have “their own grammar which can direct or limit mobility” and are “also actively produced by the act of moving” (Creswell and Merriman 2011: 15).

Some scholars, such as Low (2009) find it more fruitful and theoretically important to explore space and place as reproductions of human agency rather than “resolving the space/place dichotomy” (p. 23). Allowing the concepts to co-exist has also been advocated. For instance, Agnew (2005: 82) argues that “as conceptual twins, [space and place] offer more together than use of either does separately.”

In this volume, two of the five chapters explicitly address space versus place. For Đỗ and Poole, space and place (as well as landscape) are concepts that should be used as verbs rather than nouns. Kumagai draws upon scholarship to give an overview of the contested distinction between place and space, determining that the online classroom is an abstract, conceptual space and that only physical locations will be referred to as “places.” Keeping these diverging...