Resumen de Language awareness and agency in the availability of linguistic resources: A case study of refugees and locals in Austria
This paper discusses the relationship between language awareness and agency by means of a follow-up analysis of language diary based interviews with refugees and locals in Vienna collected in 2016. Based on the previous insights gained about the availablity of linguistic resources, the study puts forward arguments for relating the question of speakers’ agency to the availability of linguistic resources and the participants’ language awareness. Following the Mediated Discourse Analysis approach and theoretical re-conceptualizations of ‘language’ and its use, the study emphasizes the need for a re-evaluation of the speakers’ role in the construction of language and agency in sociolinguistic research. In a concise discussion of data-excerpts the study illustrates how language awareness may be related to the participants’ agency with regard to language learning, strategies to engage ‘the other’ in making meaning, and the notion of L2 ‘proficiency’ measured against the idealized native-speaker. The results call for further investigations into how language awareness may influence language practices and how it could benefit communication in multilingual and multicultural settings and the safeguarding of linguistic rights.
