Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2023, Side 170

Since English plays such an important role in Móa’s life, the display of mul-
tilingual skills emphasizes Móa’s “glocal” self-image, which is characterized
by Icelandic as the local code as well as the global language of English. (p.
137; emphasis added, ACS)
While she uses Icelandic as the base language of her posts that convey the
relevant information. (p. 121; emphasis added, ACS)
English constitutes the base language of this comment. By drawing on
English, C1 mirrors Móa’s code choices made in the caption. (p. 123; empha-
sis added, ACS). (“Base language” is used 21 times throughout the disserta-
tion.)

Based on these quotes, I ask the following questions for clarification:
How do you understand “language”, “base language” and “code (choice)” in
quotes like these and how do these terms fit in with your overall “feature
approach” to social interaction?
And who is categorizing Icelandic and English as a “base language” — is it the
researcher or the participants?

Vanessa Isenmann:
In my research I used the framework of polylanguaging because it allowed
me to start from people’s language ideologies and perceptions. Although the
notion of polylanguaging argues for an approach to language use that goes
beyond separate languages it does not abandon the idea of different lan-
guages entirely, especially because it is important to the speakers them-
selves. As linguists that describe people’s everyday linguistic practices, we
need terminology to describe these practices. Therefore, when I speak about
base language, I refer to the morpho-syntactic structure that my informants
draw upon in their contributions. This morpho-syntactic structure is itself
a feature associated with a certain language or linguistic code. In other
words, I refer to a specific base language, whenever the users employ the
morpho-syntactic structure that can be ascribed to said language, for in stance
Icelandic.

I also want to inquire into the use of the term independent features, which you
define in the following way: “The code marks features that cannot be ascribed
to any given language and includes features such as emoticons and emojis, ver-
balized laughter, and interjections” (p. 104; emphasis added, ACS). I am slightly
troubled by two aspects regarding this terminology. Firstly, this term does not
sufficiently describe the (communicative) functions of the features included in
this category and secondly, it emphasizes “languages” as the point of departure,
Andreas Candefors Stæhr170