Paper short abstract:

In this paper we argue that participatory sociolinguistics is possible, when participants seek to relate their own language ideologies to each other through common acts of translocal participatory practices, based on mutual involvement and engagement.

Paper long abstract:

The participatory approach is not only becoming more widespread in the social sciences, but is also starting to take hold in sociolinguistics. However, there has been hardly any research on how, if at all, critical sociolinguistics can be linked to research based on the involvement and engagement of as many stakeholders as possible. In this paper we argue that such a link is possible, when differences between local and non-local linguistic ideologies become the focus of research, and participants seek to relate their own ideologies to each other through common acts of translocal participatory practices. We illustrate this with two case studies from our own research project, which attempted to understand the contemporary language practices of potential stakeholders in a language revitalisation programme. We point out that the participants' common ideological work and situated knowledges (Haraway 1988) may lead to results which depend on the participants' own positionalities, be these practices of sociolinguistic belonging and nostalgia (Bucholtz 2003) or those of relational multilingualism.