Language-use as spatial experience: migrants' non-fluent participation in stabilizations of linguistic practice

Abstract

The experiences of migrants arising from their non-fluent language-use have received little attention. Because languages are seen as discrete entities, both as grammatical systems and in terms of their spatial spread, there is little room to investigate experiences of space arising from the use of languages known only in part. In this paper I combine views of language as practice with geographical understandings of embodied experience of space to explore the experiences of non-fluent language use as immersion in the spatial process of language. Based on interviews with international students in Edinburgh, Scotland, I show that organizing linguistic space by practices and viewing migrants' communicative competence as integrating the diverse elements of these practices uncovers their experiences of non-fluent language-use. I end by considering how policy and scientific investigation can better match the spatial reality of stabilisations of practice.