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Jan Blommaert (November 4, 1961, Dendermonde, Belgium) is Professor and Chair of the research program Language and Globalization at the Department of Culture Studies, and Director of Babylon, Center for the Study of the Multicultural Society at Tilburg University, The Netherlands. In this capacity he is the coordinator of an International Consortium on Language and Superdiversity (INCOLAS), attached to the Max Planck International Working Group on Sociolinguistic Diversity. He is also Professor of African linguistics and Sociolinguistics at Ghent University and holds honorary professorships in Beijing, China and Western Cape, South Africa. His professional engagements span almost three decades and are of vital importance to the fields of linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, African studies, literacy studies and, recently, the sociology of work.

Trajectory
Blommaert earned a PhD in African History and Philology (1989) from Ghent University, worked for a while with challenged youth in the non-profit sector, was Research Director at the International Pragmatics Association and in 1999 became Associate Professor at Ghent University, where he led the Department of African Languages and Cultures. In 2005 he became full professor and chair at the Institute of Education, University of London. From 2007 to 2010 he was Finland Distinguished Professor at the Department of Languages, University of Jyväskylä, during which he was appointed as Professor and Chair at the Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg University.

Academic work (mostly in English)
Blommaert’s main focus is the ethnographic study of inequality in society, and particularly how it relates to language usage. Under globalized conditions 'language' itself had to be redefined and Blommaert's work is fundamental here, in moving sociolinguistics towards a materialist semiotics: all signs, whether they consist of traditionally written forms of text, shop inscriptions or internet memes, produce meaning in multiple contexts and places. In focusing on the materiality and 'real-ness' of language, Blommaert joins other, notable American anthropologists such as Dell Hymes and Michael Silverstein in their critique of Chomsky, who in the early sixties advocated a more idealist view of language with his program of universal grammar. Blommaert emphasizes the unequal access to universally valuable linguistic resources such as standard English, and the social and political injustices as a result. These ideas are developed through a series of books, e.g. "Debating Diversity" (1998), "Language Ideological Debates"(1999) and "Discourse" (2005), but perhaps made most explicit in "Grassroots Literacies" (2008), in which the Eurocentric concept of writing and the literacy resources that are expected, exclude particular stories and voices from being taken up. In another article, "Language, asylum and the national order" (2009a), the lack of certain sociolinguistic resources is shown to have tremendous consequences in the case of a rejected asylum seeker. Not having the right resources means not to be heard. For this article, Blommaert won the Barbara Metzger prize for excellence in anthropological writing.

Since 2002, Blommaert moved towards a 'Sociolinguistics of Globalization' (2010), which was basically a new platform for thinking about language in society taking in mind the fact that 'old sociolinguistics' and its terminology could no longer address and do justice to new and unstable sociolinguistic realities, resulting from superdiversity. Blommaert, drawing on Vertovec (2007) described this superdiversity in terms of an increased mobility and an explosion of new technologies so that consequently, the idea of stability in social, cultural and linguistic formations can no longer be presupposed because of the disappearance of predictability (Blommaert & Rampton 2011). This superdiversity leads to issues of complexity, and Blommaert addressed these issues in 'Chronicles of complexity'(2012), in which he argues that seemingly 'chaotic' sociolinguistics environments, turn out to have a particular (but changing) order.

The key to Blommaert's work is 'ethnography', including issues on methodology (see e.g. "Ethnographic Fieldwork: An introduction", 2010) and empirical practice (see e.g. "State Ideology and Language in Tanzania", 1999, which partly reports on his fieldwork there). Ethnography is however not reduced to those elements, but rather sketched as a paradigm, a robust theoretical and methodological framework through which the world is observed. To achieve such a wide view, Blommaert argues for a historical and patterned understanding of real language usage in society. To build the historical component, he frequently draws on Bourdieu's oeuvre, arguing that precisely because of its eclectic methodological approach (ranging from observations to long-term surveys etc.) it is ethnographic; on Braudel, rethinking his concept of 'longue duree' for considering sociolinguistic complexity, and Wallerstein's views on the compression of time and space in World Systems Analysis. To build the patterned component, Blommaert largely draws on Dell Hymes' concept of ethnopoetics, a methodological instrument to analyze narratives in patterned ways. As for Hymes, Blommaert recognizes unfamiliar patterns to have a relevant and particular structure to the speaker, but finds that they are mis-recognized in e.g. bureaucratic encounters, in situations where "systems of meaning-making meet" (Blommaert 2006). But whereas Hymes largely focused on print data and the reanalysis of others' data, Blommaert refined the methodology by using first-hand, real-life data from Belgian asylum seekers ( see Maryns & Blommaert and Blommaert 2006) and subsequently developed an 'applied ethnopoetics'. In 2009, Blommaert edited a special issue of 'Text and Talk' (2009b) which reconsiders the Hymesian legacy in this respect.

Selected Publications
Debating Diversity: Analyzing the Discourse of Tolerance, 1998, London: Routledge.

Language Ideological Debates (ed.), 1999, Berlin/Boston: Mouton De Gruyter.

State Ideology and Language in Tanzania, 1999, Rudiger Koeppe Verlag.

Workshopping: Professional Vision, Practices and Critique in Discourse Analysis, 2004, Ghent: Academia Press.

Discourse: A Critical Introduction, 2005, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Grassroots Literacies: Writing, Identity and Voice in Central Africa, 2008, London: Routledge.

A Sociolinguistics of Globalization, 2010, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ethnographic Fieldwork: A Beginner's Guide (together with Dong Jie), 2010, Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Language and Superdiversity (with Ben Rampton and Massimiliano Spotti), 2011, Special Issue of Diversities.

Chronicles of Complexity, 2012, Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies 29.

Work in Dutch
Blommaert has also written extensively in Dutch, and in many ways there is a thematic continuity with the work in English, empirically addressing broader social and political issues in Belgian and Dutch society: nationalism, populism and democracy, asylum politics, issues in language and education, and essays on the sociology of work under neoliberalism. Blommaert's oeuvre in Dutch has also contributed to the debate on the status of the Left of the political spectrum.

Selected Publications
(All published with EPO Publishers, Berchem)

Nationalisme: Kritische opstellen (with Raymond Detrez [eds.]), 1994 (“Nationalism: Critical essays”)

Van blok tot bouwsteen (with Albert Martens), 1999 (“From block to building stone”)

Ik stel vast, 2001 (“I note”)

Het Belgische asielbeleid: Kritische Perspectieven (with Ronald Commers), 2001 (“The Belgian asylum politics”)

Populisme (with Eric Corijn, Dieter Lesage & Marc Holthof), 2004 (“Populism”)

De crisis van de democratie, 2007 (“The crisis of democracy”)

Taal, onderwijs en de samenleving (with Piet Van Avermaet), 2008 (“Language, education and society”) Socialisme voor [her]beginners, 2010 (“Socialism for (re)starters”)

De heruitvinding van de samenleving, 2011 (“The reinvention of society”)

De 360 graden werknemer (with Paul Mutsaers & Hans Siebers), 2012 (“The 360 degrees employee”)

Other activities
Blommaert is also a frequent blogger on the independent media website De Wereld Morgen ("The World Tomorrow", the former Indymedia), contributes regularly as an opinion maker to the public debate in newspaper and magazine columns and is a prominent public speaker in civic society where his audience consists of unions, students, social workers etc. Finally, Blommaert also teaches several courses at Tilburg University.

Links
Profile page Tilburg University Max Planck working group on Sociolinguistic Diversity website Academia Webpage Blog (in Dutch)