Metrolingual multitasking and spatial repertoires: ‘Pizza mo two minutes coming’

Metrolingual multitasking and spatialrepertoires: ‘Pizza mo two minutes coming’1

Alastair Pennycook and Emi OtsujiUniversity of Technology, Sydney, Australia

Drawing on data from two restaurants in Sydney and Tokyo, this paperdescribes the ways in which linguistic resources, everyday tasks and socialspace are intertwined in terms of metrolingual multitasking. Rather thanthe demolinguistic enumeration of mappable multilingualism or thelanguage-to-language or language-to-person focus of translingualism,metrolingualism focuses on everyday language practices and theirrelations to urban space. In order to capture the dynamism of the urbanlinguistic landscape, this paper explores this relationship betweenmetrolingual multitasking – the ways in which linguistic resources,activities and urban space are bound together – and spatial repertoires –the linguistic resources available in a particular place – arguing that a focuson resources, repertoires, space, place and activity helps us understand howmultilingualism from below operates in complex urban places.

本稿は、言語資源、日常生活にまつわるタスク及び社会的空間が複雑に交錯する様子を、シドニーと東京のレストランで収集したデータを参照しながら、メトロリンガル・マルチタスキングの見地から論述する。メトロリンガリズムは、言語分布を地図に表示し言語を数量化するような多言語主義や、言葉同士もしくは言葉と人の関係のみに焦点をあてて言語使用を理解するトランスリンガリズムとは一線を画し、日常言語活動とその活動の都市との関係に注目する。本稿では、都市のダイナミックな言語景観をとらえるため、メトロリンガル・マルチタスキング(言語資源と活動と都市の結びつきの関わり方)と場のレパートリー(ある特定の場にある利用可能な言語資源)の関係を探る。このように、言語的資源、言語レパートリー、空間、場、そして活動に焦点を置くことにより、複合的な都市という場において、多言語使用が日常レベルでいかに機能しているかについて理解を深めることができると提唱する。[Japanese]

KEYWORDS: Metrolingualism, multilingualism, repertoire, space,resources, restaurants

1. INTRODUCTION: OUI CHEF. JE SUIS LA

The idea of metrolingual multitasking sheds light on two particular aspects ofcurrent language use: on the one hand, metrolingualism draws attention to

Journal of Sociolinguistics 18/2, 2014: 161–184

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

ways in which language operates in contemporary urban spaces (Otsuji andPennycook 2010; Pennycook and Otsuji forthcoming); on the other,multitasking refers to the ways in which such language use is frequentlycaught up in a fast-paced multiplicity of activities and cannot therefore bereduced to a functional account of language use in particular domains. Theidea of spatial repertoires refers to the linguistic resources at people’s disposalin a given place. Rather than focusing on either language-to-languagerelations (bilingualism, code-switching, multilingualism, translanguaging) orlanguage-to-person relations (competence, individual repertoires) therefore,these theoretical moves aim to explore local language practices in relation tospace and activity (Pennycook 2010).Metrolingual multitasking and spatial repertoires are terms used to grasp the

ways in which linguistic resources, everyday tasks and social space areintertwined. Our central focus, therefore, is not only on the diversity oflinguistic resources in ‘unusual’ combinations, but also on the dynamicrelations between semiotic resources, activities, artefacts, and space. In order toshow what we mean by metrolingual multitasking and spatial repertoires, webriefly discuss, below, a piece of data from a restaurant in Tokyo (the context ofwhich will be explained in greater detail later). The interactions in Petit Paris, aFrench bistro-style wine bar in Kagurazaka, an inner-city area of Tokyo,revolve around Nabil, the owner, and floor staff, with a Francophone chef (line1), Japanese customers (lines 2–5), another member of the floor staff of Frenchbackground (line 6), the dishes in his hands (Chefterrine, Hotate no carpaccio),the need for bread at one table, and the closely positioned tables and chairs (seethe Appendix for transcription conventions):

Excerpt 1 (Na = Nabil; C = Customer; SMALL CAPS = French; italics = Japanese;ITALIC SMALL CAPS = Italian; plain text = English; translation in quotes)2

1. Na: OUI CHEF. JE SUIS L�A ! (‘Yes, chef, I’m coming’)[a few exchanges in French between Nabil and chef about thefood order]

2. Na: Are ? (‘What ?’) Sorry sorry sorry sorry.3. Na: Sorry CHEFTERRINE. Sorry gomen nasai (.) to Hotate no CARPACCIO.

(‘Sorry excuse me (.) and scallop carpaccio’)4. C: a::: Sugoi ! (‘wo :::w Great !’)5. Na: VOIL�A. Suimasen. VOIL�A. BON APP�ETIT ! (‘Here it is. Excuse me. Here.

Have a nice dinner!’)6. Na: PAIN (‘bread’). two people and two people onegaishimasu (‘please’).

ENCORE UNE ASSIETTE. DE PAIN. (‘One more plate. Bread’)

Within a short period of time (about 30 seconds), Nabil moves around thesmall restaurant floor, negotiating with the chef about the dish, passingbetween tables and managing customers (sorry, gomen nasai), serving food tocustomers (hotate no CARPACCIO ‘scallop carpaccio’)3 while also using the

162 PENNYCOOK AND OTSUJI


linguistic and culinary capital of French with customers (‘VOIL�A, BON APP�ETIT’),before passing on orders for bread (‘PAIN’) and another plate (‘ENCORE UNE

ASSIETTE’), either side of a direction to another (French-speaking) member of thefloor staff to attend to two new customers who have just arrived (‘two people,and two people onegaishimasu’).As he moves between tables, takes orders, delivers meals, directs staff, and

manages the restaurant more generally, Nabil is engaged in a range ofmultimodal semiotic practices. While Nabil is manipulating his linguisticresources in a more or less appropriate and suitable fashion for the tasks athand – this is neither random nor discretely functional – these local linguisticpractices cannot be fully accounted for without consideration of the broaderpicture of how and why particular resources are available in this place, at thistime, in relation to these objects. Of importance here, then, are theinterrelationships between restaurant multitasking, linguistic resources, andthe intricate patterning of movement, activity, and semiotic supplies.Our interest is in the ways in which linguistic and non-linguistic resources

are deployed in this busy (though not large) urban restaurant and how this, inturn, is related to an understanding of space. At any point in the flow of suchactivity, several different factors have to be understood together: there is Nabilwith his own personal trajectory and linguistic repertoire (to which we shallreturn later); particular customers and staff (though by no means an easilypredictable pattern of language use according to their background); thematerial artefacts and activities involved (the bringing of scallops and bread,and request for another plate); the movement through the crowded restaurant(the layout of the restaurant and the small gaps between the tables); and thesocial and cultural framing of Kagurazaka, where all this occurs.

2. METROLINGUALISM, REPERTOIRES AND ACTIVITIES

We draw first of all on an understanding of metrolingualism, a term originallydeveloped by extending the notion of metroethnicity (Maher 2005, 2010) torefer to ‘creative linguistic conditions across space and borders of culture,history and politics, as a way to move beyond current terms such asmultilingualism and multiculturalism’ (Otsuji and Pennycook 2010: 244).From this earlier understanding which focused on ‘the ways in which people ofdifferent and mixed backgrounds use, play with and negotiate identitiesthrough language’ and ‘on languages as emergent from contexts ofinteraction’ rather than languages as systems (2010: 246), our research hasreoriented the term away from a focus on playful or willful creativity towardsan understanding of everyday language use in the city in order to understandand capture the broader dynamism of urban linguistic practices. Thisrefocusing of metrolingualism requires an understanding of the relationsbetween language and space – hence spatial repertoires – and language andactivity – hence metrolingual multitasking.

METROLINGUAL MULTITASKING 163


Like other recent thinking that has sought to challenge the language ofbilingualism, code-mixing and code-switching, and instead has focused on themobility of linguistic resources (Blommaert 2010), translanguaging (Garc�ıa2009; Blackledge and Creese 2010; Li Wei 2011), transglossia (Garc�ıa 2014;Sultana, Dovchin and Pennycook 2014) or polylingual languaging (Jørgensen2008; Møller 2008), we have aimed to open up a way of thinking aboutmultilingualism centred around the everyday use of mobile linguistic resourcesin relation to urban space (McQuire 2008). Metrolingualism takes up thechallenge of understanding everyday local multilingualism not through thedemolinguistic enumeration of mappable multilingualism (see Extra andYa�gmur 2011, for example) or normative desires for linguistic equality (Webb2010), but rather through the study of local language practices,multilingualism from below.By analogy with globalization from below (Mathews and Vega 2012; and cf.

Blommaert 2008), and multiculturalism from below – with their focus on ‘theeveryday practice and lived experience of diversity in specific situations andspaces of encounter’ (Wise and Velayutham 2009: 3) – the emphasis is oneveryday practices, the small-scale local encounters of ‘intercultural “rubbingalong” in the public spaces of the city’ (Watson 2009: 126). While by nomeans unique in its focus on everyday multilingualism – broadly speaking, thiscan be seen as the focus of many recent studies by Blackledge and Creese(2010), Blommaert (2008, 2010), Garc�ıa (2014) and others –metrolingualism focuses on everyday multilingualism in relation to localprocesses of globalization – everyday practices and lived experience of diversityin specific locations – while emphasizing the interrelationships betweenlanguage and urban space.The relation between language and space is central to the idea of

metrolingualism. As Mac Giolla Chr�ıost (2007: 147) puts it, ‘Language isfundamental to the appropriation of space and the significance of place in theurban context and this fact has far-reaching implications for both the city andlanguage’. While metrolingualism shares some common ground withtranslanguaging and polylanguaging approaches in its attempt to getoutside the framing of languages as separate enumerable entities, and itsfocus on ‘languaging’ as activity, metrolingualism focuses centrally on therelation between urban space (metro) and language practices. Rather thanmaking the plurality of linguistic features (poly) or the movement betweenlanguages (trans) central to the analysis, metrolingualism links these linguisticinsights to the relation with space.Spatial theory has emerged from critical and cultural geography to address

the idea of space as a category alongside the social and historical (Massey1994; Soja 1996). Thrift’s (2007) associational understanding of space, whichdraws attention to the interrelated roles of space, social practices, and objectsin motion, urges us to consider mobility as central to any approach to space.Heller and Duchene (2011: 14) note that in recent years ‘sociolinguistics has



recognized that its traditional attention to fixed places and moments’ can nolonger provide the tools to address questions of language and mobility.Blommaert similarly calls for an understanding of ‘the dislocation of languageand language events from the fixed position in time and space attributed tothem by a more traditional linguistics and sociolinguistics’ (Blommaert 2010:21). This applies both to the linguistic resources that move in and out of placesand to the movement of resources within such places. As will be discussedlater, this paper sheds light on these two facets of mobility in relation to spatialrepertoires through two different research approaches.Scollon and Scollon’s (2003: 12) geosemiotics – ‘an integrative view of these

multiple semiotic systems which together form the meanings which we callplace’ – points to the importance for sociolinguistic research of place: ‘thehuman or lived experience or sense of presence in a space’ (2003: 214). Yet,while usefully taking us beyond the modernist social scientific assumption thatplace is ‘a location on a surface where things “just happen” rather than themore holistic view of places as the geographical context for the mediation ofphysical, social and economic processes’ (Agnew 2011: 317), Scollon andScollon reinvigorate place as a social category at the expense of space as ‘theobjective, physical dimensions and characteristics of a portion of the earth orbuilt environment’ (2003: 216).To avoid the two pitfalls here of a phenomenological approach to place (our

sense of place) in relation to an objectively given space – space is given, place isinterpreted – we argue on the one hand for a dynamic and socialunderstanding of place as ‘articulated moments in networks of socialrelations and understandings’ (Massey 1991: 28) that are constructed ‘outof a particular constellation of social relations, meeting and weaving togetherat a particular locus’ (1991: 28); and on the other hand for an understandingof spaces as ‘social productions’, as ‘constituted by social life in such a way that“mental space” and “material space” are brought together’ (Livingstone 2007:72). Practices do not just happen in spatial and temporal contexts but arerather bound up with space and time (Schatzki 2010).Livingstone’s interest in ‘spaces of speech’ (2007: 75) is itself located within

a framework, following Lefebvre (1991) and others, that assumes both spaceand place to be social categories. Places are not therefore mere instantiations ofspace but rather relational sites of action and interaction, sites of ‘location andlocution’ (Livingstone 2007: 75). Social spaces, Livingstone goes on, ‘areshaped by speech – by what can and cannot be said in particular venues, byhow things are said, and by the way they are heard’ (2007: 75). Place, bycontrast, has to do with the specificities of space: places are where (location)language practices (locution) occur as people bring their own trajectories intorelation with the people and objects around them, which brings us to the ideaof spatial repertoires as the resources available in particular places.The need to relate recent thinking about language use to concepts of space

has been taken up in Li Wei’s version of ‘translanguaging space’, which he



understands as ‘a space for the act of translanguaging as well as a spacecreated through translanguaging’ (2011: 1223). For Li Wei, translanguaging‘creates a social space for the multilingual language user’, as different aspectsof their personal history are brought together in their multilingualperformances. Like related discussions of linguistic repertoires as the ‘socialand cultural itineraries followed by people’ (Blommaert and Backus 2013: 28),however, the focus here remains centrally on the relation between individualsand resources, on the ‘resources individuals use to create their own space’(Li Wei 2011: 1223) or how ‘different resources enter into our subject’srepertoire’ (Blommaert and Backus 2013: 26).As Benor (2010: 161) notes, ‘recent work on sociolinguistic style sees

individuals as making use of a repertoire of sociolinguistic resources.’ In usingconcepts such as ‘translanguaging’, ‘style’ or ‘repertoire’, therefore, there is adanger that the individual becomes the sole locus of the repertoire. Sincecommunity, under conditions of superdiversity no longer operates as a usefulcategory, Blommaert and Backus (2013) argue, the idea of repertoire is moreusefully oriented towards the linguistic trajectory of the subject. Even thoughthese accounts of the development of linguistic repertoires may involve bodily(leiblich), emotional, and historico-political dimensions of life trajectories(Busch 2013), the social nature of the idea of repertoire that was originallypart of Gumperz’s (1964: 137) understanding of repertoire as ‘the totality oflinguistic forms regularly employed in the course of socially significantinteraction’ may get lost.Drawing on the insights of Blommaert and Backus (2013), Benor (2010),

Busch (2013) and Li Wei (2011) on repertoires and translanguaging space,and being likewise wary of notions such as ‘community’, we have expandedthe notion of repertoire in relation to the more extensive dynamics betweenlanguage and urban space that metrolingualism requires. Hence, the notion ofspatial repertoires, which links the repertoires formed through individual lifetrajectories to the available linguistic resources in particular places. FollowingThrift’s (2007) non-representational theory, which he glosses as ‘the geography ofwhat happens’ (2007: 2), we are interested here in what we might call ageography of linguistic happenings, the social space of language practices.Whereas Platt and Platt (1975: 36) sought to resolve the individual/social

relation by distinguishing between speech repertoire (‘the repertoire of linguisticvarieties utilized by a speech community’) and verbal repertoire (‘the linguisticvarieties which are at a particular speaker’s disposal’), we suggest a morefruitful way forward can be understood in the relation between repertoires as aresult of life trajectories, and repertoires as the set of resources at people’sdisposal in a particular place. Spatial repertoires are the available andsedimented resources that derive from the repeated language practices of thepeople involved in the sets of activities related to particular places. When wetalk of spatial repertoires, therefore, we refer on the one hand to a generalnotion of the relations between semiotic resources and social spaces, and on



the other to the specific repertoires of particular places.4 They do not, therefore,necessarily include all and every instance of language use in a place but ratherfocus on the repeated and regularized language practices of that place.The notion of spatial repertoires differs, on the one hand, from individual

repertoires by dint of its focus on the available resources in a place rather thanin an individual. It differs, on the other hand, from common sociolinguisticterms dealing broadly with context or situation of language use (Hymes 1974)such as domain (Fishman 1972) along several dimensions. Domains havegenerally been considered in terms of language functions and the attendantlanguage linked to each function (one language serving certain purposes inone domain and a different language serving different purposes in another;Mesthrie 2014). As Haberland (2005: 234) explains, however, it is ‘difficult toapply the domain concept to those situations where extensive code-switching ispart of the linguistic repertoire of the interlocutors’. Clearly, the context withwhich we are dealing here is not one in which one language serves a particularfunction but rather one in which a range of resources are deployed. Diglossic ortriglossic models of language use ‘in which each language had its functionalniche’ (Kropp Dakubu 2009: 22) cannot account for the dynamics ofmultilingual urban interaction (Garc�ıa 2014).Finally, we need to bring to this picture an understanding of the relations

between language, space, objects and activities. Significant here are anunderstanding of the role of ‘objects’ in human activity, the related sense ofdistributed and provisional personhood (hence, in part, our concern about theindividualization of linguistic repertoires) provided by actor-network theory(Latour 2005),5 and an understanding of language practices as part of thissocial world. Drawing therefore on a linguistics of communicative activity, whichinsists that everyday life ‘is mediated by, and constrained by, symbolic andmaterial artefacts that carry with them historically sedimented patterns ofusage’ (Thorne and Lantolf 2007: 188), we are attempting to grasp the waysin which individual and spatial repertoires, as well as artefacts and objects,form part of the communicative activity of particular places. We are seeking toincorporate into this view of language an appreciation of the roles of both themateriality of language and the significance of material objects.We cannot usefully consider space without also looking at the activities that

not only occur in particular places but also constitute such places. From ourpoint of view, then, we need to understand the relations between linguistictrajectories, current activities and spatial organization in order to accountmore fully for the language practices described in the first section. Spatial andindividual repertoires6 are of course deeply bound up with each other: peoplebring linguistic resources into particular places and those places providelinguistic resources that can be taken up. Neither is reducible to the other sincespatial resources include the different language practices and resourcesavailable in a place (which may also include written text) while individualrepertoires include much that may not be used in particular places.



Similar in some ways, therefore, to Gumperz’s (1964: 137) ‘totality oflinguistic forms regularly employed in the course of socially significantinteraction’, yet following Pratt’s (1987) focus on a linguistics of contactrather than a linguistics of community, we employ spatial theory tounderstand the linguistics of place. The repertoires of Petit Paris areorganizations of the totality of linguistic resources (including menus, thename of the restaurant, labels on wine bottles, and so on) that construct andare emergent from the interactions in this place. In the rest of this paper, weshall explore these ideas in greater depth through further discussion of datafrom Petit Paris, as well as data drawn from Patris pizzeria in Sydney, Australia.

3. ANALYZING PRACTICES IN PLACE

The data for this paper are part of a much larger project conducted over severalyears looking at local language practices as people get by metrolinguistically,shaping and remaking the linguistic landscapes of restaurants, caf�es, kitchens,market places, construction sites, shops and small businesses.7 The goal of thisproject is to shed light on the ways in which multilingualism from below is partof the urban environment. This work is aligned with linguistic ethnography(Rampton 2007; Creese and Blackledge 2011), which draws on the insights oflinguistic anthropology but starts above all with language as its focus, arguingthat to understand the local language practices of participants we need bothethnography and close linguistic analysis.Data used in this paper are drawn from over 30 hours of recorded and

transcribed data (a small portion of a far more extensive data set) includingrecordings of interactions, as well as interviews with staff and ethnographicfield notes, focusing on several restaurants in Sydney and Tokyo. A primaryfocus of much research in sociolinguistics and pragmatics, Li Wei (2011:1224) argues, has been on ‘describing structured patterns of variation andchange or general maxims guiding linguistic actions’. Such apparent patterns,however, are ‘long-term outcomes of original, momentary actions’ that‘become patterns by being recognised, adopted and repeated by the otherindividuals’.Following Li Wei’s (2011: 1224) ‘Moment Analysis’ which shifts the focus

‘away from frequency and regularity oriented, pattern-seeking approaches to afocus on spontaneous, impromptu, and momentary actions and performancesof the individual’, our focus is not so much on establishing patterns of linguisticuse (nor, as suggested above, so much on the individual) but on understandingpractices in place, those sedimented or momentary language practices inparticular places at particular times. This by no means suggests that suchpractices are random or indiscriminate, but rather that to focus onsystematicity may equally obscure the dynamics of interaction.Two different approaches to recording such practices were used in this

project (where possible, both were used): on the one hand, we followed certain



people as they moved through particular places (as with Nabil in the exampleabove); on the other hand, we recorded from a fixed point in a particular placeand thus observed the effects of different people moving into that space (as inthe kitchen described below). Our ethnographic observations suggested thatwhile there was often considerable movement into and out of the kitchen(depending on restaurant layouts), there was little movement within kitchens(recordings of cooks in both contexts were similar to recording from a fixedlocation). To best capture these two types of mobility, therefore, we have usedin this paper data from a fixed point in a kitchen and data from a movingperson in a restaurant.As place is ‘a particular constellation of social relations, meeting and

weaving together at a particular locus’ (Massey 1991: 28), this paper isconcerned with understanding the ways in which people moving throughplaces, as well as places as gatherings of people, produce spatial repertoires.Our analysis of practices in place, therefore, focuses first on the linguisticresources people ascribe to themselves and others (from interview and otherdata), and then on a series of interactions in the kitchen of a pizza restaurant inSydney, the recorded data picking up on the movements in and out of thisplace. We will then return to Petit Paris, and look again at Nabil’s movementthrough this bistro as he serves customers and manages the restaurant, inorder to see how this spatial repertoire is realised.

4. DISPUTED RESOURCES

The inner-city Sydney pizzeria, Patris,8 owned by a second generation Greekmigrant, reverberates with a wide range of languages, the interesting absenceperhaps being Italian. Unlike Petit Paris, where the ‘reproduction’ of a ParisBistro is Nabil’s management philosophy (discussed further later) and wherethere is also a ‘branding’ effect (with the symbolic capital of French playing animportant role) on the restaurant floor (which may be very different from thekitchen), Patris carries its Greek name – both a common Greek name and thename of one of the ships that brought Greek migrants to Australia – as adifferent sort of badge of mobility. Patris is located in a relatively affluentresidential suburb with cafes, restaurants, boutiques, galleries and bars. It issituated close to the intersection of several streets, with a Japanese restaurantand an old Victorian (late-19th century) pub across the street, and anupmarket chain grocery shop next door.While the district is Anglo-Australian dominant, Patris is ethnically,

linguistically and culturally diverse, members of staff being variouslyidentified as Polish (Krzysztof, Aleksy and Tomek), Greek (Dexter andSimon), Nepalese (Nischal), Indian (Jaidev), French (Jean), Thai (Betty) andAnglo-Australian (Mark), the majority of whom are either migrants or onworking or student visas. Such identifications, of course, have to be usedcautiously, since these workers are generally only at one stage of far more



complex cultural and linguistic trajectories. Betty, who is in her forties andmigrated to Australia at the age of thirteen, for example, explained how sheuses Teochow to her mother (of Chinese background), Thai to her sister andfriends (they grew up in Thailand), English at various work places and withother friends, and also speaks Lao (her nanny in Thailand was from Laos) andVietnamese (which she picked up at school after moving to Australia).Betty’s linguistic repertoire at this point of her life trajectory thus very

obviously complicates an easy identification as ‘Thai’. The question we areinterested in here, however, is the relation between these individualrepertoires, i.e., the totality of linguistic resources sedimented in theindividual, and the repertoires of the restaurant, i.e, the totality of linguisticresources available and potentially mobilized in the restaurant. The Nepalesecook, Nischal, who speaks Nepalese, Bangla and ‘a bit of Gujarati, Punjabi . . .definitely a lot of Indian’ as well as English, explains some of his more recentlinguistic repertoire from interacting with waitresses: ‘Actually I can speak abit of Czech and Slovak also. Because of the work mostly, words . . .’. So what,we asked, was the language used mainly in the kitchen, English?

Excerpt 2 (N = Nischal; R = Researcher)

1. N: Polish.2. R: Polish?3. N: Polish. Not much English going on in here.4. R: Really? OK. That’s not what the brothers said! The brothers

said you all spoke English!5. N: Well maybe that brother [points to Aleksy] said because

he has Colombian girlfriend who doesn’t speak Polish.6. R: Right right right. So you reckon it’s mostly (.) When you’re in

the kitchen it’s mostly Polish?7. N: Polish.

This exchange was revealing since it countered the view expressed earlier bythe other two cooks, Polish brothers Aleksy and Krzysztof, who said they usedmainly English unless talking to each other. When we questioned Nischalfurther on whether he used Polish, he replied ‘A little bit. But I don’t need tospeak; I just work. They’re the ones speaking.’ An obvious but by no meanstrivial point, then, is that in environments such as this, work may be fairlyminimally dependent on language. The kitchen is a place of activity and sharedexpertise, where there may be limited need for verbal communication. Moreimportantly, Nischal’s suggestion both that Polish is the language of thekitchen and that it’s the others who do most of the speaking points to the waythat Polish is part of the spatial repertoire of this kitchen, which includes notonly Polish and English, but also the intermittent use of other languagesincluding names of ingredients, food and artefacts such as formaggio andmoussaka as well as the use of non-linguistic resources and shared cooking



practices.9 Our own data recorded in the kitchen confirmed this pattern, with agreat deal of cooking and other activity interspersed with comments, swearing,singing and joking in either Polish, English or Hindi (to which we shall return).As Nischal continued to describe his own linguistic repertoire, it turned out

that his knowledge of Polish predated his work with the brothers in thisparticular kitchen: ‘I had Polish friends before them as well’. Asked how goodNischal’s Polish was, another Polish worker present in the restaurant told us,‘It’s very good. For first study it’s very good’. In response to questions abouthow good his Polish was, Nischal himself concurred with the others (aftersome debate over percentages) that he understood 25 percent of what wassaid: ‘OK, 25. If he says 25, it’s 25, because he would know better than me. It’shis language, so. . . Yeah, but I speak only, like, 3–5 percent’. While thereadiness of these workers to discuss and negotiate their language use in suchpercentage terms is in itself intriguing (as part of popular discourse or locallanguage ideologies), such comments of course do little to capture the nature ofactual linguistic interactions.As we try to get a handle on the repertoires of this restaurant, several

complexities thus become apparent. When people talk about the languagesthey use, what percentages of languages they speak, or what they speak withwhom, there may be a great diversity of meanings to these terms. This is not tosuggest that they are unreliable linguistic informants so much as toacknowledge that these accounts of individual repertoires are a product notonly of diverse life trajectories but also of particular perspectives on language.We need to be able to accommodate a view that both Nischal’s contention thatPolish is the language of the kitchen and Aleksy and Krzysztof’s that it isEnglish may be right. Not only is it the case that people in busy metrolingualworkplaces (where only limited amounts of language use may be required)may find it unimportant in what language interactions occur, but it may alsobe true that the spatial repertoire of any particular place will always lookdifferent according to whom you ask. But at least as important as theseperceived repertoires are the ways in which these language resources aredeployed: it is not so much about ‘which’ language but ‘getting things done’with language that matters here. Languaging, i.e., the behaviour that‘language users employ whatever linguistic features are at their disposalwith the intention of achieving their communicative aim’ (Jørgensen 2008:69), supersedes the recognition (or particularity) of languages.This also points to the fact that languages are only one part of a

multimodal, multitasking environment, and may have more or less relevanceat many particular points in the action. Restaurant staff are also often locatedtemporarily in such places as part of a much wider trajectory. So while itmay be useful to try to capture these individual linguistic repertoires at aparticular point in time, we also have to appreciate that neither people norplaces are containers of linguistic resources, but rather are part of a constantpush and pull of interactively achieved repertoires. Spatial repertoires are



thus subject to the activities of particular places, the linguistic resources inthe place (such as labels, common terms for food), and the repeated andregularised language practices that emerge from individual resources andshared practices.

5. SPATIAL REPERTOIRES OF THE KITCHEN

In order to capture the sense of flow, movement and multitasking that are partof this spatial repertoire, we placed a recorder on a kitchen shelf near the doorof the kitchen, enabling us to capture the traffic of people, food and language inand out of the kitchen as well as the ways in which multimodal semioticrepertoires form the space around the kitchen. On the day from which this datais drawn, a new French cook is making pizza dough next to the entrance.Behind him is a cashier and gelato counter. Opposite the gelato counter andnext to the door to the enclosed kitchen, is a pizza oven, the territory ofKrzysztof, who is in charge of baking, cutting and serving pizza. Jaidev andBetty are busy attending to customers while Dexter and his Greek friend,Simon, who is also helping out as floor staff, are casually chatting in the bararea in Greek. Nischal and Aleksy are in the kitchen.The kitchen is where both social and professional activities are mixed

together. This brief exchange happens near the kitchen door when Jaidevapproaches Nischal:

Excerpt 3 (J = Jaidev; N = Nischal; italics = Hindi; plain text = English;translations in quotes)

[The conversation refers to cigarettes]1. J: Acha ye last pada hua hai? (‘OK this is the last one?’)2. N: It’s alright (.) it’s all yours.3. J: Haa? Hey tere pas dusara? (‘You sure? You got any more?’)4. N: I’ll buy.

In Excerpt 3, Jaidev’s questions in Hindi (incorporating the word ‘last’)receive responses from Nischal in English, which is neither uncommon forconversations amongst multilingual speakers nor problematic in achievingcommunicative and practical needs. Jaidev’s use of informal register for ‘Haa?Hey tere pas dusara?’ (‘You got any more?’) in line 3 suggests not only a casualrelation between them but also that Jaidev assumes Nischal is capable ofunderstanding or engaging in informal colloquial conversation in Hindi. WhileNischal’s English responses here confirm both his knowledge of Indianlanguages (Hindi and Nepalese are in any case close) and the possibility thatthis capacity may be more receptive than productive, a later conversationabout Indian festivals does occur almost entirely in Hindi. Here, then, at thisintersection between the restaurant floor and the kitchen, the spatial repertoireof the kitchen has come to include certain resources from Hindi.



A few seconds later, Aleksy calls out to Krzysztof in Polish and then startstalking to himself in a sing-song voice while he works.

Excerpt 4 (A = Aleksy; italics = Polish; English translation in quotes)

1. A: Pozniej? Rece tak? (‘Later? Hands this?’) [Aleksy is calling out toKrzysztof, who is inaudible]

2. A: Ich kurwa ma�c. Trzeba raz da�c. (‘Fuck them. Gotta do it again’)[Here Aleksy is talking to himself in a sing-song voice]

This kind of interaction – here Polish slang (another aspect of multilingualismfrom below is the use of such language), words called out that only make sensewhen accompanied by actions, singing and talking to oneself while working –is relatively common in such workplaces. This provides another role for Polishresources while getting things done: self-directed talk as well as singing arepart of this spatial repertoire. For the next 15 minutes (apart from some faintverbal interactions further away) there is only the noisy silence of the kitchen:the sounds of kitchen utensils, chopping ingredients, food frying, taps running,footsteps. This is followed by a sixteen minute period with a variety ofinteractions:

1. (00:00–01:52) Aleksy orders bulk items from the grocery supplier overthe phone, assisted by Nischal.

2. (06:24–06:30) Nischal starts singing Beyonc�e’s ‘Single Ladies’ afterBetty in the background calls out ‘I’m single’.

3. (10:35–11:48) Aleksy receives a phone call from his Colombiangirlfriend and leaves the kitchen. Betty still speaking in the background.

4. (11:56–12:12) Aleksy returns and starts a conversation in Polish withKrzysztof about garlic for cooking.

5. (16:18–16:33) Nischal teases Aleksy about his Spanish and thendiscusses the lamb dish he is preparing.

Although this list suggests a fairly ordered sequence, interactions and activitiesoverlap: from continuing cooking activities (Nischal is experimenting with alamb dish, which he discusses with Aleksy in the final series of exchanges,which follows on from a previous interaction in Polish between Aleksy andKrzysztof about garlic) to the phone calls going out (Aleksy ordering food overthe phone) and coming in (his girlfriend), as well as Betty’s voice from outsidetriggering Nischal’s singing Beyonc�e’s ‘Single Ladies’, the kitchen is a place of‘articulated moments’ of ‘a particular constellation of social relations, meetingand weaving together at a particular locus’ (Massey 2005: 28).It is not surprising in this pizza restaurant that certain Italian terms for food

items occur: when putting in an order over the phone, for example, Aleksyorders ‘twelve mozzarella’. While it is unclear how to classify such terms(like Nabil’s use of carpaccio above, it is hard to know – and largelyunimportant – whether this should count as an Italian resource), we can



nonetheless see how the wider set of items available in this spatial repertoiremay get mixed up. In an exchange between Nischal, Krzysztof and Aleksy thatoccurs some 30 minutes after the phone order, Krzysztof trips up in his searchfor the English word for cheese, though via Italian rather than Polish.

Excerpt 5: 51:06–51:26 (N = Nischal; K = Krzysztof; A = Aleksy)

1. N: No (.) the mozzarella. And a whole bag of potatoes. I’ll cut it.2. K: I’ll bring formaggio (.) formaggi (.) Whatever whatever it is!3. A: Cheese.4. K: Yes.5. N: Cheese well that’s what it is.

Here the Italianness of the pizza restaurant intervenes in their linguisticnegotiations, as Krzysztof, perhaps picking up on Nischal’s mention ofmozzarella, searches for their shared resource for talking about cheese. It isnot of course Polish that is intervening here but the Italian formaggio which is awell-established ‘ingredient’ of the repertoire of this space.Aleksy’s Columbian girlfriend (whose lack of Polish, according to Nischal,

may be the cause of Aleksy’s view that the cooks speak English rather thanPolish together), meanwhile, has broadened the spatial repertoire of thekitchen, with the occasional use of Spanish. Aleksy leaves the kitchen to takethe call but Nischal, who has overheard the initial interaction, returns to itlater when Aleksy returns to the kitchen:

Excerpt 6: 16:18–16:33 (N = Nischal; A = Aleksy; italics = Spanish; plaintext = English)

1. N: Hola (‘Hello’)2. A: Hola. (‘Hello’)3. N: Hola, como estas? (‘Hello, how are you?’) . . . So you can speak, like,

really good Spanish now?4. A: Yeah of course.5. N: How good? Can you scream in Spanish in the night?6. A: I:::of course I can.

This sort of light (male) banter across languages does not imply particularcompetence in Spanish, but for the moment (cf. Li Wei 2011) certain availableand increasingly sedimented (until Aleksy andhis girlfriend split up somemonthslater) Spanish resources have become part of the spatial repertoire of the kitchen.These different linguistic resources are only one part of the multimodal,

multitasking environment and the larger set of resources nowavailable as part ofthe repertoire of this kitchen. As people come and go, asking for cigarettes, callingtheir boyfriend, singing, ordering bulk supplies, different linguistic resourcesbecome available in this place. Just as it is difficult to determine whether aparticular linguistic item has become part of an individual repertoire, so it is also



hard to name the moment where an available resource has become sufficientlyregularly used to be deemed a sedimented part of the spatial repertoire of aparticular place. What is clear, however, is that when we look at a kitchen suchas this – a spatiotemporal hub criss-crossed by trajectories of people (cooks, floorstaff, phone calls), artefacts (knives, sieves, plates) and food (ingredients, cooking,finished items) –we can observe theways inwhich activities, linguistic resourcesand space interact to produce new configurations of language use that are notbest understood by looking at language-to-language relations (trans, poly, pluri,multi), functional domains (this language for this purpose) or individualrepertoires (the resources each person brings) but need to be viewed in relation tomultiple tasks and available resources.

6. METROLINGUAL MULTITASKING IN THE BISTRO

In order to observe these interactions from the point of view of movementthrough a place rather than from one place, we return now to Petit Paris. Likethe Italian Pizzeria run by a Greek migrant in Sydney, with its Polish andNepalese cooks and Thai and Indian floor staff, such restaurants are part of theconstant remaking of neighbourhoods. Whereas Patris was not concerned withincluding much Italian as part of its repertoire, the ‘Frenchness’ of Petit Paris ismore carefully constructed. Located next to a park that was famous in the 19thand early-20th centuries for its Geisha houses (Karyukai), Petit Paris’establishment in Kagurazaka, whose small, sloping cobbled streets datingfrom the Edo (18th century) period, are often said to recall Montmartre inParis, is significant.Born in the small city of Tipaza in Algeria, to a Moroccan mother and an

Algerian father, the owner, Nabil, deliberately draws together many elementsin his construction of this ‘wine bazar’. While one element was to ‘make thislogo with a spoon and a fork and a glass and a bottle of wine’ (Figure 1; thetwo ‘Ps’ also resemble the first character in 巴里 ‘Paris’), the idea of the bazaar(here playfully combined with ‘bar’ as ‘bazar’) is also a reference to his hometown of Tipaza in Algeria: ‘This city, between us, people from Tipaza, we call itbazaar. (. . .) So it was for me . . .. Something to . . .. Old memory, nice memoryfrom my life. From France, from Algeria, everything’ (Interview, Nabil).Petit Paris is open for lunch and dinner. With its old wooden wine boxes

(with French text) as decoration around the counter, as well as the high barstools, the atmosphere is more casual than formal. The customers are mainlyJapanese10 including students from l’Institut Franco-Japonais de Tokyo. Thestaff comprise two chefs (Jean from France, worked in Cuba, Lebanon, Italy andGreece as a chef before moving to Tokyo 11 years ago; Pierre from R�eunion,lived in Paris before coming to Tokyo), a Japanese manager (Hata san) fromTokyo and two floor staff (Nabil; and St�ephane, born in Cote d’Ivoire and grewup in Morocco and New York as a child). The linguistic, cultural and



gastronomic coming-together at Petit Paris thus entails a complex traffic andinteraction of trajectories, historicities and mobilities.Unlike the separate kitchen at Patris (accessed through a constantly

moving door), Petit Paris has an open kitchen with no partition between thebar counter and main floor. Those interactions that commonly occur inFrench – between Nabil and his chefs, for example – are also therefore morebroadly part of the spatial repertoire of the restaurant. Excerpt 7 is a typicalexample of Nabil’s deployment of linguistic resources in Petit Paris on a busyevening.

Excerpt 7 (Na = Nabil; C = Customer; SMALL CAPS = French; italics = Japanese;ITALIC SMALL CAPS = Italian; plain text = English; translation in quotes)

[With customer table A]1. Na: Sorry Sumimasen, Gomennasai. HEIN? Chotto:: Chotto Small place

dakara, kokowa na (‘Sorry, excuse me, sorry. It’s a bi::t bit smallspace so, this’)

2. C: Daijoobu de::su. (‘That’s O::K’)[With customer table B]3. Na: VOIL�A. Yasai to anchovy kuro olive sauce (‘Here it is. Vegetable

and anchovy black olive sauce’)4. C: Ha ::i. (‘Ye ::s’)5. Na: BON APP�ETIT ! (‘Bon appetit/ enjoy your meal’)[To chef]6. Na: CHEF (.) ON PEUT FAIRE MARCHER LE CARPACCIO, HEIN. J’AI MIS UNE LIGNE/

MAIS ON PEUT L’ENVOYER. DE LA SIX. (‘Chef we can get the carpacciogoing. I put a line but we can send it out. From six.’)

Figure 1: Petit Paris logo



[To customer table C]7. Na: Hai. Daijobu Daijobu Daijobu. (‘Yes OK, OK, OK’)8. Na: Hai DEUX ASSIETTES S’IL VOUS PLAIT ! (‘Yes Two plates please !’)[To customer table C]9. Na: Doozo. PIZZA mo two minutes coming. (‘Here you are. the pizza

will also be here in two minutes.’)

Here, then, we see a prime example of what we have been termingmetrolingual multitasking, where Nabil’s everyday multilingualism is on theone hand a mixture of linguistic resources drawn mainly from English, French(with a Maghrebi accent) and Japanese (and possibly Italian), and on the otherhand an interaction between these resources and the everyday practices(managing and serving in this restaurant), the objects that are also part of theaction (the plates, the vegetable dish, the pizza) and the other resources thatare part of the spatial repertoire of Petit Paris.Ascription of languages to these resources is harder than the bold and italic

transcriptions suggest. Food items (such as carpaccio, or even more obviouslypizza), as already noted, do not sit easily with language labels. Pizza can just aseasily be Italian, French, English or Japanese. It also comes to mean differentthings in different places: The Chicken Teriyaki, Marinara, Moroccan Lamband El Diablo pizzas in the Greek-owned pizzeria in Sydney sit very differentlywithin the restaurant and the culinary landscape of the suburb and city, fromthe Pizza Margharita, La Flammenk€uche Alsacienne and La Pissaladi�ere Nic�oise onthe menu in the Algerian-French-owned bistro in Tokyo. Other terms, such as‘bon app�etit’ are certainly used in English (the lack of an equivalent renders‘bon app�etit’ a possible translation) while it may also be read as partlyequivalent (used at the start of a meal, but signifying receiving rather thanserving food) to the Japanese Itadakimasu ‘I humbly receive food’, as well as aform of French linguistic capital that helps construct the Frenchness of thisplace.Nabil’s grammar and pronunciation complicate the picture in terms of

linguistic labels: the phrases ‘Chotto small place dakara’ and ‘PIZZA mo twominutes coming’, with their English inserts into what seems to be Japanesesyntax might appear to be classifiable as code-mixing between Japanese andEnglish and yet the strangeness of ‘small place’ and ‘two minutes’ (with theirJapanese echoes) make this less clear. The pronunciation of ‘anchovy kuro olivesauce’ also raises questions about what language this is in. ‘Olive’, for example,with its ‘l’ and ‘v’ somewhere between French/ English pronunciation and theJapanese ‘ri’ and ‘bu’ (olive/ oriibu), or the ‘su’ ending at the end of sauce,leaves the status of such words ambiguous, and we indeed have alternativetranscripts of this section using 黒オリーブソース (kuro oriibu sousu). Smallvariations in pronunciation in relation to major decisions about transcriptionscan push back and forth in making decisions about language ascriptions. Theparticular intonation patterns of Nabil’s North African French (the intonation



patterns on terms such as VOIL�A and BON APP�ETIT, for example) as well as hisparticular use of Japanese also led to other undecidable mixes, including thestrange merging of kokowa na (‘here’) and VOIL�A (‘here it is’) across lines 1–3.While some utterances are more easily aligned with particular languages,

this identificatory orientation only takes us so far. Rather, we would suggest,Nabil’s resources are part of the linguistic soup of Petit Paris and, like theingredients of a good soup, may defy identification. Of at least equal interestfrom our point of view are the activities, use of space and artefacts, and thewider repertoire that is part of Petit Paris, which makes it possible for all this tomake sense. Many other things matter here:

• the size of the place (as he squeezes past tables apologising, ‘SorrySumimasen’, and calls across to the kitchen staff);

• its largely Francophone staff and constructed Frenchness (which allowboth requests in French and French flourishes: ‘VOIL�A, BON APP�ETIT’);

• the interactions with the largely Japanese clientele (leading to manymixtures);

• the need to keep the place running smoothly (the reference to the line onthe denpyo [food order sheet] on the wall, drawn to indicate sequencing ofdishes, hence: ‘ON PEUT FAIRE MARCHER LE CARPACCIO’);

• the need to deal with multiple tables at the same time (‘Daijobu, Daijobu;PIZZA mo two minutes coming’).

In this short exchange in Petit Paris, therefore, we see the intersection of arange of activities, artefacts, movements and linguistic resources. We havethus come to view such interlinked language practices in terms of metrolingualmultitasking and to focus less on the identification of elements within thelinguistic repertoires of the individual participants than on the spatialrepertoire in this particular place. Repertoires are not so much lists ofresources deriving from individual linguistic trajectories, but rather areemergent from local interactions. These interactions may at times be mappedin functional terms – French for this, Japanese for that – but such mappingonly takes us so far in such contexts. Instead, it is the ways in which linguisticresources are deployed alongside the spatial organization and movement ofobjects, and thus become part of the spatial repertoire, that interest us here.

7. CONCLUSION: ‘PIZZA MO TWO MINUTES COMING’

While remaining attentive to the larger value attributed to languages – thecommodification of languages (Park and Wee 2012) and the ways in whichunder late capitalist modes of production language comes to play ‘anincreasingly central economic role’ both as ‘the means through which workis accomplished’ and as ‘a product of labor’ (Heller 2010: 104) – and the waysin which the shifting linguistic resources of these workplaces are a product ofthe social and economic conditions that govern mobile kitchen workforces, our



focus centres on the everydayness of such linguistic exchanges, ‘thedimensions and practices of globalization from below’ (Mathews and AlbaVega 2012: 1), the everyday forms of exchange that ‘produce capacities for therecognition or acknowledgement of otherness in situational specificity’ (Wise2009: 35).Thus, while we might note that Nabil’s Arabic has little place in the

hierarchy of languages in Petit Paris, or that the Polish in the Patris kitchenmay not have much capital outside this niche (Block 2007), such argumentsmay reduce languages to material goods (Block 2014) and miss the localoperations of everyday multilingualism. The Spanish used by Nischal, forexample, is not a work-oriented deployment of a language of high linguisticvalue, but a teasing of his Polish co-worker’s use of Spanish on the phone withhis Colombian girlfriend. Our interest therefore has been in relating themateriality of language practices to the activities that accompany them and inthe ways in which place is constructed through such practices. This is wheremetrolingual multitasking (language use in relation to activities and urbanspace) and spatial repertoires (the regularized language resources of a place)come together.By highlighting two different ways in which we can look at the coming

together of linguistic resources – on the one hand following Nabil across spaceand through his different interactions, on the other observing how resourcescome and go in one place – we have sought to relate the physical activities ofwork (cooking, ordering food, serving customers), the social and historicaltrajectories of participants (girlfriends, songs, telephone calls, and linguisticresources picked up along the way), the organization of space (the proximity oftables, the swinging kitchen door) and the language resources at play inparticular places (Spanish, French, Japanese, Polish, Hindi, Nepalese, English,and so on) that are part of these restaurant repertoires.Social theories of language cannot leave the locus of language in the

individual, suggesting that the social is where individual languagecompetences collide. In their study of interaction in a multiethnicneighbourhood in San Francisco, Kramsch and Whiteside (2008: 664) showhow participants manipulate and accommodate various linguistic resources –Spanish, English, Chinese, Vietnamese and Mayan – displaying ‘a particularlyacute ability to play with various linguistic codes and with the various spatialand temporal resonances of these codes.’ While much of this accords with ourown analysis, as with the focus of Busch (2012: 503) on biographical‘language portraits’, or of Blommaert and Backus (2013: 15) on‘biographically organized complexes of resources’, Kramsch and Whiteside’smove to explain this in terms of ‘symbolic competence’ potentially leads to anidentification of language resources with the individual (in terms ofcompetence, trajectory, repertoire) that appears at odds with thesociolinguistic focus of these studies.



We have therefore developed in this paper several related ideas: a notion ofprovisional and distributed personhood drawn from aspects of actor-networktheory, enabling a focus on place, artefacts, activities and language practices(Thrift 2007; Pennycook 2010): ‘PIZZA mo two minutes coming’. This allows usto explore relations between activities and language resources withoutnecessarily aiming to assert functional patterns of language use (Li Wei2011). It also enables a focus on spatial repertoires as the sedimented languagepractices of particular places. It is not just the physical properties of location –the tables, bar, corridors, kitchen, pictures, bottles, and so on – that organize oraffect speech, for it is also speech and social interaction that construct themeaning of a place. This in turn draws attention away from the focus onindividual repertoires and instead emphasizes the ways in which linguisticresources become available in relation to the activities, people and organizationof particular places.

NOTES

1. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Jens Normann Jørgensen, who died onMay 29, 2013, while we were working on an early version of this paper. Hisinspirational work had an enormous impact on the work we have done overthe last few years. We would like to thank four anonymous reviewers forextremely useful and critical comments on two earlier versions of this paper,and the editors for their thoughtful and very thorough input.

2. Although we are seeking to avoid the naming of languages that implies theirexistence as separate codes, we have nonetheless provided such labels in theseinstances in order to show the diversity of resources in use. Given, too, thatthese are the terms in which participants describe their language use, it seemsappropriate to maintain such terminology while remaining sceptical about itsuse.

3. It is often hard to provide a linguistic label for terms such as carpaccio.Although obviously Italian in the first instance (the name derives from anItalian painter, Vittore Carpaccio), its use here in a French restaurant amidEnglish, Japanese (it is commonly written in katakana, and had we transcribedit thus, it might have been deemed a Japanese term) and French, means wemight identify it with any or all of these other languages (see Sebba 2012).

4. This general and specific meaning of spatial repertoires is in part a result of thelack of an adjective to refer to place. Were ‘platial’ repertoires viable alongsidespatial repertoires, we might be able to make this distinction more explicit.

5. Like Thrift (2007), however, we are concerned by the tendency toover-emphasise networks at the expense of events.

6. This is not, it should be noted, a reformulation of the dichotomous multi/plurilingual divide (where plurilingualism is personal and multilingualism issocial). This separation itself is a questionable aspect of what might betermed, following Latour (1999), part of the modernist linguistic settlementthat allowed for a separation between language ‘out there’ and language‘in here’.



7. Part of an Australian Research Council (ARC)-funded Discovery ProjectDP110101014, Metrolingual language practices in four urban sites: Talking in thecity, chief investigators Alastair Pennycook and Emi Otsuji. We are indebted toour former project manager, Astrid Lorange, other research assistants, and ourwilling participants for all their assistance in obtaining this data.

8. Patris, like the names of the workers there, is a pseudonym.9. This observation applies to other contexts of our research, such as construction

sites, where a mixed, multilingual workforce achieves its tasks through a rangeof practices, from linguistic mediation to mixed language use, and fromknowledge of construction practices to physical demonstration.

10. According to Nabil, 80–85 percent of his customers are Japanese.

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Webb, Vic. 2010. Multilingualism from below? Really? In South Africa? In Pol Cuvelier,

Theodorus Du Plessis, Michael Meeuwis, Reinhild Vandekerckhove and Vic Webb (eds.)

Multilingualism from Below. Hatfield, Republic of South Africa: Van Schaik. 134–146.

Wise, Amanda. 2009. Everyday multiculturalism: Transversal crossings and working-class

cosmopolitans. In Amanda Wise and Selvaraj Velayutham (eds.) Everyday Multiculturalism.

Houndmills, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan. 21–45.

Wise, Amanda and Selvaraj Velayutham. 2009. Introduction: Multiculturalism and everyday

life. In Amanda Wise and Selvaraj Velayutham (eds.) Everyday Multiculturalism.

Houndmills, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan. 1–17.



APPENDIX: Transcription conventions

(‘word’) English translation for utterances for languages other thanEnglish in data excerpts and in text.

[word] Paralinguistic features and situational descriptions.? Rising or question intonation.! Animated tone; not necessarily a grammatical exclamation./ Slight fall indicating that more is to come.:: Elongation.(.) Pause.

Address correspondence to:

Alastair PennycookSchool of Education

Faculty of Arts and Social SciencesUniversity of Technology Sydney

PO Box 123Broadway 2007

Sydney, NSWAustralia

[email protected]



Documents

Metrolingual multitasking and spatial repertoires: ‘Pizza mo two minutes coming’