“Because here we live in the Netherlands”: Languagecultural politics of belonging in a supermarket

Abstract

Abstract This article unravels how people construct belonging to places through languagecultural practices (Cornips et al. 2012). The tactics of intersubjectivity (Bucholtz and Hall 2004) serve as analytical tools to explain how people justify their belonging through languagecultural ideologies while challenging other people’s belonging. Furthermore, the article scrutinises how nativeness and new speakerness (O’Rourke and Pujolar 2013) manifest themselves within daily practices. Rather than focusing on “old” and “new” speakers, this article perceives nativeness and new speakerness as constructs that can be given meaning by anyone. In this article, I analyse an interaction in a small supermarket that is illustrative of the construction of belonging to places and which in turn exemplifies the dynamicity of new speakerness.