Language as Talisman

The concept of 'Language as Talisman' is rooted in the belief that language is, in some sense extent, protective and operates as a way of averting risk and creating resilience. Members of communities believe that the way they speak to each other and the language and literacy practices they draw on, will in themselves, guarantee and shore up identity, safety and agency. The ways in which a community uses oral and written language include aspects such as dialect, accent, vocabulary, preferred genres and practices.
In this study, we focus on one community, Rawmarsh in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. Rawmarsh is a community that has a strong history of coal mining and steel industries. It encapsulates the concept of the 'post industrial' working class community described by Hoggart (1957) Williams (1961) and Charlesworth (2000). Rawmarsh is a rich site for literacy and language practices. This project aims to jointly understand the role of language and literacy in constructing and making sense of communities such as Rawmarsh. Partners include the Children and Young People's Service, Rotherham schools and Inspire Rotherham.
We propose to produce a research review spanning a number of related fields, separate but adjacent, all of which deal with everyday language and literacy use. In parallel, and, interacting with the review, we shall develop a cross-disciplinary project on language in use with a local community in Rawmarsh. Our central focus will be the concept of language as 'talisman', an image that speaks to all the disciplines represented in the project. The perspectives represented include New Literacy Studies, Sociolinguistics, the investigation of dialect in literature and also in more popular cultural forms, as well as the intellectual history of language study itself. The New Literacy Studies uses ethnographic approaches to gain insights into everyday language and literacy practices in homes and communities (Barton & Hamilton 1998). Sociolinguistics offers tools for the fine-grained analysis of language use along with ways of conceptualizing the place of language within the social world. Looking at dialect in literature and popular culture involves examining the roles played by meta-language, 'folk-linguistic' beliefs, and perceptual phenomena such as enregisterment and indexicality in the way people orient themselves both to language and to the world through language. And bringing the tools of intellectual history to bear on language study allows for a rigorous and wide-ranging consideration of the relationships among different ways of thinking about and investigating language.
Alongside, we propose to create a community study on the voices heard in the park, that reflects on the role of language and literacy as a source of resilience in everyday life, as well as develop a learning resource on language as talisman, for use in local schools. Our outputs include a Literature Review, a two page summary that draws each adjacent discipline together, a set of resources to be used with year 6 students in local schools, as well as a co-curated set of arts events in Victoria Park, Rawmarsh.
Our community team includes a youth worker, the director of a community literacy initiative and an arts practitioner. Our academic team includes a researcher in the field of New Literacy Studies and ethnographic studies of community literacy practices (Dr Kate Pahl), a socio-linguist (Dr David Hyatt) an expert in the field of dialect and meta-language from English Literature (Dr Jane Hodson) and an academic interested in ideas about language (Dr Richard Steadman-Jones). In addition, an advisory group will guide the process. We have strong support from the Youth Service in Rotherham, as well as Cape UK and local schools for this project.

Who will benefit from this research?
1. Youth Service. The youth service in Rotherham will directly benefit from a project which focuses on language as a source of resilience. This will then feed into the wider world of resilience studies including Angie Hart's resilience website: http://www.boingboing.org.uk/ also funded through ESRC. There is strong interest in Rotherham as to how support for storytelling and interaction in public and community sites can avert such behaviours that led to the riots in the summer. Youth workers would like to develop a language and communication focused way forward with young people at risk of anti social behaviour. However, there is less focus on what kinds of language and literacy practices lie within communities and what are the ways these can be described. The proposed project on voices in the park will involve young people and families in the co-curation of a soundscape exhibition in the park leading to a number of language related arts based activities and outcomes.
2. Academics interested in ways in which disciplines such as the Arts and Humanities can create knowledge exchange in communities such as Rawmarsh. There is an urgent need for Arts and Humanities departments to create civic engagement opportunities outside the University spaces. This project will tie into a Faculty programme of developing ways of working with communities.
3. Schools. The project team will produce a resource for local schools which focuses on the uses of language and literacy, with a particular focus on different approaches such as discourse analysis and the study of dialect as well as stories and voices in the park. This could involve Year 6 children telling the team about their language, as experts, and then asking the young people to think creatively about how to use what is distinctive about their local voices.
4. A series of events which will be developed within Victoria Park, Rawmarsh, with a focus on local voices and 'Language as Talisman'. This will be in collaboration with the Cultural Services team at Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, together with the Youth Service. Some parts of this project, including the soundscapes and art images could also be showcased in the University of Sheffield as part of an exhibition based on the developing 'Sheffield Voices' archive in the exhibition space in Western Bank Library.
Beneficiaries of the project include both the youth service in Rotherham, and nationally. Cultural services in Rotherham and nationally, would benefit. The project also benefits those interested in language as a source of resilience, those interested in the study of naturalistic language and literacy practices in both historical and contemporary contexts and those interested in the practice of collaboration between Universities and Communities. The project will enhance research on how to foster resilience in young people.
The impact will continue on in the form of the following: 1) The resources for local schools will contribute to the work developed by the RSA on an Area Based Curriculum in Peterborough and 2) The Literature Review, Summary and Discussion paper will help draw adjacent fields together in the area of literacy and language and English Literature, to focus on the protective power of language in community contexts, as well as a on scholarly review that can be used by other academics.
It will push forward the AHRC Connected Communities' agenda in the field of considering how the Arts and Humanities can support and listen to the voices of young people and families in situated community contexts. It also offers a methodology for knitting together a University, through two departments (Education and English) and communities through arts practice, youth work and policy work in the area of literacy and language. The project also contributes to the employment skills for the researcher, Hugh Escott, and the Youth Service staff who will be working with us.