Research
Research groups
Research interests
- Sociolinguistics/sociophonetics of Portuguese, Galician, Spanish and English
- Socio-psychological/geolinguistic spaces: borders, borderlands, diaspora, islands
- Migrant identities: authenticity, belonging, in groups/out groups
- Migrant linguistic repertoires: insider vernaculars, performativity, appropriation, style-shifting
- Multilingualism, Superdiversity and Translanguaging
Current research
Jaine’s research interests are primarily sociolinguistic, with specific reference to the complexities of language, identity and belonging in diasporic, multilingual spaces, such as ‘island’ and borderland communities. Her current research project is part of a longitudinal study on economic migration to Jersey, The Channel Islands, on which she has already published various papers and articles (2014, 2010a, 2010b, 2010c, 2007) and a recent monograph (2020). She is now examining style shifting, phonological variation and performativity in multilingual encounters, focusing specifically on third generation individuals both from the Portuguese diaspora and from the local English-speaking population. Very often, specific types of lexis e.g. swearwords, exclamations etc from Portuguese are inserted into English spoken discourse, even though individuals are monolingual speakers of English, and Portuguese-English bilinguals freely switch such lexis from one language to the other. The aim of this research is to examine the linguistic and sociolinguistic rationale behind these switches, to explore the validity in of contemporary theoretical tenets such as translanguaging as well as the role of distinct linguistic repertoires as insider vernaculars among a particular age group, irrespective of their first language.