![]() The second looks at how we are constituted as speaking subjects by historical/political discourses, drawing on poststructuralism. The first is concerned with how we interact linguistically and socially, drawing on interactional and anthropological approaches. It discusses three perspectives on repertoire. This paper foregrounds the concept of Spracherleben, the lived experience of language, in a contribution to ongoing debate about the conceptualization of linguistic repertoire in the context of mobility and migration. The notion of linguistic repertoire in interactional sociolinguistics In view of the current debate on linguistic diversity, it is useful to go back to the origin of the notion of a linguistic repertoire. The third part discusses how a poststructuralist approach can contribute to expanding the notion of 'repertoire'. The second part presents empirical material on linguistic repertoires using a multimodal, biographical approach, and involves a close reading of a language portrait, a visual and verbal representation of linguistic experience, and linguistic resources. In the first part of the article, I discuss how the notion of a linguistic repertoire was developed by John Gumperz from an interactional perspective, how the concept is challenged by the conditions of super-diversity, and how poststructur-alist approaches, especially those of Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler, can contribute to exploring undervalued factors such as the power of categories or the significance of desire in language. REVISITING THE LINGUISTIC REPERTOIRE This article argues for the relevance of poststructuralist approaches to the notion of a linguistic repertoire and draws on empirical data to show how speakers conceive and represent their heteroglossic repertoires. The final part of the article discusses how a poststructuralist approach can contribute to expanding the notion of 'repertoire'. In the second part, this article considers a novel methodological approach to studying linguistic repertoires: a multimodal, biographical approach using a language portrait, which involves a close reading of the visual and verbal representation of linguistic experience and linguistic resources. It then argues that poststructuralist approaches, exemplified in the work of Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler, add an exploration of previously neglected factors such as the power of categories or the significance of desire in language. The first part of the article revisits Gumperz's notion of a linguistic repertoire, and then considers the challenge to the concept represented by the conditions of super-diversity. This article argues for the relevance of poststructuralist approaches to the notion of a linguistic repertoire and introduces the notion of language portraits as a basis for empirical study of the way in which speakers conceive and represent their heteroglossic repertoires. Referring to examples from my own research I will argue that such approaches can be particularly productive in addressing topics such as language and emotion, language and subject positions or identity constructions, or language attitudes linked to language ideologies and discourses on language and language use. The paper also discusses aspects of data collection and interpretation as well as ethical implications. Schematically I shall contrast three theoretical positions within the interpretative paradigm: approaches based on interactionist, on phenomenological and on poststructuralist thinking. It then situates biographical research within the interpretative paradigm in social and cultural studies. The paper gives a brief overview of studies in multilingualism that employ a biographical approach, drawing on different kinds of data such as diaries, autobiographical texts, language memoirs, biographical interviews, and multimodal representations. ![]() Benefiting from a strong tradition in phenomenological thought, biographical methods have developed particularly in the German speaking scientific space over the last decades. They can contribute to an understanding of the linguistic repertoire as reflecting individual life trajectories, heterogeneous life worlds and discourses about language and language use referring to specific time-spaces. For the repertoire approach, biographical methods can be particularly interesting as they emphasize the perspective of the experiencing and speaking subject. In multilingualism research a shift of paradigm can be observed: the idea of languages as distinct categories is being abandoned in favour of the notion of linguistic repertoire, which seems more apt to grasp the complexity of heteroglossic practices.
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