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The housing projects that ring modern Paris are a highly fluid linguistic and cultural melting pot, where youth culture combines North African, French, and American elements in a constantly evolving mélange.
Transcultural Teens provides readers with a window onto the cultural and linguistic creativity of the
cités. It shows how young people of Algerian Arab origins play with language and culture in fascinating and revealing ways, and in so doing afford us keen insights into youth culture and globalization.
The author's observations demonstrate that, far from evincing the 'clash of civilizations' so feared (and anticipated) by Western and Arab cultures, youth in Paris housing projects steadfastly occupy a progressive social crossroads where cultural ingredients from North African and European traditions are fused - and thus transformed. The book contributes to an understanding of the emergent identities that arise through movement across geographic, cultural, and linguistic terrain, and includes vital commentary on the everyday experiences of young French Algerian women - notably absent from scholarly publications and popular media alike. The author shows how the experience of growing up in a
cité is one of spatial and racial marginalization within the national context of France, yet is nevertheless highly receptive to the frequent encounters with people, cultures, and modes of communication from a range of disparate sources.
List of contents
Acknowledgments vi
Introduction: Performing Transcultural Youth Identities 1
1 Ethnography in les Cités 8
2 Speech in the Cité: Style and Stigma 34
3 "Sans Problème" or "Cent Problèmes"? Revoicing Stereotypes about les Arabes 58
4 La Racaille and le Respect 91
5 "You Call That a Girl?": Gender Crossing and Borderwork 114
6 Parental Name-Calling 154
7 Crossing Registers: Voicing the French TV Host 172
Conclusion 195
References 200
Index 213
About the author
Chantal Tetreault is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Michigan State University, USA. A specialist in linguistic and cultural anthropology, her work focuses on issues relating to migration and social change in France. She has contributed articles to journals such as
Language in Society,
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology,and
Language and Communication.
Summary
Transcultural Teens provides readers with a window onto the cultural and linguistic creativity of the housing projects, or cite s, that ring Paris, showing how young people of Algerian Arab origins play with language in fascinating ways that subvert commonly held notions of intercultural animosity.
