ABSTRACT
This chapter gives an overview of the research in Norway on contemporary urban speech styles (CUSs), i.e. more recent contact-based speech styles that have emerged in multilingual urban neighbourhoods characterised by immigration and class stratification. The research in Norway is rather sparse and has mainly been conducted in Oslo, on a speech style emically and popularly labelled kebabnorsk (‘Kebab Norwegian’). The research has concentrated on lexicon and syntax, the use of CUSs in identity work, as well as the role of (socio)cultural practices such as music (hip-hop), literature and textbooks in the enregisterment of CUSs. This research demonstrates that CUS is one of many speech styles in the young people’s repertoire, and that adolescents vary their speech according to context. CUS signals in-group identities and indexes place. In interaction, the usage of features associated with CUS brings social categories such as ethnicity and social class into play. In the mass media, CUSs are minoritised, othered and exoticised. Ideologically, CUS is positioned in contrast to more (regional) ‘standard’ ways of speaking Norwegian.
