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2nd International Conference on Sociolinguistics
ABSTRACT
BOOK
ABSTRACT BOOK ICS-2
2018
KEYNOTE PAPERS
Csilla Bartha, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest TBA
Jan Blommaert, Tilburg University New modes of interaction, new modes of integration Sociolinguists have generally been very reluctant to engage productively with social theory, as creators of theory rather than as consumers and reproducers of it. This is a pity, for sociolinguistic evidence often holds a substantial critical potential, dislodging and destabilizing widely accepted theoretical assumptions and forms of sociological imagination. Certainly in an age of globalization, superdiversity and online-offline social life, new forms of social interaction should be used as the material from which we can build new social theory rather than just sociolinguistic theory. In this paper, I offer an illustration of this potential. The target of the exercise is "integration": not only a political buzzword but even more importantly a key concept in 20th century sociology, certainly through the work of Talcott Parsons and his followers. Based on research on the online-offline sociolinguistic economies of diasporic individuals, I will suggest that we can propose a fundamentally different, a far more accurate and empirically verifiable theoretical concept of integration. The paper holds an invitation to other sociolinguists, to review their evidence with an eye on its relevance for 'big theory'.
Leonie Cornips, Meertens Instituut & Maastricht University "Welcome to the periphery. Ridiculing the standard, minoritising the regional language, and consequences for child acquisition research” In my talk, I will focus on the phenomenon of ‘bidialectism’ in the Dutch province of Limburg. In 1997 the ‘dialects’ of Limburg were extended minor recognition under the label Limburgish by The Netherlands, a signatory of the 1992 European Charter for Regional Languages or Languages of Minorities. I will follow Woolard’s (2016) cognitive frame in order to understand why speaking Limburgish/dialect in a standardized world gives rise to tensions both in society as well in linguistic research. I will first discuss the results from a sociolinguistic, observational study (Morilles Morales, 2017) of how and why children and their teachers choose between Dutch and dialect in pre-school playgrounds with what kind of social meaning. Speaking a dialect in the Netherlands where the standard language is omnipresent is never a social neutral practice. The observational study reveals a language socialization process in which the meaning of using Limburgisg/dialect clashes with experimental settings in which linguists try to elicit dialect vocabulary and constructions. Further, although teachers and dominant public discourse think that dialect speaking children lag behind their monolingual peers in the acquisition of Dutch vocabulary, our study of 128 children in Limburg between 5 and 8 years (Francot et al. 2017) reveals that this is not the case. Moreover, this study shows that it is not possible to categorize these children on L1 Dutch and L1 dialect speaking children on the basis of their vocabulary production. The first conclusion of this talk is that we – as linguists – need to come up with new experimental designs to study children in their development who speak two varieties that to a large extent differ hierarchically in society. I will close my presentation in discussing how to reflect on official language policies such as by the Dutch Language Union which until now formulated a vision in which Limburgish, despite the European Charter recognition, is not considered as a regional language but as a variant of Dutch.
Helen Kelly-Holmes, University of Limerick The future of sociolinguistics in the speech community of one? Sociolinguistics distinguishes itself through a concern with the language of groups, and, consequently, the speech community, where linguistic norms are learned, maintained, transferred and policed, is one of the basic units of study. While there has been an increasing focus on individual language, in terms of for example, styling (Coupland 2007) and spectacular, one-off language (Sweetland 2002), the social, shared and patterned nature of language remains key in sociolinguistic analyses. Starting with Anderson (1983), studies have shown how technological change and increasing mediatisaton have led to speech communities in turn becoming increasingly mediated (see Androutsopolous 2014) - the development of computer-mediated communication and Web 2.0 being particularly significant in recent times. As a result, marketing and advertising discourses have taken on an increasing role in shaping the speech community. In this paper, I want to look at one particular aspect of computer-mediated communication – multilingual management for marketing and advertising purposes - and argue that it has significant implications for how we as sociolinguists think about language and speech communities. Long term study of the management of online multilingualism by companies and brands points to an evolution from monolingualism to growing parallel multilingualism to hyperlingualism (Kelly-Holmes 2013). The current era can be seen to be characterised by individualism and personalisation and the objective of contemporary digital marketing is to create and target ‘the market of one’ in the form of mass customization (Pine and Gilmore 2000). In my paper, I trace this evolution and speculate as to whether a by-product of the market of one is in fact the speech community of one in these marketed and mediated contexts and what the implications of such a development might be. Androutsopoulos, J. (2014Mediatization and sociolinguistic change. Key concepts, research traditions, open issues. In: Androutsopoulos, J. (Ed.). (2014). Mediatization and sociolinguistic change. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Coupland, N. (2007). Style: Language variation and identity. Cambridge University Press. Pine, B. J., & Gilmore, J. H. (2000). Satisfaction, sacrifice, surprise: three small steps create one giant leap into the experience economy. Strategy & Leadership, 28(1), 18-23. Kelly-Holmes, H. (2013). ‘Choose Your Language!’Categorisation and Control in Cyberspace. Sociolinguistica, 27, 132-145. Sweetland, J. (2002). Unexpected but authentic use of an ethnically–marked dialect. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 6(4), 514-538.
Alastair Pennycook, University of Technology Sydney Ordinary diversities, complex assemblages and other modalities
Sari Pietikäinen, University of Jyväskylä Rhizomatics of discourse and identity
GENERAL SESSION PAPERS
Astrid Adler, Institut für Deutsche Sprache Censuses as a Mirror of Sociolinguistics – with a Special Focus on the Case of Germany Core topics of sociolinguistics concern among others identity, multilingualism, migration, language ideology, and language politics. All these play a role when it comes to censuses. There are countries that have been collecting data on languages for years and others that have not – sometimes accompanied by lively discussion. Hence, today all the census questions and their results (also the lack of them) represent a highly valuable set of data which not only displays the state of certain things that were counted at a time but also reflects on a meta-level the then actual ideologies and (language) policies behind the collected categories. Therefore, looking at these datasets allows for tracing trends and changes in ideologies and policies. Today, questions on identity categories are more up-to-date than ever not least because of increasing multilingualism caused by mobility and migration as well as related sentiments of insecurity and need of (national) belonging. In 2017, there will again be a question on language in the national census in Germany again after a period of almost 80 years. The reasons for the omission of such a question since 1939 are rather obvious as are the reasons why the question is put back again now. After a high influx of refugees in 2015, apparently, officials now feel the need to learn more about the languages spoken in Germany, and especially on ostensible (linguistic) integration of the immigrant residents. My paper will discuss the current question on language in the German 2017 census and show the multiple shortcomings it unfortunately has. I will also describe the underlying ideologies on multilingualism and minority languages and connect them to current German language policies. Furthermore, I will draw on similar situations, e.g. in England and Scotland.
Wiebke Ahlers, University of Osnabrück, Axel Bohmann, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg “Bamsie was like messed with so she was just super upset about it”: Markers of stance in narration Much of the current sociolinguistic work on stance (Holmes-Elliott/Levon 2017, Jaffe 2009, Kiesling 2009) focuses on how different linguistic forms correlate with different stances taken by interlocutors in interactions. Less attention has been paid to the question whether some linguistic innovations themselves enable new kinds of stance-taking, rather than simply being enlisted from a pool of resources. The present study considers processes of stance-taking in a corpus of 80 participants renarrating a children’s story immediately after reading it. The speakers are residents of Austin, Texas, 18-86 years old, stratified by gender, ethnicity, and educational background. Each recording is transcribed and coded for linguistic markers of epistemic, evaluative, and affective stance (Du Bois 2007). Our study focuses on the interactional deployment of like as quotative and as discourse particle, because co-occurrence of both is evident in speaker’s stance-taking work. In a statistical analysis, we compare the overall stance-taking patterns among the age groups. We find that in the older groups there are marked differences in how speakers of different ethnicities and educational backgrounds position themselves vis-a-vis the re-narration task (cf. Gee 1989). Stance-taking patterns increase and become more flexible in younger generations while ethnic and educational stratification decreases. Turning our attention to the specific use of like, a regression analysis shows that this form is both significantly more frequent among younger speakers and shows a plurality in stance meaning that is lacking in older markers of stance. Our analysis demonstrates how innovative linguistic features may restructure a socially meaningful speech activity over generations. We argue that like usage offers a more individualistic approach to storytelling, allowing speakers to shift focus from content to performance. It is our interpretation of the data that the increasing frequency of like is not only implicated in, but facilitates this process. References Du Bois, John W. 2007. The stance triangle. In Robert Englebretson (ed.) Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction. John Benjamins, 139–182. Holmes-Elliott, Sophie and Erez Levon. 2017. The substance of style: Gender, social class and interactional stance in /s/-fronting in southeast England. Linguistics 55(5), 1045–1072. Jaffe, Alexandra. 2009. Introduction: The sociolinguistics of stance. in Alexandra Jaffe (ed.) Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives. Oxford University Press, 3–28. Kiesling, Scott. 2009. Style as stance: Can stance be the primary explanation for patterns of sociolinguistic variation? In Alexandra Jaffe (ed.) Stance: sociolinguistic perspectives. Oxford University Press, 171–194.
Adnan Ajšić, American University of Sharjah Driven: Audience design and the technological hybridization of traditional media Research into recent changes in traditional media and journalism documents increasing technological hybridization as well as divergence in consumption patterns along generational lines (e.g., Jacobson, 2011; Taneja, Wu & Edgerly, 2017). Taking a cue from Bell’s (1991) audience design theory, Colleen Cotter’s (2015) influential recent overview of research into media discourse calls for a focus on ‘the role of the audience in relation to the media practitioner’ as a way to ‘explain discourse in terms of changing social patterns and technologies’. At the same time, the old media studies adage ‘the medium is the message’ remains as true as ever, as the ‘mere use of a medium communicates meaning’ (Tannen, 2013). Research reported here is based on a case study of Driven, Tom Voelk’s Emmy-award winning car review column/video series published in The New York Times (in print and online), as a prime example of technological hybridization of traditional media as well as audience design based on (perceived) generational preferences. Based on a pair of parallel corpora compiled from 72 textual and transcribed video reviews from Driven, this study combines corpus linguistics and discourse analysis to examine how discourse and media choices are used to create audience segment-specific versions of the same review. The study shows how even simple corpus linguistic tools can be effective in discourse-analytic explorations of audience design and language in the media more generally. I argue that audience design is deliberately used to cater to two separate segments of the broader The New York Times’ audience in an effort to maintain or broaden the column’s appeal. References Bell, A. (1991). The language of news media. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell. Cotter, C. (2015). Discourse and media. In D. Tannen, H. E. Hamilton & D. Schiffrin (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis, Vol. 1, 2nd Ed. (pp. 795-821). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Jacobson, S. (2011). Transcoding the news: An investigation into multimedia journalism published on nytimes.com 2000-2008. New Media & Society, 14(5), 867-885. doi: 10.1177/1461444811431864 Taneja, H., Wu, A. X., & Edgerly, S. (2017). Rethinking the generational gap in online news use: An infrastructural perspective. New Media & Society, 1-21. doi: 10.1177/1461444817707348 Tannen, D. (2013). The medium is the metamessage: Conversational style in new media interaction. In D. Tannen & A. M. Triester (Eds.), Discourse 2.0: Language and new media (pp. 99-117). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Voelk, T. Driven. The New York Times. Available from:https://www.nytimes.com/column/drive
Michael Akinpelu, University of Regina Pidgin as a vital tool for citizenry participation and sustainable development in Nigeria Pidgin is a rapidly growing and increasingly important language in Nigeria. From 30 million speakers in 2005 (Ethnologue, 2017), Nigerian Pidgin now has up to 75 million speakers, including those who use it as their first language (BBC, 2016). Although diversified, Nigerian Pidgin has a written form and is used in literature, radio and television programs, popular music, advertising and business. Furthermore, because it is used by people of every age, linguistic group, social class and educational level, it is a de facto lingua franca that readily unites the country’s multilingual landscape, and reduces the socioeconomic gap between the elites and the ordinary people created by the current language policy that highly favours the use of English as the language of political and economic participation. Despite its numerous functions and widespread in the country, Nigerian Pidgin is yet to receive any official recognition and status. This constitutes a major impediment to the full utilization of a language which has the potential of attracting higher participation in the economy compared to English which is considered the language of the elites and only account for about 20% of the population (Simire, 2003). Drawing on the concept of sociolinguistics of development which advocates a language policy that empowers the masses “to become the ‘engines’ that drive economic growth and development” (Djité, 2008:179), this presentation challenges the current status quo and proposes a revised language policy that acknowledges the meaningful contribution of Nigerian Pidgin to the socioeconomic advancement of the nation. References Djité, P. G. (2008). The Sociolinguistics of Development in Africa. Clevedon/Buffalo/Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Ethnologue. (2017). Pidgin, Nigerian. A language of Nigeria. Accessed January 8, 2018. https://www.ethnologue.com/language/pcm BBC. (2016). Pidgin – West African Lingua Franca. Accessed January 8, 2018. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-38000387 Simire, G. O. (2003). Developing and Promoting Multilingualism in Public Life and Society in Nigeria. Language, Culture and Curriculum 6(2), 231-43.
Glen Michael Alessi, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia Edible Arizona: The discourse of foodways in the Sonoran desert Publications addressing sustainable regional culinary systems , which promote 'Real' and 'Local' food movements, have arisen throughout the United States. These "Edible Communities” publications exist in localized versions in print and as Websites in 85 regional varieties, addressing producing, preparing, serving and promoting locally sourced food. The publications include feature stories, interviews, recipes and writing on heritage foods, local ecologies, farming, ethnobiology, marketing, restaurants, menus, food events and recipes. They also include extensive advertising and an elaborate interactive presence on Websites, blogs and social media. In the State of Arizona, two distinct 'Edible Community' publications exist: Edible Phoenix and award winning Edible Baja Arizona; the latter covering the greater Tucson area into northern Sonora, Mexico. These two metro areas traditionally maintain discernable 'distances' in defining their histories, local cultures, and politics. Phoenix is regarded widely as politically conservative while Tucson (named World City of Gastronomy by UNESCO ) reflects progressive values and Hispanic traditions. These distinct identities are likewise reflected in lexical choices framing local cuisine, sustainability and ecological issues. This paper takes these two publications as a starting point in identifying keywords and phrasings devoted to regional food and culinary issues in these two regions. Through frameworks borrowed from critical genre analysis (Bhatia 2010) and corpus-assisted discourse studies (Partington, 2013), it explores how these publications may ( or may not ) less-knowingly reveal marked local ideologies and target local readerships through language strategies that interdiscursively draw on terms and phrasings purposely appropriated from a mix of culinary expertise, added-value marketing lexis and loan words from Spanish or Native American Languages. References Bhatia, V. K. "Interdiscursivity in Professional Communication." Discourse & Communication 4.1 (2010): 32-50. Web. Partington, Alan, Alison Duguid, and Charlotte Taylor. Patterns and Meanings in Discourse: Theory and Practice in Corpus-assisted Discourse Dtudies (CADS). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2013. Print.
Mohammed Albakry, Middle Tennessee State University From Cajun French to Cajun English in Louisiana: Language Loss or Cultural Revival? From the expulsion of the Acadians from present-day Nova Scotia, Canada to their eventual arrival in Louisiana, United States to the current cultural situation among Acadian descendants (known as Cajuns), the history of the Cajun French language and the gradual decline of its use is long, complicated, and politically charged (Ancelet, 2007; Rees, 2008). The paper offers an overview of the rapidly diminishing Cajun French language and examines the historical statesponsored attempts to eradicate its use as well as the more recent attempts at maintenance and revival particularly in the public education system and the commercial domains of tourism and cultural heritage events. Fishman’s (2001) principles of language revival are applied to the current situation of Cajun French in order to assess the viability of the revitalization efforts. Based on a survey administered in south Louisiana, the paper also reports the prevailing cultural attitudes of younger generations of Cajun descent toward the Cajun French language and its replacement by its main competitor: Cajun English. The results reveal that the stigmatization accompanying the identification with being Cajun experienced by the older generation has largely disappeared and been replaced by cultural and ethnic pride. Younger Cajuns tend to express this positive sentiment even if they cannot speak Cajun French, which they mostly consider an unnecessary element of being Cajun. The paper concludes that the difficulty of reviving the language increases as younger generations do not see Cajun French as an important identity marker of Cajun-ness. In addition to the attitudes of younger Cajuns today, the complex language history and situation of Francophone Louisiana may pose further challenges for the prospects of Cajun French revitalization.
Pedro Álvarez-Mosquera, University of Salamanca An ethnographic approach to the semiotic reading of the Linguistic Landscape (LL) of a semi-informal space of consumption in a South African township Linguistic landscape (LL) studies have become a prolific specialized field that investigates the symbolic construction of public space. In recent years there has been a strong call for adopting an ethnographic approach to LL studies (Blommaert and Maly 2014). In line with this research focus, the current study explores the linguistic landscape of a semi-informal market in a South African township called Mabopane (Soshanguve). Longstanding multilingualism being a defining feature of this area, our analysis draws on the semiotic reading of the LL by a local participant who provides significant insight into residents’ perception on language use and materiality in this space’s commercial signage. With this approach, preliminary results underline the relevant role of African languages’ indexicality and trader’s (local) names in this English-dominated context. Furthermore, the notion of translanguaging (Garcia and Wei 2014) appears to be central as the participant draws on her complex linguistic repertoire – including a local mixed language – in her reading of the signage. Finally, our findings on the role of mediation and sponsorship present relevant implications for the notion of luxury and necessity (Stroud and Mpendukana 2009, 2010) as they might involve reinterpreting the use and perception of materials as well as the process of signage production. Reference Blommaert, J., and I. Maly. 2014. “Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Analysis and Social Change: A Case Study.” Tilburg Papers in Cultural studies. Paper 100. Tilburg University. Garcia, O., and L. Wei. 2014. Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan. Stroud, C., and S. Mpendukana. 2009. “Towards a Material Ethnography of Linguistic Landscape: Multilingualism, Mobility and Space in a South African Township.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 13: 363–386. Stroud, C., and S. Mpendukana. 2010. “Multilingual Signage: a Multimodal Approach to Discourses of Consumption in a South African Township.” Social Semiotics 20 (5): 469–49.
Elizabet Arocena, Alaitz Santos, Durk Gorter, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU The effect of in-service training on teachers’ beliefs regarding multilingual education Schoolteachers play a key role in the acquisition of languages of their students. In the Basque Autonomous Community in Spain, teachers always work according to a curriculum that has multilingualism as its goal. Their students are taught Basque and Spanish as first or second language and English as third language. Although acquisition of three languages, thus becoming multilingual, is the goal, languages are taught separately due to the rooted belief that languages are best taught in isolation (Arocena, Cenoz & Gorter, 2015). This paper is based on a study that investigates the effect of an in-service training on language teachers’ beliefs. Data were gathered from 196 language teachers from primary and secondary schools. The participants took part in an eight-week course based on the “Focus on Multilingualism” approach (Cenoz & Gorter, 2014). They filled-in a questionnaire on language teaching beliefs before starting the course and after completion. The main objective of the study is to analyze possible effects of in-service training on the beliefs of the teachers regarding language education, especially with regard to language separation in the classroom. Their responses demonstrate that in-service training can guide teachers to move from previous beliefs into new beliefs regarding language didactics. The results further show that although some teachers are hesitant to change their language teaching beliefs, the training allows them to reflect on their everyday practices and become more open to new approaches. References Arocena, E., Cenoz, J. & Gorter, D. (2015). Teachers’ beliefs in multilingual education in the Basque Country and in Friesland. Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education, 3(2), 169-193. doi: 10.1075/jicb.3.2.01aro Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2014). Focus on multilingualism as an approach in educational contexts. In A. Creese & A. Blackledge (Eds.), Heteroglossia as practice and pedagogy (pp. 239254). Berlin: Springer.
Daniele Artoni, University of Verona The policy of the Russian language in the Post-Soviet Southern Caucasus After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the status of the Russian language in the new-born republics became a central issue. In the Southern Caucasus, all the Constitutions promulgated by the three Republics – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia – opted for ethnocentric language policies that accepted the language of the major ethnic group as the only State Language (Pavlenko 2006), demoting Russian to the status of official language (Belousov 1996). However, the role of the Russian language as a lingua franca remained crucial for international communication and everyday interaction, especially amongst the numerous ethnic minorities. It followed that in the ‘90s Russian continued to play an important role also in education (Savoskul 2001, Lebedeva 1995). In recent times, English has increasingly replaced Russian in the role of lingua franca in the Southern Caucasus, especially in Georgia – where Russian has been substituted by English as the primary foreign language (Blauvel 2013, Perotto 2014). In the 2000s, a different path was followed by Armenia, which has strengthened the teaching of Russian in its curricula (Nagzibekova 2008). In my paper, I will trace the history of language policies in the Post-Soviet Southern Caucasus with reference to the Russian language. In particular, I will analyse (i) the Constitutions of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia and their following amendments regarding the use of language, (ii) their legislation on language policies, and (iii) their practices of teaching Russian in the Caucasian public education systems. I will eventually establish connections between the language policies of the three countries and their relationships with the Russian Federation, and investigate to what extent language policies in the Post-Soviet Russian Caucasus can be affected by geopolitical issues.
Erhan Aslan, Camilla Vásquez, University of Reading Multiple Indexicalities and Language Ideologies in an Internet Meme: The Case of “Cash me Ousside/How bah dah” Internet memes – defined by Shifman (2014) as cultural information that spreads from one person to another and gradually coalesces into a shared social phenomenon – can take numerous forms, such as remix and reaction videos, photoshopped image macros or graphic interchange format (GIFs) which are derived from a viral event or a popular culture reference. Milner (2016) contends that memes are “small expressions” that have “big implications” (p.14), meaning that memes extend to larger cultures or audiences and often make connections between feelings and values, positions, or beliefs, potentially shedding light on social structures and related ideologies and discourses. This study examines a corpus of digital linguistic metacommentary related to a viral Internet meme “Cash me ousside/how bah dah” to explore the sociolinguistic judgments of Internet users about the controversial – and sociolinguistically ambiguous – manner of speaking of a teenage girl who appeared on the reality TV show, Dr. Phil. The linguistic metacommentary analyzed consisted of 363 comments from two YouTube videos: a video clip from the original TV program, and a popular user-created reaction video. Adopting a “citizen sociolinguistics” (Rymes & Leone, 2014) framework, which provides a lens to understand the ways that citizens (rather than trained sociolinguists) understand the world of language around them, the analysis of the online comments revealed three categories of citizen sociolinguistic inquiry about the teen’s manner of language use. These were general evaluative judgements (negative, positive, and neutral), multiple identifications of her accent based on social variables (e.g. race/ethnicity, region, social class), and metalinguistic judgments about the quality of her speech (e.g. intelligibility, authenticity). Our findings illustrate how Internet users participate in digital spaces as citizen sociolinguists, by drawing on their own communicative repertoires and perceptions. References Milner, Ryan M. 2016. The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Rymes, Betsy, and Leone, Andrea. R. 2014. Citizen sociolinguistics: a new media methodology for understanding language and social life. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics (WPEL), 29: 25–43. Shifman, Limor. 2014. Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Khaled Barkaoui, York University Changes in the Register Features of L2 Learners' Written Texts after Nine Months of L2 Study Although sociolinguistic competence is an essential component of many models of secondlanguage (L2) ability (e.g., Bachman & Palmer, 2010; Canale & Swain, 1980), there is little research on the development of L2 learners' sociolinguistic competence as reflected in their L2 writing. Previous research has focused mainly on the grammatical and discourse dimensions of L2 writing development; other studies tend to be cross-sectional, comparing the use of formal and informal features in L2 learners' texts across learners, tasks, and/or contexts (e.g., Grant & Ginther, 2000; Hinkel, 2003). This research suggests that L2 learners tend to confuse the spoken and written registers and to overuse many lexico-syntactic features typical of speech in their L2 writing. This study extends this line of research by examining (a) changes in the register features of L2 learners' writing after a period of L2 study and (b) the extent to which these features vary depending on task type and learner gender. The study included 85 Chinese learners of English with different levels of English language proficiency (41 female) who each responded to two writing tasks (independent and integrated) before and after nine months of English-language study in China. To examine changes (over time) and differences (across tasks and gender) in register features in students' written texts, a combination of human rating and computer analysis was employed. Each text (N= 276) was rated holistically in terms of how well the writing represents a formal, written register that is appropriate for academic contexts. Additionally, using Biber's tagger (Biber, 1988, 1995), each text was tagged in terms of over 70 lexico-syntactic features that are associated with informal speech register (e.g., vague nouns) and formal features that indicate an academic register (e.g., complex syntax). The results were then compared across tasks, gender, proficiency levels, and time. The presentation discusses the findings and their implications for assessment, instruction, and research. (308 words)
Ruth Bartholomä, University of Freiburg “Our language is our identity” – Language ideologies in a speech of President Erdoğan during the “Year of the Turkish language” In May 2017, the President of the Republic of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, held a speech on the occasion of the official opening ceremony of the 8th International Congress on Turkish Language (8. Uluslararası Türk Dili Kurultayı). During his speech, Erdoğan expressed his thoughts on various aspects of language, including, amongst others, the role of Turkish in past and present, as well as a condemnation of recent borrowings with a simultaneous preference of older, i.e. Ottoman words. One can also find thoughts on the role of language in society in general, e. g. in Erdoğan citing “Our language is our identity”, the official slogan of the „Year of the Turkish Language“ 2017, proclaimed by the Turkish Language Society (Türk Dil Kurumu). This paper will analyse Erdoğan’s speech by means of Critical Discourse Analysis, more specifically by using an adapted version of the DIMEAN model (Spitzmüller/Warnke 2011). Analysis suggests that Erdoğan uses a variety of means on the intratextual level to express his ideas, such as keywords, deontic meanings and metaphors; noteworthy is also a frequent use of the Turkish possessive suffix. On the transtextual level, there are several references and quotations which support the attempt to emphasize the importance of the Turkish language. In this regard, the paper will also address the question of continuity between recent ideas and those beliefs which were expressed during the Turkish Language Reform in the late 1920s and 1930s. References Spitzmüller, J./Warnke, I. H. (2011). Diskurslinguistik – Eine Einführung in Theorien und Methoden der transtextuellen Sprachanalyse. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Márton Bartók, Eötvös Loránd University Phonatory patterns in emotion expression: gender differences in Hungarian Several studies found gender differences in emotion expression in line with the stereotype that females show greater emotional expressivity [1]. This paper aims to investigate the effect of gender on emotion expression, narrowing its scope to voice quality. 10 Hungarian speakers, 5 female and 5 male uttered the vowel /a/ expressing 7 emotions and an emotionally neutral realization, 3 repetitions each. Speech and electroglottographic signals were recorded simultaneously in a sound treated room. Voice quality was determined based on both auditory impressions and visual inspection of waveforms and spectrograms. For periods labeled as modal, the electroglottographic open quotient (OQ) was calculated for a fine-grained articulatory analysis of this perceptually homogenic and neutral phonation type. Irregular phonation was found to be similarly frequent in the expression of ANGER for both genders (26% of the total duration of all utterances expressing that emotion for females, 29% for males). Females also used irregular phonation often when expressing CONTENTMENT (34%), a pattern not appearing in males’ speech. Breathy voice was observed to express emotions with positive valence (CALM and HAPPINESS) for both genders. Males followed this pattern even in the case of CONTENTMENT (30%), showing that this emotion is expressed using different non-modal voice qualities. OQ values did not show any systema**tic variation for females, but for males, there was a significant effect of emotion on OQ. Particularly, the effect of arousal level was significant: a Tukey post-hoc test showed that men express low-arousal emotions with significantly higher OQ compared to emotions with high arousal. In conclusion, our analysis on voice quality did not corroborate the theory that females would show greater emotion expression: we found similar patterns, and greater systematic articulatory variation for males. References Chaplin, T. M. 2015. Gender and emotion expression: A developmental contextual perspective. Emotion Review, 7(1), 14-21.
Margareta Bašaragin, Primary School “Jovan Jovanović Zmaj”, Serbia Gender and Cultural Aspects on Linguistic Space in Classroom Talk The concept of linguistic space refers to the amount of talk that male and female students use in classroom and the ways in which teacher talk may be at the same time supporting and discouraging for student participation in classroom discourse (Mahoney 1985; Júle 2002, 2004, 2005). The aim of this paper is to explore the structure and function of linguistic space in mother tongue lessons in Serbian and Hungarian classes during the final year of bilingual primary schools in Subotica (Vojvodina, Serbia) in the year 2015. The corpus consists of the fine transcript of two video recordings of mother tongue lessons in Serbian and Hungarian classes during the final year of primary school. The methodological framework is based on the discourse procedures in the transcription for verbal interaction (Savić 1993) and partly on the HIAT2 transcription system for nonverbal communication and action (Ehlich 1993). The basic unit of analysis is one IRE-cycle presented in turn, consisting of multiple or single speech contributions of actors, which are further divided into single utterances as the smallest units of analysis. The results show dominant verbal and nonverbal behavior of the teachers. The function of single teachers’ utterances confirms that both teachers initiate almost all verbal and non-verbal activities, manage conversational flow and structure teaching time. They also influence the higher conversational status of male students. The role of male and female students is inferior in compare with the teachers: short answers to the teachers’ questions and reading from the textbooks are their most frequent verbal activity. The classroom talk is the socialization model and affects the formation of stereotypical gender-based behavioral patterns of female and male students.
Nailya Bashirova, Kazan State Conservatoire, Kamilia Babko, Kazan Federal University Semiotic Study of the Ethnonym “Tatar” and the Tatar National Identity Structure in the Republic of Tatarstan The present report summarises the results of the semiotic study of the semantic structure of the ethnonym “Tatar” and looks at how the word reflects self-identification of Tatars and perception of the Tatar identity by non-Tatars in the Republic of Tatarstan. The term “non-Tatars” refers mostly to Russians living in and outside RT, but also to other neighbouring ethnic groups: Maris, Udmurts, Bashkirs, etc. The study continues the previous research into the semantic evolution of the ethnonym “Tatar” and the ways the Tatar national identity is constructed in young people’s discourse (Bashirova, Solnyshkina 2015). “National identity” is considered to have a constructed nature dependent on a historical context (Leerssen 2007; Ehala & Zabrodskaja 2014). The ethnonym “Tatar” has been a complex and ambiguous lexical item in the history of Tatars and Russians, and its semantic structure altered in different historical periods. At present the word has become the focus of social and political disputes in the context of revising the political status of RT and the position of the Tatar language. The analysis sums up the results of the on-going free associative experiment conducted with students of Kazan Federal University and Kazan State Conservatoire. The 230 respondents, aged from 20 to 30, have been asked to write up to three word reactions to the word stimulus “Tatar”. The overall number of responses has been 430. The results are analysed for the four groups of respondents: 1) Tatars residents of RT, 2) Tatars non-residents of RT, 3) non-Tatars residents of RT, 4) non-Tatars non-residents of RT. The research aims to explore 1) connotations of the ethnonym “Tatar” (positive, negative, unmarked) for the 4 groups; 2) ethnic boundary markers (language, religion, food, physical appearance; etc) that constitute and prevail in the construction of the Tatar identity image by the 4 experiment groups; 3) semiotic structure of the concept “Tatar” with its nuclear and peripheral components. The results are being processed now and will be discussed in detailed during the presentation.
Lubna Bassam, Rovira i Virgili University The sociolinguistics of the Lebanese society: implications for national identity Lebanon is a diverse multilingual country, a unique mixture of local and international languages and cultures. It has always been known for its multiculturalism, and multilingualism has thus shaped the language use of most Lebanese people. In particular, code-switching has become one of the most distinctive features of Lebanese society. Most people probably know very little about the young people’s world of communication technologies and that it is but an echo of the interaction of several sociolinguistic factors that shape their different identities. This study investigates gendered language in terms of social class in 1680 SMS code-switching messages of 58 undergraduates: 34 women and 24 men from different Lebanese universities. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were conducted; a questionnaire and an interview were administered. The findings show that code-switching is used differently by students from different social classes, and that gender and social class interact together in a very significant way. Even within a single social class group, there are gendered language distinctions. Differences have been also found in the frequency of switches in code-switching messages, and in the percentage of languages in code-switching messages as well as those with no code-switching. The results also reveal that there is certainly no consistency in the code-switching of these students with regard to social class, and that different variables are intertwined to constitute a unique sociolinguistic phenomenon. Last but not least, the findings have been found to be in consistent with those of Labov; this study might thus be extending Labov’s finding into new fields. This study tackles many novel areas of research. It could be the only sociolinguistic study that deals with the overlap between gender and social class in SMS messages. I have not come across any study that deals with the correlation between written code-switching and social class, neither within CMC nor SMS messages.
Dominik Baumgarten, Leuphana University Lüneburg “The Greatest Show on Earth” – Historical Advertising Language Change on the Example of “Barnum’s American Museum” and “The Greatest Showman” This talk aims to focus on the history of language and modality of circus advertising from the 1850s until today, using examples of advertisements for the original Barnum’s American Museum and its adaptations. In 1850 mainly posters were used to advertise the Barnum US tour with Swedish singer Jenny Lind. Text-image-compositions (posters, flyers, caricatures) were used to draw attention utilizing typical stylistics from the semiotic word and image field ‘circus’ (Bouissac: 2010). Emphasis was put on imagery in order to augment oral delivery across language areas (Europe, North America). Print advertisements for the later Barnum Circus remained in the rhetoric style of classic announcement posters for more than a century, while changing their language and imagery continuously (Hagner: 1959), which is shown based on a selection of posters from that period. In addition, print and newspaper outtakes demonstrate the creation of a linguistic sub-genre around the advertisement of the circus (Borbé: 1981). 1970’s Broadway musical Barnum was advertised with print, radio and TV commercials mainly featuring outtakes of the upcoming show. The 2017 biographic film-musical The Greatest Showman retells the history of the Barnum Circus using contemporary media methods. The advertising strategy does no longer rely on print advertisements, but mainly focusses on digital online media such as webpages, social media platforms (including a dance tutorial on YouTube) to excite the discourse (Baumgarten: 2013). References Baumgarten, Dominik (2013): Ästhetische Transfers zwischen Literatur und Werbung. Marburg: Tectum. Borbé, Tasso: „Zur funktionalen Typologie des Plakats“. In: Bentele, Günter (ed.) (1981): Semiotik und Massenmedien. München: Ölschläger. Bouissac, Paul (2010): Semiotics at the Circus. Berlin: De Gruyter. Hagner, Annemarie: „Plakat“. In: Seling, Hartmut (ed.) (1959): Jugendstil. Der Weg ins 20. Jahrhundert. Heidelberg: Keysersche.
Karen V. Beaman, Queen Mary University of London, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen “Feeling Swabian”: the influence of orientation and mobility on language change Identity construction and mobility have been shown to influence dialect performance and play a critical role in language change (Blommaert 2016, Britain 2016, Coupland 2001, Johnstone, 2011). Recent research points to the role of 'dialect identity’ – the “positioning as a user or nonuser of the local dialect” (Johnstone 2016:51) – and ‘place-identity’ – the use of local/regional dialect forms in innovative and strategic ways Coupland (2001) – as pivotal factors in dialect usage. This paper presents the preliminary results of a combined panel and trend study with 40 Swabian speakers from two communities: the urban center of Stuttgart and the semi-rural towns surrounding Schwäbisch Gmünd. What does it mean to be a speaker of Swabian? In the words of one, “a real Swabian is simply someone who feels Swabian.” Analysis of ten linguistic variables, five phonological and five morphosyntactic, provide a rich palette for speakers to index different dialect identities. Indices of Swabian orientation and mobility have been developed to show how local identity and residential and workplace mobility influence speakers’ choice of dialect variants. The results show, over time, speakers with high Swabian orientation retain more dialect variants, while those with high mobility lose more variants, a finding that is particularly prominent across gender roles. This leads to the question on how gender is shaped in German society, and what ideological associations with regard to gender roles might be in play as speakers construct social meaning through dialect usage. The findings from this research offer new understandings in dialect retention/attrition and show how “feeling Swabian” and a sense of place play a vital role in our understanding of language change. References: Blommaert, J. 2016. From Mobility to Complexity in Sociolinguistic Theory and Method. In Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates. 1-25. Britain, D. 2016. Sedentarism and nomadism in the sociolinguistics of dialect. Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates. 217-241. Coupland, N. 2001. Dialect Stylization and Radio Talk. Language in Society, 30(3):345-375. Johnstone, B. 2011. Language and place. The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics, ed. by Walt Wolfram and Raj Mesthrie. 203-217.
Réka Benczes, Levente Székely, Corvinus University of Budapest Ageing and stereotypes in Hungarian: Talking about an age-old issue How do we think about older people and how do we view them? According to social psychology (see e.g. Fiske 2002), social groups – including older people – are understood through stereotypes. Stereotypes reflect expectations and beliefs about people who are perceived as non-members of our own group, and thus can be powerful, as they also influence our actions toward others. Thus, the concept of “older adult” is a more general, superordinate-level category, which is composed of several subcategories of different types of older adults, each with distinctive physical and behavioural characteristics (Brewer et al. 1981). Nevertheless, these stereotypes – and the categories associated with them – might be in flux. There is an increasing volume of social discourse in developed countries on how the baby boomer generation is redefining what it means to be “old” – and accordingly the stereotypes associated with it (Kalache 2012). However, to what degree does language reflect this reconceptualization? Previous research on Australian English (Benczes et al. 2017, 2018 in press) has already indicated that the labels that Australian English uses for the category of “old people” are changing. In line with this research, we investigated what associations people have for various labels in Hungarian for “old person”, namely idős, szenior, nyugdíjas and öreg. We conducted a nationwide, representative survey in December 2017 (n=2,000); the data analysis is still in progress. A full account of the results will be presented at ICS2. We hypothesized that the labels for “old person” are used with different meanings – especially the relatively recent borrowing szenior, which we expected to evoke positive associations, as opposed to the other three labels. If this hypothesis is justified, then it can be assumed that the expressions are labels for various subcategories of “old people” and a redefinition of ageing is taking place in Hungarian. References Benczes, Réka, Keith Allan, Kate Burridge and Farzad Sharifian. 2018 (in press). Old age revolution in Australian English: Rethinking a taboo concept. In: Andrea Pizarro (ed.), Cognitive Perspectives on Linguistic Taboo. Berlin & New York: Mouton. Benczes, Réka, Kate Burridge, Farzad Sharifian and Keith Allan. 2017. Ageing and cognitive linguistics: What naming practices can reveal about underlying cultural conceptualisations. In: Farzad Sharifian (ed.), Advances in Cultural Linguistics. New York: Springer, 607–24. Brewer, Marilynn B., Valerie Dull and Layton Lui. 1981. Perceptions of the elderly: Stereotypes as prototypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 41: 656–70. Fiske, S.T., A.J.C. Cuddy, P.S. Glick and J. Xu. 2002. A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82: 878–902. Kalache, Alexandre. 2012. How the baby boomers are reinventing old age. The Huffington Post. 4 April 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-alexandre-kalache/how-the-baby-boomersare-_b_1403431.html
Martin Beneš, Czech Academy of Sciences Disagreement between Experts and the General Public in the Context of the Czech Language Consulting Service The paper deals with how clients of the Language Consulting Service (LCS) disagree with the expert linguists’ suggested solutions to their questions about language. The LCS is operated by the Czech Language Institute of the CAS (for a more detailed description of this service, see Uhlířová, 1998; for the most recent information, see ). The analysed data consist of recordings of telephone interactions in Czech between clients and employees of the LCS (including myself), stored in an ever-growing linguistically tagged database. The analysis focuses on three aspects: (1) the type of linguistic phenomenon being disagreed upon (i.e., orthography, morphology, syntax etc.), (2) the manner, in which this disagreement is expressed (e.g., direct vs indirect, polite vs impolite etc.) and (3) the enquirers’ motivation and argumentation for this disagreement. After summarizing relevant findings, the paper exemplifies each of these aspects with two relevant extracts from the recorded interaction (or its transcriptions translated into English, and possibly its corresponding soundtracks in Czech). The purpose of the paper is to complement the recent general (and rather theoretical) description of LCS interactions based on Language Management Theory (see Beneš et al., in print) with a thorough, up-to-date empirical inquiry, aimed, as a first step, at the enquirers’ disagreement (cf. also Kopecký, 2017), and therefore to reveal some aspects of their language attitudes/ideologies. References BENEŠ, M. – PROŠEK, M. – SMEJKALOVÁ, K. – ŠTĚPÁNOVÁ, V. (in print): Interaction between language users and a language consulting center: challenges for Language Management Theory research. In: J. Nekvapil – L. Fairbrother – M. Sloboda (eds.), Language Management Approach: Special Focus on Research Methodology. New York, NY, et al.: Peter Lang, s. 119– 140. KOPECKÝ, J. (2017): Divergent interests and argumentation in Czech language consulting centre interactions. Paper presented at Fifth International Language Management Symposium: Interests and Power in Language Management. Regensburg, September 14, 2017. UHLÍŘOVÁ, L. (1998): Linguists vs the public: an electronic database of letters to the language consulting service as a source of sociolinguistic information. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 5(3), s. 262–268.
Katia Berbar, University of Tizi Ouzou The Linguistic Landscape in Algeria The linguistic landscape in Algeria is characterized by the coexistence of several language varieties: Classical Arabic vector of Islam, Modern Standard Arabic the official state language, Algerian Arabic with its local forms spoken by the majority of the population, Berber or Tamazight with its regional dialects (Kabyle, Chaoui, Mozabite, Targui…etc.) recently recognized as Algeria’s second national and official language, French a colonial language, and lately English. The kaleidoscopic linguistic scene in Algeria is the product of historical events as well as geographical and ethnic diversity, and offers a rich panorama in terms of multilingualism. The aim of the present contribution is to provide an overview of the current language profile in Algeria, discuss the language policy adopted by the Algerian government since independence in 1962, and shed light on the real status and function of language varieties in the Algerian society.
Gilles Berger, Zarina Ahmad-Berger, La Maison de Ste. Claire, Australia Digital and multimodal learning: “Technologie de l’information et de la communication dans l’éducation (Ticéitude)” This paper aims to demonstrate the implementation of a hybrid approach for learning French as a second language, developed in synergy with the Information and Communication Technologies for Education (ICTC), via “Technologie de l’information et de la communication dans l’éducation” or “Ticéitude”. The fast development in digital technologies has resulted in a plenitude of innovative approaches in education which enhances the importance of providing high quality learning materials, based on a solid methodology. Our model,“Ticéitude”, is aimed towards a humanistic approach of learning in the paradigm of “apprenance”, creating links in a rich and diversified network. It is based on a socio-constructivist model that encourages collaborative learning; thus reinforcing the motivation and autonomy of learners. In this instance, the model is based on the Australian context following the different curriculum in the various states and territory of this country. hybrid approach has been put in place to create accelerated learning, based on the process of self progression that targets the development of autonomy in the learner and for selfmotivation, while also encouraging the development of an autotelic personality. Furthermore, in today’s world, we live in a cognitive society of networking when one can learn whenever or wherever one wants. Hence, the notion of “teacher” is evolving as we focus more about coaching than teaching. The platform which we created, allows individual learning with the guidance of the coach (teacher) who at the same time participates in the network of a “group focused social learning”. The next stage for “Ticéitude” is to develop networking for collaborative learning within a coherent group (fellowship) and also a continual metacognition (cognition about cognition) of this multimodal approach. “Ticéitude” involves the utilisation of new technologies but with a humanistic approach; so those tools are used effectively in a sustainable environment aimed to develop French learning.
Gunnar Bergh, Sölve Ohlander, University of Gothenburg Football language in the age of superdiversity This paper deals with football language, or football-related communication, here mainly considered as a specific conceptual or semantic sphere, shared by the global football community. Sociolinguistically, football language in its various realizations, or registers (informal–formal, oral–written, etc.), can be seen as making up a special part, or resource, of a person’s linguistic repertoire, independent of more conventional sociolinguistic variables (Blommaert & Rampton 2016). As a field of study, it can be characterized as basically under-researched, although offering a wealth of material not only for research into its lexical, grammatical and other properties, but also for studies related to superdiverse social contexts. While not based on a specific corpus or set of data, the study provides a discussion, primarily from a migrant perspective, of the role of football language as a unifying link between different categories of spectators with a variety of first languages. In particular, the emphasis is on spoken communication, eclectically collected, in informal settings where English serves as a lingua franca. Football and football language can be seen as cutting across a range of barriers related to language, ethnicity and culture (Giulianotti 1999). Special attention is drawn to the parallelism between the early social history of British football, including its spread to other parts of the world, and the potential of today’s football and football language to bridge sociocultural and linguistic gaps, promoting integration between people in superdiverse environments in Britain and elsewhere. Thus, the “imagined community” (Anderson 1983) of people with an interest in football may transcend societal divisions, creating a sense of shared identity, especially pronounced at club level; in this, football language is instrumental. Wherever football has a long tradition as a mass culture, the game’s role in providing opportunities for communicative interaction, even among strangers, is readily apparent. In such interaction, even rudimentary familiarity with English football language may contribute to a sense of community, despite significant differences in other respects. In countries with other first languages, corresponding processes may be expected to be at work. References Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities, London: Verso. Blommaert, J. & Rampton, B. 2016. “Language and superdiversity”. In Arnaut et al. (eds) Language and Superdiversity, London: Routledge, 21–48. Giulianotti, R. 1999. Football: A Sociology of the Global Game, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Anne-Marie Beukes, University of Johannesburg Reflections on the good offices of translation as social practice in South Africa Translation as social practice in South Africa has recently been underestimated as a tool of empowerment and language development. Translation is widely recognised to facilitate language innovation such as lexical modernisation and language standardisation. Selecting and using a language(s) as target language(s) in translation processes arguably result in translation acting as a significant developmental and intellectualisation tool for minority languages in particular in socalled fragile states, where social divisions and low education levels abound. Kaplan (2012) argues that governments of such states should invest more in translation to maximize the ability of their populations to acquire knowledge with a view to increasing education levels and productivity. It is against this backdrop that this paper will attempt to demonstrate how ‘the good offices of translation’ may assist in the much-needed expansion of the socio-cultural domains of South Africa’s indigenous official languages. Drawing on the example of Afrikaans translators’ activist role in the early 20th century, I wish to argue that translation in contemporary, democratic South Africa should once again be utilised as a key strategy for an accelerated modernisation of its official indigenous languages. Translators actively assisted in developing and modernising the Afrikaans vernacular and expanding its socio-cultural domains in the early 20th century. As a result, the ethno-linguistic vitality of the speakers of this vernacular was boosted against all odds and a strong culture of translation established in that language over just more than half a century. I wish to argue that South Africa should, among other matters, address the information inequality in its new democracy and its lack of agency accountability by building a culture of translation. References Kaplan, S. 2012. Do Language Policies Contribute to Poverty and Underdevelopment? In Policy Innovations, Carnegie Council, 25 July 2012. http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/commentary/data/000242#.UBkTXj-lI-k.twitter (Accessed 1 August 2012).
Rahel Beyer, Institute for the German Language Mobility as a chance for a minority language: The case of German-speaking Lorraine Language-historically, the eastern part of the French region Lorraine has germanophone roots. Despite consistent measures of frenchification (especially after the Second World War) and a general cessation of intergenerational transfer, there are still speakers of germanophone varieties – even in younger generations. Their linguistic repertoire and competences have fundamentally changed though. Whereas in earlier periods, Standard German was an obvious part of the communicative framework and the written variety as a matter of course, today its status in the community is unclear. The language of prestige, education and in public life now is exclusively French. German is a less and less popular foreign language, however, the standard language of the nearby neighbour and genetically close to the dialect. This paper presents a project that documents and analyses the spectrum of the spoken language between (close to) the German standard and (Moselle-Franconian and RhineFranconian) dialect in German-speaking Lorraine for the first time in the history of research. Currently, language recordings are made with standardised procedures: Next to translation exercises (into the local dialect) and reading tests (in Standard German) also free speech is recorded in interviews on language biographies (in Standard German) and in conversation amongst friends (dialect/French). Focusing on Standard German speech, one can observe that the surveyed speakers show characteristic differences concerning the degree of interferences and the respective substrate (local dialect or French). Central research questions are thus: Which sociobiographical background variables play which role in the development of the competences in (near) Standard German? To what extent do extra-linguistic circumstances correlate with the character of the realised speech? First results point to the linguistic competence of a speaker’s partner along with the perception of the national border as operational limit as influencing factors.
Jessica Birnie-Smith, Monash University Chronotopic Identities: The Chinese Indonesian Context In the current paper, I examine how ethnic Chinese Indonesian youth negotiate identities in interaction. Language and identity practice in Indonesia is complex and constantly evolving. On the one hand, the state propagates the notion of a unified national identity that is considered distinct from the many localised ethnic identities. On the other, the reality of everyday communications throughout the archipelago suggest that hybrid identities and codemixing are increasingly common (Goebel, 2015). I argue that Blommaert and De Fina’s (2016) chronotopic frame theory can be used to understand how ethnic Chinese Indonesian individuals navigate these language ideologies and construct complex and chronotopically conditioned identities in interaction. Blommaert and De Fina (2016, p. 5) state that when individuals enter a speech environment, they are presented with one or more sets of expectations and attributions (known as chronotopic frames) which include particular identities and patterns of behaviour. Participants in interaction may choose to respond to these frames by converging towards the expected behaviours and identities or diverging from them. The data analysis showed that there is often more than one chronotopic frame present in interaction. Bloomaert and De Fina (2016, p. 16) state that chronotopic frames need to be constantly balanced against each other. Speakers can attempt to balance these overlapping frames by constructing responses which cater to the requirements of each chronotopic frame. Alternatively, speakers can choose to respond to one or more chronotopic frames and ignore the others. I explain strategies for balancing chronotopic frame responses including the incorporation of Chinese discourse markers into Indonesian language talk. I argue that the reason why individuals choose to respond to one or more chronotopic frames and not others is influenced by their personal sense of identity. References Blommaert, J., & De Fina, A. (2016). Chronotopic identities: On The Timespace Organisation of Who We Are. In Ikizoglu, D.; Wegner, J. and De Fina, A. (Eds.), Diversity and Superdiversity: Sociocultural Linguistic Perspectives. Georgetown University Press: Washington Goebel, Z. (2015). Language and Superdiversity: Indonesians Knowledging at Home and Abroad. Oxford University Press.
Hayden Blain, Tim McNamara, Chloé Diskin, University of Melbourne Repair in interaction, repair in society: identity work among lesbian Chinese migrants Many gay Chinese women, both in China and abroad, must confront the conflict between samesex desire and heteronormative social expectations to marry and bear children to a man. This paper explores how gay Chinese women living in Melbourne, Australia, confront this conflict in interaction. The paper is based on a linguistic ethnography which consists of participant observation and unstructured interviews with gay Chinese women living in Melbourne. All participants have expertise and affiliation with both (Mandarin) Chinese and English. The data collected includes 20 hours of audio recordings of observed interactions and interviews. The data is analysed through a combination of conversation analysis, with particular attention paid to the use of repair, and poststructuralist discourse analysis. This mixed micro and macro analysis sheds light on what linguistic and interactional techniques are used by some gay Chinese women to manage and negotiate identities that are subject to oppressive discourse, particularly the discourse of Chinese heteronormativity. The main argument of this paper is that lesbian Chinese migrants, as exemplars of individuals subject to intersecting oppressive discourses, have interactional and linguistic resources available to them to manage these discourses in their interactions. In this paper, the technique discussed in detail is that of repair in Mandarin Chinese interaction. It is argued that repair in the micro-social field of interaction has the potential to influence the macro-social field of discourse (as understood by post-structuralists), thus reshaping the discourse of Chinese heteronormativity these women are subject to, and in so doing, producing the space for different subjectivities.
Tetiana Bondar, Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National University Investigation of the contents of the concept ДОРОГА / ROAD / WEG basing on free associative experiment The concept ROAD is one of the oldest linguocultural concepts. It exists and has been actively interpreted in the different cultures regardless of a stage of their historical development, geographical position or a type of society. Nowadays associative experiment is widely used for investigation of the contents of concepts since language gives the most natural access to a person’s mind. Through linguistic units a researcher can understand mechanisms of human thinking, realizing the surrounding world and storing information. In our research we aim at studying peculiarities of contents of the concept ДОРОГА / ROAD / WEG in Ukrainian, Russian, British and German linguocultures. To achieve our goal we conducted a free associative experiment with 160 respondents: 40 Ukrainians, 40 Russians, 40 Britons and 40 Germans. We determine invariant and linguospecific components in the structures of associative fields ‘дорога’, ‘шлях’ (Ukrainian part of experiment), ‘дорога’, ‘путь’ (Russian part of experiment), ‘road’, ‘way’ (English part of experiment), ‘Weg’ and ‘Bahn’ (German part of experiment). Word-responses were grouped into semantic groups in each of the four languages. Apart from three common groups (‘a hard surface built for vehicles to travel on’, ‘process of travelling, a trip’ and ‘life, a way of living’) in the four languages we singled out specific associations which were allocated to separate unique groups. Thus, in a German part of the experiment we got a unique group ‘railway’ – these are responses on the stimulus Bahn. It means that the lexeme Bahn has narrowed its references in modern German to the meaning ‘railway’. The rest of the lexeme meanings fixed in dictionaries stay in the background for native speakers. Unique associations were obtained as well in Ukrainian, Russian and English parts of the experiments. Thus, the differences which were detected in the structures of associative fields serve as evidence of specific perception of the world by representatives of Ukrainian, Russian, German, English and German linguocultures.
Pau Bori, University of Belgrade Neoliberalism in Catalan Language Textbooks: A Critical Analysis The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of neoliberalism on one of the most important cultural products in the process of teaching and learning a foreign/second language, the language textbook. In this study, neoliberalism, the current phase of capitalism, is understood as the ruling global political economic paradigm and the dominant ideology of the last four decades, and also as the rationality that shapes people’s behavior in western societies and beyond. Several studies have recently shown how neoliberalism has penetrated in the content of English Language Teaching (ELT) Textbooks. This paper aims to contribute to this growing body of literature, critically analyzing the content of language textbooks of a non-global language, without international pretensions, such as the Catalan language. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, this paper examines how neoliberalism has filtered into current Catalan textbooks. The results suggest that Catalan textbooks, treated as discursive objects, align with the main tenets of neoliberalism since they embody many neoliberal practices and values such as individualism, consumerism, entrepreneurship, flexibility and self-care. Furthermore, textbooks emphasize upper-middle class lifestyles and create an idealized representation of the reality where everybody lives a happy, carefree life. Accordingly, Catalan langue materials prioritize and promote a neoliberal world-view very similar to the one identified in ELT textbooks. The paper concludes with a call to teachers and the rest of the educational community to become aware of the neoliberal nature of language textbooks and to take measures to challenge the growing neoliberal common sense in language teaching and learning.
Krzysztof E. Borowski, University of Kansas Othering as a Social Practice in Polish-Silesian Online Discussion Forums The goal of this paper is to analyze discourses of othering in online discussions between selfidentified Poles and Silesians in contemporary Poland. While the issue of Silesian minority has been given much attention in recent years, studies about online constructions of Silesian (and Polish) identities are scarce. Drawing from the ideas of iconization (Irvine & Gal, 2000) and stylization (Coupland, 2001), I use selected examples from a corpus of over 1,000 online comments to examine how discussants engage in what I call sociolinguistic approximation, that is, a subjective projection of identity features onto interlocutors through linguistic means. In this process, commenters (1) introduce stable associations between their interlocutors and specific varieties, and (2) activate these associations by incorporating linguistic elements from outside varieties (German, Russian, Ukrainian). Further, language ideologies are strategically interwoven with prestige projections as Poles’ claimed Easternness and Silesians’ claimed pro-Germanness are emphasized in how these two groups portray themselves and each other. My analysis shows that these sociolinguistic strategies are employed by both Polish and Silesian commenters in order to render their interlocutors distant, distinct, and foreign, effectively producing them as Others. The pervasiveness of these constructions suggests that othering in the discussions analyzed becomes a social practice, producing stable and predictable representations of Poles and Silesians that play a major role in public discourses about the former (“Polnische Wirtschaft”) and the latter (“fifth column”). References Coupland, N. (2001). Dialect Stylization in Radio Talk. Language in Society, 30(3), 345–375. Irvine, J. T., & Gal, S. (2000). Language Ideology and Linguistic Differention. In P. V. Kroskrity (Ed.), Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities (pp. 35–84). Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
Natalia Borza, Pázmány Péter Catholic University Shall I call you ze? Vox populi on a gender-diverse neopronoun Following American precedents (University of Tennessee, University of Canada), it was the Oxford University’s Students Union (OUSU) which first promoted the use of gender-inclusive pronouns in European academic life to avoid gender-binarism. OUSU finds it supportive if students declare their chosen pronouns by which they wish to be addressed at meetings (he, she or ze). Public attention turned to the birth of this new pronoun. The present project aims to explore the social acceptance of the newly appearing gender-neutral neologism by mapping public attitude towards the idea of intentionally introducing a neopronoun (ze) in the English language for the sake of celebrating gender diversity. The discourse plane investigated in the research was comments given to online newspaper articles. The genre of comments, where immediate, typically brief and anonymous reactions are posted to an issue, provides insights into the opinions and feelings of the general public. A near-thousand comments displayed on the websites of six online British newspapers (three compact, former broadsheets and three tabloids) during a one-year timespan (December 2016 – December 2017) were analysed qualitatively. The relevant comments were categorised along three dimensions by applying the constant comparative method: argumentation, emotion and evaluation. Arguments on either discourse position were studied, hidden premises were uncovered. Emotions were classified with the aim of determining prevalent sentiments. The themes of evaluations were identified and grouped. The results of the exploratory study reveal that there is a notable imbalance in the voicing of opinions: the promotion of the gender-neutral English pronoun is markedly lacking. The findings of the threefold analysis indicate that the voice of the people does not consider pronoun-binarism as a sign of excluding or marginalizing gender-diverse people; however, the new pronoun tends to excite shock and refusal in the public.
Rino Bosso, University of Vienna Exploring the use of the verb borrow in Computer-Mediated English as a Lingua Franca. Migrating to new countries to find work, better living conditions, or to simply study abroad are but a few examples of the circumstances under which English as a Lingua Franca users come into face to face contact. However, the Internet has contributed to globalization processes and facilitated the formation of new multicultural communities, including hybrid communities (HCs) ‘consisting of people who interact together socially using both online and offline methods of communication’ (Gaved and Mulholland, 2005: 2). As pointed out by Seidlhofer, we are witnessing ‘an age of rapid change, mostly due to the ever-increasing pace of technological developments’ (Seidlhofer, 2011: 82). Not only has the Internet changed the way we relate to others, it also ‘affect[s] meaning by changing the vocabulary we use to talk about everyday actions’ (Jones and Hafner, 2012: 6). In my longitudinal study, I focus on an HC of international students living in the same student dorm in Vienna. In the computer-mediated speech acts they produced on their private Facebook group several nonconformities can be observed that are nevertheless appropriate to the specific context in which they are put to communicative use. With particular reference to the speech acts of request, it can be appreciated how the physical proximity between my informants offers the conditions for using the relational antonyms borrow and lend. In the interactions under investigation, borrow often appears to replace lend in computer-mediated utterances produced by non-native speakers of English. This paper aims at discussing the reasons which might have given rise to this nonconformity in intercultural communication via ELF, while also embedding this phenomenon in the wider framework of language variation and even possible language change: is lend undergoing the process of becoming an obsolete verb? References Gaved, Mark & Mulholland, Paul. 2005. Grassroots Initiated Networked Communities: A study of hybrid physical/virtual communities, in System Sciences, 2005. HICSS '05. Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Jones, Rodney H. and Hafner, Christoph A. 2012. Understanding Digital Literacies: A practical introduction. London and New York: Routledge. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2011. Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Katrina Boutwell, SIL International Mungong Language Revitalization Activities and their Impact This paper examines some factors of revitalization of Mungong in a complex multilingual situation. For more than ten years, the Mungong language community in the Northwest Region of Cameroon has been conducting revitalization activities to encourage greater use of the language. Here we explore how those activities are impacting and strengthening the intergenerational transmission of that language on the EGIDS (Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale) (Lewis and Simons 2010, 2016). Mungong provides a unique situation for examining language maintenance as a single village community of 1500 speakers. Mungong was previously an unclassified language (Grimes 2000), but is now classified as a dialect of Nchane [ncr], a Bantoid language (Raymond Gordon G., Jr. 2005). However, the Mungong people do not view themselves as Nchane speakers, even though they find their historical origins with Nchane as well as Noone. A 2001 survey of the area showed Mungong having strong vitality, as the language was used in the home, traditional religious ceremonies, for public announcements and among peers. Within churches, Cameroon Pidgin English and/or English was used for Bible readings and sermons, followed by limited translation. Additionally, some Mungong songs are sung. In school, children are taught in English, while use of the local language and Cameroon Pidgin English is discouraged. (Brye and Brye 2001) Since revitalization activities began in 2004 among the Beboid languages near the town of Misaje, Mungong chose to start its own activities and has shown strong motivation in revitalizing their language. This paper will review the impact of these activities on strengthening the intergenerational transmission and moving them up the EGIDS from level 6b or 6a (threatened or vigorous) to 5 (written). References Brye, Edward, and Elisabeth Brye. 2001. “Rapid Appraisal and Intelligibility Testing Surveys of the Eastern Beboid Group of Languages.” Yaoundé, Cameroon: SIL. http://www.sil.org/silesr/2002/019/SILESR2002-019.htm. Grimes, Barbara, ed. 2000. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fourteenth Edition. 14th ed. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Lewis, M. Paul, and Gary F. Simons. 2010. “Assessing Endangerment: Expanding Fishman’s GIDS.” Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 55 (2):103–120. 2016. “Sustaining Language Use: Perspectives on Community-Based Language Development.” Dallas, TX: SIL International. Preliminary Edition Available at Https://Www. Leanpub. Com/Sustaininglanguageuse. Raymond Gordon G., Jr., ed. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth Edition. 15th ed. Dallas, Texas: SIL International.
Anita Bright, Portland State University The Flinch, The Gasp, and The Eye-roll: Responses to Trigger Words Because each educator brings a complex history and identity, nested in temporal, and spatial, historical, and individual contexts, working in our multilingual and multicultural environment invites deep introspection as a means to identify areas of opportunity, limit, strength, and potential for growth (Motha, 2014; Varghese, Morgan, Johnston, & Johnston, 2005). Set in a graduate school of education in the Northwestern US, this descriptive case study explores the ways groups of teacher candidates navigated the sociolinguistic issues surrounding the use of particular terms or “trigger words.” Each of these trigger words, generated by members of the classroom community, carried a connotation of oppression, marginalization, power, or privilege, frequently in ways that were coded and known to some members of the community, while being unfamiliar to or seen as neutral by other members of the community. This study explores the generation of this list of “trigger words” on the first day of the course meeting, and the subsequent reactions to the use of these terms throughout the remainder of the class meetings. This study took place in a required teacher preparation course titled “Educating for Equity and Social Justice,” centered on “understanding of self and culturally sustainable pedagogy in relation to teaching and learning in a social and socio-historical context in PK-12 school settings” (Bright, 2017, p. 1). As such, in this paper I describe the ways in which our teacher candidates leverage critical race theory and feminist epistemologies to approach, examine, and stretch their understandings of the ways power structures (as related to language, identity, and culture) are layered into our educational structures writ large, and particularly in the word choices we make. Building from this, I describe the ways in which our teacher candidates connect their own professional practices to the structural and systemic contexts in which we work. References Bright, A. (2017). Course syllabus: Educating for Equity and Social Justice. Motha, S. (2014). Race, empire, and English language teaching: Creating responsible and ethical anti-racist practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Varghese, M., Morgan, B., Johnston, B., & Johnson, K. A. (2005). Theorizing language teacher identity: Three perspectives and beyond. Journal of language, Identity, and Education, 4(1), 21-44.
Gavin Brooks, Doshisha University The Importance of Vocabulary for Learners of English as an Additional Language English as an Additional Language (EAL) learners have been shown to struggle academically in English only learning environments (Coxhead & Boutorwick, 2016; Murphy & Unthiah, 2015). This phenomenon has far reaching consequences considering recent population changes brought about by mass migration and worldwide increases in EAL student numbers (Bunnell, 2014). EAL studies suggest that one reason for such performance discrepancies relates to EAL learners’ vocabulary knowledge often being significantly smaller than that of their L1 counterparts (Henriksen & Danelund, 2015). To overcome such challenges it is of primary importance to understand how a lack of vocabulary knowledge might influence EAL academic performance. Accordingly, we investigated the relationships between general academic ability, linguistic knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge amongst EAL students and their first language (L1) English counterparts. The investigation was conducted over a three-week period with 58 EAL learners and 23 L1 (English) counterparts at an international school in Japan. Based on a range of measures from recent EAL papers, we evaluate our subject population for: vocabulary knowledge (McLean, Kramer & Beglar, 2015); reading comprehension ((YARC) Melby-Lervag & Lervag, 2014); overall academic proficiency (C-test) Eckes & Grotjahn, 2006); and, linguistic proficiency (Bell Foundation, 2016). Results suggest that our EAL learners’ performance is lower than their L1 counterparts for all measures, with significant correlations between vocabulary knowledge and linguistic proficiency measures. These results mirror earlier EAL research and indicate that a focus on vocabulary is important for EAL students’ academic success. We will discuss the pedagogical implications of our findings in this light, and explain how data from the study discussed in this presentation will inform a larger-scale study to be conducted at a further 33 international schools in Japan.
Marie-Louise Brunner, Stefan Diemer, Trier University of Applied Sciences, Saarland University Analyzing the negotiation of communication problems resulting from medium, language, and cultural context in English as a Lingua Franca Skype conversations The paper analyzes potential communication problems in a corpus of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) conversations via Skype (CASE 2018). We focus on two different levels: issues related to the medium, and issues related to interaction itself, which are documented on the basis of examples. The medium Skype poses unique constraints that may lead to communicative issues, negatively influencing or even interrupting communication (e.g. time lags and echo, cf. also Tang & Isaacs 1993). Participants in CASE adapt to these issues with longer pauses, explicit repetition requests, rephrasing, or even conversation re-starts. On an interactional level, we focus on communicative issues with regard to language and content. Various studies (Björkmann 2009, Kaur 2016) have shown that ELF is an efficient resource in intercultural communication between speakers of different language backgrounds. It shows a high degree of interactional robustness (Firth 2009), facilitating largely unproblematic communication (Kaur 2016). Nevertheless, problematic instances do occur: The influence of the speakers’ native language may cause the communicative process to stall, for example when encountering gaps in lexical repertoires. Potential problems are addressed locally, e.g. through use of plurilingual or nonverbal resources, as well as discursively, e.g. through defining or let-it-pass strategies. On a content level, a potential issue is the treatment of unwelcome or problematic topics which often occur in the form of cultural stereotypes. This results in various evasive or explanatory strategies such as disalignment and topic shifts. By looking at both the medium and the interactional level, the paper aims at developing a more complete view of potentially problematic instances of communication in ELF Skype conversations. Refernces: Björkman, Beyza. 2009. From Code to Discourse in Spoken ELF. English as a lingua franca: studies and findings, ed. by Anna Mauranen & Elina Ranta, 225-251. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press. CASE. Forthcoming. Corpus of Academic Spoken English. Birkenfeld: Trier University of Applied Sciences & Saarbrücken: Saarland University. [http://umwelt-campus.de/case] (20 Oct 2017). Firth, Alan. 1996. The discursive accomplishment of normality. On ‘lingua franca’ English and conversation analysis. Journal of Pragmatics 26: 237–59. Firth, Alan. 2009. The lingua franca factor. Intercultural pragmatics 6(2): 147-170. Kaur, Jagdish. 2016. Intercultural misunderstanding revisited: Cultural difference as a (non) source of misunderstanding in ELF communication. The Cultural and Intercultural Dimensions of English as a Lingua Franca, ed. by Prue Holmes & Fred Dervin, eds. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. 134-156. Mauranen, Anna. 2012. Exploring ELF: Academic English shaped by non-native speakers. New York: Cambridge University Press. Spencer-Oatey, Helen. 2002. Managing rapport in talk: Using rapport sensitive incidents to explore the motivational concerns underlying the management of relations. Journal of Pragmatics 34(5): 529-545. Tang, John C. & Ellen Isaacs. 1993. Why do users like video? Studies of multimedia-supported collaboration. Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing 1. 163-196. .
Alberto Bruzos, Princeton University The discourse of ‘Spanish as an economic resource’ and the making of a language teaching industry in Spain Since the 1990s, a bloc formed by public institutions and private actors has actively promoted Spanish language as a coveted economic resource in the new global market (Del Valle, 2007). Within the same period, Spain has developed an important language teaching industry around the model of ‘language tourism’ (Bruzos, 2017). Through the critical analysis of institutional documents, promotional materials and public interventions about the value of Spanish and the Spanish language teaching industry, I will consider the relationship between the discursive and administrative apparatus commanded by the Instituto Cervantes and the processes of commodification of language (Duchêne & Heller, 2012) prevalent in the sector of Spanish language teaching. I will argue that the complexity of those processes, aimed at ensuring control of the Spanish linguistic market, call for an analysis that breaks down the notion of ‘commodification of language’ into interrelated techniques of branding/added value, reification/standardization, and monetization. Finally, I will discuss the impact of such processes on the subjectivities of Spanish language teachers and learners, as well as on the precarious and de-professionalized labor regime characteristic of language tourism (Stanley, 2016). References Bruzos, A. (2017). “De camareros a profesores” de ELE. Spanish in Context, 14(2), 230–249. Del Valle, J. (Ed.). (2007). La lengua, ¿patria común? Ideas e ideologías del español. Iberoamericana Vervuert. Heller, M., & Duchêne, A. (2012). Pride and profit: Changing discourses of languages, capital and nation-state. In A. Duchêne & M. Heller (Eds.), Language in late capitalism: Pride and profit (pp. 1–21). London: Routledge. Stanley, P. (2016). Economy class? Lived experiences and career trajectories of private-sector English-language-school teachers in Australia. In P. Haworth & C. Craig (Eds.), The career trajectories of English language teachers (pp. 187-199). Oxford: Symposium Books.
Dinah Callou, Carolina Serra, University of Rio de Janeiro On /r/-deletion in coda position: regional diversity in Brazilian Portuguese This paper focuses on the on-going /r/-deletion process, in final coda position (cantaØ ~ cantar ‘to sing’; maØ ~ mar ‘sea’; pioØ ~ pior ‘worse’; devagaØ ~ devagar ‘slow’), pointing out to the interplay of Dialectology and Sociolinguistics to variation and change analysis. Data are extracted from the corpus of the Linguistic Atlas of Brazil (ALiB) -- informal interviews with young and old speakers with two degrees of education from several cities of Northeast, Southeast and South regions of Brazil, the state capital in each region and some countryside towns -- and the analysis makes use of sociolinguistic methodology (Labov, 1994). Our hypotheses are that /r/-deletion is basically affected by three factors: (i) morphological class of the word, (ii) word length measured by the number of syllables (related to phonic salience principle); and (iii) regional origin of the speaker. The multivariate analysis confirms previous research with several different samples and the results, based on ALib’s data, show different trends in different regional dialects. The /r/deletion process occurs more often in verbs than in non-verbs, may be due to the fact that, in verbs, the syllable with r always receives lexical stress and the presence of the segment might be considered a redundant morphological feature. The phenomenon is at different stages in different varieties of Brazilian Portuguese and the assumption is that in Northeast region the process is quite advanced in comparison to Southern region. Summing up, we were able to confirm that, like all linguistic change, the overall process of /r/-loss involves stimuli and constraints, both from social and linguistic structure. Implementation of the rule is at different stages in BP and, therefore, the embedding of the process must necessarily be considered separately in each dialect. Reference LABOV, W. 1994. Principles of linguistic change. Internal factors. Cambridge, Blackwell.
Marina Čamber, University of Vienna Language use and code switching in bilingual Austro-Croatian families Well-integrated families with immigration background are generally bilingual. But their selfperception of language use may differ greatly from actual use, on which this paper will focus. The largest group of speakers with a different first language than German is the speaker group of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian in Austria (Statistik Austria 2017, online). Yet, there is only little research on their language use, even less on their self-perception and on code switching between B/C/S and German within adult speakers (Mikic 2017, Schlund 2006, Stanisavljević 2010, Zagoricnik 2014). There is no research on bilingual kindergarten children acquiring these languages simultaneously. I examine child and adult language of Austro-Croatian families at four data points over a period of 1.6 years at home in spontaneous interaction, in interviews and via tests from phonology, lexicon, grammar to discourse, i.e. with a mixed-method design, as devised for the Viennese INPUT project (Korecky-Kröll, Uzunkaya-Sharma, Czinglar & Dressler 2016a, b). The focus is on four families, half of high and half of low socioeconomic status. These parents completed their education in Austrian schools and speak German at mother tongue level. I will present results about differential language use (also according to domains) at home and tested language capacities in dependence of socioeconomic status (SES), analyzing spontaneous speech data and particularly code switching activities from home recordings. Especially the low SES families in this sample tend to switch more in child speech and childdirected (also adults in adult-directed) speech than high SES families. Different types of code switching, code mixing and tag switching (c.f. Poplack 1980) will be discussed and presented. The direction of switching has always been from Croatian to German only.
Marisa Campos, University of Lisbon Sociolinguistic analysis of micro-syntactic variation in Mozambican Portuguese The African varieties of Portuguese (AVP) developed in a multilingual context, involving language contact and a history of L2 acquisition of European Portuguese [EP] (Gonçalves 2012, 2013). Therefore, these varieties show substantial differences and greater variation in comparison to EP. Research on AVP has described and analyzed some of the variation found, but little attention has been given to the role of sociolinguistic factors. As a consequence, there is a tendency to overgeneralize the identified variation in the characterization of these varieties (Gonçalves 2013). I will analyze three cases of syntactic variation in Mozambican Portuguese (MP) and correlate their occurrence with sociolinguistic factors, namely education, socioeconomic background, and language contact (Milroy & Gordon 2003, Thomason 2010). This allows us to discuss how we should account for these differences within a theory of language variation and change and whether sociolinguistically driven features can be used to establish specific norms of MP (Gonçalves & Chimbutane 2015). Irrespective of whether variation is contact-driven or internal-driven, sociolinguistic factors appear to be relevant to determine whether certain features can be used to classify the variety as a whole (Hagemeijer 2016). The analysis is based on data drawn from a spoken corpus compiled through structured interviews with 34 consultants with a diversified sociolinguistic background (around 254 368 words). Our case-study relate to the complements of the verb: a) Double object constructions: “dar os meus filhos aquilo que eu não tive” -> ‘to give my children what I didn’t have’; b) Clitic placement in verbal cluster: “vou te pedir carro” -> ‘*I will you ask a car’; c) Differential human object marking with an inserted dative preposition: “conheci a ele no mês passado” -> ‘*I met to he last month’.
Diana M. J. Camps, University of Oslo Negotiating linguistic authority: A local spelling contest in Limburg, Netherlands This paper examines how local speakers engage with processes of language standardization for Limburgish, a regional language in the Netherlands. I analyze how the officially accepted spelling norms are negotiated, debated, contested, and appropriated by various types of social actors involved in a local spelling competition. From a historical perspective, the written medium has been closely tied to notions of legitimate knowledge and has become a crucial element in minority language movements. Legal recognition along with the promotion of a prescriptive standard is often used as a means to increase language status (Costa, De Korne, & Lane, 2018). In contrast to dominant state languages, contemporary standardization activities within regional and minority languages are largely transparent and raise new tensions with respect to language. In Limburg, different conceptualizations around spelling have brought to the fore competing ideologies of linguistic authority related to discourses of authentication and scientific linguistic expertise. By drawing on data collected through observation, audio/video recording, and (focus group) interviews, I show that throughout the spelling competition, the moderator encounters conflicts between these opposing discourses. The analysis reveals a complex dance of negotiation, in which the moderator, from moment to moment, orients towards different centers of authority. His overt commentary and more subtle metadiscursive strategies serve to reproduce a hierarchical linguistic order that ultimately upholds a standard language ideology. References Costa, J., De Korne, H., and Lane, P. (2018). Standardising minority languages: Reinventing peripheral languages in the 21st century. In Pia Lane, James Costa, and Haley De Korne (Eds.). Standardizing minority languages: Competing ideologies of authority and authenticity in the global periphery. New York: Routledge.
Mireia Canals-Botines, Núria Medina-Casanovas, University of Vic – Central University of Catalonia Songs and Narrative Structures in Storybooks for Young Learners This proposal is a research of UVic-UCC in collaboration with Eötvös Loránd. The investigation wants to highlight the importance of the use of stories accompanied by songs in teaching English as a foreign language according to Fonseca-Mora (2013) in a competency based curriculum. It intends to find out the narrative structures that are used in class in the form of stories and/or songs. These structures are based on Truby’s theory (2007) for narrative structures related to cinema and Lavandier’s definition (2003) of narrative structures in relation to literature. The study also makes a compilation of songs in a songbook classified according to topics used in Early Years and Primary Education schools both in Budapest and Vic. Moreover, the present research establishes the relevance of pupil’s gender construction roles in the narrative structures used in EFL teaching (Gooden and Gooden, 2001). In this sense, language interaction presentation and classs teaching is very important. In the present paper we show the results of the first part of the research done in six schools in Vic (Barcelona).
Isolda E. Carranza, National University of Córdoba, National Scientific and Technological Research Council (CONICET) Ways of knowing in ethnographic perspective: institutional receivers and unreliable communication This presentation builds on an interest in discursive practices in institutions and the contributions of ethnography to understanding them (Blommaert 2015, Maryns 2013, Jacobs & Slembrouck 2010) with the aim of exploring the problem of veracity, the reception of citizens’ claims, and insiders’ and outsiders’ ways of knowing. A multi-site ethnography in very different judicial settings allows for the observation of two kinds of speech events: interviews of witnesses during the preparatory stage of a trial and interviews of inmates who make special requests regarding the conditions of imprisonment. The institutional addressees’ interactional conduct does not give away their evaluation of the extent to which their interlocutors are being truthful. To an observer, claims seem to display verisimilitude and the routine character of the speech events precludes any indications to the contrary. However, in informal conversation with the researcher, two clerks disclose assumptions about the represented reality and their interlocutors’ sincerity, therefore, a contrasting picture emerges of the citizens’ claim and interests. Suspicion and disbelief are the norm in the clerks´ take on part of what they hear. This is in line with their expectations about specific social types and contexts, and constitutes a kind of expert knowledge acquired on the job and as part of institutional culture. The interested nature of any communicative behaviour involving conflict does not suffice to account for the usual perception of the non-institutional participant as untrustworthy. There is a mismatch between the official frame of contact communication and the backstage reception, which is grounded on the expert’s hunches and how typical the recounted events are. It is concluded that such expertise consists in resorting to sources of evidence that override clients’ statements, “professional listening” includes concealing the ongoing evaluation of the interlocutor’s credibility, and ethnography has the potential to enhance insights from discourse analysis.
Hadjer Chellia, University of the West of Scotland Revealing Complexity: French Language Use amongst Algerian Émigré Postgraduates in the United Kingdom The study explores the phenomenon of French language use in a migratory setting, and uses the case of Algerian international students in the UK. The linguistic history of Algeria reveals that French language has a high status among the Algerians ’verbal repertoires due to colonial reasons. This has triggered many language conflicts and many debates among policy makers, especially when it comes to its competitive status with English. In higher education, Algerian English students’ sociolinguistic profile is characterised by the use of French as a sign of prestige. What may leave room for debate is the effect of crossing borders towards the UK as a result of international mobility programmes, a transition which doomed to add more complexity and resulted slightly into their French language -being endangered and threated by a potential shift to English. The study employed multiple methods in which semi-structured interview is a primary source of data among six Ph.D. ethnically related students, and the main aim behind that is to explore their attitudes about French language and its use, targeting both their pre-migratory experience and current one. Web-based questionnaires were set up to explore further what emerged in semi-structured interviews.The six participants identified in interviews were further invited to focus group sessions based in an in-group interaction to discuss different topics using heritage languages. This latter was opted for as a means to observe their natural linguistic practices. The major trends of data highlighted two perceived sociolinguistic stances: students’ maintainers and shifters. The findings also detected a variety of factors that would contribute in refining the concept of language maintenance and shift among newly established émigré communities with short stay in the light of academic mobility. The results further revealed different factors behind the first embedded language choice and –importantly-a mismatch between students ‘perceptions and observed behaviors and that implies more complexity. The research is then largely relevant to international students’ experience of study abroad in terms of heritage languages use.
Neda Chepinchikj, University of Melbourne Using gaze in opening and closing sequences in Woody Allen’s cinematic discourse Gaze, as a crucial interactional feature in face-to-face talk-in-interactions, has a number of functions. One of them is the regulatory function, which is associated with the process of opening and closing sequences of talk-in-interaction. Although this function has been widely analysed in naturally-occurring interactions (e.g. Kendon, 1967; Rossano, 2013), there is a noticeable absence of such research into diegetic interactions, i.e. interactions between represented participants in films. Therefore, this paper investigates the use of gaze by represented participants in opening and closing sequences in dyadic diegetic interactions, i.e. diegetic interactions between two represented participants. The data come from a few film segments from several films by Woody Allen. The principal question is how gaze is used to open and close sequences of talk-ininteraction. The analytic tool is multimodal conversation analysis, which integrates the analysis of speech with other embodied interactional resources, such as gaze. Findings show that gaze plays a crucial role in opening new and closing ongoing sequences. Whereas in the former cases speakers usually direct gaze at their interlocutors, in the latter ones they almost invariably avert gaze from recipients, thus marking the imminent closing of a sequence. Nevertheless, it is important to conduct further, more extensive research into film data to gain more insight into this use of gaze.
Jan Chovanec, Masaryk University Euphemism as a non-proximal manipulation of discourse space: The case of blue-on-blue This presentation deals with the issue of euphemism from the perspective of the critical pragmatic theory of proximization. It argues that euphemism constitutes a specific instance of discourse space (DS) manipulation that increases the symbolic distance between the extralinguistic reality and its verbalization. While proximization theory (Cap 2013, 2016) is concerned with how a perceived threat is enhanced through the compression of DS along spatial, temporal and modal axes, I apply this model to show how the opposite process (i.e., distantiation) can be applied where the legitimacy of certain political actions could be compromised through the most direct (‘congruent’) representation of reality. The analysis documents how the expression ‘blue-on-blue’ has been used in the British media as a euphemistic synonym for ‘friendly fire’ during the time of the Iraq war. It maps how the expression achieves a conceptual transformation of the reality through a chain of several structural modifications that gradually remove any traces of agency by deleting the underlying semantic actors and processes. Each stage in the syntactic and lexical transformation of the congruent realization of this grammatical metaphor (Halliday 2014) gradually weakens the undesirable impact on the recipient. As a result, the phrase ‘blue-on-blue’ sanitizes a potentially painful event (cf. Allan and Burridge 2006, Chouliaraki 2007) by increasing the conceptual distance between the reality and its linguistic representation. References Allan, Keith and Kate Burridge (2006) Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language. Cambridge University Press. Cap, Piotr (2013) Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. John Benjamins. Cap, Piotr (2016) The Language of Fear: Communicating Threat in Public Discourse. Palgrave Pivot. Chouliaraki, Lilie, ed. (2007) The Soft Power of War. John Benjamins. Halliday, M.A.K. and Christian Matthiessen (2014) An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 3rd ed. Routledge.
Kamila Ciepiela, University of Łódź Discursive construction of agency and self-differentiation in blogs by subjects with Turner syndrome The paper aims to analyze “psychosocial practices” (Wetherell 2008) of females with Turner Syndrome (TS) when they share their stories about their health condition, treatment and everyday life in their blogs. Turner syndrome is a chromosomal disorder in which all or a portion of one of the X chromosomes is missing. Consequently, affected females exhibit growth failure and attain a final height that is shorter than average, and a premature ovarian failure which results in the failure to attain puberty, and eventually infertility. Other TS symptoms include: abnormalities of the eyes and ears, skeletal malformations, heart anomalies, and kidney abnormalities. Regular and primary TS treatment (usually imposed on individuals without their consent) involves hormonal therapies (growth hormone and estrogen therapies) whose aim is not only to improve a subject’s health and physical development but also to make it possible for TS females to lead full, productive lives (NORD 2012), and to become “truly” feminine. My discursive analysis of TS subject’s blogs is intended to show how TS subjects retain their agency in selecting and using discursive procedures through which they position themselves as same or different from the communities (gender in particular) to which they belong or aspire. At a more general level, the paper aims to present that language and style choices enable not only an instant renewal of a personal identity expression but also an agentive re-fashioning of social identity. References NORD (2012). Turner Syndrome. Available at: https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/turnersyndrome/ Wetherell, M. (2008). Subjectivity or psycho-discursive practices? Investigating complex intersectional identities. Subjectivity, 22, 73–81.
Luca Ciucci, James Cook University On the secret register of the Ebitoso dialect of Chamacoco (Zamucoan) Chamacoco is a Zamucoan language spoken by about 2000 people in northern Paraguay. It is divided into two dialects: Ebitoso (aka Ybytoso or Ɨbɨtoso) and Tomaraho. Ebitoso is spoken by the vast majority of Chamacoco speakers, who have been for a long time in contact with Paraguayan people, so that it has introduced many matter and pattern borrowings from Spanish (Ciucci 2016). By contrast, the Tomaraho have lived a longer period of isolation (Sequera 2006; Escobar 2007), so that their dialect is more conservative. Based on data from my fieldwork, I will analyse the main sociolinguistic dynamics affecting the use of Chamacoco, particulary Ebitoso, within Paraguayan society. On the one hand, Chamacoco can expose speakers to discrimination, so that the language is often kept secret, while, on the other hand, Chamacoco can be used in some situations as a secret language. Since in the Ebitoso dialect the introduction of Spanish borrowings has made some amount information potentially understandable to outsiders, the Ebitoso dialect has developed a secret register. In this presentation I will show how the Ebitoso secret register has contributed to the survival of archaic structures which have partly lost their original function. References Ciucci, Luca 2016. Inflectional morphology in the Zamucoan languages. Asunción: CEADUC. Escobar, Ticio 2007. The curse of Nemur. In search of the art, myth, and ritual of the Ishir. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Sequera, Guillermo 2006. Tomárâho. La resistencia anticipada. Asunción: CEADUC. 2 vols.
Tony Cripps, Richard Miles, Sean O’Connell. Nanzan University “Help me I’m drowning!”: Developing effective teacher-training workshops This paper examines the issue of providing support for English teachers in Japan who are struggling to teach within the New Course of Study framework drawn up by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). The presenters explicate how they crafted a series of intensive teacher-training workshops (funded by MEXT) which were designed to help improve in-service teacher training for junior high school and high school teachers. In-depth interviews were conducted with in-service English teachers (n=18) at junior high schools and senior high schools in Japan to ascertain their specific needs. The presenters will outline how they have provided pedagogical support for Japanese teachers of English through practical workshops which address the teachers’ immediate needs. Workshop topics covered so far include: ‘Motivation’, ‘Authentic material’, ‘Critical thinking’, ‘Intercultural communication skills for English teaching’, and ‘Utilising the homeroom class to teach English’. It is hoped that this presentation will be of interest to anyone engaged in language education and teacher training.
Anna Csernus, University of Bath Selection and use of grammar teaching techniques from a belief perspective Although a significant number of studies have been conducted on teachers’ beliefs about grammar teaching (e.g. Borg, 2011, Phipps & Borg, 2009), teachers’ selection and use of grammar teaching techniques still seems to be an under-explored area within teacher cognition research (Sanchez & Borg, 2014). This study set out to provide insights into the relationship between teachers’ beliefs about grammar teaching strategies and their grammar teaching practices, focusing on the bidirectional relationship between beliefs and practice. In order to shed light on this complex relationship a multiple case study of three experienced English language teachers, who work at a private language school in Southern England, was conducted. Background interviews, scenariobased interviews, lesson observations and stimulated-recall interviews were used for collecting data. The findings show that a) the teachers used a large variety of grammar teaching techniques, including techniques which have not featured in the research or practical literature to date, b) there is a complex and dynamic relationship between the teachers’ beliefs about pedagogical techniques in grammar teaching and their grammar teaching practices c) the belief-practice relationship can be influenced by a variety of external and internal influential factors. The findings carry implications for teacher cognition research, teacher education and professional development. References Borg, S. (2011). The impact of in-service teacher education on language teachers’ beliefs. System, 39, 370-380. Phipps, S. & Borg, S. (2009). Exploring tensions between teachers’ grammar teaching beliefs and practices. System, 37, 380-390. Sanchez, H. S. & Borg, S. (2014). Insights Into L2 teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge: A cognitive perspective on their grammar explanations. System, 44, 45-53.
Višnja Čičin-Šain, University of Oslo Dirtiness and Linguistic Purism: Situational Priming and Individual Sensitivity to Dirtiness Influencing Attitudes to Loanwords? A discursive analysis of a collection of Croatian sociolinguistic texts reveals that linguistic purism, reflected in the urge for the rejection of foreign elements, regularly exploits concepts such as “dirtying”, “contamination”, and “pollution”, and is conceptually related to national concerns (Thomas 1991) and in-group loyalty (Duschinsky, Schnall & Weiss 2016). Subscribing to the framework of the conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson [1980] 2003), the current research starts by examining the linguistic metaphors based on the concepts of cleanliness and dirtiness (cro. čistoća, prljavština, respectively) in the Croatian language-related discourses and goes a step further to test the psychological reality of A NON-NATIONAL LINGUISTIC ELEMENT IS DIRTYING LANGUAGE conceptual mapping. Sixty-four respondents assessed the acceptability of five groups of loanwords of different national-linguistic salience while being exposed to either a clean or a dirty keyboard. The results indicate that there are no significant effects of situational priming to dirtiness on the acceptability of loanwords. However, selfreported intolerance to dirtiness and nationality concerns exhibit a socially and linguistically significant stratification: the higher the cleanliness and nationality concerns, the lower the tolerance to the most targeted groups of loanwords: Anglicisms, Bosnisms, and Serbisms. This is consistent with the current sociolinguistic discourses where the word groups are regularly framed in terms of “pollution” and seen as a danger to the “socio-semiotic purity” of the Croatian language. References Duschinsky, R., Schnall, S., & Weiss, D. H. (Eds.) (2016). Purity and danger now: New perspectives. London: Routledge. Lakoff, G., & Johnson M. (2003). Metaphors we live by (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Thomas, G. (1991). Linguistic purism. New York: Longman.
Natalia Dankova, Université du Québec en Outaouais Definitions of love across languages. Voices of dictionaries This paper presents some results of a study analyzing definitions of different meanings of the word love in modern unilingual dictionaries (French, Italian, Spanish, English, German, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, etc.). Dictionary is not only a lexicographical work; it is a mirror of its time, society and culture. In our analysis we consider the weight of the culture, ideology and religion on definitions and hierarchy of the presented meanings, and the choices made by lexicographic teams regarding the meanings of love between two human beings and its physical aspects. Lexicographical approach is subject to ideological, moralistic and religious influences that manifest not only in the definitions of words included in a dictionary, but also in the examples, in the choice of first names in examples and illustrations that accompany some words (Cormier et alii, 2001, Mitterand, 2005, Pruvost, 2008, Frey, 2008). Polysemy of the word, multiple manifestations of love, its emotional and ideological charge cause hesitation in defining love. We present our findings dealing with organizing definitions, choosing examples, selecting phrases in various dictionaries, in particular, regarding the meanings of love between two human beings. References Cormier, M. et alii (2001). « À propos de la néobienséance dans les dictionnaires scolaires : les prénoms dans les exemples », in J.Pruvost: Les dictionnaires de la langue française, Paris, H.Champion, p. 139-168. Frey, C. (2008). « Description lexicographique et idéologies : jusqu’où s’engager? Retour sur Le français au Burundi » in C.Bavoux: Le français des dictionnaires : L'autre versant de la lexicographie française, De Boeck Duculot, p. 243-255. Pruvost, J. (2008). « Dictionnaire et culture(s) » in G.Dotoli & G.Papoff. Du sens des mots. Schena Editore / Alain Baudry & Cie Éditeur, Fasano /Paris, p. 23-51.
Truus De Wilde, Freie Universität Berlin Language Ideology in Language Classes: What Language Ideology do Teachers reproduce? Language classes could be an ideal environment to tackle standard language ideology, since the topic in language classes is never solely the foreign language but also language as such, bringing along themes as standard language, varieties and correctness. To conceptualize language as homogenous and invariable has unmistakably clear advantages in a language class, may however turn out to be a trap, when teachers accept only one variant and feel insecure to accept/explain equivalent forms (Milroy 2001, Topalović and Elspaß 2008). Thematizing important sociolinguistic questions could be done to the advantage of the language learners, as shown by recent research results on Language Awareness, although be it with a focus on English and on grammar (Svalberg 2012 and 2016). However, few researchers seem to have taken the opportunity to define the role of the teacher, especially the teacher with a longer career, in this process. In my research I conduct oneto-one semi-structured interviews with university teachers of Dutch to find out whether they are aware of those sociolinguistic paradigms, and if, how they apply them in the classrooms and what kind of language awareness they show. The pluricentric nature of Dutch, as it is in Europe spoken both in the Netherlands as in Flanders (Belgium), gives an extra dimension to this research (Muhr and Marley 2015). My findings show (1) that some teachers of Dutch at European universities do follow-up actual sociolinguistic research and incorporate it in their language teaching classes, (2) that, however, the Standard Language Ideology is still very vivid amongst language teachers, even those with lots of experience, and (3) that customer designed workshops for and with teachers are able to tackle the standard language ideology successfully and do give teacher the opportunity to reflect their stance on standard language. References Topalovic, Elvira and Stephan Elspaß, 2008. “Die deutsche Sprache - ein Irrgarten? Ein linguistischer Wegweiser durch die Zwiebelfisch-Kolumnen.” In: Denkler, M. (Hg.): Frischwärts und unkaputtbar. Sprachverfall oder Sprachwandel im Deutschen. Münster, 37–57. Milroy, James, 2001.” Language ideologies and the consequences of standardization.” Journal of Sociolinguistics. 5 (4), 530–555. Muhr, Rudolf and Dawn Marley, 2015. Pluricentric Languages: New perspectives in Theory and Description. Peter Lang: Frankfurt/Berlin. Svalberg, Agneta, 2012. “Language Awareness in language learning and teaching: A research agenda.” Languae Teaching. 45(3), 376-388. Svalberg, Agneta, 2016. “The Eric Hawkins Lecture - Language Awareness research: where we are now.” Language Awareness. 25(1-2), 4-16.
Stefan Diemer, Marie-Louise Brunner, Trier University of Applied Sciences, Saarland University “Yeah {nods & smiles} …” – Multimodal negotiation of meaning in English as a Lingua Franca Skype conversations This paper illustrates how multimodal elements (MEs) contribute to the meaning making process in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), using examples from CASE (2018), a corpus of informal ELF Skype conversations. We conceive of MEs as including gestures as well as other non-verbal features such as background interference or camera movement. MEs have been increasingly studied as a key means of meaning-making (McNeill 2000, Streeck 2010), and there have been calls for a stronger consideration of multimodal elements in corpora in general (e.g. Adolphs & Carter 2013). MEs cannot be considered in isolation, but are interconnected with verbal interaction in a dynamic process of creating meaning (Goodwin 2000 & 2007, Kendon 2004, Mondada 2014 & 2016). By using a multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) approach, we include rich data environments in the interpretation of meaning making processes, combining the study of language with that of other resources (Brunner et al. 2017, Kress 2011, O’Halloran 2011). In our analysis, we find seven main functions of MEs in CASE: Backchanneling (listener practices), supporting (often emphasizing or metaphorically underlining meaning, cf. McNeill 2000), relativizing (more nuanced basis for interpretation, e.g. stance or irony), complementary (more detailed meaning through focusing or imitating), replacing (instead of a verbal element), incidental (only potentially influencing conversational development), and background (noise or movement). All functions are context-dependent and can occur in combination with each other. Our findings suggest that non-verbal elements provide a more comprehensive view of the dynamic meaning-making processes involved in conversational interaction. The results of the analysis thus contribute to a better understanding of the role that non-verbal elements play in spoken language data. References Brunner, M.-L., Diemer, S. and Schmidt, S. 2017. “... okay so good luck with that ((laughing))?” Managing rich data in a corpus of Skype conversations. Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English. Helsinki: Varieng. Adolphs, S. and Carter, R. 2013. Spoken corpus linguistics: From monomodal to multimodal [Routledge advances in corpus linguistics, 15]. Routledge. CASE. 2018. Corpus of Academic Spoken English. Saarbrücken: Saarland University and Birkenfeld: Trier University of Applied Sciences, Environmental Campus Birkenfeld. [http://umwelt-campus.de/case] (29.11.2017). Goodwin, C. 2000. Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 32(10), 1489-1522. Goodwin, C. 2007. Environmentally coupled gestures. Gesture and the dynamic dimensions of language, ed. by Susan D. Duncan; Justine Cassell; and Elena T. Levy, 195-212. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Kendon, A., 2004. Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kress, G. 2011. Multimodal discourse analysis. The Routledge handbook of discourse analysis, ed. by J.P. Gee and Michael Handford, 35-50. London: Routledge. McNeill, D., 2000. Language and gesture [Language, culture, and cognition, 2]. Cambridge University Press. Mondada, L. 2014. The local constitution of multimodal resources for social interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 65, 137-156. Mondada, L. 2016. Challenges of multimodality: Language and the body in social interaction. Journal of Sociolinguistics. 20:2, 2-32. Streeck, J. 2010. Gesturecraft: The Manu-facture of Meaning. [Gesture studies, 2]. Benjamins.
Samantha Disbray, Australian National University Multilingual education policy, practice and Australian Indigenous Languages During a period of great educational innovation in Australia, the Northern Territory Bilingual Education Program operated in 27 local Aboriginal languages and English in some 30 remote schools (Devlin, Disbray, & Friedman Devlin, 2017). Designed in 1974, it was to provide Aboriginal children initial education in their home languages, with English introduced as a second language, and support the transmission of traditional languages and cultures. These remain core aspirations among Aboriginal community members. Current government and education departments policy rhetoric promotes Traditional language and culture maintenance. Yet today bilingual programs operate in only five schools. This paper takes a critical approach to competing discourses in languages and education policy (Alim & Paris, 2015; Hornberger & Johnson, 2011; Tollefson, 2013) to explore how forces play out in the context of contemporary Australia. It also tests the framework of affordances (Aronin & Singleton, 2012) to make predictions for bilingual education in light of recent developments, including the introduction of the first national Indigenous languages curriculum. References Alim, H., & Paris, D. (2015). Whose Language Gap? Critical and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies as Necessary Challenges to Racializing Hegemony. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Invited Forum: Bridging the “Language Gap”, 25(1). Aronin, L., & Singleton, D. (2012). Affordances theory in multilingualism studies. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 2(3), 311-331. Devlin, B., Disbray, S., & Friedman Devlin, N. (Eds.). (2017). History of bilingual education in the Northern Territory: People, programs and policies. Singapore: Springer Publishing. Hornberger, N., & Johnson, D. (2011). The ethnography of language policy. In T. McCarty (Ed.), Ethnography and Language Policy (pp. 273-289). London, New York: Routledge. Tollefson, J. (2013). Language Policy in a Time of Crisis and Transformation In J. Tollefson (Ed.), Language Policies in Education: Critical Issues (pp. 11-34). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Vít Dovalil, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg Language choices in international tourism. The example of Prague The presentation explores the processes of language choices in the domain of international tourism in Prague. This domain is one of those which significantly contribute to super-diversity of the Czech Republic (Sloboda 2016). The main research questions concentrate on which language problems arise in this domain, how the interlocutors deal with them, and the extent as to which English can, or cannot, be taken for the most reliable solution to such problems (ideology English is enough). The empirical research is based on the participant observation with field notes (conducted in the spring/summer 2017). These data were collected in natural social contexts in which interactions between tourist and local people (waiters in restaurants, cafés, employees of tourist agencies) occurred. In suitable situations, short interviews with these informants were added. As these interactions reflect the interlocutors’ behavior toward language, the language management approach is used as the theoretical basis (Nekvapil 2016). The central focus on the micro-level is framed by the statistics and economics of tourism in the Czech Republic (Palatková/Zichová 2014). The preliminary results indicate that English is not the only language that would always guarantee the communication success. Electronic devices with translators are often used. References Nekvapil, Jiří (2016): Language Management Theory as one approach in Language Policy and Planning. In: Current Issues in Language Planning 17/1, 11-22. Palatková, Monika/ Zichová, Jitka (22014): Ekonomika turismu. Turismus České republiky. [The economics of tourism. Tourism in the Czech Republic]. Praha: Grada Publishing. Sloboda, Marián (2016): Transition to super-diversity in the Czech Republic: its emergence and resistance. In: Sloboda, Marián/Laihonen, Petteri/Zabrodskaja, Anastassia (eds.): Sociolinguistic Transition in Former Eastern Bloc Countries. Two Decades after the Regime Change. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 141-183
Patricia Droz, Christal Seahorn, University of Houston-Clear Lake Houston Doing Politeness” in power: A corpus linguistic and discourse analysis of Hillary Clinton’s emails Harvard University’s Berkman Flein Center for Internet & Society (2017) found that negative news coverage of Hillary Clinton’s emails overwhelmed efforts by her 2016 presidential campaign to communicate platform and policy positions. Most coverage criticized Clinton’s behavior, largely ignoring the email content and the messages they conveyed about her leadership style or diplomatic expertise. More than 33,000 of Clinton’s Secretary of State emails are available on the U.S. State Department’s Freedom of Information Act virtual reading room. They provide an unparalleled corpus of workplace correspondence by a woman in a position of power and global influence. This paper presentation treats Clinton’s emails less as political fodder and more as a rare chance to investigate the electronic discourse strategies of a female Secretary of State. Our presentation examines the sociolinguistics of writing (Lillis, 2013) present in Clinton’s emails. By analyzing the roughly 7,645 Clinton-authored emails written, we will present 1) a word frequency analysis, demonstrating the consistent use of word like “please” [“pls” or “pis” (sic) in the corpus] in requests to subordinates; 2) an analysis of the linguistic strategies at work in Clinton’s emails, including instances of facework (Goffman, 1967) and positive politeness (Brown & Levinson, 1987); and 3) an evaluation of how Clinton’s discourse affirms or challenges established theories of women in traditionally male-dominated professions. Brown, P. and Levinson, S. (1987) Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Faris, R., Roberts, H., Etling, B., Bourassa, N., Zuckerman, E., and Benkler, Y. (2017). Partisanship, propaganda, and disinformation: Online media and the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Retrieved from the Harvard University Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society website: https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud. Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. New York: Pantheon Books. Lillis, T. (2013) The sociolinguistics of writing. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Ondřej Dufek, Czech Academy of Sciences Language ideologies in Czech language counselling interactions Czech Language Institute runs language counselling centre which consults various questions regarding language and its use. In their phone calls, both inquirers and linguists can express language ideologies (LI). The paper analyses recordings from a counselling calls database being currently created. The sample consists of ca. 1500 recordings from 2017. The data are manually annotated with regard to appearance of explicit LI signals – e.g. statements on what a language is or should be, evaluations of its characteristics, uses etc. It aims to find out how coherent from LI perspective is the group of people involved in language (albeit for various reasons) who enter the interaction with Czech Language Institute telephone service. Methodologically, the study combines elements of critical discourse analysis (Reisigl & Wodak 2009) and its approach to ideologies with language management theory (Beneš et al. 2017). The analysis shows (1) what LI do the inquirers hold, (2) what LI do the staff hold, (3) a difference between those two groups in quantity of expressing LI, (4) differences in the sense of quality of expressed LI, and (5) means that both groups use to express the LI. The study concludes that the inquirers are more likely to express LI and are more conservative than linguists. References Beneš, M., Prošek, M., Smejkalová, K., Štěpánová, V. (2017). Interaction between language users and language consulting centre: Challenges for language management theory and research. In: L. Fairbrother, J. Nekvapil, M. Sloboda (eds.), The Language Management Approach: A Focus on Research Methodology. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 119–140. Reisigl, M., Wodak, R. (2009). The discourse-historical approach (DHA). In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (eds.), Methods for critical discourse analysis. London: Sage, 87–121.
Maitena Duhalde De Serra, UPV/EHU & UPPA-IKER Explaining variation in coastal Labourdin Basque: Demonstrative and pronouns Scholars have marked the special identity of the Basque variety of the Labourdin coast, located within French territory. Although there has been some interesting research on the Basque dialects spoken within France, they have not received very much study. A description of Labourdin, therefore, remains essential for Basque dialectology, since it is undergoing dramatic change. To provide the first synchronic description of coastal Labourdin, we have compiled a corpus of more than 100 hours of interviews to speakers from 14 towns who were selected according to the standard criteria of dialectology (Sanchís Guarner 1953; Chaurand 1972). Moreover, our study does not neglect diachronic aspects; thus, to identify both archaisms and innovations (Camino 2008) we work with a corpus of Labourdin texts from 17th to 20th century. More specifically, this paper deals with different variation patterns of demonstratives and pronouns. On the one hand, there are innovations which have fully replaced common forms, such as harek ‘(s)he.SG.ERG’ (common hark). On the other hand, our study reveals some new forms attested for the first time in the area; this is the case of guek ‘we.ERG’, which co-occurs with the common guk (same gloss), and may be an analogic result (← zuek ‘you.PL.ERG’). References: CAMINO, Iñaki. 2008. Dialektologiaren alderdi kronologikoaz. Fontes Linguae Vasconum 108. 209-247. CHAURAND, Jacques. 1972. Introduction à la dialectologie française. Paris-Bruxelles-Montréal: Bordas. SANCHÍS GUARNER, Manuel. 1953. La cartografía lingüística en la actualidad y el Atlas de la Península Ibérica. Madrid: Instituto Miguel de Cervantes.
Eva Duran Eppler, University of Roehampton, Christoph Gabriel, Jonas Grünke, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz The realisation of article schwa in Viennese German-English bilinguals: evidence for the heterogeneity of migrant communities It is a well-established fact that linguistic categories can converge in situations of language contact and that bilinguals frequently change language between a determiner and a noun. For speakers of both English and a south-eastern (SE) variety of German the possibility to realise the indefinite article as schwa constitutes a congruence site not only at the syntactic but also at the phonetic level. This suggests that the schwa realisations of speakers who use English and SE German on a regular basis may have converged phonetically. To test this we analysed semi-spontaneous data from three groups of speakers: first, Viennese Jewish refugees who have been living in London for more than fifty years (Duran Eppler 2010; data collection: 1993); second, Viennese monolinguals of comparable age (Moosmüller 1984); third, monolingual speakers of London English also born between 1910 and 1935 (Svartvik/Quirk 1980). We selected all schwa-like indefinite articles and determined the F1 and F2 values using Praat. Expectations of convergence were only partly met: the F2 values of the schwas produced by the Jewish refugees lie between those of the Vienna and London speakers, but the F1 values are higher than both monolingual schwas (Figure 1). A closer look at the data, however, revealed that only a subgroup of the Jewish refugees is responsible for the “overshot” F1 values. The schwas of one group (A) remained close the Viennese F1 and F2 values (L1 transfer to English). Those of group B moved into the direction of London schwa regarding F2, but their F1 values are significantly higher than those of group A and the monolingual German and English schwas (Figure 2). Interestingly, the members of group A are loosely connected, whereas group B forms a close-knit network. This suggests that migrant communities do not form homogeneous groups and dense networks can significantly influence linguistic behaviour.
References Duran Eppler, Eva (2010): Emigranto. The syntax if German-English code-switching. Wien: Braumüller. Moosmüller, Sylvia (1984): Soziale und psychosoziale Sprachvariation: eine quantitative und qualitative Untersuchung zum gegenwärtigen Wiener Deutsch. PhD Thesis University of Vienna. Svartvik, Jan/Quirk, Randolph (ed.) (1980): A corpus of English conversation. Lund: Gleerup.
Carmen Ebner, Queen Mary University of London Attitudes and Superdiversity: assessing urban speakers’ attitudes towards linguistic norms in London For more than 300 years, prescriptivists and descriptivists have engaged to varying extents in a debate on correct English usage (Beal, 2009, p. 35). While prescriptivists have managed to keep this so-called usage debate going, the success of their efforts is somewhat questionable (see Anderwald, 2013). In the past century, cities, such as London, have become increasingly ethnically and linguistically diverse. Undoubtedly, this diversity has had an impact on the English varieties used in London (Fox & Sharma, 2017, p. 115). The following questions thus need to be raised. What linguistic norms are valued and how are these norms negotiated in urban centres such as London? Does ethnic and cultural diversity foster linguistic leniency? In this paper, I will present findings of an online questionnaire containing four different usage feature whose standardness is disputed among prescriptivists: the split infinitive, verb conversions such as to burglarize and to hospitalize, literally as an intensifier, and like as an approximative adverb. Taking into account social factors such as age, gender, locality and ethnicity, as well as contextual factors, such as formality and mode of language use, I aim to assess which linguistic norms are valued by speakers in London. Additional qualitative data in the form of meta-commentary will enrich the scope of the analysis and provide an answer to the questions raised above. References: Anderwald, L. (2013) Natural language change or prescriptive influence? Throve, dove, pled, drug and snuck in 19th-century American English. English World-Wide 34 (2), 146–176. Fox, S., & Sharma, D. (2017). The Language of London and Londoners. In D. Smakman & P. Heinrich (Eds.), Urban Sociolinguistics: The City as a Linguistic Process and Experience (pp. 115–129). Abingdon: Routledge.
Gerhard Edelmann, University of Vienna The sociolinguistic status of Valencian – Problems of Definition Catalan (català) is a Romance language, which is spoken by 10 million people in four European countries. In Spain, this language, together with Castilian, is considered as the official language of the three Autonomous Communities Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands. However, in the Statute of Autonomy of the Valencian Community the language is called Valencian (valencià). In my contribution I will discuss the sociolinguistic status of Valencian, in particular, the question whether it is a language or a regional variety (dialect) of Catalan. In linguistic terms, Catalan is split into the major varieties Eastern and Western Catalan, which, however, do not coincide with the political frontiers of the above-mentioned Autonomous Communities. There is rather a dialect continuum with clear mutual intelligibility between Valencian and the other varieties of Catalan. The degree of standardization of Catalan is high, but there are two codification and normali-zing centers: The Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC) in Catalonia and the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua (AVL) in Valencia. The IEC claims to be competent for all Catalanspeaking territories, whereas the AVL maintains its competence for Valencia. Linguistic criteria such as mutual intelligibility and standardization are not the sole means to determine the status of a language, that’s why I will further discuss important sociopolitical aspects and identities, for example the name of the language, which has become an instrument of national lanuage policy, and the important concept of “Països Catalans” the main goal of which is to create a Catalan identity. Another topic of interest will be the question of pluricentricity. Applying the criteria established by Clyne and Muhr, I will discuss whether Catalan can be considered as a pluricentric language, whether it is possible to speak of dominant and non-dominant varieties of Catalan and which type of variety Valencian may be.
Jan Eichler, Masaryk University Trump versus Trudeau: Articulation of National Identity on Twitter As a relatively new phenomenon, social media still have not established conceptualized and consistent rules and regulations in terms of language manifestations performed on these platforms. Among many facets that social media platforms offer is the fact that they serve as a tool for presentation of various identity constructs. Collective or national identity is one such construct. This paper chooses Twitter as a social media platform representative for the case study. The present study examines official Twitter accounts of Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau, arguably the two highest representatives of the United States and Canada, respectively. By juxtaposing these two prominent politicians, the paper tries to explore how they portray and promote their respective countries and also what kinds of discursive and other (e.g. visual and stylistic) devices they use for the purpose of negotiating the national identity. Finally, it inspects whether they use this channel as a political arena in order to articulate their national agenda. Furthermore, the study analyses data collected in two different periods, one taken prior to the character-limit change on Twitter, the other after the change. By investigating the collected data, the present study aims to demonstrate the differences in the articulation of national identities by the similar yet very distinctive countries. References Crystal, D. (2002). Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Page, R. (2012). The Linguistics of Self-Branding and Micro-Celebrity in Twitter: The Role of Hashtags. Discourse and Communication, 6(2), 181-201. Seargeant, P. & Tagg, C. (Eds.). (2014). The Language of Social Media: Identity and Community on the Internet. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Zappavigna, M. (2013). Discourse of Twitter and Social Media. London: Bloomsbury.
Tamás Eitler, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest Multimodal decontextualisation The present paper aims to advance a synthesis of how symbolic representations, non-linear arrangements, compositional discontinuities and modality choices alike inevitably result in decontextualisation in a great variety of multimodal documents and across disparate domains. Though sporadically discussed in Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) and Machin (2007), and implied by Jaworski and Thurlow (2012), the multimodal means of decontextualisation (here tentatively defined as (1) a process resulting in the lack or relative scarcity of factual and circumstantial (spatial, temporal, etc.) content and context, and (2) the resulting state) have not yet come under scrutiny. While addressing this situation, the present paper claims that decontextualisation is closely associated with the clearly observable shift over the past decades from factual/fact-based representations to increasingly abstract, overly symbolic communication. The domains affected include political discourse (symbolic politics; see Eitler forthcoming), brand and corporate identity communication (especially where the brand name is not descriptive but rather fanciful or suggestive; Eitler 2012a), university websites (especially mastheads and content regions; Eitler 2011, 2012b) and new ways of news reporting (Eitler 2014) including the image-nuclear news story (Caple and Bednarek 2010). The corpus-based study reported on in the present paper investigates how exactly the aforementioned various decontextualisation processes result in highly elaborate, yet at the same time considerably minimalistic abstract compositions and content in various domains and genres. The multimodal corpus of the case study consists of print and online advertisements, university websites, movie posters and product packaging. The investigated non-domain-specific and nongenre-specific tendency will be argued (1) to not simply convey altogether less content but also rather less factual content and context, and, simultaneously, (2) to feature more content designed multimodally to activate emotional, attitudinal and value-based appeals. These appeals include inter alia escape, lifestyle, and beauty/sex appeal. The discussion of the findings will show how the seductive nature of late modern capitalism is fostered by subtle as well as blatant decontextualisation, which has become the norm rather the exception even for some downmarket brands and in informal domains.
Elizabeth J. Erling, University of Graz English and ideologies of value: The complexity of linking English language skills to economic development In many education policies globally, English language skills are placed alongside general numeracy and literacy skills as being central to providing an educated populace with skills that are valued in the global labour market (Rassool, 2013). English is positioned as an important means of economic development, both at the individual and national level. But are these policies ‘evidencebased’? What evidence exists about the relationship between English and economic development? Does the promotion of the English language in formal education systems in so-called developing countries actually result in the economic development of individuals and nations? In this paper, I will explore the complexity of the relationship between English language skills and economic development. Using examples from Bangladesh and Ghana, I will present the findings from a meta-analysis and critical evaluation of a range of research studies that explore this relationship from a variety of perspectives. Drawing on the ‘capabilities approach’ developed by the economist Amartya Sen (1999), I will present an analysis that suggests that while English language skills might enhance opportunities for individuals, they also appear to reinforcing embedded inequalities and therefore not necessarily contributing to the overall wellbeing of societies. This analysis also suggests that there are ongoing and significant needs to develop literacy and numeracy in local and national languages, and that this might have a stronger relationship with more even and sustainable economic development. Equipped with this nuanced understanding of the relationship between English language skills and economic development, I make recommendations for how those involved in language policy and education can navigate the complexity of the evidence and promote policies and practices that might better contribute to holistic development and social justice.
Myroslava Fabian, Uzhhorod National University Transcarpathian region: multilingualism in action Sociolinguistics, as the study of the social uses of language, is the best single label to represent a very wide range of contemporary research at the intersection of linguistics, sociology, social psychology, and human communication studies. In theoretical perspectives, sociolinguists view language and society as being mutually constitutive: each influences the other in ways that are inseparable and complex. Furthermore, language is fundamentally at work in how we operate as individuals, as members of various communities, and within cultures and societies. In this respect multilingualism, both individual and societal, governed by the needs of globalization and cultural openness, is of vital importance in our research. In the age of technological advances, close trade, economic and cultural relationships between countries and societies, more and more people study foreign languages and reach a considerable proficiency in mastering them. In many countries worldwide there exist large speech communities where people speak several languages in their everyday lives and business dealings. Multinational Transcarpathian region of Ukraine serves as a good example of multilingualism in action. It is located in the west of Ukraine, it is a part of Carpathian area, in the south it borders with Romania, in the south-west – Hungary, in the west – Slovakia, and in the north-west – Poland; the region is a kind of Ukrainian “window to Europe”. The capital city is Uzhhorod (Ungvár) near the Slovak border. The geographical centre of Europe is also in Transcarpathia. Different ethnic minorities live and work together, at the same time preserving their cultural and social identity: here are the representatives of over 70 nationalities, including Ukrainians (80.5%), Hungarians (12.1%), Romanians (2.6%), Russians (2.5%), Gypsies (1.1%), Slovaks (0.5%), Germans (0.3%) and others. Multilingualism affects all aspects of their lives. The languages they speak also influence their everyday and social activities.
Lisa Fairbrother, Sophia University Managing micro-level language problems in the Japanese multilingual workplace This paper will focus on how plurilingual employees working in Japan manage their linguistic repertoires in their everyday work interactions. Although there is a growing body of work focusing on micro-level multilingual interactions, very little attention has been given to the Japanese context, and in particular the Japanese workplace. In fact, research focusing on the Japanese workplace has tended to focus on interactions between Japanese workers and native speakers of English, with little attention being paid to interactions occurring between non-native speakers of English or with speakers of other languages. Based on interviews conducted with plurilingual employees at three multinationals in Japan, this paper will focus on the language problems that employees report relating to English, Japanese and their other languages. Applying Language Management Theory (e.g. Nekvapil 2009), I will highlight the types of language issues my participants were particularly sensitive to and demonstrate how they attempted to overcome these problems. In addition to noting purely linguistic problems, connected to vocabulary use, pronunciation and syntax, the participants were particularly sensitive to problems relating to sociolinguistic and discourse features of their interactions, including pragmatic meaning, politeness, non-verbal behaviour and the ordering of components within communication. However, despite the participants’ awareness of a variety of language issues at work, it was found that the power constraints of the workplace often deterred them from making adjustments to remove those problems. It will be argued that no examination of multilingual interaction can be complete without also addressing the power framework within which that interaction occurs. References Nekvapil, J. (2009) The integrative potential of Language Management Theory. In J. Nekvapil & T. Sherman (eds.) Language Management in Contact Situations: Perspectives from Three Continents. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1-11.
Krisztina Fehér, University of Debrecen How language attitude evolves: a contribution of cognitive psychology to sociolinguistics ‘Language attitude’ is a key term in sociolinguistics. It is an axiom that people’s attitudes towards different linguistic phenomena may have important effects on language changes both at the level of speech communities and that of individuals. However, the emergence and development of attitude itself is understudied in this research area. ‘Language attitude’ is usually used referring to adults and teenagers. This implies that it must go along with some linguistic awareness about language variety. Due to this the emergence of attitude needs a certain cognitive level of linguistic maturity and it can occur only after the period what we usually consider as the time of ‘first language acquisition’. Nevertheless, sociolinguistic interviews on language attitudes towards different dialects have shown that people are often confused about their linguistic feelings and opinions. Furthermore, Matched Guise Technique experiments have demonstrated that there are at least two kinds of attitudes which are at many times in conflict with one another. Besides the ‘overt’ attitude (usually towards a standard dialect with ‘overt prestige’) there is also a hidden, more instinctive, ‘covert’ type of attitude (usually towards a non-standard dialect with ‘covert prestige’). The sociolinguistic research on attitude seems to be a bit one-sided without introducing the cognitive perspective and the point of view of first language acquisition. In this paper I will present my fieldwork carried out among pre-school and primary school Hungarian children and analyze it in light of the findings of experiments done in cognitive psychology. I will describe a socio-cognitive scenario about how language attitude evolves, i.e. how the initial, instinctive attitude emerges, becomes more and more reflected, and may turn into a stereotype.
Samuel Felder, University of Leipzig Accommodation and rapid change of individual language patterns in WhatsApp Even though in recent years there seems to be a growing interest in how the language use of individuals develops over time (cf. Buchstaller et al. 2017), studies dealing with this question are still rather rare. The present paper addresses this topic by analysing Swiss German data stemming from a large WhatsApp corpus consisting of over 800'000 messages in several hundred chats. This communicative environment favours variation on the level of the individual as there are no clear norms or rules yet for the use of many of the graphic and linguistic features which are considered typical for computer-mediated communication (e.g. emojis, grapheme repetitions), and as there is no orthographic standard for writing in Swiss German which leads to considerable differences in how the Swiss German dialects are represented in writing (cf. Siebenhaar 2006). The current study asks how individual patterns for the use of features on different linguistic levels (e.g. spelling, lexis, use of emojis) develop over time, and how changes might be influenced by the language use of the chat partner, i.e. what patterns of accommodation may be discerned. By conducting computer-assisted analyses of WhatsApp chats which are several hundred messages long and stretch over several months or even years, it will be possible to show that the language use of individuals in WhatsApp may change rather rapidly and that accommodation can be an important factor influencing such changes. References Buchstaller, I., Krause, A., Auer, A., & Otte, S. (2017). Levelling across the life‐span? Tracing the face vowel in panel data from the North East of England. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 21(1), 3– 33. Siebenhaar, B. (2006). Code choice and code‐switching in Swiss‐German Internet Relay Chat rooms. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 10(4), 481–506.
Milan Ferenčík, University of Prešov Im/politeness as social practice in Slovakia’s tourist semioscape – a case study in globalization. In publicly displayed signs in tourist destinations across the world different types of social processes are displayed among which the practices of im/politeness indexing particular configurations of power relations among tourism actors are particularly salient. In our ethnographic case study we explore im/politeness practices performed in public signs placed in the Štrbské Pleso holiday resort, Slovakia’s prime site of tourism. Our corpus of photographic data consisting of instructions and notices is subjected to analysis focusing on the ways in which power relations as perceived by sign authors/producers are encoded in the strategies of im/politeness employed to formulate directive speech acts of requests and prohibitions. Also, we aim to explore how geo-cultural globalization is manifested in the semioscape of the place and see how globallyuniform and locally-endemic im/politeness practices are combined in the shaping of its unique semiotic “ecology”. The theoretical-methodological approaches we combine are the sociolinguistics of globalization (Blommaert, 2010), politeness as social practice (Kádár and Haugh, 2013), linguistic landscape study (e.g. Ben-Rafael, 2009) and geosemiotics (Scollon and Scollon, 2003). As the principal analytical tool we use ethnographic linguistic landscape analysis (Blommaert, 2013; Blommaert and Maly, 2014) References Ben-Rafael, E. 2009. A sociological approach to the study of linguistic landscapes. In: E. Shohamy and D. Gorter, D. (Eds.). Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. London, New York: Routledge, 40-54. Blommaert, J. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blommaert, J. 2013. Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes. Chronicles of Complexity. Bristol, Buffalo, Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Blommaert, J., Maly, I. 2014. Ethnographic linguistic landscape analysis and social change: A case study. (Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies; No. 100). Tilburg: Babylon. Kádár, D., Haugh, M. 2013. Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scollon, R., Scollon, S. W. 2003. Discourses in place. Language in the material world. London and New York: Routledge
Bridget Fonkeu, Technical University of Dortmund Cameroonians in Germany: Code-Switching as a Vehicle for Identity (re)Construction This research investigates Anglophone Cameroonian immigrants emerging from a multilingual and multicultural language ecology as they make sociolinguistic adjustments and readjustments to meet up with the challenges of their migratory dreams in the German diaspora (Blommaert, J. & Rampton, B. 2011). This presentation demonstrates how these multilingual post-colonial subjects use code switching as indices of social meanings (Myers-Scotton, C.1993). As these transplanted post-colonialists attempt to build new self-images for themselves, questions of gender, age, class, race, tribe and nationality take new dimensions (Anchimbe, E. & Janney, R. W. 2011; Joseph, J.E. 2016). Data for this research is made up of transcribed recordings of naturally occurring discussions and conversations among members of this group both in the public and in the private domains. Preliminary findings show that Cameroonians in the German diaspora sometimes codeswitch for the sake of in/out group relationships. African expressions express deeper social meanings than their English counterparts, drawing speakers closer to home thus creating a feeling of nearness to roots. References Anchimbe, E. A. & Janney, R.W. Eds. (2011). Postcolonial Pragmatics. Journal of Pragmatics 43 (6): 1451–1539. Blommaert, J. & Rampton, B. (2011). Language and Super Diversity. Diversities 13 (2) 1-21. Joseph, J.E. (2016). Historical perspectives on language and identity Language and identity, in S. Preece (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity London: Routledge, 19-33. Myers-Scotton, C. (1993). Social Motivations for codeswitching. Evidence from Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Anna Franzén, Björn Sjöblom, Rickard Jonsson, Stockholm University Laughing at rape humor: The interactional intricacies of responding to aggressive misogyny on a live podcast A common understanding of rape humor is that it is a homosocial practice that reproduces patriarchal order while normalizing sexual violence (Pérez & Green, 2016). In this paper, however, we further investigate what else is going on in the delivery and uptake of such humor by scrutinizing the social interaction in an actual recorded case. In 2015, a Swedish comedian known as Kringlan launched a series of somewhat comically framed, yet still very ambiguous, sexualized insults and threats, including rape and assault, on a live podcast. His utterances were mainly treated as jokes by the all-male hosts of the show, and both Kringlan and the hosts were severely chastised in the media afterwards. By studying rape humor as interaction, our analysis focuses not only on rape humor as a way of maintaining patriarchal power; we want to take up the call to look for desire in talk (Cameron & Kulick, 2003), or what Milani and Jonsson (2011) have called interactional enjoyment, as a vital component in the social interaction of the men in the podcast studio. We contend that desire is not reducible to the domain of the erotic. Instead, desire involves, more broadly how people create amusement, pleasure or enjoyment in and through language use. More precisely, this paper investigates pleasure and interactional enjoyment (as well as displeasure and unlaugher, see Billig, 2005) in performances where the participants engage in highly tabooed sexist talk. References Billig, M. (2005). Laughter and ridicule: Towards a social critique of humour. London: Sage. Cameron, D., & Kulick, D. (2003). Language and sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Milani, T. M., & Jonsson, R. (2011). Incomprehensible language? Language, ethnicity and heterosexual masculinity in a Swedish school. Gender and Language, 5(2), 239-236. Pérez, R., & Greene, S.V. (2016). Debating rape jokes vs. Rape culture: framing and counterframing misogynistic comedy, Social Semiotics, 26(3), 265-282.
Jala Garibova, Azerbaijan University of Languages, Ildirim Zeynalov, Khinalug Secondary School Bilingualism, language change and potential for language maintenance in Khinalug Bilingualism is a normal practice in Khinalug, which, so far, is not seen as a serious danger to language maintenance. Some patterns of shifting from Khinalug to Azerbaijani are certainly observable, particularly among younger generations. However, they are not overwhelming and are reversable. At this point language degeneration rather than negative attitude towards Khinalug stands as a major threat to language maintenance. The study of written texts and observation of oral performances demonstarte a great deal of lexical attrition, a process probably spanning across three or four generations. Children become fully exposed to Azerbiajni after starting school, which creates porgressing bilingualism with further relexification tendencies. Some vocabulary lost by yonger generations has still survived in older people’s speech. However, some near-extinct elements, whcih do not appear in normal conversation, can only be collected from mouths of old people while they are telling stories or fairy-tales. Turkish apprears as another source of relexification due to media influence. However, unlike Azerbaijani, Turkish elements are often borrowed for informal domains. The presentation offers a classification of the domains where Azerbaijani becomes a relexifier for the Khinalug language; an overview of native lexicon replaced by Turkish; and a set of measures for reversing complete loss of moribund lexical elements of the Khinalug language. References Azerbaijani Multiculturalism. Ethnic http://multiculturalism.preslib.az/en_a3.html
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Clifton JM. 2013.Colonialism, Nationalism and Language Vitality in Azerbaijan. E Mihas et al (eds). Responses to Language Endangerment: In honor of Mickey Noonan. JB Publishing: 197220 Friedman VA. 2010. Sociolinguistics in the Caucasus. JB Martin (ed). The Routledge Handbook of Sociolinguistics in the World. London. 127-138. Isaacs R & Polese R (eds) 2016: Nation-Building and Identity in Post-Soviet Space. Routledge.
Anika Gerfer, WWU Münster Crossing: Jamaican Creole in reggae and dancehall music Jamaican Creole (JC) has had a long history as ‘corrupt’ or ‘broken’ English. After Jamaica’s independence, JC has developed into a linguistic symbol of a Jamaican national identity, and nowadays JC linguistic features are also adopted by ‘crossers’ (Rampton, 1995). Although researchers agree that the global spread of JC has been enhanced through the international popularity of reggae and dancehall music, there has been no sociolinguistic research on the use of JC in these music genres so far. This study adds to the sociolinguistics of globalization and performance by examining 1) which features of JC are used by Jamaican and 2) non-Jamaican artists, and 3) which factors influence their use of JC features. A reggae and dancehall lyrics corpus is compiled which provides the basis for a phonetic, morpho-syntactic, and lexical analysis. Preliminary findings indicate that the singing behavior of the examined Jamaican and nonJamaican artists is rather similar. Not only do they use the same phonetic and morpho-syntactic features of JC, but they do so in similar frequencies. This finding contrasts with earlier studies on crossing which found that crossers tend to choose only a few socially significant and globally prominent variants due to lack of proficiency (e.g. Cutler, 2003; Akande, 2012). The present study, therefore, suggests that non-Jamaican artists skillfully cross into the now globally prestigious variety JC in their performance of reggae and dancehall personae. References Akande, A. (2012). The appropriation of African American Vernacular English and Jamaican Patois by Nigerian hip hop artists. ZAA, 60(3), 237-254. Cutler, C. (2003) Yorkville Crossing: white teens, hip hop and African American English. In R. Harris (Ed.), The language, ethnicity and race reader (pp. 314-327). London, England: Routledge. Rampton, B. (1995). Crossing: language and ethnicity among adolescents. London, England: Longman.
Martin Gill, Åbo Akademi University, Finland Comrades below the line: constructing solidarity in pro-Brexit online comments Debate in Britain about Brexit, from national political forums to online comments, has been loud and acrimonious, and characterized by a troubling level of hatred. In particular, public expression of previously taboo attitudes towards ‘foreigners’, apparently licensed by Brexit, has led to anxious reflection on the dislocated state of British society. The partisan treatment of Brexit in the popular press has helped to foster an online environment in which extreme opinions can thrive. This paper will examine one such news source, the Express online, and its creation of a closed space in which extreme views have become ‘normalized’. Based on analysis of a corpus of articles and comments collected between 2014 and 2018, it aims to shed light on the processes of normalization and to consider their implications for the rise of populism in the public sphere. Results suggest that the role of ‘below the line’ (BTL) comments is central, both in defining pro-Brexit stances and in constructing a shared sense of embattled identity. Regular commenters compete to display the strength of their anti-EU credentials, and complement editorial content by drawing conclusions left unstated in the articles themselves. While their tone is often combative, they form strongly aligned, ad hoc communities of ludic discursive practice, distinguished not only by a repertoire of shared references and allusions but also by uses of irony, humour, word play and innuendo. Their views are refined and hardened, but never altered, by constant repetition, and in running skirmishes with critical outsiders. It will be argued that BTL voices in the Express contribute across political lines to the reinforcement of a populist stance of authenticity under siege and resolute, self-sufficient common sense, against which alternative discourses of tolerance, reason and compromise hold little sway.
Madona Giorgadze, Ilia State University, Georgia The Harm of Hate Speech in Classroom Discourse Classroom discourse studies verbal relationship between a teacher and student. Teachers have a wide range of resources to spread their ideas. Their attitudes and beliefs may have an influence on a student’s personality, dignity and self-esteem; sometimes this influence may be quite negative and even be equal to violence. The purpose of this paper is to reveal lexical markers of hate speech, to analyze these markers from gender perspective and determine causes of this problem. The author analyzes the hate speech through a three-phase model (Initiation-response-feedback) based on the theory of Attitude. The paper deals with cognitive, affective and behavior components of hate speech, it analyzes threats that may entail the use of hate speech. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used for the research. We administered predesigned questionnaires. To obtain deeper insight into the respondents’ answers, focus groups were organized. This observation on structured dialogue with an interactive group conducted in tolerant and peaceful environment allowed us to obtain information about approaches and values of interviewees who encounter hate language. This gave us the opportunity to find out real threats of hate language, reveal the line between hate speech and freedom of expression both from students’ and teachers’ perspectives. The primary results of the research showed that hate speech is frequent not only in a political and media discourse, but it is more dangerous and deep-rooted problem in classroom discourse. The final part of the paper offers recommendations for raising awareness on hate language, tolerance and freedom of expression from the perspective of classroom discourse. It provides strategies for dealing not only with the problem, but with causes of this problem as well.
Maria Guzikova, Ural Federal University Towards Creating a Multilingual University Environment In the modern culturally hybrid world [1] with its appeal for super-diversity [2], a speaker should be experienced for a wide range of communicative encounters. To this aim, institutions of higher education share the determination of internationalizing their education and research by attracting foreign researchers and students. In Russia, most foreign students study in Russian-medium programs. During their first study year they get an intensive Russian language training which is meant to integrate them into the native speaking environment. Their test results at the end of the year vary from A1 to B2. In this research we match students demands and expectations of Russian language ‘repertoires’ [3] after a year of study and learning outcomes as prescribed by the program of their study. The hypotheses of the research are: 1. a negative match predisposes a low test result of students; 2 a. study program in its current form cannot possibly serve the highly diverse students’ language demands and needs; 3. students’ value associations and motivations for learning Russian do not coincide with their teachers’ views imperatives. The students’ low or insufficient satisfaction with their level of Russian language proficiency is seen as the main predicament for their cultural adaptation, and also the cause of academic failures and general discontent with their study experience. The article proposes a series of means for creating an open and diverse learning environment that would better suit the idea of a university as a multilingual site [4]. References [1] Bhabha H. K. et al. The location of culture. London, 2012. [2] Vertovec S. Super-diversity and its implications // Ethnic and racial studies, vol. 30, 6, pp. 1024-1054, 2007. [3] Blommaert J., Backus A. Superdiverse repertoires and the individual //Multilingualism and multimodality. SensePublishers, Rotterdam, 2013. Pp. 11-32. [4] Guzikova M. From opposition to transcendence: The language practices and ideologies of students in a multilingual university //International journal of bilingual education and bilingualism. – 2014. – Т. 17. – №. 3. – С. 310-329.
Luis Guzmán Valerio, The City College of New York Signs of Community Organizing in Sunset Park, Brooklyn on the Eve of the 2016 Presidential Election Sunset Park, Brooklyn, in New York City, is a multilingual and multiethnic community. In June, 2016, just a few months before the presidential election, I conducted fieldwork which included gathering a 600-meter sample of the linguistic landscape along a main commercial strip. My research revealed signs of community organizing as this neighborhood pushes back against gentrification and police abuse, and for progressive politics in English, Spanish, and other languages, in print and on-line media. My research shows that speakers of Spanish and English in Sunset Park are not the mere subjects of public policies such as broken windows policing and real estate development. The signage we will be discussing during my paper presentation demonstrate that language is used to move Latinx residents to political ends and to exercise agency in both the streetscape and in the cyberscape, making use of both the majority and minoritized languages. Community groups advertise their political organizing efforts in the linguistic landscape around the neighborhood. Anti-police abuse signs are part of a larger nation-wide movement against police-abuse in the U.S., which include photographing and filming the police. These signs of resistance were not isolated. Nor were they a reaction to Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant discourse before the election. The community organizing evident on the signs is part of an on-going historical process of solidarity that has been evidenced in Occupy Wall Street and other social movements. The organization in Sunset Park of the Puerto Rican Parade and Festival, for example, is the result of a historical process of contestation and negotiation over who would have the right to exert control over the public space. The signage at the street level exists on a continuum within cyberspace as social media such as Facebook is used to spread the word of community organizing groups.
Annaliina Gynne, Mälardalen University “English or Swedish please, no Dari!” – Language policing and (trans)languaging in upper secondary school’s Language Introduction Programme in Sweden The study presented in this paper focuses on doing of language policy, i.e. the everyday practices highlighting normative ideas of languages and languaging, that students and teachers engage in at an upper secondary school’s Language Introduction Programme (LIP) in Sweden. The LIPs offer recently arrived immigrant youth, both asylum seekers and others, between ages 16 to 19 education where emphasis is on the Swedish language. The study stems from a larger ethnographically framed project, which builds on both explorative research and school development. This particular study explores teachers’ and students’ doing of language policy within an institutional learning context affected by both superdiversity and the monolingual habitus of the surrounding society and educational system. Moreover, it critically reflects upon the implementation process of (trans)languaging as a pedagogical framing and relates these two processes to each other. The study offers a multidimensional analysis of communicative, learning and teaching practices. It juxtaposes previous understandings of (named) languages as bounded entities and the concept of languaging, i.e. the inter-linked use of oral, written and other semiotic resources, including several language varieties. Data in the project includes video and audio recordings of naturally occurring classroom activities, policy documents, literacy and visual data and interview data. Employing micro-macro analyses of interactional, multimodal data (including oral and written language), I discuss in the study the different ways in which students and teachers engage in language policing processes and pedagogical transformation.
Oren Haber, Tel Aviv University Diachronicity and contestation on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem This study examines the linguistic landscape (LL) on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem, focusing on two dimensions – diachronicity and contestation – which demonstrate LL’s dynamic nature, varying over time and embodying competing social agendas. This is anchored in Backhaus (2005)’s concept of layering as a method of examining diachrony by comparing old and new versions of the same signs. Shohamy and Waksman (2009) describe LL as an arena of contestation, through which various agendas can be battled, negotiated or dictated. Jaffa Road is of interest as one of West Jerusalem’s oldest historical streets. The diachronic dimension compares versions of signs from different periods in Jerusalem’s history. Contestation is found in the contrast between trilingual official signage (Hebrew/Arabic/English) and various bottom-up items, including stickers, graffiti and practices such as defacing Arabic. The changes in LL over time, such as the relative dominance of the three languages, illuminate the political changes that occurred from the British Mandate to modern-day Israel with a Jewish majority. The order of languages and content of the signs demonstrate the shift in power relations between Jews and Arabs in the city. Contestation can be observed in the LL between competing ideologies, ranging from an exclusionary, “Jewish only” ideology, to inclusive approaches that promote a shared Jewish-Arab space. These findings can be relevant for future research in regions with both historical dimensions and current conflicts. References Backhaus, P. (2005). Signs of multilingualism in Tokyo – A diachronic look at the linguistic landscape. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2005(175/176), 103–121. http://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl.2005.2005.175-176.103 Shohamy, E., & Waksman, S. (2009). Linguistic landscape as an ecological arena: Modalities, meanings, negotiations, education. In E. Shohamy & D. Gorter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (pp. 313–331). New York, NY: Routledge.
Chryso Hadjidemetriou, University of Leicester Belonging and the politics of listening in Greek Cypriot community of London This paper discusses notions of language, identity and belonging in the Greek Cypriot communitiy of London. The paper focuses on how members of this community challenge the idea of culture and ethnic identity in a diasporic and transnational context where 'Cypriotness' is being redefined and belonging is fluid and questioned. De Fina (2016: p. 187) argues that ‘identities are conveyed, negotiated and regimented through linguistic and discursive means…[and] perceptions and constructions of identities fundamentally shape the ways linguistic resources are deployed’. This paper explores this idea whereby individuals negotiate, challenge, and re(formulate) notions of ‘Cypriotness’, ‘Britishness’, ethnic identity, belonging and exclusion. This is also done in light of Bassel’s (2017) discussion on the importance of ‘listening’ as a social and political process. She explains that ‘the politics of listenging can disrupt power and privilege and harmful binaries of ‘Us and Them’, with the aim of political equality’ (Bassel, 2017, p. 1). The data used in this presentation come from recordings with Greek Cypriot adolescents and adults in London during fieldwork from 2012-2014. In total, 28 British-born Greek Cypriot adolescents between the ages of 14 and 18 were recorded along with 6 British Greek Cypriot adults between the ages of 35-45. The informants can be defined as transational individuals who according to Glick Schiller et al. (1995: p. 1 cited in De Fina 2016: p. 187) are individuals who ‘build social fields that link together their country of origin and their country of settlement’. De Fina (2016: p. 187) further explains that ‘studying the identities of transnational individuals involves analyzing processes and practices that are different from those that are relevant for people who are firmly grounded in one place’. The Greek-Cypriot informants offer insights on their multicultural associations and multilingual choices and perceptions regarding their plurilinguism and ‘pluriculturalism’. The informants multi-layered understanding of ethnicity and language become evident in their views about these issues through looking at categories of belonging in narratives. The paper explores these issues to highlight the challenges that heritage diasporic communities face regarding ‘belonging’. The paper also explores how such diasporic communities can help in understanding hybrid ethnic identities, the fluidity of ethic identities through their perpetual reformulation, and how such fluid and constantly reformulated ideas of ethic identity, culture, and language can become visible and legitimised in the diasporic communities. References Bassel, L. 2017. The Politics of Listening: Possibilities and Challenges for Democratic Life. Palgrave. De Fina, A. (2016) ‘Chapter 10: Linguistic practices and transnational identities’. In S. Preece (ed.) (2016) The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity’. Oxon and New York: Routledge: pp. 187-202. Farrell, E. J. (2008). Discourses of Migration and Belonging. Unpubished PhD thesis: Macquarie University. Glick Schiller, N., Basch. L. and Blanc, C. S. (1995) ‘From immigrant to transmigrant: theorizing transnational migration’. Anthropological Quarterly, 68 (1): pp. 48-63.
Sho Hagio, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Significance of External Projection of the “Minority Languages”: The Cases of Basque and Catalan. In some contemporary states, there exist organizations whose mission is to promote and disseminate the official language (and culture) of the given state beyond its borders. With regard to Spanish, the Cervantes Institute is endowed with such a national mission. What is characteristic of Spain is that not only the central government but also some non-state public entities have been engaging in the diffusion of their proper language beyond the state boundaries; more precisely, the Etxepare Basque Institute and the Ramon Llull Institute. Their target-languages are respectively Basque and Catalan, which were once labelled ethnic and/or regional “minority languages”. The author, after giving overall theoretical frameworks of external projection of statelanguages, highlights the analogous case of Basque and Catalan. By drawing a comparison with the Cervantes Institute, the author describes the significance of the objectives and activities of the Etxepare Basque Institute and the Ramon Llull Institute, from political, economic, social and cultural aspects, occasionally referring to experimental knowledge of the author, who is affiliated with one of the partner institutions of these two institutes. Based on this comparative description, the author intends to argue the range of probable targets of such an external projection, which presupposes a differentiation between “interior” and “exterior”. The author’s discussion is to be focused on the following two points: 1) the demarcation between “interior” and “exterior” based on the concepts of ethnicity and territoriality, and 2) validity of a putative dichotomy between the universality and the particularity behind language ideology, which are often parallel to that between state-languages and non-statelanguages. And finally, the author suggests a prospective impact and a future perspective of the external projection of the so-called “minority languages”.
Judit Háhn, University of Jyväskylä “In English & other languages”: Language options on multilingual Finnish municipality websites As the official online representations of local governments, municipal websites have important informational and promotional functions. These sites are virtual hubs that do not only provide information about the different aspects of living, such as housing, education or health care, but also play a role in online marketing. The way the information is presented on the pages implies what content elements are held essential and what groups of readers are targeted. When searching for information, the readers of the websites navigate on online linguistic landscapes (Ivkovic & Lotherington 2009, Kelly-Holmes 2015), where they have to find their way to the page with the relevant information. The selection of languages on the websites is thus a strategic marketing choice (Duchêne and Heller 2012), which reflects the speakers of which languages were considered worth targeting. In addition, it can also reveal language policy practices in the settlement. The present study discusses the language options offered on Finnish municipal websites (n=316) by giving an overview of the languages offered and by identifying the strategies of representation on the multilingual sites. Although the findings reveal differences between the regions, the use of English as an international lingua franca seems to prevail over Swedish, which is the second national language of Finland. References Duchêne, A. & Heller, M. 2012. Multilingualism in the new economy. In M. Martin-Jones, A. Blackledge & A. Creese (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism. London: Routledge, 369–383. Ivkovic, D. & Lotherington, H. 2009. Multilingualism in cyberspace: Conceptualising the virtual linguistic landscape. International Journal of Multilingualism, 6 (1), 17─36. Kelly-Holmes, H. 2015. Analysing language policies in new media. In F.M. Hult & D.C. Johnson (eds) Research Methods in Language Policy and Planning: A Practical Guide. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 130─139.
Magdalena Hanusková, University of Ostrava Boundary Cases of Repair in ELF Academic Discourse The presentation discusses the results of research which studies the use of English as a lingua franca in spoken academic discourse interactions in countries where English is neither the local language nor that of most of the participants, offering a deeper insight into the interactional practices utilized in the process of achieving the communicative purpose(s) of international university seminars. Drawing on audio-recorded data collected from English-taught seminars at the University of Ostrava and the ELFA corpus and using conversation analysis procedures, the research, focusing on the sociopragmatic aspects of interaction, identifies and analyses boundary cases of other-initiated repair where the initiations are used to perform potentially face-threatening acts, i.e. express doubt, criticism or disagreement. References Angouri, Jo & Locher, Miriam. (2012). Theorising disagreement. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(12). 1549-1553. Kendrick, Kobin. (2015). Other-initiated repair in English. Open Linguistics, 1(1). Locher, Miriam. (2004). Power and Politeness in Action: Disagreements in Oral Communication. Language, Power and Social Process, 12. Schegloff, Emanuel. (1997). Practices and actions: Boundary cases of other-initiated repair. Discourse Processes, 23. 499-545.
Samira Hassa, Manhattan College, Zsuzsanna Fagyal, Jessica A. Nicholas, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign French in new diaspora communities: Two case studies from the United States Despite their long colonial history, US French-speaking communities from homelands such as France and Quebec have steadily declined. However, migrant communities whose heteroglossic language practices include French have been multiplying in recent years. In this paper, we report on two such communities: refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who were forced to emigrate due to political events, and Moroccan artists who have emigrated by choice, often for economic gain. For both groups the French language is a “central characteristic connecting people across time and space”, necessitating a “dynamic approach to transnational practices of communication and consumption” (Rosa and Trivedi 2017:220–221). In the Midwest, some asylum seekers from the DRC are highly educated Francophones who serve as interpreters and guides, i.e. brokers (Stovel and Shaw 2012) acting on behalf of fellow immigrants. For them French is both an asset and a burden: they may gain prominence within their community, but they often do so at the expense of their own advancement. In contrast with this rural community, Moroccan artists working in the fast-paced, competitive, multicultural environment of New York City employ French as a marketing tool. Rather than a necessity, French is a customizable product ‘brought in their suitcases’ along with Moroccan Arabic, Standard Arabic, and in some cases Berber. Useful for branding (Moore 2003), the functionality of French, as of other languages, can change according to Moroccans’ own calculations of supplyand-demand and the size of the competition in the art business. References Moore, Robert. 2003. From genericide to viral marketing: on ‘brand’. Language & Communication 23: 331–357. Rosa, Jonathan, and Trivedi, Sunny, 2017. Diaspora and language, In: Canagarajah, Suresh (ed.). 2017. The Routledge Handbook of Migration and Language. London, New York: Routledge, pp. 220-246. Stovel, Katherine, and Shaw, Lynette. 2012. Brokerage. Annual Review of Sociology, 38: 139158.
Martin Havlík, Eliška Zaepernicková, Czech Language Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences – Charles University in Prague Luxury and necessary Anglicisms in Czech Nowadays, we can observe how innovations are more frequently than before exported from English speaking countries to the rest of the world. These innovations influence all spheres of life, including language. However, not only is necessary innovative terminology borrowed from English, but also expressions which already have their equivalent in the recipient language. Recent studies (for example, Onysko & Winter-Froemel, 2011 or Șimon, 2016) suggest a distinction between so called luxury (non-catachrestic) and necessary (catachrestic) borrowings. In our paper we aim at finding the correspondence between the assignment to these categories and belonging to a pre-defined social sphere. We analysed 200 most frequent words from the Phonological Database of Czech Anglicisms, which contains 4,689 entries. We also implemented a newly established category “preferred” into the existing bilateral distinction. The newly established category originates from typological structure of Czech, where few compounds and simple words are preferred over phrases. Our results suggest that luxury and necessary Anglicisms in Czech are evenly deployed. Furthermore, loanwords belonging to the newly established category “preferred” present 1/5. Our analysis shows that the necessary borrowings originate primarily from technological and transportation semantic fields, while the luxury ones from the social spheres of leisure time and employment. Finally, we claim that the necessary loanwords preserve original spelling to more degree than the luxury ones. The original spelling of necessary loanwords makes them more vulnerable to pronunciation variation. References Onysko, A. & Winter-Froemel, E. (2011): Necessary loans – luxury loans? Exploring the pragmatic dimension of borrowing. Journal of Pragmatics, 41 (6): 1550–1567. Șimon, S. (2016): Necessary and Luxury English Loanwords in Some Romanian Online Newspapers and Magazines. In: D. Dejica, G. Hansen, P. Sandrini, I. Para (eds.), Language in the Digital Era. Challenges and Perspectives. Warsaw/Berlin: De Gruyter Open, pp. 29–36.
Shanhua He, Yangzhou University Language Census as an Aid for National Language Construction in Central and Eastern European Countries Language census can be employed in macro language management to enhance the link between national identity and the dominant language while weakening the link of ethnicity and minority languages. In the case of CEE countries, this can be illustrated from three perspectives by examining the designing of census questionnaires. The first is the data collected. Most countries collect the information on “mother tongue” which is traditionally considered as a principal indicator of ethnicity in CEE area. This emphasis on mother tongue can enhance position of the dominant language. Latvia and Poland choose to collect information of “language used at home” mainly for monitoring the process of assimilation of minority members, also reflects a macro intention of consolidating national identity. The second is the position of the question. To put the question of language immediately after that of ethnicity would encourage an answer consistent with the ethnicity, while the inverse arrangement could induce the answer of the dominant language (e.g. Albania). In different circumstances both can enlarge the proportion of dominant language speakers. The third is the form of answers. An increasing number of countries are allowing two answers for the question of “mother tongue” (e.g. Hungary and the Czech Republic) or making the answer not compulsory, which will weaken the link between language and identity for minority language speakers.These possibilities are demonstrated on specific conditions of individual CEE countries. References: Kertzer, David I. and Dominique Arel (eds.). 2001. Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Silver, Brian D. 2002. Nationality and Language in the New Censuses of the Baltic States: Michigan State University: East Lansing.
Øystein Heggelund, University College of Southeast Norway Fearing ’the Other’: A critical discourse analysis of The Norwegian Progress Party’s language during the migrant crisis of 2015-2016 This paper examines the language used by key members of the Norwegian Progress Party about immigrants and immigration policy in the period during and after the so-called ‘European migrant crisis’ in 2015-2016. The Norwegian Progress Party (NPP) is a right-wing populist party known for their strict stance on immigration in general and on non-western immigration in particular. The NPP sits in the Norwegian government and is normally not considered a far-right party like the UK Independence Party (UKIP). However, the party has recently been accused of using and contributing to hate-speech and Islamophobia (Nilsen 2017). The paper applies tools from Critical Discourse Analysis on NPP speeches and media comments, and aims to answer the following questions: How do NPP statements fit into the Western discourse of ‘the Other’ (Hall 1997; van Dijk 1997)? Which other discourses may be identified? Which linguistic features support the relevant discourses? Particular attention is given to lexical choices and the use of metaphors to depict immigrants and immigration policy. The findings are compared with immigration discourses used by UKIP (e.g. Engström 2013). References Engström, B. 2013. The In-groups and out-groups of the British National Party and UK Independence Party: a corpus-based critical discourse analysis. Master thesis, Lund University. Hall, S. 1997. Representation: cultural representations and signifying practices. London, Thousand Oaks and New Dehli: Sage Publications. Nilsen, A. B. 2017. Slik virker hatretorikken. https://forskning.no/meninger/debattinnlegg/2017/09/slik-virker-hatretorikken. Retrieved on 14 January 2018. van Dijk, T.A. 1997. Political discourse and racism: Describing others in western parliaments. In S. H. Higgins (ed), The language and politics of exclusion, pp. 31 – 46. London: Sage Publications. Wodak, R. 2015. The Politics of fear: what right-wing populist discourses mean. London: Sage Publications.
Guilherme Heurich, Jan David Hauck, University College London The multiple natures of language in indigenous South America Variation of languages, styles, genres, and registers, and their use, is ubiquitous within and across communities. This variation is meaningful within a particular language ideological regime that attaches social and indexical meanings to these forms. At the same time, language ideologies themselves are no less diverse than the linguistic phenomena they rationalize. In this paper, we will go one step further and explore differences on a deeper level, namely what we call the “multiple natures of language,” i.e., local assumptions of what language is. If language ideologies are beliefs “about” language, where language is understood as a given, we ask here, what is language, and how may what language is itself vary across communities? As a starting point for this project, we compare Amerindian and Western narratives about the evolution of language. In Western philosophy and science, language and linguistic diversity are one of the most important traits that differentiates humans from their ancestors as well as other species. Humans have language, other species do not. In stark contrast, in Amerindian narratives, the origin of humanity is depicted as a diversification process out of a primordial unity of humans and nonhumans. Here, language is part of the original common condition of humans and nonhumans, part of essential characteristics shared between humans, animals, plants, and gods. Contemporary communicative opacity between humans and nonhumans is explained as the result of transformations on animals’ bodies, where Western theories of language evolution focus on transformation of human minds. We discuss how variation in the natures of language in the Americas might explain phenomena such as shamanic songs that make ancestors present, communication with nonhumans, or healing rituals in which language is used as material resource.
Ildikó Hortobágyi, University of Pannonia Linguistic Icebergs – The In/Visible Language Ecologies of Hungarian Urban Areas The way we think about languages has major implications on how we understand the environment in which they are created and used. Nowadays the social and technological contexts of communication and learning are undergoing a dramatic change, and forecast a new paradigm according to which speakers will adjust to a common communicative arena rather than to a specific language or culture. Echoing Coupland’s (2016) assertion that sociolinguistic “theory is everywhere”, and drawing on recent related literature that tackles concepts and processes associated with metrolingualism and translanguaging, the paper aims to offer an insight into the new and still almost invisible language ecologies of emerging multilingual areas. Building on a comparative approach, the research-based study has proposed to trace how the workings of different languages in the capital are also specific of the language life of a provincial urban university campus. The findings aim to prove that areas considered highly monolingual - with instances of disparate multilingualism seen as the tip of the iceberg - hide a complex system and network of linguistic entanglements and multiformity under the surface, where novel communicative needs generate new solutions. References Blommaert, J. and Backus, A. (2013). Super diverse repertoires and the individual. In de SaintGeorges and Weber (Eds). Multilingualism and multimodality: Current challenges for educational studies. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, pp11-32. Coupland, N. (2016). Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates. Cambridge: CUP. Molina, C. (2011). Curricular Insights into Translingualism as a Communicative Competence. Journal of Language Teaching & Research 2(6): pp.1244-1251. Pennycook, A. and Otsuji, E. (2015). Metrolingualism. London: Routledge. Smakman, D. and Heinrich, P. (2018). Urban Sociolinguistics. The City as a Linguistic Process and Experience. London: Routledge.
Zahra HosseiniKhoo, University of Vienna The Deal-maker, the Salesman and the Traitor: Representation of the negotiators in Iran’s nuclear talks in selected US, UK and Iranian press The Iranian nuclear negotiations have become dominant in the international political discourse, especially since 2013. The current study explains the discursive strategies applied by selected newspapers from three major participants in the negotiations with different political tendencies, in representing the nuclear negotiators. In the first step, representative texts of various opinion oriented genres (commentaries, editorials, op-eds etc.) are selected from three Iranian, two American and two British newspapers between 2013-2016. Secondly, the argumentative aspects (e.g. types of arguments, argumentative topoi, etc.) of the texts are identified and pragmatic aspects of their use in media discourse are investigated. It is revealed that the use of specific argument and speech act types, topoi, and fallacies in the texts, is not only linked to a broad ideological differentiation between the two negotiation parties, between “the Western” (UK and the US in this paper) and “the Iranian” approach to the negotiations, but also depends on the newspapers’ differing political positions within each side of the conflict. This is also revealed that these strategies are employed as a de/legitimizing device regarding the process and outcome (Iran deal) of the negotiations along with challenging or supporting the process based on the positioning of each newspaper in domestic political scene. (1) KhosraviNik, M. (2015). Discourse, Identity and Legitimacy: Self and Other in representations of Iran's nuclear programme. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. (2) Reisigl, M. and Wodak, R. (eds.) (2000) The Semiotics of Racism. Approaches in Critical Discourse Analysis. Wien: Passagen-Verlag. (3) Reisigl, M. & Wodak, R. (2001) Discourse and Discrimination Rhetorics of racism and antisemitism.London: Routledge (4) Richardson, JE (2017) British Fascism: A Discourse-Historical Analysis. Ibidem press: Stuttgart.
Alexander D. Hoyt, University of Zagreb The Propagation of Croatian Language Rights in the Istrian Newspaper Naša Sloga Considered to be the first Istrian newspaper printed in Croatian, Naša Sloga was published from 1870 to 1899 in Trieste and from 1899 to 1915 in Pula. Its publication was initiated by Bishop Juraj Dobrila (1812–1882), a representative from Istria in the Imperial Council in Vienna, who decided in the late 1860s that the national consciousness of Istrian Croats needed to be awakened. The newspaper’s main audience was the Croatian-speaking peasantry in Istria, who were not typically educated, and when they were, it was often in Italian or German. Its primary goal was to make the Slavic rural populace of Istria (i.e., mainly Croats, but Slovenes as well) politically and ethnically aware. A considerable portion of the newspaper focused on Croatian language rights in Istria, where Italian speakers held the bulk of political power. It included articles pushing for changes in Austrian language policy; on the lack of quality primary schools with instruction in Croatian; on protests against Italian hegemony by Croats in local communities; and on the establishment of Croatian and Slovenian reading rooms; not to mention the cartoon “Franina i Jurina,” which often included commentary about the language situation. In this article I will focus on the first two decades of Naša Sloga’s existence (i.e., the 1870s and ‘80s), with the intention of describing the newspaper’s basic language policy agenda. In addition, I plan to explore how these attitudes affected, or at least lined up with, the attitudes of speakers of that time. In order to do this, I will use the correspondence of Istrians from a historical letter corpus that I have been compiling over the last decade.
Diana Hriberski, University of Zagreb Linguistic landscape in multicultural context: a survey in Belgrade Building upon the growing body of linguistic landscape (LL) research, this paper examines LL of Belgrade on two locations – the center of Belgrade and a neighborhood of New Belgrade – residential and work area of the Chinese minority. Using the hybrid approach – qualitative and quantitative methodology – the LL of Serbia's capital is analyzed in order to explore present languages and scripts, to infer about the preferred code (Scollon and Wong Scollon 2003) and to explain the factors influencing its diversity. Due to relationship between LL and sociocultural context, the focus of analysis is to show the specificities of researched areas and to explain their similarities and differences. Furthermore, the aim is to identify factors affecting the appearance of LL and mechanisms involved in its production. The comparison of two locations reveals the dialogue between dominant and minority culture and emphasizes the socio-symbolic importance of LL as a social marker (Ben-Rafael 2006). References Ben-Rafael, E., Shohamy, E., Amara M. H. and Trumper-Hecht N. (2006). Linguistic Landscape as Symbolic Construction of the Public space: The case of Israel. In Gorter D. (ed.) Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 7–30. Gorter, D. (ed.) (2006) Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Landry, R. and Bourhis, R. Y. (1997) Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality: An empirical study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 16 (1), pp. 24–49. Scollon, R. and Wong Scollon, S. (2003). Discourses in place: Language in the material world. London: Routledge. Shohamy, E., Ben-Rafael, E. and Barni, M. (eds) (2010) Linguistic Landscape in the City. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Shohamy E. and Gorter D. (eds) (2008) Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. New York: Routledge.
Luca Iezzi, Università “G. d’Annunzio” Repertoire, language use and identity. The Chinese community in Italy This speech provides an analysis of the Chinese community in the south of Italy from a sociolinguistic perspective. In particular, I will look at the main differences related to the language repertoire and the language uses between the first and the second generation. The topic will be analysed by the study of the speakers’ attitudes towards the standard language (called Putonghua), the dialect and the Italian language, and the consequences they have on the functional distribution of the repertoire and on their identity. References Ceccagno A. (2003), Lingue e dialetti dei cinesi della dispora, Giunti, Firenze. D’Angelo V., Fasciglione M. (2009), Migration Flows in Campania Region: Analysis and Working Proposals, EnzoAlbano, Napoli. Muysken P. (2000), Bilingual Speech. A Typology of Code-mixing, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Pedone V. (2008), Il vicino cinese, Nuove Edizioni Romane, Roma. Pedone V. (2013), A Journey to the West. Observations on the Chinese Migration to Italy, Firenze University Press, Firenze. Santangelo P., Varriano V. (2006), Dal Zhejiang alla Campania. Alcuni aspetti dell’immigrazione cinese, Edizioni Nuova Cultura, Roma. Wei L. (ed) (2007), The Bilingualism Reader, Routledge, Oxon. Yuan J. (2001), Hanyu Fangyan Gaiyao 汉语方言概要, Yuwen Chubanshe, Beijing.
Päivi Iikkanen, University of Jyväskylä The Changing Roles of Language During Migrant Parents’ Integration Process into Finnish Society This ethnographically oriented longitudinal study focuses on how five parents of migrant origin have experienced the changing role of language in their integration process into Finnish society. Originally, they came to Finland to get married, to study or accompanied their husbands, who came here to work. At the time of our first interviews in 2015-2016, they were all staying at home with young children. In the two years between the interviews, most of them had begun to study and the children were in daycare. When moving to Finland, these parents did not speak Finnish (or Swedish) but used English instead. As my earlier work (Iikkanen 2017) showed, they felt that the use of English as a lingua franca (Seidlhofer 2011) had worked quite well for them, especially in more official encounters. However, they had often felt excluded in more unofficial social contexts because they did not speak Finnish. Consequently, they expressed a very high motivation for mastering the Finnish language. In fact, most of them had also achieved this goal by our second interview, as they chose to speak Finnish instead of English. In a nutshell, they felt that they did not need English in every day encounters anymore. This leads to the conclusion that English seemed to be very important in the initial period of integration, but, in the long run, Finnish became more and more essential for managing everyday life and enabling these migrants to become true members of the society. References Iikkanen, P. (2017). The use of language in migrant stay-at-home parents’ process of integration: Experiences of inclusion and exclusion. Apples – the journal of Applied Language Studies, 11(3), 121–142. Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Tjaša Jakop, Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts Slovene dialect of Cankova on the crossroads of Slovene, German and Hungarian The book is devoted to Slovene and Hungarian linguist August Pavel (1886–1946) with the emphasis on his great dialectal work A szlovén vashidegkúti nyelvjárás hangtana (‘The Phonetics of the Slovene dialect of Cankova’) from 1909. Although Pavel’s Phonetics from 1909 puts focus on phonology (as suggested in the title: hangtana (‘phonetics), the materials feature a lot of vocabulary, phrases, and sentences from Cankova dialects which, in addition to Slavic, also shows signs of Germanic, Romance, and various other foreign language influences and elements. All these suggest a great diversity of linguistic influences in such a small fraction of the Prekmurje territory (the thesis does contain a lot of Prekmurje-related and foreign language comparative material). The author of this book will compare Cankova local dialect from Pavel’s work (1909) with the speech about a hundred years later – as spoken by the eldest generation (born before WW2), the middle generation and the younger generation (Cankova Elementary school pupils). References JAKOP, Tjaša, 2017: Govor Cankove od Pavlovega Glasoslovja (1909) dalje. In: Avgust Pavel med Slovenci, Madžari in Avstrijci = August Pavel among the Slovenians, Hungarians and Austrians. (Zora 120). Maribor: Univerzitetna založba Univerze, 53–64. PAVEL, Avgust, 1909: A vashidegkúti szlovén nyelvjárás hangtana. Budimpešta: A Magyar Tudományos Akadémia.
Bernadett Jani-Demetriou, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest “We cannot step forward unless we manage to understand each other.” Heteroglossia and academic achievement Academic achievement is not possible without understanding what is being told at school. Furthermore, understanding is the result of successful communication. The presentation employs the theory of heteroglossia (Bahtyin 1986) which defines communication as an action where both speakers and listeners are actively involved. The speaker takes into consideration how the listener would react and this reaction depends on the listener’s previous experiences and knowledge. According to Bakhtin, this individual interpretation of the conversation is the apperceptive background which is the accounts created among speakers taking part in the discourse about the existence of the occuring cultural precognitions (Bahtyin 1986). The presentation is based on the experiences of an ethnolinguistic research conducted in the north-eastern part of Hungary, among members of a group identified in local discourses as Vlah Roma. The language practices of the community are characterised by using linguistic features linked to both Hungarian and Romani. However, at school, teaching is solely in Hungarian which is far from being familiar to the children of the community. With the presented circumstances, the apperceptive background of both teachers at school and students of the community differs significantly so that there is lack of understanding. The children of the community face great difficulties in their academic achievements due to the fact that their different language practices are not appreciated at school. The teachers are aware of these differences and they try in various ways to find methods that could improve the communication with the children. By analysing interviews taken with the teachers of the school, this presentation presents how the teachers perceive and evaluate the children’s different linguistic repertoire and what ideologies they use to describe and categorize these different language practices (Geeraerts – Kristiansen 2012) and how they apply these ideologies in their teaching. References Bahtyin, Mihail Mihajlovics 1986. A beszéd műfajai In: Bahtyin, Mihail Mihajlovics A beszéd és a valóság. Filozófiai és beszédelméleti írások. Gondolat, Budapest. 357-419. García, Ofelia 2009. Education, Multilingualism and Translanguaging in the 21. Century. In: Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove et al. (ed.): Social Justice through Multilingual Education. Multilingual Matters, Cromwell. 140–58. Geeraerts, Dirk – Kristiansen, Gitte 2014. Cognitive Linguistics and Language Variation In: Littlemore, Jeannette – Taylor, John.R. (ed.): The Bloomsbury Companion to Cognitive Linguistics. Bloomsbury Academic. 202-217.
Lisa Jansen, University of Münster “It’s more common for Brits to sound American”: British and American perceptions of music performances Singers actively stylize language and put it on display. The audience plays a crucial role in music performances as their evaluation and approval determine an artist’s success. Research into the sociolinguistics of music has focused on the production side of performances but neglected the audience’s role (e.g. Trudgill 1983). Their perception gives insight into language attitudes and language ideological processes. How do listeners identify and label performed accents? Which are the telltale features of different Englishes? How do speakers of different varieties evaluate the same performance? In light of this research gap, British and American students’ perceptual assessments of British pop and rock music were elicited with 50 guided interviews. Ten excerpts of unaltered music samples served as auditory stimuli to simulate an everyday listening experience. The interviews underwent a qualitative content analysis, i.e. statements were coded and clustered into categories. Results show that whereas the British participants named various phonetic features to identify an Americanized singing style, the American subjects were quite vague in describing their own variety. Against expectations (Frith 1996), they did not immediately identify British singers emulating an American accent. Genre and lyrics also activated different sets of expectations and influenced the interviewees’ cultural associations. The participants showed a detailed understanding of the complex interplay of motivations for stylizing language performances. To a large extent, their assessments reflect findings of the expert discourse and show that the audience takes part in constructing different performance styles. References Frith, S. 1998. Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Cambridge (MA): Harvard UP. Trudgill, P. 1983. Acts of conflicting identity: The sociolinguistics of British pop-song pronunciation. In On Dialect: Social and Geographical Perspectives, edited by P. Trudgill, 141-60. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lysbeth Jongbloed-Faber, Fryske Akademy, Maastricht University The impact of social media on language shift Dutch migrants are known for their high levels of language shift (Clyne & Pauwels, 2013). Among Frisian migrants (i.e. Dutch migrants from the Fryslân province) the same patterns have been observed (Gorter, 2002). Social media offer infinite opportunities to migrants to stay connected with their homeland and communicate in their first language, irrespective of place and time. Research in the Fryslân province shows that through social media, the minority language Frisian has experienced a staggering increase in writing (Jongbloed-Faber et al., 2016). The question is to what extent social media have also influenced the linguistic behaviour of Frisians living outside the language territory. Have social media triggered a more frequent use of Frisian outside the Fryslân province as well, and if so, do social media have the power to slow down the rapid language shift found in earlier research (Gorter, 2002)? To address the research questions, a survey was set out among Frisian migrants (n=562) and nine interviews were conducted in 2017. The results show that through social media, contact with Fryslân has intensified, and Frisian is used much more frequently in writing than before. Moreover, the reported language proficiency of the migrants’ children is superior to previous findings. References Clyne, Michael & Anne Pauwels (2013). The Dutch language in Australia. In: Hinskens, Frans and Taeldeman, Johan (eds.), Language and space: an international handbook of linguistic variation, volume III: Dutch. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp.858-878. Gorter, Durk (2002). Language ability and use. In: Gorter, Durk & Karen van der Zee (eds.), Frisians abroad. Ljouwert/Leeuwarden: Fryske Akademy, pp.33-45. Jongbloed-Faber, Lysbeth, Van de Velde, Hans, van der Meer, Cor & Edwin Klinkenberg (2016). Language use of Frisian bilingual teenagers on social media. Treballs de Sociolingüística Catalana, 26 (2016), pp.27-54.
Jana Jurčević, University of Zagreb Beyond traditional standardization – language policing in the digital era Although often perceived as libertarian and chaotic: a space of freespeech, a place of exercising democratic values, active participation in social and political life, borderless, timeless and mostly anonymous domain of human interaction, cyber communication is nevertheless guided by various norms. In this article we shall look how to investigate these norms, specifically the problem of language policy in the new media environment, which is no longer under scrutiny of institutions traditionally governing this domain (e.g. the state and educational institutions). Special focus will be put on „dialogic“ Web because: Web 2.0 allows users to upload their own content in diverse locations, following that it also provides an ideal space for studying bottom-up language policing (Blommaert et al. 2009) by individuals and/or groups at the micro level. Our corpora shall examine two Facebook groups concerned with problems of (il)literacy, mostly dealing with orthography, adherence to offline language policy as means of achieving an online goal and humor as a discursive technique in language management. The groups in question are 'Jezični FAIL – Nepismenost naša svagdašnja' which can be translated as a 'Language FAIL – Illiteracy of our Daily Lives' and a pun-intended group name 'Tijedan polu pismenosti' translated as 'One Weak of semi literacy'. Both groups are concerned with Croatian standard language, and the users are encouraged to participate in giving examples, suggestions and problem solving, but it must be noted that pages are moderated by administrators and official disclaimer of rules concerning behavior of group members is implemented. Our method can be described as a multimethod approach which consist of Virtual Linguistic Ethnography (Cavanagh, 1999) that takes on fundamentals of Conversation Analysis, also relies on Linguistic Landscape Analysis, as well as foucauldian aspects of Critical Discourse Analysis.
Rania Karachaliou, University of Patras Oscillating between alignment and affiliation in the reception of complaint stories My presentation aims to explore the multiple ways story recipients respond to complaint stories, namely stories which concern “some (non-present) party whose behavior (often toward the teller) is considered blameworthy” (Couper-Kuhlen 2012: 114). Based on Stivers’ (2008: 33-37) distinction between alignment, which involves responses that endorse the telling activity, and affiliation, which concerns the support of the teller’s stance, I examine the linguistic resources story recipients employ to show their alignment or/and affiliation during complaint stories. I argue that when the target of the complaint story is an outgroup member, story recipients convey their affiliation towards the storyteller’s stance; but, when the target belongs to their own group, they rely on displays of alignment. My data consist of complaint stories which emerged in casual conversations among the members of a theater group. Drawing on conversation analytic methods, my analysis shows that • when the target of the complaint is an outgroup member, story recipients exhibit their affiliation to the storyteller’s stance through laughter, evaluative comments, and extended sequences which belittle the target; • when the target of the complaint is an ingroup member, story recipients convey their alignment through continuers and minimal responses. Given the above, I argue that complaints, and thus criticism, towards an outgroup member are responded with various displays of affiliation, while targeting an ingroup member seems to be a rather delicate issue for interlocutors. References Couper-Kuhlen, E. 2012. Exploring affiliation in the reception of complaint conversational stories. In A. Peräkylä & Μ.-L. Sorjonen (eds.), Emotion in Interaction, 113–145. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stivers, T. 2008. Stance, alignment, and affiliation during storytelling: When nodding is a token of affiliation. Research on Language & Social Interaction 41(1): 31–57.
Eleni Karafoti, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Negotiating preferred norms: is the preferred/unmarked/appropriate so obviously polite? Politeness phenomena are treated as essentially evaluative and normative. More or less the idea is that politeness is based on evaluation against a standard. Such an assumption lies at the heart of both earlier and recent work of (im)politeness; thus, a theory of (im)politeness necessarily involves an understanding of both what people think should happen (moral norms) and what people think it is likely to happen (empirical norms) (cf. Eelen 2001; Haugh 2003). In a similar vein, yet not identical, First Pair Parts (FPPs) set up an expectation of a specific relevant Second Pair Part (SPP), namely, the notion of ‘preference organization’ in Conversation Analysis (Schegloff, 2007). Thus, not surprisingly, an attributable feature of preference is linguistic markedness (Levinson, 1983). The present paper is an attempt to identify the connection between politeness as social practice (Haugh & Kadar, 2013) and preference organization, in instances where this relationship emerges from the sequential organization of talk, since it is the position of the turn in the sequence that creates the expectation of a particular second action. For this purpose, I will exploit Heritage’s (1984) distinction between normative and moral accountability and I will focus on SPPs of requests and offers, in order to argue that the equation between preference, unmarkedness, appropriateness and politeness stands more for turn shape rather than for the characterization of a particular class of actions. References Eelen, G. 2001. A Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing. Haugh, M., 2003. Anticipated versus inferred politeness. Multilingua, 22 (4): 397-413. Haugh, M. & Kadar, D. 2013. Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heritage, J. 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Levinson, S., 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E., 2007. Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pınar Karakılçık, INALCO Paris / SeDyL CNRS UMR8202 / Istanbul University A title through the voice of the people: "A language is a person": "Turkish is also our language" Thanks to a field mission in a city densely populated by Armenian speakers (Bourj Hammoud [BH], Lebanon), we have created an oral corpus of Turkish-speaking Armenian speakers, speaking an archaic variant of Turkish. This community has the particularity of being in a form of continuity with the Ottoman Empire, for geographical and socio-political reasons, and because of this it is the only Armenian community that has preserved a bilingual Armenian-Turkish continuum today. The Armenian community of Lebanon is mainly composed of refugees from the genocide who originated in Cilicia, where turcophonie was widespread. The community demonstrates an active engagement with the genocide, in which Turkey is perceived as the country of the enemy, but Turkish, as a language, carries meaning that is separate from the country, offering a sociocultural proximity that blurs the division between the “homeland” and the diaspora: “Sorry we speak Turkish better than the Turks”. This community has been under the influence of the linguistic campaigns led by political organizations against turcophonie. The speakers express a disapproval on this subject, recalling the adage: "A language is a person / Turkish is also our language / we are as many people as we speak languages...". This fieldwork, conducted on language memory and transmission, has brought us great openings concerning the social context of Armenian-Turkish linguistic contact, in a post-genocide context, that is to say after a hundred years of rupture of the community of its socio-linguistic ground of origin, and the absence of contact with other turcophones. This context exploits five linguistic codes including Armenian; Turkish (regional); the Armenian of BH, called "their Armenian" (code-alternation/code-switching with "their Turkish"), which was realized by the perceptual dialectology. We will analyze these discourses through present linguistic codes and their local and identity functions. References Blackledge, Adrian. 2005. Discourse and Power in a Multilingual World. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Blommaert, Jan. 2005. Discourse, A Critical Introduction. Cambridge University Press. Blommaert, Jan & De Fina, Anna. 2016. “On the Timespace Organisation of Who We Are”. Tilburg Papers in Cultures Studies. 153. https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/upload/ba249987-6ece-44d2-b96b3fc329713d59_TPCS_153_Blommaert-DeFina.pdf Donabédian, Anaïd. 2001. “Tabou linguistique en arménien occidental : 'gor' progressif est-il 'turc'?”. in Donabédian, A. (ed.), Langues de diaspora, langues en contact, Faits de Langues, Ophrys, Paris, 18/2001, pp. 201-210. http://a.donabedian.free.fr/textes/FdL%20Diaspora%20Donabedian%20gor.pdf Thomason, Sarah G. 2001. Language contact. Edinburgh University Press.
Petros Karatsareas, University of Westminster, Alexandra Georgiou, UCL Institute of Education, University of Westminster Attitudes towards non-standard forms of community languages: negotiating the position of Cypriot Greek in London’s Greek complementary schools We present preliminary findings of an ethnographic study of the role that London’s Greek complementary schools play in shaping and reinforcing negative attitudes towards the linguistic practices of pupils with a Greek Cypriot background. We focus on the ways in which teachers’ attitudes towards the non-standard Cypriot Greek dialect and their attitude-driven teaching and learning practices stigmatize the dialect and treat children’s bidialectalism as a pedagogical problem instead of as a cultural, cognitive and developmental asset. We follow Blackledge and Creese (2010), Creese and Blackledge (2011), and Lytra and Martin (2010) in viewing complementary schools as sites of multilingualism where meaning is negotiated and multilingual and multicultural identities are reified. We adopt Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory of mind in seeing language as a symbolic tool that not only facilitates meaningful interactions but also creates spaces for language learning. Our investigation draws on classroom observations conducted in two schools over a period of six months. Our data reveal that the school pro gramme only accepts Standard Greek as the target variety. It does not take into account the pupils’ linguistic repertoires and does not provide them with opportunities to use them to make meaning and develop their metalinguistic awareness (García & Li Wei, 2014). In line with this rigid institutional pedagogy, teachers do not incorporate Cypriot Greek into their teaching. They consider it to be ‘improper’ and ‘bad’ language, and engage in practices that make explicit their disapproval of its use by the pupils. Recasting and corrective feedback create a negative discourse towards Cypriot Greek and hinder the meaningful use and learning of Standard Greek. We emphasize the need for policy makers, practitioners and educators in superdiverse contexts like London to recognize the value of rich linguistic repertoires and to develop multilingual pedagogies that draw on them as resources for language learning.
Akiko Katayama, University of Tokyo US base, English, and us: A Foucauldian discourse analysis of life story narratives by young Japanese non-elite English users This study reports on a Foucauldian discourse analysis (e.g., Wooffitt, 2005) of life story narratives by three young Japanese who were born, grew up, and learned to use English without receiving higher education in a rural Japanese town which hosts a large US base. While Japan’s standardization-driven English education policies have propagated that it is essential to “cultivate Japanese with English Abilities” in the time of “globalization,” little is understood about what it means to use English for the Japanese, particularly for non-elites including the participants of the study. Following the controversial US-Japan Status of Forces Agreement, Japan still accommodates 124 US military bases and base-related facilities; consequently, many local residents have been using English on and near the bases. Multiple ethnographic interviews were conducted over two years with a male truck driver for the base’s laundry service, a male housekeeper for the military hotels, and a female manager of an apparel shop frequented by female military affiliates. All three learned to use English informally at work or through relationships and were functioning at least in their social contexts. The series of long interviews explored their life histories and histories of learning and using English as well as their attitudes and beliefs about the language. The thematization of the fully transcribed audio data revealed locally and historically situated meanings of English to the three participants, which were neither a monolithic symbol of colonialist oppression nor of neoliberal globalization. Rather, their narratives reflect highly complex and at times contradictory “discourses” (e.g., Foucault,1972). The study specifically identified three kinds of (Foucauldian) discourses which the participants sometimes subjugated and other times resisted; 1) discourse of the localized version of African American hip-hop trend called B-kei, 2) discourse of ESP on and around the US base, and 3) discourse of globalization in Japan. 299 words
Martha Karrebæk, University of Copenhagen Food, language and place: The authentic, the exotic and nostalgia when eating (D anish) food As food and food related issues receive heightened societal focus these years, it is relevant for a socially engaged science of language to engage with the intersection of food and language (Karrebæk, Riley & Cavanaugh Forthc). Such socio-linguistic interest concerns communicative processes taking place through, around and about food, and the social meanings conveyed, created, contested, developed and incorporated (Silverstein 2003; Riley & Cavanaugh 2017). In this paper I focus on cases where a geographical destination – D enm ark, the N ordic countries, the D anish island of Bornholm – is used to brand food in professional settings – at restaurants and am ong producers. I discuss how the destination is m ade available to consum ers and how consum ers and producers m ake sense of it. I also look at what happens when place- based food travels. To attract potential costum ers’ attention and to create distinction in the saturated food m arket, different sem iotic m eanings are used to create added value. One of these is authenticity, which invokes tradition, historicity and m aterial grounding (C avanaugh & Shanker 2014; H eller & D uchene 2011; Z ukin 2008). Other m eanings com prise exoticism (Johnston & Baum ann 2007) and un- m ediated proxim ity between consum ers and producers (Weiss 2014). H owever, producers’ and sellers’ strategic choices m ay or m ay not be taken up by consum ers, who m ay use food in entirely different ways, e.g., to recreate m em ories (Tippen 2016). I will com pare data from field sites in D enm ark and N ew York, pictures, audiorecordings of interviews and of interactions in restaurants and am ong food producers, to study the role and m eaning of the place designation of food. F or instance the N ew N ordic C uisine, a gastronom ic and discursive construction, which has received m uch attention over the last decade (Byrkjeflot et al. 2013), is used creatively, but how depends on the setting. I will draw on theories of food and language (Karrebæk, R iley & C avanaugh F orthc.; R iley & C avanaugh 2017), reflexivity, globalization (G iddens 1990; P ietikäinen et al. 2016), tourism (Jaworski & Thurlow 2015), and authenticity (C oupland 2003, 2014).
Marleen Kedars, Tallinn University LIN G U ISTIC LAN D SCAPE IN TALLIN N OLD TOWN 2013– 2017: A D IACH RON IC PERSPECTIVE The linguistic landscape (LL) study has gone through a m ajor developm ent during the last 10 years but it is still exceptional that it has been studied diachronically (P avlenko 2010). LL is m ostly explored in the urban environm ents where the com m ercial areas can be found (G orter, C enoz 2017) and this is the reason why this study has been conducted in Tallinn Old Town that is a place with a big tourist flow and sm all tourism businesses. The purpose of the paper is to collect valuable em pirical language m aterial diachronically to determ ine the sociolinguistic changes that have taken place throughout the research, explain and describe the functions of public signs, street advertising etc. Therefore, the m ethodology of the study com bines quantitative and qualitative research. The quantitative part gives an overview of the fin dings of the ethnographic fieldwork in num bers and the qualitative part analyses thoroughly the different languages used on the signs, their functions and the changes in language or script use that have taken place over tim e. The m ain outcom e of the research is that the LL in Tallinn Old Town is m ultilingual, m ultim odal, also sym bolic and inform ative. A large num ber of visual and printed texts and also different languages are in use. English as a foreign language is m ost frequently used which shows that English is used for a fetishized purpose (KellyH olm es 2014). References GORTER, Durk; CENOZ, Jasone. 2017. Linguistic Landscape and Multilingualism. Language Awareness and Multilingualism. Third Edition 233–245. KELLY-HOLMES, Helen. 2014. Linguistic fetish: The sociolinguistics of visual multilingualism. Visual Communication 135–151. PAVLENKO, Aneta. (2010. Linguistic landscape of Kyiv, Ukraine: A diachronic study. In Shohamy, E., Barni, M. & E. Ben Rafael (eds.) Linguistic landscape in the city. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters 133–150.
William Kelleher, University of the Witwatersrand A linguistic ethnography of geomapped small stories: Born Frees in Sandton, South Africa In order to operationalise small story research (De Fina and Georgakopoulou 2008) in a linguistic ethnography of place, the present study uses geomapping to trace participant trajectories through a site and thereby examine the emergence and occasioning of narrative interaction. The data for the study consists of photographs, and GPS mapped and transcribed self-collected participant audio recordings. These are analysed using the axes of Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) approach to identity as complemented by a geosemiotic analysis of discursive environment (Blommaert and Maly 2014 and Scollon and Scollon 2003). The resulting exploration of Sandton, Johannesburg, is a ‘new’ ethnography that aims to better understand new city spaces. One cohort in particular, that represents South Africa’s modernity (the ‘Born Frees’ or ‘millenials’) is focused upon. This paper gives an account of the subjectivities and understandings that will be relevant to the present, and future, of the site. In particular, I look at Born Free’s tactics of intersubjectivity, their stylects, their complex movement from periphery to centre, their distinction through conspicuous consumption, as well as gender violence and their insertion within vertical, neoliberal, power structures and discourses. References BLOMMAERT, J. & MALY, I. 2014. Ethnographic linguistic landscape analysis and social change: a case study. Tilburg papers in culture studies, 100. BUCHOLTZ, M. & HALL, K. 2005. Identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies, 7, 585-614. DE FINA, A. & GEORGAKOPOULOU, A. 2008 a. Analysing narratives as practices. Qualitative Research, 8, 379-387. SCOLLON, R. & SCOLLON, S. 2003. Discourses in place: language in the material world, London and New York, Routledge.
Roswitha Kersten-Pejanić, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Post-Conflict Linguistic Landscapes. Bottom-up discourses of ethnic tensions in a rural border region in Croatia Persisting bottom-up discourses of former open conflicts between the different national groups of former Yugoslavia can be perceived in the landscape of the former “Serbian Krajina” in today’s Croatia. Next to legacies of the violent war in the physical landscape – ruins, danger signs of land mines, monuments – it is the linguistic landscape of this former war zone at the state border of Croatia with the Serbian Republic in Bosnia and Hercegovina that portrays glaring social (ethnical and religious) borders in this previously diverse and heterogeneous area. Instead of a ‘corporate sense’ of Yugoslavia, manifested in the maxim of “brotherhood and unity”, there are still obvious trends of enduring (ethno)nationalism and rehabilitated traditionalist and populist discourses. This paper will provide central results of an ongoing research project on the linguistic landscape in a rural region and former war site in peripheral Croatia, which, next to the physical border between Croatia and Bosnia, points to the existing inner borders between ethnic groups in the area researched. The examination of the wealth of signs of ethnic and nationalist tension in the public space – as shown by written messages on house walls, road signs and other public surface – will be at the center of the presentation. The influence of the 1990s’ war and the status of this area as a ‘post-conflict site’ is of particular analytic importance for the presented research. By means of an ethnographic perspective, the interrelation of bottom-up linguistic signs in public space, their political messages, the corresponding ideological origin and their temporality (i.e., both the historical context in which they were produced as well as the current time, which these linguistic signs are still influencing) will be discussed.
Jaime Kim, University of Bath Investigating the concept of appropriate academic English use in UK degree programmes The shifting sociolinguistic realities of English have been challenging L1 English hegemony in English education, but L1 English as a default academic lingua franca is still a deeply entrenched idea in higher education, particularly in writing. With growing awareness of the international character of higher education, the need for re-conceptualisation of what is appropriate academic English has been addressed by a number of scholars (Jenkins, 2014; Mauranen, 2012), but prior research in EIL in academic context has largely focused on L2 English students and their learning experience. This study looked at academic English use in eight degree programmes in three UK universities from academics’ perspective. Using Communities of Practice theory (Wenger, 1998), the study examined how appropriateness of English use was conceptualised in the programmes in the context of written assessment. The data were drawn from documents and interviews of teaching staff in undergraduate honours and postgraduate taught programmes across engineering, science and social sciences. Findings show that appropriate English use in each programme was strongly associated with clarity of communication and conforming to specific disciplinary conventions. However, in the context of assessment, academics’ judgement on the quality of students’ written work was largely subjective and substantially hidden from students’ view. The presentation will discuss the implications of the results for academics and policy makers to adapt their practices in a world defined by transnationalism where the diversity of culture and English is valued, which would enable them to remain competitive in today’s global education market. (246 words) References Jenkins, J. (2014). English as a Lingua Franca in the International University: the Politics of Academic English Language Policy. Oxon, UK: Routledge. Mauranen, A. (2012). Exploring ELF: Academic English Shaped by Non-native Speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Alla Klimenkowa, University of Göttingen The virtualization of ‘language conflict’ While the international language policy does not dispose of really efficient means to promote minority languages, the communities concerned develop their own counter-discourses based on ideologies of resistance. The communicative platform chosen is – already prototypically in the context of politicized language conflict – the Internet which plays a catalyst role in language conflicts since it co-constitutes a space and, thus, shows the reasons of language conflicts and enables to communicate them. This contribution addresses a counter-discourse in form of metalinguistic comments in the blogs of creolophone language activists in the French Antilles, a region where the relationship between French as official language and Creole as traditional oral communicative code is typically described in terms of language conflict. The activity of this group is interesting because of their role as founders of counter-discourses and their position as recognized experts. One of the questions raised is by what discursive means they create a ‘common ground’ with their readers to succeed a convincing communication. Discussing the strategies of argumentation of this counter-discourse, we ask, how a counter-discourse becomes manifest as such and how it handles conventional dominant ideologies and linguistic prejudices. Some preliminary hypotheses are possible. The Antillean language activists make use of many conventional ideological concepts, terms and images, often recontextualizing and recycling them, for example in order to re-define a “spoiled identity” of the Creole as an endangered, respectful and authentic one. Similarly, the employment of French as a discourse language does not diminish the perception that the Creole is endangered and should be protected. It rather demonstrates a strategic dealing with a ‘competitor’ used as an articulation or information medium. The acceptance of bilingualism in the Antillean society does not, however, mean that contact induced phenomena as borrowing and code-switching are also accepted, which testifies a powerful ideology of purism.
Polina Kliuchnikova, Durham University ‘But Do We Speak It?’ Discourses on Language Proficiency and Performance Among FSU Migrants in Russian Cities Urban environments of Russian megalopolises have gradually become more diverse due to, beside other factors, constant inflows of migrants from other former Soviet Union (FSU) countries. Since the collapse of the USSR, the language of these mobile groups has gradually become occasional rather than systematic, non-standard rather than normative, conversational rather than formalized. Once they arrive in Russia, however, they usually face strong sociolinguistic stereotyping exercised in different communicative contexts. Characteristically, the majority of contemporary urban ‘langscapes’ in Russia hardly manifest their multifaceted or vibrant composition, hiding the large proportion of their ethnic and linguistic diversity into the underbelly of suburban and downcast areas. What this implies for incoming migrants themselves is that their linguistic background – whether they are mono-, bi- or multilingual – has to go through critical changes once they move to Russian cities. Not only do they face strong normativity which automatically labels them as ‘nonnative’ speakers of the dominant language (i.e. Russian) and downgrades their proficiency in other FSU languages as irrelevant to their migrant present, but their own vision of language skills at hand changes, with inevitable consequences in communicative patterns which such ‘calibration’ to a new language regime implies – both at an individual and group level of interaction. Based on the results of ethnographic research carried out among post-Soviet migrants in large Russian cities in April-October 2017, the proposed paper seeks to look into migrants’ own accounts of transformations their (socio)linguistic behavior undergoes in the new context of Russian urban culture. It examines migrants’ narratives through the perspective of their own perceptions of ‘differences’ which they discover in own linguistic behavior and performative strategies to deal with them– both as individuals on the day-to-day basis or as a minority group with an emerging voice.
Ibtissem Knouzi, University of Toronto, Khaled Barkaoui, York University Effects of Audience and L2 Proficiency on L2 Learners' Pragmatic Choices when Writing Emails Successful written communication in a second language (L2) depends on mastery of the L2 grammatical and discourse conventions as well as the socio-pragmatic and sociolinguistic norms assumed/expected by the interlocutor. L2 learners’ misunderstanding of these norms may lead to communication breakdowns and/or offensive exchanges. However, there is little research on the pragmatic choices of L2 learners when writing in L2. This study starts to address this gap by examining L2 learners’ realization of a face-threatening directive speech act, making a suggestion, when composing emails to different audiences. Each of 16 L2 learners at two levels of English language proficiency (low and high) wrote four emails to audiences that differ in terms of their familiarity and power status relative to the writer suggesting solutions for a given problem. Each participant then watched a video recording of their writing session and provided stimulated recalls about what they were thinking while writing each email. Using a taxonomy developed by Martinez-Flor (2005), each of the emails (N= 64) was analysed in terms of the frequency, directness, and type of suggestions made as well as the politeness strategies and redressive forms used. Devices used to mitigate the imposition of the suggestions as well as examples of impoliteness (e.g., threats) were also identified. The stimulated recalls were analyzed in terms of participants’ explanations of their pragmatic choices while writing. The results were then compared across audiences and proficiency levels. The findings and their implications for the teaching and assessment of L2 writing and pragmatics will be discussed. References Martínez-Flor, A. (2005). A theoretical review of the speech act of suggesting: Towards a taxonomy for its use in FLT. Revista alicantina de estudios ingleses, 18, 167-187.
Senem Konedareva, American University in Bulgaria Language and Identity – a sociolinguistic investigation of two examples from Banat Literary tradition The main focus of my research paper is two unknown books from the Banat literary tradition presenting the first stage of the efforts for creating an official literary micro language of the Banat Bulgarian community named Paulician language. The two printed books “Duhovny glas ali molitvi kasi” and “Molitveno knigce’, the first published in 1860, and the second published before 1863 include canonic texts written by the Beshenov clergyman Andria Klobuchar. The texts presented use Latin orthography adapted to the phonetic characteristics of the language and are one of the first written examples initiating the process of standardization and codification of the Paulician vernacular. The texts are investigated on the ground of phenomenological processes of social interactions not only chronologically placing them in the process of the complex social and political actions for institutionalizing of the language, but also the use of language in the canonic texts sacredly kept as an identification code of the Paulician community and endowing it with special status in this context. The paper will also discuss some findings concerning the preserved structural features of the language typical for its dialectal group despite the distant existence of the vernacular from its original linguistic area and the great number of linguistic and cultural interferences. References Bucholz, M. Hall, K. Language and Identity In: A companion to linguistic anthrophony, ed. Duranti, A. 2004, pp.299-394 Miletich, L. Knizhninata i ezikat na banatskite balgari – In: Sbornik za narodni umotvorenia, nauka I knizhnina, Sofia, ed. XVI –XVII, 1900, pp.405-481 Stoykov, S. Leksikata na banatskiya govor. Sofia, 1968 Stoykov, S. Banatskiyat govor. Sofia, 1967 Telbizov, K. Banatskata balgarska knizhnina. – In: Literaturna musal, No2, 1984, Sofia, pp.132137 Jakovsky, J. NAUKA KRISTIANSKA ZA KRISTIANETE OF FILIBELISKATA DARXIAVA. U Rim, 1844
Jakub Kopecký, Czech Academy of Sciences Documentary voices: Intertextuality and multimodality in documentary films The aim of this paper is to analyse selected contemporary Czech documentary films (e.g. Český žurnál: Matrix AB / Czech Journal: Matrix AB, Šmejdi / Crooks, Co dokáže lež / The Power of Lies and others) with regard to their intertextual elements and multimodal aspects. Intertextual links in documentaries involve connections between the utterances in the film and other discourses as well as connections between the utterances of different speakers within the film. As concerns the multimodal aspects of documentaries, different combinations of verbal and nonverbal (esp. visual) signs and their roles in conveying meanings will be analysed. Based on Nichols’ (2010) taxonomy of six principal modes of representation in documentaries, I describe how the relationships between verbal and nonverbal means differ in particular modes, especially in expository, observational and participatory filmmaking. I also deal with the question of whether there are differences in the interplay between various semiotic modes when representing the diverse interpretative repertoires the speakers use (Wetherell & Potter 1992; Homoláč 2009). References Homoláč, J. (2009). Internetové diskuse o cikánech a Romech. Praha: Univerzita Karlova v Praze – Nakladatelství Karolinum. Nichols, B. (2010). Introduction to documentary. 2nd edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Wetherell, M. & Potter, J. (1992). Mapping the Language of Racism: Discourse and the Legitimation of Exploation. New York: Columbia University Press.
Simona Korytářová, University of Ostrava Orchestration of Modes in Mathematics Video Tutorials: Can a Symphony Be Played by a Chamber Orchestra? In recent years, remote tutoring has spread thanks to the availability of varied means of computer technology; there is a great amount of educational videos to be found on video-sharing websites. Not only do video tutorials vary in respects such as length, quality, and used equipment, they also show a relatively wide range of modes employed. However, some producers of video tutorials manage to explain the topic and give instructions with a limited set of means. Based on the methodology of multimodal discourse analysis, the contribution attempts to describe the genre of online video tutorial, focusing primarily on the involved modes and their interplay. The research has been done on the corpus consisting of online video tutorials on differential and integral calculus (e.g. implicit differentiation, first-order linear differential equations) which are available on the Internet and made by native speakers of English. In order to comment on differences between online and offline practices a referential group of standard lectures on infinitesimal calculus has been investigated as well. References Bateman,J.A. (2008) Multimodality and Genre. A Foundation for the Systemic Analysis of Multimodal Documents. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Crawford Camiciottoli, B. and Fortanet-Gómez, I. (2015) Multimodal Analysis in Academic Settings. New York: Routledge. O’Halloran, K.L. (2005) Mathematical Discourse. Language, symbolism and visual images. London: Continuum O’Halloran, K.L. (2011). Multimodal Discourse Analysis. In K.Hyland&B.Paltridge (Eds.), Companion to Discourse Analysis. London: Continuum. Norris, S. (2004) Analyzing Multimodal Interaction. A methodological framework. New York: Routledge.
Aleksandra Kosla, University of Vienna Impoliteness in Computer-Mediated Communication. Deconstructing Corporate and PR Social Media Crises on Twitter The goal of this project is to categorize impoliteness strategies in Twitter communication. What makes this project difficult is the fact that language of social media is multifaceted and engages a variety of semiotic resources such as hashtags, memes, gifs, etc. necessary for meaning making. According to Culpeper, “naturally occurring impoliteness is relatively rare” (2011: 9) but social media crises provide is with this exceptional possibility to collect this kind of data for analysis. For the purposes of this project a total of 18 293 tweets that were posted in 50 different instances of social media crises were collected. The data will be analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Data will be analysed by means of Herring’s (2013) CMDA framework and appraisal theory. Appraisal theory states that expressing feelings in language is institutionalized by a society and can be categorized in the system of affect, appreciation and judgement (Martin & White 2005: 45). Categorizing data in those systems will reveal which strategies we use in computer-mediated communication and will be useful for building a model of impolite strategies. Preliminary results suggest that there is a correlation between the severity of a social media crisis (and the reason why it happened) with the kind of tweets Twitter users post. Additionally, sarcasm, irony and humour seem to play a bigger than expected role in impolite communication. References Culpeper, Jonathan. 2011. Impoliteness. Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Herring, Susan. 2013. “Discourse in Web 2.0: familiar, reconfigured, emergent. In: Tannen, Deborah; Trester, Anna (eds.) Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1-15.
Marin, James R; White, Peter. 2005. The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave.
Dominika Kováčová, Masaryk University The Language and Communicative Practices of ‘Instagirls’ This paper focuses on the current trend of celebrity construction on social media, particularly Instagram, and investigates the communicative practices of so-called Instagirls. The term ‘Instagirls’ is used to designate female users of Instagram who utilized their presence on social media and sprang to fame thanks to their captivating posts and large followership. The data used in the analysis consists of Instagram posts of three randomly-chosen Instagirls. These posts, manually collected and preserved with the associated metadata (pictures, videoclips), were divided into five categories based on their content and function: public, private-like, repost, product, public awareness. The classification revealed which aspects of Instagirls’ lives are emphasized in their profiles and the way their online identity is constructed. The analysis (inspired by discourse analysis) demonstrates that Instagirls employ various strategies to promote their online visibility, e.g. hashtags and tagging. Furthermore, the stylistic and lexical choices, the use of emoji and the multimodal aspects of the posts are examined. The author also aims to show that the influence of online celebrities such as Instagirls is no longer limited to social media but extends to various aspects of public life. Their popularity on social media has earned them a valued place in, for example, marketing, advertising, awareness-raising activities and politics. It thus can be assumed that the rise of Instagirls and further development of this phenomenon supports the principles of social media logic (van Dijck & Poell, 2013). References Baym, N. K. (2010). Personal Connections in the Digital Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Page, R. (2012). The linguistics of self-branding and micro-celebrity in Twitter: The role of hashtags. Discourse & Communication, 6(2), 181-201. van Dijck, J., Poell, T. (2013). Understanding Social Media Logic. Media and Communication, 1(1), pp. 2-14.
Philipp Krämer, Freie Universität Berlin How to ‘create’ a multilingual society? Language attitudes in the Franco-German border region of Saarland In 2014, the German federal state of Saarland introduced its France strategy which comprises the objective to make French a second vehicular language next to German. This paper investigates linguistic practices in Saarland’s population and their attitudes towards French and the regional government’s language policy. An online survey carried out in spring 2017 with 1’200 participants reveals a generally positive stance towards the objectives of the strategy. The quantitative findings of the survey include the participants’ opinions about specific measures of the France strategy such as early bilingual education (Mohr 2017), the creation of multilingual linguistic landscapes or free language courses for adults. The quantitative data are complemented by qualitative data from comments given at the end of the survey which reveal the reasoning behind arguments made both for and against the aims of the strategy. Saarland’s society turns out to be surprisingly multilingual already and therefore offers a promising setting to further enhance the region’s multilingualism. This is particularly reflected in present linguistic practices which show a distribution of functions between English as the global lingua franca and French as a language for communication in the border region. Whether the France strategy succeeds depends primarily on future developments in the population’s language attitudes (Lüsebrink et al. 2017). The survey can serve as a starting point for research-based recommendations for the advancement of Saarland’s language policy. References Lüsebrink H.-J. / Polzin-Haumann, C. / Vatter, C. (eds.). 2017. ‘Alles Frankreich oder was?’ – Die saarländische Frankreichstrategie im europäischen Kontext. Bielefeld, transcript. Mohr, A. 2017. Die Frankreichstrategie des Saarlandes – eine Vision und ihr bildungspolitisches Potenzial, in: Mentz, O. / Bühler, M.-L. (eds.): Deutsch-französische Beziehungen im europäischen Kontext. Ein vergleichendes Mosaik aus Schule und Hochschule, Berlin, LIT-Verlag: 161–192.
Adam Kříž, Czech Academy of Sciences Czech and Slovak of Slovaks living in Czechia The paper addresses how native speakers of Slovak who live long-term in Czechia acquire certain aspects of Czech vocabulary and forget some parts of Slovak vocabulary. Hence, the topic falls in the field of L2 acquisition and L1 attrition (e.g. Schmid, 2011) and combines sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives. The relation between Czech and Slovak can be called semicommunication (Zeevaert, 2007). Despite mutual intelligibility between these languages, many factors can lead to some form of adoption of the second language. Even in cases when speaker does not use second language, it can be assumed that strong exposure to it (e.g. migration context) can influence his/her mental representation of languages at his/her disposal. The representation of two languages was investigated with respect to individual words. The methods employed to cover this issue included lexical decision and picture naming tasks. All stimuli (Czech and Slovak words) were controlled for frequency, length and degree of similarity to equivalent in the second language. The performance of Slovaks living in Czechia (65 people chosen on the basis of sociolinguistic questionnaire) was compared to two control groups: native speakers of Czech and Slovaks living in Slovakia. The connections to sociodemographic characteristics were also examined. The results revealed that performance of the experimental group differed only from performance of Czech speakers and showed interesting differences in the processing of Czech and Slovak words in the experimental group. The paper aims at two closely related languages, the material which has not been extensively explored so far, and thus represents a valuable contribution to the general question of processing of languages in migration context. References SCHMID, M. (2011): Language attrition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ZEEVAERT, L. (2007): Receptive multilingualism and inter-Scandinavian semicommunication. In: Thije – Zeevaert, Receptive multilingualism. Linguistic analyses, language policies and didactic concepts. Amsterdam – Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 103–135.
Edina Krompák, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Boglárka Straszer, Dalarna University, Víctor Fernández-Mallat, University of Bern Interactional approaches in linguistic landscape research Linguistic landscape (LL) was first defined by Landry and Bourhis (1997) and offered insights into determining the vitality of a certain language in public spaces. The first studies in the field relied chiefly on interpretative or quantitative analyses of signs. More recently, by adopting usercentred methods, some LL research has aimed at exploring the stories behind these signs (Blommaert, 2013). This study compares the methodological approaches of three different LL research projects conducted in Switzerland (Krompák and Meyer, forthcoming; Fernández-Mallat, 2017) and Sweden (Straszer and Weding, forthcoming) and draws on data gathered from focus group discussions and interactions between speakers and researchers. We intend to analyse the ways in which speakers dialogically negotiate the meanings of signs in the LL. We thus put the spotlight on the speakers’ perspective, as we consider their role in the processes of telling the stories beyond the signs as central. The findings of our comparative analysis imply interactions about the sign as a new approach in LL research. In this approach, dialogues between different stakeholders appear as a central element in exploring the stories beyond signs. References Blommaert, J. (2013). Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes. Chronicles of Complexity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Fernández-Mallat, V. (2017). Evaluative Responses to the Presence of Spanish in Basel’s Linguistic Landscape. Paper presented at the international conference Approaches to migration, language, and identity, 05.05.2017, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Krompák, E. and Meyer, S. (forthcoming). Translanguaging and the negotiation of meaning. Multilingual signage in a Swiss linguistic landscape.In G. Mazzaferro (ed.). Translanguaging as Everyday Practice. Dordrecht: Springer. Landry, R. and Bourhis, R. Y. (1997). Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality: An Empirical Study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 16 (1), 23-49. Straszer, B. and Wedin, Å. (forthcoming). Rum för transspråkande i modersmålsundervisning. In Transspråkande och utbildning i svensk kontext. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Ágnes Kuna, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Éva Csupor, Judit Pintér, Márta Csabai, University of Szeged Power metaphors in healthcare conflicts Healthcare professionals face several conflicts, many of which derive from communicative problems or interpersonal hierarchical relationships. This has been recently confirmed by a U.S.– Swiss–Hungarian research project exploring conflicts in healthcare (Csupor et.al.2017). The results suggest that hierarchical relationships play a preeminent role in all three countries under study, with their highest share recorded in the Hungarian material (< 90%). The goal of the present talk is to highlight how conflicts in the Hungarian healthcare system correlate with the hierarchies of power. The analysis focuses on metaphors of power and hierarchical relationships, with the cognitive approach to metaphor serving as theoretical as well as methodological background (Steen et.al.2010). The overall research material was supplied by recorded interviews with 24 nurses and 49 doctors (altogether 144 conflict stories), conducted on the basis of a Swiss-American joint protocol. The interviews were subjected to content analysis with two independent coders working with ATLAS.ti7. The Hungarian material suggests that conflicts correlate strongly with hierarchy, power and disturbances of communication. Specifically Hungarian features include the conceptual metaphors POWER IS UP, POWER IS BEING BIG, HOSPITAL WARDS ARE EMPIRES WITH FEUDAL ORDER etc. I investigate the role of metaphors with regard to the issue of hierarchy and disturbances of communication. In particular, the following questions will be addressed: 1)What kind of metaphors appear in the conflict stories of health care professionals? 2)What is the role of metaphors in the conceptualization of conflicts? 3)How is power distributed in metaphors? 4)Can metaphors play a role in conflict management? The analysis of conflicts involving healthcare professionals will demonstrate that metaphor studies can make a significant contribution to the detection, understanding and management of conflicts. References Csupor, Éva – Ágnes Kuna – Judit Pintér – Zsuzsa Kaló – Márta Csabai 2017. Konfliktustípusok és konfliktuskezelés magyar egészségügyi dolgozók körében. Orvosi Hetilap 158/16:625–632. Steen, Gerard J. – Aletta G. Dorst – J. Berenike Herrmann – Anna A. Kaal – Tina Krennmayr – Trijntje Pasma 2010. A method for linguistic metaphor identification: From MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Olli Kuparinen, Liisa Mustanoja, Jaakko Peltonen, Unni-Päivä Leino, University of Tampere, Jenni Santaharju, University of Helsinki Variation and change in the infinitive system in Finnish spoken in Helsinki Finnish has a complex system of infinitives where the -MA, -A and -e infinitives together cover all the productive nominal cases. In spoken varieties of Finnish, some of the infinitives have contracted forms, and in Helsinki a contracted infinitive has become more common in positions where either the -MA or -A infinitive would be expected infinitive (e.g. kertoo pro kertoa or kertomaan). Using the Longitudinal corpus of Finnish spoken in Helsinki, which covers the language with 10-year increments from 1970’s to the present day, we analyse the ongoing change. The new short infinitive has not yet completely separated from the original ones, but there are indications that it is in the process of superseding them. It seems possible that Finnish is moving towards a single general infinitive, similar to that in many Indo-European languages, although as of yet it is not certain that this process will complete successfully.
Maria Eugenia Lammoglia Duarte, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Overt vs null subjects in European and Brazilian Portuguese: a contrastive analysis This paper presents a new a contrastive analysis of the expression of referential pronominal subjects in European Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP), based on two recent samples, recorded in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro, in 2009-2010, according to the same social stratification. The results reinforce EP’s status of a consistent Null Subject Language and show that the change in progress in BP towards a non-Null Subject system proceeds, as suggested in Duarte (1993; 1995; 2000). With respect to 1st and 2nd persons, we face an almost complete process of change towards overt subjects. As for 3rd person, in spite of a significant rise of overt pronouns, the course of change is slower. A multivariate analysis of 3rd person subjects in both varieties point out the same structural relevant factors constraining overt/null subjects: the structural pattern, the cluster of semantic features of the referent and the structure of the Complementizer Phrase (CP). The comparison allows to claim that the multivariate analysis is a powerful instrument to understand the course of change. Even though rates of overt subjects are significantly higher in BP, outnumbering null subjects (contrary to what is found for EP), Relative Weights obtained reveal the same effects for both varieties. References Duarte, M. Eugênia. L. Do pronome nulo ao pronome pleno: a trajetória do sujeito no português do Brasil. In: I. Roberts, Ian; M. A. Kato. (eds.). Português Brasileiro: uma viagem diacrônica. Campinas: Ed. da UNICAMP. 1993, 07-128. _______. A perda do princípio “Evite Pronome” no português brasileiro. PhD Dissertation, UNICAMP, 1995. _______. The loss of the “avoid pronoun” principle in Brazilian Portuguese. In: M. A. Kato and E. V. Negrão (eds.), Brazilian Portuguese and the Null Subject Parameter., Frankfurt: VervuertLatinoAmericana.2000, 17-36.
Hanna Lantto, University of Eastern Finland Language contact and individual styles in new Basque speakers’ linguistic practices Euskaldun berriak, ’new Basques’ or ’new Basque speakers’, are a speaker group that has acquired the minority language as their L2 mostly in normative class room settings. In the Greater Bilbao area, where the data for this study were gathered, new speakers now outnumber the native speakers of Basque (Basque Government 2009: 72). The original local vernacular has become extinct, and the mixture of linguistic varieties, forms and features makes the city an interesting language laboratory to examine the creation of new styles of speech. The new Basque speakers have acquired the Basque standard in a regimented environment, and they all share the resources provided by their L1, Spanish. Through their social networks, cultural activities, and the Basque media, they can also have some contact to different vernacular forms of Basque. The question is, what do they make of all these linguistic resources at their disposal? The new Basque speakers recorded and interviewed for this study have all learned the purist standard Basque in classroom contexts, yet their individual styles of Basque are by no means uniform. This paper examines the language use patterns of four different new Basque speakers with the focus on four concrete features that highlight the extent of language contact and variation in new speaker varieties: 1) use of ergative marking, which is often considered as one of the core features of Basque, 2) choice of word order, which in Basque and Spanish is the opposite, 3) use of Spanish lexical resources, and 4) use of different dialectal features in their speech. References Basque Government (2009) IV Mapa sociolingüístico. Vitoria-Gasteiz: Servicio Central de las Publicaciones del Gobierno Vasco.
Tatiana Larina, Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, Maria Yelenevskaya, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology Linguistic landscape, power and communicative styles: a study of Russian, British and Israeli public signs The rapidly growing research interest in linguistic landscape (Gorter 2006, Gorter, Marten, & Van Mensel 2012, Pavlenko 2017, Pennycook and Otsuji 2015, Shohamy and Gorter 2009, Shohamy, Ben-Rafael and Barny 2010, to name but a few) proves its increasing importance for sociolinguistics. Linguistic landscape provides easily accessible and important information on how language operates as an ‘integrated social and spatial activity” (Pennycook 2010). Research into linguistic landscape mainly deals with the problems of multilingualism, language policy, and language commodification. In our study we focus on the so called top-down category of linguistic landscape and aim at analyzing public signs and announcements issued by central and local authorities, and by institutions regulating public behavior. In other words, we study how those who have power interact with citizens. The data were obtained from ethnographic observation in Britain, Israel and Russia. Our comparative study reveals that the language used by those who have power differ in the cultures under study. The English public signs are more indirect, mitigated and addressee-oriented, while Israeli and Russian signs are mostly direct and messageoriented, which corresponds to the communicative styles of these cultures in general. Since Israeli public signs are mostly multilingual, and besides Hebrew and Arabic, many include English and Russian text, we will also discuss how language contacts affect the style of multilingual signage. Our study confirms that linguistic landscape is a valuable resource for sociolinguistics and social studies as it enriches these fields with linguistic data about social organization of society, shaping collective identity and culture-specific styles of social interaction References Gorter, D. (Ed.). (2006). Linguistic landscape: A new approach to multilingualism. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Gorter, D., Marten, H., & L. Van Mensel (eds.) (2012). Minority languages in the linguistic landscape. Palgrave. Pavlenko, A. (2017). Linguistic Landscape and other Sociolinguistic Methods in the Study of Russian Language Abroad. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 21 (3), 493—514. Pennycook, A. (2010). Language as a Local Practice. Routledge. Pennycook, A., & Otsuji, E. (2015). Metrolingualism: Language in the City. Routledge. Shohamy, E., & Gorter, D. (Eds.). (2009). Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery. New York & London: Routledge (Taylor and Francis Group). Shohamy, E., Ben-Rafael, E. & Barny, M. (Eds.). (2010). Linguistic Landscape in the City. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Heini Lehtonen, University of Helsinki Making language visible. Linguistic awareness and expertise in a sociolinguistic action research project This paper is based on a project that is carried out by linguists, a journalist and community artists in one multilingual school and the surrounding suburb in East Helsinki. The general aims are to raise linguistic awareness, make linguistic diversity visible, and to develope plurilingual practices and pedagogies. The project includes artistic sessions (e.g. painting cyrillic or Arabic ABC pictures) that encourage the participants to utilize their plurilingual repertoires, discussions and interviews with the participants as well as other co-operations where multimedia material about linguistic diversity is developed. In this paper I focus on the analysis of audio and video recorded art sessions and interviews with one 5th grade and its teacher. My main questions are: (5) How do the pupils display their expertise and knowledge about language when working together in the class? (6) How do the participants position themselves with regard to the roles of a learner, a teacher, a language expert, an artist? (7) How do the participants analyse the plurilingual practices of the class in the interviews? I will show that community art is a functioning way to make such linguistic resources visible that are minoritized or even stigmatized in the communities. The sessions encourage the participants to display their linguistic expertise as well as to compare different languages. According to the teacher, plurilingual practices have an overall positive impact on the interaction in the class. References Hélot, C. & Ó Laoire, M. (eds.) (2011): Language Policy for the Multilingual Classroom: Pedagogy of the Possible. Multilingual Matters. Madsen, Lian Malai & Karrebæk, Martha Sif &Møller, Janus Spindler (eds.) 2015: Everyday Languaging. Collaborative Research on the Language Use of Children and Youth. De Gruyter Mouton.
Mara Maya Victoria Leonardi, Free University of Bozen/Bolzano Italian, Standard German and Bavarian in South Tyrol (Italy): Contact – language usage – language ability Language choice is often determined by the context in which communication takes place. Focusing on South Tyrol, an official trilingual region in Northern Italy, this paper explores young adults’ language usage in different domains and everyday situations as well as their competences in the respective languages. German (70%), Italian (25%), and Ladin (5%) are the three official languages in South Tyrol – with the majority of the German language group speaking a Bavarian variety as their first language, which is also used almost exclusively in their everyday life (Riehl, 2007:108-110; ASTAT, 2015:142-145). In educational institutions, on the other hand, Standard German and Standard Italian are the main languages of tuition. The KOMMA-corpus compromises oral as well as written discourses of high school graduates attending German-medium schools in South Tyrol. The present qualitative research is solely based on the linguistic biographical interviews conducted within the ongoing project “KOMMA – Language competences of high school graduates”. All subjects speak a German variety as (one of) their first language(s). Besides German, which is the main language of tuition, their linguistic repertoire contains further languages such as Italian, English, French, Latin or Greek. The aim of this presentation is twofold. First of all, it examines pupils’ language use within different domains (e.g. family, friends, school context) with regard to previous studies, investigating whether there can be observed a change in young people’s language usage. Furthermore, it shall also be explored how their self-evaluated linguistic abilities in German, Italian as well as English might correlate with extralinguistic factors. References ASTAT (2015). Südtiroler Sprachbarometer. Sprachgebrauch und Sprachidentität in Südtirol 2014. Autonome Provinz Bozen-Südtirol: Landesinstitut für Statistik. Riehl, C.M. (2007). Varietätengebrauch und Varietätenkontakt in Südtirol und Ostbelgien. Linguistik Online, 32 (3), pp. 105-177.
Luyao Li, University of Bath Translanguaging and Identity: Case Studies of Chinese Students at a UK University The present multi-case study seeks to explore the dynamic interplay between identity construction and negotiation and translanguaging practices among Chinese overseas students in a Chinese students’ association at a UK university. This study draws on non-essentialist, symbolic interactionism, poststructuralist perspectives of identity and language, language theories of Bakhtin, and translanguaging theory. It aims to demonstrate how Chinese overseas students alternate between different linguistic resources, and how they incorporate their linguistic repertoires and knowledges, personal backgrounds, sociocultural experiences, attitudes and ideologies toward language in the negotiation of their identities, meanings and social relations. Whereas previous studies of translanguaging have tended to focus on language use in the classroom, this study looks at the students’ social communication and interaction. This constitutes a relative gap in the research. My context is the meetings and events of the Chinese student association. The research design is a multiple case study consisting of eight to ten cases. Each case will be a Chinese student member of the association. The students’ conceptualisations of identity and attitudes toward language will be explored through their translanguaging practices. Qualitative data collection methods will be adopted in this study, namely semi-structured interviews, participant observations, stimulated recall interviews, field notes and audio recordings. It is hoped that, by the application of such methods, the study will contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of real-life language practices and identity negotiation in an everchanging and superdiverse social context.
Songqing Li, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University Translation as the medium of local practices of English Research on mistranslations or wrong translations of public signs in mainland China has gained ample attention from translation studies and language planning. However, almost all studies into this phenomenon focus overwhelmingly on the disparity between the advice on the translation of Chinese into English and English used for translation often judged in respect of linguistic correctness or genre conventions (e.g. Dai & Lv 2005; Luo & Li 2006). The emphasis on norms of translation in terms of equivalence indeed is being challenged by functionalist approaches (Nord 1997), and it is no longer the source text but the target text’s intended purpose that should set the standard for translation evaluation. In light of the account of language as a local practice (Pennycook 2004, 2010), the objective of this study is not primarily to find translation norms as others usually do, but rather to account for motivations behind translators’ choices and thus to explore wrong English translation of public signs in terms of intended purpose. Data for analysis were collected from the bilingual public signs at Suzhou, East China. It is assumed that wrong English translation of public signs is intended to communicate to target audience a self-representation of a city. By this, the study aims to investigate what self-identity or image Suzhou wants to present or to be perceived by foreign visitors and foreigners living and working there. References Dai, Z. & Lv, H. 2005. On C-E translation of public signs. Chinese Translators Journal, 26(6), 3842. Luo, X. & Li, T. 2006. Translating public signs: Some observations. Chinese Translators Journal, 27(4), 66-69. Nord, C. 1997. Translating as a Purposeful Activity. Functionalist Approaches Explained. Manchester: St. Jerome. Pennycook, A. 2004. Performativity and language studies. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies: An International Journal, 1(1): 1-19. Pennycook, A. 2010. Language as a Local Practice. London: Routledge.
Haiqin Liu, University of Helsinki. Prue Holmes, University of Durham Ideological Discourses about Chinese Language in Finnish News articles and Policy Documents Drawing on critical discourse analysis and dialogism, this study explored discourses about Chinese language presented in policy/strategy documents and two main news outlets in Finland -Yleisradio (Yle hereafter) and Helinsingin Sanomat (HS hereafter) , aiming to discover the ideological discourses about Chinese language are presented in policies and news articles and how they are constructed and (re)produced. Four prevailing categories of ideological discourses of Chinese language emerged from our analysis of the political and media texts: Chinese as a useful language, Chinese as a world/global language, Chinese as a (n increasingly) popular language, and Chinese as a difficult language. Despite the different stance they are taking, the policy documents and the two different news outlets are often discursively engaged with each other through circulating certain discourses about Chinese language. These discursive ideological outputs can impact the current state of Chinese language education in Finland. The findings of this study can shed light on the role media press and policy making institutions play in constructing and (re)producing ideologies of Chinese language in the Finnish context.
Svetlana L’nyavskiy, Center for Central and Eastern European Studies, Lund University Diachronic Linguistic Landscape Analysis of Four Regions in Ukraine The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the studies of language policy often criticized for its fragmentary perspective (Bastardas-Boada, 2013) from a discursive approach to language poly (DALP) focusing on linguistic landscape analysis (LLA) as it expresses implicit agendas, ideologies, and shapes discursive, de-facto sociolinguistic practices on the ground, in public space (Barakos, 2016; Ben-Rafael et al., 2006). A diachronic study of linguistic landscapes, conducted in the main cities of four distinct regions of Ukraine (Kyiv, Dnipro, Odesa and Lviv) in 2015, shortly after the onset of the war with Russia, and in 2017-2018 seeks to investigate the relationships between languages as a result of deliberate organization regulated by policy choice (top-down) and by beliefs of individuals making their choices of signage (often in violation of the LP regulations) for the intended audience (bottom-up) that deliver messages about power, importance, beliefs, salience or absence of certain languages; moreover, there is an effect of globalization and language commodification marked by the increasing presence of non-local languages. Furthermore, this diachronic study marks the disjunction between the everyday use of Russian and its presence in Ukrainian LL, especially noticeable in 2015, corresponding to the Ukrainizaion efforts of the state to consolidate the country during the war, and its visible come back in 2017-2018. References Barakos, E. (2016). Language Policy and Critical Discourse Studies: Toward a Combined Approach. In Discursive Approaches to Language Policy (pp. 23-49). Palgrave Macmillan UK. Bastardas-Boada, A. (2013). Language policy and planning as an interdisciplinary field: towards a complexity approach. Current issues in language planning, 14(3-4), 363-381. Ben-Rafael, E., Shohamy, E., Hasan Amara, M., & Trumper-Hecht, N. (2006). Linguistic landscape as symbolic construction of the public space: The case of Israel. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3(1), 7-30.
Dawn Lucovich, University of Nagano Learning to read the linguistic landscape Linguistic landscape (LL) research investigates the use of language(s) on signs in public spaces: "public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings" (Landry & Bourhis, 1997, p. 25). In the 21st century, the concept of an LL has been further expanded to examine how public space is constructed by the language(s) (not) present, by their positioning and (non-)prominence, and by their intended and actual purposes (Ben-Rafael, et al., 2006; Shohamy & Gorter, 2009). The prominence, and thus relevance, of language(s) in a landscape can change over time (Shohamy, 2010). Increasingly, and particularly in the context of the coming 2020 Olympics, Japan is seeking to position itself as global city with an attendant focus on English, including drastic revamping of its signage. Post-war Tokyo is one example of a textual landscape shift from Chinese-based characters (kanji) to foreign words (romaji). In an EFL context, LL research can be employed to reframe the linguistic landscape of Japan as already populated with authentic foreign language text. This presentation will report on how undergraduate learners (n = 30) at a private university in Tokyo learned about the concept of linguistic landscapes, how to conduct LL research, and the results of their five-week projects. This presentation will also highlight example data of note and preliminary conclusions that the learners drew, as well as problems, reactions, and questions they had while completing the research project.
Zsófia Ludányi, Eszterházy Károly University, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Ideologies about language correctness in the management of contemporary Hungarian medical language Metalinguistic discourse and reflections on language involve ideological aspects both in their scientific and everyday context. In the present contribution, I examine language ideologies as they are communicated explicitly or conveyed implicitly in metalinguistic discourse on Hungarian medical language management over the past two decades. Following Lanstyák’s narrower conception of language ideologies (2017), I consider these to be (system of) thoughts serving the purpose to explain or legitimize judgements concerning linguistic correctness. The most important forum for medical language management in Hungary is provided by the periodical Magyar Orvosi Nyelv [Hungarian Medical Language]. The papers appearing in the journal primarily revolve around the following central topics: (1) the preservation of the orthographic tradition, (2) the establishment and consolidation of a norm in Hungarian medical language (standardization, codification), and (3) terminological innovation, i.e. creating Hungarian equivalents for English medical terms. The authors addressing the issues of medical language management are predominantly physicians, not professional linguists, therefore I consider these texts to represent the layman’s notions. I investigated the language ideologies underlying the papers published in the journal Magyar Orvosi Nyelv between 2001 and 2015. In this presentation, I provide a qualitative analysis and classification of language ideologies (with several illustrative examples) as they are manifest in these texts on medical language management. The focus of my presentation will be on 4 four major categories of these ideologies revealed by my analysis of the texts under scrutiny: language ideologies about (1) the social embeddedness of linguistic expressions, (2) the unambiguity of linguistic expressions, (3) the etymology of linguistic expressions, and (4) language contact. References Lanstyák, István (2017): Nyelvi ideológiák. Általános tudnivalók és fogalomtár. [Language ideologies. Basic assumptions and a glossary.] (Available at: http://web.un
Morana Lukač, Leiden University Centre for Linguistics Holding the line: The role of mass media in the interplay between prescriptivism and language change The title of a 2014 article published in the Daily Mail reads: “Don’t rely on us for good grammar, says the BBC: Broadcaster is no longer the bastion of correct English, it’s ‘style chief’ admits” (Glennie). The audience, as the title implies, traditionally attributes the role of the language guardian to the Corporation, which has had an indisputable linguistic influence in Britain. If we look beyond this example, mass media institutions and professionals employed in them everywhere are expected to adhere to prescriptive rules not only by their audience, but also by their community of practice (Albakry, 2007, p. 29; Cotter, 2014, p. 371). In order to shed light on the role of mass media in linguistic prescriptivism, this paper analyses seven interviews conducted with British journalists who act as language authorities, that is, style guide authors and editors. The remaining parts of the paper illustrate what influences the process of accepting changes in usage and lifting sanctions from the linguistic features that have been stigmatised previously and deemed unacceptable in the mass media context. References Albakry, M. (2007). Usage Prescriptive Rules in Newspaper Language. Southern Journal of Linguistics, 31(2), 28–53. Cotter, C. (2014). Revisiting the ‘journalist’s bible’. Hot news practitioners respond to language and social change. In J. Androutsopoulos (ed.) Mediatization and Sociolinguistic Change (pp. 371–94). Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Glennie, A. (2014, November 10). Don’t rely on us for good grammar, says the BBC: Broadcaster is no longer the bastion of correct English, its ‘style chief’ admits. Daily Mail. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/.
Adrian Lundberg, Malmö University Teachers’ viewpoints of multilingualism in Switzerland The present study provides qualitative insights into the multilingual sociolinguistic reality in the Swiss educational arena by introducing Q-methodology to explore the ways primary school teachers in Switzerland understand the concept of multilingualism. Particular understandings can lead to misinterpretations of language policy documents, where individual multilingualism is understood as a repertoire of linguistic abilities which is continuously accessed, varied, and developed (Lüdi & Py, 2009). Q was used to identify the currently predominant viewpoints and explicate them in a systematic, holistic and qualitatively-rich fashion (Watts & Stenner, 2012). Lo Bianco (2015) describes Q as a valuable research method in the field of language policy and planning to explore and define ‘the nature and complexity of communication problems’ by mapping out the field of arguments, positions, and the underlying discourses in debate about multilingualism. Teachers from three primary schools (n= 67) participated in the rank-ordering process of 39 statements on the understanding of multilingualism and 32 statements on pedagogical suggestions with multilingual students. With the support of the dedicated computer package PQMethod (Schmolck, 2014), factors were extracted and qualitatively interpreted. Results indicate a large consensus on the understanding of multilingualism and a wide variety of suggested pedagogical action. Implications of the findings for a successful implementation of multilingual educational language policy are discussed. References Lo Bianco, J. (2015). Exploring language problems through Q-sorting. In F. M. Hult & D. C. Johnson (Eds.), Research methods in language policy and planning: A practicle guide (pp. 69-80). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Lüdi, G., & Py, B. (2009). To be or not to be ... a plurilingual speaker. International Journal of Multilingualism, 6(2), 154-167. Schmolck, P. (2014). PQMethod. Release 2.35. Retrieved from http://schmolck.userweb.mwn.de/qmethod/downpqmac.htm Watts, S., & Stenner, P. (2012). Doing Q methodological research: theory, method and interpretation. Los Angeles; London: SAGE Publications.
Yunyi Ma, Bencie Woll, Kearsy Cormier, University College London Sociolinguistic variation of lexical signs used by Beijing and Shanghai signers of Chinese Sign Language Chinese Sign Language (CSL) is used by the Deaf community in China. There is a wide agreement among deaf people that CSL has two major signing varieties—Beijing signing and Shanghai signing. It has been claimed that Shanghai signing is considered more natural and Beijing signing is heavily influenced from Mandarin due to different teaching methods used in early deaf schools (Fischer and Gong, 2010). However, these claims have not been studied empirically. This study investigates sociolinguistic variation of lexical signs of the two signing varieties, including alphabetic signs, Chinese character signs, government promoted signs (i.e. Zhongguo Shouyu signs) and compound signs. A preliminary analysis was performed using the multiple logistic regression analysis tool Rbrul, with data collected from 30 Beijing signers and 30 Shanghai signers via a lexical elicitation task. The signers’ social backgrounds investigated include region, age, gender and family language background. The analysis shows that region and age are the two important factors in predicting lexical variation. Beijing signers were more likely to use loan signs from spoken language, i.e. alphabetic and character signs. Also, the use of compound signs suggests that the structure of lexical signs used by Beijing signers is more like the structure of lexical words in Mandarin. In addition, younger signers were more likely to use the government promoted signs and alphabetic signs than middle-aged and older signers, while older signers prefer to use Chinese character signs than the other two groups. These findings lead to the conclusion that the character signs are an older form of loan signs while alphabetic signs are a more recent type of borrowing. Together these findings suggest a change in the type of borrowing signs from character signs to alphabetic signs, and a simplification in the structure of lexical signs used by the younger generation of Chinese signers. References S Fischer, Q Gong. 2010. Variation in East Asian sign language structures. Sign languages: a Cambridge Language Survey, ed. by Diane Brentari, 499–518. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Irene Madfes, Universidad de la República Conflicting ideologies: A case of abortion in Uruguayan mass media In 2012 the Uruguayan government legalized abortion (with certain restrictions which go beyond the scope of the study). In 2016 the following event reached mass media attention: a man lodged an application for amparo against his former couple’s wish to end her own pregnancy. In this presentation we explore how this event was reported in local digital media in a corpus of news published right after the event (February 22 through March 3). We mainly focus on the nomination strategies through which social actors are represented and we explore how these nomination strategies serve other discursive processes as well, namely the construal of particular positionings toward the event and the appraisal of social actors. The notion underlying our analysis is that the comparison of different news reporting on the same event allows us to describe the discursive strategies at stake in the construction of such texts. In turn, this allows us to explore the representation and reformulation work in which news professionals engage when working with sources (Moirand 2015). Our main interest, then, is in describing points of convergence and divergence among these texts so as to access the different mechanisms through which these texts come to reflect different ways of structuring reality (Fuchs 1983) by nominating social actors. In other words, this type of work attempts to problematize what is preconstrued (Angemuller 2016) in mass media communication.
Larysa Makaruk, Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National University The stylistic processes which are made possible by multimodal semiotic resources Nowadays, people use various types of semiotic resources to achieve their communicative goals. The multiplicity of semiotic options opens up immense possibilities for individuals, but creates new challenges for linguists at the same time. Since multimodality is a relatively new phenomenon we have found it necessary to assemble all the available communicative means and then to propose a system for classifying them. The following groups of graphic means of a non-verbal nature have been identified: segmentation; font and colour; supplementary graphic effects; non-pictorial and non-photographic graphic elements; iconic elements (images); and infographics. Careful study of modern mass media discourse enables us to observe that when these graphic devices are combined with one another, it is possible to create various special effects which provide a basis for the development of the study of multimodal stylistics. This is one of the most promising areas in multimodality, and yet one to which the least study has been devoted. Some of the multimodal stylistic devices have already been carefully studied, such as multimodal metaphors and multimodal metonymy. However, comprehensive study of mass media discourse enables us to identify some additional stylistic devices with multimodal implications—alliteration, anaphora, cataphora, ellipsis, epiphora, hyperbole, pun, and simile. In addition to those mentioned above, there are a number of procedures which are possible thanks to the combinability of resources. They produce many different stylistic effects which are multimodal in character, as they can be viewed from the standpoint of several different multimodal resources: repetition of one and the same symbol, insertion of elements which seem rather inappropriate, arbitrary text positioning, strikeout text, highlighting, non-standard juxtaposition of words without intermediate spacing, boldface accentuation, highlighting, and unusual patterns of writing words by manipulating fonts.
Busi Makoni, Pennsylvania State University Speaking out with your T-shirt: Visual Semiotics and ‘tactics of resistance’ While inscriptions on T-shirts have been studied as part of political campaigns, less attention has been paid to how inscriptions on T-shirts can be utilized in constructing discourses often unrelated to politics per se, but focused on issues of concern to the wearers (Chiluwa & Ajiboye 2016). Drawing on qualitative data in the form of T-shirt inscriptions from college students studying at various institutions in New York City and Philadelphia, this presentation will explore the resurgent role of college students in the production of a ‘new’ tactics of resistance through T-shirtinscriptions with the view to contributing to contemporary studies of protests and other forms of ‘silent’ activism in educational institutions. More importantly, by analyzing T-shirt inscriptions, the study takes a multimodal approach in that it combines the linguistic and the material; a move that has the potential to provide significant insights into practices of capitalist value formation (Shankar & Cavanaugh 2012:359). From the findings, I will highlight the pervasiveness of compromised scientific discourses with regard to the presumed causal relationship between high (good) grades and smoking weed. Using Foucault’s ‘regimes of truth’ and de Certeau;s (1984) ‘tactics’ of resistance’ as analytic and interpretive frameworks, I will argue that inscriptions pertaining to weed act as ordinary, non-confrontational means in which college students as a community of practice speak back to power in non-obvious ways. The co-signification of smoking weed and attainment of higher grades, together can be seen as “processes of local meaning making, value formation and the construction and maintenance of social hierarchy’ (Shankar & Cavanaugh 2012:359). In this regard, inscriptions on these T-shirts act as ‘lawful’ instituting practices of ‘tactics of resistance’. As representations of resistance to the criminalization of weed, T-shirt inscriptions, as visual semiotics, become an alternative space for articulating multiple discourses of resistance. References Chiluwa, Innocent and Ajiboye, Esther (2016) Discursive Pragmatics of T-Shirt Inscriptions: Constructing the Self, Context and Social Aspirations. Pragmatics and Society, 7 (3). pp. 436-462. De Certeau, Michel. (1984).The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Shankar, Shalini and Cavanaugh, Jillian R. (2012) Language and Materiality in Global Capitalism. Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 41, pp. 355-369.
Arzu Mammadova, ADA University Power Relationships through Modal Verbs in Internationalized Educational Discourse This article concerns the condition of power relationships in educational discourse. The study identified a set of globalization driven social factors, and conducted analysis to see how those factors are reflected in US and UK University discourses. As one of the pertinent implications of globalization is inequality in distribution of power in educational institutions; the study of the latter constitutes a core component of this paper. The introduction section of the paper emphasizes the impact of globalization on higher education and elaborates on the main reasons that cause internationalization of higher education. The main part of the paper studies previous work concerned internationalization of education and power relationships, thereby reviewing and redefining critical questions of this paper. The principal goal of the paper was to conduct discourse analysis into the US and UK University discourses in order to shed light on a controversy over the language of university policies being oppressive or instrumental. The research concluded that there is a substantial difference between the educational discourse of US and UK Universities with the former being more constructive and instrumental as well as its power relationships being moderately balanced between the administration/faculty of the University and its stakeholders.
Sara Martin, University of Luxembourg Referring to female persons: Determining factors in gender assignment in Luxembourgish Due to the still ongoing standardization processes, Luxembourgish shows great variation, which is also reflected in the gender assignment in reference to female persons. In fact, female first names are neuter in Luxembourgish and take neuter targets, whereas the feminine gender is used when referring to a female person e.g. with a last name, kinship terms or other appellatives. However, gender assignment conflicts arise when referring to female persons e.g. with their first name (triggering neuter) and their last name (triggering feminine). Although there is still little research on this specific topic, first investigations have shown that – in these cases – gender assignment mainly depends on various sociopragmatic factors (Nübling 2015). The aim of this study is to find out more about the exact sociopragmatic factors playing a role in gender assignment (i.e. grammatical vs. (socio)pragmatical) considering the different types of names as well as to analyze the importance of the syntactic distance between the controller and the target(s) (e.g. definite article, personal pronoun etc.) following Corbett’s Agreement Hierarchy (Corbett 1979). Thus, the study analyzes elicited data from an online questionnaire (over 2700 participants) as well as picture/video descriptions (spoken data). The paper presents and discusses results from these different types of data. On the one hand, they confirm previous findings, namely the decisive role of the sociopragmatic factors (i.a. age and respect). On the other hand, the results highlight the variation that can be found both on interspeaker (primarily connected to the speaker’s age) and intraspeaker level. References Corbett, Greville (1979): The Agreement Hierarchy. Journal of Linguistics 15, 203–224. Nübling, Damaris (2015): Between feminine and neuter, between semantic and pragmatic gender assignment: Hybrid names in German dialects and in Luxembourgish. In: Agreement from a Diachronic Perspective. Ed. by Jürg Fleischer et al. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter Mouton, p. 235265.
Joe McVeigh, University of Helsinki, University of Jyväskylä This is CRAZY! Please DON’T Share This: Describing the complex nature of non-standard features in email marketing The language of email marketing is an understudied genre in both the fields of business communication and linguistics. One of the most interesting features of this genre is the use of nonstandard orthography and spelling (Jenkins 2009; Cho 2010; Chaffey 2011; McVeigh 2017). For example, researchers and marketing guides have stressed that writing messages in ALL CAPS is seen as shouting and that this will have a negative effect on how messages are perceived (Krohn 2004; Turnage 2008; Bly and Kelly 2009). But this does not explain why so many email marketing subject lines and body texts include words in all caps, when marketers clearly know better than to yell at their potential customers. This study describes the usage of non-standard linguistic features in email marketing subject lines. The analysis is based on a corpus of 35,000 marketing emails from 70 different companies. The non-standard features –ALL CAPS/no caps and variations in spelling, punctuation, spacing, and symbol usage – are categorized according to how they are used by different types of companies. The complex reasons for using non-standard features are investigated and genre-internal differences in the use of non-standard features are examined. The results show that the use of non-standard features is an established practice of the email marketing genre, but also that not all of the companies make use of every non-standard feature in the analysis. The study demonstrates the ways in which email marketing combines the features of traditional marketing and computer-mediated communication in novel ways. References Baron, Naomi S. 2003. “Why email looks like speech. Proofreading, pedagogy, and public face”. New Media Language, ed. by Jean Aitchison and Diana M. Lewis, 85–94. London: Routledge. Bly, Robert W. and Regina Anne Kelly. 2009. The Encyclopedia of Business Letters, Faxes, and E-mail: Features Hundreds of Model Letters, Faxes, and E-mail to Give Your Business Writing the Attention It Deserves. Franklin Lakes, NJ: Career Press. Chaffey, Dave. 2011. Email Marketing: Seven Steps to Success Guide. Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence). Cho, Thomas. 2010. “Linguistic features of electronic mail in the workplace: A comparison with 7: article 3. memoranda”. Language@Internet http://www.languageatinternet.org/articles/2010/2728 Dürscheid, Christa and Carmen Frehner. 2013. “Email Communication”. Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Communication, ed. by Susan Herring, Dieter Stein and Tuija Virtanen, 35– 54. Berlin: Mouton. Frehner, Carmen. 2008. Email – SMS – MMS. The Linguistic Creativity of Asynchronous Discourse in New Media Age. Bern: Peter Lang. Herring, Susan C. 2007. “A faceted classification scheme for computer-mediated discourse”. Language@Internet 4, article 1. http://www.languageatinternet.org/articles/2007/761 Jenkins, Simms. 2009. The truth about email marketing. New Jersey: Pearson. Krohn, F. B. 2004 “A generational approach to using emoticons as nonverbal communication”. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 34(4): 321–328. Kelly-Homles, Helen. 2016. “Digital Advertising”. The Routledge handbook of language and digital communication, ed. by Alexandra Georgakopoulou and Tereza Spilioti. 212-225. McVeigh, Joe. 2017. “Congratulations, You WON!!! Exploring trends in Big Data marketing communication”. Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English 17, ed. by Turo Hiltunen, Joe McVeigh and Tanja Säily. Helsinki: VARIENG. http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/series/volumes/19/mcveigh/ Turnage, Anna. 2008. “Email flaming behaviors and organizational conflict”. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13: 43–59. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00385.x
Philipp Meer, University of Münster A sociophonetic analysis of the speech of Trinidadian students and teachers In Trinidad and other anglophone Caribbean islands, tendencies of endonormative re-orientation co-occur with exonormative trends in the development of local standards of English (e.g. Hackert 2016). Studies of structural nativization provide important insights into this question of normativity. However, previous descriptions of Trinidadian English (TE) phonology differ considerably in their account of segmental features, especially concerning diphthongs, of which currently only impressionistic accounts exist (e.g. Ferreira & Drayton 2017). Based on acoustic and auditory analyses of vocalic and consonantal features in reading passage and word list data from 35 teachers and 66 students, this paper analyzes accent variation in Trinidadian secondary schools, an underresearched domain regarding the question of endonormativity. It aims to contribute to the question of whether and to what extent an endonormative standard is emerging in Trinidad at a structural level and investigates sociolinguistic variation in particular, given the diverse regional and socioeconomic background of the sample. First results show a number of endonormative trends, which are, however, not necessarily homogenous across all speakers. Endonormative vocalic features include a merger of NEAR and SQUARE and NURSE raising. Other endonormative developments, namely rhoticity in NURSE and TRAP [æ], occurred variably and were particularly observed in the speech of (female) students and less frequently among teachers. Inter-speaker variability was generally high for the investigated consonantal features (TH-stopping and coda cluster reduction), while many within-group differences were also observed. These results provide a new perspective for discussions regarding the emergence of standards in Trinidad. References Ferreira, J.-A. & Drayton, K.-A. (2017). Trinidadian English. Author manuscript submitted for publication. Hackert, S. (2016). Standards of English in the Caribbean. History, attitudes, functions, features. In: E. Seoane & C. Suárez-Gómez (Eds.), World Englishes. New theoretical and methodological considerations (pp. 85-111). Amsterdam: Benjamins
Warsa Melles, Technical University of Dortmund Sociolinguistic attitudes of Eritrean immigrants towards Tigrinya and English This study examines the way generation 2 and generation 1.5 Eritrean immigrants living in the eastern part of the United States of America behave linguistically and culturally. The aim of this research is to demonstrate how their language use correlates with their language and cultural attitudes as well as how these aspects (re)construct their identity. In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to observe both generations’ language skills, habits and attitudes towards English and Tigrinya. To that purpose, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews have been carried out. Participants were asked to answer questions regarding their linguistic habits, their perception on being bilingual and their cultural identity. The major findings have demonstrated that generation 2 relates more with the host country’s language whereas generation 1.5 identifies more with the Eritrean language even though their linguistic integration in the host country is successful. Due to the fact that they have never lived in Eritrea yet were raised by Eritrean born parents in a foreign country, it is more difficult for generation 2 to unanimously identify with just one culture. As for generation 1.5, language forgetting and code-switching- which are the main issues that immigrants who left the country of origin at a young age face when arriving in the host country- influence their notion of identity. Intergenerational transmission plays a major role in both groups’ perception of identity. In addition to that, questions of gender, age, class and nationality take new dimensions and shape the participants self-images. References Blommaert, J. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gardner, R. C. 2010. Motivation and Second Language Acquisition: The Socio-Education Model. New York: Peter Lang. Garrett, P. 2010. Attitudes to Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grosjean, F. 2010. Bilingual: Life and Reality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kasanga, L. A. 2008. 'Cheap' c'est quoi? Immigrant Teenagers in Quest of Multilingual Competence and Identity. International Journal of Multilingualism 5:4, 333-356
Marie-Luis Merten, Paderborn University Stancetaking in Web 2.0 – Investigating internet comments The talk will give insights into the social world of online language use. It focusses on a particular form of keyboard-to-screen communication (Jucker/Dürscheid 2012): commenting on German online news sites, especially on medical online news concerning topics like smoking and its consequences on health, weight loss or new drugs and innovative products on the market. By leaving a comment, internet users position themselves socially. They realise linguistic structures that index societal discourses and evoke different social positions and identities associated with particular forms of writing. According to Jaffe (2009), these verbal performances are understood as acts of stancetaking – a socially situated and consequential “key discursive act in online interaction” (Barton/Lee 2013: 87). Employing qualitative corpus-based methods, this digital practice is empirically investigated within a socio-cognitive framework. I will explore the link between individual performance(s) and social meaning(s) established by the use of stance constructions as (complex) form-meaning pairs. These pairings are discussed as lexicogrammatical construal techniques (Langacker 2008), e.g. linguistic resources for the – in (online) medical discourse highly relevant – construction of expertise, authenticity and trust. By instantiating particular constructions, discourse participants construe their attitude(s), perform (and negotiate) “health identities [e.g. medical expert, (formerly) affected person, (involved) family member etc.] on social media” (Koteyko/Hunt 2016: 59) and make use of the “social capital” (Jaffe 2009: 7) accompanied by specific stances. References Barton, David / Carmen Lee (2013): Language online. Investigating Digital Texts and Practices. Routledge. Jaffe, Alexandra (2009): Introduction: The Sociolinguistics of Stance. In: Alexandra Jaffe (eds.): Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Oxford University Press. Jucker, Andreas H. / Christa Dürscheid (2012): The linguistics of keyboard-to-screen communication: A new terminological framework. In: Linguistik Online 56.6, 39-64. Koteyko, Nelya / Daniel Hunt (2016): Performing health identities on social media: An online observation of Facebook profiles. In: Discourse, Context and Media 12, 59-67. Langacker, Ronald (2008): Cognitive Grammar. A Basic Introduction. Oxford University Press.
Athanassios Michalis, University of Athens, Stavroula Tsiplakou, Open University of Cyprus, Elena Ioannidou, University of Cyprus Diglossia, post-diglossia and their effects on current approaches to language pedagogy in Greece and Cyprus The aim of this paper is to explore aspects of the consequences of diglossia for language pedagogy in Greece and in Cyprus by tracing the effects of related language ideologies in texts that are central to language pedagogy in both education systems. While the diglossic situation in Greece has long been resolved and katharevusa, the artificial, archaic H variety in Fergusonian terms has receded in favor of dhimotiki, or Standard Greek (Mackridge 2009), diglossia in Cyprus remains is still going strong: Standard Greek is still the H variety and the Cypriot dialect (a continuum of basilects and a local koine) is still the L variety (Hadjioannou et al 2011). Through a critical discourse-analytic approach to three recent Greek grammars (scientific and pedagogical) and, crucially, of reviews thereof, this study shows that vestiges of normative language ideologies are still quite persistent in post-diglossic Greece and have profound effects on approaches to standardization, grammar teaching and literacy learning, as prescriptive, ‘archaizing’ trends persevere and linguistic variation is not addressed. In Cyprus, which is still diglossic, language policies make minimal reference to capitalizing on linguistic variation for pedagogical purposes, the sole exception being the curriculum of 2010 (MoEC 2010), which adopted a critical literacy agenda and proposed capitalizing on the contrastive teaching of dialect and standard for the purpose of honing metalinguistic awareness. Through a critical discourse-analytic approach to recent policy documents (MoEC 2013, 2016), which replaced the short-lived curriculum of 2010, we show that the valuing of the standard variety over the dialect is an ideological choice that is an integral part of the ‘autonomous’ model of literacy learning (Street 2003) and the concomitant resistance to critical literacy pedagogies promoted in these documents. References Hadjioannou, X., S. Tsiplakou & M. Kappler (2011). Language Policy and Language Planning in Cyprus. Current Issues in Language Planning 12, 1-67. Mackridge, P. (2009). Language and national identity in Greece 1766–1976. Oxford: Oxford University Press. MoEC (Ministry of Education and Culture) (2016). Markers of Success-Competence 2016 [Δείκτες Επιτυχίας - Επάρκειας 2016]. http://www.moec.gov.cy/analytika_programmata/programmata_spoudon.html
Jackie Militello, University of Hong Kong and King's College London Arriving at “What do you do?”: preceding small talk, conviviality and conversational trajectories in professional networking events Once a speaker explicitly proclaims a professional identity, immediate connections are made in the minds of listeners as to the speaker’s usefulness for instrumental aims and the level of interest in continuing the interaction. Prior to the always-expected “What do you do?” a period of small talk can be constructed having varying degrees of conviviality, with high levels building “social cohesion, community belonging and social comfort” (Blommaert and Varis, 2017). The data for this study comes from a one-hour professional networking event in Hong Kong, where conversations were recorded and transcribed. These recordings were then played for participants in one-on-one interviews where they were asked to comment on their impressions of the conversations, how they interpreted the various utterances and interactions, and what they thought of their interlocutors. Many of the initial small talk conversations were “phatic” in terms of being low in denotational value, but they served various social functions (Coupland, Coupland and Robinson, 1992), including providing unintentionally “given off” impressions from speakers (Goffman, 1959) that index certain identities. While participants paid attention to these indexical markers as they socially positioned their interlocutors, in their metapragmatic comments, they highly attended to conviviality in opening small talk sequences and evaluated convivial conversations positively. These effects continued past small talk sequences, impacting conversational trajectories. Conviviality also impacted evaluations, as participants assigned penalties/ rewards to participants according to their perceived convivial competence. References Blommaert, J., & Varis, P. (2017). The importance of unimportant language. Multilingual Margins: A journal of multilingualism from the periphery, 2(1), 4-4. Coupland, J., Coupland, N., & Robinson, J. (1992). "How Are You?" : Negotiating Phatic Communion. Language in Society, 21(02), 207-230. doi:10.1017/S0047404500015268 Goffman, E. (2002). The presentation of self in everyday life. 1959. Garden City, NY.
Piotr Mirocha, Jagiellonian University Profiling Europe in Croatian media discourse Media discourse on Europe was of a big relevance for a long time due to this country’s plans to join the European Union. This has not changed after the 2013, both for the reason of functioning in the framework of the European Community, as well as because of the series of crises in the EU. Every political topic tends to be highly divisive on a line of ideological profiling of a discourse, while the discourse on Europe and occidentalism probably belongs to the most polarising topoi of Croatian discursive repertoire. This presentation will focus on the preliminary results of a research of internet editions of selected Croatian daily newspapers (Večernji list, Jutarnji list, Slobodna Dalmacija) in a time range from Autumn 2012 until Autumn 2017. A focal point of the analysis was placed on modelling of a notion of ‘Europe’, especially of its discursive limits/borders. The presentation will begin with a short introduction of a historical context: a résumé of evolution of Croatian discourses on Europe throughout the history that gave rise to their two main varieties, which can be roughly labeled as ‘modernisation discourse’ and ‘conservative bulwark discourse’. The main point made in the brief introduction is the strict connection of reactualisation of certain topoi and the current socio-political context. Using a big corpus of articles from the selected newspapers most common collocations of the lexeme Europe are identified and classified basing on their connection to the common historical topoi of a Croatian discourse on Europe. In general, this will enable demonstrating possible methodological strategies for differentiating between various ideological profiles of analysed discourses due to their argumentative strategies.
Sofiya Mitsova, SWU “ Neofit Rilski” Language management in the social media Facebook. The Bulgarian case The purpose of this paper is to apply the Language management theory (LMT) to the monitoring and analyzing the specifics of communication in the social media Facebook (in Bulgarian context). The observation is directed at the behavior of the participants in Facebook groups, whose main topic is the discussion of grammatical and spelling problems of the Standard Bulgarian. The analysis of the communicative models that the participants of the discussions adhere to shows that the phases of Language management can be traced in the virtual speech situations as well. To prove this, the following experiment was carried out: On the principle of random selection, three different open-ended Facebook groups were selected with a common theme - spelling and grammatical rules of Standard Bulgarian. In all three groups the same sentence was published, containing a deviation from the norm. The analysis of the comments under this post shows that, despite their specificities, which are reflected by group rules, these phases of Language Management can be traced: noting a deviation from the expectation (in this case Bulgarian standard language norm); its evaluation; the design of its adjustment and the implementation of adjustment itself. References Danet 2001: Danet, B. Ciberpl@y. Communicating online. Oxford: Berg. Nekvapil, Sherman 2009: Nekvapil, J., Sherman, T. (eds.) Language Management in Contact Situations. Perspectives from Three Continents. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang. Nekvapil, Sherman 2015: Nekvapil, J., Sherman, T. An Introduction: Language Management Theory in Language Policy and Planning. International Jurnal of the Sociology of Language. 2015 (232): 1 – 12. Neustupný, Nekvapil 2003: Neustupný, J. V., Nekvapil, J. Language Management in the Czeck Republic. Current Issues in Language Planning. 4(3-4), 181–366. [Reprinted in Baldauf, R. B. & Kaplan, R. B. (eds.) (2005). Language Planning and Policy in Europe. Vol. 2. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 16–201.] Sherman, Švelch 2015: Sherman, T., Švelch, J. “Grammar Nazis never sleep”: Facebook humor and the management of standard written language. Language Policy. 14, 4, 315–334. Spolsky 2009: Spolsky, B. Language Management. Cambrige: Cambrige University Press.
Álvaro Molina-García, Universidad de Málaga (UMA) An exception to Garde’s principle. An experimental approach to the alleged demerger between coronal fricatives in Malaga (Spain) Garde’s principle (Garde 1961: 38-39) implies that the complete fusion of two phonemes is irreversible. Malaga (Spain) has been traditionally considered as a community speech in which the confusion of two fricatives has been categorical (it is known as ceceo). However it has recently been observed a recovery of the distinción (Ávila 1994; Moya y Sosinski 2015). If Garde’s principle was absolutely valid, this situation would be impossible. In my previous research, it was demonstrated that the recovery of the split would be a consequence of a dialectal nivelation to standard variety which is undergoing in occidental Andalusia, reinforced by the influence of the media (Villena y Vida 2017). Ergo, it was shown that it is possible the split of two phonemes that had fully merged. Nevertheless, it was considered important to make an acoustic-perceptive research, so that it can also be determined: a) which are the parameters that differentiate these two fricatives phonemes; b) which is the distance between them when the speaker makes ceceo and when makes distinción, and c) that the perception of the people from Malaga of the ceceo is objectively measurable. For that, each token was substituted by a code which indicated how it had been perceptively codified (in 5 categories: s -> s̪ -> sθ -> θ > elision). The results proves that the parameters are significantly modified in function of how they are perceived, so that the perception is correct. In summary, this research is an example of how this linguistic principle has exceptions, and it is exposed an acoustic test of perceptual reliability. References ÁVILA, ANTONIO (1994): «Variación reticular e individual de s/z en el Vernáculo Urbano Malagueño: Datos del barrio de Capuchinos, Analecta Malacitana, 17, pp. 343-367. GARDE, PAUL (1961): «Réflexions sur les différences phonétiques entre les langues slaves», Word, 17, pp. 34-62. MOYA CORRAL, JUAN ANTONIO Y MARCIN SOSIŃSKY (2015): «La inserción social del cambio. La distinción s/θ en Granada. Análisis en tiempo aparente y en tiempo real», Lingüística Española Actual, 37/1, pp. 33-72. VILLENA, JUAN ANDRÉS Y MATILDE VIDA (2017): «Variación, identidad y coherencia en el español meridional. Sobre la indexicalidad de las variables convergentes del español de Málaga», Lingüística en la Red.
Lucia Molnár Satinská, Slovak Academy of Sciences Arrivals: Students in Bratislava The paper presents the first two phases of an ongoing qualitative research (2016 – 2020) based on narrative interviews with students coming to study at universities of Bratislava, Slovakia, from various language backgrounds (various Slovak regions and Hungarian minority speakers). For these students, both Hungarian and Slovak, their university experience is the first personal contact with other varieties of Slovak and with other languages as well. The students were interviewed twice so far, at first during their first semester in Bratislava and then a year later. Preliminary results are presented, including possible change in language attitudes towards varieties of Slovak and the individual language use (the discrepancies between their expectations and perception in reality).
Sergio Monforte, UPV/EHU Language contact between Basque and French: embedded questions This abstract presents data of language contact between Basque and French concerning the movement of the inflected verb in embedded questions. In Basque wh-word and inflected verb must be adjacent not only in matrix clauses but also in embedded ones: (8) Non utzi diozu aitari oparia? Where leave AUX father.DAT gift.ABS ‘Where did you leave the gift to dad? (9) Ez dakit non utzi diozun aitari oparia. Not know where leave AUX.C father.DAT gift.ABS ‘I don’t know where you left the gift to dad.’ This adjacency has been explained by terms of checking features; so I0 has a [wh] feature which has to check with the wh-word moved to [spec, CP] triggering I0’s movement. The contact between Basque and French in these days is causing changes such as the nonadjacency between wh-word and inflected form in embedded clauses: (10) Badakit noiz Beñat Pariserat joanen den. (Norantz 2009) CL.know when Bernard Paris.ADL go.FUT AUX.C ‘I know when Beñat will go to Paris.’ This resembles the French pattern, since I0 does not trigger movement to C0: (11) J’ai demandé où Jean a laissé les clés I.AUX asked where Jean AUX left the keys ‘I asked where John left the keys.’ This can be explained through the dichotomy “strong/weak features”, i.e. I0’s strong feature [uwh*] has become (or is becoming) a weak feature [uwh] in these varieties. This pattern can be found in Basque native speakers who grown up in a more and more French environment. Indeed, this could be the previous stage of in-situ questions found among young Basque speakers in the same area (Duguine & Irurtzun 2014). References IKER-UMR5478, 2009, Norantz database: . Duguine M. & A. Irurtzun, 2014, “From obligatory Wh-movement to optional Wh in-situ in Labourdin Basque“, Language 90.1
Kaarina Mononen, University of Helsinki Complimenting as multimodal social action in elderly care The paper discusses functions of compliments, i.e. giving positive feedback, in elderly care interaction. Positive feedback and praising can be seen as part of the discourse in elderly care and they might invoke dependency-inducing features (Backhaus 2009). On the other hand, positive comments can also have an empowering function, as they might e.g. give relevant feedback to the resident. Here, I see compliments as a multimodally co-constructed action, and my focus is on how the interactants are constructing meaningful relationships (Marsden & Holmes 2014). I will concentrate on a microanalysis of compliments in everyday interaction and show how embodied action (for example hugging) is intertwined with complimenting. The framework of the study is interactional sociolinguistics. The data have been collected in an old people’s home in Finland and consist of 55 hours of videotaped material, a background interview and ethnographic field notes. The paper will show the multifaceted nature of complimenting in elderly care. Multimodal analysis sheds new light on situations in which the caregiver gives positive feedback while assisting or as part of social chatting. In addition, situations which break the routine (e.g. resident complimenting caregiver) reveal the dynamics between interactants in a caregiving context. I will show how complimenting is used e.g. for indicating affection and encouraging activity, and how interactants compliment and respond to compliments in an embodied way. Complimenting occurs in different sequential positions; overall, it can be seen as creating affiliation and positive relationships between interactants. References Backhaus, Peter 2009: Politeness in institutional elderly care in Japan: a cross-cultural comparison. – Journal of Politeness Research 5 (2009), 53–71. Marsden, Sharon & Holmes, Janet 2014: Talking to the elderly in New Zealand residential care settings. – Journal of Pragmatics 64, 17–34.
Annabelle Mooney, University of Roehampton A fool and his money are soon parted: A critical examination of credit card websites In this paper, I consider the idea that a fool and their money are soon parted by analysing one of the ways in which people are parted from money: credit cards. I analyse the websites of two cards: the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ as rated by UK consumer organisation Which? A multimodal critical examination (Brookes and Harvey, 2016) considering colour, typeface, layout, images and text shows the individual is constructed in different ways by the two sites. For the best card, the viewer is constructed as a trustworthy consumer who is rewarded with further opportunities for consumption. For the worst, the viewer is positioned as a failed, but redeemable, consumer. Taking the two sites together, I show that consumption is constructed as both desirable and risky. I will further argue that credit cards construct the individual as an (isolated) person with few rights and great responsibility (Henry, 2010). I suggest that these sites index the central role of the individual as a consumer in the neoliberal economic world. A good citizen is parted from their money so that the national economy appears to be healthy. The different constructions of the consumer also suggest that ‘credit’ is good but ‘debt’ is bad. Taking into account the moral complexity of debt, I suggest that a credit card is better understood as a debt token. I argue that the real foolishness is the system itself, the one that credit cards (‘debt tokens’) index and exemplify. References Brookes, Gavin, and Kevin Harvey. 2017. Just plain wronga? A multimodal critical analysis of online payday loan discourse. Critical Discourse Studies 14(2), 167-187 Henry, Paul C. 2010. How mainstream consumers think about consumer rights and responsibilities. Journal of Consumer Research 37 (4) (12): 670-87.
Daniel Morales, University of Southampton Language ideologies and experiences of Latin American immigrants in London Sociolinguistics in the current stage of globalisation has begun to pay attention to immigrants’ narratives to explore the changing social conditions in which they live, particularly the social processes of which they are part as they could be explored through the analysis of language in context (Blommaert 2010; Georgakopoulou 2011). The paper to be presented will consider recent case studies in a population termed the Latin American community (McIlwaine 2011; 2015). It has been estimated that 250,000 people of Latin American origin live in the United Kingdom of whom 145,000 live in London but research about them is still incipient (McIlwaine et al 2011; McIlwaine and Bunge, 2016). Thus, I intend to examine Latin American immigrants' social identities as their ways of speaking suggest a reluctance to speak Spanish as an attempt to gain social inclusion and socioeconomic mobility in London. The intended analysis will cast light not only on their language attitudes but on their social relations as language ideologies are not only about language (Woolard 1998). In light of the above, analysing how the participants in the present study describe their experiences in a city such as London can help us understand how they attribute different values and degrees of instrumentality to Spanish since issues of geographic mobility are accompanied with problems of function in language. (Blommaert 2005; 2010). Such values are explored through indexicality, an interpretative approach in which the value of a statement is not merely contained in its literal meaning but in its capacity to point to elements of the context of the statement where social identities and relations are constructed (Hanks, 2000; del Valle and Meirinho-Guede 2016). Such study aims to contribute to current research in language ideologies in an age of globalisation where there is a linguistic market of increasing inequalities (Bourdieu 1991). References Blommaert, Jan. 2005. Discourse. Key Topics in Sociolinguistics. CUP. UK. Blommaert, Jan. 2007. Sociolinguistics and Discourse Analysis: Orders of Indexicality and Polycentricity. In Journal of Multicultural Discourses.Vol.2 No 2. Blommaert, Jan. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge University Press. UK. Bourdieu, Pierre, 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Polity Press. UK Del Valle, J. and Vitor Meirinho. 2016. Ideologías lingüísticas. In Enciclopedia de Lingüística Hispánica. Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach (ed). New York: Routledge. USA. Georgakopolou, Alexandra. 2011. Narrative Analysis. 396-411. In The Sage Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Ruth Wodak, Barbara Johnstone and Paul Kerswill (eds). Sage. London.UK. Hanks, W. 2000. ‘Indexicality’. Ed. Duranti, A. Language matters in anthropology: A Lexicon for the Millenium, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 9, 1–2, pp. 124–126. McIlwaine, C. 2011. Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives on Latin American Migration across Borders. In Cross-Border Migration among Latin Americans: European Perspectives and Beyond. Ed. Cathy McIlwaine. Nueva York. Estados Unidos. Palgrave McMillan. Pp 1-17 McIlwaine, C., Juan Camilo Cock, y Brian Linneker. 2011. “No Longer Invisible: The Latin American Community in London”. London: Trust for London. Available at https://www.trustforlondon.org.uk/publications/towards-visibility-latin-american-communitylondon/ (Accessed November 2014) McIlwaine, C. 2015. “Legal Latins: Creating Webs and Practices of Immigration Status among Latin American Migrants in London”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41:3, 493-511. McIlwaine, C. & Bunge, D. 2016. “Towards Visibility: the Latin American Community in London”. London. Trust for London. Available at https://www.trustforlondon.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2016/07/Towards-Visibilityfull- report.pdf (Accessed November 2016) Woolard, K. 1998. Language ideology as a field of inquiry. In Schieffelin, B., Woolard, K,. and Kroskrity, P. (eds), Language ideologies; Practice and Theory. New York. OUP. USA.
Sonia Morán Panero, University of Southampton Competing social meaning associations in the use of English as a lingua franca: indexicality in metalanguage English as a lingua franca interactions are often characterized as communicative contexts where linguistic or meaning-making norms cannot be assumed to be shared (e.g. Canagarajah, 2007; Jenkins, 2015). While much research attention has been placed on linguistic and referential meaning negotiability in ELF studies, we also need to understand how users of English as an additional language reproduce, challenge or negotiate social meanings associated with their own variable linguistic practices, and the symbolic and social consequences that may be linked to such indexical relations. In this paper, I explore how users of English from the Spanish-speaking world ascribe social meanings to forms of linguistic fixity and variability that shape their use of English. The study draws from qualitative frameworks of analysis to identify participants’ construction of interpretative repertoires in interview talk. The findings reveal that spoken English may be used to index competence, pedantry, authenticity and different forms of belonging, both when it conforms to perceived (native) standards and when it departs from them. For many participants, a particular 'way of speaking' can be assigned multiple and often contradictory social meanings simultaneously, thus making possibilities for identification through English fairly complex. Since social meaning is best conceptualised as multi-dimensional, variable and context-dependent (e.g. Blommaert, 2014; Coupland, 2007: 99), I also analyse whether these participants are aware of the situational negotiability of indexical relations, and reflect on the implications that this negotiability can have for ELF interactions and ELT. References Blommaert, J. M. E. 2014. Meaning as a nonlinear phenomenon: The birth of cool. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies. 106. 1-20 Canagarajah, S. 2007. Lingua franca English, multilingual communities and language acquisition. Modern Language Journal. 91. 923-939. Coupland, N. 2007. Style: language variation and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jenkins, J. 2015. Repositioning English and multilingualism in English as a Lingua Franca. Englishes in Practice 2015; 2(3): 49-85
Spiros A. Moschonas, University of Athens Prescriptivism and language change This paper provides a review of recent literature on the effects of prescriptivism on language change. It concentrates on corpus-driven approaches that seek to demonstrate the effects of prescriptivism by statistically correlating two types of corpora: “precept” corpora (such as Usage Guides and prescriptive Grammars) with historical language corpora (Langer 2001; Auer 2009; Anderwald 2016; Hinrichs, Szmrecsanyi & Bohmann 2015, among others). A general framework that could unify the diverse approaches to the study of prescriptivism is proposed, based on the notion of correctives (i.e., “speech acts” of a metalanguage-to-language direction of fit, having the form ‘one should neither say nor write X; one should say or write Y instead’) and permissives (‘one may say X in addition to Y under condition C’). It is argued that correctives and permissives are the elementary units for the quantitative study of prescriptivism within a variationist paradigm. On the basis of this framework, it is shown that the relevant studies, despite their statistical complexity, do not account for the propagation trajectories that prescriptive instructions follow; they are subject to the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy; and they do not satisfy an essential counterfactual condition, which requires proving that the change in question could not have occurred otherwise. References Anderwald, Lieselotte (2016): Language Between Description and Prescription: Verbs and Verb Categories in Nineteenth-Century Grammars of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Auer, Anita (2009): The Subjunctive in the Age of Prescriptivism: English and German Developments During the Eighteenth Century. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hinrichs Lars, Benedikt Szmrecsanyi & Axel Bohmann (2015): Which-hunting and the Standard English relative clause. In: Language 91.4, 806-836. Langer, Nils (2001): Linguistic Purism in Action: How Auxiliary tun was Stigmatized in Early New High German. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
Timothy Mossman, Simon Fraser University Processes of Identity Construction for Generation 1.5 University Students in Canada The number of adolescent children accompanying their immigrant parents to Canada has steadily increased since the 1990s. Much of the applied linguistics literature on these so-called “Generation 1.5” youth (Harklau, Losey, & Siegal, 1999) has focused on their deficiencies as academic writers in US Rhetoric and Composition and ESL contexts in higher education and the stigma of ESL in US K-12 contexts. However, the literature on Generation 1.5 students and identity in Canadian higher education is limited. This paper utilizes applied conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis (Hester & Eglin, 1997) to investigate the processes of identity construction of three Generation 1.5 students studying at a university in Canada. In analyzing the accounts and experiences of the participants in interviews, focus groups, and texts and as “culture-in-action” (Hester & Eglin, 1997), I posit that they constructed identities as social categories associated with the languages and social practices of their countries of birth, in liminal spaces among a continuum between Canada and their countries of birth, and a spectrum of related cultural representations. Ideas and beliefs associated with broader macro social structures in Canadian society related to language, culture, legitimacy, immigration, power, distinction, and racism were shown to be transcended in and through their representations of themselves and others. The paper brings implications for finding ways to understand the complexity of immigrant students, avoid reifying and generalizing about them, and not see them as stuck-in-between or lacking. References Harklau, L., Losey, K. M., & Siegal, M. (Eds.). (1999). Generation 1.5 meets college composition: Issues in the teaching of writing to U.S.-Educated learners of ESL. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Hester, S. & Eglin, P. (Eds.), (1997). Culture in action: Studies in membership categorization analysis. Washington, DC: International Institute for Ethnomethodology & Conversation Analysis and University Press of America.
Dorottya K. Mózes, University of Debrecen Code-sliding in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners This paper proposes that, rather than using the traditional sociolinguistic concept of codeswitching, the term code-sliding should be applied to the literary representation of creole styling in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners. Caribbean-Canadian novelist Nalo Hopkinson posits that the term “code-sliding” fits Caribbean writers’ use of fluid modes of address; it is unclear whether she mistakenly, or deliberately claims that code-sliding is the term linguists use (vs. code-switching). Regardless of her intentions, this paper argues that code-sliding should be added to our critical vocabulary because it can enhance our understanding of Caribbean creole “code-switching” and languaging. On the one hand, code-switching imagines a series of exchanges between preconceived, static, stable, separate linguistic codes. On the other hand, code-sliding conceives of creole styling as a fluid, dynamic and motile act of languaging, which foregrounds the continuity and entanglement between linguistic varieties on the creole continuum. The paper will examine how the complex set of practices involved in code-sliding dismantle and remix colonial English, thus engaging with the multiplicity of languages and cultures that comprise Caribbeanness. The paper hence shows how the ephemerality, opacity and orality embedded in code-sliding are means of evading capture, and expressing black fugitivity. References Hopkinson, Nalo N.d. “Code Sliding.” http://blacknetart.com/Hopkinson.html (Accessed, January 9, 2018) Selvon, Samuel 2001. The Lonely Londoners. New York: Longman
Kamila Mrázková, Jiří Homoláč, Czech Academy of Science “Besides the government’s falls, elections and political scandals, I like skiing and wine”: Czech journalists blurring media and genre boundaries on Facebook and Twitter The initial reaction of the Czech mainstream media to the extensive development of social networks during the last decade involved the quotation of tweets and statuses of prominent politicians, business people, and ordinary users. Later, these same media began to communicate with the public using their own accounts on social networks, taking advantage of the interactional character of these networks (on the use of social networks in mainstream media in general, see for example Lipschultz, 2014, cf. Hladík & Štětka, 2017 for the Czech context). In this paper, we deal with the individual activities of journalists on social networks. Newspaper articles, blogs and texts posted on social media on the same topic by five Czech journalists are analyzed. The main focus is placed on the following questions: a) How do the journalists utilize the affordances of social network communication, especially its multimodal and interactional character? b) Do they use practices that are non-preferred in the mainstream media (e.g. the explicit or even emotional expression of stance or the non-mention of information sources); c) How do they position themselves as private persons? d) How do they reflect the fact that, especially on Twitter, their texts are read not only by their friends and colleagues, but also by unratified readers? The analysis reveals journalists’ private accounts to be another manifestation of the blurring of boundaries between traditional and social media. References Lipschultz, J. H. (2014) Social Media Communication : Concepts, Practices, Data, Law and Ethics. London: Routledge. Hladík, R. – Štětka, V. The Powers that Tweet. Social media as news sources in the Czech Republic. Journalism Studies 18 (2), 154-174
Gizem Mutlu-Gülbak, Sezen Bektaş, Yasemin Bayyurt, Boğaziçi University Politeness in Turkish emails: The use of interactional and stylistic items Although emails have been proven to be a common, easy and quick practice especially for students in university contexts (Chen, 2001) and they have the potential of portraying a variety of stylistic features (Crystal, 2006), previous research has remained limited with inter-lingual and learner-centered studies (e.g. Sadler & Eröz, 2002; Yang, 2001). Adopting a more analytical approach, the present study is intralingual in nature and it aims at describing Turkish emails by specifically addressing the question of whether social distance has an impact on the email initiation and ending patterns. To this end, it examines emails written by 63 graduate students in Turkish as a response to an invitation based on two of the pragmatic variation levels (Barron & Schneider, 2009): interactional (openings and closings) and stylistic (address forms and pronouns). In the course of data analysis, the components of each email at two levels were checked and grouped. The coded data were then turned into quantitative measures by calculating the percentages of the uses by taking the social distance between the interlocutors into account. It was found that great majority of emails included greetings and a wide range of closings were used. In terms of addressing terms and pronouns, the social distance was found to serve as a mediating factor in the formation of emails. The findings of the study were discussed with reference to Politeness Theory (Brown & Lewinson, 1987). References Barron, A., & Schneider, K. P. (2009). Variational pragmatics: Studying the impact of social factors on language use in interaction. Intercultural Pragmatics [Special Issue: Variational Pragmatics.] 6(4), 425-442. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chen, C-F. E. (2001, February). Making e-mail requests to professors: Taiwanese vs. American students.Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, St. Louis. Crystal, D. (2006). Language and the internet (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sadler, R. W. & Eroz, B. (2002). I refuse you! An examination of English refusals by native speakers of English, Lao, and Turkish. Arizona Working Papers, 9, 53-80. Yang, E.M. (2001). Organizational patterns of the requestive e-mail by Korean English speakers. English Teaching, 56, 3-30.
Johannes G. Mücke, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz Language attitudes and linguistic consequences: The Hebrew loanwords of the Corfiote Italian variety Speakers of endagered languages “do not passively adopt dominant ideologies, but produce their own responses by negotiating, resisting or adapting to national and transnational language policies” (Selonie & Sarfati 2013: 8). Adherence to an endangered variety can be achieved through an awareness of its linguistic features, which thus can “mark group membership” (Chambers 2002: 349). This intertwinement between language attitudes and linguistic consequences can be seen in relation to the highly-endangered Italian variety of Corfu (Corfioto). Corfioto shows features of Venetian and Apulian dialects, but is also influenced by Hebrew and Greek, the latter being the dominant language of the remaining speakers. The Hebrew borrowings of Corfioto mostly cover cultural and religious aspects e.g. /kapa'ra/ (Hebr. kapparàh 'expiatory sacrifice', cf. Fortis 2006: 166). However, there are also grammatical borrowings like the female plural marker -ò (Hebr. -oth, cf. Belleli 1905). Corfioto is still known by some older members of the Corfu Jewish community. The dismantling of the the linguistic roofing (cf. Harmann 2005) of Tosco-Italian in the 19th century in the course of Greek nationalism produced double otherness (language and religion) of the Jewish comunity. The near extinction of the community by the Nazi regime in 1944 resulted in a partly conscious decision to no longer use Corfioto. My presentation contrasts historical language ideologies with personal language attitudes reflected in personal narratives from the last three decades. Furthermore, I will analyze the Hebrew loanwords (semantic fields, phonological and morphological “italianization”, and parts of speech) and discuss their social function as group-identity markers. The study (funded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences) is based on recordings collected in narrative-biographic interviews (Franceschini 2004) and partial unpublished archival documents. It also relies on Nachtmann (2002), video interviews of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 1996, and older research literature (Cortelazzo 1946, 1948; Levi 1961). References Belleli, Lazarus (1905): Greek and Italian dialects as Spoken by the Jews in Some Places of the Balkan Peninsula. London. Available online at http://archive.org/details/greekitaliandial00belliala, checked on 1/15/2018. Chambers, J. K. (2002): Patterns of Variation including Change. In J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill, Natalie Schilling-Estes (Eds.): The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Malden Mass. u.a.: Blackwell Publishing Ltd (Blackwell handbooks in linguistics), pp. 349–372. Available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470756591.ch14, checked on 1/15/2018. Cortelazzo, Manlio (1946): L'italiano a Corfù. Di alcuni recenti scambi linguistici italo-corfioti. In Lingua Nostra VII, pp. 66–69. Cortelazzo, Manlio (1948): Caratteristiche dell'italiano parlato a Corfù. In Lingua Nostra IX, pp. 29–34. Fortis, Umberto (2006): La parlata degli ebrei di Venezia e le parlate giudeo-italiane. Firenze: Giuntina. Franceschini, Rita (2004): Sprachbiographien: das Basel-Prag-Projekt (BPP) und einige mögliche Generalisierungen bezüglich Emotion und Spracherwerb. In Rita Franceschini, Johanna Miecznikowski (Eds.): Leben mit mehreren Sprachen. Vivre avec plusieurs langues. Sprachbiographien. Biographies langagieres. Bern: Peter Lang (Transversales, 9), pp. 121–145. Haarmann, Harald (2005): Roofless Dialects / Dachlose Dialekte. In Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier, Peter Trudgill (Eds.): Sociolinguistics / Soziolinguistik. An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society / Ein internationales Handbuch zur Wissenschaft von Sprache und Gesellschaft. Volume 2 / 2. Teilband. 2., vollst. neu bearb. u. erw. Aufl. 2 volumes. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 1545–1552.
Levi, Leo (1961): Tradizioni liturgiche, musicali e dialettali a Corfù. In La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 27 (1), pp. 20–31. Available online at http://www.jstor.org/stable/41281334, checked on 1/15/2018. Nachtmann, Jenny (2002): Italienisch als Minderheitensprache. Fallbeispiel Korfu. Staatsexamensarbeit. Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg. Romanisches Seminar. Seloni, Lisya; Sarfati, Yusuf (2013): (Trans)national language ideologies and family language practices: a life history inquiry of Judeo-Spanish in Turkey. In Lang Policy 12 (1), pp. 7–26. DOI: 10.1007/s10993-012-9262-7.
Harushige Nakakoji, Sophia University, University of Vienna Linguistic Accommodation in Plurilingual Collaborative Work in Science Laboratories: A Case Study of an English-taught Programme in Japan This study explores the interactive discourse by students in pair or small-group work during laboratory work in an English-taught programme (ETP) in science and engineering at a university in Japan from a sociolinguistic perspective. The participants of the study were first-year undergraduate students of the programme from various lingua-cultural backgrounds. As in many other ETPs in European and Asian countries, the programme of this university created an environment where students from a wide range of lingua-cultural backgrounds communicate not only in English, but also in various other languages. A largely qualitative analysis of transcribed audio-recorded data from laboratory sessions in physics and chemistry focus on the interactions by selected participants in pair or small-group work where they try to solve problems in completing assigned tasks or in understanding related academic content by communicating with their partner or the instructors (e.g., through asking questions and exchanging ideas). Drawing on the Communication Accommodation Theory (Giles, Coupland, & Coupland, 1991) and Audience Design (Bell, 2001, 2006) as the theoretical frameworks, the study investigates the interplay between the plurilingual linguistic skills of the speaker and the interlocutor during their interactions, in particular, the effects of the linguistic repertoire of the interlocutor on the language choice and use by the speaker. The study reveals that, in this plurilingual community of learning, students employ their plurilingual linguistic resources in accommodation to the linguistic skills and backgrounds of the interlocutors so as to fulfil their communicative needs. The findings of the study imply that the instructors of classes in ETPs need to take into account the linguistic backgrounds and repertoires of students and their effects on the way the students interact with one another when organising pair or group work in order to enhance the learning outcomes through the utilisation of the students’ plurilingual linguistic resources. References Bell, A. (2001). Back in style: Reworking Audience Design. In P. Eckert & J. R. Rickford (Eds.), Style and Sociolinguistic Variation (pp. 139-69). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bell, A. (2006). Speech Accommodation Theory and Audience Design. In E. K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (2nd ed., Vol. 11, pp. 648-651). Oxford: Elsevier Ltd. Giles, H., Coupland, J., & Coupland, N. (1991). Accommodation theory: Communication, context, and consequence. In H. Giles, J. Coupland & N. Coupland (Eds.), Contexts of accommodation: Developments in applied sociolinguistics (pp. 1-68). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Janice Nakamura, Sagami Women’s University Minority language loss in exogamous families: Language experiences of grown bicultural children of Filipino and Thai mothers in Japan Many children of foreign parents in Japan do not speak their parents’ language (Ishii, 2010; Jabar, 2013; Yamamoto, 2002). This study draws from the language experiences of grown bicultural children to understand minority language loss in exogamous families across the lifespan. Interviews were conducted with five adult participants with Filipino or Thai mothers. Interview data was analyzed using a constructive grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2014). Initial coding and focused coding of interview data showed how individual and societal factors led to a Japanese-focused family language policy since childhood. Three out of the five participants were not exposed to Tagalog or Thai. Their Japanese fathers did not speak their mothers’ native language so Japanese was used in the home. Living with in-laws who initially objected to their exogamous marriage may have also made the participants’ mothers less inclined to transmit their own language. Another two participants spoke some Tagalog because they lived apart from their grandparents, or initially lived in the Philippines. The participants shared that their mothers played minimal roles in their school life due to their lack of Japanese proficiency, and depended on them for Japanese language support. The need to master Japanese for school and for language brokering probably contributed to the family’s emphasis on the acquisition of Japanese. The participants also had weak ties with their mothers’ home country due to infrequent visits, which did not continue after childhood. In adulthood, some participants wished they had been raised bilingually, but prioritized the learning of English over Tagalog or Thai. These findings indicate that minority language transmission is minimal or even non-existent in these exogamous families. Sociocultural, socioeconomic and sociopolitical influences manifested at the family level contribute towards Japanese monolingualism of the children in adulthood. References Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory (2nd Edition). London, UK: Sage. Ishii, K. (2010). "Japanese" children with "Thai" mothers: The identity of Japanese-Thai mixedethnic children in Japan. Nagoya University of Commerce and Business Administration Journal of Economics and Information Science, 54, 13-23. Jabar, M. A. (2013). The identity of children of Japanese-Filipino marriages in Iota, Japan. Japan Journal of Multilingualism and Multiculturalism, 19, 28-39. Yamamoto, M. (2002). Language use in families with parents of different native languages: An investigation of Japanese-non-English and Japanese-English families, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 23:6, 531-554.
Warda Nejjari, Marinel Gerritsen, Roeland van Hout, Brigitte Planken, Radboud University (Non-)Native accents in context: the impact of communication contexts and accentedness on Speech Comprehension and Language Attitudes. This study was designed to determine the impact of accentedness and communication context on Speech Comprehension (Interpretability, Comprehensibility, Intelligibility) and Language Attitudes (Status, Affect, Dynamism). Three English accents: (1) Standard British English, (2) Standard American English, and (3) Dutch-accented English were produced by a matched-guise speaker in three communication contexts: (1) a lecture, (2) an art gallery audio tour, and (3) a job pitch. Dutch listeners (N=392) listened to speech samples in each accent and context, and were asked to answer comprehension questions (Speech Comprehension) and the impression they had of the speaker (Language Attitudes). Firstly, the results showed that accent did not affect Speech Comprehension. However, context did affect Speech Comprehension, with significantly higher Interpretability and Comprehensibility in the lecture context compared to the audio tour and job pitch. Secondly, compared to both native accents, the non-native accent negatively affected the Status but not the Affect or Dynamism ascribed to a speaker. Context had no significant effect on Status, but did have a significant effect on Affect and Dynamism: the job pitch context evoked significantly lower Affect and Dynamism compared to the lecture context and the art gallery audio tour context . Thirdly, there was a negative correlation between Affect and Comprehensibility, which suggests that lower Comprehensibility can lead to higher Affect. Since our results indicate that the context in which the accent is used is an important factor in assessing listeners’ perceptions of speakers, future speech evaluation research should focus more on how both accent and communication contexts affect Comprehension and Attitudes. The practical implications are that foreign language training should include extensive accent training and build awareness on the effects of the context of communication. This will help learners create the impression they want, and as a result, allows for learners to achieve their personal objectives.
Jiří Nekvapil, Charles University in Prague ‘Interests’ and ‘Power’ in Language Policy and Planning Though the concept of interest was introduced in language policy and planning (LPP) as early as in the 1980s, in contrast to ‘power’ it has attracted relatively little attention. This paper should help remedy this situation, focusing on a number of points. First, it presents a brief history of the use of ‘interests’ in LPP, with attention devoted to scholars such as Richard Ruiz, Brian Weinstein, Björn Jernudd, and Jiří Neustupný. Second, it demonstrates an intimate connection between ‘interests’ and ‘power’ which is obvious from two basic questions drawing on common-sense logic: 1. What are the interests of individual actors and their groupings when it comes to language phenomena? 2. (To what extent) do these actors have power to assert these interests? Third, it elucidates the difference between non-linguistic and linguistic interests, following up on Weinstein’s classification of interests (ideological, political, economic, social) on the one hand, and Jernudd’s concept of happy communication on the other. Fourth, and this is the focus of the paper, it incorporates ‘interests’ and ‘power’ in the main dimensions of Language Management Theory (on the theory see, for example, Nekvapil 2016). The paper concludes with remarks on methodology demonstrating some pitfalls regarding empirical research on ‘interests’ and ‘power’ (on research methodology relevant here, see Fairbrother, Nekvapil & Sloboda 2017). The theoretical agenda is illustrated using examples from the research conducted in German-based and Korean-based multinational companies operating in the Czech Republic (Nekvapil & Sherman 2018). References Fairbrother, L., Nekvapil, J. & Sloboda, M. (eds.) (2017) The Language Management Approach: A Focus on Research Methodology. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Nekvapil, J. (2016) Language Management Theory as one approach in Language Policy and Planning. Current Issues in Language Planning 17, 11-22. Nekvapil, J. & Sherman, T. (2018). Managing superdiversity in multinational companies. In Angela Creese and Adrian Blackledge (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Language and Superdiversity. Oxford: Taylor & Francis, 329-344.
Jenny Nilsson, Therese Leinonen, Lena Wenner, Eva Thorselius, Institute for Language and Folklore, Gothenburg Social meaning on the move: the indexicality of [ɨ:] in rural and urban Sweden In this study, we focus on [ɨ:] (a variant of the phoneme /i:/) which has different connotations in different parts of Sweden in order to discuss processes behind changes in social meaning for a linguistic form (see also Johnstone et al 2006). We investigate the use and perception of the feature in urban Gothenburg, where it at least in the mid-20th century marked social class and gender, and in rural Skärhamn (65 kilometers away), where it has been part of the traditional dialect system indexing place. We also investigate the feature in a small town (Stenungsund) located in between Skärhamn and Gothenburg, where it has traditionally indexed place. In order to investigate the change in the variant’s separate social meanings we have approached the phenomenon from three angles. First, we have investigated the use of the variant in recorded data. Second, we have made interviews about speakers’ more or less conscious attitudes towards [ɨ:]. Finally, we have conducted an IAT experiment (Campbell-Kibler 2012) in order to test to what extent [ɨ:] is associated with urbanity/rurality. By approaching the phenomenon with these methods, we can discuss the relationship between conscious and unconscious attitudes on the one hand, and use of linguistic form on the other. Our results indicate that [ɨ:] has a more prominent position in today’s speech community than to ‘only’ index place, and that the social meaning is changing in all locations as the Gothenburg variety is gaining ground in the area. References Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. 2012. The Implicit Association Test and sociolinguistic meaning. In: Lingua, 122(7): 753–763. Johnstone, Barbara, Jennifer Andrus and Andrew E. Danielson. 2006. “Mobility, Indexicality, and the Enregisterment of “Pittsburghese’”, Journal of English Linguistics 34 (2): 77–104.
Jenny Nilsson, Institute for Language and Folklore, Catrin Norrby, Stockholm University, Camilla Wide, University of Turku, Jan Lindström, Helsinki University Private talk in public – reference to non-present family members in service encounters from a pluricentric perspective Talk about non-present family members is uncommon in Swedish service encounters. In a corpus of 1000 audio- and video recorded Swedish service interactions at box offices and booking venues, non-present family members are introduced in 55 conversations. Even though it is quite rare, this phenomenon sheds light on the relationship between culture, social structure and language use (Stivers, Enfield & Levinson 2009). By comparing reference to non-present family members in two varieties of Swedish – Finland Swedish and Sweden Swedish – we gain new insights into cross-cultural similarities and differences in interactional patterns and pragmatic routines (Norrby et al. 2015). In this presentation, we focus on why non-present family members are introduced in these service encounters. We have found several functions in our data such as ask a favor, handle a potential interactional problem, praise a family member or make a joke. Through person reference of this kind, the service interaction shifts from a formal towards a more informal exchange (see e.g. Clark 1996; Felix-Brasdefer 2015), and the private becomes public. References Clark, Herbert H. 1996. Using Language. Cambridge: CUP. Felix-Brasdefer, J. César. 2015. The Language of Service Encounters. Cambridge: CUP. Norrby, C., Wide, C. Nilsson, J. & Lindström, J. 2015. Address and interpersonal relationships in Finland-Swedish and Sweden-Swedish service encounters. I: Norrby, C. & Wide, C. (red.): Address practice as social action – European perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Pivot. 75– 96. Stivers, Tanya, Enfield, Nick & Levinson, Stephen 2007. Person reference in interaction. I: Enfield, N. J., & Stivers, T. (red.). Person reference in interaction: Linguistic, cultural and social perspectives (Vol. 7). Cambridge University Press. 1–20.
Daisuke Okabe, Ferris University Loose Connections to Fight: Discursive Practices to Let “Others” in at Participatory Charity Events for Cancer in Japan Both in developed and developing countries, cancer is one of the most well-known diseases. It has been the number one killer in Japan since 1981 and is still at issue not only for its mortality but also for its social stigma. Participatory charity events for cancer such as Pink Ribbon Walking for breast cancer, Gold Ribbon Walking for adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer, and Relay For Life, have been gaining popularity since the early 21st century in Japan. They could be a promising candidate to tackle with those problems. Such events hold a variety of purposes: fundraising, promotion of screening, prevention of cancer, or peer-support among cancer survivors. Participants are engaged in a variety of activities such as walking, running, sharing stories, attending lectures given by medical professionals, watching performances on stage. One of the characteristics of those events is they need "loose connections” amongst participants: It is essential for those events to be inclusive enough to let all types of participants in to fight against cancer, but there would also be a risk to look exclusive for cancer survivors if there is too much emphasis on survivors like self-help groups, for instance. Balance is the key to success, but how is such delicate work being done at the events? The questions to be asked are: what kind of discursive practices to let non-cancer survivors in are being done? What sort of discursive resources available on site and outside the events are being used for such practices? Data constructed through fieldwork of events in eastern Japan are analyzed using a form of discourse analysis, specifically focusing on how "non-cancer-survivor” participants are discursively constructed. Although some scholars assume those events as “machines for preferred narratives”, the analyses will reveal much more complex and diverse discursive practices being done on site.
Tomonori Okubo, Kansai University Contextual normative bias and race distinction: Was Barack Obama the first black President of America? It is well-known that couples of antonymic terms concerned with desirability show a kind of semantic deflection called “normative bias” when they are put in negation: while the negation of “clean” (desirable): “not clean” is very near to “dirty” (undesirable), “not dirty” is far from equivalent to “clean” (Ducrot 1973, Peeters 1974). This paper will examine, as a case study of the normative bias, the antonymic (skin) colour terms “black” and “white”. They show the normative bias with “black” as undesirable and “white” as desirable. (1) Barack Obama was the first black president. (www.independent.co.uk) As Barack Obama is mixed-race, the example (1) should be based on a normatively biased assumption that when a person is not “white”, then (s)he is “black”, as if we were still bound to the one-drop rule, a social and legal principle on race distinction. What is more complicated is that, according to a research[1], “(w)hile whites and Hispanics are far more likely to describe Obama as ‘mixed race,’ a strong majority of African Americans see him as black.” If we combine our above observation and this survey result, it is as though the black people accept a disgraceful normative bias for them. By analysing all these phenomena, this paper will propose the following description. The observed (un)desirability in the pair “white/black” is not lexical but contextual, and in actual socio-linguistic context, the pair “white/black” is more advantaged/disadvantaged pair rather than desirable/undesirable one. The normative bias attributed to them is operative only in some racist context, while disadvantage imposed on them (to be “black”) is rather honorable when it is overcome, and that is why the expression “the first black president” is more popular among black people than the others. References Ducrot, Oswald (1973). La prevue et le dire, Tours, Mame. Peeters, G. (1974). “Patterns of information implied in interpersonal relations. A case in point on the convergence of social-cognitive schemata, formal causal inferences, and linguistic universals”. Nederlands Tijdschrift voor de Psychologie, 29, 505-534.
Kingsley Oluchi Ugwuanyi, Northumbria University The development of English in Nigeria: From alien to own language. The English language, like every living thing, grows, moves and reproduces. Development, on the one hand, can be conceived in this biological sense. On another hand, and particularly in relation to the world Englishes paradigm, development can be conceptualised as the processes or stages in the transition of a language (in this instance, English) from exonormative status to an endonormative status (Schneider, 2003 & 2007). In Nigeria, as in most postcolonial contexts, the status of English has been in constant flux. The aim of this study is to take a trajectory of the development and status of English in Nigeria, from precolonial to colonial and then postcolonial periods. In particular, the purpose is to explore the ‘changing face of English in Nigeria’ (Kperogi, 2015) across times with emphasis on its current status. The orientation of the study portends bidirectionality—diachronic and synchronic—but stressing the sociolinguistic signposts that mark these developments. The study is underpinned by the theoretical notions of the Dynamic Model (Schneider, 2003 & 2007), which thematises the developmental stages of postcolonial Englishes. The growth of English in Nigeria is discussed along the theoretical principles of this Model for two purposes. First, to show how insights from the Nigerian context can support or refute the tenets of the Model; and second, to demonstrate where in the developmental continuum English in Nigeria sits. Following a preliminary analysis of a larger study involving 15 interviews, convincing evidence emerged that English in Nigeria has grown from the status of a foreign language to that of second language and now to first language, with evidence of speakers of English in Nigeria taking ownership of English. References Schneider, E. W. (2003). The dynamics of New Englishes: From identity construction to dialect birth. Language, 79(2), 233–81. Schneider, E. W. (2007). Postcolonial English: Varieties around the world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kperogi, F. A. (2015). Glocal English: The changing face and forms of Nigerian English in a global world. New York: Peter Lang.
Theng Theng Ong, Northumbria University The Construction of Malaysian Airline Tragedies in Malaysian and British Newspapers: A Multidisciplinary Study This study adopts a multidisciplinary method by combining the corpus-based discourse analysis and language attitude study to explore the construction of Malaysia airline tragedies: MH370 and MH17 in the selected Malaysian and United Kingdom (UK) newspapers. The analysis aims to determine the ways in which Malaysian Airline tragedies MH370 and MH17 are linguistically defined and constructed in terms of keywords and collocation. In addition, the language attitude study was carried out to study the readers’ attitudes toward the keywords, topics or issues covered by the selected Malaysian and UK news newspapers pertaining to the Airline tragedies. Using the analysis tool Sketch Engine, the newspapers analysis revealed that the semantic category of aircraft related matters and countries/nationalities were important to the news reporting of the air tragedies. Essentially, the findings suggest the tendency of the news media to construct the air tragedies with a classification between ‘Us’ and ‘Others’. The division was featured in two dominant discursive modes: ‘honorification’ and ‘anonymity’. Across the Malaysian and UK respondents, the most salient associations with MH370 concern about conflict and for MH17, is emotions. The finding suggests that the news media have relatively little influence on the respondents’ attitudes in relation to the dichotomy of ‘Us’ versus ‘Others’. References Gabrielatos, C., & Baker, P. (2008). Fleeing, Sneaking, Flooding A Corpus Analysis of Discursive Constructions of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press, 1996-2005. Journal of English Linguistics, 36(1), 5-38. Garrett, P., Evans, B., & Williams, A. (2006). What does the word ‘globalisation’ mean to you? Comparative perceptions and evaluations in Australia, New Zealand, the USA and the UK. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 27(5), 392-412. Fairclough, N. (1992a). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Sara Orthaber, Simon Zupan, University of Maribor Negotiation and co-construction of translators’ professional identity in an online community With few exemptions, the profession of translators in Slovenia is unregulated, which means that unqualified individuals can act as translators, offering services at extremely low prices, much to the displeasure of many qualified translators. Moreover, the numerous calls for changes by professionals and relevant institutions remain largely unheeded. The study examines the ways in which translators as members of an online community, created to help fellow translators and laymen, make relevant their professional identity (Richards, 2006). Drawing on publicly available, naturally-occurring interactions between members of a popular language-support group comprising translators and laymen, we examine how translators discursively and dynamically coconstruct and negotiate their professional identity (Bucholtz and Hall, 2004) and situate it in relation to the current situation on the market. Thus, identity is treated as a constantly shaping and developing process (e.g. Holmes, 2000). The analysis demonstrates that professional translators negotiate their identity by resorting to various face-aggravating practices (such as accusations, insults or even removals), with the objective to sanction their seemingly unfair competition. References Bucholtz, M. & Hall, K. (2004). Language and Identity, in A. Duranti (ed.) A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, pp. 369–394. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Holmes, J. (2000). Doing Collegiality and Keeping Control at Work: Small Talk in Government Departments, in J. Coupland (ed.) Small Talk, pp 32–61. London: Longman. Richards, K. (2006). Language and Professional Identity: Aspects of Collaborative Interaction. Palgrave Macmillan. Doi: 10.1057/9780230505049.
Hajime Oshima, NINJAL (National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics) Variation in the Possessive Plural Marker in the Burgenland Dialect of Hungarian in Austria. This study describes the possessive plural marker in the Burgenland dialect of Hungarian in Austria, and shows how it has different meanings from the possessive plural marker used in Standard Hungarian. In Standard Hungarian, the possessive plural marker is -i, as shown in (1). (1) az autó-i-m the car-PL-POSS.1SG ‘(the) my cars’ a láb-am-i͜ëk the leg-POSS.1SG-PL ‘(the) my legs’ IMRE (1971) described that speakers of the Burgenland dialect add the special marker -i͜ëk to create the possessive plural form, as in (2). However, I point out that -i͜ëk in the Burgenland dialect corresponds to -ék in Standard Hungarian, which is used as as marker of the associative plural form (OSHIMA 2017). (3) Péter-ék Peter-ASSOC.PL ‘Péter and his family or friends or associates’ It has been found that -ék and -i͜ëk have different functional meanings because the associative plural can be added only to human nouns (3) and not to animate or inanimate nouns (4a, b) in Standard Hungarian. (4) a. *kutyá-ék dog-ASSOC.PL b. *szemüveg-ék glass-ASSOC.PL However, -i͜ëk can be added to not only human nouns but also animate or inanimate nouns (5a, b) in the Burgenland dialect. (5) a. kutyá-m-i͜ëk dog-POSS.1SG-ASSOC.PL ‘my dogs’ b. szemüveg-em-i͜ëk glass-POSS.1.SG-ASSOC.PL ‘my glasses’ The meanings are not associative plural, but possessive plural. With my current research data, I wish to describe in detail the uses and meanings of the special marker -i͜ëk in the Burgenland dialect of Hungarian.
(2)
References IMRE, Samu, 1971, A felsőőri nyelvjárás, Nyelvtudományi értekezések 72., Akadémiai kiadó, Budapest. Oshima, Hajime, 2017, The possessive plural marker in the Burgenland dialect of Hungarian in Austria, Studia uralo-altaica 51: Uralic and Siberian Lexicology and Lexicography 131-147, University of Szeged, Hungary.
Antonio Oštarić, University of Zadar Commodification of the Glagolitic script in contemporary Croatian material culture of multilingualism The Glagolitic script was the first script used in the history of Slavs for literacy in their own languages. Although a great majority of Slavic nations abandoned it after some time and introduced the Cyrillic or Latin script, it was used in Croatia until the first decades of the 20th century, simultaneously with different varieties of the Latin script. However, in recent years there has been a noticeable revival of a symbolic usage of the script in Croatia, included in school curricula as a significant component of the Croatian cultural heritage. Letters of the script have also found their place on logotypes of numerous national institutions, on various products, such as souvenirs, wine bottles or key rings, as well as on art objects, in graphic design, and inscriptions in the public space. Since the Glagolitic script hasn’t been used productively in Croatia for almost a century, the present-day usage is entirely symbolic. In this paper I analyse the significance of the Glagolitic script for contemporary Croats and their identity and I will explain the process of commodification of the script and its usage in tourism. This paper draws on the increasing body of literature on the commodification of language in the context of the globalised new economy and on the literature on the material culture of multilingualism. The material culture of multilingualism is defined as “a specific blend of materialities, originating from many cultures which constitute a multilingual society” (Aronin and Ó Laoire 2013: 228). The materialities that will be analysed as language-defined objects of material culture are graffiti and inscriptions on municipal buildings, photographs of souvenirs, memorabilia, wine bottle labels, all collected or photographed in the wider Zadar area in Croatia.
Katarzyna Ostrowska, Jan Kochanowski University Between literary and documentary – features of the reportage on the basis of Kopenhaga written by Grzegorz Wróblewski The proposal theme of the occurrence is an attempt of presenting literary and documentary features on the basis of Grzegorz Wróblewski’s reportage called “Kopenhaga”. The occurrence consists of the elements contributed to the writers biography, etymology, definition and the history of the reportage, literary and documentary parts and the summary. The authoress refers to the reportage researchers like: Konstanty Troczyński, Ignacy Fik, Roman Kołoniecki, Zbigniew Żabicki, Józef Rurawski, Jacek Maziarski, Wojciech Furman, Andrzej Kaliszewski, Kazimierz Wolny-Zmorzyński, Marek Miller. The reason why the authoress chose this theme is a dual form of “Kopenhaga”. The reportage concept has not been clearly defined yet. It may refer to the social, travel, war and sport themes. On the one hand it may be fictional (the literary feature), on the other hand it may consist of parts that are the documentary characteristic. Furthermore Grzegorz Wróblewski is an interesting writer, which creation is characterised by the rupture of the schemes, being against of the traditional poetry and individualism. The foreign critics appreciate his tracks but the Polish writers still do not accept this type of presenting the world. The aim of this theme is to present and exemplify not only the literary features (the existence of the narrator, dramaturgy, language individualisms, description’s plasticity, selection of the facts, fiction permissibility) but also the documentary (like the authentic happenings, accuracy, verifiability of names, dates and numbers).
Helena Özörencik, Czech Language Institute, M. A. Hromadová, Charles University Teaching ‘foreign pupils’ Czech: Linguistic integration between official language policy and local policing practices This paper investigates how instruction of Czech for the so-called ‘foreign pupils’ is organized in two elementary schools in Prague. Number of ‘foreign pupils’ in Czech schools, same as the overall number of foreigners in the country, more than doubled between 2000 and 2017 (Czech Statistical Office 2017). However, it was only in 2017 that Czech policy makers started considering a ‘systematic instruction' of Czech for ‘foreign pupils’ (Government 2017) to consolidate the existing haphazard policy on linguistic integration. The aim of the paper is to contribute to the study of how growing linguistic diversity is dealt with in post-socialist Central Europe (cf. Sloboda 2016) and to the debate on how official language policies (or their lack) relate to local policing practices (cf. Blommaert 2013). The paper is based on observations and narrative interviews with educators. The data suggest that both schools have long history of educating ‘foreign pupils’ and that two distinct language policies evolved from patterns of policing practices in each of them. We argue that educators developed those practices ‘in-situ’ independently of the official language policies. References Blommaert, J. (2013). Policy, policing and the ecology of social norms: ethnographic monitoring revisited. IJSL, 219, 123-140. Czech Statistical Office (2017). Foreigners in the Czech Republic – 2017. Online at: https://www.czso.cz/csu/czso/cizinci-v-cr-2017. Government of the Czech Republic (2017). Government Resolution from January 9th 2017 on implementation of the updated Foreigners Integration Policy. Online at: http://www.mvcr.cz/clanek/integrace.aspx. Sloboda, M. (2016). Transition to super-diversity in the Czech Republic: its emergence and resistance. In M. Sloboda – P. Laihonen – A. Zabrodskaja (eds.), Sociolinguistic Transition in Former Eastern Bloc Countries: Two Decades after the Regime Change. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 141–183.
Borbála Pachné Heltai, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Global Spaces, Peripheral Sites: Social Media Practices of a Multilingual Rural Community The investigation of multilingual practices in social media has become a central issue of sociolinguistics (Leppänen–Kytölä 2017), for example the practices of urban youth have been broadly studied. At the same time, less attention is paid to online practices of small, aging communities located at peripheral rural sites. In my paper, I will present a German speaking minority settlement of 750 people located in Southern Hungary, which has been an attractive destination for foreigners: a high number of properties has been bought by German and Finnish newcomers. Some of them actively use social media for sharing their local experiences. The aim of my paper is to examine online practices of this community affected by numerous crucial social phenomena of the age of mobility. I have conducted a long term sociolinguistic-ethnographic research in the community. Online fieldwork was a significant part of data generating. After setting the broader context and the main local factors which determine the social practices of the community (cf. Scollon–Scollon 2004), I will analyse examples of online multilingual practices. The results underline that the participants mobilize diverse semiotic resources, modify their indexical field (Eckert 2008), and these resources become tools for constructing authenticity, locality or exoticness. These online practices might also affect linguistic ideologies, thus, on the long term, the linguistic make-up of the village. References Eckert, Penelope 2008. Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4): 453– 476. Leppänen, Sirpa – Kytölä, Samu 2017. Investigating multilingualism and multisemioticity as communicative resources in social media. In: Martin-Jones, Marilyn – Martin, Deirdre eds., Researching Multilingualism: Critical and Ethnographic Approaches. Routledge, London. 155– 171. Scollon, Ron – Scollon, Suzie Wong 2004. Nexus Analysis. Discourse and the Emerging Internet. Routledge, London.
Boróka Pápay, Bálint Kubik, Júlia Galántai, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Gossip is more than just story telling: Topic modelling and quantitative analysis on a spontaneous speech corpus Gossip is one of the most widespread human activities with multiple functions such as enhancing human cooperation, establishing social order, information sharing, norm enhancing or stress reduction (Dunbar, 2004; Feinberg, Willer, & Schultz, 2014; Hess & Hagen, 2006; Nowak & Sigmund, 2005). Gossip has been analyzed mostly by qualitative or survey methods. In this paper, we describe a quantitative approach to identify gossip in a large corpus containing spontaneous talk with LDA topic modeling and quantitative analysis. We aim to identify gossip and its characteristics by its topics, the verbal and non-verbal emotions that are used during gossiping, and other non-textual data such as the number of speakers and the number of persons present during gossiping events. We also analyze our corpus to extract the hidden structure of spontaneous speech and to find those thematic topics that people are gossiping about. We also analyze the topics to distinguish gossiping and storytelling by dividing gossip and non-gossip texts in our large spontaneous speech corpora. In our analysis we assume that gossiping is not only about informing people or to set norms in a community, but it might have a personal impact on the individual with unleashing anger or distress. It is also possible, that it differs from non-gossip as it might be used for reputational purposes. In our analysis a huge dimension of words of anger appeared while gossiping, but we could not notice any non-verbal emotion during this type of communication. References Dunbar, Robin Gossip in evolutionary perspective. Review of general psychology, 8(2), 100. (2004). Feinberg, M., Willer, R., Schultz, M. Gossip and ostracism promote cooperation in groups. Psychological science, 25(3), pp. 656-664. (2014). Hess, N. H., & Hagen, E. H. Psychological adaptations for assessing gossip veracity. Review of general psychology, 8(2), 78. (2006). Nowak, M. A., & Sigmund, K. Evolution of indirect reciprocity. Nature, 437(7063), pp. 12911298. (2005).
Panayiotis A. Pappas, Simon Fraser University, Symeon Tsolakidis, University of Patras Mid-vowel raising in the speech of Greek Canadian immigrants This paper examines the variable pattern of unstressed mid-vowel raising in the speech of Greek immigrants to Canada. This feature of Northern Greek (NG) dialects has been stigmatized for at least the past five decades as an index of lack of education, and provincialism. In a recent study of young NG speakers, Pappas (2017) found that the raised variant appears only about 15% of the time, while Lengeris et al (2016) found that even older speakers (77-88 years old) produce the raised variant only around 40% of the time. We examine how long ago the avoidance of this dialectal feature began in the corpus of sociolinguistic interviews conducted for the purposes of the project Immigration and Language in Canada: Greeks and Greek Canadians. It comprises over 200 hours of high quality recordings of Greeks who immigrated to Canada between 1945 and 1975. The dataset is constructed from the recordings of 41 speakers who immigrated to various cities of Canada from an area where NG is spoken. The interviews were transcribed orthographically, and time-aligned and annotated in text grids in Praat. An examination of 3280 tokens of unstressed mid vowels confirms that speakers avoid the raised variants. We will present the results of a mixed effects analysis that will consider both independent variables that are linguistic in nature (e.g. position in word, position relative to the stressed syllable), and variables that are social (gender, age, place of origin). References Lengeris, A., E. Kainada, and N. Topintzi. 2016. Vowel raising, deletion and diphthongization in Kozani Greek. In A. Ralli, N. Koutsoukos, and S. Bompolas (eds.) Proceedings of MGDLT 6, pp. 92-100. University of Patras. Pappas, P. 2017. Vowel raising and vowel deletion as sociolinguistic variables in Northern Greek. In I. Buchstaller and B. Siebenhaar (eds.) Language Variation - European Perspectives VI, pp. 113-124. Benjamins
Papuc Oana, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca The fluidity of languaging practices and multilingual speakers’ identity in the classroom. A case study The current sociolinguistic study seeks to answer the questions: 1. How do multilingual speakers, operating with differently developed linguistic repertoires, interact in an educational setting? 2. How can this situation be understood at local and macro levels, when identifying the factors and effects linked to languaging practices phenomena? The data consisting of video-audio recordings of second year Erasmus Physiology students, enrolled in the UASVM, highlighted numerous code-switching occurrences and perceptions of self-identity, in interactions where co-constructions of social personas become indexed by choices of linguistic features. A qualitative interpretation of the data (conversation analysis, Myers-Scotton’s Markedness and RCM models and Membership Categorization theory among others) was mixed with a quantitative one. Respondents’ answers to an open-ended questionnaire and quantitatively interpreting code-switching appearances per turns at talk/per speaker will substantiate the validity of the identified results. The main languaging factors identified are related to: knowledge attainment and seminar tasks accomplishment, emotional responses and on-the-spot reactions to local interactions in the classroom. Changes in topic and the physical movement throughout the laboratory setting also push speakers to disengage from initially negotiated to adapting to other other personalized micro R-O sets. The interweaving of code-switching instances with discourse and situated roles, as well as the code-related and content-related peer-peer teaching instances and speakers’ metalinguistic awareness indicate a creative re-appropriation of local and global linguistic features, outlining a fluid identity of ‘Erasmus multilingual students in transit’ and a co-created ‘bricolaged’ classroom Lingua Franca. The linguistic strategies employed by multilinguals and the bearing of a fluid sense of selfidentity and otherness in interactions come across as interruptions, discontinuities, and fragmentariness that do not impede communication, but simply constitute markers of today’s superdiverse world, in which hypersubjectivities emerge and are challenged, via multilingual practices among others.
Lida Paul, Saritha V. Thodi., Vignans Foundation for Science Technology and Research, Rajesh Kumar, Indian Institute of Technology Madras Hindi Se Tamil Varai: Contradictions in the Politics of Linguistic Identity in India The question of language is a controversial debate in identity politics in India, from the period before independence and continues to be so even today. Language movements and agitations across India have underlined language as the marker of identity. Language as the marker of identity is often used for political benefits. This in turn produced problematic outcomes with regards to language policy in general and education in particular. The Three Language Formula (TLF), aimed at addressing the multilingual situation of India in education (Khubchandani, 2001). In the politics of the Hindi-speaking North and the non-Hindi speaking South, the policy met with little success. In the state of Tamil Nadu, the policy faced the most apparent rejection leading to violent agitations. Also, this policy turned a blind eye towards the question of minority languages (Kaviraj, 2009). Tamil Nadu’s rejection of the policy though, reflected the contradictory position of both the Hindi-approving North and anti-Hindi Tamil Nadu. This paper argues that Tamil Nadu’s politics of identity located around language and its anti-Hindi stance is as ill-formed and contradictory as the pro-Hindi movements in the North. In opposing a language that it thinks is being imposed, it in turn imposed its own language on the other minority languages in the state. Also, it meddles with the fundamental nature of both Language and identity by compartmentalizing them along geographic and political boundaries. The paper thus seeks to address this contradiction in the politics of identity along languages in multilingual India and its impact on language in education through a critical analysis of the language debates before and after the independence, various language movements and agitations, caste politics, linguistic formation of the states and language policy in education. References 1. Khubchandani, Lachman M. “Language Demography and Language in Education.” Language Education in Multilingual India, edited by C J Daswani, UNESCO, 2001, pp. 3-47. 2. Kaviraj, Sudipta. “Writing, Speaking, Being: Language and the Historical Formation of Identities in India.” Language and Politics in India, edited by Asha Sarangi, OUP, 2009, PP. 312-350.
Jana Pelclová, Masaryk University Hidden in your cosy den: You'll be my donut, I your jam. Poetics in Brno street signage. A number of street artists as well as of ordinary citizens take advantage of urban public space in order to share their feelings, emotions, ideas and beliefs with their co-citizens. Besides where the message will be displayed, how it will be communicated is also crucial. The choice of both the place and the form of the message enables to address as wide an audience as possible. Moreover, owing to the interplay of various media and objects found in a public domain, street messages are often artistically rendered. The aesthetic value can be carried by both the visual and the verbal aspects of a message. This enables the author to communicate the message in an untraditional way, and the receivers of the message to be exposed to more interpretations. The objective of this paper is to present street messages located in Brno (the second largest city of the Czech Republic) that work with the poetic function and that are meant not only to please passers-by, but also, to a certain degree, to react to current events and affairs. Drawing upon her previous research of Brno vernacular street signage (Pelclová 2017), the author will talk about various media and forms Brno street artists utilize in order to enliven the shared public space. Besides language and visual image used, the paper will also focus on the material and channel chosen for the message delivery. Taking the situational context into consideration, the author will also speak about how these messages alert one’s attention to social and political problems. References Pelclová, Jana (2017) “Signifying Brno – Creating Urban Space, Shaping the City.” Brno Studies in English 43 (1): 69-87.
Giulia Pepe, University of Westminster Translanguaging in a super-diverse community: the case of new Italian migrants in London Italian mass emigration has re-started in the last decade due to the 2008 economic crisis and London has become the favourite destination of this new migratory wave (Tintori and Romei, 2016). The Italian community in London stands now as an example of super-diverse community, due to inter and intra generational differences. Through the presentation of data ethnographically collected during gatherings organised by new migrants, the papers shows how participants cope with super-diversity (Blommaert, 2010) by engaging in translanguaging practices (Wei and Zhu, 2013). Informants’ interpretation of super-diversity results in the challenge of the existence of a real community. However, participants acknowledged the presence of an in-group style characterised by translanguaging. The analysis of the data suggests that participants engage in translanguaging to show affiliation and disaffiliation to the challenged community (Auer, 2007), and to display new identities by agreeing (or disagreeing) with this style. Translanguaging is thus adopted as a means to negotiate a priori form of casting, in order to separate from a long migratory tradition. References Auer, P. (2007). Introduction. In: Auer, P. (ed.). Style and Social Identities: Alternative Approaches to Linguistic Heterogeneity (Vol. 18). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Blommaert, J. (2010). The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tintori, G. and Romei, V. (2016). Emigration from Italy after the crisis: The shortcomings of the brain drain narrative. In: Lafleur, J.M. and Stanek, M. (eds.) South-North Migration of EU Citizens in Times of Crisis. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, pp. 49-64. Wei, L. and Zhu, H. (2013). Translanguaging identities and ideologies: Creating transnational space through flexible multilingual practices amongst Chinese university students in the UK. Applied Linguistics. 34(5), 516-535.
Hanna-Mari Pienimäki, University of Helsinki Language professionals as regulators of academic discourse: resources for regulation Internationalization of higher education forces Finnish universities to function in many languages. To aid in this, some institutions offer language support services, such as translation and language revision. In my ongoing PhD project, I use ethnographic methods to study English language professionals who work as in-house and freelancer translators and language revisors in a multidisciplinary Finnish university. The PhD is part of a larger project focusing on language regulation. By framing language professionals’ work as language regulation, we can ask what kind of language is regulated, how and why in an international academic institution. In my paper, I will explore how language professionals employ different resources to do language regulatory work. The language professionals use multiple resources, some continuously, e.g. various quality assurance mechanisms, such as collegial text revision and translation memory software; some more ad hoc, e.g. consult texts related to the field of the text under translation or language revision. The employed resources also have different functions: some are used to look up proper terminology and appropriate writing conventions or to verify intuitive judgement calls (e.g. dictionaries, style guides); others to organize work and distribute the text production process across different individuals and time. I will illustrate with fieldwork data that employing resources for language regulation is a multilayered phenomenon. Instead of solely consulting codified material produced by external authorities and complying to their instructions, the language professionals also negotiate and develop in-house guidelines and practical mechanisms to ensure quality in translation and language revision as a local, communal effort. References Pennycook, A. 2018. Posthumanist Applied Linguistics. New York (NY): Routledge.
Christian Pischlöger, University of Vienna Udmurt language use on social media: language hooliganism or a hint towards the future of Udmurt? Udmurt is an endangered Uralic language spoken in the Udmurt republic and its neighbouring administrative units in Russia. According to the last Russian census in 2010 only 320,000 (60%) of ethnic Udmurts claim to speak Udmurt, i.e. loosing ca. 140,000 speakers in comparison to the census in 2002. With the help of social media urban internet activists from Izhevsk, the capital of Udmurtia, made Udmurt to one of the most visible minority languages on the Russian Internet (Pischlöger 2014, 2016). A quantitative study among minority languages in Russia confirms that Udmurt language groups on VKontakte take the first place in number, the Russian counterpart of Facebook (Languages of Russia 2016). This apparent success has also found critics among professional linguists and even social media activists who bemoan the (perceived) Russian influence on social media (in succession code-mixing became a kind of fashion in literature and popular culture) as “language hooliganism” (Edygarova 2013). With the emergence of social media, Udmurt is now written and read by non-professional (non-)native speakers as never before. The question is raised what is more important for language maintenance: “correct” use of standard Udmurt, more wishful thinking than linguistic reality and a language variety which is mastered by only about 6% of the speakers (Edygarova 2013), or a frowned-upon but vital vernacular. References Edygarova 2013 = Едыгарова, Светлана Валерьевна. 2013. Об основных разновидностях современного удмуртского языка. Ежегодник финно-угорских исследований 3. 7-18. Languages of Russia [= Языки России]. 2016. http://web-corpora.net/wsgi3/minorlangs/view (viewed on 15.01.2018) Pischlöger, Christian. 2014. Pischlöger C. Udmurtness in Web 2.0: Urban Udmurts resisting Language Shift. Finnisch-Ugrische Mitteilungen 38. 143–162. Pischlöger Christian. 2016. Udmurt on Social Network Sites: A Comparison with the Welsh Case. In: Linguistic Genocide or Superdiversity? New and Old Language Diversities. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. 108-132.
Verena Platzgummer, Eurac Research Seeing the forest: Exploring linguistic repertoires on a larger scale The concept of a linguistic repertoire has recently gained momentum in sociolinguistic research, particularly in multilingual contexts. Conceived “as forming a whole, across individual languages or dialects, which speakers draw from as the situation demands” (Busch, 2015:5), this concept adopts a speaker-centered view and is not only concerned with the cognitive but also with the bodily and emotional dimensions of experiencing language (Busch, 2012). Empirical research on linguistic repertoires has mostly been qualitative in nature and has focused either on single cases or on a low number of participants. However, insights into the linguistic repertoires of a larger number of people may prove beneficial for certain purposes, e.g. in the context of language education. The project RepertoirePluS thus aims to describe the linguistic repertoires of secondary school students in the Italian province of South Tyrol. This province is multilingual by definition, as the three languages German, Italian and Ladin have official status. In the framework of the project, 240 students (aged 12-15) completed semi-structured questionnaires targeting different aspects of their linguistic repertoires, including their language use, their self-assessment of their language skills and their language biographies. First results point to the fact that the students’ repertoires are highly diverse and often include linguistic resources other than the ones used in education. In this paper, I will delineate these results and I will discuss the challenges faced in adopting a repertoire perspective for a larger study as well as the benefits that arise from this perspective. References Busch, B. (2012). The Linguistic Repertoire Revisited. Applied Linguistics, 33(5), 503–523. Busch, B. (2015). Expanding the Notion of the Linguistic Repertoire : On the Concept of Spracherleben — The Lived Experience of Language. Applied Linguistics, 1–20.
Albrecht Plewnia, Astrid Adler, Institut für Deutsche Sprache The Language Attitudes Survey in Germany 2018 – A Blueprint for Representative Studies Attitudes shape how we perceive the world and the people living in it, they also influence our behaviour. Therefore, their study is a cornerstone e.g. in social psychology and in sociolinguistics. To specifically collect language attitudes one can conduct large (representative) surveys and deploy reliable methods. Currently, the Institute for the German Language is carrying out such a representative nationwide survey including well established methods as the AToL (Attitudes Towards Languages Scale, cf. Schoel et al. 2012) and consisting of about 50 questions on language repertoire and language attitudes. This survey is a first time joint venture with the German Institute for economic studies and their Socio-oeconomic panel. This brand new survey is a follow-up of a representative survey conducted in 2008 (cf. Gärtig/Plewnia/Rothe 2010). Our complete dataset represents the only available collection of representative data on language matters in Germany. It can be statistically tested for patterns between attitudes and for influencing sociodemographic factors. The relevance of such analyses is not limited to the German context. The employed methodology as well as the analyses can be adapted for other contexts, e.g. other countries or languages. In our paper, we will present the results of our surveys focusing on the data from the 2018 survey. By then, we will be able to show trends and changes in language attitudes in Germany between 2008 and 2018. We will also thoroughly describe the employed methodology to measure language attitudes and the analyses thereof as they can serve as a blueprint for comparable surveys in other contexts. References Gärtig, Anne-Kathrin, Albrecht Plewnia & Astrid Rothe (2010): Wie Menschen in Deutschland über Sprache denken. Mannheim: IDS. Schoel, Christiane et al. (2012): “Attitudes Towards Languages’ (AToL) scale: A global instrument.” JLS 32 (1), 2012, 21-45.
Issra Pramoolsook, Zhongmin Li, Windy Metasari, Suranaree University of Technology Popularisation of Medical Knowledge: Genre Transfer from Medical Research Article to Medical News Article Writing medical research articles and medical news articles are very different because they serve different discourse communities with different communicative purposes. Medical news articles in popular science magazines and newspapers are usually transferred from the latest published medical research articles as an attempt to popularise scientific knowledge. This study aims to explore the effects of the genre transfer from medical research article to medical news article by analysing the corpus of 20 medical research articles published in international journals and 20 corresponding medical news articles from The Bangkok Post, an English language newspaper in Thailand published in 2017. The “7+1” move model, consisting of seven moves and one submove of the medical news articles, was identified. Then, this model was used to analyse the original medical research articles to find out the moves that were retained through the transfer from the research articles to the news articles. Eight genre transfer strategies were extracted from the contrastive analysis between these two genres. Finally, a checklist survey was conducted to identify the differences between the expectations of possible medical news article readers and the content of the current medical news articles in order to testify if there is a match between the readers and the writers of the news articles. Pedagogical implications drawn from the findings of this study are proposed for teaching Thai university journalism students to handle this specific kind of genre transfer.
Shivangi Priya, Rajneesh Chaubisa, Pushp Lata, BITS Pilani (Birla Institute of Technology and Science) Determinants of School drop outs in Bihar (India): An Exploration beyond Economic Perspective UNESCO adopted the term ‘multilingual education’ in 1999; it refers to the use of at least three languages: the mother tongue, a regional or national language and an international language in education. This linguistic fight has been going on in India for years, where many linguists are fighting for the rights of education of marginalized sections of the society and also arguing how helpful it is to impart education in vernacular languages. Most of this and a large body of research across the world with many studies based in Asian settings support mother tongue based multilingual education (UNESCO, 1953, 1996, 2003, 2010; Skutnab-Kangas, Maffi and Harmon, 2003; Premsrirat and Bruthiaux, 2012). The present study is in reference of Bihar, which is the most densely populated state of India with 102 million populations, census 2011. It is the least urbanized state among the major states of India, with an urban population of 11 percent. Also, it is the poorest state in India with the lowest per capita income. Not only this, the census of Indian states 2011 reveals that Bihar is the least literate state with a literacy rate of 63.82%. Most of the research conducted in Bihar echoes the economic conditions of the households and infrastructure as major reasons for high rate of dropouts and absenteeism in schools. However, the general research findings consider economic factors and infrastructural challenges as major constraints for dropouts and absenteeism. Consequently, the important issue such as the relationship between the lack of education in mother tongue and the high rate of absenteeism or school dropouts have either been ignored or marginally discussed. There could be a high probability that lack of primary education in mother tongue could be one of the major reasons behind educational backwardness. The present study aims at investigating, how far the lack of primary education in mother tongue is interrelated with educational backwardness and high rate of dropouts in Bihar. A secondary data analysis back up with archival data analysis will be done. Further, the result will be corroborated with the help of primary data through participatory rural appraisal. References Dutcher, N. (2001). Expanding Educational Opportunity in Linguistically Diverse Societies. Skutnabb-Kangas, T., Maffi, L., & Harmon, D. (2003). Sharing a world of difference: the earth's linguistic, cultural and biological diversity. Unesco. UNESCO. (1953). The use of vernacular languages in education. Paris: United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization. UNESCO. (1996). Universal declaration of linguistic rights. Barcelona, Spain. Retrieved from http://www.culturalrights.net/descargas/drets_culturals389.pdf UNESCO, (2003), Education in a Multilingual World. Paris: United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization. UNESCO. (2010). Investing in cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue. Paris: United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Ondřej Procházka, University of Ostrava Chronotopic approach to identity performance in a Facebook meme page Online identity work and the dynamics of community formation remain poorly understood especially in the light of largely fragmented infrastructure underlying social interaction on social networking sites. This paper examines identity performance in terms of negotiating normativity in a Facebook page Polandball 2.0 organized around creating, sharing and reacting to multimodal cultural artefacts generally referred to as internet memes (Shifman, 2013), more specifically geopolitical satire meme comics also known as Countryballs. Such pages can be viewed as a ‘focused but diverse occasioned coagulation of people’ (or a ‘light community’; Blommaert and Varis, 2015) formed around a shared focus – here an interest to rebuild the original page that had been suspended by Facebook and to ensure continuance of the community. This offers a unique case for dissecting the complex and multi-layered nature of negotiating normativity in an emergent multi-voiced online arena. Attention is thus paid to performances of ‘vigilante’ identity – reactions in comment sections to perceived transgressions against normative orders of the community and its anchoring in Facebook’s technological and communal affordances. The paper shows that normative negotiations largely depend on the characteristics of internet memes which are in turn dynamically shaped by trajectories of their usage in various environments, and hence also by their history. Identity work is here consequently approached as a chronotopically organized phenomenon (Bakhtin 1981; Blommaert and De Fina, 2017) – memes appear in certain chronotopic (timespace) configurations which ratify certain communicative practices and the way people relate to them in discussion. Seeing much of the identity work as chronotopically organized and dialogically negotiated allows a greater degree of complexity in analysis and brings new insights for the study of identity work on social media. References Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The Dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Blommaert, J. & De Fina, A. (2017). Chronotopic identities: On the timespace organization of who we are. In A. De Fina, D. Ikzoglu, and J Wegner (Eds.), Diversity and super diversity: Sociocultural linguistic perspectives (pp. 1–15). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Blommaert, J. and Varis, P. (2015). Enoughness, accent and light communities: Essays on contemporary identities. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies Paper 139: 1–72. Shifman, L. (2013). Memes: In digital culture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Rachel Rade, University of Nottingham A Longitudinal Discourse Historical Critical Discourse Analysis of ‘Immigration’ in the UK Parliament In this paper, I discuss the way in which immigration is debated in the UK Parliament, utilising the approach of discourse historical critical discourse analysis (DHCDA). A DHCDA approach to the study of immigration allows one to identify the ideological beliefs inherent in a society and how historical events impact on these beliefs. I use Wodak’s definition of ideologies, which she calls ‘topoi’, as ‘stable and natural forms [that] are taken as “given”’ (in Wodak and Meyer, eds., 2011, p. 3). Focusing on three immigration-related Bills and the event, ‘Brexit’, drawn from Hansard and comprising 37 debates and 1,089,605 words of dialogue, I take a longitudinal approach to show that British immigration law was and remains exclusionary in nature. I will explore examples of the pragmatic, semantic and grammatic manner by which MPs embed their ideological views to show that, while the groups targeted by the various laws and events vary, the underlying ideologies remain largely stable. Van Dijk (1993) states that governmental elites, through their power and access to the media have a significant influence on how a population views the non-autochthonous population. The result of the EU referendum makes clear that the government’s consistent claim that immigration is ‘uncontrolled’ and that the British populace is the victim of large numbers of illegal immigrants has had an effect on wider society. References van Dijk, T. A.,1993. Elite Discourse and Racism. London: Sage. Wodak, R., 2001. What CDA is about – a summary of its history, important concepts and its developments. In R. Wodak and M. Meyer, eds. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage.
Yağmur Raman, Çise Çavuşoğlu, Near East University Teaching “is no joke, is it?”: Pre-service Teachers’ Professional Identity Negotiations During Peer Feedback Sessions The aim of this linguistic ethnographic study was to investigate the classroom interactions of four pre-service teachers in an attempt to understand how their professional identities are negotiated during peer feedback sessions. Data was collected through in-class observations, field notes as well as audio recordings of the feedback sessions, where the participants commented on each other’s performances in micro-teaching sessions. Discussions of strictness and seriousness, and dichotomous discourses on how they were taught grammar and how they will be teaching as well as discourses on their progress were the significant discourses through which they negotiated their professional identities.
Maciej Rataj, University of Gdańsk Standard language ideology and the belief in language decline: The case of Polish social media The objective of this study is to analyse the standard language ideology, as described by LippiGreen (1994), and subsequently by e.g. Milroy and Milroy (1998), Wardhaugh (1999) and Crystal (2006), which can be observed in the views expressed by Polish speakers in social media, primarily on Facebook and YouTube. The study focuses on attitudes towards language change, in particular reactions to changes in progress taking place in present-day Polish. The views in question will be regarded as part of more general normative practice, what Cameron (1995) calls ‘verbal hygiene’. Social media provide the linguist with an opportunity to study not only informal written language, which is frequently spontaneous and emotional, but also reflections on language use. These include comments on other peoples’ use of their mother tongue or foreign languages, and discussions concerning the current state or the possible future of languages. Needless to say, the majority of social media users are not trained in linguistics and are thus inclined to believe in language myths and misconceptions such as objective linguistic ‘purity’ or ‘correctness’, the ‘beauty’ or ‘clarity’ of some forms as opposed to the ‘ugliness’ or ‘vagueness’ of other forms. These attitudes are combined with the feeling that Polish is declining, becoming less ‘native’ (due to the influence of English) and more ‘incorrect’ or even ‘vulgar’. References Cameron, Deborah. 1995. Verbal Hygiene. London: Routledge. Crystal, David. 2006. The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot and Left. Oxford: OUP. Lippi-Green, Rosina. 1994. ‘Accent, Standard Language Ideology and Discriminatory Pretext in the Courts’. Language in Society, vol. 23, No. 2 (June 1994), 163-198. www.jstor.org/stable/4168513?origin=JSTOR-pdf Milroy, James and Lesley Milroy. 1998. Authority in Language: Investigating Standard English. 3rd ed. London: Routledge. Wardhaugh, Ronald. 1999. Proper English: Myths and Misunderstandings about Language. Malden: Blackwell.
Marianne Rathje, University of Southern Denmark ”You spell like shit yourself”. Language norms in the Danish online debate forum Nationen This presentation examines metalinguistic comments found on the Danish online debate forum Nationen, as well as the spelling norms adopted there. Based on Agha’s (2007) model of normativity, the presentation examines the users’ reflective understanding (Agha’s level 2) and whether or not they adapt to a standard spelling norm (his level 3). The aim of the present presentation is to investigate whether the users on Nationen adhere to a standard spelling norm, or if Nationen is a forum that lacks spelling norms – something which for Sebba (2003, 2007) is a distinctive feature of CMC (computer mediated communication) texts. The results indicate that the language used on Nationen does adapt to a standard norm. The users’ own metalinguistic corrections and their corrections of other people’s misspellings show that such users adhere to the standard norm. In fact, however, another norm does exist, namely ‘the debate group norm’. This norm follows the rule: “Do not correct linguistic deviations as long as the meaning is clear”. The fact that there are two competing norms, the standard one and that of the debate forum, creates conflicts for the users on Nationen. As a comparison with Hyttel-Sørensen & Stæhr’s earlier (2014) study of young people’s metalinguistic comments on Facebook shows, these conflicts are not typical for young Facebook users, though. In addition, whereas Nationens users often look down on people who are prone to linguistic deviation, young Facebook users do not (Hyttel-Sørensen & Stæhr 2014). Finally, even young Facebook users adhere to some kind of standard norm. Therefore, in contrast to Sebba (2003, 2007), the present article argues for a new approach to CMC-texts, based on the understanding that such texts indeed obey certain (standard or other) norms. References Agha, Asif. 2007. Language and social relations. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Hyttel-Sørensen, Liva & Andreas Stæhr. 2014. Normativitet som social ressource på Facebook. NyS: Nydanske sprogstudier – Sprogbrug i nye medier, 46. 67-102. Sebba, Mark. 2003. Spelling rebellion. Jannis Androutsopoulos & Alexandra Georgakopoulou (red.): Discourse Constructions of Youth Identities. John Benjamins: Amsterdam. 151-172. Sebba, Mark. 2007. Spelling and Society. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
Timothy Reagan, University of Maine Heritage Signed Languages Under Threat: The Role of Deaf Education Most scholarship and activism concerned with signed languages of Deaf communities focuses on might are relatively standardized national sign languages: American Sign Language, British Sign Language, French Sign Language, Danish Sign Language, and so on (Reagan, 2011). Although understandable given the marginalization of signed languages in general, such a focus is nevertheless problematic in that it ignores the presence and use of many other signed languages that co-exist with national sign languages. These other signed languages, sometimes called ‘village sign languages’, are often the first and primary sign language of many Deaf people, and serve as the local vernacular language for smaller Deaf communities (see Woodward, 2003). Such signed languages are best understood as minority heritage languages of different groups of Deaf people (Turner, 2006). The successful advocacy for the use of national sign languages in deaf education, which has led to significant changes in the teaching and learning experiences of deaf children in many parts of the world, has paradoxically benefited the status of national sign languages even as it has contributed to the increasing endangerment and risk of extinction of these other, smaller signed languages (Sknabb-Kangas, 2000: 225-227). This paradox will be explored in this presentation, and suggestions will be offered for addressing the challenges that it creates. References Reagan, T. (2011). Language policy and planning for sign languages. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2000). Linguistic genocide in education – or worldwide diversity and human rights? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Turner, G. (2006). Why protect heritage sign languages? International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 16(3): 409-413. Woodward, J. (2003). Sign languages and deaf identities in Thailand and Viet Nam. In L. Monaghan, C. Schmaling, K. Nakamura, and G. Turner (Eds.), Many ways to be deaf: International variation in deaf communities (pp. 283-300). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
Valeria Reggi, University College London Shaping Nationalism: Stereotyping and National Character in the Speeches in English of Italy’s ex-Prime Minister Matteo Renzi The paper focuses on the dynamics of negotiation of identity and group formation in institutional communication, with reference to the speeches in English of the Italian ex-Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Based on the assumption that language expresses the system of values and beliefs of the speaker (Bakhtin, 1981; Volosinov, 1973) and ideologically constructs the subject (Bourdieu, 1991; Fairclough, 2015; Gramsci, 1971), it highlights the use of national stereotypes and references to Italian culture in Renzi’s communication, with the ultimate purpose of unveiling implied ideology. With the end of the so-called ‘Berlusconi era’ in 2011, Italian political communication adopted a radically new style, whose discontinuity with the past became more overt in 2014 with the appointment of Renzi: innovation, dynamism and reliability became the core messages (Barile, 2014; Bordignon, 2014). Despite his statement of intent, however, Renzi played with a commonplace view of Italy, which was particularly noticeable in his speeches in English. The reason may lie, on the one hand, in the self-perpetuating nature of stereotypes (Pickering, 2001); on the other hand, Renzi may have apparently promoted change while reinforcing the nationalistic, conservative tradition to which he belongs. The research presented in the paper focuses on two sample videos of Renzi’s speeches in English addressed to a general audience, and is conceived as a pilot study to test the applicability of Munday’s model for evaluation in translation (2012) to second-language speeches. This model highlights the evaluative stance of the speaker and the dynamics of creation of the Other by combining Martin and White’s Appraisal Theory (2005) and Chilton’s Deictic Space Theory (2004). Drawing upon Critical Discourse Analysis, the study applies Munday’s framework to multimodal resources – with particular reference to verbal and culture-specific nonverbal language – in order to bring to the fore Renzi’s attitude towards nationalism. References Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press. Barile, N. (2014). Il politico come marca. Identità, posizionamento strategico e canali di comunicazione del brand Matteo Renzi. Mediscapes Journal, (3). Bordignon, F. (2014). Matteo Renzi: A ‘Leftist Berlusconi’ for the Italian Democratic Party? South European Society and Politics, 19(1), 1–23. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. (J. B. Thompson, Ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press. Chilton, P. (2004a). Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London and New York: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (2015). Language and Power (3rd ed.). Abingdon, Oxon, New York: Routledge. Gramsci, A. (1971). Prison Notebooks. (Q. Hoare & G. Nowell-Smith, Eds.). New York: International Publishers. Martin, J. R., & White, P. R. R. (2005). The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Munday, J. (2012). Evaluation in Translation. Abingdon, Oxon, New York: Routledge. Pickering, M. (2001). Stereotyping, The Politics of Representation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Volosinov, V. N. (1973). Marxism and The Philosophy of Language. New York and London: Seminar Press.
Giuliana Regnoli, University of Naples L’Orientale Dialect Perceptions and Linguistic Attitudes in the Indian Diaspora Long-standing scholarly tradition has often, if not always, delegitimated nonlinguists’ views of language, dismising them as ‘superflous’ and ‘misleading’ (Boas 1911). Yet, attending to folk awareness as a dimension of ideology (Silverstein 1979, Kroskrity 2004) and perceptual dialectology (Preston 2010) has pointed to the importance of speakers’ diverse responses to specific varieties of language. The current paper intends to focus on local and global ideologies of cultural contact surrounding accent perceptions in a multilingual transient community of Indian university students located in Heidelberg, Germany. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data collected through sociolinguistic interviews, questionnaires and accent identification tasks, the paper aims at undertaking an ethnolinguistic reflection upon speakers’ elaboration of mental maps and border perceptions regarding regional varieties of Indian English. In addition, considering that attitudes towards languages seem to be tied to attitudes towards specific groups of people (Labov 1972), the paper will consider the transient aspect of the community in regard to the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ internal sociolinguistic conceptualisation, positing that attitudinal divergence in the form of dialect awareness may depend on in-group affiliations or distance. References Boas, F., 1911, “Introduction”, in F. Boas (ed.), Handbook of American Indian Languages, 1, 1-83, Bureau of American Ethnology, 40, Washington, Government Printing Office. Kroskrity, P., 2004, “Language Ideologies”, in A. Duranti (ed.), A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, Oxford, Basil Blackwell. Labov, W., 1972, Sociolinguistic Patterns, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Press Preston, D., 2010, “Language, People, Salience, Space: Perceptual Dialectology and Language Regard”, in Dialectologia 5, 87-131. Silverstein, M., 1979, “Language Structure and Linguistic Ideology” in R. Cline, W. Hanks, and C. Hofbauer (eds.), The Elements: a Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels, Chicago, Chicago Linguistic Society.
Tom Rendall, Orkney College UHI Voices around the Orkney Islands Orkney is situated at the northern tip of Scotland. There are 67 islands in the archipelago – with only 15 being inhabited. Demographic movement over the past 60 years have led to an influx of people to Orkney. This has led to changes in the way that the indigenous people use their dialect which is based on Standard Scottish English interspersed with Norse lexical items. This paper will examine the ways in which the dialect speakers have adapted their mode of communication in order to accommodate the incomers who are not conversant with local terminologies and vernacular variations. The use and frequency of code-switching will be highlighted and evidence from recent research will be discussed. Why do dialect speakers decide to change and is there some resistance towards this? Do the incomers attempt to assimilate by employing some dialect words in their speech acts? Gardener-Chloros (2009) suggests that codeswitching provides a variety of clues as to the identity of the speaker. It is often used for politeness as well as humour as well as to interact with another interlocutor in a way which will be mutually understood. Linked to code-switching is the practice of speech accommodation. Howard Giles (1973) identified the notion of accommodation in linguistic behaviour. This usually takes the form of convergence when speakers will choose the language or dialect that best suits the needs of the person or person being addressed. Through interviews carried out by Rendall (2013) the ways in which local people attempt to accommodate non- dialect speakers will be discussed along with the frequency of codeswitching. The paper will assist with the understanding of the vagaries of the vernacular within a rural island setting and the attitudes and perceptions of the people who live in Orkney. References Gardner-Chloros.,(2009) Code-switching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Giles, H., (1973) “Accent mobility: a model and some data” Anthropological Linguistics, 15: 87105 Rendall T., (2013) Perceptions of the Social and Cultural Factors which have influenced the use of dialect in Orkney., unpublished Ph.D.thesis The Open University; University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI)
Facundo Reyna Muniain, Universität Bremen Language ideologies and superdiversity in Porteño´s language identity, Heritage languages in Buenos Aires. At present, the diaspora communities in Buenos Aires presents, especially in the new generations, a profile related to the multicultural superdiversity context (Vertovec 2007/Blommaert & Rampton 2011). To understand this, we need to account the multicultural constitution of Argentine society and the population of Buenos Aires in particular, which undoubtedly meets the properties of a global city (Sassen 1991). Likely to be highly productive to expand the scope of the concept of superdiversity to other urban contexts affected by globalization such as Buenos Aires. Diaspora communities in Argentina went through a process of cultural and linguistic assimilation progressively losing its quantitative homogeneity weight and its uniqueness. But a part of second and third generation descendants of immigrants in recent years are seeking a recovery of their cultural and linguistic heritage identity. Thus, one can observe a new language, social and cultural profile development by new speakers (O´Rourke & Ramallo 2015), which in many cases become activists of the heritage language and culture. In the case of the third generations of migrants in a multicultural society like Argentina, where most of the population does not have only one or two ethnic origins, but three or four, which are articulated in a system of multiple identities. In this context the Language ideologies play an important role in the constitution of the linguistic identity of the citizens of Buenos Aires with heritage background. References Blommaert, Jan / Rampton, Ben (2011). “Language and Superdiversity”, Diversities 13/2, 1-22, Gottingen. Sassen, Saskia (1991). The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, Princeton University Press. O'Rourke, Bernardette - Ramallo, Fernando (2015) Neofalantes as an active minority: understanding language practices and motivations for change amongst new speakers of Galician in Applied Linguistics Review 6(2). (Open Access) Vertovec, Steven (2007): “Super-diversity and its implications”, en Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Marie A. Rieger, University of Bologna The visibility of immigration in the cityscape of Genoa Compared to other European countries, immigration to Italy is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the Italian city of Genoa, for example, there were just around 6000 foreigners registered during the survey period 1993-1997. Numbers began to increase only in the mid-2000s, reaching at present 54,678 foreign residents. The share of foreigners is particularly high in two districts: the historical city center around the old port, once the domain of long-established local businesses, has not only, in absolute terms, the highest share of foreigners (around 25% in 2011), but also the highest number of Africans and a good number of Asians. The closely located zone of SampierdarenaCornigliano, traditionally a working-class neighborhood, has a share of around 20% of foreigners, in particular from South-America. According to Eliezer (2009: 40) “language facts that landmark the public space are to be seen as social facts the variations of which should relate to more general social phenomena” (2009: 40). In my speech I will discuss to what extent the linguistic landscapes – or rather cityscapes (cfr. Coulmas 2009: 13) – of these two districts reflect the recent demographic changes. A comparison with the Palermo study (Marion Weerning) will highlight similarities and differences between the two cities. References Blommaert, Jan (2013): Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes. Chronicles of Complexity. Bristol et al. Coulmas, Florian (2009): Linguistic landscaping and the seed of the public sphere. In: Shohamy/Gorter, pp. 13-23. Eliezer, Ben-Rafael (2009): A sociological approach to the study of linguistic landscapes. In: Shohamy/Gorter, pp. 40-53. Shohamy, Elana and Gorter, Durk (eds.) (2009): Linguistic Landscape. Expanding the Scenery Edited. New York/London. http://genova.erasuperba.it/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/infografica-stranieri-residenti-genova.jpg [09/01/2018]. http://www.tuttitalia.it/liguria/45-genova/statistiche/cittadini-stranieri-2017/ [09/01/2018].See Totale Pré-Molo-Maddalena (p. 40): statistica.comune.genova.it/pubblicazioni/download/stranieri.../stranieri_ge2011.pdf [09/01/2018].Idem, pp. 42 and 50.
Anna Ritter, University of Regensburg From L3 learner to L3 user: combination of naturalistic and formal language acquisition by adolescent migrants Experienced language learners seem to have a better strategic competence in tackling new languages (cf. Dewaele 2014). Furthermore, they seem to perform better when they are immersed in the foreign language environment and learn it in naturalistic contexts (cf. Muños 2008, Dewaele 2014). The present paper aims to answer questions, if and how do experienced language learners use the benefits from both naturalistic and formal ways of language acquisition. This paper is a case study of adolescent migrants learning German as L3 in Germany through classroom instructions and in naturalistic learning contexts at the same time. The 13 – 16 years old informants spent their childhood and first school years outside Germany, where they learned one language beside L1. The study is based on a corpus of group conversations and individual interviews with informants. The analysis showed that all informants used previous experiences in learning foreign languages. Thus, they consciously developed their individual strategies in order to combine and strengthen the effects of their naturalistic and formal acquisition of German. In context of formal language instructions at school they generally used every school class as a possibility to improve their German, e. g. compiled lists of new terms in mathematics, history and biology and memorised them. In context of naturalistic language acquisition they searched for native-speaking friends to practice German outside the classroom and watched news on TV and those films in German they already know in other languages. References Dewaele, Jean-Marc (2014): Second and Additional Language Acquisition. In Wei, Li (Ed.): Applied Linguistics. Malden/Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 46-68. Muños, Carmen (2008): Symmetries and asymmetries of age effects in naturalistic and instructed L2 learning. Applied Linguistics 29 (4), 578-596.
Katarzyna Rogalska-Chodecka, Nicolaus Copernicus University Does Italian possess features of a lingua franca? Evidence from an evolutionary linguistics experiment There is no doubt about the lingua franca status of English. It manifests itself even in evolutionary linguistics studies using the methodology of iterated learning (based on Hurford and Kirby 2002). In non-manipulated experiments with human agents, aimed at producing basic yet novel linguistic systems, entrenched linguistic structures related to English can be easily found (e.g. Rogalska 2015). When experiment participants try to find a lexical or syntactic pattern in a set of CVCVCV strings, they refer to English words regardless of their level of language knowledge. In consequence, the final product of the experiment is not a novel linguistic system, but one containing entrenched linguistic structures. The present paper poses a question whether it is possible to “force” experiment participants to use certain items from the Italian lexicon (related to colour, number, and shape) or syntax (plurality markers) instead of those coming from English, despite their declared lack of knowledge of the Italian language. The results of the two studies, the non-manipulated one with English manifestations and the one “contaminated” with Italian, are compared to determine whether Italian is as useful as English from the perspective of experiment participants. References Cornish, H. (2011). Language Adapts: Exploring the Cultural Dynamics of Iterated Learning. PhD thesis: The University of Edinburgh. Kirby, S. and Hurford, J. (2002). “The emergence of linguistic structure: An overview of the iterated learning model”. Cangelosi, A. and Parisi, D. (eds). Simulating the Evolution of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 121-148. Kirby, S., Smith, K. and Cornish, H. (2008). “Language, learning and cultural evolution: How linguistic transmission leads to cumulative adaptation”. In Cooper, R. and Kempson, R. (eds) Language in Flux: Dialogue Coordination, Language Variation, Change and Evolution. London: College Publications, 81- 108. Rogalska, K. 2015. “Investigating Glossogeny via the Iterated Learning Methodology: The Effect of Entrenched Linguistic System(s) in Human Agents” in Chruszczewski, P. Languages in Contact 2014, Wrocław – Washington, D.C.: Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoły Filologicznej we Wrocławiu, 219-232.
Raquel P. Romasanta, University of Vigo English as the lingua franca of the Internet in a polylingual world: Creativity and innovation This presentation focusses on the variability found in the complementation profile of one retrospective verb, REGRET, as used by non-native speakers of English in the Internet, using GloWbE (Global Web-Based English, Davies 2013). Drawing data from the Internet will allow us to check how the medium shapes communication in English as a lingua franca in the poly/multilingual world, given that English on the Internet is often used for global communication. It will also help to make connections between the study of innovation in World Englishes (WEs) and the issue of innovation in ELF, since, as Schneider (2012: 57) notes, there are cognitively-based similarities between them. These pertain to principles of Second Language Acquisition and language contact, such as preferences for simplicity, analogy, isomorphism, substrate influence and language transfer. The study focuses on speakers of English as L2 in 14 non-native contexts (India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Hong Kong, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Jamaica among others), and uses the two metropolitan varieties of English (British and American English) as benchmark varieties. An overview of the data shows linguistic creativity and innovation regarding i) the distribution of existent patterns, ii) new uses of already existing patterns with different temporal meanings, and iii) the emergence of innovative constructions, such as the use of the verb REGRET followed by a prepositional phrase (as in I regret over not to be listed in it). References Davies, Mark. 2013. Corpus of Global Web-Based English: 1.9 billion words from speakers in 20 countries. http://corpus.byu.edu/glowbe/ (accessed February 8th, 2017). Schneider, Edgar W. 2012. Exploring the interface between World Englishes and Second Language Acquisition – and implications for English as a Lingua Franca. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1(1): 57-91.
Sofia Rüdiger, University of Bayreuth, Daria Dayter, University of Basel Iceberg Ahead: Self-Praise in Online and Offline Discourse Self-praise is perceived as a stigmatized discursive move, as evidenced, for example, by some speakers’ explicit attempts at mitigation (“I don’t like to brag too much, but...”). Accordingly, social psychologists and linguists have argued for an interactional norm against self-praise. This also explains a range of redressive moves accompanying self-praise, for instance, self-effacement (Schlenker and Leary 1982) or shifting credit to a third party (Speer 2012). However, studies of online environments such as Twitter and WhatsApp (Dayter 2016, in press) have shown that although self-praise is performed via a range of mitigation strategies (e.g. framing as a complaint or self-denigration), it also occurs bald-on record. Our research combines the study of self-praise in online and offline environments. We use the Santa Barbara Corpus of American English for the spoken component and material from Pickup Artist forums (PUA; men who practice speed seduction) for the online component of this study. Both data sets were manually tagged for instances of self-praise, its form and the environment where it occurs, as well as the reaction by the interlocutor. Our data clearly show that self-praise is a prevalent and common occurrence in discourse. Taking previous academic discourse as a reference point, the results demonstrate that self-praise is an iceberg phenomenon: there is much more to self-praise than visible at first glance, both from a qualitative and quantitative perspective. References Dayter, D. 2016. Discursive Self in Microblogging. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dayter, D. in press. “Self-praise Online and Offline: The Hallmark Speech Act of Social Media?” Internet Pragmatics 1. Schlenker, B. R., & Leary, M. R. 1982. “Audience’s Reactions to Self-enhancing, Self-denigrating and Accurate Self-presentations.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 18: 89-104. Speer, S. 2012. “The Interactional Organization of Self-praise: Epistemics, Preference Organization, and Implications for Identity Research.” Social Psychology Quarterly 75(1): 5279.
Veronika Rusňáková, University of Ostrava Appraising Ballet Polyphony: Multimodal Analysis of European Theatres’ Websites The recent profound transition in communication practises has been reflected also in the vibrant world of theatre and dance. The traditional opera houses have adopted websites as a primary source of their presentation and the affordances of new technologies have enabled institutions to enhance the inherently multimodal character of theatres’ promotion and offer a new accessible and stimulating platform to present the content to a much wider audience than ever before. Anchored in the multimodal discourse analysis (Bateman’s GeM model, Kress and van Leeuwen’s Grammar of visual design and Language of colour) and systemic functional linguistics (Martinec and Salway’s image-text relations, Martin and White’s system of evaluation in language), the contribution attempts to explore the mutual interplay of layout, colours, verbal and visual elements on the selected ballet companies’ webpages, the role of the individual modes in the website composition as well as the meaning-making in online communication using Monika Bednarek’s typology of evaluative expressions for the description of inter-modal relations. References Bateman, John. Multimodality and Genre. A Foundation for the Systematic Analysis of Multimodal Documents. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Bednarek, Monika. Polyphony in Appraisal: typological and topological perspectives. Linguistics and the Human Sciences 3/2, 2009, 107-136, Sheffield: Equinox Publishing Ltd. Kress, Gunther, and van Leeuwen, Theo. Reading Images: Grammar of Visual Design. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006. Martin, James R., and White, Peter R. R. The Language of Evaluation. Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Martinec, Radan, and Salway Andrew. A system for image-text relations in new (and old) media. Visual Communication, 4 (3), 2005, 337-71. Van Leeuwen, Theo. The Language of Colour: An Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge, 2011.
Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, University of Edinburgh Gatekeeping Russianness: Discourses of Russophone Cultural Activists in London The paper discusses the discursive construction of the diasporic self and community by Russophone migrants in the UK. It examines the discursive data obtained from 50 semi-structured conversational interviews given by the London-located Russophone diasporic cultural entrepreneurs, focusing on the articulation of their role of a nexus of ‘global Russian’ identity production. With around 300,000 Russian speakers, London has an extremely vibrant Russophone cultural activity, spanning from Russian food events to film and book festivals to the Immortal Regiment marches commemorating Soviet victims of the Second World War. The paper takes a position that diaspora is not a physical group of people, but ‘rather an idiom, a stance, a claim’ (Brubaker 2005: 12), and that the notion of diasporic community belongs to the imaginary (Appadurai 1996; Waldinger 2004). It positions itself within the theoretical framework of sociolinguistics of globalisation and discourse and narrative approaches to trans-national identity construction (Wodak et al. 2009; Preece 2016; De Fina 2016; Merino, Becerra and DeFina 2017). Analysis will be aimed at variants of the ‘diasporic idiom’ performed by the interviewees. In particular, the following questions will be addressed: how by discursively articulating, controlling and manipulating ‘Russian’ cultural flows in the UK, the gatekeepers use these as a resource to produce, convey and negotiate Russophone transnational identities. The paper examines what kind of belonging, allegiances, and orientations do the Russian-speaking cultural gatekeepers narratives display, and how does their control of the cultural flows contribute to the diasporic imagination.
Mitsuyo Sakamoto, Sophia University Writing as a social process: Development in scaffolded L2 writing Writing is often misunderstood as "autonomous, asocial and decontextualized cognitive processes" (Pennycook, 2001, p. 76) but Pennycook reminds us that literacy is "a set of contextualized social practices" (p. 77) and that "schools should learn to accommodate different orientations toward texts" (ibid.). This action research addresses L2 writing from such individualized and contextualized approach using sociocultural theory as its analytic framework. According to Vygotsky (1981), scaffolding that reflects learner's zone of proximal development (ZPD) is conducive to internalization and hence learning. The research questions are as follows: 1) What aspects (e.g., vocabulary, syntax, spelling, etc.) of English academic composition writing do Japanese college students have difficulties with? 2) What aspects are particularly resistant to transformation/development? 3) What is the developmental pattern like? 4) Are there differences in (1) ~ (3) between returnee and non-returnees? In this study, three Japanese female senior English majors, two non-returnee and one returnee, wrote their English undergraduate thesis in the course of a month. Their drafts were collected five (11 files in total), six (eight files) and 12 times (26 files), respectively, based on their requests. Upon receipt of a new draft, the researcher, instead of making straightforward corrections, highlighted parts that contained erroneous items in yellow and the students were to identify and correct them on their own. By examining the errors, it was noticed that the returnee tended to make grammatical errors such as subject-verb agreement that were difficult for the student to identify irrespective of repeated highlights. Non-returnees, on the other hand, over-utilized the preposition "of” and used awkward syntax that disrupted text flow. However, these were identified and corrected immediately. It is suggested that the returnee’s writing is influenced by her oral performance, giving rise to errors that are difficult to rectify; more interactions that scaffold her oral accuracy are needed.
Rauha Salam, University of Jyväskylä Resistance and Compliance: An Investigation into Gendered Identity Construction Practices of Pakistani Female Facebook Users A significant line of inquiry in the context of online communication has been the impact of Computer Mediate Discourse (CMD) on gendered identities, in particular, how the latter can be subverted, reinforced or challenged in the virtual world. Over the last decade, Facebook (along with other social media platforms) have gained popularity among an emerging, computer-literate young, predominantly urban, generation of Pakistanis These sites (SNSs) allow their users the freedom to express themselves in whatever way they like—whether it is in form of the choices they make regarding the usernames, display pictures and/or communication topics. The ways in which Pakistani Facebook users mobilize resources such as these in their identity work is in the focus of my research paper. More specifically, by combining the frameworks of Multimodal Discourse Analysis and theory of intersectionality, I will investigate the ways in which Pakistani females construct their gendered identities on Facebook through the use of still images (including the text written on images). In addition, I will show how Facebook in particular is making a significant impact on the social, cultural and linguistic norms of discourse in Pakistan by making it possible for women to challenge the already established communication patterns. References Jones, R. H., Chik, A. and Hafner, C. A. (2015) Discourse analysis and digital practices. In: Discourse and Digital Practices: Doing discourse analysis in the digital age. Routledge, London, pp. 1-17. ISBN 9781138022331 Crenshaw, K. (1991) ‘Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color’ Stanford Law Review, Vol. 43, No. 6: 1241–1299.
Vasiliki Saloustrou, King’s College London The construction of femininity in Greek women ‘small stories’ This paper departs from ‘small stories’ research (Bamberg 2006a; Georgakopoulou 2006a, 2007a; Bamberg & Georgakopoulou 2008) that was developed as a counter-move to the dominant paradigm of ‘Big stories’, and made a convincing case for incorporating “a gamut of underrepresented narrative activities” in the focal concerns of narrative-cum-identity analysis (Georgakopoulou, 2006a:130). It draws on Bamberg’s three-level model of positioning (2004b; Bamberg & Georgakopoulou 2008) to tap into ‘small stories’ as sites of identity work. It particularly employs positioning in the fine-grained micro-analysis of a spontaneous conversation between three Greek women, who portray themselves as ‘best friends’. This group was studied ethnographically between September 2015 and June 2016, and data collection involved audiotaped data, and personal field-notes. The analysis focuses on how the participants engage in identity work through positioning in a co-authored ‘small story’ about heterosexual relationships. It demonstrates how the ‘deferrals and refusals to tell’ are as integral part of the analysis as the actual telling, since they provide rich insights into the teller’s complex positioning vis-à-vis dominant capital-D-discourses of femininity in the heterosexual field/market (Ryan, 2008:219). References Bamberg, M. (2006a). Biographic-Narrative Research, Quo Vadis? A Critical Review of ‘Big Stories’ from the Perspective of ‘Small Stories’. In K. Milnes (ed.) Narrative, Memory & Knowledge: Representations, Aesthetics, Contexts. Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield. 6379. Bamberg, M. (2006b). Stories: Big or small? Why do we care? Narrative Inquiry, 16, 147-155. Bamberg, M., & Georgakopoulou, A. (2008). Small Stories as a New Perspective in Narrative and Identity Analysis. In Text & Talk 28: 377-396. Georgakopoulou, A. (2006a). Thinking Big with Small Stories in Narrative and Identity Analysis. In Narrative Inquiry 16: 129-137. Georgakopoulou, A. (2007a). Small Stories, Interaction and Identities. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ryan, M. E. (2008). Small Stories, Big Issues: Tracing Complex Subjectivities of High School Students in Interactional Talk. In Critical Discourse Studies 5(3): 217-229.
Mónica Sánchez Torres, University of Tampere Poet or poetess? Sexist language from the point of view of Finnish and Spanish undergraduate students of English This paper explores the use of non-sexist language in a second language. Its aim is to analyse how our mother tongue shapes our perception of what is linguistically sexist in another language. Many recent studies have established that the implications of grammatical gender go beyond language (Boroditsky, Schmidt & Phillips’ 2003, Wasserman and Weseley 2009, and Freilino et al. 2011). These studies support the claim that using non-sexist language favours gender equality based on the Sapir Whorf hypothesis that argues that language shapes the way we perceive the world (Hellinger & Bußmann 2010: 18). Yet, the guidelines that promote non-sexist language vary greatly from language to language (UNESCO 2011, European Commission 2011). For instance, speakers of languages with grammatical gender, such as Spanish or German, are encouraged to use strategies that promote the visibility of women in the language while in languages with no grammatical gender, such as English or Finnish, the proposals have been towards gender equality or neutralization (Pauwels, 2003:110). My hypothesis is that the use of non-sexist language in a second language, in this case, English, is influenced by the norms of language inclusivity in the mother tongue and culture of the speaker. The data is collected from undergraduate students of English whose mother tongue is either Spanish, a language with grammatical gender, or Finnish, a language with no grammatical gender. The methods used are a questionnaire designed to investigate the participants’ attitudes towards sexist language in English, and eye-tracking measurements aimed at studying how sexist language is processed at the cognitive level through the analysis of the eye-moments of the participants when exposed to (non)-sexist forms. This paper discusses the preliminary results of the questionnaire and the eye-tracking study in Finland and Spain, which suggest that students prefer using the linguistic strategies they use in their mother tongue. References Boroditsky, L., Schmidt, L., & Phillips, W. 2003. Sex, Syntax, and Semantics. In Gentner & Goldin-Meadow (eds) Language in Mind: Advances in the study of Language and Cognition. European Commission 2008. Gender-Neutral Language in the European Parliament. [online] Available at: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/publications/2009/0001/P6_PUB(2009)0001_EN.pdf {last accessed 25/10/2017} Hellinger, M. & Bußmann, H. 2001. ‘Gender across languages: the linguistic representation of women and men’ in Hellinger, M. & Bußmann H. (eds.) Gender across Languages: the Linguistic Representation of Women and Men, Vol.1. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins, (pp 2-25) Pauwels, Anne 2003. 'Linguistic Sexism and Feminist Linguistic Activism'. In: Holmes, Janet and Meyerhoff, Miriam, (eds.), The Handbook of Language and Gender. Oxford: Basil Blackwell UNESCO 1999. Guidelines on Gender-Neutral Language. [online] Available at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001149/114950mo.pdf {last accessed 25/10/2017} Prettwitt-Freilino, J. L., Caswell, T. A. and Laakso, E. K. 2012 ‘The Gendering of Language: A comparison of Gender Equality in countries with Gendered, Natural Gender and Genderless Languages’ Sex Roles 66 (3/4) 268-281. DOI: 10.1007/s 1/199-011-0083-3 Wasserman, B. D. & Weseley, A. J. 2009 ’¿Qué? Quoi? Do languages with grammatical gender promote sexist attitudes?’ Sex Roles 61(9/10) (pp 634–643). DOI 10.1007/s11199-011-0083-5
Petrus Ari Santoso, Keio University Students’ beliefs about Indonesian language learning: BALLI in Japan Most studies about learning beliefs and learning strategies, which affect learners’ target language achievement, are concerned with English as foreign language. Only few studies have been conducted to examine students’ beliefs about learning Indonesian as foreign language. Using Horwitz’s Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) (1998), this study explored the learning beliefs of Japanese students who learn Indonesian language as foreign language in Japan. A total of 268 students from universities across Japan which have Indonesian as a major or elective course have participated in the study. The statistical analysis of the collected data combines descriptive and multivariate techniques like factor analysis. The study identified four main factors of the learning beliefs such as general foreign language beliefs, Indonesian language learning strategies, language difficulty, and the nature of learning foreign language. Comparing the previous studies which used BALLI, this study is quite unique considering the fact that Indonesian is a minor foreign language taught in Japan. The findings of the study are relevant to improve the practice of Indonesian language teaching and learning not only in Japan, but globally. References Horwitz, E.K. (1988). The beliefs about language learning of beginning university foreign language students. Modern Language Journal, 72(3), 283–294.
Junko Saruhashi, Aoyama Gakuin University Discursive Geography: Connecting and Distancing Place Names in Nation-specific Festivals in Tokyo Numerous nation-specific festivals such as the Brazilian Festival, Cambodian Festival, or Indian Festival are held on weekends at large public parks in Japan. The purposes of these festivals are multifaceted but include mutual cultural understanding, charity for social issues, promotion of tourism, contests and competitions, product exhibition, and so on. The commonalities among these festivals are that people bring a condensed version of the country’s history and practices to a geographically remote place, Japan. The festival venue, a public park in Tokyo, for example, is decorated with the national flags of the other country (e.g. Cambodia) and the banner at the entrance gate reads ‘Welcome to Cambodia’ as if the place is Cambodia for the time being. In this fictional space, one can observe that the actual geography is distorted and a newly imagined geography is created, which we shall call ‘discursive geography’. This research describes the discursively constructed geography in nation-specific festivals in Tokyo. First, what kind of discourse practices are produced? Place names, icons, nouns, and adjectives such as ‘here’, ‘there’, ‘near’, and ‘far’, and links among these linguistic and semiotic items are analysed. Second, how are existing geographical scales maintained or distorted? In actual geography, there are agreed scales ranging from the smallest unit, street, to larger units such as town/city, prefecture, province, country, region, and continent. For example, the main stage of the Myanmar festival is named ‘Yangon Stage’ and a substitute one is the ‘Mandalay Stage’. This is an example of utilising existing dimensions because Yangon is the former capital and the biggest city in Myanmar, and Mandalay is the second largest city. Data were collected through ethnographic fieldwork at more than 20 nation-specific festivals in Tokyo. By analysing discourse practices at these festivals, the author outlines how the nation-specific festivals make sense of fictional geography, the kinds of discursive resources that support it, and how a fictional discursive geography interacts with the dimensions of existing geography.
Svenka Savić, University of Novi Sad, Margareta Bašaragin, Primary School “Jovan Jovanović Zmaj”, Subotica, Danijela Radović, Pedagogical Institute of Vojvodina Gender and Ideology: Women on Postage Stamps in Serbia: 2000-2017 In 2000 democratic changes happened in Serbia. They aroused hopes that everyday life will be more democratic, especially when equality is concerned (equality for different, women). Degree of which a society is democratic might be measured in different ways. One of them is the absence of language and presence of pictures and other forms of material culture. A state can manifest its statehood (a flag, coat of arms, hymn), and it can also manifest a good will to show equality in different domains. The aim of this paper is to examine the degree of democratic changes in multinational and multilingual Serbia during the last two decades regarding the absence of linguistic codes and using stamps depicting women (2000-2017). The corpus is all the stamps printed during the period, but only those depicting women were analysed. We conclude the following: 1. there are only several women who got the privilege to be presented on a postage stamp; 2. all of them originate from the Serbian culture and none from other national communities. These results show the ideological decisions to give a clear visibility to women from the majority population. We suggest a list of women from different national communities who might get the possibility to be presented on the stamps and who equally contribute to development of the society in Serbia. Key words: ideology, gender, postage stamps, Serbia References Burzan, Michael (2013). Gebührend vertreten?: Madonnen, Märchengestalten und Frauen auf deutschen Marken. Das Archiv: Magazin für Kommunikationsgeschichte. Frankfurt am Main. 2431. Raento, Pauliina &Stanley D. Brunn (2005). Visualizing Finland: Postage stamps as political messengers. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 87, 2. 145-164. Rowley, Alison (2002). Miniature Propaganda: Self-Definition and Soviet Postage Stamps, 1917– 41. Slavonica 8, 2. 135-157.
Mustafa Savoglu, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest Language Planning and Policies in Cyprus after 2003 As a multilingual and multicultural island, Cyprus had been segregated based on religion and ethno-linguistic identities before and after its independence in 1960. This segregation, however, became a physical division of the island in 1974. After twenty-nine years of division, in 2003 April 23rd, the borders or in other words, the check-points were opened, and the two biggest communities of the island; Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, have been put in direct contact again. The phenomenon that the both communities were put in contact again also brought the question of language along with. This research investigates the evolution of the language policies and planning (LPP) in Cyprus under the reconciliation process. The research analyses the evolution of the LPP under three categories; A) Politics and Language Policies and Planning in Cyprus, B) Civil Society and Language Policies and Planning in Cyprus, C) Education and Language Policies and Planning in Cyprus. The results of the research have shown that the both sides (North and South) are willing to achieve a Greek and Turkish bilingual Cyprus, whereas the current situation points out that the lack of the policies and planning and as well as the lack of cooperation between the two sides results in the spread of English language as Lingua Franca.
Addie Sayers China, University of North Carolina - Wilmington Resemiotizing Beyoncé: Multimodal Meaning Making in Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest Year after year, American cultural icon Beyoncé is accused of “breaking the internet” when users of social networking sites (SNS) flood social media with posts about her. In their discursive practices, SNS users increasingly utilize multiple communicative modes as part of their digital repertoires, incorporating linguistic, visual, and other semiotic elements in their mobilization of content. Despite connections between different modes and meaning-making potentials (Bourlai & Herring, 2014), multimodal meaning-making, and the links between modes, meanings, and SNS platform affordances, remain under-researched. In this paper I directly address this gap by adopting a social semiotic approach to a data set of SNS posts about Beyoncé from 3 SNS with different affordances, Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest. Motivated by Beyoncé’s ubiquitous social media presence, and attention to issues like gender and racial justice, motherhood, and celebrity, I investigate Beyoncé as the embodied site of American cultural discourses. I analyze a dataset of 300 tweets, pins, and posts obtained from entering #Beyoncé into each SNS platform search, and through a multimodal discourse analysis (Jewitt, 2016), I examine meaning trends across modes and across platforms. Ultimately, I argue that this multimodal lens elucidates Beyoncé as a cultural object subject to reinterpretation where Beyoncé means much more than just “Beyoncé” and spans 13 meaning categories. I then assert that meaning distinctions occur not only across different modes, but also across platforms, and I link Beyoncé’s resemiotization and meaning potentials to distinctive modal and platform affordances and constraints. References Bourlai, E., & Herring, S. C. (2014). Multimodal communication on Tumblr: "I have so many feels!". Proceedings of the 2014 ACM conference on web science (pp. 171-175). New York, NY: ACM Press. Jewitt, C. (2016). Multimodal analysis. In A. Georgakopoulou, & T. Spiloti (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of language and digital communication (pp. 69-84). New York, NY: Routledge.
Claudio Scarvaglieri, University of Basel The ordinarization of linguistic diversity in a ‘bilingual’ city Drawing on the concept of ‘ordinariness of translinguistics’ (Dovchin 2017a, 2017b, Lee & Dovchin forthc.), the paper describes linguistic practice in Swiss Biel/ Bienne, an officially bilingual German-French municipality. Aside from its official bilingualism, Biel/ Bienne is characterized by a high degree of linguistic diversity, as 29% of the city’s inhabitants hold a NonSwiss passport and overall more than 120 languages are spoken. Therefore, it could be expected that translinguistic language practices are generally perceived as common and ‘ordinary’ in Biel/ Bienne. As our ethnographic study shows, however, the social contexts of interaction determine what is accepted as ordinary. In the public, the use of both German and French alongside each other is perceived as not only ordinary, but often as the correct and socially expected activity type. Conversely, in places that restrict access and communicative participation, the use of other languages, often in combination with German or French, is perceived as ordinary. It is thus argued that the notion of social space (Lefebvre 1986) allows us to understand how varying degrees of ordinariness are produced. Ordinariness is therefore not conceptualized as a trait of certain activity types, but as a form of stancetaking (Du Bois 2007) that contributes to the ordinarization of certain activities as ordinary or ‘normal’ (cf. Foucault 1975), while others are made to appear less ordinary, uncommon or even inappropriate. Furthermore, language attitudes (Ajzen 2012) and language ideologies (Blommaert 2006) are discussed that, depending on the social surroundings, influence the evaluation of different activities as more or less ordinary. Empirically, the study is based on data from public and institutional settings gathered via participant observation, interviews, analyses of public discourse in the media and of the linguistic landscape (cf. Blommaert 2013).
Olga Schitz, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Dina Mymrina, Tomsk Polytechnic University Minority languages in isolation: trends, challenges and perspectives on maintenance The Mordva-speaking community of the Kaliningrad region of the Russian Federation (the Erzya and Moksha), living compactly and being isolated from the main ethnos for more than 70 years, have no well-established contacts with their historical homeland. The paper focuses on the results of the expeditions held in 2016-2017, aiming to study the current state of the languages of the ethnic groups in question. The article opens with an overview of the Mordva’s migration to the territory of East Prussia, which became part of the Soviet Union in 1945 following the results of World War II. A special emphasis is made on the reasons underlying their mass migration to the region, among which the appeal of the Soviet government to work in agriculture in the Kaliningrad fertile lands. Based on the data collected and the analysis of the state of the Erzya and Moksha languages it can be concluded that both of the languages and national cultures have been preserved almost everywhere at the household level even in the conditions of prevalence of the Russian-speaking population and absence of education in their native languages.
Valéria Schmid Queiroz, University of Graz The Diary of a Mother: the construction of a multilingual identity With the raise of possibilities for mobility in the globalized world we live, it is not uncommon to find families migrating from their original country across geographical boarders due to diverse reason. When these families arrive in this new context, they usually have to deal with difficulties related to cultural and linguistic differences. Not just the children must quickly learn the local language to follow up their studies, but also the parents, when they do not master the language yet, have to learn it in order to interact in the new society. In the process of reconstruction and redefinition of themselves, they also question their identity in relation to social roles, such as parents, for example. The lack of language domain can also prevent these adults from acting socially in their children’s life, for instance when it comes to dealing with social institutions, such as schools, or helping their children with their learning process. In order to broad this discussion, we attempt to analyze how a mother, living in Austria, in a position of migrant reconstructs her multilingual identity, considering her experiences and feelings as L2 learner and her subject positions in front of her children’s school. As a research method, we chose the diary studies, as this is considered as an important means to foster participant’s reflection about their own “selves” as a language learner, and to analyze how these participants build their identities in the context of a L2. We still are in the process of collecting data, but with this study we aim to contribute for the general society by calling the attention of the academic community to the importance of developing projects to involve these migrant parents in their children’s school life, even if they are still not very familiarized with the local culture and language. References Dewaele, J.M. (2007) Becoming bi- or multilingual later in life. In: Auer, P.; Wei,L. Handbook of Multilingualism and Multilingual Communication. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.
Bojana Schubert, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts Strike while the iron's hot: Standard language ideology as it reveals itself in Croatian readers and school dictionaries There are three main dialect groups in Croatia – Kajkavian, Štokavian and Čakavian. Croatian standard language is based on Štokavian grammar and although most standard language handbooks accent that the lexical level of standard Croatian is open to words from all three dialect groups, analysis show the opposite. This paper analyses official Croatian readers for primary schools (fifth to eight grade) on one hand, in order to conceive how many non-standard texts they represent, either contemporary or historic. It will be shown that there are a very small number of such texts in Croatian educational program. On the other hand, paper analyses keywords of Croatian school dictionaries in order to see how many non-standard lexemes they contain, excerpted from readers or obligatory reading. Since the dictionaries have high society value (Bejónt 2000) we can say that the results of our analysis are devastating from the Croatian dialects’ point of view and they show Croatian standard language ideology is very strong and discriminatory towards regional determination of its speakers (see Milroy i Milroy 1999). If we hear what Algeo (1990) says: when the word X is not in the dictionary than the word X is not in language, we must find a way to make Croatian lexicography more tolerant for the regional lexicon so that children wouldn’t feel like their mother tongues aren’t worth or are valued less than standard. The last part of this paper deals with the idea on how to make more righteous Croatian school dictionary.
Charlotte Selleck, University of the West of England Only bilingualism matters: A discursive and ideological shift from bilingualism to plurilingualism amongst ‘new’ speakers of Welsh Within a political climate largely attuned to bilingualism, modern foreign languages are increasingly becoming marginalised in the Welsh curriculum (British Council 2015: 4). Meanwhile, the ever-increasing mobility of people triggers new language needs and practices. This study seeks to re-examine the place of ‘other’ or ‘foreign’ languages in the Welsh curriculum through the eyes of a ‘new’ or ‘learner’ speaker of Welsh. This study draws on research carried out in two contrasting secondary schools in southwest Wales; an English-medium (EM) school and a designated Welsh-medium (WM) school between September 2008 and June 2018. This research is characterised by the use of three principal methods: ethnographic observational fieldwork, ethnographic chats, and audio recordings. Arguments will be put forward around the place of modern foreign languages in the Welsh curriculum. It will be suggested that students at the English-medium school, question whether or not to include Welsh as a ‘foreign’ language - with the distinction seeming to stem from whether you know or are learning the language (with issues of authenticity coming to the fore). It emerges that the flexible conceptualisation of language at the English-medium school, seems to give rise to an aspiration to learn more languages (not just English and Welsh), with students suggesting that they have an apparent desire to be multilingual, not just bilingual. Students at the ‘English’ school seem to question the emphasis on the Welsh language, seeing it as limiting their opportunities. They suggest that their school should adopt a more ‘flexible’ approach towards language learning, moving beyond the limits of a narrow construction of bilingualism in Wales, instead adopting a position that is reflective of ‘modern’ international concerns and changing global sociolinguistic needs.
Elena Seoane, University of Vigo, Cristina Suárez-Gómez, University of the Balearic Islands Language and age: The role of young speakers as instigators of change in World Englishes Young speakers often constitute “the movers and shakers of language change” (Tagliamonte 2016:xiv). In this paper we will explore the effect of age on language innovation and creativity in L2 speakers of World Englishes. For that purpose we have selected two high frequency syntactic phenomena. First, the expression of perfect meaning, which exhibits variability between the have + past participle periphrasis, the preterite and other less-frequently used forms such as the be + past participle periphrasis, the base form and the bare past participle (cf. Seoane & Suárez-Gómez 2013). Second, relative clauses, with variation in the use of relativizers (e.g. use of which with human antecedents,) and innovative patterns (e.g. wherein instead of where, cf. Suárez-Gómez 2017). These patterns of variation are explored here in Indian English and Philippine English using the spontaneous spoken component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-IND and ICE-PHIL). Our sample, therefore, concentrates on the spoken production of L2 speakers in nonnative contexts, and many of the innovations attested here are analyzed as the result of cognitive determinants of learning, which favor isomorphism and aim for maximizing transparency. It will be interesting to explore whether ICE can be a valid tool for exploring differences between age cohorts and a challenge to identify the effects of age within the complex interplay of intra- and extralinguistic factors that condition syntactic variation in the contact varieties spoken in nonnative contexts. References Seoane, Elena and Cristina Suárez-Gómez. 2013. The expression of the perfect in East and SouthEast Asian Englishes. English World-Wide 34.1: 1-25. Suárez-Gómez. Cristina. 2017. The role of transparency and language contact in the structural nativization of relative clauses in New Englishes. English World-Wide 38.2: 212-238. Tagliamonte, Sali. 2016. Teen Talk. The Language of Adolescents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Alexandra Shaeffer, University of Iowa The role of gender on opting out of complaining: A cross-cultural examination This cross-cultural study explores if, how, and, why gender impacts individuals who opt out of verbally responding in situations eliciting complaints. Past research suggests that women and men tend to complain to accomplish differing goals (Wolfe & Powell, 2006). Whereas women tend to complain to build solidarity, men often complain during confrontation to support their position (Kraft & Geluykens, 2002). However, little research has been conducted on the effect of gender when individuals do not complain. Therefore, the goal of the study was to examine how gender influences complaint behavior, specifically when and why individuals opt out of complaining. Oral and written data were collected from 106 participants across three cultural groups: 1) 45 L1 English advanced French learners, 2) 31 L1 monolingual French speakers, and 3) 30 L1 monolingual English speakers. Participants verbally responded to thirty-six pre-recorded videoclips of native-speaker actors in contextualized situations. Twenty-four video-clips were to elicit complaints and 12 video-clips were distractors. Situations varied in social power, social distance, and severity of offense, with six total conditions. If participants did not respond to a video-clip, they were asked to provide a detailed verbal explanation and to mark the best-fitting summary of their explanation from a binary on a worksheet: 1) I didn’t know how to formulate a response, or 2) I wouldn’t say anything in this situation. Categorized by gender, situations in which the participants opted out of complaining were analyzed for communicative context and reason given. Results suggest a relationship between gender and opting out, and communicative value of complaining across cultures. References Kraft, B., & Geluykens, R. (2002). Complaining in French L1 and L2: A cross-linguistic investigation. EUROSLA, 2, 227-242. Wolfe, J., & Powell, E. (2006). Gender and expressions of dissatisfaction: A study of complaining in mixed-gendered student work groups. Women and Language, 29(2), 13-20.
Tamah Sherman, Czech Language Institute, Jiří Homoláč, Czech Academy of Sciences Processes and practices in the acquisition and use of Czech names by Vietnamese The adoption of new personal names by immigrants is a common phenomenon, mostly studied in English-speaking countries (see e.g. Kim 2007). This contribution explores a slightly different context, in which Vietnamese immigrants to the Czech Republic, a highly homogenous ethnolinguistic space, manage the nearly inevitable acquisition and use of Czech names. Based on data from interviews, blogs and other new media texts, and utilizing the language management approach (Nekvapil 2016), we consider three processes and practices in the management of personal names. The first of these is the initial acquisition of the Czech name, which is usually involuntary. Vietnamese children often gain a Czech name in preschool or from a Czech nanny, where they are placed in order to learn the language and acculturate to the majority society. The second involves the actual use of the Czech name – some actively use it, others only passively. Individual choice frequently corresponds to generational affiliation, as well as to the degree of contact with Czech speakers. The third concerns the renewed use of the Vietnamese name. This tends to accompany the return to the Vietnamese language and culture, and is an expression of ethnic self-awareness as well as a reflection the transforming opinions of the Czech majority toward the Vietnamese minority, or in fact, toward all minorities in the Czech Republic. References Kim, T-Y. (2007). The dynamics of ethnic name maintenance and change: Cases of Korean ESL immigrants in Toronto. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 28(2), 117–133. Nekvapil, J. (2016). Language Management Theory as one approach in Language Policy and Planning. Current Issues in Language Planning 17(1), 11–22.
Okoa Simile, Dar es Salaam University College of Education Listeners’ Attitudes towards Radio Presenters’ Swahili-English-Swahili Code Mixing and Code Switching This paper presents the results of a study on listeners’ attitudes towards Swahili-English-Swahili codemixing and code switching among radio presenters. Two radio stations were surveyed; Clouds FM and Tanzania Broadcasting Cooperation (TBC) FM both from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The main objectives of the study were to identify the patterns of code mixing and code switching, the listeners’ attitudes towards it, and the effects it has to the listeners’. The study involved eighty 80 respondents (listeners) and four radio presenters from two radio stations. The study employed the framework of Audience Designed as introduced by Bell (1984). The study revealed that radio listeners have different views with ragards to presenters use of code mixing and code switching. Those infavour of CM and CS are in a view that this language use makes the radioshows more interesting and attractive. Those whore are against code mixing and code switching claim that this language use is discriminative and leads to the misuse of Standard Kiswahili language, hence lowering its status as a national language. It has also been discovered that this difference in attitudes is dependent upon age, and education. References Appel, R na Muysken, P. (1978). Language Contract and Bilingualism. Institute of General Linguistics, Amsterdam: British Library Cataloguing Publication. Becker, K. (1997). “Spanish/English Bilingual Codeswitching: A Syncretic Model,” Bilingual Review, Volume 22, pp. 1, 3-31 Bell, A. (1984). Language Style as “Audience Design”. Katika N, Coupland na Jaworski (1997) (wah.), Sociolinguistics: A Reader and Coursebook (uk. 240-250). New York: St Mattin’s Press Inc. Benson, E. (2001). “The Neglected History of Codeswitching Research ni the United States.” Language & Communication, Volume 21, pp. 1, 23-36 Best, J. W. na Kahn, J. V. (1993). Research in Education. United State of America: Allyn and Bacon. Buliba, A., Njogu, K. na Mwihaki, A. (2006). Isimujamii kwa Wanafunzi wa Kiswahili. Nairobi: The Jomo Kenyatta Foundation.
Gajendra Singh Chauhan, Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani Fake News in Media: Decoding the Communication of Chaos In today's media climate, it is difficult to differentiate between fake news and real news. We find many stories with stats and figures but skepticism continues to haunt whether they are real or unreal? Donald Trump has further reinforced the dilemma of fake news in 2016 US Presidential Election. Although fake news could not alter the outcome of election but such dubious content can undermine the quality of public debate, promote misperceptions, foster greater hostility toward political opponents, and corrode trust in government and journalism. (Allcott and Gentzkow, 2017)1. Social media platforms have further added fuel to the fake news stories where rumours and lies spread unnoticed because of easy production techniques and gullibility of people ready to accept them. According to a report of Internet and Mobile Association of India, the number of internet users in India was expected to cross 450 million by June 2017—241 million have Facebook accounts and over 200 million are on WhatsApp. (IAMAI)2. Many of these users have been mobile-first users of the internet and it is beyond their comprehension to identify the fake news in such a volatile media scene. They often believe and accept what comes to them as genuine. The paper raises the serious issues that how insensitive and unauthentic content mislead the factual information that people usually find everywhere. Some selected stories are taken up as cases to highlight how trivia has been circulated without fact checking and what powerful measures can we have to understand the discourse of news falsification. References 1 Allcott, Hunt, and Matthew Gentzkow. 2017. “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 31 (2): 1–28. 2 Internet users to touch 420 million by June 2017: IAMAI report
Devet Sinyangwe, Dar es Salaam University College of Education Attitudes towards ethnic community languages in Tanzania This paper assesses urban dwellers attitudes towards ethnic community languages in Tanzania. The paper surveys the maintenance of ethnic community languages by urban dwellers. It seeks to find out the extent to which urban dwellers maintain their ethnic community languages; the degree of use of these languages and people’s perceptions of these languages. The paper posses questions about ethnic language loyalty and language maintenance among urban dwellers in Tanzania. In the light of this discussion, the paper makes a prediction of the future of ethnic community languages in Tanzania. The findings were obtained through interview and a questionnaire administered to a sample of people who dwell in the city of Dar es salaam in Tanzania. The findings indicate that more than 90% of urban dwellers do not use ethnic community languages. It was revealed that urban dwellers have negative attitudes towards ethnic community languages. In this sense it is predicted that the future of ethnic community languages is jeopardized and that these languages are likely to disappear and become extinct due to migration of people from rural areas and urban areas. Factors that contribute to this state of affairs include formal education, migration to urban areas, the use of technology (computers, mobile phones, TVs etc). In this paper it is recommended that deliberate efforts should be made to rescue the ethnic community languages from becoming extinct. References David M. 2006. Language policies;impact on language maintenance and teaching. Focus on Malasia, Singapore, Brunei and Philippines. The Linguistics Journal. Dweik, B. 2000. Linguistic and Cultural maintenance among Chechens of Jordan, Language, culture and curriculum, 13 (2) 184-195. Zalina M and R. Campbel 1997. Language Crisis in Tanzania. The Myth of English versus education
Emilia Slavova, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” Polylanguaging on social media: when one language is not enough In the context of globalization, weakened national borders and superdiversity (Vertovec, 2007), languages mix and mesh to create new, hybrid forms and to challenge traditional conceptualizations of language. The developments in communication technologies, virtual reality and new media have also exerted a strong influence: computer-mediated communication is particularly conducive to boundary crossing, language mixing, creativity and experimentation, blurring the lines between the written and the spoken word, and emergent new communication conventions. Тhere is now a burgeoning field of research urging sociolinguistics “to unthink its classic distinctions and biases and to rethink itself as a sociolinguistics of mobile resources” (Blommaert, 2010: 1). In this paradigm, languages lose their ideologically constructed homogeneity and turn into heterogeneous, context-dependent, mobile resources with fuzzy boundaries, functioning on the principle of the “open source” (Saraceni, 2015). The long-standing monolingualism norm has been replaced by the bilingualism norm, and subsequently overtaken by the polylanguaging norm (Jørgensen, J. N. et al. 2011, 33-34). The paper discusses these recent reconceptualizations of language and then provides examples from social media, observing the communication patterns of mobile Bulgarians living abroad or internationals who have spent some time in Bulgaria. Both groups usually resort to polylanguaging not for lack of words in their own language, but usually to signal their fluid identities and transnational orientation, and disregard for the monolingualism norm. References Blommaert, Jan. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jørgensen, J. N. et al. 2011. “Polylanguaging in Superdiversity”. Diversities, Vol. 13, No. 2 23-37. Saraceni, Mario. 2015. World Englishes: a critical analysis. London, New York: Bloomsburry. Vertovec, Steven. 2007. “Super-diversity and its implications”. Ethnic and Racial Studies. 30 (6): 1024–1054.
Dick Smakman, Leiden University Persona projection through L2 pronunciation This study asks the question whether identity-driven language choices that are typically active in speakers’ native tongues are also active in their L2. In many Northern and Western European countries, students of English in tertiary education can choose accents when they learn English pronunciation. The traditional choice is usually between British English and American English, while increasing numbers of institutes seem to be dropping native-speaking requirements. With either British or American English, but also with the English that does not strictly follow a native norm, come many cultural and identity-related associations. The question for English departments nowadays is whether to follow one of the two norms or apply a laissez faire approach. What do students themselves want, and what do they themselves view as important motivations to choose accent when they speak an L2 that is typically associated with communication in international, globalised contexts, and which seems to have dissociated itself from the cultures it originated from. This paper investigates the accent choices of 1st-year students of English at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and links this to the social identity, or persona, they wish to portray in English. It delves into the motivations that students use to decide on their accent if given that choice. It also investigates the realities of students’ pronunciation, which is not necessarily in line with their preferences and abilities. The majority of the students aspired to a traditional British accent and mentioned prestige of the native speaker and intelligibility as reasons for this preference. About half of the students already sounded predominantly British in their sound files, although American influences were commonly heard, like t-flapping and rhoticity. This study illustrates personal identity expression may not be a priority of this specific group of learners; instead, these future teachers of English apply highly conservative status-driven motivations in their approach to ‘good English pronunciation’. At the same time, a smaller group of students seems to be emerging with L1-like identity motivations in their L2.
Wendy Smith, California State University, Tamar Macharoblidze, Ilia State University Power and the Construction of Identity in a Deaf Community This paper presents the results of a study of the naturally occurring interaction of thirteen participants in a Deaf* NGO in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. There are few studies of the Deaf Community as a community in its own right, rather than a pathological variation from the hearing world, and fewer in terms of a true sociolinguistic community of practice. Following IRB approval (#16004; July, 2016), we hired one of the participants to videotape eight hours of data over the course of several weeks in July-August 2016. The only instructions we gave him were to videotape any interaction between participants he encountered in the normal course of a day. Our analysis is based on nine vignettes of interaction from the eight hours we collected. Georgian Sign was then translated into spoken Georgian, and from there into English into a turn-by-turn format. As stated by Eldredge (2005) people negotiate identities in the context and flow of daily interaction, and in portraying themselves in interaction, they tell stories about themselves. Within these data, we have found both narrative and conversation in Georgian Sign. Interestingly, the cameraman appears and participates in all of these bits of data. We analyze the data in terms of footing shifts following Goffman. The data illustrates how the cameraman negotiates and take power and agency with the other participants and how shifts in identity occur as this happens. Additionally, we examine how power gets constructed within these identities in relation to each other and to the hearing world. Deaf is used to identify “cultural affiliation” and deaf is used to identify simple audiological deafness. References Eldredge, B. K. 2005. The Role of Discourse in the Formation and Maintenance Of the Deaf World. University of Iowa (UMI Ann Arbor DA 3139420)
Anđel Starčević, Klara Bilić Meštrić, University of Zagreb You are all illiterate! – Language ideologies and language conflict in language teaching The educational system is one of the most influential societal domains for establishing and passing on ideologies (Bourdieu 1991, Wodak 2009). A key role in the process is played by teachers, who (consciously or unconsciously) promote and normalize ideological views on the content they teach. This paper adopts a critical applied linguistics (Pennycook 2001) perspective in order to study what linguistic and extralinguistic ideologies are promoted in teaching Croatian and other languages in Croatia by correcting students’ language production. The study was conducted by using printed and digital questionnaires, and through a qualitative analysis of the respondents’ answers (N = 153). The findings indicate a strong presence of (1) the ideology of the standard language (Milroy 2001), (2) the ideology of the native speaker (Doerr 2009), (3) the monoglossic ideology (Wardhaugh & Fuller 2015), (4) the ideology of monosemoformy (one meaning ~ one form), (5) the ideology of the source language, and (6) the ideology of one regional standard, all presented as ‘commonsensical’ and ‘neutral’ views, with various regional/social dialects portrayed as illegitimate (non-)language. These ideologies are promoted by using strategies which include (1) the stigmatization of trivial formal variation, cross-linguistic influence, and heteroglossia (Blackledge & Creese 2013), (2) aggressive feedback, (3) public shaming, (4) multimodal expression of disapproval, (5) pretending not to understand students’ production, and (6) the strategy of apparent descriptiveness (Starčević 2016). Because such promotion of these ideologies encourages intra-speaker and inter-speaker language conflict (Nelde 1997), (1) linguistic varieties and extralinguistic identities are delegitimized and erased (Irvine & Gal 2000), while (2) students report feelings of embarrassment and demotivation, as well as schizoglossia (Haugen 1962), linguistic selfhatred (Giles & Niedzielski 1999), and other-hatred. Consequently, given the negative effect of such correction practices on students’ self-confidence and motivation, teachers are sometimes perceived as language breakers (Starčević 2014). Keywords: language ideologies, language conflict, language teaching, language breaker
Vukašin Stojiljković, Institut za srpski jezik SANU “It is spoken by the inhabitants of Serbia plus”. A LANGUAGE TOO DIFFICULT TO DEFINE The collapse of Yugoslavia intensified the processes and practices of drawing and enforcing boundaries of the imagined communities, an important part of which was the “enregisterment” (Agha 2007) of languages supposed to replace Serbo-Croatian (see Stojiljković 2017). A variety of “centering institutions” (Silverstein 1998: 404) have taken part in this, producing various, often sharply opposed, discourses on ethnolinguistic identities in the region. This paper is concerned with how Serbian linguists of the younger generation (i.e. PhD students) construct the Serbian language through orienting to the complex postYugoslav “orders of indexicality” (Blommaert 2005). In particular, I will analyze which language-related identity categories are made relevant by my interviewees and how they are negotiated and contested as the interview interaction unfolds (i.e. how the meaning is supplied to the newly-established/reestablished language names). I will draw on transcripts from the qualitative interviews I conducted in late summer 2015. References Agha, A. (2007). Language and social relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Silverstein, M. (1998). Contemporary Transformations of Local Linguistic Communities. Annual Review of Anthropology, 27, 401–426. Stojiljković, V. (2017). Negotiating the Yat Border(s). Wiener Linguistische Gazette, 81, 47–73.
Janine A. E. Strandberg, Leiden University Generational change of the open front rounded vowel [ɶ] in Finland-Swedish This study examines linguistic identity and generational change in the Finland-Swedish community as a result of increased contact with the Finnish majority language. FinlandSwedish is a variety of Swedish that is spoken as a first language by approximately 300,000 people in Finland. Although Swedish is quantitatively a minority language in Finland, it is also an official national language alongside Finnish (Hult & Pietikäinen 2014: 4). In the past Finnish and Swedish were largely spoken in different regions and culturally distinct communities. However, lately the Finnish society has become more linguistically mixed, causing Finnish to have a larger impact on the lives and language of Finland-Swedish speakers. This study focuses on the Swedish open front rounded vowel [ɶ], a more open allophone of [ø] that only occurs before /r/ (Riad 2014: 38; Leinonen 2011: 78). Sample tokens for [ø] and [ɶ] in different speech contexts were collected through recordings of photo-elicited interviews from several consecutive generations of bilingual Finland-Swedish speakers. Measuring the first and second formants of the samples, the study examines the phonological differences between the older and younger generations of speakers. The research explores the correlations between age, linguistic identity, and the realisation of the linguistic marker [ɶ] to determine whether or not generational change of the Finland-Swedish variety is occurring as a result of language contact. References Hult, Francis, & Sari Pietikäinen (2014). Shaping Discourses of Multilingualism Through a Language Ideological Debate. Journal of Language and Politics, 13(1): 1–20. Leinonen, Therese (2011). Aggregate Analysis of Vowel Pronunciation in Swedish Dialects. In Johannessen, J. (ed.), Language Variation Infrastructure, Oslo Studies in Language 3(2): 75–95. Riad, Thomas (2014). The Phonology of Swedish. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Boglárka Straszer, BethAnne Paulsrud, Dalarna University “We know the same languages and then we can mix them”: A child´s perspectives on translanguaging and family language policy This study presents an investigation of a young multilingual child, called Laura, and her parents as they navigate language practices using Hungarian, Finnish, and Swedish in their everyday life in Sweden. The multimethod study focused on Laura’s perspectives. Our aim was to highlight a child’s “lived experience” of translanguaging as her views on and experiences of translanguaging reveal how she respects or resists the planned family language policy. First, Laura was interviewed and observed over the course of one day at home with her family. One researcher engaged Laura in play in order to elicit her views on her agency and linguistic repertoire in relation to family language policies. Second, Laura’s parents were interviewed about the implicit and explicit family language policies, and how these policies were initially constructed and then developed in their implementation over the course of the childhood of Laura and her two younger siblings. These interviews and observations were considered together with material (written observations and audio-recorded interactions) collected by the parents since Laura’s birth. The triangulation of methods offers a unique view of how one child exercises agency, makes use of her linguistic resources, articulates metalinguistic awareness, considers societal language hierarchies, and respects or resists the family language policy set forth by her parents—thus creating her own everyday translanguaging practices. Our results indicate the importance of linguistic awareness and repertoires, and suggests the potential that this multilingual child possesses for exercising agency in order to “make sense” of her multilingual world. We argue that focusing on a child’s stories of everyday translanguaging framed within her family’s language policy and practices has relevance for understanding the home, school, and societal implications of young children’s translanguaging.
Dace Strelēvica-Ošiņa, University of Latvia Livonians and Their Name: Historic, Onomastic and Sociolinguistic Aspects The presence of Livonians (a Finno-Ugric autochthonous minority ethnic group in Latvia) has been studied by various scholars in various aspects – from the recent revitalization of the Livonian language to the impacts it has had on Latvian language and culture. This paper is looking at how several Livonian-related ethnonyms and linguonyms function and are perceived in the society of Latvia (both academic and non-academic) and also beyond its borders. Almost every instance of naming the Livonians (or Livonian-related phenomena) is rather multilayered. The Livonians have had various endonyms for their ethnic group (līvlist, rāndalist, līvõz etc.), and their exonyms are varied, too. In Modern Latvian there are two official names lībieši and līvi to denote Livonians, who in their turn have often debated about the suitability of each of these. Moreover, besides the Livonian language (līvõ kēļ) there is another linguistic code with a similar name spoken in Latvia. It is one of the dialects of Latvian – the Livonianized (lībiskais) dialect which developed historically as the result of contact and interference between Livonian and Latvian. The similarity of linguonyms is sometimes a cause of misunderstandings; both in Latvian and also English where, until recently, the name "Livonian" was used in linguistic literature both for the language and the said dialect. "Livonian" in English also has other usages when denoting phenomena that pertain to the medieval Baltic region of Livonia – its name being coined from a Latinized ethnonym of the Livonians. Besides that, a shortened version "Liv" also exists in English. This, in its turn, is often corrupted by Latvians (as non-native English speakers/writers) as "Liiv", and this error also can be explained sociolinguistically. Thus, the diversity of Livonian-related linguonyms and ethnonyms provides a vast area of research.
Maiju Strömmer, University of Jyväskylä Dynamics of recruiting seasonal workers to an expanding Arctic tourist resort This paper discusses the dynamics of recruiting seasonal workers to a remote ski resort in Finnish Lapland, which is now a growing international tourist destination. Above the Arctic circle, Finnish Lapland is attracting both tourists and workers from all over the world in the winter season in particular. This region has a long history of being understood as a reservoir for the centres of the nation state but is now, under changing ecological, economic and political conditions, transforming into a developing economic hub. Based on interviews with recruiters and managers and ethnographic observations in the resort, the paper investigates how desired workers for different positions are defined and what social categories and skills are made relevant for different tasks in tourism work. The findings indicate that the relationship between language requirements and other qualities is dynamic and often ambivalent. Multilingual competence can be the key for employment but often requirements are flexible, as language brokers are utilised for language work between tourists and customer service staff. The so-called invisible back-stage work is often performed by a group sharing the same linguistic background. Mobile labour can profit from their linguistic resources in many ways but globalising forces work differently in historically peripheral compared to urban centres (Pietikäinen & Kelly-Holmes 2013). The paper is part of a larger project called Cold Rush, which investigates language and identity in expanding Arctic Economies (funding: Academy of Finland). The project’s methodological approach draws on multi-sited ethnography, critical discourse analysis and sociolinguistics (see Heller, Pietikäinen & Pujolar 2018). References Heller, M., Pietikäinen, S. & Pujolar, J. 2018. Critical sociolinguistic research methods: Studying language issues that matter. Routledge. Pietikäinen, S. and Kelly-Holmes, H. (eds.) 2013. Multilingualism and the periphery. Oxford: OUP.
Jos Swanenberg, Tilburg University The Sociolinguistics of Dynamic Gender Marking One of the most prominent features of Brabantish, a group of dialects in the south of The Netherlands, is gender marking. With a process of dialect change well on its way for at least 50 years, the knowledge of lexical gender is supposedly fading away. Also in the light of general tendencies of deflection in Germanic languages, it might be expected to vanish from the dialects. The situation, however, is completely different. In all generations of speakers in Brabant, we find a high level of heterogeneity when it comes to gender marking. Gender marking can be absent, but we also find markers in noun groups where they should not appear, according to the traditional rules of dialect grammar. This is an overgeneralization of the application of markers, leading to hyperdialectisms (Lenz 2004). Furthermore, gender is also marked in innovative constructions, e.g. in accumulate forms with two identical suffixes. This project aims at explaining this phenomenon. Our data consist of online speech (vlogs), translation tests, grammaticality assessments, and interviews on attitudes and prestige. We found that variation in gender marking cannot be tied to linguistic variables or conditions. The features function are part of a speech style, indexing regional identities (Johnstone & Kiesling 2008). If one identifies with Brabant, one must sound Brabantish. Applying gender markers, especially ‘over the top’, is the way to go, even for the youngest generations. This paper will deal further with the ‘what, how and why’ of the dynamics and diversity and the underlying identification processes. References Johnstone, B. & S.F. Kiesling (2008) Indexicality and experience: Exploring the meanings of /aw/-monophthongization in Pittsburgh. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12, 5-33. Lenz, A. (2004) Hyperforms and Variety Barriers. Language variation in Europe. Uppsala University, 281-293.
Peter Szabo, Tilburg University Lingua Franca English within/without European Multilingualism: An ongoing shift in language ideologies? The ongoing expansion of Lingua Franca English (LFE) in Europe in terms of quantities and domains is currently conceptualised, as opposed to, or as an integral component of, European Multilingualism (EM) in contradicting language ideological framings, with language policy (LP) evaluations ranging from threat to opportunity. The study analyses this expansion from an ethnographic LP research perspective (McCarty, 2012) in one particular setting of EM practice and performance, the European Parliament (EP). Working in the simultaneous interpreter's booth, multilingual practice on the EP floor is observed from the emic position of the participant observer of the speech events engaged in and analysed. The data sets are multimodal recordings of speech events observed live in social interactions among Members of Parliament (MEPs). The findings of ethnographic analyses indicate that LFE resources deployed on the EP floor, and meta-pragmatic commentaries on multilingual talk by agents, reveal various indexical potentials for meaning making. Performed in tactics of intersubjectivity (Bucholz & Hall, 2005), linguistic resources accomplish an axis of differentiation (Gal, 2011) indexing value-laden social positionalities. The indexical accomplishments by LFE performances, including idiosyncratic features of the L1 of speaker, allow identifications below and above the ideological construct of the ethnolinguistic assumption (Blommaert et al., 2013), towards open-ended language ideological configurations in late modern Europe. References Blommaert, J. Leppänen, S. & Spotti, M. (2013). Endangering multilingualism.Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies.Paper No.56. Bucholz, M. & Hall, K. (2005). Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies, SAGE Publications. 2005, 7(4–5), 585–614. Gal, S. (2011). Sociolinguistic Regimes and the Management of Diversity. In Duchêne, A.& Heller, M. (Eds.), Language in Late Capitalism: Pride and Profit. London: Routledge. McCarty, T.L. (2012). Introducing Ethnography and Language Policy. In McCarty, T.L. (Ed.), Ethnography and Language Policy. London: Routledge.
Lilla Szabó, Corvinus University of Budapest Do the Trump-tweets thump? The role of phonology in the popularity of political tweets Donald J. Trump, the incumbent president of the United States of America has sparked countless debates with his rather controversial messages posted on the microblog Twitter. Several of his tweets went viral on the internet and have been ‘retweeted’, i.e. republished by users. The content of these tweets has been discussed on different forums, and has also been studied by journalists, political analysts and linguists. An aspect that has not been extensively addressed is the phonological structure of the President’s ideas shared on Twitter. Recent years have witnessed a growing body of evidence that not only the content of the message should be considered in terms of linguistic analysis, but the way it is structured phonologically can achieve different communicative effects (cf. Benczes 2013). It has also been proved that phonological structure is closely related to persuasion (cf. McGlone and Tofighbakhsh (2000)). Moreover, Guerini et al. (2015) conducted a wide range of research on the way sound may enhance persuasiveness related to retweets, among others. They found that rhyme, alliteration and homogeneity, for example, are significantly present in persuasive texts. The current presentation sets out to explore the way the political communication of President Trump on Twitter exploits phonological means such as rhyme, alliteration, consonance and assonance, and the way these features are influential concerning the number of retweets. It will be argued that it is not only the content, but the phonological structure of the message that influences its effectiveness, and therefore is an essential component of political communication. The research focuses on three months, from October 2017 to December 2017, and encompasses the analysis of more than 650 presidential tweets. References Benczes, R. (2013) “The role of alliteration and rhyme in novel metaphorical and metonymical compounds.” Metaphor and Symbol 28.3: 167-184. McGlone, M. S. and J. Tofighbakhsh (2000) “Birds of a feather flock conjointly (?): rhyme as reason in aphorisms.” Psychological Science. 11.5: 424-428. Guerini, M., G. Özbal, and C. Strapparava (2015) “Echoes of persuasion: The effect of euphony in persuasive communication.” Human Language Technologies: The 2015 Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the ACL: 1483–1493.
Károly Takács, Boróka Pápay, Júlia Galántai, Bálint Kubik, Martina Katalin Szabó, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Whom Are We Talking About? The Content of Informal Social Communication Humans are characterized by their exceptional complexity of communication. People are believed to devote two thirds of their informal speaking time to gossip: evaluative talk about others known both to sender and receiver, but not present at the discussion (Dunbar 1996, 2004). It is argued that gossip has replaced grooming and it is the fundamental function of why humans uniquely developed language. In relation to this alleged relationship, gossip is considered as an idle talk that serves social bonding (Dunbar, 1996; 2004; van de Bunt, Wittek, and de Klepper, 2005). Does human informal spontaneous communication have preserved this constitutional feature? We built a corpus of approx. 550 hours of informal communication with gossip annotations. We operationalized, quantified, and characterized gossip in this text. We found that gossip was frequent, but was far from being two thirds of human social communication. Next to gossip, informal speech about others often included chatting about celebrities, storytelling about friends and relatives, and social representation of the sender through its relational acts to third parties unknown to the receiver. References Dunbar, Robin (1996): Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dunbar, Robin (2004). Gossip in evolutionary perspective. Review of general psychology, 8(2), 100. van de Bunt, Gerhard G.; Wittek, Rafael P. M., and de Klepper, Maurits C. (2005): The Evolution of Intra-Organizational Trust Networks. The Case of a German Paper Factory: An Empirical Test of Six Trust Mechanisms. International Sociology, 20(3): 339-369.
Hiroko Takanashi, Japan Women’s University Stance as dialogic practice of chronotope in tourism In sociolinguistics tourism has been studied primarily in light of global capitalism, power asymmetries, and complex identities (e.g., Jaworski and Thurlow 2013). Nevertheless, attention to interactionally displayed human cognition and emotions, particularly in Asian contexts, falls short. This study examines the constitution of chronotope (Bakhtin 1981), a spatiotemoral configuration, in English interactions between a Japanese walking-tour guide and foreign tourists in Nara, a historic site in Japan. Acknowleding that chronotope is mediated by scales, namely, “the scope of communicability” (Blommaert’s 2015:105), I argue that stance, a dialogic and intersubjective social act (Du Bois 2007), serves to operationalize such scale. Although stancetaking is grounded on the here-and-now aspect of chronotope, it is naturally tied to the texts at diverse chronotopic points, thereby creating intertextual series (Hanks 1986) in which sociocultural meanings emerge due to indexical orders (Silverstein 2003). In my data, both epistemic and affective stances are communicated through the resonant use of multimodal semiotic resources, thereby more distant elements of chronotope (i.e., Japan’s history and customs) is practiced and taken into the tourists through the local practice of stancetaking. References Bakhtin, M. M. 1981. The dialogic imagination. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Blommaert, J. 2015. Chronotopes, scales, and complexity in the study of language in Society. Annual Review of Anthropology 44: 105-116. Du Bois, J. W. 2007. The stance triangle. In R. Englebretson (ed.), Stancetaking in discourse. Amsterdam: John Banjamins. 139-182. Hanks, W. F. 1986. Authenticity and ambivalence in the text. American Ethnologist 13: 721-744. Jaworski, A. and C. Thurlow. 2013. Language and the globalizing habitus of tourism. In N. Coupland (ed.), The handbook of language and globalization. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 255-286. Silverstein, M. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and Communication 23: 193-229.
Zoi Tatsioka, CITY College English loanword use in online Greek women’s magazines: the construction of the female identity The present paper examines the use of English loanwords in online women’s magazines in Greece and discusses the potential impact it can have on the construction of the modern-day Greek female identity. More specifically, the paper analyses qualitatively a number of English loanword occurrences in three online Greek women’s magazines and investigates the way the female reader is depicted through the particular linguistic choices. Preliminary findings indicate that English borrowings are present in menu options, headlines and body text and are mostly associated with fashion and lifestyle topics. The extensive use of English in the three magazines shows that the Greek female reader is depicted as a fluent speaker of English, a cosmopolitan and a citizen of the world.
Judith Taylor, Northumbria University A folklinguistic analysis of young Tynesiders’ perceptions of local and wider regional northern English This presentation reports on mixed-methods research into perceptions of their speech community among young adult informants from Newcastle in the north of England. The focus here is on the evaluative repertoires used in freely chosen keyword responses to a speech stimulus. A verbal guise instrument was used, comprising nine speakers, representing the speech of a ‘nested’ set of local and wider regional area locations. Linguists agree that evaluations of speech varieties are not caused by inherent value, but originate in language ideologies. Previous attitudinal investigations have highlighted the emphasis on non-standardness, which underpins evaluative judgements of speech communities in the north of England. Of these, the dialect of Newcastle upon Tyne, or ‘Geordie’, is one of the most widely recognised. It has been shown that Geordie, in common with other non-standard varieties of English, is perceived as low in status but high in solidarity traits such as friendliness. Language change is currently underway in the region, led by young people. It has been suggested that this change will be in the direction of a supraregional northern standard, resisting accommodation towards a southern standard. The keywords responses suggest outgrouping of southern speech, but ambivalence in responses to local varieties. For these young people, it appears, the shifting reality of how it sounds to be Geordie complicates perception of what it means to sound Geordie. References Garrett, P., Williams, A., & Evans, B. (2005). Accessing social meanings: Values of keywords, values in keywords. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, 37(1), 37-54. Milroy, J. (2001). Language ideologies and the consequences of standardization. Journal of sociolinguistics, 5(4), 530-555. Watt, D. (2002). ‘I don’t speak with a Geordie accent, I speak, like, the Northern accent’: Contact‐induced levelling in the Tyneside vowel system. Journal of sociolinguistics, 6(1), 44-63.
Mei-Lin Teoh, Rachel Siew-Kuang Tan, Fauziah, Taib, University of Malaya Mismatch between employers’ expectations and potential employees’ English Language competence at job interviews: A Malaysian case study This paper presents the findings of a study at a local public university in Malaysia. A group of final year students attended a simulated job interview with a human resource manager and data obtained from the conversational exchange between them were analyzed using a communicative competence framework (Bachman, 1990). The study was carried out as the team English Language (EL) instructors who taught a course known as “Communication for Employment Purposes” to a group of undergraduate business students sought to gauge the students’ EL competence at the entry-level job interview session. The data revealed that having learnt English for 11 – 13 years, these students have not arrived at an acceptable level of proficiency that would enable them to secure jobs upon graduation. Couching the study within the backdrop of the Malaysian EL education context, some insights into the level of the Malaysian learners’ EL were revealed. Grammatical, phonological and syntactical errors were evident and the lack of confidence as a result of the poor language contributes to failure of gaining employment. Implications of the study is discussed in the light of current issues of the role of English language education and policies of the country and some suggestions for the way forward are offered. The sociolinguistic landscape of its multilingual context will also be discussed in the light of language planning and policies of the nation.
Tanya Tercero, University of Arizona Arabic vs. English as a Medium of Instruction in the United Arab Emirates: A Critical Discourse Analysis of a Media Debate The National is an Emirati, government-run newspaper meant to model itself on Western journalism standards; however, the UAE is ranked poorly at 119 in the 2016 World Press Freedom Index (Reporters Without Borders) and has been the only Arab country to suppress an Arab Spring thus far. It is noteworthy then that from 2010-2018, The National has published dozens of education articles, opinion pieces, and letters-to-theeditor on the ‘debate’ of Arabic versus English as a Medium of Instruction in its government-sponsored schools and universities. This media debate centers around the use of and attitudes towards Arabic and English, not only in education, but in their roles in national identity, religion, modernization, and globalization. Keeping Findlow’s (2006) analysis of linguistic dualism in Higher Education in mind, the aim of this paper is to present results of a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) that analyses the language of the media debate in order to discover how the ‘interests’ of the Emiratis and foreign nationals living and studying in the UAE are “represented, helped, or harmed” (Gee, 2014). The language, identity and power stances within the articles reveal an evolving discourse between revered government officials who believe that English is a requirement for participation in global commerce and those Arab voices who express concern at the threat to their identity. In order to conduct the CDA, a corpus of more than four dozen published pieces was created using AntConc freeware concordance software by converting html files to .txt files. Keywords related to national identity, English, Arabic, religion, modernization and globalization were analyzed in context and according to tags of type of article published, date and author.
Christiana Themistocleous, University of Reading Ideologies of unification and division in ‘No Man’s Land’: An exploration of the multilingual LL in Nicosia's Green Line Although the Republic of Cyprus has been an independent state since 1960, due to the long-term conflict between the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot communities the island has been divided into two parts. The Green Line is a UN-controlled zone which separates the country and divides Nicosia in half. The two communities have lived in separation for more than 30 years until the border was opened in 2003 allowing people to visit the ‘other side’. Greek and Turkish are the official languages of the Republic of Cyprus but, due to the long-term separation, bilingualism in these two languages has declined. English on the other hand is a prestigious language. This study focuses on the use of written language displayed in public signs which contain Greek, English and Turkish and are located in the Green Line. A qualitative Semiotic Landscape analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2003; Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010) is employed to understand the ways that the public space interacts with written discourse, discursive modalities and dimensions of history and culture. The aim is to unveil how ideologies are created and projected in the public space of this area that is characterised by conflict. Fieldwork was carried out in August – October 2016, October 2017 and January 2018 by collecting photographic data from the area near the border and the Green Line. Linguistic traces collected include: fixed public and private signs, ephemeral signs (e.g. stickers, posters) and graffiti. The data for this study includes more than 1000 photos. Findings indicate that traditional discourses of separation and conflict are projected by the exclusion of the language of ‘the other’ from the majority of signs found in the area. Within the Green Line however new ideologies of unification and peace are projected by official signs produced by the UN and the EU. Interestingly, ephemeral signs produced by subcultural groups from both ethnic communities project ideologies of either unification or division. Findings from this study will help inform language policies and practices at this crucial time of peace negotiations.
Veronika Thir, University of Vienna Phonological intelligibility in English as a lingua franca: a quantitative perspective English as a lingua franca (ELF) users come from a vast range of different linguacultural backgrounds and so exhibit a particularly high level of diversity with regard to their accents. Phonological intelligibility has thus concerned ELF researchers for quite some time now (e.g. Jenkins 2000, Deterding 2013), but most studies in this area have been based on qualitative analysis of relatively small data sets, which limits the generalizations that can be made to a larger population of ELF users. Furthermore, research on phonological intelligibility in ELF communication has often tended to focus on the importance of specific pronunciation features without making fully explicit the complementary role played by linguistic co-text and extra-linguistic context in the complex process of spoken word recognition. This paper seeks to address both these relatively neglected areas of ELF research by reporting on a quantitative study on the effect of co-textual and contextual cues on the intelligibility of accented English to listeners from various L1 backgrounds. Each listener was presented with target words in English spoken with an Austrian accent under four different conditions: (1) in isolation (2) embedded in semantically ‘neutral’ syntactic cotext, (3) embedded in semantically meaningful syntactic co-text and (4) embedded in syntactic co-text, with a certain situational context in addition. Intelligibility was measured by the number of target words correctly transcribed by the listeners. The paper discusses the statistical effect of the various conditions on the ability of listeners to recognize the target words correctly and aims to shed light on the role of co-text and context for phonological intelligibility in ELF communication from a quantitative perspective. References Deterding,D. (2013). Misunderstandings in English as a Lingua Franca. Berlin:de Gruyter Mouton. Jenkins,J. (2000). The phonology of English as an international language. Oxford:OUP.
Naomi Tokumasu, University of Tokyo Language Maintenance and Shift in the Transnational Peruvian Nikkei Community: Focusing on the Relationship between Language and Identity This paper reports on some preliminary findings from a sociolinguistic investigation of Spanish and Japanese language maintenance among the transnational Peruvian Nikkei population, i.e. residents of Peru and Japan, in relation with the ethnic and cultural identity. The proposed methodology includes a quantitative analysis that investigates which social factors most strongly contribute to the Japanese and Spanish oral language abilities. The observed social variables are age, generation, gender, identity, education, mass media, language importance, language used at home and work and contact with community members in the country of residence, as well as with relatives and friends in their distant homeland. In addition, a qualitative analysis examines the narrative regarding the identity construction around the categories of Peruvian-ness, Japanese-ness, and Nikkei-ness. We argue that the strength of identification with these constructions varies according to their personal experiences and believes, and that de degree of bilingualism fluctuates depending on how these three identities coexist. References Bourhis, R. Y., Giles, H. & Rosenthal, D. (1981). Notes on the construction of a “subjective vitality questionnaire” for ethnolinguistic groups. Journal of multilingual and multicultural development 2(2). 145-55. Holmes, J., Roberts, M., Vertvaki, M., & ‘Aipolo, ‘A. (1993). Language maintenance and shift in three New Zealand speech communities. Applied linguistics 14(1). 1-24. and, (2012). Japoñolés: El Uso del Japonés, Español e Inglés en la Comunidad Peruano Japonesa. Fulbright Grantee Projects. Article. Submission 1. h p://digitalcommons.lin eld.edu/fulbright/1 Sarup, M., & Raja, T. (2005). Identity, culture and the postmodern world. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Sueyoshi, A. (2011). Nikkei Peruvian Children between Peru and Japan: Developing a Dual Frame of Reference. In The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, 5 (12): 45-59.
Stanislav Tomčík, Universität Leipzig Lower Sorbian in the Internet: Digital Vitality of a Dying Language As Lower Sorbian ceases to exist as a vernacular, its internet presence seems to be expanding. There is quite a number of web pages in Lower Sorbian and on social media – especially Facebook – it is used both by Sorbian institutions and for (semi-)private communication. Yet the nature of its use could be described as restricted. Basically all users of Lower Sorbian using social media have learned it as a L2 and their command of the language can therefore be very diverse, reaching from basic knowledge to near native speakers. The lower command of the language might be the reason for language change tendencies and ungrammatical constructions observed by Kaulfürst (2015: 180-181). Furthermore, the use of Lower Sorbian oscillates between communicative and symbolic role, similarly described by Wölkowa (2015) for the case of Upper Sorbian. My paper describes both the language itself and the contexts of its use and tries to answer the question how vital Lower Sorbian is. References Kaulfürst, Fabian (2015): Nowe rěcne rumy a kak se w nich powěda. Górno- a dolnoserbšćina we facebooku. In: Słowjanske spisowne rěče a medije. Budyšin, 174-182. Wölkowa, Sonja (2015): Hornjoserbšćina w interneće mjez symboliskej a komunikatiwnej funkciju. In: Słowjanske spisowne rěče a medije. Budyšin, 15-23.
İrfan TOSUNCUOĞLU, Karabuk University Effect of billingualism on the societies
Language plays an important role in the development of society and development of people. The world is getting smaller and smaller by means of communication and language all the more. The issue of migration from rural areas to big cities or to other countries has been causing big problems nowadays. Hundreds, thousand, millions of refugees try to live in the other countries, such as, Europa and Turkey-more than three million Syrian people in Turkey. When a person wants to learn another a culture, he or she should learn its language. In this case, the phenomenon of bilingualism emerges. Bilingualism is the ability to speak and use two languages. Actually, people become bilingual for different reasons such as migration because of the political situation in their country, the social or economic situation, as well as cultural and educational factors. As is known, bilingualism is a feature of multi-cultural societies. It effects the people of the countries, because language is included in everyday life of the nations. Shortly speaking, by means of bilingual knowledge it can be produced literal works in the literature of the two language. In this study it is tried to shed light on the issue of bilingualism.
John Trumper, Marta Maddalon, University of Calabria Forming Identity Most modern living revolves around IDENTITY. As one identificatory distinctive feature, language sometimes assumes a role difficult to define and comment on. Alongside the general idea that it is both an aspect of culture and its vehicle, other ideological side issues may develop, e.g. language as a differentiating function, even a defining part, of the desire for complete political autonomy. Real exceptions are belied at the ideological level. Aspects analysed regard (a) different values given geographical dialects according to the cultural and socio-political values assigned them, (b) different attitudes towards historical minorities (in Italy Arbëreshë, ‘Grecanici’, German-speaking Groups), depending on their sense of belonging to a particular ethnic group, (c) the lack of a common Italian national identity with respect to a strong identity model, which is regional or local, and which Italian certainly does not have. When dealing with the identity concept in terms of language use and theories, specific models must be identified in each separate case considered in its own right. The very concepts ‘language’, ‘dialect’, ‘minority language’, change definitions and functions in accordance with particular situations. Usually, dialects and minority languages are considered subordinate vis-à-vis ‘national language’; sometimes roles are reversed. This happens when you attribute a code a value that is not purely denotative but belongs to the connotative sphere. In similar cases dialects and minority languages, even ‘special languages’, live a new life not on the socio-historical plain but enter into a new and different cultural, artistic domain. Case studies. References Trumper J., Maddalon M. Standard and Identity: Two Case Studies. In Creativity and Innovation in Language Education. Argondizzo C. (ed.): Peter Lang 2012, Linguistic Insight 154, pp. 63-82. Trumper John B. et al. Ammasca, with CD and music. Reggio Calabria, Città del Sole 2012.
Villy Tsakona, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Rania Karachaliou, Argiris Archakis, University of Patras, Dimitris Serafis, Panteion University & University of Neuchâtel Liquid racism in a Greek anti-racist campaign Liquid racism is a highly ambivalent form of racism encouraged and promoted mostly in the mass media and usually hard to detect as it involves multiple interpretations, some of which may not be assessed as racist. Its emergence is related to the avoidance of overtly racist discourse, hence it may occur despite the speaker’s lack of racist intent (Weaver 2016). Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis (e.g. Fairclough 2010) and on Bamberg’s model of narrative positioning (2004), the present study investigates how liquid racism emerges in the five narrative clips of the anti-racist campaign #StopMindBorders launched by the Greek branch of the International Organization of Migration in 2017. The clips officially aim to denounce hate speech and expose and challenge widespread stereotypes concerning immigrants. The above-mentioned theoretical and analytical tools allow us to account for a striking power imbalance in the representation of majority and immigrant characters: the former are represented as employing hate speech and aggression against the latter who are in turn portrayed as silent recipients enduring verbal abuse without reacting. Furthermore, the incidents of verbal aggression are downgraded in the narrative clips and represented as not lasting long, provided that immigrants become fully integrated in the host societies. We therefore argue that, while the anti-racist campaign aims at problematizing hate speech and racism among Greeks, it tacitly reproduces assimilationist discourse, thus underpinning dominant discriminatory views. In this sense, the narrative clips examined seem to be examples of liquid racism, as they engender both racist and non-racist interpretations. References Bamberg, M. 2004. Form and functions of ‘slut-bashing’ in male identity construction in 15-year-olds. Human Development 47: 331–353. Fairclough, N. 2010. Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. London: Routledge, 2nd Edition. Weaver, S. 2016. The Rhetoric of Racist Humor. London: Routledge.
Stavroula Tsiplakou, Open University of Cyprus Linguistic Landscapes, Liminality, Superdiversity: Texts from a Divided City Linguistic landscapes attract considerable research interest, not least because of the rich semiotic import of the texts involved, which stems from their relation to the dynamics of (urban) space and from their function as linguistic shapers of (particular socioculturally embedded representations of) space, jointly with other semiotic resources such as architecture, urban construction, visible and covert aspects of human geographies, etc. This paper is a first attempt to chart aspects of the urban linguistic landscape of Nicosia, the capital of the Republic of Cyprus and Europe’s last divided city. The focus is on texts collected from the inner-city areas of Phaneromeni and Taht-el-kale, which are adjacent to the ‘dead zone’, the UN buffer zone dividing the northern and the southern part of the city; these are areas that display dereliction but also recent attempts at gentrification; texts include political slogans, advertisements for rallies or local festivals, graffiti, posters etc., which feature (i) aspects of the Cypriot Greek dialect, a variety of Greek that is still by-and-large banned from the public domain given the diglossia between Cypriot and Standard Greek (Hadjioannou et al. 2011), a particularly interesting aspect being the way in which the absence of a standardized writing system for the dialect is capitalized on for indexical purposes; (ii) dense code-mixing between Standard Greek, Cypriot Greek and English; (iii) purposefully ungrammatical structures; (iv) overt subversions of formal writing conventions at large. In terms of methodology, a micro-level linguistic analysis of individual texts and of particular instances of linguistic and orthographic bricolage or translanguaging/superdiversity is proffered (cf. Blommaert 2013, Pennycook 2010) and an attempt is made to explore their import as indexicals of ideologies constructing innercity spaces as settings for specifically politicized, counter-normative facets of ‘glocal’ identities. References Blommaert, J. (2013) Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes. Chronicles of Complexity. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Hadjioannou, X., S. Tsiplakou & M. Kappler (2011) Language policy and language planning in Cyprus. Current Issues in Language Planning, 1-67. P ennycook, A. (2010) Spatial N arrations: G raffscapes and C ity Souls. In A. Jaworski and C . Thurlow (eds) Sem iotic L andscapes: L anguage, Im age, Space, 137- 151. London: C ontinuum .
Martha Tsutsui Billins, SOAS University of London Amami as a Local Practice in Amami Oshima This paper will examine how speakers on Setouchi, Amami Oshima utilize their heritage language as a local practice to maintain their connection to their heritage culture. Southern Amami-Oshima is an endangered Japonic Ryukyuan language spoken on the Amami Islands within a diglossic context, where Japanese is the dominant language. Today, only very elderly community members still speak the islands’ heritage language, Southern Amami-Oshima. This paper will draw on the researcher’s fieldwork in Setouchi, Amami Oshima, working with Southern Amami speakers. The aim of this paper is to explore how speakers whose language is undergoing stylistic shrinkage utilize and maintain the language abilities they possess despite their diminished abilities to use Amami in its full capacity. Although linguists have noted that stylistic shrinkage occurs in communities within language shift contexts, there has been little research on this phenomenon, and what happens to languages’ pragmatic and discourse systems as they undergo this stylistic shrinkage is still unclear as no detailed case studies have been conducted on the subject. There is ample literature on diglossia, however studies on how Ryukyuan language communities (e.g. Amami) use their languages in their daily lives are uncommon, with only the best examples (stereotypes) used as references for conclusions drawn and as examples. In the Amami context, Amami speakers now only use their language in a limited range of registers, such as casually within the home, and particularly fixed registers (i.e. speeches, rituals, etc.). This paper will demonstrate how languages are used by their communities as they undergo attrition at the expense of a more dominant language (Japanese).
Émilie Urbain, Carleton University, Sandrine Tailleur, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi Native Voices in Canadian French Newspapers (1870-1920): Hearing the Inaudible In this paper, we present the initial results of a project investigating discourse regarding First Nations produced in key discursive spaces in Acadie and Quebec, the two main French-speaking areas of Canada. While studying the representation of First Nations and their speech in newspapers, we aim to understand how this “othering discourse” judges not only language practices but also speakers and their value systems. The period 18701920 is a crucial one in the history of relations between French-speaking Canadians and Native people. On a political level, this era corresponds to openly colonialist and discriminatory policies aiming to assimilate First Nations governments, languages and cultures (Backhouse 2001). Through a qualitative and critical discourse analysis of three Quebec French and two Acadian French newspapers, our goal is to study language ideologies underlying the (non)representation of Native voices (understood, following Hymes 1996: 64, as the “freedom to have one’s voice heard, and freedom to develop a voice worth hearing”). Which traces of these voices can we find? What is said about them, in what interest? Having access to public discourse (as producers or as discourse topics) is in itself a token of power relations between social groups, which renders certain groups and voices invisible and inaudible (Langer & Havinga 2016; Anderson and Robertson 2001). It is these forgotten voices that we aim to recover. References Backhouse, Constance (2001). Colour-coded. A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900-1950. Toronto, Toronto University Press. Cronlund Anderson, Mark et Carmen Robertson (2001). Seeing Red. A History of Natives in Canadian Newspapers. Winnipeg, University of Manitoba Press. Hymes, Dell (1996). Ethnography, linguistics, narrative inequality: Toward an understanding of voice. London and Bristol, Taylor & Francis (Critical perspectives on literacy and education). Langers Nils et Anna Havinga (2016). Invisible Languages in the Nineteenth Century. Historical Sociolinguistics, 2. Bern: Peter Lang.
Daina Urbonaitė, Research Institute of the Lithuanian Language Language ideology in L1 school textbooks in Lithuania and Denmark This presentation is a part of the ph.d. project, which topic is language notion and ideology in the L1 school textbooks. In this context, language education policy (LEP) plays an important role. As Shohamy points, LEP is a powerful tool imposing language behaviour on pupils, for whom participating in the system is compulsory, determining criteria for language correctness and obliging people to adopt certain ways of speaking and writing (Shohamy 2006: 77). In the presentation, I argue that standard language ideology and national ideology has a significant impact on the Lithuanian LEP, i.e. teaching of the L1. The romantic notion of language, seen as the preserver of the national identity, tightly connected to the idea of national idealism (Joseph 2004), is strongly expressed in the Lithuanian LEP. In comparison, analysis of the Danish LEP shows, that national ideology is not expressed through L1 education policy, and language variation is introduced in LEP documents. Moreover, the aim of Lithuanian L1 teaching is formulated as teaching of the correct standard norm of the Lithuanian language, while importance of teaching the communicative function of language is less significant. On the other hand, the Danish LEP regards teaching of the communicative language function together with the abilities of critical-analytical thinking as the most important aim of L1 education. How is the LEP implemented in teaching material, namely textbooks of L1 in Lithuania and Denmark? What language ideologies are expressed in the L1 textbooks, which form the pupils’ notion of language? These questions, connecting language ideologies and language education policy, will be considered in this presentation. References Shohamy, E. 2006. Language Policy. Hidden agendas and new approaches. London: Routledge. Joseph, J. E. 2004. Language and identity: national, ethnic, religious. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Melanie Uth, Universität zu Köln, Élodie Blestel, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Santiago Sánchez Moreano, SEDYL-LABEX EFL, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Language Contact and labialization of final nasals in Spanish In this talk, we intend to investigate the relevance of language contact for the labialization of final nasals in Spanish by comparing three sets of speech corpora of Mexican, Columbian, and Paraguayan Spanish. In Yucatecan Spanish (Mexico), instead of saying Quiero comer pan ('I want to eat bread'), many speakers say Quiero comer pam. Yucatecan Spanish speakers are renowned for this feature to the degree that it is even used for merchandising purposes by local souvenir shops: ¡Vaya biem!, 'Take care!' (Lope Blanch 1987, Pfeiler 1992, Michnowicz 2008). Since this phenomenon is largely unknown in other Spanish-speaking regions, it is often linked to the influence of the contact language Yucatec Maya (Alvar 1969, Lope Blanch 1987). However, similar pronunciation habits have casually been reported with respect to both Paraguay (De Granda 1982) and Colombia (Mora Monroy 1996). By empirically comparing labialization in the above-mentioned three sets of corpora on the same methodological basis, we aim to see to what extent this phenomenon is similar in the three regions in terms of frequency, phonetic environment, and social stratification. References Alvar, Manuel. 1969. Nuevas notas sobre el español de Yucatán. Iberoromania 1: 159189. Granda, Germán de. 1982. Observaciones sobre la fonética del español en el Paraguay. Anuario de letras 20: 145-194. Lope Blanch, Juan M. 1987. Estudios sobre el español de Yucatán. Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma de México. Michnowicz, Jim. 2008. Final nasal variation in Merida, Yucatán. Spanish in Context 5: 278-303. Mora Monroy, Siervo. 1996. “Dialectos del español de Colombia. Caracterización léxica de los sub dialectos andino-sureño y caucano-valluno.” Thesaurus : boletín del Instituto Caro y Cuervo 51 (1):1–26. Pfeiler, Barbara. 1992. Así som, lo de yucatán. Memorias del primer congreso internacional de mayistas, 110-122. San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico.
Tímea Vakula, Judit Bóna, Eötvös Loránd University Characteristics of storytelling in preschool- and schoolchildren depending on family environment The linguistic development of children is largely determined by the home environment, education of the mother/caretaker, and their language use (Neuberger 2008; FekonjaPeklaj 2010). In this presentation, it is examined how the family background affects the storytelling of children. Spontaneous story-telling from a series of images were analysed in fifty 5-6 year-old preschoolers and fifty 8-year-old schoolchildren. They come from two types of family background: (1) one group consisted of children of mothers with higher education (university or above), (2) the other group consisted of children of mothers with lower education (secondary or below). Qualitative and quantitative analyses were carried out on the speech samples. The following metrics were used: number of words, number of content units, type-token ratio, grammatical structure, and coherence. Children’s self-sufficiency was analysed, too. The preliminary results show that children of mothers with higher education tell longer and more complex stories, but there are other factors which influence the success of storytelling (for example the attention paid on the child in the family, or the individual characteristics of the child). Older children have better results based on the quantifiable indicators, but there are pre-schoolers with similar or better results than schoolchildren. Our results confirm the necessity of developing speech production both in kindergarten and in school. References Fekonja‐Peklaj, U., Marjanovič‐Umek, L., & Kranjc, S. (2010). Children’s storytelling: The effect of preschool and family environment. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 18(1), 55-73. Neuberger, T. 2008. A szókincs fejlődése óvodáskorban. Anyanyelv-pedagógia 2008/3-4. http://www.anyp.hu/cikkek.php?id=86
Silvie Válková, Jana Kořínková, Palacký University Olomouc Compliments and evaluative statements in online comments on music The aim of this paper is to present the results of our research into the politeness strategy of complimenting in English on the Internet. Compliments, according to Leech (2014: 186) belong to politeness-sensitive speech events. They have been widely studied in faceto-face interaction for decades, with a relatively new tendency emerging: the occurrence of compliments and compliment responses in digital contexts (Placencia and Lower, 2016). Although there is no obvious formula for expressing compliments, research shows that there seems to be a limited number of patterns used for their construction (Válková, 2012). On the corpus of compliments of online comments on music (modern and classical), we would like to show whether the variety of forms would conform to the types presented in the theoretical part (based on currently available research material) and whether there are any essential differences in the characteristic lexical and syntactic repertoire with respect to the selected music genres. References Leech, G. (2014) The Pragmatics of Politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Placencia, M.E. – Lower, A. (2016) Compliments and compliment responses. In Hoffmann, CH.R. – Bublitz, W. (eds.) Pragmatics of Social Media, 633-660. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter. Válková S. (2012) Regulating Discourse: Compliments and Discourse Signposts (English-Czech Interface). Saarbrücken: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing.
Margaretha van Dam, SIL International Investigation of role of language attitude for identity formation of a Roma group in Southern Romania In Romania, Roma people form a recognized minority, their language is recognized as a minority language. Many Roma people have an ambivalent relationship with their language. Sometimes they are proud of their language, sometimes they are ashamed of it, sometimes this neglect it. The interesting thing however is that if people say to be proud of their language, these people do not necessarily use Romani in daily life. I have identified four attitudes of people to their language: Language pride: people have strong emotional feelings about their language and are proud about their language and use it. Language as a symbol: The language is being studied and preserved but not used in every day conversations. People have strong emotional feelings about their language. Indifference: people draw from the repertoire that is most convenient for them at that moment, without being emotionally drawn to one of the two. Shame: avoidence of language in public sphere. In studying language attitude, I willl use the mentalist view. The mentalist view divides this concept into three sub concepts: feelings, beliefs and behaviour (see Coronel-Molina, 2009:9). According to Romaine (p.317, as cited by Coronel-Molina, p.7) “it is very important not to confuse attitude with behavior.” A person may say that he/she thinks that something is a good thing, but his/her behaviour does not necessarily match this. For the study of identity I will use the sociocultural linguistic framework of Bucholtz and Hall (2005, 2010). They see identity as an 'emergent' product (Bucholtz and Hall 2010:19), emerging in society through language. References Bucholtz, M., Hall, K. (2005) Identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse studies, 7 (4-5), 585-614. Bucholtz, M., Hall, K. (2010) Locating identity in language. In: Llamas, C. and Watt. D. eds. Language and identities. Edingburgh University Press Ltd. Coronel-Molina, S. M., 2009. Definitions and critical literature review of language attitude, language choice and language shift: Samples of language attitude surveys. Bloomington: Indiana University.
Marten van der Meulen, Liz Tollenaar, Radboud University Nijmegen The pronunciation of GIF: Authority and argumentation in online prescriptivism 'It's pronounced "JIF", not "GIF"'. With this five-word speech, Steve Wilhite, inventor of the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF), accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 17th Annual Webbys in 2013. Wilhite's statement caused an eruption of discussion about this usage item, in the form of numerous newspaper articles, YouTube videos, subreddits and other online content. These commentaries provide an interesting case study for the way modern usage items are discussed. Moreover, they present linguists with the opportunity to study a unique prescriptive argument: the authority of the inventor of a word. How does this argument affect the advice that is given? And more generally, what kind of arguments are used in this debate, and to what advice to they lead? In order to answer these questions, we collected 1100 online utterances about this usage item from the period 2013-2017. In these, we annotated both the advice given ([gɪf], [dʒif], or both acceptable) and the argument used, building upon the annotation schema developed in Van der Meulen (2017). Our research shows that although proponents of [dʒif] often use Wilhite's authority as a decisive argument, overall preference still seems to be for [gɪf]. Additionally, the type and number of arguments used in this particular case are different from traditional usage advice. For example, reasoning is often based on fairly sophisticated linguistic arguments, such as frequency and analogy. Finally, we argue that the study of modern usage problems can give us a new understanding of the workings of prescriptivism in the 21st century. References Van der Meulen, M. (2017). “Changing values in 20th century prescriptivism in the Netherlands” Presentation given at 2017 Conference on Prescriptivism, Park City (Utah), 21-23 June 2017
Elena Vedernikova, Eötvös Loránd University Collective identity of Mari This paper presents the results of an investigation into the collective identity of the Mari (a Finno-Ugric minority of Russia) in the Mari El Republic, based on the Sign Theory of Identity (Ehala 2007; 2015) focusing on the phenomenon of the collective identity as a social sign. The given research is based on the results of qualitative and quantitative analysis of data collected within a framework of the research on ethnolinguistic vitality of Mari (2012-2015, University of Tartu, Estonia). The analysis revealed that modern Maris have ethnic Mari and ethnic Russian national identities. The emergence of the Russian ethnic national identity is caused by a strengthening of a civic national identity due to the Russian language changing from a signal value to a core value. Absence of a clear distinction between these two identities, and a strong emotional attachment to the Russian language facilitate the process. A decrease in the use of the Mari language has an erosive effect on Mari ethnic identity. The results indicate that Mari collective identity is becoming gradually Russian-oriented (Vedernikova, forthcoming). References Ehala, Martin (2007) Etnolingvistilise arengu ökoloogia: teesid. Akadeemia 3: 511-553. Ehala, Martin (2015) Blurring of collective identities in the post-Soviet space. Sociolinguistic Studies 9: 173-190. Vedernikova, Elena (2017, still forthcoming) Collective identity of Mari. Journal de la Société Finno-Ougrienne (Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Aikakauskirja): 96
Anna Verschik, Helin Kask, Tallinn University English-Estonian code copying in different genres of CMC: comparative perspective So far, the research on English-Estonian language contacts has been focusing on what gets copied (in the terms of Johanson’s code-copying framework) and what factors condition different degrees of copying (global, corresponds to borrowing; selective, corresponds to structural change; mixed, combination thereof). The paper looks at language contacts from a different angle and investigates whether and how genre of computer-mediated communication (CMC) affects copying. We analyze code-copying in Estonian blogs (275,263 words), Facebook conversations (22,601 words) and vlogs (3 hours) and look whether attributes such as synchronous/asynchronous, monologic/dialogic character, limited/unlimited space influence copying. The data suggests that vlog has the highest number of copies, as it is more spontaneous and the ways to edit it is more limited. Blogs and Facebook conversations can be easily edited and space is unlimited. Whatever the genre is, global copies prevail everywhere and selective copies are more characteristic of vlogs. We will provide an explanation for the prevalence of global copies and varying share of selective/mixed copies. Apparently, there is a continuum of implicit norms, according to which a certain genre should look like more or less multilingual. References Johanson, Lars 2002. Contact-induced change in a code-copying framework. – Language change: The interplay of internal, external and extra-linguistic factors. Eds. M. C. Jones, E. Esch. (Contributions to the Sociology of Language, 86.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp 285–313. Kask, Helin. 2016. English-Estonian copying in Estonian blogs. Philologia Estonica Tallinnensis 1, 80-101. Verschik, Anna and Kask, Helin. To appear. Estonian-English code alternation in fashion blogs: structure, norms and meaning. In Heiko Marten and Sanita Lazdina (eds.), Multiligualism in the Baltic States: Societal Discources, Language Policies and Contact Phenomena. Palgrave.
Mark Visonà, Georgetown University ‘That's exactly what happened to me!’: Differences in directness, speaker type, and illocutionary acts of reported speech in truthful and deceptive online hotel reviews This analysis replicates Hamilton’s (1998) coding methodology for reported speech in comparing how posters report speech in a corpus of truthful and deceptive negative online hotel reviews. This corpus comes from a computational study of deception detection by Ott et al. (2011; 2013) that collected actual reviews online and solicited fake or deceptive reviews using the tool Amazon Mechanical Turk. In my study, I coded truthful (N=400) and deceptive (N=400) reviews for reported speaker type, directness or indirectness, illocutionary act, narrative report of a speech act (Leech & Short, 1981), and the presence of quotation marks. The following excerpt represents an example of speech reported in a deceptive review: 1 When I went to complain at the front desk, they just said that sometimes the valets 2 get overwhelmed, and you have to exercise patience! In this example, a deceptive reviewer reports the speech of a hotel employee indirectly, a feature found significantly more often in deceptive reviews than in truthful reviews. Significant differences were also found in reported speaker type, with deceptive reviews reporting the speech of the reviewer (self) more frequently than in truthful reviews. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of several features reveals further differences between truthful and deceptive reviews, as in the use of quotation marks (present in 86% of direct reported speech tokens in deceptive reviews compared to only 58% of tokens in truthful reviews). I argue that these findings suggest that truthful reviews generally use more diverse ways to report speech, with truthful reported speech showing more variability in illocutionary act and speaker type. This study thus contributes to our understanding of how discourse analysis can provide insights on which new linguistic features to investigate in forensic linguistic research and why, further complementing previous and future computational approaches to deception detection.
Vuk Vukotić, Research Institute of the Lithuanian Language Can we compare language ideologies? A substantial number of publications has dealt with the question of language ideologies in public discourse (i.e. Blommaert 2011, Berthele 2008, Spitzmüller 2007) and have come to some quite similar points regarding the nature and origin of language ideologies in different societies. Yet, not much comparative research has been done in this field. This paper aims to create a theoretical model for comparative research of language ideologies in the public sphere. Based on a detailed analysis of relevant research, three aspects have been constructed for the theoretical model: (1) representation, which describes what group or individual is represented though language; (2) expertise, which describes what is considered “correct” and “incorrect” language in the discourse; (3) function, which describes the primary function of language. The model has been tested on two genres of internet discourse – an “expert article” (or an opinion article by a linguist or a similar language expert in a news portal) and online comments in forums and news portals – and compares them in three different societies: Lithuania, Norway and Serbia. The comparison is done in-between societies and genres. The strengths (the possibility to compare societal, political, gender-related factors that shape different aspects of language ideologies) and the shortcomings (difficulties with categorizing irony and creative use of semiotic tools) of the model are discussed. References Berthele, R. (2008). A nation is a territory with one culture and one language. The role of metaphorical folk models in language policy debates. Cognitive sociolinguistics: Language variation, cultural models, social systems, 301-332. Blommaert, J. (2011). The long language-ideological debate in Belgium. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 6(3), 241-256. Spitzmüller, J. (2007). Staking the claims of identity: Purism, linguistics and the media in post‐1990 Germany. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 11(2), 261-285.
Petar Vuković, University of Zagreb Linguistic landscape of Subotica Subotica is a multi-ethnic city in the north of Serbia and the most important centre of established Hungarian and contested Bunjevac/Croatian minority. According to the 2011 census, the city had a population of 97,910, with 32.66% Hungarians, 29.86% Serbs, 9.18% Croats and 8.74% Bunjevci. Serbian was the first language for 44.8% of inhabitants, Hungarian for 35.76%, Bunjevac for 4.46% and Croatian for 4.07%. Official languages of the city are Serbian, Hungarian and Croatian. Two things should be noted in connection with the linguistic situation and ethnic composition of Subotica. First, Serbian and Croatian are two mutually intelligible standard languages, but their differences are perceived as prominent and symbolically highly important. Second, Bunjevci, a South-Slavic ethnic group that arrived from Dalmatia in the 17th century, are a deeply divided community - half of them believe that Bunjevci are merely a subgroup of Croats and speak a Croatian dialect, while the other half claims to be of a distinct Bunjevac identity and language. The paper presents results of the two consecutive researches into linguistic landscape of Subotica, conducted in February 2011 and in January 2018. The earlier research identified a distinction between the official signs, which promoted all three official languages, and the private ones, characterized by a specific form of bilingualism with Hungarian and Serbian written in Latin script. The more recent research demonstrated that Serbian written in Cyrillic script and English were on the rise, that Croatian and Serbian written in Latin script were on the decline, and that Hungarian was stable. This reflects changes in both political situation and social attitudes in Subotica. References Ferdinand, Siarl and Flora Komlosi. 2017. The Use of Hungarian and Serbian in the City of Szabadka/Subotica: An Empirical Study. Hungarian Cultural Studies. e-Journal of the American Hungarian Educators Association, Vol. 10. Vuković, Petar. 2011. Jednojezičnost ili višejezičnost – slučaj bačkih Bunjevaca. In: Katarina Čeliković (ed.). Dani Balinta Vujkova. Zbornik radova sa znanstvenih skupova 2006.-2010., 29-43. Subotica: Hrvatska čitaonica.
Katharina von Elbwart, University of Duisburg-Essen “Once you’re south of Orlando, you’re not in Florida anymore.”- Mapping Perceptions and Language Attitudes in Florida This paper presents the findings of a study of how non-linguists view linguistic variation in Florida and follows the research paradigm of perceptual dialectology (e.g. Preston 1999). Recent work in the field has shifted focus from entire nations to individual states and thus allows for a more detailed picture of perceived dialect areas. While a few studies have investigated language perceptions in English-Spanish contact scenarios in the U.S. (e.g. Bucholtz et. al 2007), others have focused on the perceptions of Spanish varieties in Florida (e.g. Lynch & Carter 2013). This paper complements research on non-linguists’ beliefs about language in a linguistically (super)diverse setting. I will showcase how perceptions vary among different ethnic groups and whether cultural and linguistic diversity plays a crucial role in forming representations of linguistic landscapes among Floridian residents. 87 undergraduate students completed Preston’s draw-a-map-task to access perceptions of linguistic variation in Florida. Of these 87 maps, 84 were run and analyzed in ArcGIS. Results indicate that Florida is perceived as a trichotomy with three salient dialect areas. Perceptions among respondents of Hispanic origin vary compared to those of Anglo-Americans. Whereas the perceived quality of language spoken in all three areas differs, the use of quantifiers is frequently found in describing Spanish language influence in the south. Together, these results show that participants exhibit a stronger awareness of cultural and linguistic heterogeneity in settings of diversity as compared to monolingual contexts. References Bucholtz, M., Bermudez, N., Fung, V., Edwards, L., & Vargas, R. (2007). Hella nor Cal or totally so Cal? The Perceptual Dialectology of California. Journal of English Linguistics, 35 (4), 325-352. Lynch, A. & Carter, P.M. (2013). The Situation of Spanish in the United States: Representation and Perception. Universitat Pompeu-Fabra. Barcelona. February 26, 2013 Preston, D. (1999). Handbook of perceptual dialectology, Volume I. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Marija Vukšić, Lucija Šimičić, University of Zadar The perception of power negotiation in doctor-patient encounters The quality of medical service is constituted not only by the treatment but also by the communicative aspect of a medical encounter. Power differentials are construed and manifested in both, but we are particularly interested in the latter which is often seen as “the main ingredient in medical care” (Ong et al. 1995). The goal of the paper is to analyse the ways in which knowledge, authority and power are depicted, (re)produced, and evaluated on the basis of doctor-patient communication (Kuipers 1984). The overall aim of the study is to contribute to a broader discussion on the “structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power, and control” (Wodak, 2001:2) in institutional medical contexts. A critical discourse analysis of in-depth interviews with twenty patients from Zagreb (Croatia) allows us to reconstruct power negotiation strategies that resulted from face-to-face medical encounters on which they report. They were particularly useful in understanding our informants’ stance towards discursive practices that construct and promote power differentials in such settings. While much of earlier work on this topic was based on the conversation analysis of naturally-occurring data, our analysis departs from patients’ narrations about their own experience as not all of discursive practices are perceived as equally relevant by the patients. In the study we focus on those that are evaluated as meaningful by the patients themselves. References Kuipers, J. C. 1989. “Medical discourse” in anthropological context: views of language and power. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 3(2): 99-123. Ong, L. M. et al. 1995. Doctor-patient communication: a review of the literature. Social science & medicine 40(7): 903-918. Wodak, R. (2001). What CDA is about – a summary of its history, important concepts and its developments. In Wodak, R. & M. Meyer (eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE, 1-14.
Ute Walker, Massey University Diverse translingual voices: emergent identities and communities in a transnational online exchange This presentation compares the synchronous online interactions of three small groups of learners in an international bilingual collaboration between distance learners of German as a foreign language in New Zealand and students of English as an academic language in Germany. It aims to demonstrate how the participants drew on their dynamic linguistic and multimodal resources to adapt to an unpredictable and complex learning environment in creative ways and through divergent forms of ‘identity repertoires’ (Blommaert & Varis, 2013). The presentation’s key aims are to: - address the methodological/analytical challenge of sociolinguistic research of digitallyfacilitated discourse by drawing on/adapting the Community Indicator Framework (Galley et al.); - account for the complexities and social meanings of dynamic languaging practices by revealing the discursive construction of knowledge and identity as overlapping social processes in an emerging community of learners. Findings support the role of shared translingual repertoires for co-constructing identities across linguistic/cultural boundaries by learners as social agents adapting to new sociolinguistic spaces. Recognising bilingual forms of languaging as legitimate communicative practice may help break away from monolingual practices and national orientations in foreign language programmes and equip learners with enhanced sociolinguistic competencies in the face or new multilingual realities, without denying the reality of and desire for named languages in the consciousness of learners. References Blommaert, J, Varis, P (2013) Enough is enough: The heuristics of authenticity in superdiversity. In: J. Duarte & I. Gogolin (Eds.). Linguistic Superdiversity in Urban Areas: Research Approaches (pp.143–158). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Galley, R., Conole, G., & Alevizou, P. (2014). Community indicators: a framework for observing and supporting community activity on Cloudworks. Interactive Learning Environments, 22(3), 373-395.
Marion Weerning, University of Palermo The cityscape of Palermo: shop names and signs as indicators of sociological relationships Every day, a huge number of locals and tourists move across the centre of Palermo from Politeama Theatre to the Central Station, taking, always straight on, a large street called first Via Ruggiero Settimo and then Via Maqueda. Along these two kilometres, the elegance of the architecture and the shop windows decreases, and the typology, addressees and names of the shops change. Shop signs contribute to shaping the urban linguistic landscape; their function lies in orienting those who – locals or tourists – are in front of the store. A shop name may be a family name (Bulgari, a guarantee of good jewels all over the world, or Soldani, a synonym for good shoes in Palermo since 1911), a first name (Foto Gino), an abbreviation (H&M), a geographic name (Africa Market) or a fantasy name referring in some way to the goods on offer (Ke palle’s Sicilian rice balls). Its root may be Italian like the local mother tongue, English or French as attractive and prestige-conveying languages, one of the languages of the increasing community of immigrants living in the historical neighbourhoods to the right and left of Via Maqueda, or hybrid, thus utilising more than one language. This contribution systematically analyses all shop names and signs in the area described above in order to find out their relationships to the sociological backgrounds in which the stores are embedded. References Landry, R. and Bourhis, R. Y. (1997). Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality: An empirical study. In: Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16(1), pp. 23-49. Ross, N. (1997). Signs of international English. In: English Today, 2(13), pp. 29-33. Shohamy, E. and Gorter, D. (eds.) (2009): Linguistic Landscape. Expanding the Scenery Edited. New York/London.
Csilla Weninger, Nanyang Technological University, Tamás Kiss, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University Viewers interpreting visuals: An empirical investigation Multimodality is a thriving field of academic study, subsuming a diverse set of interests in how the multimodal nature of human communication is situated, theoretically and empirically, in relation to social and cultural practices. Within this diverse field, the bulk of theoretical and empirical, broadly sociolinguistic research has centered on the development and application of frameworks for the systematic analysis of multimodal signs, particularly but not exclusively within a systemic-functional orientation (e.g., Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006; O’Halloran, 2004). Within this prolific scholarship into multimodal signs or sign ensembles, studies that have investigated readers’ or viewers’ semiotic engagement with signs remain small in number. This presentation reports on an empirical investigation into the (written) interpretive responses of adolescents when viewing an image prompt. The task involved a photo from an EFL textbook that showed a group of females taking part in the Hindu Holi celebration. 147 students from Singapore and Hungary were asked the simple question, What do you think of when you see this image? since the goal of the project was to capture the process of interpretation as unguided association. Results were analyzed with reference to Peirce’s tripartite distinction between icon, index and symbol as types of sign. Specifically, students’ responses give cues as to whether they interpreted the picture as an icon, and index or a symbol. The study’s significance lies in further problematizing the difficulty in describing images as composed of discrete and describable signs (cf. Machin, 2009) while also pointing, through commonalities in students’ responses, to the role of systematicity in image analysis and interpretation. References Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images: The grammar of visual design. (Second edition). London: Routledge. Machin, D. (2009). Multimodality and theories of the visual. In C. Jewitt (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis (pp. 181-190). Abingdon: Routledge. O’Halloran, K.L. (Ed). (2004). Multimodal Discourse Analysis. London & New York: Continuum.
Gustav Westberg, Södertörn University, Henning Årman, Stockholm University “We are never cold. To shiver is to show weakness.” - The multisemiotics of neo-Nazi activism in Sweden In Sweden, as elsewhere, far right political movements are gaining momentum. This is semiotically observable in the presence of neo-Nazi activism in public spaces. In this political landscape the limits of freedom of expression has become heavily debated as regards what semiotic practices should be regarded as hate speech. This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the semiotic practices of neo-Nazi ideology and how these are negotiated and regulated by on the one hand neoNazi organisations, and on the other by Swedish authorities. The primary data consists of an influential handbook published by “The Nordic Resistance Movement” (NRM) and a notice from the Swedish police, directed explicitly to NRM-activists. The handbook regulates how neo-Nazi activists should embody the ideology in their clothing, speech and posture. The police notice provides a list of semiotic practices that activist should refrain from in order to avoid being arrested for hate speech. Drawing on multimodal critical discourse analysis (Machin & van Leeuwen, 2016) and by use of the concept of provenance (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001) we discuss how the neo-Nazi organisations and the authorities focus on different historical trajectories of meaning making. We argue that a critical preoccupation with the semiotics of historical Nazism can obfuscate an analysis of present-day political developments. We believe that an analysis with a semiotic focus can add important perspectives to a broader debate on how contemporary society understands, and reacts to the growth of far-right movements like NRM. References Kress, G. R., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse : the modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Arnold. Machin, D., & van Leeuwen, T. (2016). Multimodality, politics and ideology. Journal of Language and Politics, 15, 243–258.
Michael Westphal, University of Münster Tag questions in different varieties of English and text types: A pragmatic perspective on corpus-based sociolinguistics Pragmatic phenomena, such as speech acts or discourse markers, are underresearched in sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics, which have focused on phonetic and grammatical variables, respectively. Furthermore, context – a fundamental concept of pragmatics – is not addressed in earnest detail in both branches: sociolinguistic interviews are artificial speech situations and operationalize situational variation according to attention payed to speech. Although corpora with diverse text types, such as the International Corpus of English (ICE), have the potential to investigate linguistic variation across different communicative situations, most ICE-based studies either pool text types together or just focus on face-to-face conversations. The pragmatic perspective of this paper aims to widen the canon of linguistic variables and carefully considers the notion of context by including different text types. This paper illustrates the potentials of such a pragmatic perspective by investigating tag questions (TQs) in three varieties of English (Trinidadian, Philippine, and Nigerian English), using the respective ICE corpora. I investigate both variant and invariant TQs in these varieties and across four text types: face-to-face conversations, phonecalls, classroom lessons, and legal cross-examinations. The analysis shows that all three varieties prefer invariant to variant TQs in all text types. There are certain varietyexclusive invariant TQ forms (e.g. Tagalog tags in Philippine English), but the majority of TQ forms (e.g. right, you know, eh, or OK), are shared by all three varieties. Text type influences the overall frequency of TQs, the distribution of forms, and the pragmatic function in similar ways across the respective varieties. The pragmatic perspective has the strength to pinpoint similarities and differences across language varieties more clearly by considering the communicative needs of speakers in different situations. It also highlights the potentials of small corpora that include spoken texts and have a diverse design in contrast to large written online corpora.
Guyanne Wilson, Ruhr University Indexing social class through choral singing: A look at Trinidad In work on language use in pop singing, two broad tendencies can be identified: Use of linguistic variables which initially are associated with specific national/ regional varieties, but eventually become enregistered as features of pop singing (Trudgill 1983, Simpson 1999) Intentional rejection of the aforementioned variables in favour of features that reinforce singers’ membership in a specific speech community (Beal 2009) Trinidadian choristers use features associated British English to demonstrate that their proficiency in the art form (Wilson 2014). However, choral singing in Trinidad is an elite activity, and variables the singers draw upon go beyond regional dialectal and stylistic associations to index other macrosocial categories. This paper explores how singers index membership in Trinidad’s middle class and distance themselves from the working class through the linguistic variables they employ. Data was collected via observations of choir rehearsals, and chorister and conductor interviews. Analysis involved examination of variables as they were produced in sung contexts and as read from a word list. Metapragmatic discussions of pronunciations— as corrections in rehearsals or discussions in interviews— were also studied. The results show how indexical associations are created and specific sociolinguistic variables (e.g. consonant clusters, LOT) become enregistered and also how the indexical fields of sociolinguistic variables are expanded. References Beal, J. 2009. “You’re not from New York City, You’re from Rotherdam: Dialect and Identity in British Indie Music.” Journal of English Linguistics 37: 223-241. Simpson,P. 1999. “Language, culture and identity: With (another) look at accents in pop and rock singing.” Multilingua 18.4: 343-367. Trudgill, P. 1983. “Acts of Conflicting Identity: The sociolinguistics of British pop-song pronunciation.” On Dialect. Ed. Peter Trudgill. Oxford: Basil Blackwell pp. 141-160. Wilson, G. 2014. The Sociolinguistics of Singing. Muenster: Monsenstein und Vannerdat.
Katarzyna I. Wojtylak, James Cook University Counting practices in Northwest Amazonia as an example of language contact A fundamental question in studying the interconnectedness of the world's languages is what grammatical categories are most and least likely to be borrowed in varying situations of contact (Aikhenvald 2002). The Lowland Amazon is an area of extreme linguistic diversity, where geographic proximity and language contact has resulted in unprecedented diffusion of patterns and forms. This paper focuses on the CaquetáPutumayo river basin in the Northwest Amazon, a putative linguistic area with a high number of unrelated groups sharing linguistic and cultural traits (Echeverri 1997). The languages of the Caquetá and Putumayo river basins (Northwest Amazonia) belong to a number of unrelated families (including Bora, Witotoan, Arawak, and one language isolate), and share a daunting number of linguistic features, including numeral systems (Epps et al. 2012). Why so, and what are their features? Based on an analysis of the lexical category of numbers, this paper seeks to uncover the patterns of contact-induced change between the extant languages and their speakers in the Caquetá and Putumayo river basins. References Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2002. Language contact in Amazonia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Echeverri, Juan Alvaro. 1997. "The people of the center of the world. A study in culture, history and orality in the Colombian Amazon." PhD dissertation, New School for Social Research. Epps, Patience , Claire Bowern, Cynthia A Hansen, Jane H Hill, and Jason Zentz. 2012. "On numeral complexity in hunter-gatherer languages." Linguistic Typology 16:41–1
Johannes Woschitz, University of Edinburgh, Emre Yağlı, Hacettepe University The Meaning Change of hayır in the Turkish Constitutional Referendum 2017 Hayır is an Arabic loanword that was borrowed into Turkish between the 8th and 10th century in the context of Turkic tribes converting to Islam. What makes the word unique is that it means both ‘good’ and ‘no’, and both meanings have acquired different indexical meanings over the last century. Hayır as in ‘good’ has predominantly acquired religious indexical meaning. In the course of Neo-Ottoman endeavours of the AKP, it acquired additional politicized indexical meaning. Hayır as in ‘no’, on the other hand, remained neutral, until relatively recently. In the 2017 Turkish constitutional referendum, the social sphere exhibited a sharp contrast between two options: Evet (yes) for increasing the power of the presidency and the AKP, and hayır (no) for sustaining the competency of the parliamentary system. This led to an odd situation where a pro-democratic vote and a diametral Neo-Ottoman ideology were expressed with the same word hayır. No-voters soon began to take up this homonymy to contest the regime. By entering the NeoOttoman indexical meaning of ‘good’ into a dialogue with the second referential meaning ‘no’, they managed to create new indexical meaning that directly opposes NeoOttomanism. To make sense of the mechanism behind this meaning change, we apply Silverstein’s theory of indexicality, specifically his (2003) framework of indexical orders. We put forward the idea that when investigating lexical meaning change, it is not enough to focus on the motivations of the relevant parties initiating or contesting the change. The formal aspect of the word seems to be just as important when it comes to setting the direction of the change. References Silverstein, M. (2003). Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication, 23, 193–229.
Emre Yağli, Işıl Özyıldırım, Hacettepe University Social meaning of /ɾ/ in Turkish in heteronormative contexts Building on the claim that alveolar approximant [ɹ] variant of alveolar flap /ɾ/ variable is one of the phonetic resources that indexes sociolinguistic style of gay men in Turkey, this study aims to uncover the indexical field (Eckert, 2008) yielded through the perception of /ɾ/ in heteronormative contexts. Detaching the variable from the sociolinguistic style of gay men, and utilizing it in new contexts, the study reports from four sociolinguistic group interviews conducted with listeners who are members of a youth organization in which heteronormativity has been institutionalized. In the semi-structured sociolinguistic group interviews, in which the listeners were provided with two distinct pronunciations of /ɾ/ alongside with such social cues about the speaker as (i) education level (ii) socioeconomic level and (iii) authenticity as gay, the listeners were asked to negotiate the social meaning of the variable with respect to the overall style of the speaker, e.g., personality traits, intimacy, authenticity, locus of practice and clothing. It has been found that the listeners have employed the preset social information found in the institutionalized context and yielded similar interpretations regardless of the social cues presented to them. Seeing that perceiving the other is a social practice, the current study provides an evidence on how the listeners use the institutional knowledge in negotiating the social meaning by developing a stance (Jaffe, 2009) towards the speaker and yielding iconic (Irvine and Gal, 2000) interpretations in perception. References Eckert, P. (2008). Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 12(4), 453–476. Irvine, J. T. & Gal, S. (2000). Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation. In P. V. Kroskrity (Ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, politics, and identities (pp. 35-84). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Jaffe, A. (Ed.) (2009). Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tomo Yanagimachi, Hokusei Gakuen University A conversation-analytic investigation of service encounters in English as a lingua franca at a ski resort in Japan This study is based on the multi-modal, conversation-analytic investigation of service encounters in English as a lingua franca (ELF) between Japanese staff members and international customers at a ski shop in a winter resort in Japan. It delineates how staff members who have limited L2 English proficiency and customers who are linguistically more fluent collaboratively accomplish successful service encounters. Preliminary analysis of video data shows that in this workplace setting both foreign customers and Japanese staff members disregard staff members’ status as novice English speakers. Rather, in their advice-giving and -receiving interaction, both parties orient to practical issues involving the ski equipment and repair work. Even when some misunderstanding occurs—as is always possible in an authentic communicative context—the problem is dealt with not as a linguistic problem per se, but as something related to the technical field of expertise of ski repair. The participants orient to the immediate tasks they are facing: for the customer, seeking appropriate advice and getting the skis repaired, and for the staff member, persuading a customer to accept the suggested repair plan. Gardner & Wagner (2004) argue that second language speakers look more capable in authentic communicative settings—where the consequences of interaction really matter—than in the language classroom. Unlike the classroom interaction, in which the responsibility for establishing intersubjective understanding is put on the linguistically less proficient learner, in the service encounters in the present data, both service personnel and customers engage in the interactional and collaborative work of accomplishing intersubjectivity, while displaying, negotiating, and aligning their epistemic stances and identities as professionals and laypeople. References Gardner, Rod, & Wagner, Johannes (2004). Introduction. In Gardner, Rod, & Wagner, Johannes (Eds.), Second language conversations. pp. 1-17. London: Continuum Books.
Xiaofang Yao, University of Melbourne Challenging metrolingualism: The linguistic landscape of a rural town in Australia Linguistic landscapers have increasingly adopted superdiversity, complexity and multimodality to explain the relationship between communication and place. Worldwide, the landscapes of capital cities and economic centres attract the greatest attention, leading to the argument that linguistic landscape is in reality multilingual cityscape (Gorter, 2013). As one of the often-noted sociolinguistic phenomena, metrolingualism refers to the modern communicative events featuring a hybridity of linguistic resources drawn from historical trajectories, spatial repertoires and local activities (Pennycook, 2017). Under the metrolingual paradigm, marketplaces, restaurants and urban streets in metropolitan cities are the productive spaces for new types of languages and identities to emerge (Pennycook & Otsuji, 2015). However, the potential of rural areas where communicative practices and local spaces interact is largely ignored. Contrary to the belief that rural towns have been left aside in the era of globalisation and mobility, migrants who have settled down overseas long ago enjoy unique presence both linguistically and visually. In a rural town in Victoria, Australia, Chinese migrants have been formed unique connections with the local community since two decades ago. While Chinese and English signs of the only Chinese restaurant signal a strong sense of nostalgia, the owners claim the choices of linguistic and semiotic resources are made to create an authentic image and attract local customers. The relationship between Chinese migrants with limited English proficiency and rural residents with restricted exposure to ethno-linguistic diversity is not one of fully integration, but a situation where both parties seek common grounds while reserving differences. The case eludes to the wider concern as for how Chinese language and identity may be preserved or compromised after decades of settlement. Metrolingualism would be better off to move away from the urban-centric view and embrace the complexity of rural landscapes. References Gorter, D. (2013). Linguistic landscapes in a multilingual world. ANNUAL REVIEW OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, 33, 190-212. doi:10.1017/s0267190513000020 Pennycook, A. (2017). Translanguaging and semiotic assemblages. International Journal of Multilingualism, 14(3), 269-282. doi:10.1080/14790718.2017.1315810 Pennycook, A., & Otsuji, E. (2015). Metrolingualism : Language in the city. New York: Routledge.
Hsin-hung Yeh, Stanford University Language Ideology and Imagined Standard Chinese of Taiwanese L2 Chinese Teachers This project investigates the sociolinguistic correlation between language ideology of Mandarin Chinese (or Guóyǔ) used in Taiwan and linguistic features of Taiwanese L2 Chinese teachers, including phonetic, lexical, and syntactic features. As Eckert (2012) points out in her article, the third wave of sociolinguistic variation studies view variation as a ‘a social semiotic system capable of expressing the full range of a community’s social concerns’, while the social meanings associated with the semiotic system are almost always fluid and susceptible to external social factors. Taiwanese L2 Chinese teachers stand out as an intriguing case. Our preliminary result shows that Taiwanese L2 Chinese teachers speak an imagined (standard) Mandarin Chinese, i.e. an imagined (standard) dialect not spoken outside L2 Chinese classroom, nor similar to the Pǔtōnghuà used in Mainland China. We also found that the previous National Language Movement and dialectal influences are contributable to different imagined language standards of Taiwanese L2 Chinese teachers of different age cohorts. This project is conducted qualitatively and quantitatively through recorded interviews with Taiwanese L2 Chinese teachers of 4 age cohorts (21-30, 31-40, 41-50, and 51-60), and audio recordings of Taiwanese L2 Chinese teachers’ classroom teaching. The interviews include questions on language ideology and Chinese passage recitation to ensure that data is collected in both forms of outputs. In addition to the interviews, the L2 Chinese class of the interviewed teachers are recorded for comparative analysis. Statistics from the analysis help constitute a fuller picture about the language ideology and linguistic features of Taiwanese L2 Chinese teachers. References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Revised Edition). Brooklyn, NY: Verso. 2016. Eckert, Penelope. ‘Three Waves of Variation Study: The Emergence of Meaning in the Study of Sociolinguistic Variation.’ Annual Review of Anthropology, 41 (2012). pp.87100.
Yuko Yoshinari, Gifu University, Kiyoko Eguchi, University of Miyazaki The relationship between language use and perception of responsibility on apologetic behavior: a case study of Hungarian and Japanese speakers The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of causal attribution on perceived responsibility and linguistic expressions for apologetic behavior. Based on the Theory of Linguistic Relativity derived from Sapir and Whorf’s hypothesis, we considered the correlation between language specific expressions and cognitions among different language groups. We examined the perceptions and expressions for apologetic behavior of Japanese native speakers who are said to apologize more often, in comparison with Hungarian native speakers. We also compared those of Japanese-learners, to examine the influence of language-specific tendencies to second language use. Using the questionnaire-based study, we collected the data from three groups: 80 Japanese native speakers (J-L1), 100 Hungarian native speakers (H-L1) and 60 learners of Japanese whose native language is Hungarian (J-L2h). Participants were presented with scenarios incurring damage to a friend’s property caused by four types of situations. The locus of causality (internal vs. external) and the controllability (controllable vs. uncontrollable) were manipulated. They were asked to provide open-ended explanations for each event addressed toward that friend, and then rate the extent to which they thought they were responsible for the consequence. Results first showed that J-L1 consistently rated with a higher sense of responsibility and frequently expressed more apologies versus other language groups. It must be noted that they rated higher in external and uncontrollable situations, such as earthquakes, than during external and controllable situations caused by another person’s carelessness. We concluded this to be related with the lack of Japanese expressions that talk about inanimate subjects. Interestingly, these tendencies are also found in J-L2h’s results, while H-L1 showed opposite results. These findings suggest the possibility that the judgment of responsibility is related to expressing apologies. Linguistic relativity can also be seen in second language acquisition as reflected by cognition and language usage.
Eliška Zaepernicková, Martin Havlík, Charles University in Prague, Czech Academy of Sciences Related semantic choices in L1 and L2s of the speakers living in the Czech Republic as a display of translanguaging In today's globalized world people often come into contact with an L2 on a daily basis, especially when living or working in an environment with multiple L1s. As we know, reaching a native-like level in an L2 is difficult, if not impossible, after a certain age. Given this fact, it might be assumed that a limited lexicon might inhibit L2 speakers from asserting their identity and expressing their own ideological viewpoint (Machin&Mayr, 2012). In our study we analysed whether speakers are limited in their semantic choices by their L2 in comparison with their L1. We recorded 40 speakers. The L1 of the recorded speakers varied, but our main focus was on Czech, English, Portuguese and Russian. Informants’ task was to watch and describe the plot of a silent animated movie in their native language as well as in several other languages, including Czech. We focused on the linguistic semiotic resources which the speakers used to describe the three main characters. Our analysis shows consistency in intra-speaker as well as in intra-L1group word choices and storytelling formulations. Our study shows that the assumption of a limited lexicon’s inhibitory force is inaccurate. Instead, our results support translanguaging theory (Li Wei&Garcia, 2014), as we found out that the inherited L1 identity together with the shared ideological viewpoints flow into L2 speech. We conclude, therefore, that the L1 forms all the other languages learned, though this relationship is not reciprocal. References Garcia, O. & Li Wei (2014): Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Machin, D. & Mayr, A. (2012): How to do Critical Discourse Analysis. A Multimodal Introduction. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC: Sage.
Konstantin Zamyatin, Helsinki University Revivalist Policy Impact in the Finno-Ugric Republics of Russia The application of language policy theories opens a new perspective in the Finno-Ugric studies. Policy analysis is one of the approaches used in the field. A traditional conceptual framework for policy analysis in political science was the stages approach that divided the policy process into a series of stages. When applied to language policy, three stages in the policy cycle were typically distinguished: language beliefs (ideology), language management (planning), and language practices (ecology). Language planning, then, is often also represented as a series of stages: policy adoption, its implementation and evaluation. In my previous research on language policy in Russia and its ethnic republics titled after the ethnic groups speaking Finno-Ugric languages, I also followed the series of stages and focused on investigating the revivalist ideologies and planning. The impact of revivalist efforts on language practices and ideologies remains without proper evaluation. In these regions, some sociological and sociolinguistic research was conducted into different aspects of the ethnic and linguistic situation that was often commissioned by regional agencies on nationalities affairs. However, usually the data were not interpreted in the context on language policy, probably, because its accumulating lasting effects often remain indistinguishable in the short run. The aim of the paper is to explore the revivalist policy impact on the sociolinguistic situations in the Finno-Ugric regions of Russia in order to understand the policy scope and limits. The objective is to conduct a comparative study of the current sociolinguistic situations across the Finno-Ugric regions. The research problem is topical in the light of a larger theoretical debate about the scope and limits of language policy of the state. The empirical rationale is to finalize the study of the policy cycle in the FinnoUgric republics of Russia.
Larysa Zavgorodnia, University of Zurich Proximization in News Discourse: Real Threat or A Fake? Present-day news “carry” their consumers to different places and “transfer” events from there to the territory of the consumers. It does so by predicting the processes conceived as threatening customers position, interests and actions. The focus of this paper is on the function of the proximization (i.e., symbolic distance-crossing, cognitive-pragmatical construal in discourse) as well as its linguistic organization in the Swiss news discourse in the period of January – December 2017. Two Swiss newspapers of high-circulation are selected for the quantitative and qualitative analysis: Tages-Anzeiger and 20 Minuten. The research presented here draws on the integrative framework implicating the theory of proximization (P. Cap), CDA (M. Reisigl, R. Wodak), socio-cognitive discourse studies (T. van Dijk). Neutrality being the center of Switzerland’s main principle of international policy makes proximization dynamic in the Swiss news discourse a topic of special interest. References 1. Cap, Piotr (2013): Proximization. The pragmatics of symbolic distance crossing. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 3. Spitzmüller, Jürgen / Warnke, Ingo H. (2011): Diskurslinguistik. Eine Einführung in Theorien und Methoden der transtextuellen Sprachanalyse. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter. 4. Van Dijk, Teun A. (2008): Discourse and Context: A Socio-cognitive Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 5. Wodak, Ruth (2013): Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage.
Claudia Zbenovich, Hadassah College The Communicative-Pragmatic Method at Work: A Study of Linguistic Behavior in Three Discursive Realms The paper seeks to discover how language both creates and is created by different social contexts. It draws on the communicative-pragmatic framework in which utterances are viewed as linguistically-realized actions and can be analyzed as indicators of contextual and social meaning. More specifically, the paper suggests discussing the communicativepragmatic approach in its application to the analysis of three dissimilar realms of communication: the cross-cultural family interaction, the discourse of support groups and the student-professor online communication in academia. Simultaneously, it aims to examine institutional and cultural norms that underlie the interaction within each specific domain of communication and to reveal which patterns of verbal behavior construct these discourses. Given the fact that the above settings represent different modes of communication (interpersonal, group, or computer-mediated) and involve different communication channels (face-to-face or internet), the question arises whether the same method can be equally put to use to the multilayered data and what can be viewed as unique in the application of the approach to each of the discursive fields. Furthermore, the use of the pragmatic method is concerned with the issues of discursive hierarchies, speakers’ power and distance relationship and co-existence of private and public modes of the talk. Thus the paper seeks to explore how these discourse components are indexed by the use of language and are continually created, negotiated and redefined in concrete acts between the participants of different interactive situations. Finally, the pragmatic perspective provides a useful analytical tool to determine the patterns of emotion talk incorporated into the process of communication and to reveal how the articulation of interpersonal experience and emotional state affects the construction of a new type of interaction in different sets of data. References Alba-Juez, L. & J. Lachlan Mackenzie. (2016). Pragmatics: Cognition, Context and Culture. Madrid: Mc Graw Hill Education. Austin, J. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grice, P. H. (1975). Logic and conversation. In: P. Cole and J. L. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics (3,) Speech Acts (pp. 41-58). New York: Academic Press. Leech, G. (2014). The Pragmatics of Politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wierzbicka, A. (1999). Emotions across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and Universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yi Zhang, University of South Florida “666” as a Compliment in Chinese Online Communication - An investigation of creative stylized Chinese in a video-sharing site The study investigates the use of creative and stylized Chinese adopted by users on a popular Chinese video-sharing website. It is found that Chinese, including Mandarin and regional dialects, are often used in non-conventional ways, such as deliberate substitutions of characters, Romanization, manipulation of meanings, adoptions of radicals and Arabic numerals, and traditional Chinese characters. Over a two-month period, data were collected from bilibili.com, which is one of the the most popular video sharing website in China and by Chinese expatriates. This website is celebrated by Chinese youth and is featured with Japanese animation, comics and games, and other types of videos such as popular movies, documentaries and so forth. A total of 13491 instances of language uses that involve stylized Chinese were identified in 28579 comments from 88 video posts. These language uses were then categorized into the following categories according to their linguistic features as stylized Chinese Mandarin, non-conventional Chinese character expressions, Romanized Chinese, stylized dialectaccented Chinese, traditional Chinese characters, Chinese represented in Arabic numerals, Chinese Radicals, and Capitalized Chinese. The analysis suggests that users of bilibili.com are noticeably creative when it comes to online communication through Chinese. Users utilize their knowledge of Chinese characters, pinyin and popular culture for meaning making. These practices reflect the Bakhtinian notion of “carnivalesque” communication (Bakhtin, 1984) characterized with creativity and playfulness. The findings demonstrate users’ complex linguistic repertoires through the adoptions of various linguistic features in both written and spoken Chinese. The study further contributes to the understsanding of the linguistic ecology of online communication in Chinese, and exhibits the remarkable possibilities of creative writings of Chinese beyond the conventional Chinese texts in simplified Chinese characters.
Anna Zhiganova, Nizhny Novgorod State Linguistics University News Stories Today: A Sociolinguistic Perspective Recent sociolinguistic research has highlighted the importance of a functionally-oriented approach to language study, according to which language is viewed as a set of resources and practices employed for specific purposes in a variety of discourses (Blommaert 2010, Heller 2007, Pennycook 2010). News discourse in particular, being one of the most dynamic discursive practices in the context of ideological, economic and socio-cultural transformations of the beginning of the XXI century, has become a powerful means of public opinion making and an effective mechanism for conveying political preferences and biases. The current study is based on critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 2006) and investigates the strategic usage of language employed in a corpus of contemporary English-language newspaper and magazine news reports on acute international and political issues. Analysis focuses on the power of linguistic choices as ways of addressing and affecting massive target audiences. Language serves as a means of constructing ingroup and out-group identification through either establishing relations of solidarity with certain segments of the readership or creating and maintaining distance with them. The intentional structure of the news stories is manifested in the syntactic, morphological and stylistic features which can make the elements of the message salient or obscure. Thus, the results demonstrate functional motivation for the choice of the passive voice and nominalization instead of active verbs, different types of modality to express certainty or desirability as well as a wide range of stylistic devices such as paraphrase, contrast, play on words, metaphor, and rhetorical questions. The findings add to the emerging research on the dialectical relationship of language and social practice in an increasingly globalized and polarized world.
Suren Zolyan, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia Sociolinguistics, semiotics culture and social semiotics: unum ex pluribus In his pioneer paper M. Hallyday suggest to consider language as social semiotics, respectively, social semiotics was understood by him as a general sociolinguistics. Later, the subject of social semiotics was shifted from sociolinguistics to studies of multimodality and communication. However, this should not disregard the core function of language: the most of representations of human social activity (culture, history, literature, art, politics, law, etc.) are expressed in textual verbal forms. It will be natural to come back and consider social and cultural semiotics as some extensions of general sociolinguistics. As it easy to observe, that social objects and relations are permanently considered by semiotics of culture, and on the contrary, social semiotics studies mechanisms and texts relating to culture. On the other hand, M. Halliday completely equated social reality with culture:”A social reality (or a ‘culture’) is itself an edifice of meanings – a semiotic construct” [Halliday 1978:2]. The equation of social and cultural aspects of language can be tolerable in general socio-linguistics, but is not sufficient for next stages of semantification, when additional semiotic means are required. In many cases it is senseless to draw a distinction between two semiotics: culture presupposes social relations and institutions, any social order is impossible without mechanisms of culture. However, in some cases, they should be differentiated. The following main types are possible. Firstly, it comes from a possible integration and/or separation of semiotic Universum on the domains: 1.CULTURAL AND NATURAL 2.SEMIOSPHERE vs BIOSPHERE 3.CULTURAL (including SOCIAL) vs BIOSEMIOTICS 4.CULTURAL vs SOCIAL From the fourth level the following semiotics are possible: A.NON-CULTURAL, NON-SOCIAL B. SOCIAL & CULTURAL C. CULTURAL D. SOCIAL
PANEL PAPERS
PANEL 1: REGIMENTING THE PUBLIC SPHERE: THE POLITICS OF VISIBILITY Convenors: Jan Zienkowski, Saint-Louis University, Sigurd D’hondt, Research Collegium for Language in changing Society (ReCLaS), University of Jyväskylä Discussant: Alfonso Del Percio, UCL/UK
The category of visibility constitutes a key dimension of the public sphere, up to the extent that the public sphere can be characterized as constituted in/by struggles over visibility. At the threshold of visibility, one encounters power struggles over what aspects of social and cultural practices deserve a public stage, and what aspects should be relegated to the private sphere (or made invisible altogether). For this panel, we bring together scholars from various backgrounds to reflect on these struggles over visibility, which are at the heart of many ongoing attempts to (re-)shape and (re)structure the public sphere in our contemporary societies. We are interested in empirical investigations that look into such struggles over visibility from various angles, and in a variety of online and offline settings. The panel includes contributions that document and investigate actual practices of regimenting/reclaiming the public sphere (ethnography, linguistic landscaping), as well as work that examines the macro-discursive structures (discourse analysis) and/or the situated communicative events (conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics) through/in which such regimenting/reclaiming is discursively negotiated. A first kind of struggle over visibility, with a strong presence in the current sociopolitical climate, can be referred to as “the politics of erasure.” This politics comprises various attempts, usually initiated by local municipal authorities, to regiment activities and practices not because they constitute a crime or would endanger members of the public, but because they are perceived as “polluting the public space” and/or “scaring members of the public.” Items to be removed from the public sphere, or to be “pushed back” beyond the boundaries of public perception, include cultural practices (e.g., wearing a burkini, a headscarf, etc.) and linguistic practices (e.g., foreign language advertisements and other expressions of multilingualism), as well as certain forms of economic activity (e.g., begging, busking etc.). Often, such attempts to regiment the public sphere are targeting practices and/or activities that have a linguistic, a social and an economic component. Think, for example, of restrictions on “appearancedegrading” businesses, which are often also migrant-owned: night shops, shisha bars, internet shops, video stores, etc. The politics of erasure is grounded in a vision of “appropriateness” that re-signifies everyday activities as indexing wider socio-political problems, and hence as undesirable (a clear example would be the transformation of the headscarf into an index of religious conflict and non-integration). It brands its own way of “seeing” the public space as the only legitimate one, and hence as the only one that should be allowed to inscribe itself into the materiality of public everyday life. Paradoxically, this process leads to a heightened visibility of the phenomena that are considered illegitimate. At the other end of the continuum, one finds various attempts to “reclaim” the public sphere, such as the various struggles waged by minority group activists to decenter “oppressive” representations and practices associated with the colonial past. In doing so, these activists negotiate alternative ways of seeing/experiencing the public sphere, decentering the hegemonic gaze that problematizes expressions of diversity and making visible the historical patterns of insubordination on which it is founded. Other activists pursue a more proactive strategy, opening up the public sphere to alternative orders of indexicality through physically “altering” the material organization of the public space, either transiently or permanently. This can be done within existing regulatory frameworks, as exemplified by the various struggles for the recognition of alternative lifestyles and minority
communities (e.g., through amendments to the public calendar). On other occasions, however, this may take the form of transgressive re-territorializations that problematize the very notion of the public realm, ranging from guerilla gardening, over Occupy-style appropriations of squares and plazas, to the tactics and practices of the so-called “black bloc”. Looking at the public sphere through the lens of visibility allows us to explore interconnections between public space, as a feature of the material organization of the physical landscapes in which we live our lives, and the public sphere as a discursive phenomenon. In addition to an actual space, the public sphere is also a spatial metaphor for a set of discursive practices and shared meanings through which we imagine ourselves to be part of a wider network of mutual accessibility/reflexive accountability. Of particular importance are the various technologically mediated channels that mediate the dissemination of these discursive practices: mass media, social media platforms, etc. The resulting mediatized debates are a major site were struggles over the regimentation public sphere are fought. On other occasions, however, these mediating channels become themselves caught up in struggles over visibility, as attempts to decenter oppressive representations often specifically target media content. Focusing on the category of visibility allows us to explore how these different realms, ranging from physical to digital space, mutually mediate one another, without treating one or the other as somehow more “foundational.”
Sigurd D’hondt, ReCLaS/University of Jyväskylä “Saint Nicolas does not exist": Acceptability judgments and the policing of the public realm For the past five years, the Netherlands witnessed a fierce debate over Black Peter (BP), the blackface character that plays a central role in the annual Saint Nicolas celebration. This debate over the presumably racist nature of the BP character exhibits opposing normativities concerning acceptable/offensive conduct in the public sphere (to be understood as an “order of indexicality”), which are in turn grounded in discrepant notions of belonging (and associated entitlements to formulate criticism). These notions of appropriate conduct are thus very much constitutive of the public realm. In my talk, I illustrate this reflexive intertwining of acceptability judgments and understandings of the public realm by taking a closer look at one of the incidents responsible for the sudden intensification of the BP debate in 2013: a news show, broadcast in prime time, in which a BP critic publicly cried out that “Saint Nicolas does not exist” (thereby allegedly “spoiling it for the kids,” who still take the tradition literally). In my analysis, I trace how the other panelists recontextualize this transgressive act and how it is subsequently accounted for by the transgressor himself. Drawing on recent sociolinguistic work on stance-taking, the transgressive act can be understood as part of an attempt to make visible an alternative indexicality, rooted in “postcolonial” citizenship, by construing oneself as an outsider to the cultural practice in question. Conversely, BP supporters appear to anchor their attempts to deracialize BP in a dialogical field that excludes such outsiders. Judgments over the acceptability/offensiveness of a cultural practice are thus largely coincident with the way in which the boundaries of the public realm are policed.
Béatrice Fracchiolla, Université de Lorraine, Christina Romaine, Aix Marseille Université The denomination: Inter-relations between the public sphere and the private sphere The public sphere is one of the places where the solicitation of attention for violence is more and more apparent and arises loomingly. The video Stop Jihad (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke3i97kkQM&t=4s, broadcasted by the government on French public channels to alert and dissuade to go to Syria) is an example of this phenomenon. The public space is here used to make visible what is normally invisible, and we are hence challenged by messages that are not always intended for us, that are potentially agressive to us or even do us violence. This leads to the question of the (potentially threatening) emergence of the public sphere in the private sphere, and of how communicative elements of the first tend to transform the second, particularly by means of interpellation and address. This in turn raises the question of how public communications are discursively elaborated and negotiated in order to enable them to penetrate the private sphere. More specifically, we ask if there are specific discursive elements that constitute the pivot of this shift, or if it is only the place of reception that contributes to this permeability As part of research that we conducted in a hospital, we broadcast the video Stop Jihad for the first time to 18-25 years old volunteers and collected their reactions. The video addresses the viewers in the second person with threatening messages, and also shows unexpected violent pictures of what happens in Syria. In this dialectic of the private (daily life) and the public (social life), we study the question of denomination as a vector of visibility and interpenetration of the public and the private sphere. We will thus question, from our linguistic point of view, the interpersonal relation elaborated through the forms of address within this governmental discourse, through a discursive analysis of the interpellation and address processes used in the video but also through the reaction of the subjects to whom the video was shown.
Samu Kytölä, University of Jyväskylä The underrepresentation of sexual diversities in male football cultures This paper discusses the severe under-representation of sexual diversities in male football cultures from the perspectives of visibility and public sphere. While the issue of sexual minorities in team sports has emerged recently in gender/sexuality studies and the sociology of sports (Anderson 2015; Magrath et al. 2013), the well-known strengths and insights of sociolinguistics and/or multisemiotic discourse studies in fine-grained analyses of everyday social activity fabrics have not been extensively applied to diversities of sexualities, certainly not in the context of football culture. Sexual minority rights are rapidly (albeit not universally) gaining ground in many other domains of life, yet men’s team sports stand as the “last citadel” where the full diversity of masculinities and sexualities – often concretely conceived of as “coming out” – is not thriving (Anderson 2011, 2015; Kokkonen 2012; Skogvang & Fasting 2013). This has direct and dire consequences to hundreds of thousands of men and boys doing the world’s most popular team sport, football, as they have to hide or suppress an integral part of their personality while engaging in activities which would otherwise bring them joy and well-being. The same is true with trans-gender and other non-heteronormative gender categories in football culture, and to a great extent, also with females. Part of a more extensive research project on sexual minorities in male football cultures, this paper taps into the various ways in which, in football, individuals belonging to a sexual minority (mainly gay men) have been invisible or visible in two different types of public sphere: concrete football-related events (matches, competitions, spectacles) and digital media (institutional media articles, social media texts, advertising, games). I will discuss connections between physical and digital sites of analysis (mediatedness) as well as between the (partly imagined?) “extremes” of public and private spheres of social life.
Petteri Laihonen, University of Jyväskylä The public sphere and the Moldavian Csángó educational program in Romania The Moldavian Csángós, Roman Catholics speaking a vernacular associated with Hungarian, have faced serious oppression in Romania. However, in 2001 the Csángós (numbering 48 000 according to a recent estimate) were officially recognized by the Council of Europe, and in the same year a Hungarian language revitalization program was launched in the Csángó villages in Moldavia. As a consequence, the educational environment (schoolscape) was the first public space in which the Hungarian language has appeared in writing. In this paper, I ask how these new language practices (re)conceptualize the Hungarian language in Moldavia, and I examine whether the local vernacular gets repositioned through this use of Hungarian in the public space. During fieldwork in Moldavia in 2017, I witnessed several first occasions where Hungarian was used in public events (e.g. the first Csángó Dance House in a major city). This presentation focuses on schools where Hungarian made its appearance in the Linguistic Landscape (Schoolscape) and where oral Hungarian entered the public stage during school events. My analysis of 10 schools where Hungarian is taught indicates that, where at all, mostly standard Hungarian is on display. It indicates an attempt to connect the Moldavian Csángós to the Hungarian Imagined Community (Benedict Anderson). In some of the school events, Hungarian is constructed as a “foreign language”. However, Hungarian also seems more connected to local culture by folk elements, and Hungarian performances such as narrations and recitations include more actual language use than, e.g., English or French performances. The local vernacular appears seldom in the public schoolscape, indicating that it is restricted to Moldavia and to the private sphere, whereas the standard Hungarian displayed and performed in public space constructs, and indexes (discourses of), an imagined Hungarian national community, as well as Hungarian as a “foreign language” in the Moldavian province of Romania.
Niels Uhlendorf, Leuphana University Lüneburg Interpellations of (non-)visibility: Demands of inconspicuous self-optimization for immigrants This presentation aims to look at the ideologies of self-optimization in Western, neoliberal societies and on the inherent logics of (non)belonging for immigrants. Self-optimization shall be understood as a general contemporary demand to improve aspects of life conduct in competition with others. For many immigrants, further and more specific demands of self-optimization often exist which implies to make oneself visible in the public sphere as a committed and successful member of society and to be invisible as indigent or harmful. At the same time, it can be much harder to accomplish optimization due to existing barriers and discriminations. These considerations formed the basis of my PhD-thesis, in which I analyzed public representations and biographies of Iranian immigrants in Germany to understand how discourses of self-optimization and processes of subjection interrelate. Thus, representations of German-Iranians in mass media were collected and contrasted to an analysis of biographical interviews. In reference to Judith Butler’s theory of interpellation and subjection, the powerful interrelation between discursive knowledge regimes and biographical self-constructions was of interest. One of the main results, which shall be discussed in this presentation, was the often contradictory nature of optimization discourses: on the one hand proving oneself as a (potentially) valuable member of the host society seemed necessary. At the same time, being too visible as a successful immigrant also implied a threat for the host society. As the author Dina Nayeri once put it: “You’re not enough until you’re too much.” Therefore, an inconspicuous self-optimization seems necessary: to improve oneself in many directions, but to avoid creating too much visibility about it. Starting from the analysis of such discursive demands, two ideal types of biographical appropriation will be contrasted and lead to a final discussion on powerful interpellations of (non)visibility in the public sphere in the context of migration.
Mieke Vandenbroucke, Ghent University Regimenting language in Flemish public spaces: Doxic appropriation of polyvalent indexical fields In this paper, I address indexical resignification of language visibility against the background of recent controversial language-related incidents and ideological statements by Flemish nationalist aldermen regarding the use of languages other than Dutch in the public sphere of Flemish towns. In recent years, such metadiscursive struggles over language visibility and politics of erasure have become commonplace throughout Flanders in the wake of a re-emergence of nationalist ideologies in Flemish politics in the 2000s and a profound upsurge of Flemish nationalism in recent elections. By drawing on interviews with different types of local stakeholders in two Flemish towns (shop owners, aldermen, and passersby), I document differences in stance, perception and ideological indexicalities of shop names and written signs in foreign languages in these Flemish contexts. While all languages other than Dutch are deemed inappropriate in nationalist politics of visibility affordances, French emerges in these interview data as one language which is deemed more inappropriate than others. This indexical field (Eckert 2008) of French, in particular, emerges as both polyvalent and indexically ordered with recent resignifications building on historical ones, while the Flemish nationalist interpretations invoke rescaled and historically recursive indexical meaning that can only be understood vis-à-vis the longue durée of the larger protracted language ideological debate in Belgium. As such, language use in the public sphere is attributed a central role by the Flemish nationalist in their politics of erasure and their aim to (re)create and maintain a linguistically homogenous Flanders. What makes this Belgian case peculiar and controversial, however, is not just the focus on the regimentation of the public sphere to impose doxic logics (Bourdieu 1977) of territorial monolingualism, but the fact that the tool they employ to impose this monolingual doxa concerns an area in Belgian language legislation that is not regulated by language laws in Belgium.
Jan Zienkowski, Saint Louis University Brussels Making racism visible: Claiming a space for the articulation of racist experience(s) in Flanders Racism has been at the center of numerous debates in Flanders. One of the most heated debates in recent years is without a doubt the debate over racism’s alleged relativity. In Flemish nationalist discourse, the notion that “racism is (a) relative (concept)” has become the standard line for responding to calls to more radical anti-racist and anti-discriminatory policies. At the same time, racism is more and more being made visible by victims of racist slurs and practices, mostly via online media. At times, these testimonies find their way to newspaper and television discourse. Here, I will focus on a debate surrounding a call to publish as many stories about racist experiences on Twitter as possible. These accounts of racism are meant to render racist experiences visible in a context marked by a commonly pursued politics of erasure that does not grant such accounts legitimacy and visibility in the public sphere. This discourse analysis is based on linguistic pragmatic, critical and poststructualist insights. It will examine how stories about racism are framed metadiscursively in the debate. I will link the way these narratives are being contextualized in highly situated discursive practices with a more abstract meso-level mode of analysis in order to analyze the ideological structure of a debate that spans multiple media and language games. The question if and to what extent racist eperiences are being integrated in explanatory discourses that challenge the rationality of denials and relativistions of racism is one of the main questions to be answered in this analysis.
PANEL 2: PLURICENTRICITY FROM A HISTORICAL-SOCIOLINGUISTICS PERSPECTIVE Convenors: Gijsbert Rutten, Leiden University, Rik Vosters. Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Over the past thirty years or so, pluricentricity has become an important research area in sociolinguistics. While many languages have been studied from the perspective of pluricentricity (e.g. Muhr 2012), it is particularly in the German language area that a strong theoretical debate developed. Research on pluricentric German dates back at least to the 1980s (see e.g. the recent overviews in Fingerhuth 2017 and Niehaus in press), but the discussion really took off after the publication of Ammon (1995) and Clyne (1992, 1995). In these publications, the variation in Standard German is the central topic, focusing on Germany, Austria and Switzerland as well as on smaller German-speaking communities in Belgium and Luxembourg. Both publications connect the standard language with the political structure of the nation-state, that is they compare Austrian German, Swiss German and German German. Clyne (1995: 23) is very explicit about this relationship between standard languages and nation-states: “The nation-state of the nineteenth century mould was constructed on the basis of language being the common factor, so clearly language was, and remains, the basic identity marker.” Similarly, Ammon (1995, 1998) argues that within the pluricentricity framework, the nation-state is a key concern, which is why he prefers the even more specific terms plurinationality and plurinational language. However, the historical relationship between language and nation was far more complex than suggested here, and in addition highly variable across Europe (e.g. Joseph 2004). Furthermore, in many nation-states multiple normative centers can be identified. In Germany, for example, in addition to the national standard, regional centers are constituted by major cities such as Hamburg and Munich. Moreover, it has been argued that on the level of specific linguistic variables, usage patterns do often not follow national borders. Instead, the regional variation traditionally associated with dialectology can also be found at the level of standard varieties, albeit in a modified form. It is for this reason that already in the 1990s some authors argued for pluriareality as an empirically sounder theoretical concept (Wolf 1994, Wiesinger 1995, Reiffenstein 2001, Elspaß et al. 2017, Niehaus in press). The discussions on pluricentricity in the international research literature, however, are predominantly focused on present-day situations. In this panel, we aim to tackle pluricentricity – as well as pluriareality and plurinationality – from an explicitly historical- sociolinguistic perspective, focusing on the historical validity of concepts such as pluricentricity and pluriareality. The discussion on German clearly suggests that a more thorough historical perspective, taking into account the historicity of concepts such as the nation, may yield a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of pluricentricity and its origins. The panel will comprise an introductory paper by Rudolf Muhr, discussions of the historical pluricentricity of five Germanic and Romance languages, and a final discussion slot led by Stefan Dollinger. References Ammon, Ulrich. (1995). Die deutsche Sprache in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz – Das Problem der nationalen Varietäten. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter. Clyne, M.G. (ed.). (1992). Pluricentric languages. Differing norms in different nations. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Clyne, M.G. (1995). The German language in a changing Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elspaß, Stephan, Christa Dürscheid & Arne Ziegler. )(2017). Zur grammatischen Pluriarealität der deutschen Gebrauchsstandards – oder: Über die Grenzen des Plurizentrizitätsbegriffs.
Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 136: 69–91. Fingerhuth, Matthias. (2017). Morphosyntactic Variation in the Development of German and Swiss Standard German. Unpublished PhD dissertation University of Texas at Austin. Joseph, John. (2004). Language and Identity. National, ethnic, religious. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Muhr, R. (ed.). (2012). Non-dominant varieties of pluricentric languages. Getting the picture. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Niehaus, Konstantin. In press. Die Begrenztheit plurizentrischer Grenzen: Grammatische Variation in der pluriarealen Sprache Deutsch. In: Winifred V. Davies, Annelies Häcki Buhofer, Regula Schmidlin, Melanie Wagner & Eva Lia Wyss (eds.), Standardsprache zwischen Norm und Praxis. Theoretische Betrachtungen, empirische Studien und sprachdidaktische Ausblicke. Tübingen: Francke. Reiffenstein, Ingo. (2001). Das Problem der nationalen Varietäten. Rezensionsaufsatz zu Ulrich Ammon: Die deutsche Sprache in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz – Das Problem der nationalen Varietäten, Berlin/New York 1995. Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 120: 8789. Wiesinger, Peter. (1995). Zu Ulrich Ammons Buch “Die deutsche Sprache in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz – Das Problem der nationalen Varietäten” aus österreichischer Sicht. Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 25: 45-52. Wolf, Norbert Richard. (1994). Österreichisches zum Österreichischen Deutsch. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 61: 66-76.
Stephan Elspaß, University of Salzburg, Konstantin Niehaus, University of Innsbruck Pluriareal Standard German – from Past to Present The paper will address the notion of diatopic variation of Standard German in a diachronic and synchronic perspective. It will begin with a reflection of the notion of ‘standard’ and a critical reflection of relevant research models, i.e. the ‘pluricentric’ and the ‘pluriareal’ model. Next, results from ongoing research projects on present-day diatopic variation of Standard German (cf. Elspaß/Kleiner in press for an overview) and on diatopic variation of the emerging standard in the nineteenth century (e.g. Elspaß/Niehaus 2014, Niehaus/Elspaß in press) will be presented and compared. The data suggest that present-day variation partly reflects the effect of modern political borders on the use of standard language. For another part, however, present-day ‘standard variation’ can be traced back to earlier variation in printed sources and can thus be explained by the tradition of regional linguistic usage. Based on the ‘principle of viability’ (Ágel 2001), according to which every linguistic description (or explanation) has to fit into the description (or explanation) of the history of the phenomenon under description (or explanation), it will be argued that present-day diatopic variation in Standard German is described (or explained) more adequately by the ‘pluriareal model) (cf.Elspaß/Dürscheid/Ziegler 2017 for discussion). References Ágel, Vilmos (2001): Gegenwartsgrammatik und Sprachgeschichte. Methodologische Überlegungen am Beispiel der Serialisierung im Verbalkomplex. In: Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik 29, 293–318. Elspaß, Stephan / Stefan Kleiner (in press): Forschungsergebnisse zur arealen Variation im Standarddeutschen. In: Joachim Herrgen / Jürgen Erich Schmidt (eds.): Language and Space – German. An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation. Vol. 4. Berlin, Boston: de Gruyter. Elspaß, Stephan / Konstantin Niehaus (2014): The standardization of a modern pluriareal language. Concepts and corpus designs for German and beyond. In: Orð og tunga 16, 47–67. Elspaß, Stephan / Christa Dürscheid / Arne Ziegler (2017): Zur grammatischen Pluriarealität der deutschen Gebrauchsstandards – oder: Über die Grenzen des Plurizentrizitäts- begriffs. In: Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 136, Special issue: „Das Deutsche als plurizentrische Sprache. Ansprüche – Ergebnisse – Perspektiven“, ed. by Heinz Sieburg / Hans-Joachim Solms. Berlin: Schmidt, 69–91. Niehaus, Konstantin / Stephan Elspaß (in press): ‘From above’, ‘from below’ and regionally balanced. Towards a new corpus of Nineteenth Century German. In: Whitt, Richard Jason (ed.): Diachronic Corpora, Genre and Language Change. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Karoline Kühl, University of Copenhagen Sprigs of the same mother plant: Pluriareal Danish in northern Europe Varieties of Danish are/were present in several territories in northern Europe outside Denmark proper: As a colonial power, Denmark transferred Danish language to Greenland, Iceland, the Faroes and Norway. In the Faroe Islands, parts of the Kingdom of Denmark since 1380 and still parts of the Unity of the Realm (rigsfælleskabet), Danish continues to be part of everyday life (Kühl 2015a). Also, historical redrawings of the Danish-German border (the last one in 1920) have led to the existence of an autochthonous Danish minority in Northern Germany, more specific in South Slesvig (Sydslesvig), an area geographically contiguous to Denmark. Both Faroe Danish and South Slesvig Danish are characterized by considerable linguistic Abstand compared to Danish proper, but, for very different reasons, there is little chance of either variety undergoing further Ausbau into codified varieties of Danish (cf. Kühl 2015a, b). In Norway, de facto a mere Danish province from 1536 to 1814, transplanted elite Danish became Dano-Norwegian which was nativized into today’s Bokmål. In the beginning of the 19th century, we may assume the development of separate norms for Dano-Norwegian (Løkensgard Hoel 1996, Kühl 2017). Based on the cases of Dano-Norwegian, Faroe Danish and South Slesvig Danish, I want to discuss possible outcomes of pluriareal language patterns that are connected by their acknowledged relation to a common variety, i.e., the acknowledgment that historical Dano- Norwegian, Faroe Danish and South Slesvig Danish are varieties of Danish, as well as relevant factors. Fully-developed pluricentricity (sensu Clyne 2004, Muhr 2012) appears to be but one outcome of pluriareal patterns, and pluricentricity might be of only limited duration as the variety’s national affiliation may change (e.g., from Danish to Norwegian). Other possible outcomes might be the maintenance of the variety as a non-dominant variety of the dominant language (sensu Muhr 2012 as in South Slesvig) or as an autochthonous lingua franca (Faroe Danish). References Clyne, Michael (2004): Pluricentric language/Plurizentrische Sprache. In Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier, Peter Trudgill (Eds.): Sociolinguistics. An international handbook of the science of language and society, 1. 2nd completely rev. and extended ed. = 2., vollst. neu bearb. u. erw. Aufl. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter (HSK, 3.1), pp. 296–300. Kühl, Karoline (2015): Faroe Danish. An unknown variety. In Eivind Torgersen, Stian Hårstad, Brit Mæhlum, Unn Røyneland (Eds.): Language variation – European perspectives V. Selected papers from the Seventh International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 7), Trondheim, June 2013. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins (Studies in language variation, 17), pp. 157–168. Kühl, Karoline (2015): South Schleswig Danish. Caught between privileges and disregard. In Rudolf Muhr, Dawn Marley, Kretzenbacher, Heinz L., Bissoonauth, Anu (Eds.): Pluricentric Languages. New perspectives in Theory and description. Wien: Peter Lang, pp. 227–240. Kühl, Karoline (2017): Translocated Danish in Northern Europe. The case of Faroe Danish and DanoNorwegian. In Sociolinguistica 31 (1), pp. 57–72. DOI: 10.1515/soci-2017- 0005. Løkensgard Hoel, Oddmund (1996): Nasjonalisme i norsk målstrid 1848-1865. Oslo: Noregs forskningsråd Muhr, Rudolf (2012): Linguistic dominance and non-dominanance in pluricentric languages: A typology. In Rudolf Muhr (Ed.): Non-dominant varieties of pluricentric languages. Getting the picture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien: Peter Lang, pp. 23–48.
Rita Marquilhas, University of Lisbon ‘Latin with small dross among’: Early Modern praises of an aspiring centric tongue The notion of pluricentric languages can only be understood in the context of modern nation- states. As Peter Burke reminds us, when speaking about the emergence of European standard vernaculars, ‘there is the danger of projecting back into the early modern period the close associations between language and nation that only became common at the end of the eighteenth century’ (Burke, 2004, p. 63). Nevertheless, the sociolinguistic approach to the reality of pluricentric languages can benefit from the findings of an historical perspective of the early modern times for two reasons. Firstly, those are supposed to have been times lived by speakers for whom ‘linguistic pluralism’ was ‘commonplace’ (id. ibid.). So it could be observed that, in terms of language usage, speakers lived a paradise that is only dreamed of today by the critics of unbalanced pluricentric linguistic contexts. These are fighters who aspire to build a world of linguistic pluralism. But secondly, the early modern linguistic pluralism, as well as the mediaeval one before it, could only exist because, until the seventeenth century, there was one Western uncontested top language in the scale of linguistic prestige, which was Latin. When Latin ceased to dominate in the cultural empire of those times, contemporarily referred to as a Republic of Letters, the first step was to praise vernacular languages against other ‘rivals’ (other Romance languages, in the case of Portuguese) for their genuine essence of Latin descendants. The poet Camões (1572) praised his own language in these terms: E na língua, na qual, quando imagina, / Com pouca corrupção crê que é latina: ‘And in the charming music of their tongue, / Which she thinks Latin with small dross among’. Much in the same way, today, non dominant varieties of pluricentric languages are defended in terms of deservers of the same reverence that is ascribed to the dominant standards. These parallels are useful in the sense that history is also useful, helping us to avoid committing twice the same mistakes. Because the outcome is clear. Once a pluricentric language attains a state when its different standards are recognized as equals, there will emerge the process’s cost: the marginalization of other even less dominant language varieties. More linguistic pluralism will lead to a new unbalanced linguistic context in sociolinguistic terms. The war should be on standards themselves. Reference Burke, P. (2004). Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rudolf Muhr, University of Graz, Pluricentric theory and Historical sociolinguistics: Dominance and non-dominance in the history of German as an example In my talk, I will give a short introduction on the latest development in pluricentric theory that have been achieved since 2010 in the context of the work of the “Working Group on Pluricentric Languages and their non-dominant Varieties” (WGNDV) which focuses on the dominance and nondominance of varieties as key terms. In a second part, I will show by the example of the history of German how the theory of pluricentricity and historical linguistics can go together. German is a pluricentric language ever since 1867 and even before. By the end of the 19th century, the identity aspect that has always played a role became more and more extinct through the ideology of pan-Germanism (Deutschnationalismus) that constructed a common identity based on the purported common “mother tongue” and by that erasing national linguistic identities. The pan-Germanic (monocentric) stance in German linguistics and its variety concept has only been changed in the early 1980s (Clyne 1984, 1995) but recently there are attempts to reverse the concept by postulating that German is not a pluricentric but a pluriareal language and by that devaluating its status from a national to a regional variety and loosing its identity aspect. It is obvious that representatives of some dominant varieties in some pluricentric languages are not willing to accept the pluricentric character of their language and try to reverse the concept into the earlier pan-Germanic and monocentric view on German but under a new name. Historical sociolinguistics – seen from the perspective of how power relations between varieties of languages (and through the construction of sub-ordinate and super-ordinates varieties) are developing and changing by means of language political manoeuvres – can indeed shed a light on the development of pluricentric languages too.
Gijsbert Rutten, Leiden University, Iris Van de Voorde, FWO Vlaanderen & Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Rik Vosters, Vrije Universiteit Brussel The development of pluricentricity in Dutch language history The Dutch language is traditionally described as pluricentric, with normative centers in the Netherlands (Holland) and in Belgium (Brabant). In the history of the language, however, it is often assumed that this situation of pluricentricity is a recent phenomenon, dating back to the nineteenth century. We will present an overview of how the issue of normative centers across regions is depicted in traditional histories of the language, where the dominant view is that of consecutive monocentrism. The focus is usually placed on one linguistic center for the entire language area, which shifts from Southern Brabant to Northern Holland at the beginning of the Dutch Golden Age. It is not until the early nineteenth century, when the Northern norms are imported in the South as a result of the integrationist movement, that standardization in the South is said to take off, and only from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century onwards, autonomous developments in the South and in the North are claimed to have lead to diverging norms and modern-day pluricentricity. We will proceed to go against this communis opinio, arguing that there are reasons to assume that a situation of pluricentricity or indeed pluriareality better describes the history of Dutch from the 1500s onwards. We will present our ongoing project investigating how innovations and language norms spread throughout the language area throughout history, focusing on the development in various types of primary sources, written in central and more peripheral areas between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century. Based on preliminary analyses of a small number of linguistic features, we will argue that the discursively constructed differences between Northern and Southern Dutch may in fact not be as strong in actual language use as traditional accounts would lead us to believe, and we will argue that differences among speakers and between groups of speakers outweigh differences between normative centers and more peripheral regions.
PANEL 3: Contemporary Urban Speech Styles across Space and Time: Social Meanings, Power and Contestations of Language Convenors: Bente Ailin Svendsen (University of Oslo) & Janus Spindler Møller (University of Copenhagen) Discussant: Alastair Pennycook (University of Technology Sydney) Existing studies have revealed that ‘us/them’-social dichotomies are prevalent among young speakers of urban speech styles that have emerged in multilingual neighbourhoods shaped by immigration and class stratification (e.g. Milani & Jonsson 2012; Nortier & Svendsen 2015). There is, however, a need to understand the extent to which and how such contemporary urban speech styles (CUSs)* constitute mechanisms of social inclusion and exclusion over time (e.g. Rampton 2015). The objective of this panel is to gather and provide knowledge on the development of these speech styles and the complex ways in which they establish and erase senses of boundaries in a range of different urban, as well as rural environments. We ask how features associated with CUSs is used, when, to whom, and for which purposes and, furthermore, when use is sanctioned or policed. By investigating linguistic and social practices over time, among individuals in interaction, at school, among peers and, furthermore, analysing how CUSs and their alleged speakers are portrayed in media over time, this panel focuses on the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion in the globalised nation states. The studies are carried out in different socio-political contexts spanning from the Scandinavian welfare systems to post-apartheid South Africa and a central aim of the panel is to improve our understanding of the relation between societal systems and the developments of CUSs. In this way the vision of the panel is to contribute knowledge on linguistic diversity, multilingualism and integration needed to reconceive society and education in the sociolinguistic complexities of the 21st century. * We use ‘contemporary urban speech styles’ coined to grasp Rampton’s (2015) description of what he labels ‘contemporary urban vernacular’, as well as the criticism raised against the term ‘vernacular’ (Cornips, Jaspers & De Rooij 2015), suggesting to replace ‘vernacular’ with Eckert’s (2004) term ‘style’.
Bente A. Svendsen & Ingunn I. Ims Ideologising speech styles in multilingual urban spaces over time: Portrayals of ‘Kebab Norwegian’ in the media The aim of this paper is to contribute knowledge of the assignment of values to contemporary speech styles in urban contact zones with analyses from Norway. In the repercussion of post-modern globalisation, sociolinguists have documented the emergence of urban speech styles among young people with and without migration legacies in multilingual urban neighbourhoods across Europe, such as Strattaal in Amsterdam and Rinkeby Swedish in Stockholm (e.g. Nortier and Svendsen 2015). These urban speech styles are seen as “connected-but-distinct from” the locality’s migrant languages, national ‘standard’ language(s), the locality’s traditional ‘non-standard’ dialect, as well as adult second language speaker styles or learner language (Rampton 2015: 39). These contact-induced speech styles are, however, not new, as shown i.a. with Citétaal in Flanders (Marzo, this panel). They are neither solely urban (Sollid and Johansen, this panel). This paper contributes knowledge of the valorisations of linguistic pluralisation processes through the ways language practices in multilingual urban spaces are presented over time in traditional Norwegian mass media, from 1990-2015. Methodologically, the data are analysed through corpus assisted discourse analysis to investigate value-laden collocations through a combination of semantic prosodic analysis (Baker 2006) and discourse analyses of the so-called ‘Kebab Norwegian-debate’ in 2009 and a TV-program in 2010. We argue that the values assigned to contact-induced speech styles in media discourses reify language ideologies of unity and purity. There are, however, national and contextual differences; and there is thus a need to further investigate these differences synchronically as well as diachronically; historical perspectives are highly relevant to comprehend how media contributes to the creation, maintenance, and renegotiation of perceptions linked to ‘new’ ways of speaking in the sociolinguistic complexity of the 21st century.
Yolandi Ribbens-Klein, University of Cape Town Hoe praat julle? Youth from the South Cape’s attitudes towards Kaaps as contemporary urban speech style The political ideologies of Apartheid and the racialisation of Afrikaans varieties have informed language ideologies about what should be regarded as Standard Afrikaans, compared to non-standard varieties. Standard Afrikaans was generally associated with educated White speakers, with all other varieties of Afrikaans, especially as spoken by speakers from the “Coloured” population group, as nonstandard (in South Africa, the term “Coloured” does not refer to all “people of colour”; this racial label was created during the nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries to classify people who were not classified as Black African, White, and Indian or Asian). The extreme form of this segregationist tendency is the labelling of Afrikaans spoken by speakers for the Coloured population group as “Coloured Afrikaans”, regardless of the speakers’ social and regional backgrounds. Kaaps or Kaapse Afrikaans is an urban variety (or contemporary urban speech style) of Afrikaans, primarily situated in the working class neighbourhoods of Cape Town and surrounds, and almost exclusively spoken by Coloured speakers. This variety of Afrikaans has been emblematic for hip-hop language activists advocating for the transformation of Standard Afrikaans. However, there is a risk of perpetuating supra-regional myths about Kaaps as monolithic “Coloured Afrikaans”. Cape Town is a prestige centre, and features of Kaaps can be used as indices of streetwise urbanity or extreme locality (Williams & Stroud 2010). With this presentation, I focus on the perceived status and role of Kaaps outside of Cape Town, as is evident in the metalinguistic comments made by fifteen Coloured participants (aged between 17 and 27) from a peri-urban town called George (400 kilometres from Cape Town). The results show that for these speakers, Capetonians speak their own, distinct variety of Afrikaans, which has varying degrees of status.
Astrid Ravn Skovse, University of Copenhagen What kind of local are you? Linguistic practices among young people in linguistically and ethnically heterogeneous urban neighbourhoods have received much attention from sociolinguists in the last 30 years. More recently, researchers have turned the spotlight to the interplay between speakers’ use of linguistic features associated with contemporary urban speech styles (CUSs) and their use of ‘traditional’ local or regional features. For instance, Quist has argued that “(multi-)ethnolect […] ought to be seen as integrated in the local linguistic and social landscape” (Quist, 2008: 46). In line with the above, this paper presents a study of linguistic variation regarding the use of regional features and features associated with CUSs among adolescents living in a heterogeneous housing estate near the third largest Danish city, Odense, in the region of Funen. Drawing on insights from human geography, urban sociology and indexicality theory, I investigate the relationship between socio-geographic orientation, everyday mobility and linguistic practices among the participants. The study shows how there are only few segmental features associated with Funen in use among the participants, whereas the use of Funen intonation and features associated with CUSs is widespread. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses, I demonstrate how the distribution of the features is connected to 1) patterns of contact and interaction with other young people outside of the local area, and 2) participants’ socio-geographic orientation. Funen intonation is used the most by speakers who have had and still have a high degree of contact with people outside Vollsmose. Features associated with CUSs are primarily used by boys displaying ‘loyalty to the local’ and projecting a certain 'cool' type of local persona. The use of these features is not, however, related to a desire to stay in the local area as an adult.
Hilde Sollid & Åse Mette Johansen, UiT The Arctic University of Norway A view from the globalised village There is no doubt that sociolinguistic developments in the cities are particularly relevant in order to explore the increasingly complex relationships between the societal systems and the development of contemporary speech styles and language use more broadly. These processes are however not per se urban. Rather, at the heart of these developments are processes of mobility and also global indigenous awakening which are characteristics of rural northern neighbourhoods (cf. Pietikäinen et al. 2016). Hence, also in the globalized village sociolinguistic processes are intertwined with increasing sociocultural diversity and complexity. In our talk, we focus on contemporary rural multilingual neighbourhoods north-east of Tromsø, Northern Norway. Here, a change in language choice on road signs from monolingual Norwegian to trilingual Sámi, Norwegian and Kven is an unmistakable indicator of a discursive language ideological shift locally but also inter-/nationally. Examples from other parts of the sociolinguistic spectrum show as well that despite a history of national negligence and social exclusion, we still find traces of enduring multilingualism in local Norwegian varieties (cf. Sollid 2013). In addition, new generations take part in more widespread ongoing changes in Norwegian speech repertoires, for example depalatalization which is a well-known process of change in contemporary urban speech styles in Northern Norway. We interpret these observations as changes in identity models and social norms that have become available through the discursive language ideological shift.
Anna Åhlund & Rikard Jonsson, University of Stockholm Dompa, Peggy Guggenheim and jypp: performing social mobility in and with contemporary urban speech styles in a Stockholm elite school This paper considers the interface of time, space, language and social mobility. Drawing on ethnographic data, including fieldnotes, interviews and recorded mundane talk, we explore how a group of secondary high school students talk about and use various urban speech styles in a Stockholm elite school – both those indexed multilingual settings in Stockholm’s outskirts, as well as a style emblematic for the richest part of the city. We argue that these linguistic styles are used as resources, employed to comment on locality as well as social hierarchies in the school. Further, the analysis reveals how the students, when talking about and in different styles, perform authenticity and indexically anchor their linguistic practices in time-space configurations. This, in turn, can be understood in the light of a master story of success which is prevalent in the specific school context.
Yeşim Sevinç, Center for Multilingualism across the Lifespan (MultiLing), University of Oslo Power, norms and language anxiety in the immigrant context Bilinguals are often understood as composite individuals comprising multiple monolinguals, who are expected to function with “nativeness” in a “monolingual” way in every language they have acquired (cf. Grosjean, 2008). This misconception can pose linguistic, social and psychological challenges particularly for members of an immigrant or minority community in their daily communications (Sevinç, 2016). One of the biggest challenges for immigrants is perhaps to speak their non-dominant language particularly with so-called natives – people from the mainstream society or from immigrants’ so-called home country – who are likely to perpetuate stereotypes or other labels of the bilingual immigrant (Sevinç & Backus, 2017) based on standard norms. This may induce linguistic anxiety among immigrants when they speak their heritage language and/or majority language in various social contexts. Language anxiety is not limited to the classroom setting, but remains an ever-present and unavoidable circumstance of immigrants’ lives and a part of their identity. The current paper summarizes recent research on two types of language anxiety prevalent across three generations of the Turkish immigrant community in the Netherlands: “heritage language anxiety” and “majority language anxiety”. Combining questionnaire and interview data and interview data (n=30) carried out in urban areas of the Netherlands, Amsterdam, Nijmegen and Rotterdam, all Dutch cities with sizeable Turkish populations, this study targets daily sociolinguistic and socioemotional challenges (e.g. language tension, discrimination, stereotyping, accusations of slipping in ethnic allegiances and social exclusion) associated with immigrants’ language anxiety. Findings suggest that future studies on language anxiety in an educational context should pay special attention to anxieties experienced by students with immigrant background using a variety of methods that can elicit information on the daily challenges these students are also exposed to outside the classroom.
PANEL 4: GERMAN IN AUSTRIA Discussant: Manfred Glauninger, University of Vienna At the risk of overstressing a well-worn metaphor, many factors make it tempting to describe Austria as a linguistic laboratory. Among these are a history and present of multilingualism; the contrast of rural settlements a large and international metropolitan area of world status, Vienna, boasting a third of the state’s total population; or its integration into the pluricentric German-speaking world. The panel takes up the opportunities for sociolinguistic research and presents work from the special research programme (SFB) “German in Austria: Variation – Contact – Perception.” (FWF: F60) The program as a whole has the goals of researching variation and change of the German language in Austria, its contact with other languages as well as the subjective perception and attitudes of its speakers. The five presentations in this panel provide insight into the programme’s goals and methodologies and presents initial results. The focus is on the aspects of variation, change, and perception. The studies operate at different linguistic levels, ranging from phonology to discourse strategies, and address intergenerational language change both in rural and in urban settings, as well as intra-speaker variation and individual linguistic repertoires. Further, they explore language use and perception in public spaces by non-linguists. With their different approaches and methodologies, they provide a broad perspective on contemporary German in Austria in diverse contexts. Time for questions and discussion will be allocated immediately after each paper.
Lars Bülow, Hannes Scheutz, Stephan Elspaß, University of Salzburg Lexical diffusion – The case of Middle High German ô in Austria In this paper, first results from an on-going project on the variation and change of dialect varieties in Austria will be presented. So far, very few sociolinguistic studies in Austria were able to focus on the structural heterogeneity of dialects and take the whole range of the dialect spectrum into consideration, analysing e.g. the relationship between linguistic and extra-linguistic factors within the processes of dialect change. The focus of this paper is on the problem of lexical diffusion in the case of sound change. Sound change can involve phonological, semantic, pragmatic and social factors (Scheutz 1985). As large-scale dialect atlas projects in the late 20th century have shown, sound change does not always proceed evenly across space and similar phonetic environments. The case of MHG ô, for instance, has demonstrated a heterogeneous development across Austria, even in small dialect areas (Scheutz 2016: 41–44). One factor that has been discussed in this process of sound change is lexical diffusion and the frequency of words (Scheutz 1985: 244–252; Bybee 2015: 39–41). Based on both ‘apparent’ and ‘real time’ data from selected locations, the study tries to give an overview of the development of MHG ô in different words in different dialect regions in Austria. We will discuss several factors which might influence the particular changes. In particular, we focus on language contact and socio-demographic factors. In this context, we also want to address a central methodological problem of quantitative studies. Based on examples from our dialect data, we will demonstrate that the selection of words can be crucial for the results of the quantitative analyses. References Joan Bybee. (2015). Language Change. Cambridge. Hannes Scheutz. (1985). Strukturen der Lautveränderung. Variationslinguistische Studien zur Theorie und Empirie sprachlicher Wandlungsprozesse. Wien. Hannes Scheutz. (2016). Insre Sproch. Deutsche Dialekte in Südtirol. Bozen.
Matthias Fingerhuth, University of Vienna Complementizer Agreement in Austria: Variation and Change This paper discusses the regional occurrence and change of complementizer agreement in different varieties of German in Austria. Complementizer agreement, the occurrence of what appears to be an inflectional affix on words that introduce subordinate clauses shown in (1), is a phenomenon documented in numerous varieties of German. 1)
Ich frage mich ob-sd du morgen in I wonder myself if-2SG you tomorrow in ‘I wonder if you are going to go to school tomorrow’
die the
Schule gehst. school go
Yet while there is a long history of documentation going back to the beginning of the 20th century and beyond (Weise 1907), detailed inquiry into its regional spread has only emerged very recently. Further, to date this investigation has relied on indirect methods using questionnaires (Lenz et al. 2014). In contrast to earlier work, the presentation discusses complementizer agreement based on spoken data recorded since 2017 in 12 locations across Austria. It consists of recordings from 120 participants between the ages of 18 and 35 as well as speakers older than 65. The data were elicited using computer supported language production experiments targeting subordinate clauses. These experiments prompted speakers to complete sentences in their local base dialect based on audiovisual stimuli. The data indicate that the use of complementizer agreement by different speaker generations shows regional differences. Drawing on the hypothesis of apparent time, they suggest that dialect change has affected complementizer agreement with varying speed in different regions of Austria. References
Lenz, Alexandra / Ahlers, Timo / Werner, Martina (2014): Zur Dynamik bairischer Dialektsyntax – eine Pilotstudie. In Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 81 (1), 1–33. Weise, Otto (1907): Die sogenannte Flexion der Konjunktionen. In Zeitschrift für Deutsche Mundarten 2, 199–205.
Ann Kathrin Fischer, University of Graz Older people’s communication practices in Vienna and Graz Almost 25 years ago, Nussbaum stated that “[…] [t]hough much is known concerning communication patterns and perceptions of children and college-aged adults, very little is known concerning communicative patterns or the functions of communication for individuals entering their sixth decade of life.” (1983: 262) Even if primarily neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics deal with the elderly and more research is gradually being carried out in other fields of linguistics, sociolinguistics still lags behind, especially in the German speaking area. Attributing more importance to ageist communication, this talk focuses on the communication practices between older people living in and around the Austrian cities Vienna and Graz. In this talk, referencing techniques and forms of identity construction as well as syntactic phenomena depicting age will be addressed. The corpus data consists of recordings of spoken language of 80 informants, all older than 65 years and living in the urban area and stems from the on-going special research programme –German Contact –inPerception. Austria. Variation The spoken data is supplemented by social data collected via questionnaires and interviews which allow combinatory and comparative analyses. Based on preliminary sample analyses, first insight into some observed tendencies will be offered, arguing that more socially integrated and mobile older urban informants show different strategies interactively as well as syntactically than more isolated and immobile ones. Finally, the depicted tendencies will be compared to a smaller set of speech data of younger informants to support the outcomes. References Coupland, N., Coupland, J., Giles, H. (1991): Language, Society and the Elderly. Discourse, Identity and Ageing. Oxford [u.a.]: Blackwell. Fiehler, R. / Thimm, C. (2003) (Eds.): Sprache und Kommunikation im Alter. Radolfzell: Verlag für Gesprächsforschung. Nussbaum, J. (1983): Successful aging: a communication model. In: Communication Quarterly 33(4). UK: Taylor & Francis, p. 262-269.
Kristina Herbert, Stefanie Edler, University of Graz Vertical variation in urban language use – the Austrian case In modern variationist and sociolinguistic studies, analyses of repertoires of speakers in urban areas and the linguistic variants constituting these repertoires have advanced to the centre of research interest. In consideration of the linguistic and sociocultural complexity of cities, methods of modern urban language research are, naturally, diverse. They range from two-dimensional variation studies, assuming areal as well as social variation, to ethno-methodological and interactional studies (e.g. Moosmüller/Scheutz 2013; Bucholtz/Hall 2005). Within our long-term project ‘Vienna and Graz – Cities and their influential force’, which is a subproject of the special research program ‘German in Austria’ we aim at holistically examining the vertical variation of urban language use on the dialect/standard axis by combining a broad variety of elicitation methods – an urgent desideratum for Austria. The presenters will give first insights into the intra-individual language variation of selected speakers in different recorded settings. The talk will focus on the phenomenon of clitisation concerning prepositions and articles as well as conjunctions and pronouns. With the selected examples we aim to illustrate how the combination of various settings can reveal insights into intra-speaker variation on the dialect-standard-axis that point towards a vertical linguistic continuum in urban language use. References Bucholtz, Mary/Hall, Kira (2005): Identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach. In: Discourse Studies 7. 585-614. Moosmüller, Sylvia/Scheutz, Hannes (2013): Chain shifts revisited: The case of monophthongisation and econfusion in the city dialects of Salzburg and Vienna. In: Peter Auer/Javier Caro Reina/Göz Kaufmann (eds.), Language variation – European Perspectives 4, 173-186. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Melanie Seltmann, University of Vienna Language Perception in the Linguistic Landscape of Vienna This contribution discusses Vienna as a linguistic landscape based on data collected with the mobile app Lingscape (Purschke 2017) as part of a Citizen Science project. The project „On everyone’s mind and lips – German in Austria“ (I am DiÖ) (FWF: TCS 40) encourages the general public to reflect on their use of and their attitudes towards the German language in Austria. It tries to capture thought on different aspects of language, including language variation, language varieties and language contact phenomena. It is part of the “Special Research Programme (SFB): German in Austria. Variation Contact - Perception” (FWF: F60). One of its components is to build a linguistic landscape data set by means of the mobile app Lingscape. Participants upload photos of signs and letterings in public spaces in the app, geolocate them on a map, and add tags for those languages and varieties they perceive on the image. The presentation introduces the technology and scope of the project, outlines opportunities and challenges of the approach and presents first findings. A set of images from Vienna is analysed in regard to what varieties appear in the linguistic landscape and how language users perceive them. Insight into these perceptions is gained based on the assignment of tags by the users. Furthermore, it is analysed in which contexts which variety is used. The data indicate that language that is perceived as non-standard by the users, is predominantly tagged as Austrian or Viennese German. These nonstandard examples primarily appear in contexts like food and agriculture. References Purschke, Christoph (2017): Crowdsourcing the linguistic landscape of a multilingual country. Introducing Lingscape in Luxembourg. Linguistik Online, [S.l.], v. 85, n. 6, nov. 2017. ISSN 1615-3014. Verfügbar unter:
PANEL 5: LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES AND PRACTICES IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH Convenors: Maria Helena Araújo e Sá, Susana Pinto, Universidade de Aveiro Discussant: Georges Lüdi, Universität Basel, Suisse “Language ideologies” and “Language policy, language planning” Over the last fifteen years the production, dissemination and circulation of scientific knowledge have been increasingly discussed in relation to languages and language policy and planning within research. These discussions, directly related to the issue of scientific knowledge internationalization, take place mainly in the area of social sciences, arts and humanities and have as one of their principal focus the constraints of monolingualism versus the potential of plurilingualism in scientific research. Discussion on this issue has been enhanced by the results of some international projects (e.g. project DYLAN, http://www.dylan-project.org/Dylan_en/home/home.php), by scientific seminars and conferences (e.g. Colloque d’Automne de l’Académie Suisse des Sciences Humaines et Sociales, http://www.sagw.ch/fr/sagw/veranstaltungen/sagw-agenda-2009/ht-09.html; XVIII Congreso Internacional ALFAL - Proyecto 8 “Políticas del lenguaje en América Latina”, http://e-ipol.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/10/ALFAL-2017-Convocatoria-Proyecto-8-PL-en-AL-1.pdf) and by the constitution of some working groups (e.g. European Language Council Working Group “Langues et http://www.celelc.org/activities/Working_groups/Active-Working-Groups/1-CEL_ELCsciences”, Working-Group-_Langues-et-sciences_/index.html). These initiatives, led by a number of researchers who have been addressing this question, underline that the production, dissemination and circulation of knowledge are grounded on an increasing monolingualism that conveys several constraints to scientific knowledge itself and to cultural, social, technological and economic development of individuals and societies. Considering this framework and the reduced discussion concerning language ideologies in academic settings, this Panel will bring together several acknowledged experts in the area, from diversified academic and geographical areas (France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Portugal and Switzerland), who will present and discuss their views about these issues based on current research. Thus, languages ideologies and practices in scientific research will be addressed from different angles: glotopolitical analysis of current universities’ linguistic policies and practices (Chardenet); the expansion of English as an hyper-central language in research and some plurilingual alternative models developed by Latin American universities (Hamel); monolingualism/plurilingualism in the process of science evaluation in articulation with science language policies (Berthoud & Gajo); multilingual collaborative research and the social production of science (Melo-Pfeifer); communication in scientific research under the scope of socioterminology and of variation (Conceição); language diversity management by academic institutions (Yanaprasart); the role of languages in the process of doing a PhD in an international scientific context (Araújo e Sá & Pinto); language policies and terminologies (Zanola).
Maria Helena Araújo e Sá, Susana Pinto, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal Researching across languages: a study with doctoral students and supervisors at a Portuguese University Within the growing literature on doctoral research education, language issues have been receiving more attention. Namely studies focus on: the cultural impact of doing a PhD on home and international students (Holliday, 2016); thesis/dissertation writing in a second language (Paltridge & Starfield, 2007; students’ experiences of supervisor multicultural competence and its impact on doctoral work (Soheilian et al, 2014); multilingual communicative practices between supervisors and students and the influence of languages/cultures in research design (Robinson-Pant, 2017). Our study intends to extend existing research, aiming to understand how languages influence the process of doing a PhD by focusing on three main themes: the impact of working in a foreign language; the role of English as a lingua franca; the acquisition of the discipline discourse. It was conducted at a Portuguese University and used a case study approach informed by institutional document analysis and individual semi-structured interviews with 4 doctoral supervisors and 12 ‘home’ and ‘international’ students. We conclude that languages/cultures influence the process of doing a PhD concerning: i) supervision process (relationship and communication between students and supervisors); ii) construction of a researcher identity (working within diversified languages and research cultures allows to develop competences considered essential in identity construction); and iii) knowledge construction (languages are assigned different roles in scientific work, namely in writing and dissemination activities). References Holliday, A. (2016). PhD students, interculturality, reflexivity, community and internationalisation. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 38 (3), 206-218. Paltridge, B., & Starfield, S. (2007). Thesis and dissertation writing in a second language. London: Routledge. Robinson-Pant, A. (2017). From cross-cultural to intercultural. An alternative perspective on the research process. In. A. Robinson-Pant & A. Wolf (Eds.) Researching across languages and cultures (pp.1-19). New York: Routledge. Soheilian, S., et al (2014). Multicultural supervision: supervisees’ reflections on culturally competent supervision. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 27(4), 379-392.
Anne-Claude Berthoud, Laurent Gajo, Université de Lausanne, Suisse / Université de Genève Issues of multilingualism for scientific knowledge: practices for assessing research projects in terms of linguistic diversity Our communication will address the following general question: in what way and under what conditions can multilingualism be considered an advantage, i.e. an added value with regard to the development of scientific knowledge? A substantial number of research outcomes have provided evidence of the added value of multilingualism for higher education in cognitive, communicative, and strategic terms; more recent academic work endeavours to demonstrate the added value of multilingualism for research. At the same time, it has to be emphasised that the advantages of multilingualism are subject to certain conditions. Factors that should particularly be taken into account include the type of activities (research teams, peer-to-peer exchanges, international symposia, wide-scale dissemination, training), the different disciplines and the language as such (values attached to the various languages, especially whether or not a given language is a language of science). In this communication, we will focus on the particular field of evaluation in science. We will discuss the main results of a project that took as research field the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF). The purpose of this project was to provide a scientific basis for the language policy pursued by the SNF, which was drawn up in 2010 and aims to guide internal and external communication as well as practices for assessing research projects in various scientific fields (humanities and social sciences, mathematics, natural sciences and engineering, biology and medicine, interdisciplinary programmes). There is currently something of a compromise between the maintenance of Switzerland’s national languages – particularly German and French – and the use of English. The key questions here were (a) whether the SNF should allow both monolingualism among researchers (in the languages they are comfortable with and entitled to use) and monolingualism in science (especially in fields other than the humanities and social sciences), at the risk of strengthening disciplinary monocultures, or instead pursue a deliberately multilingual policy and take the language question seriously when promoting and assessing research, (b) whether multilingualism is an asset in developing new and original scientific knowledge, or a brake on interchange and collaboration between researchers from different disciplinary cultures, with sometimes greatly divergent epistemological and linguistic backgrounds, and (c) whether a strong institutional stance by the SNF in favour of multilingualism in general, and in assessment practices in particular, is a mark of originality and an added benefit, or a marginalizing factor that is counterproductive at international level.
Manuel Célio Conceição, Universidade do Algarve, CLUNL/NOVA Communication in scientific research: languages matter! There is no science without languages and communication; science thrives on language because terms refer to concepts and to processes (often very complex). Knowledge is created, discussed, validated, disseminated etc. in and with language and it is communicated using shared languages and mutual understandings (or misunderstandings!). It is nowadays assumed in different research and higher education communities that language is just a code to formalise knowledge and science as a monolingual activity, using a sort of lingua franca. In this presentation, after redefining the concept of language, we will discuss the relevance of multilingualism and of linguistic diversity for scientific research and for its communication. From the perspective of multilingual terminology, we will present arguments to question language ideologies and practices linked to the use of specific languages. Different steps and aims of the research process, different contexts of its existence and the expected social impact of scientific research will be considered to argue for the need of linguistic diversity in the communication of science. Knowledge exists in society if it can be shared; this dynamics will be focused on its social dimension and we will approach communication in scientific research under the scope of socioterminology and of variation, considering a) categories of speakers (ex: dichotomy expert/ layperson and other polarities issued from diastratic and diatopic conditions or form emotional dimensions); b) variation of expected aims and expected impacts of its practices; c) multidimensionality and concept saturation and different linguistic possibilities of their expression (including normativity of terms but also for example terminology gaps caused by conceptual vagueness of terms). The non-existent symmetricity of terminological structures in different languages (among other conclusions to be addressed) will justify the need of linguistic diversity for scientific research, as a permanent innovative activity mostly context-based driven.
Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer, Universität Hamburg Is it just “black” or “white”? Multilingual collaborative research seen by an international research team In this contribution we plan to go beyond the common discussion on the duality surrounding practices in scientific research, i.e., the discussion about the teething troubles attached to monolingualism in research, on the one hand, and the potentialities of multilingualism, on the other hand. We believe that beyond this dualism, other forms of reasoning may be more productive in terms of acknowledging the diversity of collaborative linguistic constellations that are shaped according to researchers’ agency, investment and goals. This contribution thus puts the subject – the researcher – and not the subject – the research/the knowledge – at the center of the discussion, while, at the same time, it values the social production of science instead of its products only. We will present data obtained by means of a questionnaire filled in by group of researchers integrating the on-going Erasmus-Plus project EVAL-IC: Evaluation of competences in intercomprehension (http://evalic.eu/leprojet ). The aim of this questionnaire was twofold: i) to determine how researchers perceive their own linguistic practices while collaborating in international research teams; and ii) to identify the variety of parameters influencing their choices of participating or avoiding multilingual and/or monolingual communicative practices.
Patchareerat Yanaprasart, Université de Genève Scientific knowledge diversity management and academic language(s) One of the challenges for Higher education is to find a ‘glocal’ balance, which is the need to compete in the international area while fostering the national linguistic and cultural values. Promoting people diversity and creating inclusive academic and scientific environment represent an important management task and embraces the role of language in managing knowledge diversity. For some, the choice of the global English lingua academica is claimed to be the best strategic solution for beyond-borders scientific communication, focusing on immediacy, simplicity, economy and efficiency. Others prefer the option of multilingual language policies for fairness, symmetric participation, active collaboration and relational intersubjectivity in the knowledge transmission process. However, if the additive concept of the institutional multilingualism policy is not only recurrent and is often valued as a real strategic asset in our terrains, multilingual practices take different forms in terms of both policy and measures, strategy and implementation, ideologies and attitudes. This contribution aims to better understand how a new conception of multilingual language policy can offer a way for universities to draw up strategic measures, which could be a favorable condition for the construction and transmission of knowledge in a linguistically and culturally diverse context. Furthermore, in what way is the concept perceived, problematized, accepted, applied, neglected or refused by institutional actors at different hierarchies? For what reason? Our reflections rely on the results of a study mandated by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF 100015_147315) with a special focus on the way in which organizations and institutions in Switzerland manage diversity. Qualitative and quantitative data analysis as part of a didactical approach-based project on plurilingual academic actors will also be integrated in this contribution.
Maria Teresa Zanola, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Language Ideologies and practices in arts and craft terminologies: new trends in scientific research The construction and transmission of knowledge is based on growing monolingualism, with English lingua franca as a condition for any knowledge that tries to be universal. Nevertheless, this idea is based on the illusion that languages are transparent and that the forms of communication are universal, because they are simple vehicles to ideas and discoveries. The field of arts and craft is an example of the fact that this idea cannot work at all, neither in theory nor in practice. Languages and terminologies are the verbal aspect of concepts of scientific discourse and the condition sine qua non for creating, transferring and disseminating knowledge. The use of the diachronic perspective enables an analysis of the evolution of technical and scientific knowledge of these crafts, whose terminological wealth - preserved in the language and cultural heritage - is documented through encyclopedias, manuals and glossaries and it is still dynamic in natural languages, not only in English. Languages and terminologies improve conceptualization by involving a re-framing of formulations and optimised communication. They must also be able to communicate the necessary know-how for research and practice so as for the public understanding of this knowledge in itself. Some case analysis permit interesting considerations concerning variation, in relation to the terminological distribution between the use of natural languages and the English one, which differs according to the context of production and the commercialization of products. This proposal is the result of a joint work of OTPL (Observatory of Terminologies and Language Policy) and some arts and craft experts. Terminology is a factor of social and economic development, which contributes to the dissemination of knowledge by enhancing deep relationships with its socioeconomic, technical and scientific evolutionary background: the assessment of this terminological approach becomes a relevant factor in promoting enterprises in this sector and in disseminating knowledge related to skills which have such a long tradition.
PANEL 6 LANGUAGE AND AFFECTIVE CAPITALISM Alfonso Del Percio, University College London, Kati Dlaske, University of Jyväskylä Discussant Alastair Pennycook, University of Technology Sidney The ’affective turn’ in cultural, anthropological and sociological research has encompassed an interest in the interconnections of affect and capitalism, the ways in which “our capacities to affect and become affected are transformed into assets, goods, services, and managerial strategies” (Karppi et al. 2016: 9). ’Affect’ has been theorised from a number of theoretical standpoints ranging from Thrift’s (2007) “nonrepresentational theory” that places and seeks to capture affective processes beyond the discursive, to Wetherell’s (2013) notion of “affective-discursive practice” that views affective processes as unescapably intertwined with socio-semiosis and suggests discourse studies as a methodological window to investigate these practices. This panel revisits a question raised by language scholars (Besnier, 1990: McElhinny, 2010), but that for a number of reasons has remained unanswered in our discipline. Namely: what work are language and affect doing in contemporary capitalism? Inspired by the ongoing conversations on affect and capitalism in our neighboring disciplines and the (re)emerging interest in language and affect in sociolinguistics (Milani 2017; Dlaske 2017; Wetherell 2013), this panel pushes further research on the interconnections between language, affect and political economy. Drawing on different case studies, this panel addresses these (and other) questions: How does language and discourse contribute to the shaping of affective infrastructures that appeal to people and activate crowds? How can language and discourse help us understand the affective relationship between capitalism and the worker and how do language and discourse serve the interests of economic models that turn individuals’ capacities to affect or being affected into a commodity? How do individuals challenge capitalism’s attempt to affect their selves through language and discourse and draw on affective energies to pursue alternative agendas? And methodologically: How can sociolinguistics be mobilised to investigate how affective investments are evoked, exploited, and expressed in the production networks of contemporary capitalism?
Elisabeth Barakos, Aston University The language trainer as neoliberal entrepreneur: language, work and affect While affective factors have been considered in the context of foreign language learning and teaching (e.g. Dewaele 2010), they have largely been absent from the analysis of the work of language trainers of the privatised language teaching industry. This paper thus contributes a situated case study of multilingual trainers as ‘neoliberal entrepreneurs’ in late capitalism. It details the discourses, ideologies and affective investments of their work, and what tensions and ruptures this poses vis-à-vis their institutional and wider economic embedding. I draw upon recent critical sociolinguistic scholarship (e.g. Darvin & Norton 2016, Kubota 2016) that engages with the growing skillification of language work under a neoliberal brand of multiculturalism and multilingualism. These conditions have nurtured a workforce that needs to cope with fewer job guarantees, rising insecurity and tensions over precarious and elite working conditions, which give rise to a new language trainer agency with an assemblage of skills. Framed by a discourse-ethnographic approach (Smith 2005), I argue it is important to integrate affect into the analytical toolkit as a mediated mode of meaning-making that is indexed in multiple social and discursive acts (Besnier 1990). The study contributes to a growing scholarship on the reification of knowledge, the discursive and social appropriation of language work, and the increased role of affect in work practices in late capitalism. References Besnier, Niko. (1990). Language and Affect. Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 419-451. Darvin, R., & Norton, B. (2016). Investment and Language Learning in the 21st Century. Langage et société, 3(157): 19-38. Dewaele, J.-M. (2010). Emotions in Multiple Languages. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Kubota, R. (2016). The multi/plural turn, postcolonial theory, and neoliberal multiculturalism: Complicities and implications for applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics, 37: 474-494. Smith, D. (2005). Institutional Ethnography. A sociology for people. Lanham: Altamira Press.
Alfonso Del Percio, University College London Normalising Affecting Deviance: Language and the making of the good worker This paper presents an ethnographic account of employability trainings provided to NEETs by a charity located in East London. NEET is the category used by the British authorities to refer to people between 16 and 24 who are not in education, employment or training. Governmental actors and social organisations working with impoverished populations (often from ethnic and linguistic minority milieus) conceptualise the ‘inactiveness’ of NEETs as a form of social and emotional deviance representing a danger for these individuals’ mental hygiene, as well as posing a risk to security and social order. This is why charities provide NEETs with employment training programmes, helping them to exercise a set of operations on their minds and on their language that facilitate socialization into morally acceptable modes of affective behaviour. These disciplining practices are also said to turn deviant individuals into self-confident and mentally balanced citizens and facilitate their activation into employment. This paper documents the workings of these employability trainings. It specifically investigates the circumstances under which individuals are asked to operate control over their linguistic behaviour and bring their minds into alignment with specific market principles and moralised figures of personhood. I argue that these employability trainings are emblematic of a shift in how authorities of all kinds exert control over and securitise populations. While the regimentation of population is still informed by a bureaucratic, state apparatus which relies on complex systems of classification and disciplining, the case presented points to a gradual change in the theories on which the governmentality of population draw; away from a controlling, coercive patriarchal and patronising welfare state that manages its citizens through institutionalised modes of rationalisation, towards governmental practices in which the individual becomes the guardian of herself and engages in practices of self-analysis and self-management for the benefit of herself and society at large.
Mi-Cha Flubacher, University of Vienna Female ethnic economies and the trappings of desire. A sociolinguistic perspective It has long been argued that so called ethnic economies offer a “stepladder experience” (Raijman & Tienda 2000) for members of a diasporic community to participate in the labour market. The focus of research on ethnic economies has mostly been on male entrepreneurship (cf. Erdem 2005) or on businesses that have a family at their disposal, thereby disregarding realities that clash with such specific experiences. It is thus the goal of this contribution to offer a complimentary sociolinguistic perspective on the lived experienced of women migrants who are self-employed entrepreneurs, namely managers of Thai massage studios in the Western European metropole of Vienna. Contrary to other diasporic communities, the Thai community in Austria is largely female, which is due to a restrictive migration policy, which has led to a gendered migration pattern. In the framework of an ongoing sociolinguistic ethnographic research project, I will describe how these women negotiate their professional selves in the Austrian economy and with Austrian customers. Drawing also on postcolonial and anthropological accounts, I will discuss how performances of authenticity for business purposes (e.g. Comaroff & Comaroff; cf. also Hochschild 1983) and discourses of desirability (e.g. Hall 1995) intermesh in this particular form of economic activity, pitting the women in a bind between servicing male fantasies and European ideas of Asian affability (Ang 1996). As any articulation of affect and desire is inextricably linked to power structures and control (Cameron & Kulick 2003; Lutz 1990), I will argue that this bind becomes highly telling of the vulnerable positions of female ethnic entrepreneurs, thus shedding light on the particular interconnections between current capitalism and affect for female experiences within ethnic economies.
Sirpa Leppänen, University of Jyväskylä Language, multimodality and transgressive digital work The focus in my talk is transgressive digital work – playbour (Kücklich 2005). From the perspectives of traditional, Taylorist and Fordist understandings of work, playbour could be argued to represent the anti-thesis of work: it is not work, because work is something done silently, seriously and efficiently (Marazzi 2008; Virno 2004). In this talk, I highlight a different understanding of playbour. I argue that, thanks to its commons- based and networked creative sharing culture, and start-up and peer-production mentality (Eran & Fuchs 2015; Jakonen et al. 2017), it is a telling example of work in globalized, technologized and post-industrial knowledge and attention economies. With the help of typical examples of Finland-based playbour, I will demonstrate how playbour crucially depends on discourse and interaction (Häkkinen & Leppänen 2014). From a transdisciplinary framework combining insights provided by sociolinguistics, discourse studies and digital labour research, I will show how the mobilization of semiotic resources provided by language/s and other modalities are in a key role in the development and execution of expertise in playbour, as well as in the production of social, cultural and economic value.
References Eran, F. & C. Fuchs. (2015). Reconsidering value and labour in the digital age. New York. Palgrave MacMillan. Häkkinen A. & S. Leppänen. (2014). YouTube Meme Warriors: Mashup Videos as Satire and Interventional Political Critique. eVarieng 15, http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/series/volumes/15/, accessed January 15, 2015. Jakonen, M. et al. (2017): Towards an Economy of Encounters. A Critical Case Study of Affectual Assemblages in Coworking. Scandinavian Journal of Management. Forthcoming. Kücklich, J. (2005). FCJ-025 Precarious Playbour: Modders and the Digital Games Industry. The Fibreculture Journal, 5. http://five.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-025- precarious-playbour modders- and-the- digital-games- industry/. Accessed June 12, 2017. Marazzi, C. (2008). Capital and Language. New York: Semiotext(e). Virno, P. 2004. A Grammar of the Multitude. New York: Semiotext(e).
Stephanie Meier, University of Basel Language and affect in the global care work economy – a decolonial, anti-capitalist, feminist perspective This paper investigates how structures of feeling (Williams 1977, Park 2015) towards language education, language testing and language use serve as a tool for hierarchisation that enforces social inequalities. Drawing on ethnographic field work conducted during a six-month research period in the Philippines, I trace institutional involvement in the shaping of affective responses of future labor migrants towards the German language. In 2012, the Philippines and Germany signed a bilateral labor agreement on the deployment of Philippine nurses for Germany. The contact with German and Germany is dominated by the Goethe Institute, other language schools and the German embassy. Thus, the two main emotions towards German – anxiety and pride – can be traced to their roots in the discourses of structural power. Nationalist pride is evoked in order to promote and produce the ideal Filipin@ labor force staying loyal to their home country as well as to market Germany as an attractive destination country. Central to pride is its capacity to set up hierarchies to make the desired object of pride not only ideal and attractive but also explicitly more ideal and more attractive than others. Anxiety is created by extensive regimentation through language courses, repeated language testing and long waiting periods that require heavy emotional, physical and financial investment by the migrant workers. Portrayed as migrant-entrepreneurs, anxiety increases when the options of brokering agencies, language schools and language certificates have to be constantly scanned and one’s own choices reviewed. I argue that marketing and regimentation elicit pride and anxiety towards Germany and the German language. These affective responses have historical roots in the colonial/racist, capitalist, patriarchal distribution of power. Drawing on and enforcing these hierarchies help to produce the direly needed, ideal (loyal and grateful) workforce.
Riikka Nissi, University of Tampere In pursuit of change: Reflexive practice as a tool for invoking collective transformation in organizational training This presentation investigates the interconnections between language and affect in the context of new management and consulting practices. The previous research in sociological and organizational research has underlined the central role of “community”, “collaboration” and “participation” in contemporary organizations (e.g. Adler 2015) that are seen as self- organizing systems utilizing the participants’ affective engagement with each other and the task at hand. This study explains how this shift to affective economies has created new sites for the commodification and policing of language, based on a new kind of communicative expertise. The data come from a training program of a Finnish educational institution, delivered to its management teams by a consulting company. The training aimed at enhancing the organizational capacity by creating an organizational culture that is rooted in co-creative and experimental work processes. For this reason, the participants were helped to establish an elevated self-awareness of their professional practices and the way in which they materialize in social interaction – in order to transform them as the training proceeds. In the study, the one-year long training was followed ethnographically. The training encounters (approx. 45 h) were videotaped and analyzed by using conversation and discourse analytical methods. The presentation demonstrates how the transformation the training is expected to generate is construed and managed through a sequence comprising 1.) the consultant’s request to reflect the professional practices, 2.) the participants’ response and 3.) the consultant’s follow-up. In particular, it analyzes the consultant’s methodic ways of invoking the participants’ awareness of their routinized social conduct and their desire for its transformation, and the participants’ resistance of the pursued change. The results show how the sequence functions as a basis for the negotiation of the professions’ rights to interpret and categorize the world, and thereof, is used to redefine their boundaries.
Christina Schoux Casey, Aalborg University "The real is dead": Affect and linguistic commodification in post-Katrina New Orleans. Karppi et al. have suggested that affective capitalism “is a broad infrastructure in which the emotional culture and its classed and gendered history merge with value production and everyday life” (2016: 5). Commodified language is one aspect of this infrastructure, and sociolinguistic scholarship has explored how linguistic variants become enregistered, and subsequently made available for commodification. Using New Orleans as a case study, I argue that two inter-related affective and ideological processes, nostalgia and commodification, offer a theoretical bridge between enregistered language and affective capitalism. Drawing on interviews and a collection of texts, I trace how discursive 'acts of nostalgia' enshrine ways of speaking as local. The nostalgic valorization of local language elides historical association of local features with often undesirable social meanings; low socioeconomic class, unfashionable provincialism. Further, nostalgia and commodification are linked; local language is nostalgically revived for commercial purposes, as merchandisers and entertainment outlets work to enregister local language as a commodity. This revival is an example of Baudrillard's idea of simulation, which he describes as a state "inaugurated by a liquidation of all referentials and their artificial resurrection in the systems of signs" (1994: 2). The “liquidation” is the disappearance of objects—including language—as a necessary step towards their existence as simulations. Linguistic forms can become enregistered, "revived," as simulations. Commodified discourse both employs and amplifies nostalgic language for use in affective economies, and individual speakers can be agentively engaged in these economies. References Baudrillard, Jean (1994). Simulacra and Simulation (S. Glaser, Trans.). Ann Arbor, MI: U. Michigan Press. (Original work published 1981). Karppi, Tero, Lotta Kähkönen, Mona Mannuevo, Mari Pajala and Tanja Sihvonen. (2016). Affective capitalism: Investments and investigations. Ephemera 16:(4), 1-13.
PANEL 7: LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES IN THE MEDIA - POSTCOLONIAL AND CREOLE DISCOURSES Panel convenors: Alla Klimenkowa, Univesity of Göttingen, Philipp Krämer, Freie Universität Berlin Christoph Neuenschwander, University of Bern. Discussant: Philipp Krämer The panel focuses on language ideologies in settings where social, cultural and economic-political conditions are shaped by colonial heritage. Following Woolard (1998) and Irvine/Gal (2000), we regard language ideologies as conceptual schemes that speakers construct about the relationship between language use and social structure. Postcolonial societies tend to adopt and to exploit the same linguistic ideologies that used to support hierarchical power relations during colonial times. One of the central issues addressed by the panel is whether this ideological heritage can be completely dismantled, particularly in the context of continued connection to and dependence from dominant markets. “Monoglossic culture” (del Valle/Gabriel-Stheeman 2004), ideologies of standardisation, of linguistic and cultural homogeneity, the notion of the superiority of European languages and cultures over local ones, next to concepts like nativeness, naturalism and authenticity – these and many more elements constitute an ideological base for metalinguistic reflection in postcolonial communities and, often enough, also in present discourses of former colonial powers. As a consequence of conventionalized asymmetries, hierarchies and attitudes, language often develops into an important symbol of social conflicts. Current sociolinguistic and anthropolinguistic approaches (cf. Androutsopoulos 2012; Verschueren 2012; Mar-Molinero/Stewart 2006) envisage societal ideas about language as a result of metalinguistic discourses in which various linguistic ideologies are constructed, reproduced, negotiated and modified. The panel aims to explore to what degree the media are involved in this process. On the one hand, media provide platforms for heterogeneous metalinguistic debates to various groups of speakers. Politicians, journalists, educators, intellectuals and the general public participate in such debates whenever questions of linguistic relevance attract widespread interest, for example when they are presented as concerning the entire society, its identity and unity. While their interpretations of linguistic realities differ, discursive strategies of persuasion and legitimation used by all groups involved often seem to be very similar. The multiple ways of speaking about language in different types of media and by different “ideology brokers” (Blommaert 1999) can be a valuable source for sociolinguistic investigation of ideologies. On the other hand, media are considered by many speakers as a role model of good language, which means they have a strong influence on what is perceived as the linguistic norm. Frequently, metalinguistic debates are sparked by particular choices of orthography, register, dialect or even of a newly standardised local variety or a creole language used in the media. These choices can be motivated by various reasons, from nationalist convictions and populist manifestations to commercial interests and shared communicative preferences which favour a particular idiom in the public sphere. The panel addresses the following (but not exclusively) research questions: In what ways are language ideologies in postcolonial societies influenced/supported by language use in the media? What are specific reasons for media to favour a particular linguistic variety over another (e.g. broadcasting in Creole or holding on to a European standard pronunciation on the news, printing texts in local varieties or playing music in a particular language, etc.) How are arguments in metalinguistic debates presented or silenced in the media in postcolonial
societies? What role do journalists, editors, readers or viewers play? In what ways do language ideologies in postcolonial societies differ from those in other societies? Are mediated language ideologies in postcolonial societies distinguishable at all? (cf. the connection to dominant media markets, e.g. television and press from mainland France in overseas territories, the consumption of US media in the Caribbean, the global audience of fiction via streaming services like Netflix, etc.) How may metalinguistic debates in the media help us to better understand how, why and by whom postcolonial language ideologies are constructed? What types of data do media contents provide and how can they be analysed? References Androutsopoulos, Jannis (2012). „Intermediale Varietätendynamik: ein explorativer Blick auf die Inszenierung und Aushandlung von Dialekt auf ‚You Tube‘“, in: Sociolinguistica 26/2012: 87101. Blommaert, Jan (1999). “The debate is closed”, in: Jan Blommaert (ed.). Language Ideological Debates. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 425-438. Del Valle, José/Gabriel-Stheeman, Luis (2004). „Nacionalismo, hispanismo y cultura monoglósica“, in: José del Valle/Luis Gabriel-Stheeman (ed.). La batalla del idioma. La intelectualidad hispánica ante la lengua. Madrid: Iberoamericana & Frankfurt/M.: Vervuert, 15-33. Irvine, Judith/Gal, Susan (2000). “Language ideology and linguistic differentiation”, in: Paul Kroskrity (ed.). Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities. Santa Fe, School of American Research Press, 35-84. Mar-Molinero, Clare/Stewart, Miranda (2006) (eds.). Globalization and language in the Spanishspeaking world. Chippenham: Palgrave. Verschueren, Jef (2012). Ideology in Language Use. Pragmatic Guidelines for Empirical Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Woolard, Kathryn (1998). “Language ideology as a field of inquiry”, in: Bambi Schieffelin/Kathryn Woolard/Paul Kroskrity (eds.). Language Ideology: Practice and Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3-47.
Angela Bartens, Turku University The making of languages and new literacies through the use of language in the social media: San Andrés-Providence, Jamaican, and Haitian Creole In this paper, I examine the idea of “making of languages” through Facebook groups which constitute easily accessible material for studying language use, emergent norms, and ideologies. Considering the continuum orality – literacy, new technology enables minority languages to enter “through the back door” into the domain of literacy, crucial for eventual H language status (Ferguson 1959 etc.). This results in decolonization of the traditional power relationships between H and L varieties and the ”democratization of former elite practices” (Mair to appear) as the world’s most peripheral and endangered languages benefit from the opportunities offered by the internet (Eisenlohr 2004). We can notice a cumulative effect of adoption of innovations of both attitudes and structure. Asynchronous communication provides a safe space to use the language, resulting in new communities of practice. This, in turn, allows for the integration of less competent/”peripheral” speakers, crossing, and the performing of situational ethnicities (Keefe & Padilla 1987: 190). Thus FB groups, among other venues, can play a crucial role in language revitalization and development. Cyberspace has also developed a sociolinguistic order of its own (cf. Mair to appear): what is stigmatized on the ground, may become prestigious there. I also aim to show that the use of minority languages in FB either reflects or may spill over to “traditional” media as language ideologies evolve. References Eisenlohr, P. (2004). Language revitalization and new technologies: cultures of electronic mediation and the refiguring of communities. Annual Review of Anthropology, 33, 21-45. Ferguson, C. (1959). Diglossia. Word, 15:2, 325–340. Keefe, S.E. & Padilla, A. (1987). Chicano ethnicity. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. Mair, C. (to appear). World Englishes in cyberspace. In D. Schreier, M. Hundt & E. Schneider (eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes, Cambridge: CUP.
Theresa Heyd, Universität Greifswald Tchat-moi tous les ways! On the social meaning of metalinguistic items in digital West African contact varieties This paper reports on the metacommunicative lexicon of two West African contact varieties: Nigerian Pidgin (previously described in Heyd 2015) and Camfranglais. It is assumed here that lexical repertoires which encode metalinguistic moves constitute more than just a conventional lexical field: they are instrumental in doing enregisterment talk, as they help to transport and reinforce speakers’ attitudes about linguistic belonging, legitimacy and authenticity. This is all the more relevant in globalized settings, in which contact varieties have become mobile through digital, deterritiorialized and diasporic settings. By analyzing metalanguage in the digital diaspora, this paper contributes to our understanding of contact varieties in mediatized and mobile settings. Based on the analysis of large-scale corpus data taken from Cameroonian and Nigerian discussion forums (see Mair and Pfänder 2013 for an overview), I isolate lexemes that are constitutive for Camfranglais and Nigerian Pidgin, respectively. After an overview on structural features (such as etymology and morphological patterns), I focus on dimensions of social meaning that are transported in the digital usage of terms such as gramma (n), fone (n) and front (v) for Nigerian Pidgin, tchat (v) whitiser (v) and amerlogue (n) for Camfranglais. What emerges through discourse-analytical close reading is the performance of enregisterment talk on two levels: how individual speakers position themselves in interaction; and how the overall language ecologies associated with Cameroon/Nigeria, and legitimate ways of navigating them as a speaker, are constructed. References Heyd, Theresa. (2015). The metacommunicative lexicon of Nigerian Pidgin. World Englishes 34(4): 669–687. Mair, Christian & Pfänder, Stefan. (2013). Using vernacular resources to create digital spaces: towards a sociolinguistics of diasporic web forums. In Peter Auer, Martin Hilpert, Anja Stukenbrock, Benedikt Szmrecsanyi (eds.) Space in language and linguistics: geographical, interactional, and cognitive perspectives, 529-555. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
Alla Klimenkowa, University of Göttingen The virtualization of ‘language conflict’ While the international language policy does not dispose of really efficient means to promote minority languages, the communities concerned develop their own counter-discourses based on ideologies of resistance. The communicative platform chosen is – already prototypically in the context of politicized language conflict – the Internet which plays a catalyst role in language conflicts since it co-constitutes a space and, thus, shows the reasons of language conflicts and enables to communicate them. This contribution addresses a counter-discourse in form of metalinguistic comments in the blogs of creolophone language activists in the French Antilles, a region where the relationship between French as official language and Creole as traditional oral communicative code is typically described in terms of language conflict. The activity of this group is interesting because of their role as founders of counter-discourses and their position as recognized experts. One of the questions raised is by what discursive means they create a ‘shared ground’ with their readers to succeed a convincing communication. Discussing the strategies of argumentation of this counter-discourse, we ask, how a counterdiscourse becomes manifest as such and how it handles conventional dominant ideologies and linguistic prejudices. Some preliminary hypotheses are possible. The Antillean language activists make use of many conventional ideological concepts, terms and images, often re-contextualizing and recycling them, for example in order to re-define a “spoiled identity” of the Creole as an endangered, respectful and authentic one. Similarly, the employment of French as a discourse language does not diminish the perception that the Creole is endangered and should be protected. It rather demonstrates a strategic dealing with a ‘competitor’ used as an articulation or information medium. The acceptance of bilingualism in the Antillean society does not, however, mean that contact induced phenomena as borrowing and code-switching are also accepted, which testifies a powerful ideology of purism.
Christoph Neuenschwander, University of Bern “Their Tok Pisin is so corrupted”: The re-appropriation of language ideologies in standardisation debates in Papua New Guinea Tok Pisin has played a vital role in Papua New Guinea for more than half a century, as a language of public communication, local trade and (oral) political debates. It has been valued as a lingua franca in a linguistically highly diverse area for a long time, and, more recently, has become celebrated as a marker of identity and means of uniting the country. However, the strength of Tok Pisin as a common language has often been portrayed to lie in its simplicity, i.e. the supposedly low effort required to learn it as a second language. Due to this image as a simple language, to date, the creole is largely rejected as inferior to English when it comes to education and formal (usually legal or technical) written language, with metalinguistic debates partly perpetuating ideas about pidgins and creoles that originated in a colonial, European-dominated discourse. This paper investigates these notions of linguistic simplicity, national unity and authenticity in the light of the legitimisation and standardisation process that Tok Pisin has undergone. By comparing language ideological debates in the media around Papua New Guinea’s independence in 1975, to ongoing standardisation debates today, I aim to explore how ideologies have been transformed over time. To some extent, while language ideologies constantly shift, compete and adapt to new sociopolitical circumstances, metalinguistic comments in public discourse always seem to result from reproducing and re-interpreting former comments (Blommaert 1999). However, the example of Tok Pisin demonstrates how remarkable these re-interpretations can be in a context of decolonisation, where the dominant voices in discourse have changed dramatically over a few decades. In Papua New Guinea, (colonial) ideologies around standardisation debates have been re-appropriated considerably in the wake of political emancipation. Reference Blommaert, Jan (1999). Language Ideological Debates. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 425438.
Britta Schneider, Freie Universität Berlin Public life and hidden language practice. Language choice in media in multilingual Belize In this presentation, I analyze the role of different languages in public media in the multilingual setting of Belize. I focus on the three most dominant languages of Belize, namely English, Kriol and Spanish. The language of the former British colonizer is Standard English and occupies almost 100% of formal media language in TV news or in newspaper articles. This shows the dominance of colonial language ideologies, where English is still regarded as the only medium of communication to transport formal content. Yet, the language Kriol, a non-standardized creole language, indexes ‘authentic’ Belizeanness and is found frequently in less formal media. At the same time, apart from some consumption of Mexican TV channels, the absence of Spanish in Belizean mass media is striking. Despite being the demographically most dominant language, Spanish is scarcely used. Spanish is thus constructed as nonBelizean. This is linked to the political history of Belize – the political elite is traditionally Kriolspeaking and feels a need to defend itself against Hispanic surroundings. Nevertheless, exogamous norms of English continue to hold the place of ‘correctness’, above all in written domains. The overall language ideological arrangement seems to be contested only in language uses in social media, where non-standardized and creolized forms of English and also some Spanish comes to the fore. This demonstrates that the use of language in public media does not necessarily reflect linguistic uses of the population of a country but is highly dependent on discourses of power, authenticity and legitimacy. I ask whether the stark contrast between language use in daily life and in media is a phenomenon that is particular to postcolonial settings and discuss whether newer media uses (such as social media) bring about general changes to these ideologies.
Fernanda Maciel Ziober, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam/CAPES-Brazil Linguistic attitudes in Brazil and Guinea-Bissau: organizing a model Colonial linguistic ideologies were conceived on the basis of an “aesthetic beauty” of the European language, defined in the sociolinguistics as the prestige of a linguistic variety (Labov, 1966) or the status of one language in relation to another (cf. Couto/Embaló, 2010). The aim of this contribution is to find out categories for an aesthetically free discussion of a colonial perception of the linguistic policies and attitudes, as advocated in the literature (Osundare, 2009), especially within the theory of the postcolonialism (Hall, 2003; Said, 1978). We focus on Brazil and Guinea-Bissau in recent years, experiencing technological advances such as the Internet, historical issues such as aesthetic and/or separatist movements, linguistic policies, and linguistic attitudes, determined by school teachers (Pessoa, 1989) and news of political-ideological content circulating in channels of widespread diffusion such as magazines and radio (for Brazil cf. Faracco, 2016; Lucchesi, 2015; for Guinea-Bissau, cf. Intumbo, 2017; Couto/Embaló, 2010). The choice of the both countries is determined by their common colonial root, Portugal, and their major linguistic contrast between the (supposed) monolingualism and the multilingualism. The contribution addresses following questions: what factors contributed to our current perception and evaluation of colonial linguistic identity? Why, even after the independence and considering so many differences between these countries, there are still common discourses in the media classifying one linguistic variety upon another? What differs and approaches the multilingualism and the monolingualism in relation to linguistic prejudices (Bagno, 1999)?
PANEL 8: HISTORICAL SOCIOLINGUISTICS OF THE IDEOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS PRACTICE
RUSSIAN
LANGUAGE:
OFFICIAL
Kapitolina Fedorova, European University at St. Petersburg Discussant: Nikolai Vakhtin, European University at St. Petersburg, Being a multiethnic and linguistically diverse country, on every stage of its historical existence Russia – Russian Empire – the Soviet Union – Russian Federation had to deal with issues of language ideology. Inevitably, the Russian language, as a “big brother”, language of politically domineering ethnic majority, constantly became a field of struggle between different competing ideological vectors, as well as sociopolitical groups and actors. Both the Russian society and the Russian language underwent massive transformations in the 20th century. The process of language change started before 1917, driven by urbanization and the beginning of an active political discourse. It accelerated with the beginning of WWI, and especially with the February Revolution that deposed the Tsar and removed all censorship. Socialist parties, especially Bolsheviks flush with German money, unleashed a massive propaganda campaign targeting primarily the army and the cities but reaching the countryside as well. It exposed peasants (the largest group by far), soldiers in the army, and workers in the city to a radically new vocabulary, syntax and organization of discourse. After the Bolshevik takeover, those new ways of speaking became the language of power. Its impact on the young and the less educated was huge, gradually spreading through all the social classes. The most resistant turned out to be parts of intelligentsia, who preserved the literary language, and the peasants, who, with amazing cultural tenacity, preserved their own idiosyncratic tradition. Later, gradual fossilization of the Soviet social system and then abrupt socioeconomic transformations of the 1990s further modified relations between sociolinguistic practice and official ideology. Despite the fact Russia presents a fascinating scene for sociolinguistic research, weakness of its post-WWII sociolinguistic tradition (resulted from Stalinist repressions and overwhelming communist ideological pressure) leaves it aside of most up-to-date studies. The proposed panel, on the one hand, aims at bringing together scholars working on different aspects of social variation and language ideology in the history of the Russian language while, at the same time, to present the results of their research on Russian data to international sociolinguistic community to integrate them into more broad research context.
Kapitolina Fedorova, European University at St. Petersburg Class struggle at the “linguistic front”: academic language in the USSR in the 1920–1930s The paper deals with the influence of official communist ideology on the Soviet academic language in the period from the end of the 1920s to the early 1930s. In linguistics, it was a time of intense ideological debate around social issues in language stimulated both by practical needs and by theoretical questions emerging in the new social reality. Main protagonists of this battle were Evgeniy Polivanov and his opponents, mostly disciples of Nikolai Marr and his “New theory of language”. (Eventually Marr was victorious, and Polivanov was arrested and shot.) Polivanov competed Marr not as a “pure” linguist, he tried to oppose to Marr’s vulgar Marxism the “real Marxian approach to language”. From today's perspective though the theoretical positions in the debate are less interesting than the language in which the debate was conducted. The Soviet academic language of the 1930s is very different both from its pre-revolutionary analog and from more recent forms developed in 1960s–1980s. By the late 1920s there were already Sovieteducated, young and upward-mobile scholars who brought their class background to the language in which they conducted academic discourse. Evgeniy Polivanov, on the other hand, was educated and became an established scholar in the pre-revolutionary period, and his texts reflect more traditional academic language but, importantly, with some traces of conscious ideological changes. Soviet linguists’ academic language usage therefore is related to the social variation and “class struggle” in the Russian language of the period. The paper analyzes and compares lexical and syntax levels of Polivanov’s and his opponents’ texts revealing some mismatches between ideologically motivated strategies and their linguistic results. Data from linguistic texts will be supplemented by analysis of texts from other disciplines to illustrate the influence Soviet ideology had on academic language practice.
Victoria Gulida, St. Petersburg State University The emergence of sociolinguistics in two socio-academic contexts Sociolinguistics emerged as an independent area of linguistic studies in the 1920s USSR and the 1960s USA. Since neither research community was aware of each other’s activities, this is a unique situation for a sociolinguist to try and analyse. How did the two communities go about their typologically similar task? Which steps and/or building blocks of the new paradigm development – in their initial stages – by Russian and American counterparts reveal similarities or differences? Both research communities found themselves in a classic situation of breaking away from the tradition; participants on both sides were distinguished linguists of comparable professional status (with the American group including academics from disciplines, related to linguistics, hence considerably larger). Yet they acted in different political and economic systems and in different periods of modern history. It is important for a student of sociolinguistics in progress to attempt to identify the impacts of these factors (academic, socio-political or time-related) on the resulting intellectual outcome. This paper aims to a. explore the stance taken by the Russian and American research groups as regards the dominant conceptualisation of language b. identify the areas and/or types of language prioritised by each team for empirical research c. analyse the reasons for focusing on the urban language in both groups’ initial large-scale empirical research projects; also, if any particular research methods were developed for the purpose d. compare W. Labov’s variationist model and B.Larin’s urban sociolinguistic system that were put forward as a result of experimental / field research; also, particular concepts, introduced within the model framework and still in use.
The analysis suggests a clear similarity in b and c, a degree of difference in a and clearly dissimilar modelling strategies in d.
Svitlana Malykhina, Boston University Language contact and creation of linguistic self-identity in the Russian-speaking world The paper focuses on the issue of language contact by situating it in the scope of historical sociolinguistics. The field of language contact has been rapidly growing during the past decade and developed to the degree that it is transdisciplinary and not wholly reliant on linguistic formalism. As an immigrant, I have often felt displaced, and I perpetually try to find ways to overcome that ultimate feeling of not belonging. As a language instructor, I constantly figure out different ways to navigate the, sometimes, conflicting linguistic landscape. As a researcher, I always reflect on facets of my identity that tend to isolate me from some parts of the dominant culture, for which I appear to be a perfect fit. This is where this interest in studying language contact and its relationship with identity comes from. In my fieldwork, which took place in Moscow, Kharkiv, Narva, Boston I uncovered multiple discursive practices in which the identity has been shaped. In the course of the last ten years I recurrently interviewed Russian speakers in those discursively constructed multilingual places, exploring the narrative on language practices and practical strategies, through which they characterize their identities. My media research and reflection on emergent bilingualism underline how the personal identities, which constructed by media and cultural analysis are never simply transparent representation of linguistic or cultural situations. To bring to the forefront these issues of enclosing ethnic diversity within the fixed zones of the nation-state does not mean that dilemma of cultural and linguistic hybridity, and the performative nature of self-identity is to be discounted. In this paper, media analysis of representation of the multilingual subject attends to the subject’s self-assessment of linguistically hybrid status and challenges in a coherent narrative construction of personal identity.
Gesine Argent, The University of Edinburgh Language ideology and multilingualism in Russia: historical and contemporary language attitudes The use of multiple languages has been a feature of the linguistic landscape in Russia for centuries. This multilingualism has sparked reactions ranging from acceptance via reservations to rejection. This paper analyses how multilingualism is constructed discursively, comparing contemporary portrayals of multilingualism in Russia with historical linguistic attitudes on the subject. The topic of attitudes to multilingualism and multilingualism as a part of self-fashioning and identity construction in the 18th and 19th century has recently received attention, but similar concerns have not been at the forefront of existing studies of contemporary multilingualism in Russia. In order to provide a diachronic perspective on the topic, this paper will examine the following questions: Is multilingualism celebrated, a source of pride, considered the norm, feared or fought against? Is multilingualism perceived as a problem or an opportunity? What links are made between identity and multilingualism? Do the linguistic ideologies expressed in this discourse remain similar over time? Given the wide-ranging and far-reaching sociopolitical changes in this region both historically and in recent times, a comparison of contemporary language ideologies with their precursors in the 18th and 19th centuries can reveal insights on whether and how perceptions of multilingualism can change.
POSTERS
Ágnes Domonkosi, Eszterházy Károly University The role of gender in the use of Hungarian address forms Forms of address are directly related to the nature of social relationships. The gender of the discourse partners, including the question whether they are of the same or different genders, thus has an impact on the use of address forms. The goal of the presentation is to highlight the major gender-related characteristics of Hungarian address practices by reporting on a comprehensive sociolinguistic study based on questionnaires and interviews. The findings are as follows: • the distribution of T/V forms is characterized by the fact that in all types of relationship and in every discourse domain, T forms are more likely to be used in dyads of the same gender than in those of different genders, and their share is the highest in women’s discourses. • with regard to various choices of V forms (the pronouns maga/ön and the auxiliary construction with tetszik ’please’), expressions which are considered more confidential or more likely to be used from a superordinate position have a higher frequency in addresses directed at women; furthermore, there are special, highly confidential V forms which are exclusively used in such contexts (e.g. magácska, a diminutive form derived from the V pronoun maga), • nominal forms of address expressing affection are more often directed at women and used by women, • in official relationships and in the discourse domain of work, women are more likely to be addressed by their given names, including situations in which their male counterparts are almost exclusively addressed by forms highlighting social rank or position. In line with the perspective of social constructivism, the gender-related usage patterns of address forms are interpreted as actively shaping the construal of particular relationships and gender roles. Thus, the research findings suggest that iterative patterns in the use of more confidential/affectionate forms with women contribute to the maintenance of female gender roles.
Alexander Glück, Free University of Bozen/Bolzano Syntactic Features of Regional Standard German in South Tyrol The linguistic situation in South Tyrol in northern Italy is characterized by internal and/or external multilingualism of most of its inhabitants. Internal multilingualism refers to the co-existence of German dialects and Regional Standard German, external multilingualism, on the other hand, to the presence of both German and Italian. So far, syntactic features of South Tyrolean Standard German have mainly been investigated with regard to language contact (e.g. Riehl 2007) or acquisition (e.g. Risse 2014). Descriptive approaches mostly focus on selected phenomena, even though the “Variantengrammatik des Standarddeutschen” (e.g. Dürscheid/Elspaß/Ziegler 2015) will fill this gap. In my poster, I shall present results obtained from the investigation of oral as well as written discourses produced by South Tyrolean high school graduates. The written data include 430 authentic essays; the oral data comprise 254 elicited interviews. All subjects speak a German variety as (one of) their first language(s), and attend a German-medium high school. Starting with a description of the means of connecting and pronominalizing dependent clauses individual speaker profiles and writer profiles respectively shall be investigated. This includes the question, whether any overall differences between spoken and written language can be observed. References Dürscheid, Christa/Elspaß, Stephan/Ziegler, Arne (2015): Variantengrammatik des Standarddeutschen. Konzeption, methodische Fragen, Fallanalysen. In: Lenz, Alexandra N./Glauninger, Manfred M. (Hgg.): Standarddeutsch im 21. Jahrhundert – Theoretische und empirische Ansätze mit einem Fokus auf Österreich, Wien, S. 207-235. Riehl, Claudia Maria (2007): Varietätengebrauch und Varietätenkontakt in Südtirol und Ostbelgien. In: Linguistik online 32,3, S. 105-117. Risse, Stephanie (2014): Deutsch als Zweitsprache im mehrsprachigen Kontext. Zum Erwerb von Konjunktionen als Indikator für Textqualität. In: Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 44,2, S. 86-95.
Andrea Götz, Károli Gáspár Református Egyetem Sex differences in interpreted Hungarian discourse The present poster presentation explores whether sex differences can be observed in Hungarian interpreted discourse in terms of hesitation. The presentation examines filled and unfilled pauses, as well as added (not motivated by the original speech) discourse markers, which are deployed to gain time and re-focus interpreted discourse after hesitation occurred. It is well documented in many language pairs that translators add discourse markers to target texts to increase cohesion and coherence (e.g. Englund Dimitrova 2005). It has also been found that interpreters add discourse markers to their speech production in order to clarify the speaker’s point of view (Blakemore and Gallai 2014). Female interpreters have been observed to produce fewer filled pauses (Collard and Defrancq 2017). This investigation combines these findings, asking whether female and male interpreters deploy discourse markers differently during simultaneous interpreting as a part of recovery after a filled or unfilled pause. The analyses are carried out on European Parliamentary speeches, sourced from the Pannonia Corpus. The source language of the speeches is English, their duration on average is two minutes. Altogether 15-15 speeches interpreted by female and male interpreters are examined. A contrastive analysis probes whether implicit logical links or pragmatic content could inspire inserting discourse markers. Beyond sex differences, this could also provide evidence for the claim that the mediated communicative event of interpreting creates its own discourse pattern. References Blakemore, D., Gallai, F. 2014. Discourse markers in free indirect style and interpreting. Journal of Pragmatics Vol. 60. 106–120. Collard, C., Defrancq, B. 2017. Sex Differences in Simultaneous Interpreting: a Corpus-Based Study. Presented at Conférence Internationale permanente d’Instituts Universitaires de Traducteurs et Interprètes (CIUTI)’s Forum. Englund Dimitrova, B. 2005. Expertise and explicitation in the translation process. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Axel Harting, Hiroshima University Developing L2 socio-pragmatic competence through blended learning involving SNS Socio-pragmatic competence, which includes knowledge of speech acts, is crucial for establishing and maintaining good relations with native speakers, particularly in computer-mediated communication. This requirement can be seen notably through social networking sites (SNS). In recent years, foreign language learning involving SNS has been explored from various perspectives (see Wang & Vasquèz, 2012). Facebook’s ‘Group’ application, in particular, seems to be a suitable tool for raising the learners’ socio-pragmatic awareness, because it allows them to observe authentic target language communication and provides them with the analytical tools necessary to inductively generalize about pragmatic aspects (Hanna & de Nooy, 2003 and Blattner & Fiori, 2011). In this poster presentation, the author will illustrate how social networking was integrated into a regular university language course (11 students, CFER level B1) and how data relevant to the students’ performance of L2 speech acts was collected and analysed. The participants were assigned weekly Facebook tasks aimed at eliciting speech acts commonly used in online interaction. They were asked to comment on each other’s posts, which subsequently prompted multiple exchanges. By means of discourse analysis, the students’ posts and comments were analysed according to grammatical correctness as well as lexical and pragmatic inappropriateness. In order to get an insight into the students’ expectations and experiences concerning the project, the study draws on data collected in a pre- and post-course survey. By presenting preliminary quantitative as well as qualitative results, it is envisioned more can be realised by harnessing fellow researchers who also focus on social networking to improve their students’ communicative skills. Due to the growing popularity of SNS such as Facebook it is increasingly likely, and indeed also desirable, that students engage in such interactions and continue to practice and improve their acquired L2 skills even after they have completed their institutional language tuition.
Barbara Hoch, Universität Koblenz-Landau Superdiversity in the classroom: A multimodal analysis of socio-spatial positioning in classroom interaction Primary school classes are highly complex communities: The dynamic interplay of linguistic, sociocultural and further variables of pupils and teachers leads to a diversification of diversity (Vertovec 2007, Blommaert 2013). While the complexity goes beyond categorization, Budde (2015) assumes the orientation towards heterogeneity to be a core principle for the organization of teaching. Against this background, the project sheds light on how teachers and pupils position themselves and others during classroom interaction. Positioning is understood as social as well as spatial practice (Hausendorf & Schmitt 2017) which is analyzed based on video recordings. In order to pay tribute to the multidimensionality of the phenomenon, Nexus Analysis (Scollon & Wong Scollon 2004) is used as a meta-methodology (Hult 2017) linking the multimodal analysis of classroom interaction, the tracing of language biographical experiences of the participants and the reconstruction of discourses inscribed in the classroom (Szabó 2015). Reference Blommaert, J. (2013). Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity. Bristol/Buffalo/Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Budde, J. (2015). Heterogenitätsorientierung: Zum problematischen Verhältnis von Heterogenität, Differenz und sozialer Ungleichheit im Unterricht. In J. Budde, N. Blasse, A. Bossen & G. Rißler (Eds.), Heterogenitätsforschung: Empirische und theoretische Perspektiven (p. 21–38), Weinheim/Basel: Beltz Juventa. Hausendorf, H., & Schmitt, R. (2017). Räume besetzen im Gottesdienst: Interaktionsanalytische Argumente für ein Konzept sozial-räumlicher Positionierung. SpuR 6. Hult, F. (2017). Nexus analysis as scalar ethnography for educational linguistics. In M. MartinJones & D. Martin (Eds.), Researching multilingualism: Critical and ethnographic perspectives (p. 89–104), London/New York: Routledge. Scollon, R., & Wong Scollon, S. (2004). Nexus Analysis: Discourses and the Emergent Internet. London/New York: Routledge. Szabó, T. P. (2015). The management of diversity in schoolscapes: an analysis of Hungarian practices. Apples 9(1), p. 23–51. Vertovec, S. (2007). New Complexities of Cohesion in Britain: Super-Diversity, Transnationalism and Civil-Integration. Commission on Integration and Cohesion.
Viktória Horváth, Valéria Krepsz, Dorottya Gyarmathy, Mária Gósy, Anna Huszár, Tekla Etelka Gráczi, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Relative frequency patterns of phonemes in spontaneous speech across ages The relative frequency of occurrence of phonemes in spontaneous speech is a decisive parameter characterizing a language (Bloomfield 1933). Several linguistics fields can be aided using the statistics of phoneme occurrence in speech, like sociolinguistics, language teaching, speech technology. There are a very few publications discussing this topic in Hungarian (e.g., Szende 1973). The aim of this study was to analyse the relative frequency of occurrence of phonemes in spontaneous speech samples from early childhood to adulthood in Hungarian. Our hypotheses were: (i) phoneme-frequency patterns would be similar across age groups, and (ii) the number of phonemes building up the words would increase across ages. Two minute annotated spontaneous speech samples of the same durations produced by 100 native Hungarian females and males (aged between 4 and 20 years) were analysed using four databases (BEA, TiniBEA, GABI, and another children’s database developed by two of the authors). The number of the phonemes and the words, as well as the type/token ratios were defined using Praat software, and statistical analysis was carried out using SPSS 20.0 software. The number of occurrence of the phonemes and words were the dependent factors while age, gender and speaker were set as fixed factors. Preliminary results confirmed that there were no significant differences in relative frequency of occurrence of phonemes across ages; however, the proportion of longer words showed differences after the age of 7. Quantitative analysis of spontaneous speech shows the variety of language use and is of practical value in language development. References Bloomfield, L. 1933. Language. New York, Henry Holt. Szende Tamás 1973. Spontán beszédanyag gyakorisági mutatói. Nyelvtudományi Értekezések 81. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest.
Mika Kawanari, Meikai University The effectiveness of studying abroad on improving the communicative language competences of Japanese EFL learners
In this study, we could empirically suggest that 1) a short-term study abroad program is fairly effective for Japanese EFL learners in improving the overall communicative competence in terms of sociolinguistic or pragmatic aspects; and 2) ‘Can Do’ descriptors of self-assessment questionnaires can be reliable methodology in measuring such a qualitative effectiveness of overseas learning. Our research project has been conducted in the 3 week-long study program at UCLA in 2017 which was offered to certain Japanese private university students. They participated in the intensive English programs and were assigned to fill in a questionnaire survey form twice: before and after taking the program. The questionnaire consists of ‘Can Do’ descriptors in order to assess the students’ English language proficiency on ‘listening’, ‘speaking’, ‘reading’ , ‘writing’, and ‘overall communicative competence’. These ‘Can Do’ descriptors with 6 scales are originally implemented by the author’s project based on the CEFR. In addition, subjects’ self-assessment was marked by 4 rating scales. As a result of comparing the average scores of pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire (t-test), it was found that they experienced significant proficiency in ‘listening’, ‘speaking’ and ‘overall communicative competence’ within a given period of time. What is noteworthy here is the qualitative characteristics of how they assess what they can do after taking the program concerning their overall communication skills. They reported, for example, ‘I can handle very short social exchanges, using everyday polite forms of greeting and address’ （A2 level） (B1), or ‘I can express myself confidently, clearly and politely in a formal or informal register’ (B2). These reports are related to sociolinguistic appropriateness and pragmatic competence. Once Japanese EFL learners acquire such self-confidence in their communication skills, which facilitates their cross-cultural awareness and learning motivations positively.
Zuzana Komrsková, Michal Škrabal, Charles University The role of paralinguistic behaviour, especially laughter in written interview vs. spoken dialogue. A corpus-based study The differences between written and spoken language has been demonstrated on many languages, registers or genres (e.g. Biber 1988, 1995). However, the detailed comparison between spoken dialogue and its written form as an interview in a newspaper or magazine is still missing. The transformation from spoken to written form of an interview is a rather complicated process of eliminating undesirable phenomena that are typical for an unprepared speech: i.e. unfinished utterances, word repetition, discourse markers etc. The final article must be reader-friendly and, at the same time, it should reflect the speaker’s idiolect and behaviour. Therefore, paralinguistic and nonverbal signals are quite often verbalised or transferred to the written text as notes in parentheses. Our corpus-based research is focused on these notes in the Czech newspapers and magazines. The most frequent note in a subcorpus of Czech newspapers (Křen et al. 2015) is the one describing the laughter by the various forms (smích, úsměv, směje se, usměje se, usmívá se etc.). Similarly, the laughter is also the most frequent paralinguistic behaviour in the corpus of spoken dialogues (Kopřivová et al. 2017). The role of laughter during spoken communication has been described as indisputably one of the most important parts of paralinguistic behaviour (e.g. Glenn – Holt 2013). Selected sociological data of an oral interview (e.g. gender – the data from spoken corpus shows that women laugh more often than men) should be also taken into account as well as chosen data available for the written form of a dialogue (in addition to the gender, e.g., genre of the newspaper/journal or the section the interview is located in). Besides the laughter, there are also other paralinguistic notes, e.g. gestures (přikývne ‘s/he nods’), voice quality (křičí ‘s/he shouts’) etc. These notes should be analysed and categorised as well, considering their possible connection to the speech acts. References Biber, D. (1988). Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Biber, D. (1995). Dimensions of register variation: A cross-linguistic comparison. Cambridge University Press. Glenn, P. - Holt, E. (Eds.) (2013). Studies of Laughter in Interaction. London: Bloomsbury. Kopřivová, M. – Komrsková, Z. – Lukeš, D. – Poukarová, P. – Škarpová, M.: ORTOFON: korpus neformální mluvené češtiny s víceúrovňovým přepisem, verze 1 z 2. 6. 2017. Ústav Českého národního korpusu FF UK, Praha 2017. Dostupný z WWW: http://www.korpus.cz Křen, M. – Cvrček, V. – Čapka, T. – Čermáková, A. – Hnátková, M. – Chlumská, L. –
Andrea Lengyelová, Carmen Pérez-Sabater, Universitat Politècnica de València Language choice and attitudes towards English-Slovak code-switching in the online workplace communication Studies of code-switching (CS) in computer-mediated communication (CMC) have identified CS patterns in a range of platforms, social settings and linguistic contexts. However, investigating the occurrence of code-switching in electronic writing still remains less well researched in comparison to other linguistic processes in CMC and it is particularly under-researched in languages other than English. As Androutsopoulos (2013: 667) pointed out, ‘’CS in CMC is relevant not only because it is there (and not yet well understood) but also for the insights it can offer to pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and discourse studies’’. The objective of our poster is to present preliminary results of the questionnaire survey and actual language practices in the context of CMC, focusing on conversational CS between Slovak as L1 and English in private written interactions among colleagues in a workplace environment. The main focus of the quantitative, questionnaire-based study was to examine participants’ linguistic awareness of the extent of the use of English in the identified CMC modes and their attitudes towards code-switching. As the depth of knowledge obtained through questionnaire survey is limited, the aim of the fine-grained qualitative analysis of the corpus was to investigate more closely the amount and types of CS involved. This was done by analyzing actual linguistic practices and subsequently comparing and relating these findings to the findings of the quantitative study. A link between attitudes, language behavior and code-switching practices will be statistically established. Self-reported data, in which participants assess and comment on their own language practices, compared to naturally occurring language provide interesting insights on the language choices and code-switching patterns with the aim to contribute to the current body of knowledge dealing with this phenomenon. References Androutsopoulos, J. (2013). 'Code-switching in computer-mediated communication'. In S. C. Herring, D. Stein & T. Virtanen (Eds.), Pragmatics of computer-mediated communication (pp. 667-694). Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
Lorena Martín García, University of Granada Proposal of classification of idealised cognitive metaphors in corpus preseea in Granada The main purpose of this work is to make a new classification based on Lakoff’s and Johnson’s classification (1980) and on Iñesta’s and Pamies’ classification, according to cognitive metaphors. We also add new structures that we can not find on Pamies’ & Iñesta’s classification (1999; 2000). We pay attention to the reality that metaphors make reference to or the domain they belong to, but instead of making a difference between orientational, ontologic, conceptual or temporal metaphors, we use this classification on a second level. We also separate metaphors from a goal domain to later break down every category from the image that inspires it (source domain). We call this level iconic model (Pamies & Iñesta 1999; 2000). For example, the particular metaphor ponérsele los pelos de punta a alguien has a goal domain: FEAR, and it is based on an iconic model, that is a combination of source domains (MOVEMENT + BODY). Frequently, the same iconic model can subdivide itself into several archimetaphoras. In our analysis we also consider social factors in the use of metaphors in the Corpus PRESEEA in Granada (Moya et al. 20072012) like age, sex or level of studies. Because of it, we could consider it a contribution to the future from a sociolinguistic point of view. To make this classification of metaphors, we move away from the corpus and, depending on the examples that are found, the classification wil be bigger. We also distinguish between phraseologized and not phraseologized metaphors. References Iñesta Mena, E. & Pamies Bertrán, A. (2002) Fraseología y metáfora: aspectos tipológicos y cognitivos. Granada: Método Ediciones. Lakoff, G. y Johnson, M. (1980) Metáforas de la vida cotidiana. Madrid: Cátedra. Montoro del Arco, E. (2006) Teoría fraseológica de las locuciones particulares: las locuciones prepositivas, conjuntivas y marcadoras en español. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Moya Corral, Juan Antonio (coord.). (2007). El español hablado en Granada. Corpus para su studio sociolingüístico. Nivel de estudios bajo, medio y alto. Granada: Granada Universidad.
Cristina Mayor-Goicoechea, Jesús Romero-Trillo, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Conflict and Linguistic Confrontation: Defining the Power of Language in Terrorism Determining the interrelation between discourse and conflict is increasingly important in geopolitics, since international terrorism is one of the main definers of today’s society. The present research focuses on the Islamic State use of English language in a corpus collected from their online magazine, Dabiq, and its repercussion in society. Our study will approach this relationship through the synergy between Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics (Romero-Trillo, 2008) by expanding the ideological square method (van Dijk, 2003) with the addition of a third actor. This third actor, that we have called the translocal-group, consists of the audience who may sympathise with the cause without having aligned with it yet (Bass, 2014). Following this perspective, our study will investigate the language addressed to in-group (ISIS followers), out-group (people against ISIS), and the translocal-group. Using religion to justify conflict and, using conflict as a response to the evil and violent out-group, Dabiq readers receive ISIS ideological bias through specific key discourse elements. To illustrate this fact, we will use Proximization theory (Cap, 2013) to address the discourse of the Islamic State. Specifically, we will concentrate on the negative impact of the out-group towards the in-group. The discourse representation of this fact, following STA model (Cap, 2013) and based on the groups and the linguistic strategies employed in our research, will contribute to the development of Proximization theory from a terrorist discourse perspective. References Bass, L. E. (2014). What Motivates European Youth to Join ISIS? Syria Comment. Date of access: 2/06/2016. Retrieved from: http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/push-factorshelping-isil-recruitment-loretta-bass/ Cap, P. (2013). Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company Romero-Trillo, J. (Ed.) (2008). Pragmatics and Corpus Linguistics, a Mutualistic Entente. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Van Dijk, T. (2003). Ideology and Discourse: A Multidisciplinary Introduction. Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona. 1-118
Richard Miles, Brad Deacon Nanzan University Front Loading and Back Loading Arguments in English Oral Presentations Studies on the rhetoric used in public speeches date back to ancient Greece. Such studies have typically focused on the particular language employed by the speaker, the credibility of the speaker, the delivery style of the speaker, and how the speaker structured their argument. An analysis of the structure of English oral presentations delivered by university students in Japan is the focus of this study. In particular, this study analyzed whether presenters front loaded their argument (stated their intent explicitly near the beginning) or whether they back loaded their argument (stated their intent explicitly near the end). Cultural expectations dictate that Japanese speakers typically back load their argument (Elwood, 2011; Okabe, 1983), but presenting in English (L2) often requires speakers to adapt the structure of their argument. Previous studies have identified how front loading and back loading, also known respectively as ‘primacy effect’ and ‘recency effect’ (Haugtvedt & Wegener, 1994) can influence the persuasive impact of an argument. An analysis of 40 oral presentations (n=40) reveals that approximately half the participants front loaded their arguments, and were assessed more favorably by their English language teacher. The speakers who back loaded their argument, were assessed more favorably by their Japanese peers. This study on language as a local practice has implications for English language instructors as well as for Japanese university students studying English as a second language. References Elwood, K. (2011). Cultural conundrums/Are you cross culturally convinced? The Daily Yomiuri, March 1st. Retrieved April 17th, 2012 from http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/languages/T110223003803.htm Haugtvedt, C.P. & Wegener, D.T. (1994). Message order effects in persuasion: An attitude strength perspective. Journal of Consumer Research, Inc., 21 (1), pp. 205-218. Okabe, R. (1983). Cultural assumptions of east and west. In Intercultural Communication Theory. Ed. William B. Gudykunst. International and Intercultural Annual, 7, pp. 21-44.
Kaarina Mononen, Hanna Lappalainen, University of Helsinki Hundred Finnish Linguistic Life Stories - interviewers’ reflections on data collecting as part of a new kind of research project Our poster presentation discusses collecting data for a research project of linguistic life stories. In the project, hundred Finnish linguistic life stories have been and will be collected through interviews during the academic year 2017–2018. The interviewees represent different social and age groups; in addition to native Finnish-speaking informants, linguistic and ethnic minorities are represented in the corpus. The topics dealt with in the interviews concern interviewee’s perceptions about different ways of speaking, linguistic memories, knowledge of languages, using media etc. The majority of data have been collected by students of different universities in Finland as part of their studies. In addition to data collection, they have been asked to reflect their experiences and feelings related to interviewing. Our main database for this studypaper consists of the learning diaries of these students (c. 70). In the poster, we will present some observations based on students’ reflections and discuss what their notes reaveal about the nature of the interviews and linguistic ideologies among the students. We will also pay attention to other issues, e.g. advice and orientation given during the course, which can have an impact on the reflections. The aim of our study is to discuss the significance of the data collection for sociolinguistic research and to make visible linguistic ideologies which influence behind the research process. At the same, we will present an overview of a new kind of research project and discuss the possibilities of these data, which include both native and non native speakers of Finnish from different parts of the country.
Anna V. Sokolova G., Metropolitan Autonomous University Mexican students’ representations of the local languages-cultures Nowadays, it is particularly important to examine the role of indigenous languages in the world and, especially, in different societies. It should be mentioned that Mexico is highly rich in terms of linguistic diversity that corresponds to the languages spoken by numerous ethnic groups who live on the national territory. There have been different factors throughout the history of this country that have endangered the existence of the local languages as well as their linguistic variants. Therefore, various national and international governmental non-governmental organizations have taken certain measures to stop this endangering process. As a result, there exist numerous programmes and projects aiming at the study and promotion of the local indigenous languages-cultures. Inspiring the students with insights about the latter as well as with learning the languages in question can be regarded as a crucial contribution to preserving the linguistic and cultural richness of Mexico. In order to get closer to the present-day linguistic situation in this nation, a research was conducted among Mexican university students with a special focus on their representations of the indigenous languages-cultures. The survey participants responded to questionnaires related to their socio-cultural, academic, and demographic characteristics and also to their perceptions of the local languages and their interest in learning them. Some of these students also took part in group discussions on the subject. As a result, it was found out that the students’ features of the above-mentioned types, together with the place conferred to the indigenous languages-cultures on the national “linguistic market”, have an enormous impact on the construction of their individual and collective attitudes towards these languages. On the whole, this research results can help to optimize the linguistic and cultural policy in Mexico.
Xulio Sousa, Instituto da Lingua Galega, Soraya Suárez Quintas, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela PDMapping: a web application for processing perceptual dialectology data The study of how nonlinguists perceive variation in language permits an analysis of subconscious linguistic ideologies. Since the emergence of Perceptual Dialectology (PD), dialectologists and sociolinguists have been using different methodological approaches to register language perceptions. These procedures include questionnaires to evaluate the similarity, the difference, the correctness or the pleasantness of varieties using scales, hand-drawn maps, interviews to elicit information and collect qualitative data, among other indirect methods like matched-guise technique. All these methods have been developed to make relationship between perception and production more explicit. This poster presents a web application developed in order to facilitate PD data processing and analysis. It was designed by an interdisciplinary group of computer scientists, mathematicians and linguists. The application, which mixes different PD techniques such as draw-a-map, dialect identification and a questionnaire to recover speakers’ dialectal perceptions, is especially useful as a complement to more traditional methods of data collection. The information is stored in a PostgreSQL database, which relational structure facilitates the management of data. In this way, the database can be connected with geographic information systems (GIS) and statistical software packages as R project. References Albury, N.J. (2017): How folk linguistic methods can support critical sociolinguistics. Lingua, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2017.07.008 Calaza Díaz, L. Suárez Quintas, S.; Crujeiras R.M.; Rodríguez Casal, A.; Sousa, X.; Ríos Viqueira, J.R. (2015): “A method for processing perceptual dialectology data”, in ACTAS XII Congreso Galego de Estatística e Investigación de Operacións. Lugo, 22-24/10/2015. Cramer, J. & Montgomery, C. (eds.) (2016): Cityscapes and Perceptual Dialectology. Global Perspectives on Non-Linguists Knowledge of the Dialect Landscape. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. Long, D. / Preston, D. R. (eds.) (2002): Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Montgomery, Chris / Stoeckle, Philipp. (2013): “Geographical Information Systems and Perceptual Dialectology”, Journal of Linguistic Geography 1(1): 52-85. Preston, D. R. (2010): “Language, space, and the folk”, in P. Auer / J. Schmidt (eds.), Theories and methods (Language and space: An international handbook of language variation, Volume 1). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 179-201. Preston, D. (2017). The cognitive foundations of language regard. Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, 53(1), pp. 17-42.
Zoë Vercelli, Leibniz Universität Hannover The Problem with Science Writing is Science Writers: Academic Identity as Impediment to Improved Writing Science communication has never been more important than in today’s sociopolitical climate. Yet contemporary scientists themselves agree that STEM writing is often mired in traditional academic writing conventions that seem to value opaque sophistication over accessibility, even as publication guidelines rapidly evolve to reflect more contemporary expectations. A recent article published in The Atlantic, titled “Why is Academic Writing So Needlessly Complex?” provoked hundreds of comments and over a thousand reactions when reposted to the popular Facebook group March For Science. The present work examines these comments through qualitative discourse analysis in order to explore how the constructed identity of writer and scientist may color individual responses to attempts at improving science writing as a genre. In particular, this work identifies potential blockades presented by academic in-grouping/out-grouping, traditionalist versus contemporary notions of writing, the contrasting valuations of clarity versus sophistication, and broad disagreement on who is responsible for understanding a text (the scientist, the reader, or a mediating third party). Preliminary findings demonstrate broad disagreement on both problem and solution, e.g., that the problem is limited only to an overuse of jargon rather than fundamental language issues within the genre, or that efforts to address these issues signify a “dumbing down” of science. In the context of academic and science writing instruction, these identity constructs may be leveraged to better guide developing science writers as they situate themselves within the evolving publication-driven world of academia.
SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOCIOLINGUISTICS EÖTVÖS LORÁND UNIVERSITY 6-8 SEPTEMBER 2018
