Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 165

Thematic Session (Papers belonging to this Thematic Session)

Language, Place and Identity

Authors: Quist, Pia; Svendsen, Bente Ailin
Submitted by: Quist, Pia (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Movement and transition are typical key points when scholars characterize our late modern times: We live in the times of globalization (Bauman 1998), of urbanization (Castells 1996) and migration (OECD, 2011). Some even talk about ‘the mobility turn’ in social sciences (Urry 2008, 2010). At the same time ‘place’ and the ‘sense of belonging to a place’ continue to play an important – practical as well as symbolic – role for individuals, groups and nations in processes of identity constructions and negotiations (Quist 2010). People in the countryside define themselves in opposition to people in the big cities, and people in the cities construct local identities in relation to their local neighborhoods (Mæhlum 2010). Traditional dialects, linguistic styles – linguistic semiotic signs in a broad sense – are used as resources in such processes of making ‘place’ a meaningful part of and background for identity constructions.

We propose a session of thematically related papers which from different angles address the symbolic and discursive character of ‘place’ in late modernity.

Session papers can address questions such as:

· How are ideological connections between language, place, and identity constructed in contemporary discourse?

· How are ‘place’ and the sense of belonging to a place constructed in public and private discourse?

· How is ‘place’ used as a resource in public and private discourse?

· How are ideologies of language and place experienced by individuals who change social and/or geographic place?

· What strategies do individual speakers use to navigate within and between alternative, and perhaps competing, ideologies of language, place and identity?

Papers may focus on urban youth practices, speakers’ experiences and attitudes connected to ideologies of dialect and standard, geographic and social mobility, representations of language and place in public discourses.

References

Auer, Peter 2005: Europe’s sociolinguistic unity, or: A typology of European dialect/standard constellations. I Nicole Delbecque, Johan van der Auwera & Dirk Geeraerts (red.) Perspectives on Variation. Trends in Linguistics 163. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, s. 7–42.

Bauman, Zygmunt 1998: Globalization: The Human Consequences. New York: Columbia University Press

Castells, Manuel 1996: The Rice of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell

Johnstone, Barbara 2010: Indexing the local. In N. Coupland (ed.): Handbook of Language and Globalization. Oxford University Press.

Mæhlum, Brit 2010: Language and social spaces. In: Peter Auer & Jürgen Erich Schmidt (eds.): Language and Space. An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation. , vol 1, Mouton de Gruyter, p. 18-32

OECD 2011: www.oecd.org/ (last accessed 9^th of September 2011)

Quist, Pia 2010: Untying the Language, Body and Place Connection - Linguistic variation and social style in a Copenhagen community of practice. In: Peter Auer & Jürgen Erich Schmidt (eds.): Language and Space. An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation. , vol 1, Mouton de Gruyter, p. 632-648.

Swann, Joan, Ana Deumert, Theresa Lillis & Rajend Mesthrie (eds.) 2004: A Dictionary of Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Urry, John 2008: Moving on the mobility turn. In: Tracing Mobilities. Towards a cosmopolitan perspective in mobility research. Ashgate: Aldershot, p. 13-23

Urry, John 2010: Mobile Lives. London: Routledge.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Language, Place and Identity