Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 832

Part of Session 162: Urban linguistic practice and performance in the Greek-speaking city (Other abstracts in this session)

Languaging in the City: Identity, positioning, and performance in young females’ written interactions

Authors: Sophocleous, Andry
Submitted by: Sophocleous, Andry (University of Nicosia, Cyprus)

Even though Standard Modern Greek (SMG) is the ‘legitimate’ language variety normally employed in writing, systematic use of the Greek Cypriot Dialect (GCD) is evident in scripts of television series, political satires, theatrical or school plays and in folk literature and songs. Interestingly, recent data illustrates that Greek-Cypriot youth employ Roman characters in Computer-mediated communication to express themselves in GCD but also to create, negotiate and manipulate their social relations and group memberships (see Sophocleous & Themistocleous 2010). Interestingly, these writing trends apparent in CMC have permeated other writing arenas such as note-passing in class among female youth (Themistocleous & Sophocleous 2011).

Language is social; language is cultural and it makes little sense to study it without a close examination of the intentions with which it is used (Jøergensen 2008). Hence, the examination of why we use language the way we do, will contribute to our understanding of what speakers do with language and why.

This paper focuses on how speakers use language to create and express themselves in relation to others in writing. Important aspects that need to be addressed are the issues of identity, positioning, and verbal performance. Positioning can provide a useful analytical framework to examine the interactional constructions of selves and others, the stylistic choices made and discourse identities unfolding in moment to moment interaction (Bamberg 1997; Androutsopoulos & Georgakopoulou, 2003). Similarly, performance (Bauman 1975) deriving from work in folklore, the ethnography of speaking, literary stylistics and sociolinguistics, can be used to examine creativity and verbal art as a communicative phenomenon.

The aim of this study is to investigate how speakers use language creatively as a means of communicating in writing, but also how they use it as a medium through which they construct their identities and position themselves vis-á-vis others. Data collected from a group of sixteen year old female students from an urban school in Lefkosia (capital city), indicates them ‘doing’ language: communicating between them by using means such as special codes, figurative language (metonymy), formal stylistic devices (rhyme, vowel harmony) and folkloric features resembling traditional Tsiatista [Τσιαττιστά] in their effort to key performance and communicate ideological and cultural beliefs.

References:

Androutsopoulos, J. K. & Georgakopoulou, A. (2003) (eds.). Discourse Constructions of Youth Identities. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Bamberg, M. (1997). Positioning between structure and performance.Journal of Narrative and Life History,7, 335-342.

Bauman, R. (1975). Verbal Art as Performance. American Anthropologist, 77(2), 290-311.

Jøergensen, J. N. (2008). Languaging: Nine years of poly-lingual development of young Turkish-Danish grade school students. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen.

Sophocleous, A. & Themistocleous, C. (2010). ‘En exun aipin’: Linguistic and sociocultural elements in the use of the Greek-Cypriot Dialect on Facebook. Sociolinguistics Symposium 18 Negotiating Transnational Space and Multilingual Encounters. University of Southampton, 1-4 September.

Themistocleous, C. & Sophocleous, A. (2011). Dialect writing in Cyprus: Usage, ideology and implications for language policy. Symposium of Modern Greek Studies Association, NYU, October 2011.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Languaging in the City: Identity, positioning, and performance in young females’ written interactions