Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1017/S0047404523000301
H. Pottinger
This timely study—appearing at a moment when scandals over bullying and identity-based prejudice in elite sport are mushrooming—is grounded in the taken-for-granted, everyday interactional practices of a professional New Zealand rugby team. Kieran File’s empirically informed discourse analysis aims to establish a set of hypotheses or principles on which linguists can build a body of research about the culture of high-performance sport. The description of the conceptual structure of the investigation in chapters 1 and 2 is easily accessible to a broader audience, for whom discussions of power and ideology can be opaque. Sports practitioners, for instance, begin the book with a useful model of how the macro (in this case, interpersonal ideologies rooted in cultural knowledge) interacts with the micro (interactional dynamics, giving to relational ones) in practices they will find familiar. A core conceptual lens offered is the existence of three key roles—that of coach, captain, and players—which are treated with appropriate nuance in the content chapters, yet are easily transferrable to future studies of team dynamics. In chapters 3–6, File reveals the processes by which predictable asymmetrical power relations are maintained: how, for instance, coaches dominate interactional spaces to perform their agendas via mechanisms of control. While File does not make judgments, the reader is pointed to wider debates about the utility and ethics of power hierarchies in team sport. Some practices are obvious and overt, such as the initiating and closing of team talks, and these are co-constructed via the players’ silence or body language. Other finer-grained practices, such as the various methods of questioning used to exert ‘expert power’, elicit active participation from the players in order to perform different functions, from holding players accountable to motivating them at half-time. Power-sharing between the coaches and captain is an unequal and complex process sanctioned by the head coach, who, in essence, retains overarching authority. In the culture of high-performance sport, perhaps rugby in particular, the evidence suggests that shared power is an unpopular concept. Nevertheless, player-player relations were relatively more open and interactional, albeit within a separate informal and subtle hierarchy of rugbyplaying experience. Chapters 7 and 8 turn to solidarity. Among players, File found that a language of solidarity—for example, chants or terms of address—was used in attempts to bridge
{"title":"Kieran File, How language shapes relationships in professional sports teams: Power and solidarity dynamics in a New Zealand rugby team. London: Bloomsbury, 2023. Pp. 239. Hb. £67.","authors":"H. Pottinger","doi":"10.1017/S0047404523000301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404523000301","url":null,"abstract":"This timely study—appearing at a moment when scandals over bullying and identity-based prejudice in elite sport are mushrooming—is grounded in the taken-for-granted, everyday interactional practices of a professional New Zealand rugby team. Kieran File’s empirically informed discourse analysis aims to establish a set of hypotheses or principles on which linguists can build a body of research about the culture of high-performance sport. The description of the conceptual structure of the investigation in chapters 1 and 2 is easily accessible to a broader audience, for whom discussions of power and ideology can be opaque. Sports practitioners, for instance, begin the book with a useful model of how the macro (in this case, interpersonal ideologies rooted in cultural knowledge) interacts with the micro (interactional dynamics, giving to relational ones) in practices they will find familiar. A core conceptual lens offered is the existence of three key roles—that of coach, captain, and players—which are treated with appropriate nuance in the content chapters, yet are easily transferrable to future studies of team dynamics. In chapters 3–6, File reveals the processes by which predictable asymmetrical power relations are maintained: how, for instance, coaches dominate interactional spaces to perform their agendas via mechanisms of control. While File does not make judgments, the reader is pointed to wider debates about the utility and ethics of power hierarchies in team sport. Some practices are obvious and overt, such as the initiating and closing of team talks, and these are co-constructed via the players’ silence or body language. Other finer-grained practices, such as the various methods of questioning used to exert ‘expert power’, elicit active participation from the players in order to perform different functions, from holding players accountable to motivating them at half-time. Power-sharing between the coaches and captain is an unequal and complex process sanctioned by the head coach, who, in essence, retains overarching authority. In the culture of high-performance sport, perhaps rugby in particular, the evidence suggests that shared power is an unpopular concept. Nevertheless, player-player relations were relatively more open and interactional, albeit within a separate informal and subtle hierarchy of rugbyplaying experience. Chapters 7 and 8 turn to solidarity. Among players, File found that a language of solidarity—for example, chants or terms of address—was used in attempts to bridge","PeriodicalId":51442,"journal":{"name":"Language in Society","volume":"52 1","pages":"541 - 542"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47267613","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-30DOI: 10.1017/s0047404523000337
G.A.H. Jol, Wyke J P Stommel
In police interviews with child witnesses, ground rules like ‘correct me when I say something wrong’ are established. Establishing these ground rules is required by guidelines, with the aim of enhancing the reliability of children's testimonies. In this article, we use conversation analysis to examine how ground rules are practiced in thirty-eight Dutch police interviews with child witnesses. We focus on the police officers’ use of test questions to practice such ground rules. We found that, often, these questions (at first) only consist of an if-clause. Questions with this format leave open whose turn it is and what the appropriate response should be. If-clause questions allow flexibility in the difficulty of the test question, and a subtle pursuit of a response from the child. Yet, they are also treated as problematic by children, shown by silences and hesitations. Surprisingly, the practicing of ground rules sometimes occasions affiliation. (Police interviews, children, testing, practicing, affiliation, conversation analysis, hypothetical questions)*
{"title":"Practicing ground rules in police interviews with child witnesses","authors":"G.A.H. Jol, Wyke J P Stommel","doi":"10.1017/s0047404523000337","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404523000337","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In police interviews with child witnesses, ground rules like ‘correct me when I say something wrong’ are established. Establishing these ground rules is required by guidelines, with the aim of enhancing the reliability of children's testimonies. In this article, we use conversation analysis to examine how ground rules are practiced in thirty-eight Dutch police interviews with child witnesses. We focus on the police officers’ use of test questions to practice such ground rules. We found that, often, these questions (at first) only consist of an if-clause. Questions with this format leave open whose turn it is and what the appropriate response should be. If-clause questions allow flexibility in the difficulty of the test question, and a subtle pursuit of a response from the child. Yet, they are also treated as problematic by children, shown by silences and hesitations. Surprisingly, the practicing of ground rules sometimes occasions affiliation. (Police interviews, children, testing, practicing, affiliation, conversation analysis, hypothetical questions)*","PeriodicalId":51442,"journal":{"name":"Language in Society","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41339510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-18DOI: 10.1017/s0047404523000386
Ruey-Ying Liu
The discursive construction of institutional identity concerns how speakers, through their verbal conduct, perform actions as incumbents of particular institutional roles. This can be accomplished through the first-person plural pronoun, a salient marker of the ongoing displays, expressions, and constructions of institutional identity. Drawing on the Chinese premier's press conferences, this study investigates how politicians, journalists, and interpreters constitute their institutional identities through their use of the first-person plural pronoun (English we; Mandarin 我们 wǒmen). Relying on qualitative analysis and bivariate analysis, this study shows that Chinese journalists and interpreters tend to constitute their identities as aligned with the Chinese authority. This stands in contrast to patterns identified in independent press systems, in which journalists confront politicians, and interpreters serve as impartial facilitators. The findings illustrate the bounded fluidity of identities in political discourse and provide insight into the workings of the political communication system in an authoritarian context. (Political discourse, identity, personal pronoun, press conference, journalistic norm, mass communication, interpreter-mediated interaction, China, authoritarianism)*
{"title":"Constituting institutional identity in political discourse: The use of the first-person plural pronoun in China's press conferences","authors":"Ruey-Ying Liu","doi":"10.1017/s0047404523000386","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404523000386","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The discursive construction of institutional identity concerns how speakers, through their verbal conduct, perform actions as incumbents of particular institutional roles. This can be accomplished through the first-person plural pronoun, a salient marker of the ongoing displays, expressions, and constructions of institutional identity. Drawing on the Chinese premier's press conferences, this study investigates how politicians, journalists, and interpreters constitute their institutional identities through their use of the first-person plural pronoun (English we; Mandarin 我们 wǒmen). Relying on qualitative analysis and bivariate analysis, this study shows that Chinese journalists and interpreters tend to constitute their identities as aligned with the Chinese authority. This stands in contrast to patterns identified in independent press systems, in which journalists confront politicians, and interpreters serve as impartial facilitators. The findings illustrate the bounded fluidity of identities in political discourse and provide insight into the workings of the political communication system in an authoritarian context. (Political discourse, identity, personal pronoun, press conference, journalistic norm, mass communication, interpreter-mediated interaction, China, authoritarianism)*","PeriodicalId":51442,"journal":{"name":"Language in Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43940979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-12DOI: 10.1017/s0047404523000167
J. Singh
{"title":"Paul Kerswill & Heike Wiese (eds.), Urban contact dialects and language change: Insights from the Global North and South. New York: Routledge, 2022. Pp. xviii, 350. Hb. £130.","authors":"J. Singh","doi":"10.1017/s0047404523000167","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404523000167","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51442,"journal":{"name":"Language in Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47734725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-12DOI: 10.1017/s0047404523000155
G. Parmigiani
‘I NY’TM, ‘Incredible India’, and ‘Vive la France’ are not only successful slogans, but effective instruments of country branding that help to orient individual and collective choices—from travel to investments. What is the role of language, then, in country branding? Is language limited to linguistics or can it comprise, for example, architecture, politics, and popular culture? Research companion to language and country branding provides answers to these questions and more. Written with both academics and policy and decision-makers in mind, this volume offers not only a comprehensive introduction to the role of language in country branding practices but also an innovative framework for the emerging field of ‘brand linguistics’. This state-of-the-art contribution, as a matter of fact, is radically interdisciplinary, and includes insights from sociolinguistics, (critical) discourse analysis, ethnography, linguistic landscape analysis, semiotics, corpus linguistics, language policy, linguistic anthropology, media studies, architecture, and language-oriented marketing studies. The clear and rich introduction by the editors provides a cohesive and elucidatory overview of the main themes and contributions of the book—language, branding, and country branding. Accessible to both experts and novices, it bestows a very useful literature review on current research on both nation and place branding. Moreover, it frames the book as offering both theoretical and practical contributions relevant to different disciplines: from linguistic anthropology and linguistics, to advertisement, diplomacy, business, politics, tourism, and international relations. The book contains twenty contributions from scholars from different countries, disciplines, backgrounds, and institutions and includes examples from twenty countries—carefully selected to be ‘representative of the world as much as possible’ (15). In addition to BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and the People’s Republic of China), the book covers countries from the Global South, those with high and low GDP per capita, and most of the top thirteen economies in the world (15).
{"title":"Irene Theodoropoulou & Johanna Tovar, Research companion to language and country branding. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021. Pp. 411. Pb. £43.","authors":"G. Parmigiani","doi":"10.1017/s0047404523000155","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404523000155","url":null,"abstract":"‘I NY’TM, ‘Incredible India’, and ‘Vive la France’ are not only successful slogans, but effective instruments of country branding that help to orient individual and collective choices—from travel to investments. What is the role of language, then, in country branding? Is language limited to linguistics or can it comprise, for example, architecture, politics, and popular culture? Research companion to language and country branding provides answers to these questions and more. Written with both academics and policy and decision-makers in mind, this volume offers not only a comprehensive introduction to the role of language in country branding practices but also an innovative framework for the emerging field of ‘brand linguistics’. This state-of-the-art contribution, as a matter of fact, is radically interdisciplinary, and includes insights from sociolinguistics, (critical) discourse analysis, ethnography, linguistic landscape analysis, semiotics, corpus linguistics, language policy, linguistic anthropology, media studies, architecture, and language-oriented marketing studies. The clear and rich introduction by the editors provides a cohesive and elucidatory overview of the main themes and contributions of the book—language, branding, and country branding. Accessible to both experts and novices, it bestows a very useful literature review on current research on both nation and place branding. Moreover, it frames the book as offering both theoretical and practical contributions relevant to different disciplines: from linguistic anthropology and linguistics, to advertisement, diplomacy, business, politics, tourism, and international relations. The book contains twenty contributions from scholars from different countries, disciplines, backgrounds, and institutions and includes examples from twenty countries—carefully selected to be ‘representative of the world as much as possible’ (15). In addition to BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and the People’s Republic of China), the book covers countries from the Global South, those with high and low GDP per capita, and most of the top thirteen economies in the world (15).","PeriodicalId":51442,"journal":{"name":"Language in Society","volume":"52 1","pages":"533 - 535"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43122990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-11DOI: 10.1017/s0047404523000325
Natalia Volvach
This article aims to illuminate absences in the semiotic landscape of Crimea, resulting from the erasure of Ukraine after Russia's occupation of Crimea in 2014. By foregrounding what is not there, the study expands semiotic landscapes studies and critical sociolinguistic research more generally by interrogating absence and its haunting effects. More than 3,500 photographs of semiotic landscapes collected over two months of fieldwork between 2017 and 2019 together with fieldnotes serve as ethnographic data. The production of absence is interrogated through an analysis of its material effects, that is, voids, holes, and blank walls. It concludes that erasure does not simply negate Ukraine. Instead, pasts remain present, visible, and audible in semiotic landscapes. Absences, as part of a relational ontology of materiality, discourse, and affect, shout about complex invisibilized histories of violence. In this way, they suggest the need to probe traditional approaches in semiotic landscape research that rely on an ontology of presence. (Absence, trace, materiality, ghost, spectre, haunting, Crimea, Ukraine, semiotic landscape, linguistic landscape, interdiscursivity)*
{"title":"Shouting absences: Disentangling the ghosts of Ukraine in occupied Crimea","authors":"Natalia Volvach","doi":"10.1017/s0047404523000325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404523000325","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article aims to illuminate absences in the semiotic landscape of Crimea, resulting from the erasure of Ukraine after Russia's occupation of Crimea in 2014. By foregrounding what is not there, the study expands semiotic landscapes studies and critical sociolinguistic research more generally by interrogating absence and its haunting effects. More than 3,500 photographs of semiotic landscapes collected over two months of fieldwork between 2017 and 2019 together with fieldnotes serve as ethnographic data. The production of absence is interrogated through an analysis of its material effects, that is, voids, holes, and blank walls. It concludes that erasure does not simply negate Ukraine. Instead, pasts remain present, visible, and audible in semiotic landscapes. Absences, as part of a relational ontology of materiality, discourse, and affect, shout about complex invisibilized histories of violence. In this way, they suggest the need to probe traditional approaches in semiotic landscape research that rely on an ontology of presence. (Absence, trace, materiality, ghost, spectre, haunting, Crimea, Ukraine, semiotic landscape, linguistic landscape, interdiscursivity)*","PeriodicalId":51442,"journal":{"name":"Language in Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49258417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-11DOI: 10.1017/s0047404523000404
Awni Etaywe, Michele Zappavigna
One key aspect of threat in terrorists’ language is incitement to violence. Contributing to a fuller understanding of how terrorists use language to encourage people to join their cause, this article examines the role of evaluative language in incitement strategies used by a far-rightist to align with and alienate particular social groups. The Affiliation framework (Knight 2010a; Zappavigna 2011; Etaywe & Zappavigna 2021; Etaywe 2022a), as grounded in systemic functional linguistics, is used to understand how values and social bonds are leveraged in the process of incitement, as explored in a manifesto published online by Brenton Tarrant, preceding his 2019 terrorist attack on two mosques in New Zealand. The findings reveal two main affiliation strategies used for incitement: communion (forging solidarity and alignments) and alienation. These strategies function to construct opposing social groups in discourse, with the condemned groups positioned as a threat, hostility legitimated as morally reasonable, and violence as warranted. (Far-right extremism, incitement, hate crimes, affiliation, morality of terrorism, forensic linguistics, conspiracy theory discourse)
{"title":"The role of social affiliation in incitement: A social semiotic approach to far-right terrorists’ incitement to violence","authors":"Awni Etaywe, Michele Zappavigna","doi":"10.1017/s0047404523000404","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404523000404","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 One key aspect of threat in terrorists’ language is incitement to violence. Contributing to a fuller understanding of how terrorists use language to encourage people to join their cause, this article examines the role of evaluative language in incitement strategies used by a far-rightist to align with and alienate particular social groups. The Affiliation framework (Knight 2010a; Zappavigna 2011; Etaywe & Zappavigna 2021; Etaywe 2022a), as grounded in systemic functional linguistics, is used to understand how values and social bonds are leveraged in the process of incitement, as explored in a manifesto published online by Brenton Tarrant, preceding his 2019 terrorist attack on two mosques in New Zealand. The findings reveal two main affiliation strategies used for incitement: communion (forging solidarity and alignments) and alienation. These strategies function to construct opposing social groups in discourse, with the condemned groups positioned as a threat, hostility legitimated as morally reasonable, and violence as warranted. (Far-right extremism, incitement, hate crimes, affiliation, morality of terrorism, forensic linguistics, conspiracy theory discourse)","PeriodicalId":51442,"journal":{"name":"Language in Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41785357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-04DOI: 10.1017/s0047404523000295
Roula Kitsiou, Stella Bratimou
Abstract The present article reflects on the concept of ‘spatial repertoire’ through a ‘trans’-perspective in order to explain the trans-formation of migrants’ homescapes during the pandemic—a time of restricted mobility. In the context of translocal im~mobility, this ethnographically informed multiple case study explores how three Greek ‘brain drain’ immigrants performed homescapes in the online-offline nexus from October to February 2020. Employing a critical discourse analytic approach, the findings showcase the pandemic biopolitics that have resulted in the de/reterritorialisation of everyday sociospatial activities, thus creating heterotopic places within the home. Specifically, the integration of work and political activity into the homescape has led to the resemiotisation of the linguistic landscape of homes and the dissolution of boundaries between ‘named’ spaces in homes. The concept of ‘transpatial repertoire’ captures the hybridisation of the pandemic-affected homescape, taking into consideration the vulnerabilities and emergent resistances to biopolitical control. In other words, it sheds light on the emergent heterotopias of im~mobility. (Pandemic, heterotopia, transpatial repertoire, linguistic landscape, homescape)*
{"title":"Homescapes of im~mobility: Migratory transpatial repertoires during the pandemic","authors":"Roula Kitsiou, Stella Bratimou","doi":"10.1017/s0047404523000295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404523000295","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The present article reflects on the concept of ‘spatial repertoire’ through a ‘trans’-perspective in order to explain the trans-formation of migrants’ homescapes during the pandemic—a time of restricted mobility. In the context of translocal im~mobility, this ethnographically informed multiple case study explores how three Greek ‘brain drain’ immigrants performed homescapes in the online-offline nexus from October to February 2020. Employing a critical discourse analytic approach, the findings showcase the pandemic biopolitics that have resulted in the de/reterritorialisation of everyday sociospatial activities, thus creating heterotopic places within the home. Specifically, the integration of work and political activity into the homescape has led to the resemiotisation of the linguistic landscape of homes and the dissolution of boundaries between ‘named’ spaces in homes. The concept of ‘transpatial repertoire’ captures the hybridisation of the pandemic-affected homescape, taking into consideration the vulnerabilities and emergent resistances to biopolitical control. In other words, it sheds light on the emergent heterotopias of im~mobility. (Pandemic, heterotopia, transpatial repertoire, linguistic landscape, homescape)*","PeriodicalId":51442,"journal":{"name":"Language in Society","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136314601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-11DOI: 10.1017/s0047404523000143
C. Ilbury
Though research on the multiethnolect spoken in London—Multicultural London English (MLE)—has described the social distribution of the variety, the stylistic potentials of MLE remain poorly understood. This article explores the enregisterment and subsequent ‘recontextualisation’ (Bauman & Briggs 1990) of MLE by analysing the linguistic and aesthetic components of a stylistic identity—the ‘roadman’. Specifically, I explore a corpus of TikTok videos to analyse the ways in which linguistic features characteristic of MLE (e.g. pronominal man, discourse-pragmatic styll, fronted /uː/) are co-opted and stylised in parodic performances of the roadman. I demonstrate that these linguistic features co-occur with tropes of personhood (e.g. participation in grime music, overt heterosexuality, a streetwear aesthetic) that are ideologically associated with a particular type of gendered, classed, and racialized identity. Concluding, I reflect on the status of the roadman persona with reference to contemporary patterns of language variation in the UK. (Multicultural London English, personae, digital culture, TikTok, stylisation, performance)*
{"title":"The recontextualisation of Multicultural London English: Stylising the ‘roadman’","authors":"C. Ilbury","doi":"10.1017/s0047404523000143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404523000143","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Though research on the multiethnolect spoken in London—Multicultural London English (MLE)—has described the social distribution of the variety, the stylistic potentials of MLE remain poorly understood. This article explores the enregisterment and subsequent ‘recontextualisation’ (Bauman & Briggs 1990) of MLE by analysing the linguistic and aesthetic components of a stylistic identity—the ‘roadman’. Specifically, I explore a corpus of TikTok videos to analyse the ways in which linguistic features characteristic of MLE (e.g. pronominal man, discourse-pragmatic styll, fronted /uː/) are co-opted and stylised in parodic performances of the roadman. I demonstrate that these linguistic features co-occur with tropes of personhood (e.g. participation in grime music, overt heterosexuality, a streetwear aesthetic) that are ideologically associated with a particular type of gendered, classed, and racialized identity. Concluding, I reflect on the status of the roadman persona with reference to contemporary patterns of language variation in the UK. (Multicultural London English, personae, digital culture, TikTok, stylisation, performance)*","PeriodicalId":51442,"journal":{"name":"Language in Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45778157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}