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 re-
narrating 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 state-
sponsored 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. 239-
254). 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 second-

language (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 non-
user 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-boomers-
are-_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 <http://ujc.cas.cz/jazykova-poradna/jak-jazykova-
poradna-funguje.html>). 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 self-
motivation, 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 so-
called 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 Rhine-
Franconian) 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 same-
sex 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 post-
structuralist 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 self-
identified 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 self-
perception 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 child-
directed (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-in-
interaction. 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/turner-
syndrome/
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, scenario-
based 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, self-
reported 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 one-
to-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 Catalan-
speaking 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 non-
genre-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 ‘evidence-
based’? 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 globally-
uniform 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 code-
switch 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 counter-
framing 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 Diversity. [Retrieved 6 January 2018]
http://multiculturalism.preslib.az/en_a3.html

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: 197-
220

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 non-
Jamaican 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 pre-
designed 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 state-
languages, 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-state-
languages. 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 supply-
and-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: 139-
158.
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 Saint-
Georges 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-b96b-
3fc329713d59_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, audio-
recordings 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 (Kelly-
H 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 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.
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 ‘non-
native’ 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.132-
137
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 user-
centred 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: Vervuert-
LatinoAmericana.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 message-
oriented, 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 ever-
changing 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), 38-
42.
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-shirt-
inscriptions 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. 235-
265.
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 non-
standard 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
memoranda”. Language@Internet 7: article 3.
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 re-
actualisation 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 non-
adjacency 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: <http://www.norantz.org>.
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-community-
london/ (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/wp-
content/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 code-
switching, 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 mixed-
ethnic 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: fund-
raising, 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 co-
construct 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’

(2) 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.

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. 1291-
1298. (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 self-
identity 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 sub-
move 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 Lippi-
Green (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 code-
switching 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 code-
switching. 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: 87-
105
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 Sampierdarena-
Cornigliano, 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 Pick-
up 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): 52-
79.
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 under-
represented 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 audio-
taped 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. 63-
79.
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. 24-
31.
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 Non-
Swiss 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 south-
west 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 non-
native 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 non-
native contexts.

References
Seoane, Elena and Cristina Suárez-Gómez. 2013. The expression of the perfect in East and South-
East 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 video-
clips 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 self-
hatred (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 post-
Yugoslav “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. Finland-
Swedish 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 over-
generalization 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-the-
editor 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 co-
text, (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 inner-
city 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 1870-
1920 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: 159-
189.
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; Fekonja-
Peklaj 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 face-
to-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 digitally-
facilitated 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 neo-
Nazi 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 variety-
exclusive 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 Caquetá-
Putumayo 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 Neo-
Ottoman indexical meaning of ‘good’ into a dialogue with the second referential meaning
‘no’, they managed to create new indexical meaning that directly opposes Neo-
Ottomanism.
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.87-
100.
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-L1-
group 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 Finno-
Ugric 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 communicative-
pragmatic 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 dialect-
accented 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 in-
group 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 “appearance-
degrading” 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=ke3i9-
7kkQM&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: 87-
89.
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 Dano-
Norwegian. 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 non-
dominance 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 non-
standard (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 de-
palatalization 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 socio-
emotional 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 die Schule gehst.
I wonder myself if-2SG you tomorrow in the school go
‘I wonder if you are going to go to school tomorrow’

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 non-
standard 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: <https://bop.unibe.ch/linguistik-online/article/view/4086>
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/wp-
content/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
sciences”, http://www.celelc.org/activities/Working_groups/Active-Working-Groups/1-CEL_ELC-
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) “non-
representational 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 post-
colonial 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 &amp; 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 &amp; 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. &amp; C. Fuchs. (2015). Reconsidering value and labour in the digital age. New York.
Palgrave MacMillan.
Häkkinen A. &amp; 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: 87-
101.
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 Spanish-
speaking 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 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 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 socio-
political 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, 425-
438.
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 non-
Belizean. This is linked to the political history of Belize – the political elite is traditionally Kriol-
speaking 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 RUSSIAN LANGUAGE: OFFICIAL

IDEOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS PRACTICE
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 Soviet-
educated, 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. Martin-
Jones & 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. 2007-
2012) 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-factors-
helping-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