Speakers 2021

Post-monolingual commons

There has been a considerable amount of critical sociolinguistic work identifying the construction, imposition and territorialisation of a standardised national language as a key technology of empire (Phillipson 2010; Schwarz 1997). In this talk, I propose to engage more thoroughly with the ‘people’ element of this so-called ‘one-nation, one-language, one-people’ imaginary, specifically with regards to how that people – and their linguistic expression – come to be racialised in relation to a set of nation-state borders. My argument is not that certain languages are tainted by the moral baggage of a colonial past, nor that language practices and ideologies are shaped by empire and nation alone. Rather, I will suggest that as part of a complex colonial apparatus of language, race and power, the construct of standardised and territorially bounded national languages cannot be fully extricated from ongoing processes of racialisation and colonisation. I will further suggest that this ongoing ‘coloniality of language’ (Veronelli 2015), through which raciolinguistic ideologies of ‘languagelessness’ (Rosa 2016) are inextricable from the colonial construct of national monolingualism (Yildiz 2012), rests upon an understanding of language (and identity and culture more broadly) as property. Through considering James Trafford’s proposal that the ‘foundations of private property lie in ideologies of labour and improvement, providing the means for transforming nature as waste into nature as property’ (2021: 25) from a sociolinguistic perspective, I suggest the alternative of the collaborative meaning-making labour of translation as a move towards a post-monolingual commons.

Website of Eleanor Chapman

Marking grammatical gender or highlighting local identity? The use of hyperdialectisms in North-Brabantish social media posts.

In the Netherlands, dialects are currently in a stage of dialect levelling. Due to contact with the
standard language and other language varieties, many typical local dialect features disappear.
Simultaneously, dialects are losing their position to Dutch as a first language and a home language. These processes of convergence and language shift lead to levelled, regional varieties rather than
traditional, local varieties.
This presentation focusses on Brabantish dialects, a group of dialects spoken in the southern Dutch
province of North-Brabant. In Brabantish, grammatical gender marking – e.g. the marking of
masculine lexical gender on adnominal words such as (in)definite articles (enen/den) – is one of the
most prominent features. However, due to processes of dialect levelling and language shift,
knowledge of lexical gender is supposedly fading away, leading to the loss of the salient masculine
marker -e(n) (as in Standard Dutch).
Nevertheless, new digital, social media such as Facebook and Instagram, provide dialect speakers
with new ways of expressing themselves, building cultural identities. Dialects that used to be
restricted to spoken contexts now develop their own digital stylistic genre. This might be a
counterforce to dialect loss. In particular, hyperdialectisms – i.e. over-generalizations of typical
dialect features such as gender markers to emphasize a deviation from the standard language – seem
to occur frequently on social media. But how do such hyperdialectisms function in these relatively
new social contexts?
In this talk, I will show how hyperdialectisms are used in a specific type of social media (Instagram)
posts, so-called “tegeltjes”, i.e. posts with virtual tiles that contain idiomatic dialect expressions,
comparable to memes. Between March 2018 and March 2021 a database of more than 300 posts
was compiled for quantitative and qualitative analysis. I will zoom in on the use and overgeneralization
of gender marking in these expressions together with the metalinguistic comments
that were added to these posts, for example on authenticity. The data offers new insights in how
hyperdialectisms contribute to indexing local identity, e.g. “Brabantishness”, on social media.

Website of Kristel Doreleijers

Revitalisation and the Manx Verb

 This paper discusses the language use of New Speakers of Manx. Like many regional minority languages across Europe and elsewhere, Manx underwent linguistic obsolescence in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, which ultimately progressed to language death. In more recent times, the Manx language has seen a revival, which has increased speaker numbers. Among minority languages, Manx is unusual due to the fact that the community of speakers of the modern variety of the language is entirely made up of New Speakers, the majority of which have had no direct contact with traditional native speakers. In this paper I investigate the linguistic consequences of this through an analysis of the speech of three groups of speakers who have acquired the language in different contexts: teachers of Manx, speakers who received Manx instruction through the medium of English, and speakers who have received Manx-immersion education. An analysis of a number of verbal forms reveals differences between these three groups of New Speakers, which may be correlated with the amount and type of input in Manx these speakers have received. The paper discusses these findings in the context of other studies of the linguistic production of New Speakers of minority languages.

Webpage of Erin McNulty

Disclosing the virtus in virtual learning: power shifts in EMI classroom discourse

Some unintended consequences resulting from COVID-19 are likely to evolve over time, such as the intersection of two trends in international higher education (Querol-Julián & Crawford Camiciottoli, 2019): English-Medium Instruction (EMI) and online learning. Italian EMI lecturers, in particular, who were already struggling to cope with language and pedagogical issues, had to adjust to the new media which is characterized by the co-occurrence of different literacy practices (Gee & Hayes, 2011). Surprisingly, this might prove to be a blessing in disguise for the internationalisation of higher education. This experimental study examined the effects of computer-mediated instruction on lecturer-students interaction occurring in synchronous-video lectures in an English-mediated academic course at an Italian university. The preliminary findings of the study draw upon empirical material that consists of 15 teacher-led lectures delivered in both conventional and online settings, with approximately 30 hours of interaction material. Our interests here relate to accounting for how the positioning of the participants in classroom discourse varies across the two learning environments by particularly focusing on turn-taking and linguistic stance. In particular this study illustrates how technology mediated multimodal communication affects power shift between teacher – student interaction as reflected by discourse moves in the EMI classroom. The study investigates classroom discourse from a discursive analytical perspective with a view to measuring and comparing turn-taking and linguistic stance as detectors of lecturer-student power asymmetry shifts. This, in turn, might provide some clues as to whether technology enhances or hinders communication in EMI classrooms. Preliminary findings show that the lecturers who actively use different modes as text chat, whiteboard, audio and video tend to position themselves more as facilitators than leaders in the classroom dialogical space, thus engendering a power shifts which promote students’ engagement and increase “the[ir] responsibility over the learning process” (Viberg & Messina Dahlberg, 2011: 131). Similarly, even lecturers less likely to adapt to the new artifacts available in the online environment seem nonetheless to profit from it, particularly as regards clarity and understandability in oral speech. The findings of this study have implications for designing training programs to enhance lecturers’ communication efficacy in the EMI classroom, crossing the border which separates language and pedagogical competence.

Website of Mariangela Picciuolo

Nuair cualadh mé gutha mar ceól Orphéus… / When I heard a voice like the music of Orpheus…

How can site-specific sculpture illuminate cultural-linguistic knowledge held within historical archival material? How can the process of materialising language operate within the demarcated linguacultural space of a small Irish (Gaelic)-speaking island? Oileán Chléire/Cape Clear Island is a small but significant Gaeltacht (traditionally Irish-speaking) Island, with a permanent population of 130. In such a small community, a significant factor in the economy and community life is linguacultural tourism, both through courses at the residential language college and through informal exchange in community and cultural settings. During 2020 I participated in the ‘Oileán AiR’ artist residency programme on Oileán Chléire where I developed a sculptural installation in the landscape: ‘An Leabharlann na gClocha Ceilte/ The Hidden Stone Library’. Taking as its starting point a poem, ‘Inis Chléire’ from the Duchas national folklore archive (that romanticises the island as an Irish-speaking paradise) I materialised lines from the poem in found stone tablets, carving them by hand in traditional Cló Gaelach letterforms. In this presentation I will unpack some of the complexities of understanding landscapes through sculptural materialisation of archival source texts, examining site-specific sculptural practices that explore cultural/historical aspects of place. As an active learner of Irish, resident in Ireland but with no familial/ancestral connection to Irish, I will examine some of the challenges around language ownership, to ask: who is the language for and to whom does it belong? Mindful of sensitivities around popular perceptions of the Gaeltacht as a ‘heartland of native Irish’, I will adopt definitions of working linguistic categories including ‘expert’, ‘hybrid’ and ‘potential’ new speakers of Irish - to ask how such artistic interventions can contribute to a sustainable balance of community and visitor needs, whilst remaining respectful towards the island’s fragile linguistic and natural ecology.

Website of Noah Rose

Inclusion of the Tjwao language in the Constitution of Zimbabwe: Tjwa Expectations versus Reality

For decades, the Tjwa people, who are believed to be the first inhabitants of Zimbabwe have experienced, among other injustices, lack of recognition by both colonial and post-colonial governments. The present government only recognised their language, Tjwao, in the Constitution of 2013, Chapter 1, Section 6 (1) which is erroneously captured as Khoisan. The Tjwao is left with less than 3000 members of whom less than 250 are active speakers.   Almost ten years after the 2013 Constitution, Tjwao is still threatened with extinction; remain underdeveloped except for limited efforts by independent anthropologists and linguists. This paper discusses Tjwa expectations following their inclusion in the Constitution versus the reality on the ground. Using qualitative methodology, open-ended interviews were administered with two Tjwao linguist activists and twenty (20) Tjwa people in the Tholotsho District of northwestern Zimbabwe where they are located. This was done in order to establish their expectations versus reality of their situation. Data gathered during this study revealed that the Tjwa feel that the recognition they were accorded by the 2013 Constitution was not only erroneous but never implemented. The research participants for the study reported that the Zimbabwean Government did not, in any way, attempted to improve the linguistic situation of the Tjwa people. They expected the constitutional recognition of their language to open avenues and enhance access to education for their children which in turn would improve their livelihoods, inclusion in development issues and access to opportunities. Besides, they expected their language to be rescued from “language shift” which they say are forced into, in order to increase chances of getting menial jobs employment for basic survival needs from the dominant Ndebele people whom they live in contact with in northwestern Zimbabwe. The paper argues there is linguistic exclusion of the Tjwa people in Zimbabwe and concludes that their plight must be seriously considered by the government of Zimbabwe.

Website of Costain Tandi

Books That Feel Like Home: Exploring Multilingual Identities Through Contemporary Latinx Literature in the United States

This research aims to examine how multilingualism presents itself in the literature produced
by multilingual authors with a focus on bilingual Spanish-English Latinx writers in the United
States. It will do so by analysing the published works of a number of contemporary authors
from several distinct Latinx communities (Puerto Rican, Dominican, Mexican, etc.) as well as
conducting semi-structured interviews with said authors. The aim of text analysis is to discover
how bilingualism is reflected in their creative work, whether through specific linguistic
markers, the use of hybrid forms of writing or other ways, while semi-structured interviews
will provide the space to discuss the authors’ motivations and experiences of language.
Moreover, by looking at the written narratives produced by bilingual Latinx writers in the
United States, this research will also address themes of identity formation, migration and
immigration, language discrimination and hegemony, translation and self-translation, as well
as the role literature plays in fostering a sense of community belonging. Potentially, this
research can offer further insight into literary representation in the United States as well as the
relationship between multilingual texts, their authors and their readers. It can have implications
for school level education in increasingly multilingual communities, approaches to creative
writing teaching, migration theories, and also provide a basis for further studies looking into
different literary mediums produced by the Latinx community, such as spoken word poetry, or
studies using reader-response theory to specifically investigate the readership for bilingual
literature.

The Drama of Daughterhood in Great Britain and Scandinavia: Caryl Churchill’s and Margareta Garpe’s Plays of the 1970s and 1980s

My thesis aims at exploring the representation of daughterhood through a psychoanalytical and feminist critical approach in a selection of women playwrights from Great Britain and Scandinavia in the 1970s and 1980s. Motherhood and sisterhood have been pivotal topics of second-wave feminism; the purpose of my study is to change perspective and look at the daughter as both observer and active participant in the feminist battles. Starting from a presentation on the theoretical and methodological framework which centres on motherhood and daughterhood in psychoanalytical and feminist discourse, I will provide a historical overview of the different literary contexts. More specifically, the emergence of Thatcherism in Great Britain and its implications in feminist politics will be analysed in contrast to the consolidation of the social state in Scandinavia. After a brief introduction on some notable British and Scandinavian women playwrights of the 1970s and 1980s that have reassessed daughterhood in their work, my analysis will focus on two case studies, Caryl Churchill for Great Britain and Margareta Garpe for Sweden. Caryl Churchill is considered one of the most inventive and visionary living playwrights in the UK, with works that have already entered the literary canon. Her investigation on motherhood and daughterhood-related themes will be tackled in three of her most celebrated plays: ownership and motherhood in Owners (1972), the performance of motherhood in Cloud Nine (1979), and the mother/daughter battle in Top Girls (1982). The experience of the feminist collective in the composition and production of a play is a key aspect that will be pointed out also in relation to the Swedish case study: Margareta Garpe. One of the most important voices of contemporary Swedish theatre, Garpe famously collaborated with fellow playwright Suzanne Osten in realising political plays that aimed at igniting the public debate on feminist topics. This study will take into consideration the most influential of these collaborative works, Jösses Flickor! Befrielesen Är Nära (1974), which will be followed by two more intimate plays written by Garpe: freedom and sacrifice in Barnet (1977) and the reversal of family roles in Till Julia (1987). The final part of the thesis will provide a contrastive analysis of the case studies, to look at the different themes in a broader perspective. 

 Website of Luca Tosadori

Investigating Phonological Variation and Change in Leicester

My project is a sociophonetic study of the English spoken by first-generation Iraqi Arab speakers in two UK cities, namely London and Glasgow. It investigates phonetic variation in the realisation of word- initial and final /l/, VOT in word- initial stops, FACE and GOAT vowels in Iraqi English, with the aim of uncovering the possible impact of intra-ethnic demographic and socioeconomic diversity on Iraqis' sociolinguistic identity.  Webpage of Ebtehal Ali Asiry

Webpage of Ebtehal Ali A Asiry