Speakers - Session 1 - 2021
May 6th, 2021 - From 12.00 to 13.30 (CET), from 11:00 to 12:30 (BST)
Kristel Doreleijers
Tilburg University
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
Erin McNulty
University of Glasgow
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 19th and 20th 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
Ebtehal Ali A Asiry
University of Glasgow
Investigating Phonological Variation and Change in Leicester
Sociolinguistic research on ethnic communities in the UK has noticeably developed in
the last thirty years. While some work has considered ethnicity as the main source of
diversity (e.g., Rampton 1995), more recent studies have examined the impact of an
individual's social and stylistic practice on their linguistic behaviour within and across ethnic
groups (e.g., Alam 2015; Kirkham 2013). The literature has been largely concentrated on
South-Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities that have come to the UK through similar
channels of migration. Because of this, little attention has been given to other possible
sources of sociolinguistic diversity, both across and within ethnic minority communities, such
as migration routes and experience, which can be as varied and significant as ethnicity
according to Vertovec (2007).
The Iraqi-Arab community in the UK exhibits waves of migration, with various
migration routes to different locations. This talk is part of an on-going study that investigates
phonological variation within forcibly displaced (refugee) and professional Iraqi-Arab
migrants, who despite commonalities, are socioeconomically and demographically stratified.
In this talk, I will present patterns of language use within first-generation Iraqi-Arab English
speakers living in London and Glasgow, and stratified by migration experience, gender and
length of residence. I also present patterns of similarity and difference in the production of
English laterals (e.g., /l/ in let), which are known to be produced differently in English and
Arabic as well as in London and Glasgow English accents. Results of the analysis will be
further explored with reference to the social behaviour of each group (Acculturation attitudes,
social networks, senses of identity etc.)