The Papers
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WP292 Localising Linguistic Citizenship
2021
As ?an attempt at a comprehensive political stance on language? (Stroud 2008:45), ?Linguistic Citizenship? (LC) deserves to be a mainstream concept in socio- and applied linguistics. But the evaluation of its potential needs to be context-sensitive, …
Key words: linguistic theory
WP267 The Urban Myth: A critical interrogation of the sociolinguistic imagining of cities as spaces of diversity
2020
In this paper, I critically question the focus on ?the city? that has characterized much of recent sociolinguistic research. Besides uncertainty on how to define a city, the assumption that demographic density and territorial closeness of users of …
Key words: linguistic theory
WP264 Dialogue: Sociolinguistics and everyday (in)securitisation
2019
This dialogue starts from the perception that existential threats to national security has become an increasingly pervasive concern in daily life, spreading fear and suspicion through civil society. Communicative practices play a central role in …
Key words: linguistic theory, methodology
WP258 Trump, existential threats and the banality of evil - Or why sociolinguists should (re)read Hannah Arendt
2019
This paper offers a theoretical and empirical contribution to current sociolinguistic discussions about ?existential threats? and their discursive construction in everyday life. Theoretically, the article argues for the importance of (re-)purposing …
Key words: linguistic theory
WP247 Semilingualism: The life and afterlife of a sociolinguistic idea
2018
For half a century or more, semilingualism has been a controversial ? much debated and much derided ? idea. The present paper engages with some facets of this history. It traces the formation and early circulation in its context of origin: Sweden's …
Key words: linguistic theory
WP243 Are chronotopes helpful?
2018
Do we really need yet another word for context?? What?s new about chronotopes?? This paper explains how the notion of chronotope provides a critical check of the validity and analytical power of the term ?context?, allowing us to observe superficial …
Key words: linguistic theory
WP240 Crossing of a different kind
2018
Is crossing is now an outdated concept, losing its distinctiveness in the ?trans-super-poly-metro movement??? To answer this question, this paper moves away from the scenes of vernacular multi-ethnic heteroglossia that have dominated the research on …
Key words: linguistic theory
WP239 Goffman: Key concepts in exploration of the interaction order
2018
These are brief notes that I often use when I teach Goffman, covering ?interactional arrangements?, ?ritual investment in interaction?, ?individual involvements in activity?, ?frames, realms and keying?, and ?implications?.? Though they differ in …
Key words: linguistic theory
WP236 The language portrait in multilingualism research: Theoretical and methodological considerations
2018
Language portraits, in which participants visualize their linguistic repertoire using the outline of a body silhouette, were originally developed as a language awareness exercise in education, and they are now increasingly employed as a research tool …
Key words: linguistic theory, methodology
WP233 Promoting Linguistic Citizenship: Issues, problems & possibilities
2018
This paper sets Stroud?s ?Linguistic Citizenship? (LC) in dialogue (a) with Hymes? ethnographic sociolinguistics and (b) with language education in England.? LC?s commitment to democratic participation, to voice, to the heterogeneity of linguistic …
Key words: linguistic theory
WP232 Founding concepts: Sapir and Simmel on 'communication'
2017
Building on lecture notes from a course on the ?Ethnography of Communication?, this paper uses a close reading of two classic texts to establish some fundamental principles for the study of communicative practices in their social context(s), …
Key words: linguistic theory, methodology
WP207 Society through the lens of language: A new look at social groups and integration
2017
There are forms of scientific activity that are rarely practiced by sociolinguists, and one of them is the self-conscious construction of theory. Sociolinguists appear to share a self-perception of staunchly empirical analysts devoted to the rigorous …
Key words: linguistic theory, methodology
WP176 Five Foucauldian postulates for rethinking language and power
2015
This paper examines the extent to which shifts in the understanding of power within a poststructuralist frame require researchers to re-examine the relationships between language and power. In the light of notions of power developed in and after …
Key words: linguistic theory, methodology
WP170 Chronotopic identities.
2015
Bakhtin coined the term ?chronotope?? to point towards the inseparability of time and space in human social action and the effects of this inseparability on social action (Bakhtin 1981: 84-258).? Bourdieu and Passeron provided us with one of the most …
Key words: linguistic theory
WP164 Revisiting: Keywords, transforming phrases, and cultural concepts
2015
The verbally explicit (the said) may over time become implicit (the unsaid). Similarly, culturally prominent keywords may alternate as unarticulated cultural assumptions. The cycle is from precise lexicon to silence covering a language shadow …
Key words: linguistic theory