Indexing heritage, iconizing language: Linguistic ideology in discourses of Gaelic acquisition in Nova Scotia and New England.

Stuart S. Dunmore – University of Sussex / Harvard University sdunmore@fas.harvard.edu

Friday, April 29th, 2022 2 – 3:30 PM

Zoom registration: https://bit.ly/SLXAPRIL29

GC room 4422 in-person tickets (CUNY community only): https://bit.ly/SLXEBAPR29

Abstract: 

This seminar will examine Scottish Gaelic revitalisation initiatives and linguistic ideologies among disparate diaspora communities in Nova Scotia, Canada and New England, USA. Notwithstanding the advanced state of intergenerational disruption in contemporary Gaelic communities in Scotland and Canada, second language teaching has been prioritized in recent decades as part of official language policy to create new cohorts of speakers. Based on five years of ethnographic research in Scotland and Canada, this paper examines such ‘new’ speakers’ narratives concerning their language learning motivations, identities, and prospects for language revitalisation in each country. I will also discuss preliminary data from a 3-month Fulbright scholarship in Massachusetts, a major destination for secondary emigration from Nova Scotia since the 1870s. This research will assess how Gaelic learners in New England construct and convey their linguistic ideologies and identities, and how these may relate to the better-known Boston Irish diaspora. I show that challenging sociodemographic circumstances in the remaining Gaelic-dominant communities in Scotland and Nova Scotia contrast with current policy discourses concerning the language’s future prospects. In particular, I consider the relative strength of Nova Scotian new speakers’ sense of heritage identity in relation to Gaelic, compared to Scottish speakers’ language ideologies concerning the ethnolinguistic Gaelic community.

Linguistic Intimacy and Semiotic Conjectures: Venezuelan Sociolinguistic Imaginaries Online

Juan Luis Rodríguez

Register here: https://bit.ly/SLXAPRIL1

Abstract:

Gal and Irvine (2019:16) point out how for C.S. Pierce “the unified subject is not the center of his philosophy, which is built on acts of conjecture, not on persons”. In this presentation, I explore how focusing on acts of sociolinguistic conjecture, instead of models of real personhood, can help us understand the development of Venezuelan diasporic intimacy online. Venezuela is a country that imagined itself as a host of European and South American diasporas for most of the 20th century, especially after it became an oil exporting country. Oil gave the country economic resources that made possible for the upper and middle class to live what Fernando Coronil called a magical state, one in which modernity and cosmopolitan consumption was assured. Venezuelans could be tourists abroad but the only real diasporic community that became prominent in its social imaginary was Florida’s. In Florida Venezuelans became “Mayameros.” There was never a large Venezuelan diaspora anywhere in Latin America or Europe that could compare with Mayameros. This all changed after Hugo Chavez’s death in 2013 when coincidentally oil prices plummeted. This brought the most severe economic crisis in the country’s history. The economic collapse very quickly became worse than the economic collapse during the Venezuelan Federal War. Hunger, unemployment, and lack of opportunities pushed almost 20 % of the country’s population to emigrate to countries in South America. Today more than 6 million Venezuelans, a displaced population that rivals the Syrian refugee crisis, live abroad. This has drastically changed the way Venezuelans imagine themselves. Central to this sociolinguistic imaginary there are ideological conjectures that do not correspond with a model of a real diasporic person. In this presentation, I argue that conjectures about Venezuelanness, not necessarily descriptions about actual people, pervade the ideological imagination of this profound and sudden historical transformation. I will show, through examples of online performances and communication, how Venezuelans construct a new diasporic conjectural sociolinguistic imagination.

Weirdos and snobs: Strategies and social meanings of code choice across social media platforms in Argentine fan communities

Mary-Caitlyn Valentinsson

Register here: https://bit.ly/SLXMARCH18

Abstract:

The global circulation of English has led to a concomitant circulation of discourses that posit English as the global language. In Argentina, these discourses operate alongside historical narratives of English that link the language to attempts at British colonization as well as to the country’s elite. Thus, display of English in Argentina is multivalent. It can index both cosmopolitan participation in positively valued global cultural flows, as well as a socially striving orientation to local elites. Young people in Argentina who participate in global media fandoms, particularly for Anglophone franchises like Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Star Wars, reckon with this conflict in unique ways. In this talk, I explore how Argentine fans of English-language media orient to these contrasting discourses through code choice on different social media platforms. Platforms such as Facebook highlight local networks of Argentine fans—thus, in these contexts, use of English is highly marked. While in moderation it can signal claims to an authentic, hard-core fan identity, more frequent use of English can index an elitist, snobbish persona. Other platforms popular with fans, such as Tumblr, do not offer the same affordances for interest- and region-based groupings. Thus, display of English on this platform does not carry the same risk of inadvertently indexing a snobbish persona. On the other hand, engagement with communities on Tumblr also carries with it a risk of being labeled a “weirdo” due to a perceived overinvestment in Anglophone media products. By exploring metapragmatic commentary about how these fans navigate considerations of code choice in digital contexts, I show how local linguistic choices are implicated in broader flows of global linguistic and mediascapes.