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Thursday 14 November, 2019
Last minute changes (if any): See this space |
10.45 - 12.15 |
Session 3a, Room P216
Language & Discrimination Sujit Malick, The University of Burdwan, India (10.45-11.15)
Caste Contaminated Language – A Study of Select languages in India. (TDB College, Kazi Nazrul University, India) Language is a channel of decoding thought process, involving diverse components of human society. India is a land of linguistic diversity; Indian Constitution has recognized 22 languages and there are at least 500 languages, informally used by the people of 130 million population. However, India situates itself in the flux casteism, percolated in every sphere of life. Almost all Indian languages are usually smeared with the volley castest slur, often led towards contamination through caste prejudice, producing language prejudice - a negative attitude towards individual who belong to a particular social group and discrimination is often done through language towards the individual. Here I would select languages and a few references of it, showing language prejudice. National language of India, Hindi, is dotted with innumerable usages dubbed as the language prejudice. For example: `chori chamrari mat koro ` meaning` don’t steal like chamar`. `Chamar` is a Hindi word for blacksmith; in Indian class system chamar or blacksmith belongs to lower class and Hindi language often stigmatizes the whole community as thief. Bengali, one of the prime languages of India, often underscores several usages which are highly contaminated; phases like ` santhal er moto dekhte ` beder tol`, coolie er moto acharanran etc. Santhan er moto dekhte means look ugly, so ugliness is synonymous with santhal, a tribe of India; beder tol refers to chaotic condition as bed, a snake charmer, is treated as chaotic community. So, in this paper I would explore the language prejudice in these two prominent languages. MATS DEUTSCHMANN, ANDERS STEINVALL, ÖREBRO UNI & UMEÅ UNI, SWEDEN (11.15-12.15)
“Combatting Stereotyping by Evoking Stereotypes” - practical, theoretical and ethical dilemmas encountered in the VR-funded project Raising Awareness through Virtual Experiencing (RAVE) and C-RAVE. RAVE, and the affiliated C-RAVE project, approach the challenge of finding ways to increase sociolinguistic awareness of issues related to language and stereotyping among students in professional programs (teachers, law, sociology and psychology, for example). In this pursuit the projects have used updated matched-guise techniques to digitally manipulate the same recording of a conversation to alter the voice quality of a speaker to sound male/female or to simulate a native/non-native accent, for example. Respondents’ perceptions of the conversational behaviour of the speaker in the two guises are then measured and compared. The outcome is then used as a starting point for awareness-raising seminar discussions on the topic (i.e. stereotyping). The C-RAVE project has further added a cross-cultural dimension by comparing outcomes of similar experiments in different cultural contexts. In this presentation we aim to critically asses some of our work so far. Firstly we will highlight how methodological issues (such as the quality of the recordings) may have affected our results in an unwanted manner. We will also discuss ethical/theoretical dilemmas of our approaches. For example, the fact that respondents are initially unaware of the real purpose of the experiments presents an ethical dilemma. Further one can question whether it is justifiable to present a ‘male’ and ‘female’ version of a recording when all modern theories acknowledge that gender is a spectrum. Similarly, we ask how can we defend comparisons in responses between ‘cultures’ where ‘culture’ for practical purposes is defined by geographical location. The ultimate question is whether our projects really help to combat stereotyping, or if we in our pursuits inavertedly are contributing to strengthening existing structures. HAVVA YILMAZ, İSTANBUL ŞEHIR UNIVERSITY, TURKEY (last minute cancellation)
ole of Language and Language Prejudices in Discriminatory Discourses on the Example of Syrian Refugees in the Written Press. In this study, in light of Derrida's text Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, and based on the reports in the mainstream print media, it is targeting the role of language in the examination of discrimination against Syrian refugees in Turkey. In this famous article, Derrida seeks to make possible the utopia of cosmopolitanism, and speaks of a dilemma faced by states and societies about refugees: to open the doors to refugees indefinitely and to ignore the possibility of social chaos and terrorism in the name of the ideal of tolerance; risking the lives of millions of people for the sake of protecting national integrity and security for pragmatic reasons and being condemned to an introverted life? Turkey chose which side of the equation in favor of tolerance, since 2011 March, when the clashes began in Syria and the people began to leave the country. However, he had to question this choice many times. As the war went on and the number of asylum seekers increased, it was difficult to deal with this situation. Today, society is in a tension reminiscent of the dilemma Derrida speaks of. This tension is largely due to prejudices against asylum seekers and the feeding of these prejudices by various actors. Although the press is only one of these actors, it is highly capable of directing this prejudice because of its provocative effect on society. In this respect, this presentation focuses on how to feed the prejudices against refugees written press in Turkey, and how language is used as a means of prejudice. For this purpose, the news and columns in the three mainstream newspapers (Cumhuriyet, Sabah, Posta) determined by considering ideological representation values will be examined to cover the last three years and will be subjected to discourse analysis. |
Session 3b, Room P243
Language & Gender Océane Foubert, Université de Lille, France (10:45-11.15)
The representation of gender in language: a semantic and diffusion study of English gendered neologisms Over the past decades, numerous guidelines promoting gender-fair language have been published by institutions, such as UNESCO (1999). One of the recommended strategies is to use neutral forms over gendered terms, such as 'salesperson' instead of 'salesman and saleswoman'. While these guidelines aim at reducing gender prejudice in language (Sczesny et al. 2016), we can observe an increase in gendered neologisms, such as 'bromance' (a non-sexual friendship between men), 'guyliner' (eyeliner for men), and 'mansplain' (a man explaining in a condescending way something to a woman who usually is more knowledgeable on the topic in question). This recent and wide-spread phenomenon provides valuable insights into the current representation of gender in English. This paper presents the semantic and frequency-based diffusion analysis of over 1,800 gendered coinages. Three motivations predominant for the creation of these neologisms were found: (i) the appropriation of domains which are stereotypically associated with a different group of people, as in 'guyliner', (ii) the reinforcement of differences, as in 'man science' (a branch of knowledge available to men only), and (iii) the naming of undesirable male and/or heterosexual behaviours, rendering them more visible, such as 'mansplain'. As shown in Foubert (2019), quantitative data from the NOW corpus show that neologisms naming such undesirable behaviours have a higher degree of diffusion compared to those built on other motivations (such as domain appropriation). Overall, gendered neologisms reveal the heterogeneous nature of the current representation of gender in language, from reinforcing gender prejudice to naming undesirable male behaviours. For this aspect, these neologisms are the reflection of the current context of gender awareness, as the conceptualisations of gender identity and relationships are constantly shifting, being the subject of numerous and ongoing discussions. Maarten Lemmens, Université de Lille, France (11.15-11.45)
Gender prejudices in qualifying adjectives in English and Swedish Over the past decades, studies on gender biases in language have shown various differences between men and women in all domains (cf. Tannen 1990, Hellinger & Buβmann 2001, 2002, 2003, 2015). This paper presents some corpus studies looking into gender prejudices and stereotypes in English (BNC and COCA) and Swedish (Språkbanken corpus). The first corpus study can be regarded as the linguistic verification of sociological studies on gender stereotypes affecting women’s under- or overrepresentation in certain disciplines. For example, Leslie et al.’s 2015 study evaluates the gender imbalance in academia, and more especially in the STEM fields. They suggest that this imbalance is due to stereotypes related to the domain of intelligence which stipulate that men possess innate intelligence (“raw intellectual talent”), while women do not possess such raw intellectual talent. Conversely, studies on school results show that girls systematically have better marks. The explanation would be that girls are more studious and/or compliant and have more self-discipline. Our corpus study looks at whether corpus data, and more specifically adjectives referring to either intelligence, such as English brilliant, intelligent, gifted, etc. or studiousness (e.g., English studious, hard-working, diligent, etc.) confirm these stereotypes feeding into these commonly held beliefs. The second study is an extension of the first and presents an analysis of adjectives that qualify a (selective) number of gender-specific nouns, such as man, woman, father, daughter, girl, etc. The hypothesis here is, again, that language reflects the common gender stereotypes (cf. also Hene 1984). Our collostructional analysis shows that the adjectives are significantly distinctive for these nouns confirm gender stereotypes and prejudices, yet there are also some unexpected findings, e.g. about adjectives referring to race, origin or religion. Our corpus study confirms, both for contemporary English and Swedish, that language use, at least that of qualifying adjectives, massively reproduces and thereby sustains or even reinforces gender prejudices. Mattias Östling, Örebro Universitet, Sweden (11:45-12.15)
A Cross cultural comparison of stereotypes surrounding conversational styles and gender. This study explores how cross-cultural stereotypical preconceptions about gender and conversational behaviour may affect observers’ perceptions of a speaker’s performance. Using updated matched-guise techniques, we digitally manipulated the same recording of a conversation to alter the voice quality of “Speaker A” to sound ‘male’ or ‘female’. Respondents’ perceptions of the conversational behaviour of Speaker A in the two guises were then measured and compared. We also measured respondents’ explicit stereotypical gender preconceptions of these aspects. A comparison between the data accumulated in the Seychelles and Sweden shows that not only do the respondents’ explicit stereotypical gender preconceptions differ between the two cultures, but also their perception of the conversational behaviour of Speaker A. For example, the results showed that in the Seychelles taking a lot of floor space in the conversation is a stereotypically female trait, so when Seychellois listened to the recording with Speaker A as female, they considered the guise as taking more floor space than when Speaker A was a male. Meanwhile, in Sweden the reverse was true. This study suggests that different cultures can have different stereotypical preconceptions about gender and conversational behaviour and this may skew perceptions of similar linguistic behaviour. |
13.15 - 14.45
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Session 4a, P216
Language & Identity CHUN-YI PENG, BOROUGH OF MANHATTAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE, US (13.15-13.45)
Mediatized Taiwan Mandarin - The role televised media in the formation of speaker stereotypes. This study examines the speaker stereotypes of Taiwan Mandarin (TM) by Chinese Mainlanders and the role of televised media in assigning new social and indexical meanings in a non-local context. TM has been traditionally associated with chic, urban television celebrities and young cosmopolitan types since China’s economic reform in the 70s when Taiwanese TV dramas seized the attention of China’s younger generation. However, the data from the online survey of this study suggest that the social prestige of TM is declining as Beijing Mandarin (a.k.a. putonghua) gains social prestige. The rise of China’s economic power can perhaps be tied to preference for stereotypically more masculine homegrown speech patterns, as well as rejection of effete and effeminate speaker stereotypes associated with TM. Due to the way it is stylized in televised media, TM has been indexically linked to babyish and overly soft stereotypes by many Chinese millennials in Beijing. These millennials are now gravitating towards homegrown speech patterns that are indexical of traditional masculinity, formality, and authority. In conclusion, there seems to be a new alignment of people’s attitudes toward TM among the millennials on the mainland. This change of attitudes may be ascribed to: 1) social and economic changes on the mainland, and 2) changes in TM itself. As Chinese economic and political power surges, the rising Chinese middle class is looking inward rather than outward. For many millennials growing up in affluent urban China, the appeal of Hong Kong and Taiwan and their cultural products are giving way to local models of cosmopolitan lifestyle and identity. Lotta Christiansen, TU Dortmund, Germany (13:45-14.15)
“¡Hablamos mejor que los otros!” – Comparing Language Attitudes and Linguistic Identity in Uruguay. Comparing Language Attitudes and Linguistic Identity in Uruguay “They speak so differently in the capital.” “They speak badly in the capital.” “In the North, they really do not speak correctly.” “They sound like farmers.” These are, among others, the strongest opinions and perceptions of the rural population of the national state Rocha, Uruguay, towards the other regions in the country. The study, conducted in January 2019, concentrated on language attitudes in general and how they appear in the speakers’ linguistic identity of a linguistically quite extraordinary region in Uruguay. It is based on the international research project LIAS (Linguistic Identity and Language Attitudes towards Latin American Spanish) of the University of Bergen, Norway, which investigated in the capitals of 20 Spanish-speaking countries in all of Latin America, as well as Madrid, Spain, and Miami, USA. Since the capitals, all of them very big cities with millions of inhabitants, do not necessarily represent all of the country, it is interesting to study the opinions, attitudes and perceptions of the rural population, too. By using a slightly modified version of the semi-structured LIAS questionnaire, I ensured the possibility of a detailed comparison among Rocha and the Uruguayan capital Montevideo. In the LIAS project, the researchers conducted the study with 400 participants in each megacity, whereas I worked with 50 participants in a region of 75.000 inhabitants. The results show how differently the language attitudes already within a small country like Uruguay can be. They give an insight into the strong linguistic identity existing in Rocha and how strongly the language attitudes are connected to it. Especially the comparison between Rocha and the capital demonstrates how little the language attitudes are driven by stigmatisation and prejudice in Rocha but are rather used to express and underline the regional identity. MIRIAM SCHMIDT-JÜNGST, UNIVERSITY OF MAINZ, GERMANY (14.15-14.45)
“Caged like animals” – The Role of Animacy and Agency in the Depiction of Refugees in German MediaMiriam Schmidt-Jüngst, University of Mainz, Germany Discourses on refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants have been a central theme in public debate in Germany since the start of the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015. The initial optimism and welcoming sentiment that shaped the early phase of these discourses quickly made way for much more hostile and often outright racist opinions. The ubiquity of this subject in public discourse throughout the last four years has led to tremendous academic interest, with political, sociological and psychological approaches prevailing. Linguistic contributions have nevertheless been plentiful, with studies making particular use of discourse-analytical approaches and focusing largely on lexical items and metaphors in order to highlight the ways in which refugees and immigrants are framed in the media and in order to identify the semantic fields that dominate the public debate (e.g. Niedrig 2015, Kalasznik 2018, Wilke 2018, Rheindorf/Wodak 2019). This paper intends to contribute to the linguistic analysis of refugee discourses through a more structural approach: I aim to provide a corpus-based analysis of the grammatical structure of refugee discourses in German media, focusing on the role of animacy and agency in the ways refugees are portrayed and described. Central to this analysis is an investigation of the agent/patient dichotomy, wherein refugees and asylum seekers are either granted agency in the descriptions of social acts and interactions or become the grammatical patient of these actions. This dichotomy can be investigated to reveal the perceived placement of refugees on an animacy hierarchy; agency is tied to independence, power over the self, animacy and (human) personhood. When a group is thus denied this agency, they are arguably relegated from the category of 'human' altogether. It is this dichotomy, and this potential relegation from human categorisation, that this paper intends to investigate. |
Session 4b, P243
Language in the Workplace Carla Jonsson, Stockholms University, Sweden (13.15-13.45)
Pride and prejudice: Languages in the workplace What languages are associated with pride or prejudice when entering the Swedish labor market? And what types of stereotyping/bias/prejudice exist? This study investigates the experiences of six people born abroad who have entered the Swedish labor market as adults. The focus is on the participants’ descriptions of their prior education and work-related knowledge and experiences, including language skills. The central research questions are: a) How do participants formulate their work-related knowledge and experiences, in particular language skills? b) What values are ascribed to different languages in the workplace, and how does this valorization relate to language ideologies? c) What other cultural aspects are valued and given privilege in the workplace? d) What types of stereotyping/bias/prejudice toward languages and other cultural aspects exist? e) How do participants express agency and identities in work life? The data comes from the ongoing research project ‘Professional Communication and Digital Media: Complexity, Mobility and Multilingualism in the Global Workplace’ (Stiftelsen Marcus och Amalia Wallenbergs Minnesfond, 2016-2019) and consists of an audio recorded focus group discussion with three participants, six recorded interviews, and four CV: s written by the participants. The participants have in common that they have worked in the same international company in Sweden. Two participants were born in Syria, two participants in the US, one in Turkey and one in Wales. Theoretically, the paper builds on language ideologies (Kroskrity 2004) agency (Saxena and Martin-Jones 2013) and identities (Pavlenko & Blackledge 2004). In relation to the prevalence of English in the data, Monolingual and Anglonormative ideologies in the workplace and in society as such are discussed. The concept of agency is made relevant through the participants' agency in their everyday work life, e.g. when formulating their competences and when searching for jobs, but also in their everyday life when investing (Norton 1995) to learn a new language. The presentation focuses on questions related to the following symposium themes: • Language discrimination/bias • Accent bias • Language and immigration • Cross-cultural aspects and language bias • Intersectionality of identities and language • Language bias in policies Usha Nair, SNDT Women's University, India (13.45-14.15)
Language and Gender- Discourse Analysis of Women in Leadership Roles in India “Does one correct a social inequity by changing linguistic disparity?” asked Robin Lakoff, in her path-breaking essay Language and Woman’s Place (1973) India has one of the lowest female labour force participation-33%-global 50% of which only 9% are in managerial position of which only 5.3% are on boards of companies listed in Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). Though college enrolment of women is 45.9% of the entire population, only 1% occupy leadership positions. Participation of women who constitute 48% of the population, in top positions is of vital importance for a growing economy. Leadership Communication being vital to establish power and control, I propose to study if the career progression of women in India are constrained by the social conditioning of how a woman should speak, write and use body language (Critical Discourse Analysis). Do women perceive not being heard in a male dominated workplace, especially while asserting/defending viewpoint? Are there any stereotypes perpetuated about ‘man’s speak’ and ‘women’s speak’ in workplace setup? Research methodology consists of the study of the local/ethnic, sociological ecology of gender roles and their impact on women in leadership roles. Also questionnaire surveys among women leaders from diverse sectors- do they perceive limitations, speaking and writing, how do they handle them? Impact the research findings will open up new ways of looking at the communication of women leaders in India, setting off discussions on improving women’s participation as leaders both qualitatively and quantitatively. VLADA BARANOVA, NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY, RUSSIA (14.15-14.45)
Multilingualism and linguistic landscape of St. PetersburgVlada Baranova, Higher School of Economics, Russia The ‘linguistic visibility’ of minority groups in urban space of St. Petersburg is less evident than it could be expected for one of centers of mass labour migration. Nowadays, actual multilingualism of St. Petersburg is quite high, but only a small part of the languages is reflected in the linguistic landscape (LL). LL can show a level of diversity as well as a significant presence of specific group. At the same time, the question of linguistic landscape is closely tied with attitudes and prejudice (Rudby, Said 2015). Unfortunately, sociological surveys attested negative attitudes to minority’s languages and an increase in anti-immigrant’s attitudes in Russia (Bessudnov 2016). However, this study is based on the idea that language attitudes are currently undergoing the process of transformation because of intensive interethnic contacts becoming inevitable part of everyday communication in big Russian cities. The main method of collecting data for this study is crowdsourcing via mobile application LinguaSnapp (firstly developed by ‘Multilingual Manchester’ project, see (Gaiser, Matras 2016) which results in interactive maps containing georeferencing, photos, and different metadata such as number of languages and scripts; translations, etc. (https://linguasnapp.hse.spb.ru). The crowdsourcing method makes possible not only to gather data in the framework of digital sociolinguistics, but also to discuss linguistic diversity issues with city dwellers. Purchke (2017) notes that the main goal of the method is to bring together researchers and citizens in a joint research process. |
15.15 - 16.45
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Session 5a, P216
Multilingualism & Media Laura Paterson, The Open University, UK (15.15-15.45)
Who is prejudiced, who discriminates, and who are their targets? A corpus-based social actor analysis of prejudice and discrimination in the UK press
Although sometimes used interchangeably, prejudice refers to a ‘preconceived opinion’ about an individual/group of people ‘not based on reason or actual experience’ (OED 2007), while discrimination is the action resulting from prejudiced beliefs. To analyse how the lemmas prejudice and discriminate are used in British English – and whether their meanings are kept distinct – this paper interrogates two corpora of newspaper texts from the Guardian and the Daily Mail (2010-2015). The paper also has a social focus; using a corpus-based version of van Leeuwen’s (1995) social actor analysis, it takes the queries in Table 1 as a starting point for determining which individuals, entities, institutions, and social groups are systematically associated with prejudice and/or discrimination in the British press. To identify potential social actors, collocates (words which show a proximity-based statistical relationship with the query node) were generated for each query (Table 1). Close analysis of the co-text of the collocates (using concordance lines) was then used to determine whether the social actors (incl. Christianity, disabled, homosexuals, minority and Jews) were associated with being discriminatory or discriminated against, prejudiced or the victims of prejudice. The results for each newspaper were compared to highlight any similarities/differences in reporting. Ultimately, this paper is designed to be a push-off point for further interrogation of how prejudice/discrimination are realised in discourse, with the results of this analysis acting as a foundation for investigating whether (and to what extent) the social actors found in media texts are taken up and entextualised in other text types. SATISH PATEL, UMEÅ UNIVERSITY, SWEDEN (15.45-16.15)
Digital manipulation, methodology, adaptation and dissemination. In the RAVE and C-RAVE projects, we have exploited digital matched-guise techniques. For example, we can now manipulate identity attributes using digital media so that you can pretend to be of the opposite sex. With these methods we can give students personal experiences of how one's "identity " as perceived by others affects how we are treated and judged, and also show how we ourselves are subconsciously affected by these structures in our judgement of others. At Humlab, Umeå University, a centre for Digital Humanities, we have developed digital methods and faced challenges which have required adaptations and work arounds for these and other research projects. In this presentation, I present some of these methods and challenges. I also present a case for the presentation of digital humanities in a multi-modal format which makes the findings accessible for a non-expert public. HELGE RÄIHÄ & CHRISTINA VON POST, ÖREBRO UNIVERSITY, SWEDEN (16.15-16.45)
VALUES AND ATTITUDES OF NORDIC LANGUAGE TEACHERS TOWARDS SECOND LANGUAGE EDUCATION Issues in minority education in relation to citizenship have received more attention lately, because of new requirements for language testing in several countries (Bevelander, Fernandez & Hellström, 2011, p. 101). The acquisition of citizenship is more decisive for immigrant participation in society than the duration of stay in the country (Bevelander, Fernandez & Hellström, 2011). The second language is crucial for active citizenship and integration in this perspective. Most countries in the EU (except Ireland and Sweden) have language requirements for citizenship and the use of language testing becomes increasingly common among the countries that receive migrants. The rapid development highlights the need for new international studies on the relationship between citizenship and conditions for second language learning. The goal of the recent study is to compare premises, perspectives and scales of values of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish language educators, related to the requirements for immigrant citizenship. Previous studies (Björklund & Liubiniené, 2004) indicate that there are major differences in value systems even between the neighboring countries. To reach the objective of the present study, interviews were conducted with language educators in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The results have revealed two opposing patterns. The values of Swedish informants show a wide-ranging variation, while the Danish and Norwegian data on values are consistently similar. The results raise further questions about the effects caused by differences in values among language educators when comparing the countries and call for a further verification of the data in a more extended study, including Lithuania and other Baltic states. Key words: values, second language teachers, citizenship, immigrants, integration. |