April 2014 – University of Copenhagen

Centre for Language Change In Real Time (LANCHART)

Dear SLICE friends

We have a foretaste of summer in Copenhagen these days. And here are some more good news at the end of April:

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The Taal & Tongval Colloquium 2014, to be held in Ghent (Belgium), November 28, will be devoted to discussing

(De)standardisation in Europe: Qualitative and quantitative approaches.

More information and a call for papers can be found at the end of (and also in the attachment to) this mail. Please notice that the deadline for submission of abstracts is already May 15.

We have the pleasure of welcoming three new members to our SLICE network:

Michael Hornsby

Visiting professor, Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures | Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza, Poznań, Poland http://wa.amu.edu.pl/wa/hornsby_michael

COST Action - 'New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe: Opportunities and Challenges': http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/isch/Actions/IS1306

Joan O’Sullivan

who just a couple of weeks ago defended her PhD at the University of Limerick about the shift away from RP to 'nonlocal Irish English' in Irish radio advertising, 1977-2007 (Title: “The role of language ideologies in the exploitation of accent and dialect in Irish radio advertising – a longitudinal study”).

Lucas Duane

“My name is Lucas Duane and I have recently started my PhD research project, entitled “Language Policing in the Balearic Islands: Reconfiguring the Standard Language Ideology in the Era of Globalization”, under the co-supervision of Profs. Julia de Bres (Université de Luxembourg) and Joan Pujolar (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain). I am writing to introduce myself, since I believe this project, which is summarized below, is aligned with the objectives of the SLICE programme.

Recent language policy changes in the Spanish region of the Balearic Islands, where Castilian and Catalan are both official languages, have triggered intense language ideological debates. Part of these changes are an implicit reflection of a linguistic differentiation debate between the Catalan standard and Balearic vernaculars explicitly surfacing in new media. Language policing events in both the institutional and individual levels will be analyzed, by conducting an institutional ethnographic fieldwork and a netnography in new media. The project aims at investigating ongoing processes of (de-?)standardization in the Balearic Islands in order to investigate how the standard language ideology is being re-shaped in the context of late modernity”.

[...]

Lucas Duane, Doctoral Candidate, Institute of Luxembourgish Linguistics and Literatures, University of Luxembourg, Campus Walferdange, Route de Diekirch/BP2, L-7201 Walferdange, Luxembourg

Best wishes from Copenhagen

Tore

https://lanchart.hum.ku.dk/slice/

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Taal & Tongval Colloquium 2014

Ghent (Belgium), November 28

http://www.nederlandsetaalkunde.ugent.be/taalentongval2014

(De)standardisation in Europe: Qualitative and quantitative approaches

Taal & Tongval: Language Variation in the Low Countries is a peer-reviewed journal devoted to the study of language variation in the Netherlands and Flanders, in neighbouring areas and in languages related to Dutch, which organises an annual one-day colloquium on a current topic in variationist linguistics (cf. http://www.taalentongval.eu). The 2014 edition of the annual Taal & Tongval colloquium takes place in Ghent on November 28 and is devoted to the topic of '(De)standardisation in Europe: Qualitative and quantitative approaches'.

Since a couple of decades societal factors such as immigration, globalisation, democratisation and informalisation have led to a changing, perhaps weakened position of European standard languages (cfr. Deumert & Vandenbussche 2003). In Denmark and Germany, for instance, standard languages are said to be increasingly affected by demotisation (Coupland & Kristiansen 2011, Auer & Spiekermann 2011, Davies 2012, Svenstrup 2013), implying that “the ‘standard ideology’ as such stays intact, while the valorization of ways of speaking changes” (Coupland & Kristiansen 2011:28). Other speech communities, however, such as Norway, would be marked by destandardisation, i.e. the process whereby “the established standard language loses its position as the one and only ‘best language’” (Coupland & Kristiansen 2011:28). These changes challenge the present mainly production focused research methodologies and the contexts in which language variation is traditionally studied. New, more experimental methods have recently been introduced to document the European standard language situations, along with new contexts (e.g. the media) in which language use, attitudes and ideologies can be studied (Soukup 2012, 2013). Those methods and contexts have been described and used by (among others) the members of the SLICE-network, a network of European sociolinguists focusing on “Standard Language Ideology in Contemporary Europe” (cfr. Kristiansen & Coupland 2011, Kristiansen & Grondelaers 2013).

In the Dutch language area the standard language is at present also undergoing change. In the Netherlands Poldernederlands is for instance said to be an important competitor for the existing standard language (Stroop 1998, Van Bezooijen 2001). To what degree this relatively new language variety has to be seen as an instance of either destandardisation or demotisation is however unclear; the current research into Poldernederlands seems to be only partly embedded in the international context. In Flanders, the traditional position of the standard language is mainly challenged by the functional elaboration of tussentaal (literally ‘in-between-language’), i.e. the intermediate registers in between standard language and dialect. As is the case for Poldernederlands, discussion remains on the question whether the elaboration of tussentaal constitutes an instance of destandardisation or of demotisation (Plevoets 2008, Grondelaers & Van Hout 2011, Van Hoof & Jaspers 2012). Experimental and mediacentred approaches are increasingly used to shed light on this issue (Grondelaers & Van Hout 2011, Impe et al. 2009, Geeraerts & Van de Velde 2013, Speelman et al. 2013), while innovative lectometric methods allow insight into the stratigraphy of Dutch language varieties (Geeraerts et al. 1999, Speelman et al. 2003). However, several questions still remain unanswered with the present methodologies; fine-tuning the present techniques is warranted to elucidate various aspects of the changes in progress. The Dutch language area is an ideal breeding ground to experiment with such methodological innovations, as in the relatively small language area, a wide diversity in language ideologies and attitudes can be observed (Grondelaers, Van Hout & Speelman 2011).

The 2014 edition of the Taal & Tongval colloquium aims at bringing together researchers to debate about standard language ideologies and the ways in which these are best studied. More specifically the following questions will be at the centre of discussion:

(1) Which methods can be implemented to gain insight into standard language use and standard language ideologies? Do new, experimental methods yield results comparable to those of traditional methods?

(2) What can the different methods tell us about the standard language situation, both in the Dutch language area and beyond? To what degree do we find traces of destandardisation and demotisation?

(3) What are interesting contexts to study standard language ideologies in?

These and other topics will be further explored in the colloquium, which will host invited talks by Winifred Davies (Aberystwyth University), Stefan Grondelaers (Radboud University Nijmegen), Tore Kristiansen (University of Copenhagen) and Barbara Soukup (University of Vienna). In addition, there are a number of slots on the program for regular 20-minute conference presentations.

References

AUER, P. and SPIEKERMANN, H. 2011. Demotisation of the standard variety or destandardisation? The changing status of German in late modernity (with special reference to south-western Germany). In T. Kristiansen & N. Coupland (reds.) Standard Languages and Language Standards in a Changing Europe. Oslo: Novus Forlag. 161-176.

COUPLAND, N. and KRISTIANSEN, T. 2011. SLICE: Critical perspectives on language (de)standardisation. In T. Kristiansen & N. Coupland (reds.) Standard Languages and Language Standards in a Changing Europe. Oslo: Novus Press. 11-35.

DAVIES, W.V. 2012. Myths we live and speak by. Ways of imagining and managing language and languages. In M. Hüning, U. Vogl & O. Moliner (reds.) Standard Languages and Multilingualism in European History. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 45-70.

DEUMERT, A. and VANDENBUSSCHE, W. 2003. Research directions in the study of language standardization. In A. Deumert & W. Vandenbussche (reds.) Germanic Standardizations. Past to present. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 455-470.

GEERAERTS, D., GRONDELAERS, S. and SPEELMAN, D. 1999. Convergentie en divergentie in de Nederlandse woordenschat. Een onderzoek naar kleding- en voetbaltermen. Amsterdam: Meertens Instituut.

GEERAERTS, D. and VAN DE VELDE, H. 2013. Supra-regional characteristics of colloquial Dutch. In F. Hinskens & J. Taeldeman (reds.) Language and Space: Dutch. Berlin: de Gruyter.

GRONDELAERS, S. and VAN HOUT, R. 2011. The Standard Language Situation in the Low Countries: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Variations on a Diaglossic Theme. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 23: 199-243.

GRONDELAERS, S., VAN HOUT, R. and SPEELMAN, D. 2011. A perceptual typology of standard language situations in the Low Countries. In T. Kristiansen & N. Coupland (reds.) Standard Languages and Language Standards in a Changing Europe. Oslo: Novus Forlag. 199-222.

IMPE, L., GEERAERTS, D. and SPEELMAN, D. 2009. Mutual intelligibility of standard and regional Dutch language varieties. International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 2: 101-117.

KRISTIANSEN, T. and COUPLAND, N. (reds.) 2011. Standard Languages and Language Standards in a Changing Europe, Oslo: Novus Press.

KRISTIANSEN, T. and GRONDELAERS, S. (reds.) 2013. Language (De)standardisation in Late Modern Europe: Experimental Studies, Oslo: Novus Press.

PLEVOETS, K. 2008. Tussen spreek-en standaardtaal. Een corpusgebaseerd onderzoek naar de situationele, regionale en sociale verspreiding van enkele morfosyntactische verschijnselen uit het gesproken Belgisch-Nederlands. Leuven: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

SANDØY, H. 2011. Language culture in Norway: A tradition of questioning standard language norms. In T. Kristiansen & N. Coupland (reds.) Standard Languages and Language Standards in a Changing Europe. Oslo: Novus Press. 119-126.

SOUKUP, B. 2012. Speaker design in Austrian TV political discussions. In J.M. Hernández-Campoy & J.A. Cutillas-Espinosa (reds.) Style-shifting in Public: New Perspectives on Stylistic Variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 81-99.

SOUKUP, B. 2013. On matching speaker (dis)guises – revisiting a methodological tradition. In T. Kristiansen & S. Grondelaers (reds.) Language (De)standardisation in Late Modern Europe: Experimental Studies. Oslo: Novus Press. 267-285.

SPEELMAN, D., GRONDELAERS, S. and GEERAERTS, D. 2003. Profile-based linguistic uniformity as a generic method for comparing language varieties. Computers and the Humanities 37: 317-337.

SPEELMAN, D., SPRUYT, A., IMPE, L. and GEERAERTS, D. 2013. Language attitudes revisited: auditory affective priming. Journal of Pragmatics 52: 83-92.

STROOP, J. 1998. Poldernederlands; waardoor het ABN verdwijnt, Amsterdam, Bert Bakker.

SVENSTRUP, C. H. 2013. Language attitudes in south-west Germany. In T. Kristiansen & S. Grondelaers (reds.) Language (De)standardisation in Late Modern Europe: Experimental Studies. Oslo: Novus Press. 55-70.

VAN BEZOOIJEN, R. 2001. Poldernederlands; hoe kijken vrouwen ertegenaan? Nederlandse Taalkunde 6: 257-271.

VAN HOOF, S. and JASPERS, J. 2012. Hyperstandaardisering. Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde 128: 97-125.

Call for Papers:

We invite proposals for regular 20-minute conference presentations focusing on one or more of the issues listed above. Researchers studying aspects of Dutch language use and language ideologies in the Low Countries are especially encouraged to submit an abstract, but papers with a different language focus are also welcome, provided they raise issues of general theoretical or methodological interest. In this way, we hope to stimulate discussion. Abstracts and presentations may be in English or in Dutch.

Anonymous abstracts of 300-500 words should be submitted by email to taalentongval2014@ugent.be in .doc, .txt or .pdf format. Include name(s) and affiliation(s) in the body of the message.

The deadline for the submission of abstracts is May 15, 2014. Notification of acceptance will be sent before May 31, 2014.

Organising committee:

Steven Delarue (Ghent University)

Anne-Sophie Ghyselen (Ghent University)

Chloé Lybaert (Ghent University)

Gunther De Vogelaer (University of Münster)

Dirk Geeraerts (KU Leuven)

Ben Hermans (Meertens Instituut)

Roeland van Hout (Radboud University)

Jan Nijen Twilhaar (Utrecht University)

Jacques Van Keymeulen (Ghent University)

Wim Vandenbussche (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

Invited speakers:

Winifred Davies (Aberystwyth University, Wales, United Kingdom)

Stefan Grondelaers (Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands)

Tore Kristiansen (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Barbara Soukup (University of Vienna, Austria)