Handbuch Sprache im urbanen Raum Handbook of Language in Urban Space 9783110295870, 9783110296334, 9783110393934, 2022932008

Citation preview

Handbuch Sprache im urbanen Raum / Handbook of Language in Urban Space HSW 20

Handbücher Sprachwissen

Herausgegeben von Ekkehard Felder und Andreas Gardt

Band 20

Handbuch Sprache im urbanen Raum / Handbook of Language in Urban Space Herausgegeben von Beatrix Busse und Ingo H. Warnke

ISBN 978-3-11-029587-0 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-029633-4 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-039393-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2022932008 Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. © 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Satz: jürgen ullrich typosatz, Nördlingen Druck und Bindung: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Inhalt Beatrix Busse/Ingo H. Warnke Urban Linguistics: Ideas and Anchor Points

I

1

Bezugsfelder der urbanen Linguistik/ Fields of Reference of Urban Linguistics

Kellie Gonçalves 1. Urban Variationist Sociolinguistics

35

David Britain 2. ‘Rural’ and ‘Urban’ in Dialectology

52

Dieter Hassenpflug 3. Fundamentals of Urban Semiotics: Exemplified by Examples taken from the Chinese City 74 Carsten Junker 4. Experience as Moving Methodology: Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity 86

II Kommunikationsraum Stadt/ City as Communicative Space Sam Kirkham 5. Urban Communities of Practice Heike Wiese 6. Neue Dialekte im urbanen Europa

119

137

Christian Bär 7. Urbanes Place-Making und Sprechen über Musik

165

VI

Inhalt

III Mobilität, Fluidität und Konstruktionen in städtischen Zeichenarealen/ Mobility, Fluidity and Constructions in Urban Semiotic Areas Dennis Zuev/Monika Büscher 8. Mobilities and Mobile Methods Durk Gorter/Jasone Cenoz 9. Linguistic Landscapes Jennifer Smith 10. Semiotic Landscapes

193

218

245

IV Historizität der Stadt im Diskurs/ Historicity of the City in Discourse Jennifer Cramer 11. Folk Linguistics and the Nostalgia of the Past City Joan Beal 12. Historical Discourse about Cities Christian Bendl 13. Polyhistorizität im öffentlichen Raum

273

292

311

V Experimente/ Experiments Ingo H. Warnke 14. Melancholy Objects Remixed: A Multimodal Counterstatement on Photography in Urban Linguistics 335 Beatrix Busse 15. The HeiURBAN Database: A Brief and Unconventional Position Piece Index

415

394

Beatrix Busse and Ingo H. Warnke

Urban Linguistics: Ideas and Anchor Points Abstract: This introductory article attempts to outline the broad and interdisciplinary field of urban linguistics and explains the structure of this handbook. Drawing on Busse/Warnke (2015) we begin with a discussion of urbanity and how various disciplines conceptualize it. The focus is on linguistic approaches, but the authors stress that, for linguistics, it is important to take an interdisciplinary stance to urbanity, urban spatial considerations, and semiotic meaning making in order to capture their complexities and to define urbanity as a network of values. We avoid perpetuating the questionable distinction between city and country and instead explore the linguistic particularities of a prototypical spatial – hence, urban – constellation. We suggest four dimensions of urban linguistics: variation, place-making, enregisterment, and mobility. On the basis of these theoretical reflections, we continue with outlining some methodological considerations and also illustrating selected research fields of urban linguistics. 1 2 3 4

Questions and concepts Some research fields in urban linguistics The contributions of the handbook References

1 Questions and concepts 1.1 Why continue the discussion on urbanity? The investigation of language use in space and time has been at the heart of (socio-)linguistic research. However, combining language with urbanity as the object of linguistic analysis seems to be an arbitrary endeavor at first and follows the conventional pattern language and/in: language and urbanity, language in urban space, which is typical of linguistic research in general. Due to the changing evaluations which urbanity and urban space have undergone in the past, both in linguistics and other disciplines, it becomes more complex to justify why language and urbanity are of particular interest in contemporary social scientific research. For example, in sociolinguistic and variationist research, Labov’s (1966; 1996; 2006) studies and predecessors have drawn our attention away from broad regional/rural dialect investigations to the city and triggered the urban turn. However, with their focus on the linguistic variable alone, which is certainly not a phenomenon of language use exclusively characteristic of the city, investigations of language in the city have for a long time been one-sided, and, as Britain (2019) and Busse (2019) stress, caused that only recently the sociolinguistic gaze (Britain 2019) has been redirected. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-001

2

Beatrix Busse and Ingo H. Warnke

Furthermore, often phenomena such as city and urbanity or countryside and rurality have been treated interchangeably despite the fact – as we shall show below – their individual uses have to be treated on different conceptual dimensions. Also, for example, while, in 1978, the Dutch architect and theorist of architecture, Rem Koolhaas, proposed one of the most important urban manifestos of the 20th century for one of the modern metropolises, New York, in his Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, his most recent publication has now turned to the global countryside: Countryside: A Report (AMO/Koolhaas 2020). The manifesto is replaced by a report, and the city by the countryside. This recent book also accompanies Samir Bantal and Rem Koolhaas’ exhibition Countryside. The Future, which, interestingly, is set in the city again, that is, in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. For Koolhaas, the countryside “is largely off (our) radar, an ignored realm” (AMO/Koolhaas 2020, 2), which has created a view of progress in which the urban model is prioritized, despite the fact that the impact of the countryside on postcolonialism and 20th-century revolutionary ideas has been immense. “The past two decades […] ha[ve] been characterized by a complacent expectation that one kind of civilization – metropolitan, capital-oriented, agnostic, western – would remain the template for global development, possibly for ever” (AMO/Koolhaas 2020, 2). While in ([1978] 2014), Koolhaas stresses Manhattanism is the one urbanistic ideology that has fed, from its conception, on the splendors and miseries of the metropolitan condition – hyper density – without once losing faith in it as the basis for a desirable, modern culture. Manhattan’s architecture is a paradigm for the exploitation of congestion (n. p.).

In 2020, he outlines that the neglect of the countryside has led to a “self-imposed prison of the urban” (AMO/Koolhaas 2020, 2) and asks for new research directions which should evolve from a diverse “countryside discourse”. On the one hand, radiance and misery of the city, on the other hand, the neglected countryside. One reason to defend the project of urban linguistics might be seen in the importance of the city as a 21st-century habitat/place of living, which is also stressed by Koolhaas (AMO/Koolhaas 2020). However, signs have been mounting that living in the countryside has become more and more popular and that the urban, metropolitan model can no longer be called seminal/future-oriented. So, is urban linguistics a retrospective project, trapped in 20th century epistemes and somewhat slowly reacting to discourses which are outdated? To negate this question would be counterfactual. And it is outdated and too traditional to continue to conceptualize the city in opposition to the countryside. For us, it is more important to see and analyze language in its spatial contexts. Also, there can be no doubt about the fact that language remains in the city, as long as cities exist. Hence, it is important to differentiate between the evaluations that the city receives and the fact that urban life is both the context of language use and its space of production. This prevents us from considering urban linguistics to be a blueprint for something which could be understood without these specific and dense constellations

Urban Linguistics: Ideas and Anchor Points

3

of space. Furthermore, what could be called the countryside turn helps to demarcate the field of urban linguistics as well as to specify it in more detail with regard to its theories, methods, analyses, and models of explanation and also to demand this specification. This humility by which, we think, urban linguistics should present itself causes a further problem which is known to us, but which we cannot solve: if urbanity is not a self-evident scientific research object which should be prioritized, but rather a type of spatially oriented topic of linguistics which is based on interest, then we have to be able to differentiate countryside and city, and urban and rural from one another. But this has become more and more difficult due to varied and trans-spatial lifestyles, globally shared values and information as a result of the digitization of our everyday life. Therefore, our initial claim that the combination of language and urbanity is arbitrary has to be stressed all the more; also, we have to be ready to acknowledge the somewhat artificial character of this research interest. In academic discourse, urban linguistics construes space which in reality is even more complex and densely interwoven. A reduction of a lab-like arrangement of elements will, however, not harm our scientific research interests. On the contrary, to define our research focus can only be successful through the linguistic and artificial construction of urbanity. Urban linguistics – along with its conceptualization, methodology and subjects of study – aims at a straightforward question: what does urban actually mean? It stands to reason that urban linguistics deals with linguistic phenomena in cities and urban spaces, and this description is certainly accurate. But where does an urban space begin and end? Which interpretational strengths does urban linguistics display if, perhaps, it may also explain what is conventional in a countryside reawakened? Should the urban be defined in opposition to something else – and if so, what? To what extent is the opposition between city and countryside artificial and do we not have to question rurality, and the assumption of a so-called countryside, too, if we question the concept of urbanity? In an era of global urbanization of people’s lifestyles, have potential city-specific features of language not already been disseminated into counterurban spaces (Britain 2009; 2012; 2013)? And the other way around? How can the exclusion of rural spaces in urban linguistics be justified? We would be able to continue asking these questions further and state that urban linguistics creates a curious paradox. The meaning of cities, which is not questioned, especially not in global knowledge production, is relativized at that moment when you try to capture them scientifically. As a concept of the everyday cities are straightforward, as a scientific category they are questionable; urbanity is anything but easy to grasp. A simple yet scientifically useful definition of this phenomenon remains elusive. In functional/contextual terms, it can take on many meanings, making the objects of urban linguistics necessarily hybrid in nature. Linguistic questions about aspects of urbanity expressed via language offer no clear solution to this definitional tangle. This handbook will not change this fact. However, it also will not prevent itself from focusing on the everyday meaning of cities as contexts of language usage because of this.

4

Beatrix Busse and Ingo H. Warnke

Of course, the hybridity of the concept of urbanity could be used as an argument to exclude it from linguistic inquiry altogether, but we contend that exactly the multilayered, ambiguous quality of the discursive aspects of urbanity continues to justify its linguistic relevance. For us, it is important to address the contradictions of urban space through its diversity. In it, diverse milieus, earning capacities, political stances and lifestyles not only densely coexist, but also intersect with each other and separate themselves from each other. Practices within social space alone are contradictory. This is even aggravated by how structuring social categories, such as age, race, class or gender, impact those contradictions and raise the complexity of a social space: confinement and entanglement interfere with each other, but, in parts, are also clearly situated in the city. Urbanization is certainly marked by segregation and displacement, but in the city, diverse ways of life are concentrated to an extent unlike in other places. This multilayered complexity continues to turn the city into an interesting linguistic research site, without having to follow the superdiversity paradigm (Vertovec 2007) or new urban multilingualism (Blommaert/Rampton 2011). We also refer to Caliendo et al.’s (2019) Urban Multilingualism in Europe and Boix-Fuster’s (2015) Urban Diversities and Language Policies in Medium-Sized Linguistic Communities, in which they address so-called medium sized linguistic communities. Linguistic approaches to urbanity are as multi-faceted as is urban space. They are diverse, on the one hand, and marked by a segregated order, on the other. There is no joint, visible, and comprehensive theoretical and methodological framework. Urban linguistics is more of a loose network of linguistic approaches related to the city, which – diverse and hegemonic as the city itself – do not show a unified pattern. Our attempt at providing the reader with an overview builds on Busse/Warnke (2015). It is conceptualized not as a set of theoretical and methodological stipulations, but as an extension of existing research areas in linguistics and a more focused treatment of one possible linguistic interest in urban space. It is in this sense that we ask – both openly and avoiding distinct definitions: what does urbanity mean in the general scheme of so-called urban linguistics? Despite our reluctance to establish distinct definitions, we wish to take this question as the starting point of this handbook. Etymologically urbanity derives from metropolitan space, encompassing the language varieties of cities as well as the typical behaviors that are commonly regarded as social markers of inhabitants of cities. Whereas the word city suggests a spatial form of determinate size, urbanity implies a valorization. The parameters it sets run along the lines of center/periphery and metropole/colony and are mirrored in works on large cities and metropolises that have appeared throughout the ages. This is Rem Koolhaas’s logic when he labels the countryside to be the ignored realm (AMO/Koolhaas 2020, 2). The countryside is the Other in relation to the city. This binary structuring principle of space is already part of the etymology of urbanity. Hence, it makes sense to understand urbanity as a characteristic set of values associated with the (big) city. As a concept, urbanity is much less an objective, descriptive term than a framework which is linked to a particular historical and political con-

Urban Linguistics: Ideas and Anchor Points

5

text. Urbanity is an umbrella term that only permits definitive categorization in specific positions. Beyond paradigmatic positions, however, urbanity remains a remarkably loosely defined term with unusually blurry boundaries. However, it is exactly this feature which renders the concept highly interesting, also ethnographically speaking: urbanity is an open concept, which comes close to the ideational plurality of the city. And this holds true for the countryside and rurality, too, as Rem Koolhaas shows in his Countryside: A Report (2020). With these remarks, it makes sense to understand urbanity as a basic prototype. By urbanity, we mean a set of prototypical features of (big) cities that correspond to a metropolitan model of the city. While cities are concrete spatial entities whose urbanity is expressed only in relative terms – and must be seen in the context of historical dynamics – the urban model itself is no more than a benchmark for analytical perspectives on cities. However, as a benchmark the model may help to delimit the objects of investigation of urban linguistics and open up methodological perspectives. The prototypicality of urbanity thus means that analyses can neither definitively assign elements to the category of urbanity nor definitively exclude them; they can only reveal degrees of terminological attributes. We define the parameters of this set of prototypical features with three modi: dimension, action and representation (cf. Busse/Warnke 2015, 521–523). By dimension we mean the spatial reach and configuration of a city; by action we mean the practices in the city; and by representation we refer to the semantic coding of the city. We connect these modi with the parameters of size, density, heterogeneity, simultaneity, multiformality, and intersemioticity as follows: Tab. 1: Modi and features of urban spaces as part of the model of urbanity (cf. Busse/Warnke 2015) Urban modes

Features of urbanity

Dimension

Size

Density

Action

Heterogeneity

Simultaneity

Representation

Multiformality

Intersemioticity

We see the six features of urbanity for the three modes of urban spaces as interdependent. Our mapping of ultimately descriptive features of urbanity are not sufficient if the relation of their values is not further qualified. Therefore, drawing on Venturi (1966), we add two transverse properties of urban spaces: complexity and contradiction. These help capture the multilayered nature of urban spaces, which are replete with contrasts and divergences. If, for example, size and density are prototypical markers of the dimensional quality of a metropole, they can only partially express this quality, as built-up areas alternate with more open spaces such as parks, and the size of a city can be supplemented by surrounding neighborhoods or districts. Density has a different meaning in Hong Kong than in Cologne. At the same time, the size of a city

6

Beatrix Busse and Ingo H. Warnke

is relative to its space, its number of citizens, or various ways of life. Therefore, urban space is not only complex and contradictory in itself, but also in its contrasts between various dimensions of urbanity. With complexity and contradiction, we qualify these relational dimensions. They are additions to the features outlined in Tab. 1. Tab. 2: Transversal features of urban space (cf. Busse/Warnke 2015) complexity

contradiction

The basic idea of the model is scalar: the more obvious the features are, the more urban the city, district, or urban configuration is. This applies not only to cities in the usual sense, but also to emerging metropolitan areas and processes of suburbanization or counterurbanization. The concept of urbanity is thus not bound to the city as such. We consider this to be an advantage for research because this enables us to circumvent, if not break, the longstanding dichotomies of urban vs. rural as well as city vs. countryside. While the traditional urban-rural distinction is prone to the problems of differentiation we mentioned, our model of urbanity – with its dimensions, markers and transverse features – has the clear advantage of facilitating the description of sets of features and qualities with varying degrees of distinctiveness in particular spatial constellations. This model enables us to focus on the linguistic interest in urbanity. Urban space is characterized by a high degree of variation, on the one hand, and a high level of declarative power (in the sense of speech act theory), on the other. The larger, denser, more heterogeneous, more dynamic, more diverse, more intersemiotic, the more complex and inherently contradictory a city is, the more likely substantial variation in language will occur. This is accompanied by the declarative potential inherent in linguistic behavior, i.e. those pragmatic constellations in which urban space is constituted via language and other utterances. As such, urban linguistics can be seen as a project based on prototypicality and which focuses on scalar dimensions. In other words: distinct categories are no longer objects of research in urban linguistics, but relative specificities. There are numerous examples for this, not least in this handbook. We draw the reader’s attention to city marketing campaigns, as well as protest posters and signs, travel guides, literary portrayals of the city, songs, street art, toponyms, shop signs and a plethora of other forms of declaring urban space. Urban spaces are linguistically charged, which charges us with the task of considering urbanity as a subject of linguistic inquiry much more seriously than has been the case to date. The description of our object of investigation is therefore rather simple. Urban linguistics encompasses every language-related aspect of the urban model, including its multimodal manifestations; on multimodality (see also Bateman/Wildfeuer/Hiippala 2017; Mondada 2009; Kress/van Leeuwen 2001).

Urban Linguistics: Ideas and Anchor Points

7

In this way, we avoid perpetuating the questionable distinction between city and country and instead explore the linguistic particularities of a prototypical spatial constellation. It cannot be emphasized enough that urban linguistics is thus part of the interdisciplinary research field of urban studies. Of this rather open and interdisciplinary research field, we shall focus on four aspects of urban linguistics which are connected to (more) recent discussions of a linguistics in/of the city: variation and place-making, enregisterment and mobility.

1.2 Variation and place-making Language is embedded in the interdependencies of urban dimensions, actions, and representations; language is a phenomenon of large, dense, heterogeneous, dynamic, multiform, and intersemiotic city spaces; and language is part of how both the complexity and the contradictions inherent in cities are structured. Thus, urban linguistics does not begin by taking a pre-defined urban space as a site of linguistic inquiry – an examination of the language of New York, Hong Kong, or Dakar, for example – but instead seeks to analyze the multilayered and often contradictory language phenomena evident in cities. In other words, urban linguistics is much less concerned with language in cities than with the connections between language and urbanity. Language variation is undeniably observable in, if not a characteristic of, city spaces and the assertion that city spaces – like other spaces – set variation parameters cannot be dismissed. Yet, it is equally obvious that it is difficult to determine where the city space begins and other spaces end. In urban linguistics, the city is taken seriously as a space of variation, but the diasystemic layeredness of the space and the boundedness of language markers to it are recognized as necessary but not sufficient objects of intellectual inquiry. Accordingly, Britain (2012; 2013) shows that although urban milieus are often associated with studies of language variation and language change, variation studies, with its focus on phonological variation, are not specifically urban, as its theoretical premises, methods, and analytical techniques can be applied to rural areas just as fruitfully. Urban linguistics continues to see urban space as a variation parameter and, in keeping with linguistic tradition, investigates peculiarities of the linguistic system, such as city-specific pronunciation, lexicon and grammar, and correlates them with fluid social parameters. Yet, we should not conceive of the relationship between space and language as unidirectional. Not only is urban space a parameter for variation; language is also a parameter in the constitution of urbanity. The complexity of the model of urbanity necessarily includes the assumption that language behavior is only one of a number of factors at play in constituting urbanity; other practices, such as building, moving around, living, and working also have an impact, and there is no question about that. In urban linguistics, then, language in the city is seen not solely as a phenomenon of variation, but just as much as a parameter in the creation of urban spaces.

8

Beatrix Busse and Ingo H. Warnke

That said, the focus lies not on exploring the creation of an urban space so much as the creation of places in the context of the model of urbanity – in other words, it is about place-making in the city. And place-making is strongly related to lifestyles. Due to social media, global networks, and ubiquitous and multi-level mobility – at least prior to the Covid-19 Pandemic – various lifestyles can no longer be captured by static models. Eckert (2012) has already drawn our attention to the fact that variation studies can be divided into three phases, of which for her the final and most recent phase is characterized by fluid forms of indexical positioning. If we correlate her observations to practices and processes of place-making, it becomes obvious that we do not deal with static productions of place but with a continuous overlapping of places, which are tied to diverse linguistic practices. And this diversity shows hegemonic dimensions, such as the use of English as a world language and evaluations that accompany its use. On the basis of her empirical investigation, Thissen (2018) sees language choice as place-making. She analyzes how “particular linguistic and stylistic elements in place-making processes […] transform space into ‘lived’ and socially produced places by attaching linguistic and socio-cultural meaning to the involved location” (Thissen 2018, 137). The extent to which place-making can be the focus of both digital ethnography and place-making is shown by Özkul (2017, 227), “Mobile communication technologies alter our experience of a place, not only because they are portable, but also because they provide a connected form of presence that can help their users establish new relationships and maintain old ones”. In the areas of linguistic and semiotic landscape studies (Auer 2010; Hennig 2010; Jaworski 2015; Pavlenko/Mullen 2015; Peck/Stroud/Williams 2018; Smith, this volume), urban spaces play a crucial role to analyze and interpret the various linguistic and semiotic meaning-making processes on street, shop or restaurant signs. Jennifer Smith, in this volume, describes and investigates in detail the manifold research trends in this field. But let us look in more detail at what place-making means by investigating again the distinction between place and space, which we also consider to be crucially productive for linguistic questions (see Busse 2019). While we generally understand space as a form with spatial dimensions that can be comprehended without a context, place designates a specific kind of space – one that has identifiable characteristics which emerge as a result of interaction among actors as well as a perceptible and persistent identity that varies according to the beholder but nonetheless possesses historical qualities; Christian Bendl’s (2021) study on Wiener Heldenplatz shows this. Cresswell (2009, 169) distinguishes between place and space in the following way: Place is a meaningful site that combines location, locale, and sense of place. Location refers to an absolute point in space with a specific set of coordinates and measurable distances from other locations. Location refers to the ‘where’ of place. Locale refers to the material setting for social relations – the way a place looks. Locale includes the buildings, streets, parks, and other visible and tangible aspects of a place. Sense of place refers to the more nebulous meanings associated with

Urban Linguistics: Ideas and Anchor Points

9

a place: the feelings and emotions a place evokes. These meanings can be individual and based on personal biography or they can be shared. Shared senses of place are based on mediation and representation.

This definition – as opposed to others like that of Hultman/Hall (2012, 549), who see place as “[i]ntersecting mobilities, relations and practices” – is particularly useful for urban linguistics because it refers to the three modi of the urban model: dimension, action, and representation. An urban place is thus a “small, three-dimensional urban space” (dimension) generated by “reiterative social practices” (action) and tied to what it “represents or means” (representation) for the actors involved (Friedmann 2010, 154). Accordingly, urban linguistics sees places as functions of the three modes. Places are generated via processes of place-making (Friedmann 2010; Busse/Warnke 2015; Busse/Warnke/Smith 2020), which necessarily include language acts. In urban linguistics, the relationship between urban space and language is one of reciprocity: on the one hand, via urban space as a parameter of/for linguistic variation, and, on the other hand, via urban language as a parameter of place-making. From this, it follows that processes of place-making and varying forms of language expression in cities are mutually dependent. We call this process variational place-making and consider it to be one object of inquiry for linguistic analyses of urbanity. Variational place-making incorporates classic topics of variational linguistics as well as approaches to placemaking, since we see both areas as necessarily interdependent. If the indexical choice of specific varieties is understood as a place-making practice, then it is clear that the declarative function of utterances lies at the heart of urban linguistics. For this reason, we speak of the declarative city in the context of urbanity. Building on Searle (1976, 13), we take declarative to refer to a speech act that not only establishes concordance between the propositional content and the actual circumstances (word-to-world direction), but also alters those circumstances (word-to-world and world-to-word direction): Declarations. It is the defining characteristic of this class that the successful performance of one of its members brings about the correspondence between the propositional content and reality, successful performance guarantees that the propositional content corresponds to the world: if I successfully perform the act of appointing you chairman, then you are chairman [...].

As previously mentioned, city marketing slogans are a good example of the way declarative statements propose specific interpretive perspectives in the city. We have already addressed this in Busse/Warnke (2015) but would like to re-capture our example. One of Berlin’s still very popular and topical marketing campaigns, be Berlin (accompanied by the unofficial but perhaps even more effective – but somewhat dated – Berlin slogan poor but sexy) is not a representation but a direct speech act – the imperative mood alone makes it a command. “The illocutionary point of these consists in the fact that they are attempts [...] by the speaker to get the hearer to do some-

10

Beatrix Busse and Ingo H. Warnke

thing” (Searle 1976, 11). But not only does the command in this fictive interpersonal dialogue make it possible for any hearer to be Berlin and thus to subjectively shape the city; the declaration of Berlin as a place of diversity that people can be is an act of place-making in itself. This is neither a representative nor a direct aspect of the statement, but a declarative function of the slogan. Statements in cities – including their stylistics and the how of their construction, the use of particular registers and thus their variational imprints such as the naming of places and businesses etc. are in themselves acts of place-making, and as such constitute the object of investigation of urban linguistics.

1.3 Enregisterment and mobility Patterns of language use constitute social practices, making every speech act a social act as well. Discursive styles create and connect identities and (urban) places, even when the so-called indexical potential is difficult to discern or consciously deployed. Here Agha’s (2003; 2005) concept of enregisterment is of crucial importance for urban linguistics. With the concept of enregisterment urban linguistics is able to overcome a static modeling of urbanity, which could be and has for a long time been the result of a sole interest in variation and place-making alone. Language’s potential for indexicality is a highly dynamic force to create varied positions in space – including city as space. Enregisterment describes ideological processes in which linguistic markers are linked to particular social categories that, in turn, make performative declarations about social moves (Johnstone 2009). Repeated linguistic forms can thus take on the function of illustrating the status of speakers: a linguistic repertoire becomes differentiable within a language as a socially recognized register of forms [...] linked to a specific scheme of cultural values (Agha 2003, 231; see also Agha 2005).

Numerous, also older studies on this topic incorporate the spatial dimension into this process of enregisterment. For example, Simpson (1999) shows how pop singers adapt an American accent to sound mainstream and modern. Beal (2009) illustrates how cleverly the British pop group Arctic Monkeys represent narratives of urban Sheffield that are discursively created via pronunciation, word choice, and nostalgic references to historical places. Hall-Lew/Stephens (2012) analyze the use of the lexeme country as an index for particular rural practices and language conventions in America that mark the boundary separating country from the urban. These studies have not lost any of their timeliness and relevance. And, to note this as well, we would have to stress against viewing urban linguistics as a field consisting of only most recent and trendy approaches. To follow this line of thought we would immediately give up what we have just learned to be of crucial importance. Another lesson learned from urban space: fashion and momentariness – attractive as these features may be – co-exist

Urban Linguistics: Ideas and Anchor Points

11

with long practiced routines. To the extent that urban space is complex and contradictory urban linguistics is more than a lab of fancy innovations. We believe that the ground-breaking research and findings of the past twenty years, including those from sociolinguistics, are well placed in urban linguistics as is the classic concept of declaration. Urban linguistics is open and not interested in any kind of paradigmatic exclusion of linguistic approaches, be it by means of discrimination due to age – long known! – or other forms – is this really linguistic research? As such, we continue to believe that in interactions, places that are filled with meaning emerge; they are created by language attitudes but can be perceived and experienced in a variety of ways. The process of enregisterment thus describes a particular kind of place-making. Studies that explore discursive indexicality and enregisterment via linguistic and semiotic attitudes seek to highlight (to varying degrees) various reciprocal relationships among complex multimodal discourses and their interpretations as well as their valuation according to ideology, personal and social identity as well as locality. One such relationship is the regimentation of linguistic forms, while the other relates to metapragmatic patterns (Silverstein 1993) of language use that show which specific linguistic markers serve as links between (local) identities and places. It is commonly known that Johnstone (2009) uses the idea of enregisterment to map the historical development of the enregistered consciousness of Pittsburghese as a fashionable – and increasingly commodified – dialect. This commodification becomes evident in the variety and ubiquity of goods utilizing distinctly local language features, such as T-shirts imprinted with lists of words in Pittsburghese dialect. Drawing on a broad range of language material, both contemporary and historical, Johnstone makes a case that a 1:1 correlation between linguistic variation and demographics – Silverstein’s (2003, 206) “first order of indexicality” – cannot adequately explain when, how and why particular forms of speech and speech acts that emerge in a given urban language community and/or in public discourse can be construed and evaluated as constituting a dialect. A negative perception among speakers does not develop – quite the opposite. Linguistic variations are usually associated with speakers who are poorly educated and relatively inarticulate or members of a particular social class, usually the working class. These can only be identified and evaluated within this public discourse when the speakers of the local dialect in question become mobile, notice the differences between their speech and that of others, and talk about those differences. This second order of indexicality (Silverstein 2003, 209) is connected to a process of re-enregisterment, in which dialectical expressions are linked to new meanings and accorded a new value because they express local identities, assert authenticity, evoke nostalgia and openly declare local pride. However, it is not our intention to romanticize this and suggest that we can simply linguistically tailor our position in society. It is important to scrutinise in detail which agents are involved in these processes of enregisterment and re-evaluation and what their interests are – often we find commercial interests in a capitalistic logic of utilisation of linguistic fea-

12

Beatrix Busse and Ingo H. Warnke

tures. Who has access to this type of capital and who is able to use language as capital is a highly interesting question which goes far beyond the commodification of language on T-Shirts. Nevertheless, place-making is embedded in those processes, as local dialects creates meaning; even more, in the third order of indexicality, the dialect achieves status as a commodity – a thing of value. Thus, the dialect becomes something actors buy into. These processes reveal a relationship inherent in the declarative negotiation of places: the discursive construction of the values of a place, tied to the question of how these are engendered by complex and repeated speech acts that come to be regarded as typical, along with other semiotic processes. Busse (2019) traces the linguistic and multimodal means of place-making activities in Brooklyn, New York, that have developed since the late 19th century. Her goal is to illustrate when, how, and to what extent linguistic and other semiotic processes have worked to establish Brooklyn as a brand name. Of course, we must bear in mind that processes of enregisterment are characterized by mobility. The ability to assign and reinforce values by choosing a particular register is dependent upon scenarios of mobility. Place-making practices, along with consciousness and cultivation of a dialect within a particular speech community, are constructed linguistically in dynamic contexts that serve to enhance their value. Eventually they come to be regarded as authentic and are positioned not only locally, but also strategically. The analysis of enregisterment cannot, therefore, rely on – or be subjected to – any fixed standard. On the contrary, the point is to explore how social meaning is generated via specific linguistic strategies and/or discursively negotiated value judgements and how a community of practice can endow these language-based practices with declarative potential. It is important to remember that mobility is an essential variable for linguistic analysis. An example is Broth/Mondada’s (2019) work and their investigation of linguistically motivated change of places and related interactions. Mention should also be made of Blommaert’s (2016) discussion of stability, mobility and complexity. The meaning of mobility for the complex ecosystem of a city in its broadest sense, that is, including linguistic resources and language use in it, is most manifest where/when it is blocked. The worldwide COVID-19 crisis and corresponding lockdowns have changed how cities function and have also influenced the public and private stage of linguistic performance, which is tied to mobility, leisure, fashion, and, the display of lifestyles (see Warnke, this volume). The question of how discursive practices become enregistered such that actors can use them performatively in the material world arises from diverse and comparative perspectives. The investigations of different attitudes as well as qualitative and quantitative variations over time form the basis for the emergence, recognition and employment of enregisterment. Not every discursive practice corresponds to only one possibility for identification. Values and meanings, along with the ways they are as-

Urban Linguistics: Ideas and Anchor Points

13

cribed, change over time. To capture processes of enregisterment – or what Moore (2012, 67) has called “the social detail that vivifies language usage” – in urban spaces, it is pointless to begin with linguistic profiles that can only be derived from the diagnostic procedures of variational linguistics. In urban place-making, with its inherent variability, the classic sociolinguistic correlation of social variable and language use/variety as a one-to-one relationship is just as limited as the static distinction between city and countryside. Linguistic practices must instead be seen as diverse, dynamic, and malleable communities of practice. The city is a compressed space in which a plethora of social effects interact and collide. Globalizing tendencies such as demographic change, gentrification, and segregation contend with local traditions, personal connections, and unique characteristics and beliefs shaped and legitimized by historical experience. Such tensions produce a high degree of dynamism and vitality that is not only manifested in what is visible in the city – such as ambitious building or restoration projects – but also in what is sayable (cf. Foucault 1971); in other words, what is said and written about the city and what is at our disposal as means of (linguistic) expression in various registers and what, at the same time, is also limited. Urban space is not an open sphere of unlimited potential. It is socially stratified; resources are contested and their value influences how agents behave within a space. Again, we would also like to stress that both enregisterment and mobility cannot be misunderstood as a linguistic hub of potentialities. We would like to show that enforced mobility exists as do numerous limitations of social resources. It is especially in sociolinguistically oriented works of urban linguistics that we have to pay attention to these. Finally, language itself functions as delimiting where it is loaded with normative ideologies of correct usage. However, the process of enregisterment is both a communicative and a social practice, with the result that the idea of genres and their historical development are no longer fixed nor constituted from some absolute set of routines and conventions. Genres are dynamic and dependent on social context. And yet, this does not mean that we are allowed to view register and variation as content of a self-service shop which assists urban agents in their various performances and enables them to independently create their styles as they see fit. Indexicality always entails limitation and determination. The branding of a linguistic expression as an index of an urban lifestyle often functions as the piercing and commodified part of a complex and contradictory situation where even sub-cultural voices fight for attention, where attention is actually bound to visibility in urban space. Urban linguistics therefore has to make sure to not fall into the trap of just looking at what is loud, that is, what is ‘in-ourface’. Not least due to ethical reasons does urban linguistics have to scan all niches of everyday life, which seem to be less spectacular but constitute mundane, daily routines for numerous people. Importantly, in her study of social aspects of spatial belonging, Steen (2020), with an interest in place-identity, investigates the communicative construction of precarity in urban space. Cornips/de Rooij (2018) look at the interplay between language, place, and belonging with a special interest in unspecta-

14

Beatrix Busse and Ingo H. Warnke

cular margins which lie beyond hotspots of urban life. It is these studies which add to the aforementioned classical studies. The question of whether a specific urban language even exists must be answered in the negative – yet considering the function of language in the urbanity model, the point is not to analyze distinctions between city and not-city, but to explore the individual contributions of different varieties to the process of place-making, enregisterment, and mobility. Linguistic place-making by means of declarative statements is always specific; this variational place-making becomes specific to a city via the creation of large, dense, heterogeneous, dynamic, multiform, intersemiotic places that are simultaneously complex and fraught with contradictions. Sociolinguistic and studies from human geography utilize just such an interdisciplinary framework to highlight both the complexity and heterogeneity of spaces and their effects on social processes as well as typical language (Massey 1991; Auer/Schmidt 2010; Britain 2012; 2013).

1.4 Methodological considerations on iterative and singular place-making phenomena and movement The complex and contradictory subject matter of urban linguistics not only determines the conceptual direction of variational place-making within the model of urbanity, but can also stipulate specific methodological considerations. The choice of methodological approaches to investigate variational place-making must correspond to those particular characteristics of the urban model that diverge from the usual subjects of linguistic inquiry. Singularity and iteration are its key methodological concepts, as well as the recognition of the ways they play out in light of urbanity as a space of mobility. Every instance of place-making is also a unique act of charging space declaratively. The place is thus made via semiotic intervention. Though signs appear isolated in the space of the city, they are contextualized in a complex and contradictory manner; they become part of patterns of (cultural) property, memorials, spaces of remembrance, etc., all of which have been deemed worthy of preservation. The variations in such patterns are not always as formalized as a particular sign, but appear throughout the city as idiosyncratic, singular phenomena. The declarations of variational placemaking thus create correspondences in a web of singularity and iteration which are not devoid of internal tension. The goal of urban linguistics is to comprehend the range of correspondences at play in variational place-making. Seen in this light, urban linguistics completely covers the generally divided interests of linguists in social representation and conventionalized rules. It goes beyond what linguists refer to as language patterning (Busse/ Möhlig-Falke 2019a; 2019b; Hunston/Francis 2000; Hunston/Su 2017) and thus considers more than formally marked pragmatic conventions that can be identified in iterations and captured using quantitative methods. Urban linguistics also explores

Urban Linguistics: Ideas and Anchor Points

15

elements of patterns that bear no formal resemblance to one another yet are traceable to a common place-making pattern that qualitative methods can reveal. To preclude any misunderstanding, it must be emphasized that urban linguistics recognizes no opposition between quantitative, corpus-based analyses of iterative patterns’ elements and qualitative, ethnographic investigations of singular objects. It recognizes only that variational place-making draws on two very different types of data. This analytical perspective requires the methodological assumption that the transverse properties of urban spaces – i.e. complexity and contradiction – can only be captured in linguistic analyses when singular and iterative data are given equal consideration. In methodological terms, a triangulation of corpus-based analyses and ethnographic approaches promises to be very fruitful. It becomes possible to merge both types of data – iterative and singular placemaking phenomena – by interpreting them with an eye to place-making patterns. Although restrictions of space preclude an in-depth discussion of its precepts, the approach of Grounded Theory is relevant in this context, as it encourages the interpretation of disparate and heterogeneous data sets (Strauss 1994). Bock (2018) highlights the meaning and usefulness of Grounded Theory for a discourse analytical perspective on language. Building theory from empirical work, which is characteristic of this method from the social sciences, can be productively linked to corpus linguistic and qualitative methodologies. For research on urban space and place-making this is interesting because the research subject is not outside of the research object but identifies himself/herself as an agent of epistemic categorization. Generating hypotheses on the basis of engaging with data is central. However, data depend on the agents’ research perspective and spatial presence. At the risk of being criticized for a lack of theoretical foundation, we think that for urban linguistics this is a sensible methodology and analytical path; importantly, it opens up the possibility of conducting qualitative empirical studies which pay particular attention to the researcher’s body (Storch/ Warnke 2020). Co-presence of data and analytical entities are an important principle of urban linguistics. This includes sound, smell, the entire sensory space in which language appears. How is it possible to analyze Shanghai without including its sound and smell which, of course, are different for the variety of individual entities of analysis? Urban linguistics is therefore a research paradigm embracing embodiment. Despite a clear interest in digital place-making, urban linguistics cannot be fully captured by digital humanities. These considerations reveal yet another particular feature of urban linguistics that we consider to be a methodological prerequisite. Inquiries into place-making patterns assume the existence of movement in space. A high degree of mobility – in the sense of continual changes in positioning with or without technical assistance – is a distinctive and characteristic feature of urban spaces that serves as a striking emblem of the metropolis. Mobility as a constituent factor of urban life is more than just a phenomenon, however; it requires specific analytical procedures and methods. Statistical methods,

16

Beatrix Busse and Ingo H. Warnke

which had – and in some cases still have – a strong influence on linguistics, have proven inadequate for the comprehensive scholarly investigation of urban spaces. Urban linguistics therefore shifts mobility from the level of phenomena to the level of method, in keeping with discussions of mobile methodologies such as that of Hall (2009, 574), whose interests lie in developments in the new trans- and post-disciplinary urbanism, which, while clearly aligned with the spatial and mobilities turns, also make space for a continuing – intensified and re-energized – appreciation of place. This is not to insist on or establish a binary opposition – fixity and location as against space and motion. Instead, what is of interest about the new urbanism […] is its concern with another order of fluidity, decidedly local: the small and (seemingly) trivial practices and movements that constitute the urban everyday.

From this perspective, it becomes clear that mobile practices (cf. Hall 2009) can be counted as appropriate means of collecting linguistic data; indeed, we see them as a methodological requirement for urban linguistics. Movement through space, collecting data in motion and relying on footwork to discern variational place-making together amount to a substantial expansion of linguistics’ analytical options and thus provide for the collection of useful and relevant data. In this sense, urban linguistics is also a creative field of methodological development.

2 Some research fields in urban linguistics Readers of an introduction to a handbook most certainly expect a literature review. Urban linguistics is interdisciplinary and draws on a number of functional approaches in linguistics as well as relying on disciplines such as human geography, sociology, literary and cultural studies, and architecture. In Busse/Warnke (2015) we provide the reader with an overview of some of the directions research in urban linguistics is taking, including classic approaches as well as new and developing trends: terminological differentiation of spatial concepts in interdisciplinary research contexts with a special focus on theories related to urban spaces; dialectology, the study of language variation and change in social contexts; multilingualism, language contact, multiculturalism, and interaction; anti-static methodologies and research into mobility within spaces of communication as an operational concept; indexicality and enregisterment; multimodality and semiotic theories of (urban) space; the historicity of the city, its discursive foundations and diachronic references as well as historical speech in and about the city. A literature review of this kind, which does not claim to be complete but displays some anchor points of urban linguistics, demonstrates that the concept of urbanity serves to enhance classic sociolinguistic and variational linguistic approaches to the study of language in cities. Based on this concept, urban linguistics thus offers a useful means of understanding global processes of urbanization in linguistic terms. As an analytical model designed for application to actual cities, urbanity denies the equiva-

Urban Linguistics: Ideas and Anchor Points

17

lence of city and urban just as it rejects the obsolete distinction between city and countryside and questions the utility of a solely variational perspective. Of the numerous studies in the field of urban linguistics we shall be selective. Domke (2014), highlighting the liminal linguistic sphere of meso-communication, investigates so-called textworlds in urban space on the basis of forms and functions of a space-related type of communication which moves between face-to-face and mass media communication. Muri (2016) is of theoretical importance for urban research because his theory of the situative which relies on an action-based approach is also important for an incident-based discourse linguistics of the city. The meaning of experience, which is also highlighted by Junker in this handbook, is discussed in relation to the situation as a variable of multiple dimensions in the same way as are his reflections on ethnographical research areas as part of a theory of the situative. For urban linguistics, there are many points of intersection as long as it is interested in performance, situation, incident, and emerging data. It is particularly noteworthy that this volume draws our attention again to the fact that urban space is a lived and living configuration of multiple semiotic and other practices. Leitner/Peck/Sheppard (2020) outline recent lines of discussion of urban linguistics. The book contains a section of socalled methodological essays and also a glossary of urban linguistic key terms, such as agglomeration, gentrification, or smart cities, which may also be useful for our academic teaching. Still a classic is The City Reader by LeGates/Stout (2020), which was first published in 1996 and has just appeared in its seventh edition. General publications co-exist with more specialized studies; for example, Future directions for the European shrinking city by Schlappa/Neill (2016). If the title picture of the Berlin Tacheles in Berlin Mitte, where one of the biggest construction sites of Berlin has meanwhile emerged, is a wisely selected illustration of shrinking remains to be questioned. Recent publications on Berlin include Heyd/von Mengden/Schneider (2019), which is a versatile and broad description of linguistic diversity and variation in Berlin. It has an interesting focus on socio-economics with its contributions on urban identities, commodification and special localities. Smakman/Heinrich (2017) include investigation of twelve cities of the Global South and North. Their global view illustrates why it is important to discard our biases in urban linguistics. Ziegler et al. (2018) summarize visual multilingualism in the Metropole Ruhr in Germany. We would also like to draw the reader’s attention to Mc Laughlin’s (2009) The Languages of Urban Africa and to Shulist’s (2018) study on language and identity using the example of the city of São Gabriel da Cachoeira in the Brazilian Amazons to highlight that urban space has to go far beyond the metropolis to address questions of urban indigeneity and language revitalization. In addition, Shipley’s (2015) investigation of the meaning of trickster theatres for urban dynamics in Africa goes far beyond the global north. One topic which at least in part has also received public interest is the theme of varieties of youth speech in urban space. Wiese’s (2012) Kiezdeutsch is key for German. More recent studies on Youth Language include Drummond (2018) with contributions

18

Beatrix Busse and Ingo H. Warnke

on constructions of identities and Nortier/Svendsen (2015), whose work is generally critical of delimiting the field in such a way. Nassenstein/Hollington/Storch (2018, 11) are critical of research into youth language: Just as youth is not a marginal condition, neither is youth language. Therefore, another overdue critical reassessment is needed to address the observation that youth languages have often been constructed as ‘special’ in terms of their linguistic creativity by linguists. By highlighting their strategies of manipulating ‘standard’ language, it seemed as though this kind of creativity was a special feature of youth language practices. In particular; rapid and highly skilled multilingual juggling, now often termed translanguaging […]; semantic manipulations such as metaphor, metonymy and dysphemism; and phonological processes such as truncation, abbreviation or playful phonotactic changes have been illustrated with examples from many youth languages […]. However, the very same strategies are also employed by other speakers in a wide range of contexts.

There is no space here to further pursue this discussion. But we use this example to show why it is important to discuss frequently appropriated concepts even within the field of urban linguistics. Of the numerous contributions of urban studies, urban linguistics and the more recent sociolinguistic approaches interested in the city – see also geosemiotics (Aboelezz 2014; Al Zidjaly 2014), this handbook only outlines some of these approaches of urban linguistics because it is for a reason that we conceptualize urban linguistics to be open and not systematically structured. Our claim is not that of a classical handbook to document knowledge in and of a particular scientific discipline or area, but we would rather like to illustrate the variety of practices of a primarily linguistic preoccupation with urbanity as exemplified by selected contributions. To account for the city, we think this is an apt procedure. Neither the city nor urban linguistics are closed systems. As mentioned before urban linguistics is, like the city itself, complex and contradictory. If the reader gets the impression that this handbook does not show a closed structure, this is exactly what we aim for. Our criterion for selection is the engagement of our colleagues in urban linguistics and the degree of innovation and impact of their studies on urban linguistics. Their contributions are bundled into the following areas and are portrayed in both English and German as the contributions also appear in both languages: I) Fields of reference of urban linguistics – Bezugsfelder der urbanen Linguistik; II) City as communicative space – Kommunikationsraum Stadt; III) Mobility, fluidity and constructions in urban semiotic areas – Mobilität, Fluidität und Konstruktionen in städtischen Zeichenarealen; IV) Historicity of the city in discourse – Historizität der Stadt im Diskurs; and V) Experiments – Experimente. It goes without saying that this systmatic structuring is somewhat arbitrary, but we think it demonstrates the broadness of urban linguistics in an exemplary way. We are grateful to the authors of the individual chapters. In the following section, we shall briefly summarize the main lines of thought of the respective chapters. We invite all readers to read, study, and use these articles for their research, which, we are sure, goes far beyond what we were able to capture in this handbook.

Urban Linguistics: Ideas and Anchor Points

19

3 The contributions of the handbook 3.1 Bezugsfelder der urbanen Linguistik – Fields of reference of urban linguistics Kellie Gonçalves discusses the historical trajectory of the field of urban variationist sociolinguistics. The chapter begins by tracing the field’s roots to early studies in dialectology, which focused primarily on monolingual speech communities. Since its inception in the 1960s, variationist studies have been concerned with language variation and change by means of analyzing different linguistic variables using large data sets and thus quantitative analyses. Such methodological approaches, however, have not gone unscathed as Gonçalves rightly points out in terms of achieving a representative sample within diverse populations especially within urban spaces. In order to avoid biases and be scientifically objective (if that is at all possible), variationists have had to employ mixed methodological approaches, which incorporate speech sampling as well as interviews while simultaneously trying to avoid the Observer’s Paradox (Labov 1972) within specific speech communities. Indeed, the term speech communities within variationist studies (and beyond) has become somewhat problematic and continues to be questioned leading several scholars to critique the ways in which variationist studies have and continue to be conducted. Not only has the focus on urban centers been problematic but so too is the emphasis on quantitative methods in search of linguistic patterns based on outdated structured models of society. Here, individuals are regarded as agentless rather than creative individuals who are able to adapt their speech styles in a variety of ways based on the situational context and their interlocutors. Another relevant theme that emerges in this chapter is the discussion of place. Drawing on Britain’s (2009; this volume) work, Gonçalves discusses the often overlooked places such as rural areas and suburbia, which within today’s highly mobile world are also rich sites of language contact and thus linguistic variation. Her chapter ends with a call for scholars to engage in more interdisciplinary work that draws on sociology and human geography in order to understand how places are socially constructed through language and how this affects and is affected by language variation. David Britain discusses the urban and the rural ideologies, and what this distinction shows about metalinguistic discourses that reinforce public perceptions of rurality and urbanity. The discourse on the rural city varies geographically. For instance, in Britain there is an ideology of the rural idyll associated with the quiet countryside and stunning landscapes. This is juxtaposed with a harsh and bleak or more dangerous area being described as rural in areas such as Canada. The rural idyll ideology is commodified to sell tourist experiences in the country. However, the hip, artsy, edgy urban city is also commodified and used by business to capitalize on the idea of a busy and dynamic city life, as shown by using the lexeme urban on a variety of products. Britain argues that from a sociolinguistic perspective, it is not the city itself which causes language change but rather the dialect contact situations. The traditional dia-

20

Beatrix Busse and Ingo H. Warnke

lectology approach focused more on rural areas and NORMS (non-mobile old rural men) because researchers were more likely to find traditional vernacular forms which were not affected by the dynamic and heterogenous nature of the city. The variationist sociolinguistic approach, on the other hand, was concerned with the urban and embracing social diversity across different age groups, socio-economic class, and ethnicities to represent the speech community as a melting-pot of cultures. Geographers claim that there are no intrinsically urban or rural causal properties, therefore underlying factors must be considered, and that there are ideological discourses that shape our view of the rural and urban. Britain concludes that ideology reinforces the notion that the urban is dynamic, creative, and diverse, whereas the rural is conservative, monocultural, and static, however these two concepts are very difficult to define and not necessarily opposing images of one another. Dieter Hassenpflug’s chapter questions the concept of space as it has been conceived within the field of urban sociology. Hassenpflug introduces an intercultural approach to the concept of space by taking an interdisciplinary framework that emphasizes sociocultural aspects of both physicality and architecture and draws on practices within architecture, urban planning, and construction. For Hassenpflug, urban semiotics must consider both morphogenetic and theoretic approaches, which he exemplifies through construction and urban planning within a Chinese context, where socio-cultural dimensions must be accounted for. Hassenpflug’s chapter begins by asking the provocative question of how urban space can be read given that cities are comprised of heterogenous groups of people from all walks of life who inhabit city spaces differently. As individuals, we are indeed capable of planning and using urban space, but actually understanding it, according to Hassenpflug has not been appropriately or satisfactorily addressed within the social sciences. In fact, according to him, urban sociology lacks a hermeneutical tool allowing individuals to read the built environment as a socio-cultural text. His contributing chapter is one step in this direction, which widens the epistemological foundations of existing concepts related to urban semiotics that address both methodological and conceptual dimensions through three combined approaches, namely, syntagma (de Saussure), abduction (Pierce), and superposition (Walter Benjamin). Such a combination ultimately allows for a semiotically strengthened urban theory. Hassenpflug’s chapter continues by discussing these interrelated concepts and how they can be simultaneously used to read urban space. He draws on his own work and semiotic data and exemplifies overlapping modes of transmission within an example of retrofitted neighborhood gates in German Town Anting in China. Hassenpflug’s example illustrates the formative and differing relations between social and spatial conditions in places like China and Europe and their ensuing diverse social categorizations in sign-making especially as it relates to community, introversion, and exclusion, and to society extraversion or inclusion. As such, the underlying message of Hassenpflug’s chapter is that urban semiotics needs to approach the city not as a finished product but as evolving sociocultural practices.

Urban Linguistics: Ideas and Anchor Points

21

Carsten Junker employs an interdisciplinary discourse-analytical methodological perspective to urban studies and critically reflects on how researchers can develop an experiential and observational rather than theoretical approach. He claims the way to gain knowledge about urban space is by walking through the streets and studying the complexities of life in the city. This article poses questions of how to find empirical data on social relationality and diversity in urban space, and how social actions in and representations of the city can be explored when this may contradict theoretical approaches from urban and cultural studies. He suggests a heuristic consisting of triangulating urban space, placing discourse, and experiencing research. Triangulation refers to the process of combining non-quantitative data collected in different urban settings, and Junker stresses the importance of personal observation. This process is further divided into singular description (the researcher’s description of distinct places in the city such as neighborhoods), moving in-between (which dynamizes the note-taking of urbanity by highlighting how observations of different urban settings are linked by the observers’ movement between them), and relational interpretation (providing narrative descriptions of how one place differs from another and drawing comparisons between them). Triangulation is demonstrated with examples from Washington, D.C. Placing discourse involves thinking about ways in which discourses shape places and vice versa. Finally, experiencing research means being present in the urban space which is being investigated and using mobile field noting as an autoethnographic method. Junker concludes that movement allows researchers to account for the complex nature of the city and this plays an important role in developing research methods in and about urban space.

3.2 Kommunikationsraum Stadt – City as communicative space The focus of Sam Kirkham’s chapter is on the communities of practice approach (CoP) in multiethnic communities in Europe. While the CoP approach is indeed a useful tool for analyzing language use, Kirkham calls for future research to also draw on further complementary rather than competing approaches in order to fully grasp the social meanings of linguistic variation. Kirkham gives an overview of the CoP approach based on Wenger’s (1998) earlier work, which was later brought into the field of sociolinguistics by variation scholars Eckert/McConnell-Ginet (1992). Indeed, Eckert/McConnell’s work was instrumental in showing how a CoP membership may in fact be a better predictor of linguistic variation than traditional demographic categories, like age, gender, or socioeconomic class. Kirkham offers numerous examples of how CoP approaches within urban places like Bolton and Glasgow have advanced our understanding of the relationship between macro-sociological conceptions of social class and more local CoP-based meanings. But Kirkham warns that while CoP has shown the extent to which variation can be used to express local social concerns of a particular group or community of people, linguistic variation as a semiotic activity is

22

Beatrix Busse and Ingo H. Warnke

of course not independent of other social practices. It is precisely at this juncture that Kirkham discusses style and social meaning. While various CoP styles consist of both linguistic and non-linguistic resources, styles are also linguistically complex and Kirkham offers numerous case studies as a case in point. Kirkham discusses the complexity of social meaning associated with ‘ethnic’ variants by presenting data from British Asian English variety. Although there are indeed specific phonetic features associated with this particular variety, Kirkham demonstrates how this variety is an abstraction since linguistic features are construed in different ways and are all dependent on the social and linguistic dynamics of the particular community in question. In discussing multiethnic communities of practice, Kirkham rightly points out that most of the literature has focused on variation within speakers who belong to a single ethnic group in large urban centers. Kirkham makes various suggestions about future studies one of which may involve looking at non-adolescent and non-urban communities of practice. From a methodological perspective, combined approaches are called for, which include analyzing CoPs in order to provide an important perspective on the relationship between language and society in contemporary urban contexts. Heike Wiese’s chapter investigates the concept of new dialects and linguistic practices within urban centers of Europe by focusing on heritage speakers and adolescents in particular. The chapter begins with a historical overview of the development of dialect studies within sociolinguistics, which focused primarily on non-mobile, old, rural males (NORMS). Urban centres were favored in the 1960s with the foundational work of Labov in New York City, which showed how language variation and change were fundamental in heterogeneous city centres in terms of speakers, their backgrounds and thus language contact situations and linguistic innovation. Wiese claims that cities have not only been fruitful sites for variationist studies but also revealing in terms of investigating linguistic structures. This is by far the case in (North-Western) Europe, which due to migration, mobility, and other globalization processes may be regarded as superdiverse especially in terms of the ways in which languages, dialects, and varieties are developing. Wiese explains that within a European context, most large cities have a high percentage of foreign migrants making the linguistic situation even more complex especially when we consider the large percentage of heritage languages (and their speakers) alongside majority language (speakers), their diverse varieties, dialects, styles, and registers. In illustrating the sociolinguistic complexity in Europe, Wiese provides an example of her data from Berlin in which multiple languages are used in love declarations. For Wiese, these examples underscore the creative use of language and the many resources employed to exemplify certain linguistic phenomena such as language change, language mixing, bricolage, and style. In fact, for Wiese, such instances of language use due to language contact allow for new linguistic developments in both heritage and majority languages by their users. Wiese’s chapter continues with an explanation of multiethnolects, a term stemming from the variety approach and stylistic practice approach before discussing the metaphor feature pool and feature pond, the latter of which she employs to investigate individuals’

Urban Linguistics: Ideas and Anchor Points

23

speech repertoires both systematically and ethnographically within urban European contexts. For Wiese, new urban dialects play a significant role within the context of majority languages since they are developing quickly on all linguistic levels (phonological, lexical, syntactic, morphological), compared to more static traditional dialects. These new linguistic developments are not only the result of language contact and transfer among heritage speakers but also due to internal structural linguistic elements. Wiese shows how this is done through lexical transfer with examples of Turkish, English, German, Kiezdeutsch, Norwegian, and Swedish. Wiese’s research underscores that these new urban multiethnolects result from language contact between adolescents of different linguistic backgrounds regardless of their ethnicities but due to their varied peer-group socio-cultural contexts. Such a dynamic linguistic situation allows individuals to draw on an array of heterogeneous repertoires since they are familiar with the majority language as well as several varieties of other languages. For scholars, investigating these new urban multiethnolects provides further insights regarding language internal structures and motivation for language variation and change. Christian Bär’s chapter exemplifies how music can be described as a spatial category. In fact, music especially within urban space is usually connected to specific city soundscapes. For Bär, music is not only regarded as a cultural product but in some cases may also contribute to the making of so-called cities of music through semiotic and discursive means as seen through the marketing of cities and events in a plethora of ways (brochures, websites, guidebooks). Bär’s chapter also shows how certain music city names become categories used to classify musical and aesthetic qualities. This is especially the case with musical genres and styles, for example, Motown Sound and Philly Sound. Bär claims that these musical and aesthetic qualities are often discursively associated to anthropogeographical urban places. Methodologically, Bär’s empirical study exemplifies processes of the musical place-making of cities by taking a discourse-analytical approach of texts within two different yet similar musical genres, namely, Detroit Techno and Chicago House.

3.3 Mobilität, Fluidität und Konstruktionen in städtischen Zeichenarealen – Mobility, fluidity and constructions in urban semiotic areas Dennis Zuev and Monika Büscher explore the relation between discourse and urban living in the city by studying new mobile methods and traditional methods which have been mobilized. The analytical orientation towards (im)mobilities considers communication taking place in a variety of settings (such as, e.g. in taxis, on benches, or on street corners) contribute to the study of urbanism and language in the urban space. After reviewing a series of mobilities studies, Zuev/Büscher review modes of (im)mobility such as talk on the move and discursive interactions in places of transi-

24

Beatrix Busse and Ingo H. Warnke

tory engagement. The on the move paradigm involves shadowing, go-alongs, walking interviews, tracking subjects, following the movement of people, objects, images, and information, as well as the researchers themselves being moved. They also reflect on the immobile and how stillness is practiced in an urban place. They show that even cities themselves such as Detroit are not fixed but fluid and can move through discourse, and explore lived examples of networked urbanism by representations of the city. Private mobile media and the use of WiFi networks also contribute to a virtual interaction and mobility in the city and show how technology is impacting (im)mobility. They describe a scale ranging from passengers inside a moving vehicle involved in language exchanges to large mass gatherings in public space such as football fans at a stadium or protesters during a rally. An example of a small urban space is a bench which can be used both for isolation or as a point of contact for communicating with other people. From a historical and political viewpoint, mobilities are tied to the macro-features of the city such as urban planning layouts and architectural styles for the purpose of facilitating control and regulating public discourse. Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz’s chapter takes stock of the burgeoning field of linguistic landscape (LL) from early studies in the 1970s until today. In doing so, the authors use data from the multilingual cityscape of Donostia-San Sebastián to illustrate their findings in addition to analyzing signs in other urban centers from Jerusalem, Tokyo, Rome, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, and Washington, D.C. The authors point out that different fields such as semiotics and advertising have had a long tradition in analyzing signs, however, these fields have not necessarily been concerned with multiple language use on signs within public spaces. Due to the field’s young age and imprecise establishment, LL has and continues to allow for a wide range of inter-disciplinary theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches. While foundational studies were much more quantitatively oriented, more recent approaches have combined quantitative and qualitative aspects within their analyses allowing for a richer description of multilingualism found within public space. Multilingual signage is, as the authors claim, indicative of the kinds of individuals and communities of people who reside in such places as well as index language policies at different (state and regional) levels and the inherent and often unequal relationship (and status) among majority-minority languages and their respective speakers. Such is the case with Spanish and Dutch in Spain and the Netherlands respectively, vis-à-vis the significant differences found in the visibility of Basque and Frisian, the two minority languages in Donostia, Basque Country and Ljouwert, Friesland. A major concern throughout this chapter has to do with researchers’ unit of analysis and how data sets are systematically compiled and analyzed, whether purely through quantitative or qualitative means or by utilizing a mixed methodological approach. Despite the different methodological approaches used in LL studies over the years, Gorter and Cenoz have been able to identify various and reoccurring themes within LL literature, which consist of English as a Global language, language policy, minority languages and education. While the authors maintain “the linguistic landscape is a workplace for conducting scientific research on is-

Urban Linguistics: Ideas and Anchor Points

25

sues of multilingualism, minority languages and policies in the city of Donostia-San Sebastián”, they regard urban centers as “laboratories” for conducting research on multilingual signage while at the same time acknowledging that LL, despite its rather rapid development and trendy appeal to researchers, is still at the early stages of theoretical and methodological developments in which innovative interdisciplinary approaches can be used in future studies. Jennifer Smith discusses how the novel concept of semiotic landscapes differs from linguistic landscapes (discussed by Gorter/Cenoz, this volume) and how it is an interdisciplinary field linked to sociolinguistics, geography, sociology, media studies, ethnography, and anthropology. This article scrutinizes how social realities are constructed, which communicative functions are expressed by signs, what the relationships are between signs and the places they are to be found in, and how multimodal data can provide a better understanding of social practices and discursive placemaking. Smith begins with defining the linguistic sign as a semiotic concept, and outlines how indexicality is gaining prominence in the field of semiotics. Using Busse/ Warnke’s (2015) model of urbanity, Smith shows how an overlap of cross-referencing signs may be a defining aspect in the urban space and distinguished between two types of signs based on authorization – whether they are official or government-issues signs or personal ones. The semiotic turn in sociolinguistic research of language in space considers the distinction between place and space, and the dichotomy of land and landscape since our understanding of both has shifted. Two recent developments in semiotic landscape research are outlined, namely that nearly all signs have indexical potential, and that space can be indexed as local or global by the process of enregisterment. Smith also discusses pushing the boundaries of semiotic landscape studies by going beyond visual semiotics and physical space and expanding space into digital spaces and networks.

3.4 Historizität der Stadt im Diskurs – Historicity of the city in discourse Jennifer Cramer outlines the importance of beliefs about language held by non-linguists, a subfield of ethnolinguistics called folk linguistics. The focus of this study is on the concept of nostalgia – a longing or sentimentality for a bygone time – and anti-nostalgia – a lack of or deprecation of days gone by. Cramer demonstrates how nonlinguists in the urban city of Louisville, Kentucky describe language and identity in their city and justify regional placement. As the largest city in Kentucky, the positioning of Louisville as the only true urban center in a rural state plays a role in shifting between Southern and non-Southern identities. Cramer gives the example of how some people born in the southern United States may accommodate their accent after moving elsewhere because they have negative connotations with their original language variety. Cramer obtained data from mental maps and language surveys which

26

Beatrix Busse and Ingo H. Warnke

asked twenty-three participants to draw dialect boundaries around a region of the US and answer questions about varieties, and by conducting interviews with ten Lousvillians to see how they perceive regionality in the city. The results show there are many different ways of constructing the identity of Louisville and much like nostalgia, antinostalgia may be used to build social connections and form group identity. Joan Beal uses the theoretical frameworks of enregisterment and indexicality to discuss how urban language in Britain has been used from ancient times to the present day, and how attitudes towards a city are shaped by the urban varieties of English spoken there. Beal first considers the definition of enregisterment, how language can be used to express belonging and how speakers may be associated with social categories. Diachronically, there is less evidence of the enregisterment of urban speech in earlier times when compared with contemporary discourse. This article shows how urban speech is perceived at various points in time. The period from antiquity to the Middle Ages in Rome and Athens considered those outside of the city who did not speak the standard Greek or Latin as barbarous, and there is little evidence of urban speech in early Britain. During the Middle Ages, English was gaining prestige and there is evidence of standardization and increasing awareness about the diversity of dialects in England, however, there is a stigmatization of northern English. During the Early Modern English period, upper-class London English was associated with the status of the city as the center of power and thus contributed to its enregisterment as the most prestigious variety in the 16th century. Due to industrialization in the 18th and 19th centuries, the urban landscape changed and made movement between urban settlements far easier, and while cities in Scotland and Ireland experienced growth, the urban varieties spoken in these areas were still considered inferior to London. Discourse about urban speech during this time was dominated by the prescriptivist view that upper-class educated Londoners spoke correctly and that urban varieties were tainted. At the beginning of the 20th century, Received Pronunciation was associated more with social class rather than with London as a place. As the cities grew and developed, there were comments about how the urban vernaculars spread to the surrounding areas. Beal concludes that contemporary sociolinguistic studies on urban varieties are mostly on the speech of multilingual and multicultural cities. Christian Bendl’s chapter investigates the formation of time and space through analyzing different communicative practices about public places. He draws on an interdisciplinary approach that also combines socio- and discourse linguistic perspectives to underscore how space, time, and communicative practices are interrelated from a conceptual perspective. Bendl discusses how, similar to notions of place and space, time and especially historicity can also be conceptualized as a dynamic dimension that is discursively constructed. In fact, different historicities are associated with various speeds of change. Bendl shows how all of these concepts also refer to individuals’ social positionings and values connected to aspects of their socio-cultural lives over different courses of time and thus products of particular processes. Bendl’s analysis focuses on offline and online data of semiotic landscapes and tweets to illustrate

Urban Linguistics: Ideas and Anchor Points

27

the interdependence of material places, discursive spaces and times, and communicative practices. He draws on a large corpus of semiotic landscapes located within Vienna’s Heldenplatz coupled with online data from Austrian daily newspapers collected from 2015–2017. The Heldenplatz is of particular historical importance within Vienna and an Austrian national context more generally due to the many museums and monuments located close-by as well as historically and politically relevant speeches made within this public space. While the exact geographical location and physical significance is underscored within the semiotic landscapes of Heldenplatz and thus a mobile place through images collected from taxis, buses, street signs as well as architectural structures, Bendl’s investigation of politically heated online tweets about the possible renaming of Heldenplatz emphasizes how material places, discursive spaces and times are discursively achieved within such communicative practices. Bendl’s chapter contributes to a better understanding of how polyhistoricity and the contextualization of multi-layered timeframes both influence and impact the discursive constituting of both space and time as well as a social reality that is ideologically constructed as unified.

3.5 German goes first: Experimente – Experiments The Experiment section critically reflects on the status of theorems, methodological tools, and assumptions as well as data collection, analysis, and interpretation practices in urban studies and sociolinguistics. Ingo H. Warnke engages with the use of photographs and photography in linguistic and semiotic landscape and urban studies. Drawing on Susan Sontag’s ([1977] 2014) Melancholy Objects, Ingo H. Warnke unmasks both the documentary function of photographs and the alleged ease with which a photograph simply presents and conserves reality just because it can be both easily stored and accessed digitally. He criticizes the biased (and Westernized) gaze of sociolinguistics and urban studies, showing that a wish for neutrally describing the reality of language through photographs is as construed as any social practice and cannot be objectified by, among others, counting the number of photos from one urban space or by classifying patterns and outlining their foregroundedness. Also, he follows Sontag ([1977] 2014) by arguing that photography cannot serve as a linguistic recording because it is a surreal empowerment of perception. Hence, photographic documentation is also a sign of class and power or other ideologies, which often mark urban and sociolinguistic studies as an attempt to reinforce their academic meaningfulness. The paper concludes with leading ad absurdum a photographic documentation as semiotic landscaping in an urban space: Ingo H. Warnke uses his own photographic narrative of a pandemic Berlin world to re-locate the sociolinguistic endeavor into the surreal and a melancholy pleasantness. Beatrix Busse attempts to illustrate the complexity of data in urban spaces by allowing a concrete but rather unconventional glimpse at the multivariate data com-

28

Beatrix Busse and Ingo H. Warnke

piled in the heiURBAN database. The heiURBAN database is a corpus of Brooklyn data. Among others, it consists of semi-structured interviews, semiotic landscape data, that is mostly photographs, names for WiFi-Service Set Identifiers, Twitter data recorded in selected neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York, such as Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, Park Slope, Bushwick, Greenpoint, or Red Hook. With this position piece, she shows how the model of urbanity (Busse/Warnke 2015) can be realized into a searchable database which follows the modes of dimension, action, and representation and also does justice to the various, often contradictory ways in which the different data types interact. Through its design, the brief experimental position piece also outlines the limitations of standard publication formats, like linearly printed research articles in journals or handbooks. Conventional publication formats are challenged by dataintensive multi-modal linguistic research and the researcher’s quest for fully outlining the digital and multimodal interplay between linguistic and semiotic data in the virtual and physical urban sphere – which may be ephemeral or realized on the body or in hidden digital space. This paper interacts with Ingo H. Warnke’s piece in this experiment section in that it also critically assesses recent and own methodological practices in urban studies and sociolinguistics. Disclaimer: In parts, this introduction is a revision and translation of Busse/Warnke (2015).

4 References Aboelezz, Mariam (2014): The geosemiotics of Tahrir Square: A study of the relationship between discourse and space. In: Journal of Language and Politics 13, 599–622. Agha, Asif (2003): The social life of cultural value. In: Language and Communication 23, 231–273. Agha, Asif (2005): Voice, footing and enregisterment. In: Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15, 38–59. Al Zidjaly, Najma (2014): Geosemiotics: Discourses in place. In: Sigrid Norris/Carmen Daniela Maier (eds.): Interactions, Images and Texts. Berlin/München/Boston, 63–76. AMO/Rem Koolhaas (2020): Countryside; A Report. Köln. Auer, Peter (2010): Sprachliche Landschaften: Die Strukturierung des öffentlichen Raums durch die geschriebene Sprache. In: Arnulf Deppermann/Angelika Linke (eds.): Sprache Intermedial: Stimme und Schrift, Bild und Ton. Berlin/New York, 271–298. Auer, Peter/Jürgen E. Schmidt (2010): Language and space: An international handbook of linguistic variation. Bd. 1: Theories and Methods. Berlin. Bateman, John A./Janina Wildfeuer/Tuomo Hiippala (2017): Multimodality: Foundations, Research and Analysis; A Problem-oriented Introduction. Boston. Beal, Joan C. (2009): Enregisterment, commodification, and historical context: ‘Geordie’ versus ‘Sheffieldish’. In: American Speech 84, 138–156. Bendl, Christian (2021): Polyhistorizität im öffentlichen Raum. Zur Konzeptualität und Funktion semiotisch-diskursiver Raum-Zeit-Aneignungen am Wiener Heldenplatz. Wien. Blommaert, Jan (2016): From mobility to complexity in sociolinguistic theory and method. In: Nikolas Coupland (ed.): Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates. Cambridge, 242–260. Blommaert, Jan/Ben Rampton (2011): Language and superdiversity. In: Diversities 13, 1–21.

Urban Linguistics: Ideas and Anchor Points

29

Bock, Bettina M. (2018): Diskurslinguistik und Grounded-Theory-Methodologie. In: Ingo H. Warnke (ed.): Handbuch Diskurs. Berlin/Boston, 305–335. Boix-Fuster, Emili (2015): Urban Diversities and Language Policies in Medium-Sized Linguistic Communities. Blue Ridge Summit. Britain, David (2009): ‘Big Bright Lights’ versus ‘Green and Pleasant Land’? The unhelpful dichotomy of ‘urban’ vs. ‘rural’ in dialectology. In: Enam Al-Wer/Rudolf de Jong (eds.): Arabic Dialectology. Leiden, 223–248. Britain, David (2012): Countering the urbanist agenda in variationist sociolinguistics: Dialect contact, demographic change and the rural-urban dichotomy. In: Philipp Stoeckle/Tobias Streck/Christian Schwarz/Sandra Hansen (eds.): Dialectological and Folk Dialectological Concepts of Space. Berlin, 12–30. Britain, David (2013): The role of mundane mobility and contact in dialect death and dialect birth. In: Daniel Schreier/Marianne Hundt (eds.): English as a Contact Language. Cambridge, 165–181. Britain, David (2019): A sociolinguistic ecology of colonial Britain. In: Daniel Schreier/Marianne Hundt/Edgar W. Schneider (eds.): The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes. Cambridge, 145–159. Broth, Mathias/Lorenza Mondada (2019): Delaying moving away: Place, mobility, and the multimodal organization of activities. In: Journal of Pragmatics 148, 44–70. Busse, Beatrix (2019): Patterns of discursive urban place-making in Brooklyn, New York. In: Viola Wiegand/Michaela Mahlberg (eds.): Corpus Linguistics, Context and Culture. Berlin/Boston (Diskursmuster/Discourse Patterns, 15), 13–42. Busse, Beatrix/Ruth Möhlig-Falke (2019a): Patterns in linguistics. In: Beatrix Busse/Ruth Möhlig-Falke (eds): Patterns in Language and Linguistics: New Perspectives on a Ubiquitous Concept. Berlin, 1–10. Busse, Beatrix/Ruth Möhlig-Falke (2019b): From term to concept and vice versa: Pattern(s) in language and linguistics. In: Beatrix Busse/Ruth Möhlig-Falke (eds): Patterns in Language and Linguistics: New Perspectives on a Ubiquitous Concept. Berlin, 11–46. Busse, Beatrix/Ingo H. Warnke (2015): Sprache im urbanen Raum. In: Ekkehard Felder/Andreas Gardt (eds.): Handbuch Sprache und Wissen. Berlin, 519–538. Busse, Beatrix/Ingo H. Warnke/Jennifer Smith (eds.) (2020): Place-Making in the Declarative City. Berlin. Caliendo, Giuditta/Rudi Janssens/Stef Slembrouck/Piet Van Avermaet (eds.) (2019): Urban Multilingualism in Europe. Berlin. Cornips, Leonie/Vincent A. de Rooij (2018): Sociolinguistics of Place and Belonging: Perspectives from the Margins. Amsterdam/Philadelphia. Cresswell, Tim (2009): Place. In: N. Thrift/R. Kitchen (eds.): International encyclopedia of human geography, Vol. 8. Oxford, 169–177. Domke, Christine (2014): Die Betextung des öffentlichen Raumes: Eine Studie zur Spezifik von MesoKommunikation am Beispiel von Bahnhöfen, Innenstädten und Flughäfen. Heidelberg. Drummond, Rob (2018): Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity. Cham. Eckert, Penelope/Sally McConnell-Ginet (1992): Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. In: Annual Review of Anthropology 21, 461–490. Eckert, Penelope (2012): Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of sociolinguistic variation. In: Annual Review of Anthropology 41, 87–100. Foucault, Michel (1971): Orders of discourse. In: Social Science Information 10, 7–30. Friedmann, John (2010): Place and place-making in cities: A global perspective. In: Planning Theory & Practice 11, 149–165. Hall, Tom (2009): Footwork: Moving and knowing in local space(s). In: Qualitative Research 9, 571– 585.

30

Beatrix Busse and Ingo H. Warnke

Hall-Lew, Lauren/Nola Stephens (2012): Country talk. In: Journal of English Linguistics 40, 256–280. Hennig, Mathilde (2010): Grammatik multicodal: Ein Vorschlag am Beispiel ortsgebundener Schriftlichkeit. In: Kodikas/Code: Ars Semiotica 33, 73–88. Heyd, Theresa/Ferdinand von Mengden/Britta Schneider (eds.) (2019): The Sociolinguistic Economy of Berlin: Cosmopolitan Perspectives on Language, Diversity and Social Space. Berlin. Hultman, Johan/Michael C. Hall (2012): Tourism place-making: Governance of locality in Sweden. In: Annals of Tourism Research 39, 547–570. Hunston, Susan/Gill Francis (2000): Pattern Grammar: A Corpus-Driven Approach to the Lexical Grammar of English. Amsterdam. Hunston, Susan/Hang Su (2017): Patterns, constructions, and local grammar: A case study of “evaluation.” In: Applied Linguistics, 1–28. Jaworski, Adam (2015): Word cities and language objects: ‘Love’ sculptures and signs as shifters. In: Linguistic Landscape: An International Journal 1, 75–94. Johnstone, Barbara (2009): Pittsburghese shirts: Commodification and the enregisterment of an urban dialect. In: American Speech 84, 157–175. Koolhaas, Rem ([1978] 2014): Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. Digital Edition iBooks. New York. Kress, Gunther/Theo van Leeuwen (2001): Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London. Labov, William (1966): The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, D.C. Labov, William (1972): Sociolinguistic patterns. University of Pennsylvania Press. Labov, William (1996): When intuitions fail. In: Chicago Linguistics Society 32, 77–109. Labov, William (2006): Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change: A Multimedia Reference Tool. Berlin. LeGates, Richard T./Frederic Stout (eds.) (2020): The City Reader. Abingdon, Oxon. Leitner, Helga/Jamie Peck/Eric Sheppard (2020): Urban Studies Inside/out. Los Angeles. Massey, Doreen (1991): A global sense of place. In: Marxism Today, 24–29. Mc Laughlin, Fiona (ed.) (2009): The Languages of Urban Africa. London (Advances in Sociolinguistics, 54). Mondada, Lorenza (2009): Emergent focused interactions in public places: A systematic analysis of the multimodal achievement of a common interactional space. In: Journal of Pragmatics 41, 1977–1997. Moore, Emma (2012): The social life of style. In: Language and Literature 21, 66–83. Muri, Gabriela (2016): Die Stadt in der Stadt: Raum-, Zeit- und Bildrepräsentationen urbaner Öffentlichkeiten. Wiesbaden. Nassenstein, Nico/Andrea Hollington/Anne Storch (2018): Disinventing and demystifying youth language: Critical perspectives. In: The Mouth, 9–27. Nortier, Jacomine/Bente A. Svendsen (2015): Language, Youth and Identity in the 21st Century: Linguistic Practices across Urban Spaces. Cambridge. Özkul, Didem (2017): Placing mobile ethnography: Mobile communication as a practice of place making. In: Larissa Hjorth/Heather Horst/Anne Galloway/Genevieve Bell (eds.): The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography. New York, 221–231. Pavlenko, Aneta/Alex Mullen (2015): Why diachronicity matters in the study of linguistic landscapes. In: Linguistic Landscape 1, 114–132. Peck, Amiena/Christopher Stroud/Quentin Williams (2018): Making Sense of People and Place in Linguistic Landscapes. London (Advances in Sociolinguistics). Schlappa, Hans/William J.V. Neill (eds.) (2016): Future Directions for the European Shrinking City. New York. Searle, John R. (1976): A classification of illocutionary acts. In: Language in Society 5, 1–23.

Urban Linguistics: Ideas and Anchor Points

31

Shipley, Jesse Weaver (2015): Trickster Theatre: The Poetics of Freedom in Urban Africa. Bloomington/ Indianapolis. Shulist, Sarah (2018): Transforming Indigeneity: Urbanization and Language Revitalization in the Brazilian Amazon. Toronto. Silverstein, Michael (1993): Metapragmatic discourse and metapragmatic function. In: John A. Lucy (ed.): Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics. Cambridge, 33–58. Silverstein, Michael (2003): Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. In: Language and Communication 23, 193–229. Simpson, Paul (1999): Language, culture and identity: With (another) look at accents in pop and rock singing. In: Multilingua 18, 343–367. Smakman, Dick/Patrick Heinrich (eds.) (2017): Urban Sociolinguistics: The City as a Linguistic Process and Experience. London. Sontag, Susan ([1977] 2014): On Photography. London. Steen, Pamela (2020): Prekarität und Place-Identity: Wie Erwerbslose in ihren Gesprächen soziale Unsicherheit konstruieren und Agency kommunikativ aushandeln. In: Wiener Linguistische Gazette, Themenheft “Prekaritätserfahrungen: Soziolinguistische Perspektiven” 85 (Vorabdruck), 1–39. Storch, Anne/Ingo H. Warnke (2020): Sansibarzone: Eine Austreibung aus der neokolonialen Sprachlosigkeit. Bielefeld. Strauss, Anselm L. (1994): Grundlagen qualitativer Sozialforschung. Datenanalyse und Theoriebildung in der empirisch soziologischen Forschung. München. Thissen, Lotte (2018): The politics of place-making and belonging through language choice within center-periphery dynamics in Limburg, The Netherlands. In: Leonie Cornips/Vincent A. de Rooij (eds.): The Sociolonguistics of Place and Belonging: Perspectives from the margins. Amsterdam, 125–148. Venturi, Robert (1966): Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture: With an Introduction by Vincent Scully. New York. Vertovec, Steven (2007): Super-diversity and its implications. In: Ethnic and Racial Studies 30, 1024–1054. Wenger, Etienne (1998): Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge. Wiese, Heike (2012): Kiezdeutsch. Ein neuer Dialekt entsteht. München. Ziegler, Evelyn/Heinz Eickmans/Ulrich Schmitz/Haci-Halil Uslucan/David Gehne/Sebastian Kurtenbach/Tirza Mühlan-Meyer/Irmi Wachendorff (2018): Metropolenzeichen: Atlas zur visuellen Mehrsprachigkeit der Metropole Ruhr. Duisburg.

Acknowledgments: We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Ekkehard Felder and Andreas Gardt, the series editors, who have wholeheartedly supported us throughout the process of putting this book together. To the chapter’s authors who contributed their time and expertise to this book, we are immensely thankful to you. This project has been in the works for quite some time and the contributors’ patience and collaboration, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, has been truly remarkable. We would also like to thank Nina Dumrukcic, Jennifer Smith, Sophie Du Bois, Kellie Gonçalves, and the team at the University of Cologne for their assistance in preparing the manuscript. The theme of the book has evolved along with current trends in linguistics and reflects the broad variety of topics around urban space. It is our hope that this book will bring new insight into discursive place-making, how language and space can intertwine, as well as explore future endeavours in urban linguistics.

I Bezugsfelder der urbanen Linguistik/ Fields of Reference of Urban Linguistics

Kellie Gonçalves

1. Urban Variationist Sociolinguistics Abstract: The aim of this chapter is to trace the development of urban variationist sociolinguistic studies. It begins with a discussion on the emergence of variationist studies, which adopted and adapted their methodology from early dialectology studies. Afterwards, a historical overview is given covering different methods and techniques that have been used for data collection, many of which are still in use today. Subsequently, a section outlining some critical thoughts on variationist approaches especially as they pertain to quantitative methods is presented. The chapter ends with a discussion of the so-called urban rural dichotomy, the significant concepts of spatiality and place as well as outlining different methods suggested for future variationist studies. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Introduction Variation studies Variationist methods and techniques of data collection Critique of a variationist approach Urbanity, spatiality, and place within variationist studies Conclusion References

1 Introduction “Variability is an integral part of the linguistic system” (Milroy/Gordon 2003, 3).

Variationist sociolinguistics is a vast field and one that has been around for over forty years. It is not surprising therefore, that during this time, a lot has changed in the way the structure of language (by studying linguistic variables), variation and change have come to be viewed, studied and accounted for by different scholars. Classic studies largely focused on variation within monolingual speech communities in urban centers (Labov (1966) in New York City, Shuy/Wolfram/Riley (1967) in Detroit, Trudgill (1974) in Norwich, Cedegren (1973) in Panama City, and Milroy (1980) in Belfast). Because variationist studies can be done at all levels of language ranging from sociophonetic, morphosyntactic, pragmatic to stylistic, many traditional techniques and methods have remained stable within a variationist paradigm. However, different methodologies and theoretical frameworks have and continue to be employed and drawn on, which reflect emerging trends within sociolinguistic research in general. In this chapter, my aim is to trace the emergence and development of urban variationist sociolinguistic studies. This chapter is structured as follows: first, I outline the emergence of variationist studies, which adopted and adapted their methodology https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-002

36

Kellie Gonçalves

from early dialectology studies. Afterwards, I discuss some of the methods and techniques used for data collection that developed over 40 years ago and are still used today. I then take a look at some of the criticism of employing a variationist approach and end the chapter with a discussion of the urban rural dichotomy, the significant concepts of spatiality and place as well as outlining different methods suggested for future variationist studies.

2 Variation studies The sociolinguistic subfield, approach or tradition termed variationist began in the 1960s with the development of a theory of language change by Weinreich/Labov/Herzog (1968). It was precisely in the same year that Chomsky/Halle’s Sound Pattern of English was published, which focused on the language system of the individual only, thus making homogeneity a precondition for analysis as well as discarding the theoretical insignificance of diversity among speakers. Rather than looking at individuals only and the homogeneous speech-community Weinreich/Labov/Herzog (1968) claimed the need to focus on heterogeneity among speech communities in order to better understand the concepts of linguistic competence and language change. This entailed employing different methods in order to understand how language change occurs and diachronic variation could be studied. For them, the view of language change necessitated both regularity of forms and variation among speakers. This was done by employing well-known concepts such as the linguistic variable and the variable rule. While Weinreich/Lavov/Herzog’s work was key, Labov (1966) advanced both methods and theory of analysis of language variation and change. He is considered to be the ‘founder’ of Sociolinguistics and has introduced key concepts into the field such as the linguistic variable, the variable rule, orderly differentiation, the principle of accountability, and circumscription of the variable context. In his (2006) preface to the second edition of The Social Stratification of English in New York City (SSENYC), Labov lists a number of concepts and procedures that were introduced in the first edition of SSENYC over forty years ago and new to linguistic studies. Apart from the linguistic variable, other key concepts include stylistic stratification, the crossover pattern, apparent time, and covert prestige and procedures listed include those of: creation of a representative sample; the sociolinguistic interview and the control of style shifting within it; subjective reaction tests to measure the effect of particular linguistic variables; self-report and linguistic insecurity tests (Labov 2006). The linguistic variable is a major construct within variationist studies and is defined as “two or more ways of saying the same thing” (Labov 1994, 2). The advances in the field introduced and developed by Labov are referred to as variation theory (Labov 1963; 1966; 1982) or even Labovian Sociolinguistics. The concept of the linguistic variable was first introduced in Labov’s (1963) groundbreaking and seminal work on the variation found on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, off the northeast coast of the Uni-

Urban Variationist Sociolinguistics

37

ted States. It was in this study that Labov (1972b, 9) investigated how certain islanders pronounced diphthongs [aw] and [ay] as in down and bite and notes that “one frequently hears on Martha’s Vineyard [ɒɪ] and [ɒʊ] or even [əɪ] and [əu]”. Labov showed that these phonemes were undergoing a change, namely a centralization of the diphthong’s first element. He was able to exemplify this based on historical evidence as well as the use of phonological variables within the variable context. Labov’s study is considered to be the first sociolinguistic study that demonstrated the joint saliency of considering internal and external factors and show how language variation and change was occurring by individuals that did not belong to the upper class. Milroy/ Gordon (2003, 1) state that: Like all fields of enquiry, variationist theory has developed a distinctive orientation to its object of investigation (i.e. human language), and a distinctive set of research questions which, while not always explicitly articulated, provide the characteristic focus of those investigations. Variationists do not of course operate independently of other branches of linguistic science, nor indeed of other kinds of sociolinguistics. Furthermore, their orientation, and sometimes the assumptions underlying their theories are often best understood with reference to historical antecedents.

From a historical perspective, variationist studies have been greatly influenced by traditional dialectology or dialect geography (Chambers/Trudgill 1998) as well as regional and social dialectology in America and Europe. Beginning in the 19th century, large projects on the study of regional variation were carried out in and across Europe. One of the most influential and earliest studies was the Atlas Linguistique de la France (ALF), a project run by Jules Gillieron whose aim was to improve upon Wenker’s methods by administering a linguistic survey in France from 1896–1900. Gillieron devised a questionnaire that allowed for elicited responses and specific lexical items. Roughly 1,500 items were included in the core inventory of lexical items. The data collection was done by a fieldworker, Edmond Edmont who was trained to use phonetic notation of the local pronunciation of the different words. In the four years, he was able to carry out 700 interviews in 639 different localities (Chambers/Trudgill 1998). Of the 700 informants, only sixty were women and 200 were considered ‘educated’ resulting in a “fairly homogeneous social group” (Chambers/Trudgill 1998, 17). The consistent methodology employed in this survey allowed Gillieron to make comparisons among different localities. As a result, it was considered to be a major breakthrough within dialect geography and “remains a touchstone for subsequent surveys” such as the Sprach- und Sachatlas Italiens und der Südschweiz (1940) as well as The Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada (LAUSC) in 1930, which was further divided into several regional projects such as The Linguistic Atlas of New England and The Linguistic Atlas of the Upper Midwest (Chambers/Trudgill 1998). In the mid-20th century, the national survey of English dialects (SED) was also underway and published in several different volumes between 1962–1978. Up until the mid-1960s the traditional dialectological model was used for descriptions of language variation because “it was the only coherent one available at the time”

38

Kellie Gonçalves

(Milroy/Gordon 2003, 15). The tendency among dialectologists was to investigate linguistic elements, and in most cases, sounds, independently and in isolation rather than as being part of and belonging to a larger linguistic system. One of the major characteristics of carrying out language variation studies is the focus on examining empirical data through observation and especially how people really speak, thus investigating the vernacular. The vernacular was first defined as “the style in which the minimum attention is given to the monitoring of speech” (Labov 1972b, 208). Later scholars expanded on this notion stating that the aim of sociolinguistic inquiry was on ‘everyday speech’ (Sankoff 1974) or “real language in use” (Milroy 1992, 66). Language variation emerges in different types of contexts and people often use one form in one context, such as a casual conversation and another form in a more formal context, such as a professional interview. A good example is the phonological variable (ing) with variants of [ŋ] and [In]. Variability in language use was historically “dismissed as unstructured and thus of little theoretical value” (Milroy/Gordon 2003, 2). However, Labov (1963; 1966) was able to show that variation was not instable or an instance of free variation, but occurs systematically. This means that there are certain constraints on the variable context, which are both language internal and social or extralinguistic. The fact that Labov was able to show that extralinguistic and social factors such as age, gender, social class, etc. affect variation in a systematic way differentiates how variability was treated within the generative paradigm. One of the challenges of variationists’ work is to locate the variable context and account for the frequency of use of one variable versus another. In other words, when and where do individuals make a choice in their linguistic performance and what constraints actually influence their choices? In order to uncover the various factors that influence variation, researchers need to collect data by conducting fieldwork and collecting samples of individuals’ speech and then employing statistical tools in order for quantitative analyses and large-scale studies to be carried out. The combination of methods has been described by Sankoff (1988, 142–143) as forming part of the “descriptive-interpretive” component of modern linguistic research. The descriptive element requires “detailed and critical observation” (Sankoff 1988, 142–143) of variation and change as well as acknowledging that patterns emerge as a result of universal principles as well as being shaped by their social contexts (Tagliamonte 2012; Labov 1963). This requires acknowledging the use of certain linguistic variables while simultaneously accounting for historical, contemporary, and social facts to explain language use (Tagliamonte 2012).

3 Variationist methods and techniques of data collection Variationists maintain that methodology is fundamental to the understanding of language in general as well as linguistic theory. In an early paper, Labov (1972b, 99) states that:

Urban Variationist Sociolinguistics

39

We might approach the various methods available to linguistics by looking at the activity of the linguists themselves, according to where they can be found. In this search, we would find linguists working in the library, the bush, the closet, the laboratory, and the street, and might so name each sub-division of the discipline.

Among the places listed here, sociolinguists, and variationists in particular, are those linguists considered to be found ‘on the streets’ by employing tried, tested, and improved tools and methods of data collection in order to obtain authentic language samples from individuals. Conducting sociolinguistic fieldwork is considered to be “one of the most challenging and most rewarding aspects of sociolinguistic investigation” (Schilling-Estes 2007, 165), but the research design is always based on the researcher’s interest, goals, and research questions. Within traditional variationist studies, several methods of data collection, guiding principles, and sampling methods have been employed in order to gather a representative account of language use within a group of people, however, these do not come without problems. Within the context of urban centers, Milroy/Gordon (2003, 25) rightly state that “achieving representativeness is most challenging when studying a highly diverse population such as is typically found in urban settings”. Moreover, “the key to achieving a representative account of the language of a group of speakers is the avoidance of bias” (Milroy/Gordon, 24). In Labov’s Lower East Side study, he tried to do this through random sampling, and in the end his study was based on 88 informants and not considered to be random at all from a statistical perspective (cf. Davis 1990). The challenges of random sampling have led researchers to employ “judgment sampling” (Schilling-Estes 2007, 169). Other means of data include conducting sociolinguistic interviews (Labov 1972a; 1984; Wolfram/Fasold 1974), rapid and anonymous observations as well as largescale surveys. The sociolinguistic interview was designed to get people to use the vernacular in a conversation-like style resembling casual speech that was recorded. The fact that individuals may not speak as naturally as usual with a recording device around is what Labov referred to as the Observer’s Paradox: “to obtain the data most important for linguistic theory, we have to observe how people speak when they are not being observed” (Labov 1972a, 113). The objective for sociolinguistics is to collect data of individuals’ speech, yet minimize the attention paid to their speech by talking to informants about several topics. And while there are many advantages in using this type of technique, there has also been a lot of criticism about the sociolinguistic interview as being less natural than any other type of interview (cf. Wolfson 1976 for a discussion). Monitoring the vernacular among variationists has also been criticized by several researchers since it does not account for the social and situational context in which the vernacular is being employed, nor does it account for intraspeaker stylistic variation (Eckert 2000; Milroy/Gordon 2003; Schilling-Estes 2002). The rapid and anonymous observation technique was used in Labov’s (1972a) infamous New York City fourth-floor study in order to document the use of postvocalic /r/ by questioning

40

Kellie Gonçalves

employees in three different department stores that catered to clients of different socioeconomic class. He asked his informants about a given item located on the fourth floor. He documented responses twice by pretending not to hear informants’ first response and thus eliciting careful speech. Labov did not record these interactions but noted them down immediately after they occurred. This type of technique allows researchers to gain a lot of data in a short amount of time, but makes it difficult to account for accurate social information of informants. Large-scale surveys are done through administering surveys via telephone (Bailey/Wikle/Tillery 1997), mail and more recently, the internet, (Plichta/Preston/Rakerd 2005) in order to collect and record large amounts of data from a small group of individuals. Given these techniques or sociolinguistic toolkit, variationists are interested in answering the following questions: what types of speech patterns emerge within a particular speech community, how does this happen, and what is the order in its ordered heterogeneity? How exactly a speech community can be defined is problematic from both a practical and theoretical perspective (Kiesling 2011; cf. Patrick 2004 for a thorough discussion). For some scholars, the term has been abandoned altogether and replaced by such concepts as network (Milroy 1980) or community of practice (Eckert/McConnell-Ginet 1992; Eckert 2000). However one defines a group of individuals, the underlying principles behind them is that individuals share and use certain linguistic norms and secondly, that these individuals are somehow connected to one another either through social ties or even physical distance. Variationists studies are ultimately concerned with attempting to uncover the relationship between linguistic variables and social ones. Linguistic variables can occur at all linguistic levels: phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic, pragmatic, discoursal, and suprasegmental (Kiesling 2011), although much traditional variationist work has favored the phonological level due to the focus on the spread of sound change (Eckert 2008) and, to some extent, the morphological level since analyzing other levels of language “create methodological problems for a quantitative analysis” (Milroy/Gordon 2003, 170). Many of the variationist studies that employed SSENYC techniques have been concerned with the stratification of mainly large urban areas worldwide (cf. Labov 2006 for an extensive overview of studies done from 1967–2006). And while these studies have no doubt advanced variationist methods and our overall understanding of language variation and change, they do not go without criticism.

4 Critique of a variationist approach This field of study is not without criticism and various scholars have admitted to the disadvantages of traditional variationist approaches. For example, Tagliamonte states that “no one method can do everything” (2013, 399) and rightly admits that quantitative methods do not suit the study of discourse interaction, styles, identity, and the social meaning of linguistic forms (Lavendera 1978; Rickford 1980; Eckert 1989; 2000;

Urban Variationist Sociolinguistics

41

2008; Eckert/Rickford 2001; Coupland 2007). Tagliamonte asserts that variationist studies have been “limited in terms of its contribution to formal theory” despite its “application to a wide range of linguistic phenomenon that are beginning to evolve” and concludes by suggesting the “potential for interdisciplinary research” to be carried out in the future (2013, 399). Studies on stylistic variation carried out over a decade ago formed “part of a movement in the field of variation away from purely structural models of society that formed the original basis of variation theory, into a view of variation as social practice” (Eckert/Rickford 2001, 5). In her 2009-paper, Cameron (2009) defines sociolinguistics as the variationist and quantitative paradigm associated with Labov’s work. From the start, she admits to this being a narrow and biased definition, but one which entails various assumptions about the investigation of language and society. Because Labov’s concern was to challenge the ideal speakerhearer in a homogeneous community, which he successfully exemplified through the concept of structured variability, he was able to show that variation could be modeled and was both systematic and socially conditioned, which ultimately led to new insights regarding theories of language change. The main question Cameron (2009) asks though is why variability among individuals and speech communities exists. She states that this question has continued to be unsatisfactorily answered because the usual explanation given is that language reflects society. This proposition is problematic for two main reasons, namely, that the social theories variationists draw on for such explanations are considered simplistic and naïve and that by accepting the language reflects society explanation presupposes that “social structures somehow exist before language” (Cameron 2009, 57) thus problematizing social categories altogether. She calls for a much more complex model that views language as being part of the social and one which must engage with other modes of behavior in order to account for variation and sociolinguistic patterns (Cameron 2009). Another essential point raised in her chapter is the notion of the correlational fallacy. Because variationists are concerned with numbers and employ statistical correlations to show how frequency scores are related to linguistic variables and non-linguistic features such as demographic categories that include gender, class, ethnicity, age, etc. and context-related factors such as formality level, topic, etc., they are able to show how certain sociolinguistic patterns are described, but fail to account for the actual distribution. Cameron maintains that this is indeed a fallacy because “the purported explanation does not in fact explain anything” (Cameron 2009, 111). For Cameron (2009), the language reflects society view is too simplistic and regards language as changing on its own (organic fallacy), thus treating individuals as agentless. Cameron (2009) reports on the issue of sexist language and the changing pronoun system in English to make her case in point. For example, the use of generic masculine pronouns is hardly found among writers and educated speakers nowadays, and have been replaced by the usage of singular they and he and she. This example, she argues, shows how language change is observable in the linguistic behavior of individuals and institutions, which did not happen naturally or as a result of how women’s social positions have progressed his-

42

Kellie Gonçalves

torically. Her point is that the use of the English pronoun system did not change on its own, but as a result of “organized and politically motivated efforts to alter existing norms and conventions” (Cameron 2009, 116). She further states that: the [‘language reflects society’] model glosses over the existence of social conflict and its implications for language use. Here as elsewhere in Sociolinguistics the underlying assumption is of a consensual social formation where speakers acquiesce in the norms of their peer group or their culture, and agree about the social ‘needs’ which language exists to serve (Cameron 2009, 64).

And while she acknowledges that not all linguistic changes are politically motivated, some is and needs to be accounted for. Although traditional sociolinguists may claim that looking at sociolinguistics in this way may not advance linguistic theory, Cameron calls for individuals’ metalinguistic accounts of language use to be included within sociolinguistics. For her, language is a social institution, which must be placed at “the center rather than on the margins” of sociolinguistic theory (Cameron 2009, 117).

5 Urbanity, spatiality, and place within variationist studies Following Labov’s 1966-Lower-East-Side study in New York City, many, but not all, variationist studies continued to be carried out in urban settings, which coincided with the urban turn in the social sciences of the late 60s and 70s (Shuy/Wolfram/Riley 1967 in Detroit; Weinreich/Labov/Herzog 1968 in Harlem; Sankoff/Cedergren 1972 in Montreal; Cedergren 1973 in Panama City; Macaulay/Trevelyan 1973 in Glasgow; Trudgill 1974 in Norwich; Lavandera 1978 in Buenos Aires; Modaressi 1978 in Teheran). This was also the time when science became ‘quantifiable’ due to technological advances of data processing and the need for variationists to defend their position against generativists (Hazen 2007). From the early 80s until today, we still have seen the focus of variation studies being conducted within cities (cf. Milroy 1980 in Belfast; Abdel-Jawad 1981 in Amman; Horvath 1985 in Sydney; Hibiya 1988 in Tokyo; Hong 1991 in Seoul; Lefebvre 1991 in Lille; Gregersen/Pedersen 1991 in Copenhagen; Kerswill/Williams 1994 in Milton Keynes; Haeri 1996 in Cairo; Fridland 1999 in Memphis; Cieri 2005 in L’Aquila) despite the numerous and significant studies carried out in rural settings (Nichols 1977; Britain 1997; 2001; Hazen 2000; Jones/Tagliamonte 2004; McNair 2005; Piercy 2011; Schilling-Estes/Wolfram 1999; Tagliamonte/Smith 2002; 2005; Thomas 2001; Wolfram/Schilling-Estes 1995; Wolfram 2002). The concentration of conducting variationist studies within urban settings is often referred to as urban dialectology or even urban sociolinguistics (Britain 2009). In discussing several studies carried out subsequent to 1966, Labov admits that his list is “partial” because he is concerned with stratification of large cities and therefore does not examine “the many studies of small towns and rural areas” (Labov 2006, 380–381) since he is concerned

Urban Variationist Sociolinguistics

43

with the question, “how can we represent a city’s speech?” (Labov 2006, 380–381). This assertion suggests two things, first, that the representation of speech in areas other than cities may not be as salient, and, secondly that it is actually possible to account for an entire city’s speech representation when in fact, most studies on urban centers have looked at smaller neighborhoods within specific city limits. In his discussion on the “unhelpful dichotomy of ‘urban’ versus ‘rural’ in dialectology”, Britain (2009, 223) poses two fundamental questions when he asks, “what is ‘urban’ about variationist sociolinguistics’? and ‘can it only be conducted in urban areas?’” He draws on the work of both urban and rural geographers and maintains that “there are no causal social processes which affect urban areas, but not rural or vice versa” (Britain 2009, 242). Indeed, these concepts are considered to be fuzzy by geographers and, as early as 1966, within the field of sociology, Pahl discusses the problematic dichotomy of rural and urban. He states that “in a sociological context the terms rural and urban are more remarkable for their ability to confuse than for their power to illuminate” (Pahl 1966, 299). Within the field of sociology, the fascination with urbanity and distinguishing it from the rural is accredited to Wirth’s (1938) paper. Wirth maintained that due to the increase in population and size, urban places would lead to increased anonymity among individuals. This, together with a more widespread division of labor, would result in the growing production of social heterogeneity. Pahl (1966, 300) states that “under these conditions relationships would, inevitably, become more impersonal and formally prescribed, and prestige would be allocated according to criteria other than personal acquaintance”. These points are relevant to the current discussion and popularity of urban settings, which is where many variationists are conducting their work and what Britain (2009) has called the urban fetish. Although Wirth was writing about the characteristics of urbanity more than 20 years before Labov (1966) conducted his NYC study, the focus on urbanity within the social sciences was already extremely prevalent. Despite the characteristics listed in Wirth’s paper, which are characterized as urban, he readily admits that such modes of life might appear between individuals “wherever they may be, who have come under the spell of the influences which the city exerts by virtue of the power of its institutions and personalities operating through the means of communication and transportation” (Wirth 1938, 48). In other words, logistical, communicative, and socio-economic factors influence and affect individuals everywhere regardless of whether they are situated in rural or urban settings, but their exposure to city life may simply exacerbate these influences. It may well be the case that such factors are more noticeable in urban centers due to larger populations, ethnic diversity, and transnational immigrant communities, which highlight socio-economic, socio-political, and multilingual differences (Kamwangamalu 2013). Within this context, Britain states that “it has to be admitted that this crucial point – that the important sociolinguistic processes are at their most visible and extreme in urban areas, possibly, but are not exclusive to them” (Britain 2009, 234, italics in the original). The original techniques devised by Labov (1963; 1966) and ensuing methodological approaches that

44

Kellie Gonçalves

have developed over the years are not specific to urban centers. In a more recent paper, Britain maintains that “there is nothing methodologically urban about these approaches, nor, in principle, is such research in one more complex, difficult, expensive or time consuming, etc., than in the other” (Britain 2012, 17). It is here that Britain provides evidence of counter-urbanization processes within a British context claiming that “counter-urbanisation seems to be triggering dialect levelling and the loss of traditional dialect features” (Britain 2012, 19). Currently, we are living in what Elliott/Urry (2010) have termed the golden age of mobility where people are on the move more than ever before. This means that contact between speakers of different languages, varieties, and dialects are occurring at a higher rate than ever before and the question remains how future variationist studies deal with such mobility. Key concepts like the speech community may have worked well in earlier studies where individuals were less mobile, (cf. Trudgill 1974 and his concept of NORMS) as well as more current studies that are able to account for preserved language features of relic areas (Tagliamonte/D’arcy 2007). In his critique of the speech community, Kiesling asserts that sociolinguists have defined speech communities by using “geographical boundaries of varying sizes and precision […] however, in none of the definitions of speech community do we find an essential focus on residence or provenance for inclusion or exclusion in a speech community” (Kiesling 2011, 32–33). He further postulates the notions of space and place and the problematic and even nonconsensual definition of place for speakers being from or residing in the same area. He claims that: While space can be defined by precise coordinates and boundaries, place- how people think about their physical surroundings may not be as precise and in fact different speakers of the same space may think of place differently (Kiesling 2011, 33).

In an earlier paper concerning linguistic contact and a sense of place, Eckert (2004, 109) similarly states: Different people in a given community will view the boundaries differently, use different parts of the community, and participate in the surroundings differently. These differences result in different patterns of contact, which have implications for linguistic influence.

It appears that regardless of how place is defined and understood by individuals, the sense of place is not necessarily tangible, but ideological (Johnstone 2004) and an “idealization of the physical” (Eckert 2004, 108). The concepts of space and place have been discussed in several sociolinguistic studies (cf. Britain 2002; 2009; 2010; Johnstone 2004; Eckert 2004; Kiesling 2011) and the aim of this volume is to highlight the saliency of accounting for these concepts and incorporating them into future studies by drawing on work from human geography, sociology, and cultural studies. In the 1960s and 70s, humanistic geographers (Lukerman 1964; Relph 1976) attempted to define the concept of place. The 1970s were also the time when spatial science was born, a time when generalizations could be made and laws were both universal and

Urban Variationist Sociolinguistics

45

applicable (Cresswell 2004). According to Cresswell (2004, 19), “the term space appeals to the nomothetic or generalizing impulse of science”. Within this framework of thinking, the notion of place simply became congruent with location. By the late 1970s, humanistic geographers (Tuan 1977; Buttimer/Seamon 1980; Relph 1976) became concerned with the concept of place by drawing on the philosophies of phenomenology and existentialism. Place was no longer regarded as a geographic locale, but concerned with a way of being-in-the-world (Cresswell 2004). This view meant conceptualizing place as meaningful and connected to subjective human experiences and individuals’ perceptions of the world (Relph 1976; Tuan 1977). For both Relph and Tuan, the notions of space and place were required for a suitable definition of each concept as Relph (1976, 8) states: Space is amorphous and intangible and not an entity that can be directly described and analyzed. Yet, however, we feel we explain space, there is nearly always some associated sense or concept of place. In general, it seems that space provides the concept for places but derives its meaning from particular places.

This view of place draws on phenomenology and thus human experiences of place. Concerned with the discovery of essences, the phenomenological approach to place asks what makes a place a place (Cresswell 2004). It is precisely the phenomenological approach to place that the sociolinguist Barbara Johnstone (2004) also draws on in her chapter entitled “Place, Globalization and Linguistic Variation”. In this chapter, Johnstone (2004) reexamines how sociolinguistic variation studies have been conceptualizing explanatory variables associated with place. In her call for implementing different methodological approaches into variationist studies, she advocates incorporating the concept of place as a physical location with a phenomenological perspective that draws on both geography and social theory (Johnstone 2004). This means that speakers are agents since place becomes constructed in how individuals experience physical and social space (Johnstone 2004). As a result, Johnstone maintains that “different speakers may orient to place, linguistically, in very different ways and for very different purposes” (Johnstone 2004, 66), thus adopting a humanistic geographical perspective in which both space and place are concepts that are socially constructed. An excellent table on how place has been conceptualized and viewed as location and meaning is provided in Johnstone’s (2004) chapter and included here in Tab. 1. The left-hand side represents how place is viewed and conceptualized as a physical location while the right-hand column represents place as meaningful and influenced by humanistic geography. Although the table is mainly based on Entrikin (1991), Johnstone has added her own examples from her work in Texas (1995; 1996; 1999) and drawn on other linguists (Schlegoff 1972) and social theorists (Giddens 1984).

46

Kellie Gonçalves

Tab. 1: Place as Location and Place as Meaning, from Johnstone (2004)

For Johnstone (2004), the field of sociolinguistics and studies on language variation more specifically could benefit methodologically by adopting humanistic geographic views of place as meaningful and connected to individuals’ experiences of place. This means paying attention to how people think about place and thus talk about place through their shared experiences and orientations (Johnstone 2004). The methods advocated are qualitative and include discourse analysis and ethnography. Such a methodology entails an analytical focus on the specifics and idiosyncratic rather than just quantifiable results and generalizations. This means that in addition to large-scale linguistic studies that correlate to particular social facts, an emphasis needs to be placed on knowledge of the local in order to better understand local meanings of linguistic variation (cf. Eckert 2004). For Johnstone (2004, 76), ethnography is not just a field

Urban Variationist Sociolinguistics

47

technique but “a perspective on the entire process of studying human behavior”. Furthermore, she states: Variationists who are interested in the local meanings of variation have to be willing to start with ethnography, using ethnographic research methods to decide what the possible explanatory variables might be in the first place, rather than starting with predefined (and presumably universally relevant) variables and bringing in ethnography only to explain surprising findings or statistical outliers (Johnstone 2004, 76).

Insight into local knowledge about how local meanings come about is key for understanding how certain variants are used or even stigmatized by different speakers. Johnstone (2004, 77) also advocates looking to discourse analysis “as a way to find out how variation comes to happen in any particular case and to see analyses of particular cases as crucial”. This entails understanding discourse as a process, which is not only the outcome of certain linguistic ideologies but part of the process that helps create these ideologies in the first place.

6 Conclusion Like language itself, the field of variationist sociolinguistics continues to experience change. While the ultimate goal of variationists has remained stable over the past fifty years in terms of uncovering the patterns of linguistic variability, pinpointing the external and internal constraints of the language system, and attempting to understand when and why variation exists among speakers, different theoretical frameworks and methodological tools have been and continue to be employed by scholars to address these kinds of questions. There is no doubt that early variationist studies done in urban centers set the scene for the kind of work variationists continue to carry out today, but we must bear in mind that linguistic variation is found everywhere, whether we look to urban centers, city suburbs, or rural villages. Variation is found among men, women, teenagers, and children of different ages and socio-economic classes depending on the context and type of social interaction they are engaged in. Correlating social facts with linguistic variables, however, no longer seems to be the only satisfactory explanation to variation (Johnstone 2004; Cameron 2009). Making distinctions between centers, borders, and peripheries are also becoming more challenging due to increased forms of mobility (Elliott/Urry 2010) and resulting linguistic contact experienced by individuals in the 21st century. The concepts of space and especially place (Britain 2009; 2010; 2012; Eckert 2004; Johnstone 2004; Kiesling 2011) need to be accounted for within variationist work since the social and geographic placement of the speaker is ultimately at the heart of sociolinguistic variation (Eckert 2004). This means that in addition to large-scale studies where social meaning has become lost and “confused with demographic correlations” (Eckert 2008, 454), an emphasis needs to be placed on local knowledge (Eckert 2000; 2004; 2008; Johnstone 2004) and individuals’ language

48

Kellie Gonçalves

attitudes (Johnstone 2004; Cameron 2009) in order to uncover who, when, why, and how variation emerges when it does. This entails merging the social with the linguistic (rather than viewing them as separate dimensions) and looking to different fields such as sociology and human geography to better comprehend how place is understood and socially constructed by individuals and more importantly, how being from or residing in a place can be indexed through language. As a result, language has to be understood as creating social reality while simultaneously reflecting it. In order for this to be done, social meaning needs to be accounted for within a theory of language. In addition, scholars need to adopt different methods of inquiry (whether ethnography, discourse analysis or both) in addition to traditional variationist methods. Doing so would allow for a more holistic approach to the field of variationist studies and aid our understanding of why certain linguistic forms are chosen, preferred, and used over others in particular sociolinguistic contexts and in a plethora of places.

7 References Abdel-Jawad, Hassan R. (1981): Lexical and phonological variation in spoken Arabic in Amman. Unpublished Dissertation. University of Pennsylvania, USA. Bailey, Guy/Tom Wikle/Jan Tillery (1997): The effect of methods on results in dialectology. In: English World-Wide 18, 35–63. Britain, David (1997): Dialect contact and phonological reallocation: Canadian raising in the English Fens. In: Language in Society 26, 15–46. Britain, David (2001): Welcome to East Anglia!: Two major dialect boundaries in the Fens. In: Jacek Fisiak/Peter Trudgill (eds.): East Anglian English. Woodbridge, 217–242. Britain, David (2002): Space and spatial diffusion. In: Jack Chambers/Peter Trudgill/Natalie SchillingEstes (eds.): The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Oxford, 603–637. Britain, David (2009): ‘Big bright lights’ versus ‘Green and pleasant land’? The Unhelpful Dichotomy of ‘Urban’ versus ‘Rural’ in Dialectology. In: Enam Al-Wer/Rudolf de Jong (eds.): Arabic Dialectology. Leiden/Boston, 223–243. Britain, David (2010): Language and space: The variationist approach. In: Peter Auer/Jürgen Erich Schmidt (eds.): Language and Space: An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation. Theories and methods, Vol 1. Berlin, 142–162. Britain, David (2012) Innovation diffusion in sociohistorical linguistics. In: J. M. Hernandez Campoy/J. C. Conde Silvestre (eds.): Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics. Oxford, 451–464. Buttimer, Anne/David Seamon (eds.) (1980): The Human Experience of Space and Place. New York. Cameron, Deborah (2009): Demythologizing sociolinguistics. In: Nikolas Coupland/Adam Jaworski (eds.): The New Sociolinguistics Reader. New York, 106–118. Cedegren, Henrietta (1973): The Interplay of Social and Linguistic Factors in Panama. Ithaca, NY. Chambers, Jack K./Peter Trudgill (1998): Dialectology. 2nd edition. Cambridge. Chomsky Noam/Morris Halle (1968): The Sound Pattern of English. New York. Cieri, Christopher (2005): Modeling phonological variation in multidialectal Italy. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, USA. Coupland, Nikolas (2007): Style: Language Variation and Identity. Cambridge.

Urban Variationist Sociolinguistics

49

Cresswell, Tim (2004): Place: A Short Introduction. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell. Davis, Lawrence M. (1990): Statistics in Dialectology. Tuscaloosa. Eckert, Penelope (1989): Jocks and Burnouts: Social Categories and Identity in the High School. New York. Eckert, Penelope (2000): Linguistic Variation as Social Practice. Oxford. Eckert, Penelope (2004): Variation and a sense of place. In: Carmen Fought (ed.): Sociolinguistic Variation: Critical Reflections. Oxford, 107–118. Eckert, Penelope (2008): Variation and the indexical field. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 12 (4), 453–476. Eckert, Penelope/Sally McConnell-Ginet (1992): Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. In: Annual Review of Anthropology 21, 461–490. Eckert, Penelope/John R. Rickford (eds.) (2001): Style and Sociolinguistic Variation. Cambridge. Elliott, Anthony/John Urry (2010): Mobile Lives. London/New York. Entrikin, J. Nicholas (1991): The Betweenness of Place: Towards a Geography of Modernity. Baltimore. Fridland, Valerie (1999): The southern shift in Memphis, Tennessee. In: Language Variation and Change 11, 267–285. Giddens, Anthony (1984): The Constitution of Society. Cambridge. Gregersen, Frans/Inge Lise Pedersen (eds.) (1991): The Copenhagen Study in Urban Sociolinguistics. Parts I and II. Copenhagen. Haeri, Niloofar (1996): The Sociolinguistic Market of Cairo: Gender, Class and Education. London. Hazen, Kirk (2000): Subject-verb concord in a post-insular dialect: The gradual persistence of dialect patterning. In: Journal of English Linguistics 28, 127–144. Hazen, Kirk (2007): The study of variation in historical perspective. In: Robert Bayley/Ceil Lucas (eds.): Sociolinguistic Variation: Theories, Methods, and Applications. Cambridge, 70–89. Hibiya, Junko (1988): A quantitative study of Tokyo Japanese. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, USA. Hong, Yunsook (1991): A Sociolinguistic Study of Seoul Korean. Seoul: Research Center for Peace and Unification of Korea. Horvarth, Barbara M. (1985): Variation in Australian English: The Sociolects of Sydney. Cambridge. Johnstone, Barbara (1995): Sociolinguistic Resources, Individual Identities and the Public Speech Styles of Texas Women. In: Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 5, 1–20. Johnstone, Barbara (1996): ‘Sounding Country’ in Urbanizing Texas: Private Speech in Public Discourse. In: Michigan Discussions in Anthropology 13, 315–320. Johnstone, Barbara (1999): Uses of southern speech by contemporary Texas women. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 3, 505–522. Johnstone, Barbara (2004): Place, Globalization and linguistic variation. In: Carmen Fought (ed.): Sociolinguistic Variation: Critical Reflections. Oxford, 65–83. Jones, M./Sali Tagliamonte (2004): From Somerset to Samana: pre-verbal did in the voyage of English. In: Language Variation and Change 16, 93–126. Kamwangamalu, Nkonko M. (2013): Rural-urban and south-north migrations and language maintenance and shift. In: International Journal of the Sociology of Language 222, 33–49. Kerswill, Paul/Ann Williams (1994): A new dialect in a new city: Children’s and adults’ speech in Milton Keynes. Final report to Economic and Social Research Council. Kiesling, Scott F. (2011): Linguistic Variation and Change. Edinburgh. Labov, William (1963): The social motivation of a sound change: In: Word 19, 237–309. Labov, William (1966): The Social Stratification of English in New York. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics. Labov, Willlian (1972a): Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia. Labov, William (1972b): Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia.

50

Kellie Gonçalves

Labov, William (1982): Building on empirical foundations. In: Winfred P. Lehmann/Yakov Malkiel (eds.): Perspectives on Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam, 17–92. Labov, William (1984): Field methods of the project on linguistic change and variation. In: John Baugh/Joel Sherzer (eds.): Language and Use: Readings in Sociolinguistics. Englewood Cliffs, 28–53. Labov, William (1994): Principles of Linguistic Change: Internal Factors. New York. Labov, William (2006): The Social Stratification of English in New York City. 2nd edition. Cambridge/ New York. Lavandera, Beatriz R (1978): Where does the sociolinguistic variable stop? In: Language in Society 7 (2), 171–183. Lefebvre, Henri (1991): The Production of Space. Oxford. Lukerman, Fred (1964): Geography as a formal intellectual discipline and the way in which it contributes to human knowledge. In: Canadian Geographer 8, 167–172. Macaulay, R.K.S./George Trevelyan (1973): Language, Education and Employment in Glasgow. Final report to the SSRC. McNair, Elizabeth D. (2005): Mill villagers and farmers: Dialect and economics in a small southern town. In: Publication of the American Dialect Society 90. Durham, NC. Milroy, James (1992): Linguistic Variation and Change. Oxford. Milroy, Lesley (1980): Language and Social Networks. Oxford. Milroy, Lesley/Matthew Gordon (2003): Sociolinguistics: Methods and Interpretations. Malden/ Oxford. Modaressi, Yahya (1978): A sociolinguistic investigation of modern Persian. Dissertation, University of Kansas, USA. Nichols, Patricia C. (1977): A sociolinguistic perspective on reading and black children. In: Language Arts 54, 150–167. Pahl, Ray E. (1966): The urban-rural continuum. In: Sociologia Ruralis, 299–329. Patrick, Peter L. (2004): The speech community. In: Jack Chambers/Peter Trudgill/Natalie Schilling-Estes (eds.): The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Oxford, 573–597. Piercy, Caroline (2011): Merged or split? Variation and change in the TRAP and BATH vowels in Dorset. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 17 (2): 155–164. Plichta, Bartek/Dennis R. Preston/Brad Rakerd (2005): Did you say sod or sad? Speaker cues and hearer identity in vowel perception in an area of ongoing change. Paper presented at Methods XII: International Conference on Methods in Dialectology. Moncton, NB. Relph, Edward (1976): Place and Placelessness. London. Rickford, John R. (1980): Language attitudes in a creole continuum. Paper presented at the Annual fleeting of the Linguistic Society, of America (San Antonio, TX, December 29, 1980) Sankoff, Gillian/Henrietta Cedergren (1972): Sociolinguistic research on French in Montréal. In: Language in Society 1, 173–174. Sankoff, Gilian (1974): A quantitative paradigm for the study of communicative competence. In: Richard Bauman/Joel Sherzer (eds.): Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking. Cambridge, 18–49. Sankoff, David (1988): Sociolinguistics and syntactic variation. In: Frederick J. Newmeyer (ed.): Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey. Cambridge, 140–161. Schilling-Estes, Natalie (2002): On the nature of insular and post-insular dialects: Innovation, variation, and differentiation. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 6, 64–85. Schilling-Estes, Natalie (2007): Sociolinguistic fieldwork. In: Robert Bayley/Ceil Lucas (eds.): Sociolinguistic Variation: Theories, Methods, and Applications. Cambridge, 165–189.

Urban Variationist Sociolinguistics

51

Schilling-Estes, Natalie/Walt Wolfram (1999): Alternative models of dialect death: Dissipation vs. Concentration. In: Language 75, 486–521. Schlegoff, Emmanuel (1972): Notes on a Conversational Practice: Formulating Place. In: David Sudnow (ed.): Studies in Social Interaction. New York, 75–119. Shuy, Roger/Walt Wolfram/William Riley (1967): Linguistic correlates of social stratification in Detroit speech. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics. Tagliamonte, Sali (2012): Variationist Sociolinguistics: Change, Observation, Interpretation. Malden/ Oxford. Tagliamonte, Sali (2013): Analysing and interpreting variation in the sociolinguistic tradition. In: Manfred Krug/Julia Schlueter (eds.): Research Methods in Language Variation and Change. Cambridge, 382–401. Tagliamonte, Sali/Jennifer Smith (2002): Either it isn’t or it’s not: NEG/AUX contraction in British dialects. In: English World-Wide 23, 251–281. Tagliamonte, Sali/Jennnifer Smith (2005): No momentary fancy! The zero complementizer in English dialects. In: English Language and Linguistics 9, 1–12. Tagliamonte, Sali/Alexandra D’arcy (2007): Frequency and variation in the community grammar: Tracking a new change through the generations. In: Language Variation and Change 19, 199–217. Thomas, Eric R. (2001): An acoustic analysis of vowel variation in New World English. In: Publication of the American Dialect Society 85. Durham, NC. Trudgill, Peter (1974): The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge. Tuan, Yi-Fu (1977): Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis. Weinreich, Ulrich/William Labov/Marvin I. Herzog (1968): Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In: Winfred P. Lehmann/Yakov Malkiel (eds.): Directions for Historical Linguistics. Austin, 95–195. Wirth, Louis (1938): Urbanism as a way of life. In: American Journal of Sociology 44, 46–63. Wolfram, Walt (2002): Language death and dying. In: Jack Chambers/Peter Trudgill/Natalie SchillingEstes (eds.): The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Oxford, 764–787. Wolfram, Walt/Ralph W. Fasold (1974): Field methods in the study of social dialects. In: Walt Wolfram/ Ralph W. Fasold (eds.): The Study of Social Dialects in American English. Englewood Cliffs, 36–72. Wolfram, Walt/Natalie Schilling-Estes (1995): Moribund dialects and the language of endangerment canon: The case of Ocracoke Brogue. In: Language 71, 696–721. Wolfson, Nessa (1976): Speech events and natural speech: Some implications for sociolinguistic methodology. In: Language and Society 5, 189–209.

David Britain

2. ‘Rural’ and ‘Urban’ in Dialectology Abstract: In this chapter, I present an account of the range of views expressed in the literature on the role of the urban/rural distinction as it applies to research in sociolinguistically oriented work on language variation.1 Ideologies of the city and the countryside are examined as well as differences between the two. Geographical approaches to urbanity and rurality are considered in addition to traditional dialectologist and variationist sociolinguistic perspectives. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Introduction ‘Seeing’ the urban, ‘seeing’ the rural: Ideologies in action Urban and rural as distinct and explanatory categories in sociolinguistics Rural and urban in traditional dialectology and variationist sociolinguistics Geographers on urban and rural So what? References

1 Introduction The distinction between urban and rural is a socially salient one – people have remarkably strong views about what constitutes the urban, what constitutes the rural, and what the differences between the two are. A good number of ideologies have emerged over time which shape the way we perceive, understand, and speak about the city and the countryside. This distinction has also long been salient in dialectology. Much earlier, ‘traditional’, dialectological work very explicitly focussed on rural speakers, so-called NORMs (Chambers/Trudgill 1980), because they were deemed to be the repositories of the most sheltered, traditional, authentic, and distinctive nonstandard varieties, untainted by the change-inducing contact prevalent in the city. Later, variationist sociolinguistic approaches to dialectology focussed much more on cities, since they were deemed to be much more socially ‘complex’ communities, and

1 This chapter is the culmination of a decade of work considering the interface of, on the one hand, notions of the city and the countryside and, on the other, research in dialectology and on language change (see also Britain 2009; 2012; 2017 for more detailed work in this domain). In doing so, I have also been able to glimpse inside the world of language ideologies. Swiss National Science Foundation project ‘Contact, mobility and authenticity: language ideologies in koineisation and creolisation’ (2013–2016) has given me the chance to explore these connections further. I’d like to thank the following people who have shaped my thinking about these questions in various ways: Enam Al-Wer, Peter Auer, Beatrix Busse, Kellie Gonçalves, Clive Holes, Christoph Neuenschwander, Dimitris Papazachariou, Crispin Thurlow, Laura Tresch and Ingo Warnke. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-003

‘Rural’ and ‘Urban’ in Dialectology

53

therein the orderly heterogeneity of the speech community could be better demonstrated. In presenting this account, I wish to cover a number of themes relevant to evaluating the role these concepts play and their usefulness in dialectology. Throughout I demonstrate the importance of ideologies of the city and the countryside. Such ideologies, I will show, are important because they set the scene for the way people, including academic linguists, conceptualise, write about, and see both the city and the countryside. I begin, therefore, with a brief perspective on ideologies of the urban and the rural, before reviewing work which has proposed that there is an explanatory distinction in the roles of urban and rural, and that linguistic change in urban areas is typologically distinct from that in rural areas. Such approaches, especially prevalent in work in French and Maghreb sociolinguistics, claim that cities produce unique, specific, distinctive types of linguistic change that do not occur elsewhere. Other similar dialectological work has used rurality and urbanity as explanatory of different kinds of lifestyle which correlate with the use of linguistic variables (see also Britain 2009; 2012). While not adhering to the view that the urban or the rural represent explanatorily distinct categories, a good deal of dialectology, both traditional and variationist, has focussed its attentions in one or the other site, drawing upon the ideologies we have about the countryside and the city as justifications for those choices of settings. I will examine, then, how both traditional dialectology’s focus on the countryside and the concentration in variationist sociolinguistics on the city reflects commonly held ideologies about these sites and the differences between the two (see Britain 2017). In a good deal of dialectological practice, therefore, rural and urban are treated as productively distinct categories. Human geographers, are, however, much more sceptical about the nature of the differences between urban and rural to the extent that many argue that the distinction is “fruitless” (Pahl 1966, 302) and “a category of thought” (Woods 2011, 9). I therefore consider the debate within the human geographical literature on the nature of the rural/urban divide and what the two categories buy us. I conclude by arguing that the rural-urban distinction is unproductive as a category that can explain language change in itself but is important because of the circulating metalinguistic discourses that create and reinforce public perceptions of rurality and urbanity (see also Britain 2017).

2 ‘Seeing’ the urban, ‘seeing’ the rural: Ideologies in action Strong and clear images are provoked when we think about the countryside and the city. These images are context-dependent and historically contingent, however – at different times and in different places, people conceive of these spaces differently.

54

David Britain

Whereas in southern England2, images of the countryside, for example, are often of a tranquil, scenic vista of rolling green countryside and small quaint villages, in Canada, the image is often of a much harsher, bleaker, colder, more dangerous bear-filled terrain. Our perceptions of town and country do not of course occur in a void and are substantially shaped by a range of circulating discourses – public, institutional, cultural, and mediated. These discourses are often used to present partial images of the city – as dynamic, forward-thinking, cutting-edge, modern, ‘where it is all happening’ or dirty, dangerous, drug-fuelled, crowded, littered – or of the countryside – as authentic, traditional, quaint, safe, quiet, wholesome or dull, boring, backward, uncultured, xenophobic, etc. One of the more salient ideologies associated with the countryside in England, for example, is that of the rural idyll – an ideology that sees the countryside as embodying a landscape and a community that is tranquil, quiet, conservative, stable, uncomplicated, natural, unspoilt, but fragile, vulnerable, and in need of protection from the physical and cultural advances of the encroaching city. Much has been written about this rural idyll (see Woods 2011), and some have argued that this particular ideology is one that is constructed, generated, and reproduced outside of rural areas, by city, town, and suburb-dwellers – what Bunce (1994) calls the armchair countryside. Another pervasive ideology of the rural, and in some ways interconnected with the rural idyll, is of it being anti-modern (see Shirley 2016). Lowenthal (1994) suggests that a number of interlinked rhetorical strategies are deployed to construct the way the English countryside is conceived and understood, including artifice, stability, and order. Artifice refers to the ways in which the countryside is stewarded and maintained in a particular fashion in order to preserve a stereotypical look, and to authenticate a particular vision of the landscape. Stability is an essential element of the antimodern ideology, despite the many social and economic changes endured by the countryside over the past century. Lowenthal argues that the decline of agriculture as an employer and the increasing middle-classing of the (especially Southern) English countryside has increased the importance of tourism as one of the main contributors to the rural economy. Given ideologies of the countryside as stable, traditional and conservative, tourism has succeeded economically by “heritagising” the rural (Lowenthal called it a “vast museumised ruin” (1994, 24)), and, through processes of artifice, by protecting the image of the countryside from the dramatic economic changes which have inflicted it in recent modern times. Once stability is created, it has to be protected, alarm bells raised when it is threatened, and therefore the artifice of stability has to be maintained and defended through official institutions and legal regulation. Williams (1993, 297) argued that “the common image of the country is now an im2 My examples here derive mostly from England, and I make no claims here that these same ideologies apply in other countries – in fact I assume they are different everywhere, shaped by different social, historical, economic, political, and ideological forces. I invite others then to consider how ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ intersect with language and dialect elsewhere.

‘Rural’ and ‘Urban’ in Dialectology

55

age of the past”. Edensor (2002) notes just how few signs of modernity are present in commonly circulated images of the rural, how few cars, how few TV aerials, how few young adults or non-white locals. Images and ideologies of country (and town) of this kind are also used to sell – to sell tourist experiences, city breaks, weekends in the country, second homes, renovated barns and schools and churches as dwellings, yes, but further to sell products that acquire value because of their association with the image of the country, such as organic ‘local’ food, jams and pickles, rare-breed meat, waxed jackets, and so on, which use stereotypically rural themes in their branding and advertising. Karrebæk/ Maegaard (2015), for example, present wonderful examples of how an authentic rurality is constructed (partly around dialect) and commodified to sell both a Danish island vineyard tour and dinner in a high-end Copenhagen restaurant. Phillips/Fish/Agg (2001) discuss the enduring popularity of TV dramas set in the countryside, and the ways they portray country life to the largely urban viewing public. Series such as Last of the Summer Wine (which was the longest running sit-com in the world), Vicar of Dibley, Heartbeat and Peak Practice, as well as TV home-moving advice shows such as Escape to the Country are extremely widely viewed, but present, some have argued, “a stylised and exaggerated version of the rural that is detached from the everyday material experience of rural life” (Woods 2011, 36), with many series makers “guilty of sugar-coating and disguising the realities of rural environments” (James 1991, 28). One especially popular series was Midsomer Murders, known in many countries as Inspector Barnaby. Despite a homicide rate well in excess of that of London, Inspector Barnaby always manages, in the series, to squeeze in a game of cricket or a cream tea at the village fête between solving the weekly spate of murders. The actor who long played the role of Inspector Barnaby, John Nettles, was interviewed in Spring 2014, by the German magazine Tweed: das Magazin für den britischen Lebensstil (“the magazine for British lifestyle”). In the interview, he discussed the appeal of the programme: Bei den meisten Fernseh-Kommissaren läuft irgendetwas falsch, sie haben ein Alkohol- oder Drogenproblem, oder sie haben irgendwelche anderen Schwierigkeiten. Das scheint einen Teil der Attraktivität auszumachen. Aber Tom Barnaby ist im Gegensatz dazu ganz gewöhnlich und vollkommen intakt. Er liebt seine Frau und seine Tochter, hat keine Probleme mit seinen Kollegen. Er fährt ein anständiges Auto, wohnt in einem hübschen Haus, er ist einfach ein konservativer englischer Gentleman…oft sieht man im Fernsehen eine alte Kirche oder ein tolles Landhaus in einem kleinen Dorf, aber wenn man die Kamera umdrehen würde, dann wäre da die M40 mit ihrem Verkehr und oben fliegen die Jets von und nach Heathrow ziemlich verrückt (Tweed, February/March 2014, 19, 21–22).3

3 “Most TV cops have got some sort of problem, whether it be alcohol or drugs or some other issue. That seems to be part of what makes them appealing. Tom Barnaby, on the other hand, is quite normal and fully together. He loves his wife and daughter and gets on fine with his colleagues. He drives a decent car, lives in a pretty house, he is quite simply a conservative English gentleman…. On the TV you

56

David Britain

Here, and elsewhere in the media, the rural is presented as idyllic, calm, ordered. Note the artifice, stability, and order, mentioned earlier, deployed to create this anti-modern image of the countryside. In Midsomer Murders, only the exceptionally high (and of course fictional) murder rate disturbs the everyday conservative tranquillity and routine of Inspector Barnaby’s world. Woods (2011) argues that it is largely through mediatised images of the countryside, however, that many people come to know the rural, and judge actual rural communities they encounter against what is portrayed on their screens. Importantly, also, the media play a very important role in the intergenerational transmission of such ideologies of the rural through portraits of the countryside in programmes designed for young children, such as Postman Pat (Horton 2008a; 2008b) and In the Night Garden, both extremely popular in the UK and widely distributed beyond. The rural idyll is a dominant ideology of English culture, but not the only one attached to rurality, as we will see. It is important to be reminded at this point also, as mentioned earlier, that such ideologies are contextually dependent and no claim is being made here that similar ideologies apply elsewhere. The aim is simply to demonstrate how circulating ideologies can create a particularly formulated image of the countryside. I have demonstrated elsewhere (Britain 2017) how salient rural dialect stereotypes are regularly deployed in such televisual renderings of the countryside, not only in drama series but also in comedies and advertisements. Especially enregistered in this way in southern England is rhoticity, the use of [r] in non-prevocalic contexts, an obsolescing characteristic of the varieties of English spoken in the south-west of the country. On TV, southern rural characters, especially old ones, especially rather uneducated ‘simple’ ones, are routinely portrayed with rhotic accents, whether or not they come from the part of England where rhoticity can still be found. In these projections, a traditional, conservative, bygone dialect feature is typically used by old and the less educated characters to craft an image of a perceived traditional, conservative, uncomplicated, bygone community. Discourses of rurality such as these, broadcast regularly into people’s living rooms, strongly shape how people see, and, it seems, hear, the countryside. The way we see and interpret cities is constructed in similar ways to that of the countryside, through what Phillips/Fish/Agg (2001) have called a circuit of the emergence, circulation, and reproduction of ideological discourses. Hubbard (2007) suggests that in England there are two competing dominant ideologies shaping the way we see the city. One more liberal ideology portrays the city as vibrant, cultured, creative, diverse, tolerant, edgy, entrepreneurial, connected, cosmopolitan, innovative, cutting edge, where all the action is (Britain 2017). To these more positive characteris-

often see an old church or a fantastic country house in a small village, but if the camera were to be turned around, then you’d see the traffic on the M40 and jet planes rather crazily flying in and out of Heathrow” (my translation).

‘Rural’ and ‘Urban’ in Dialectology

57

tics, Hubbard (2007, 66) adds the ideology of the city as a cultural meeting point. This, he says, valorises the very size of the city as providing opportunities for variety, social mixing and vibrant encounters between very different social groups. Because of this, the city may be seen as having a radical potential where it is possible to challenge entrenched order.

This perspective on the buzzy city of culture, social diversity, and creativity is enhanced by comparisons with the “ignorant and brutish yokel”, and with “isolationist and technophobic” ruralites (Hubbard 2007, 64). These more modern, hip, edgy, creative, dynamic tropes associated with the city are readily commodified, as businesses seek to exploit the indexical power of urban as a positive semiotic tool. Fig. 1–4 present a few of these, where the lexeme urban is deployed to give a cool marketing edge to bottles, fruit, cosmetics, and a delicatessen.

Fig. 1: Urban as lexical commodity (Photo: David Britain).

58

David Britain

Fig. 2: Urban as lexical commodity (Photo: David Britain).

Fig. 3: Urban as lexical commodity (Photo: David Britain).

Fig. 4: Urban as lexical commodity (Photo: David Britain).

‘Rural’ and ‘Urban’ in Dialectology

59

This vision of the liberal, energised city contrasts strongly, then, with that of the rural idyll, and also helps feed ideologies of the countryside as backward, ignorant, dull, xenophobic, uncultured, and unrefined, conservative, with poverty of aspiration and ambition. Another ideology of the city is a more negative view that sees it as “a nadir of human civility” and “associated with sin and immorality, with a movement away from traditional order and mutual values” (Hubbard 2007, 60), with ugliness, decay, dirt, alienation, criminality, disorder, and a lack of belonging (Britain 2017). It is an ideology that is supported by that of the rural idyll that presents the countryside as the safe haven to escape from urban woe. Once again, we can see that media portrayals of the city help reproduce these ideologies. On the one hand, it is not hard to find representations of anti-urbanism. Hubbard (2007) reminds us that the chaos and lawlessness of some cities can only be contained by cinematic superheroes such as Batman, Spiderman, or the Incredibles. On the other hand, there are many media portrayals that show the city as a lively, frenetic but ultimately sociable place, such as Sex in the city, How I met your mother, and Friends (Britain 2017). So strong are the ideologies of rural and urban that many geographers see these concepts as mere constructions. Woods (2011, 9), for example, has argued that rurality is understood as a social construct … an imagined entity that is brought into being by particular discourses of rurality that are produced, reproduced and contested by academics, the media, policy makers, rural lobby groups and ordinary individuals.

One could say the same for the city. We return later to the idea of the rural and urban as constructs, but now move on to examine how such views of the city and the country have shaped the examination of language variation in these sites.

3 Urban and rural as distinct and explanatory categories in sociolinguistics Perhaps not surprisingly, given the distinct images of the city and the countryside that circulate and have been circulating for centuries, many endow the categories urban and rural with distinctive and explanatory powers. In some sociolinguistic traditions, it has, for example, been argued that there are certain types of linguistic change that are unique to cities. The term linguistic urbanisation (urbanisation linguistique) has been coined to denote the process by which these changes take place. Calvet (1994, 15, my emphasis), for example, argues that the convergence de migrants vers la cité a sa contrepartie linguistique (1994, 10) [...] la ville produit aussi des formes linguistiques spécifiques, des parlers urbains (1994, 13) [...] La sociolinguistique

60

David Britain

urbaine ne peut pas se contenter d’étudier des situations urbaines, elle doit dégager ce que ces situations ont de spécifique, et donc construire une approche spécifique de ces situations.4

He goes on to argue that the city is both a centripetal and a centrifugal force, on the one hand causing linguistic differences to “melt away” (1994, 62), helping engender local vernacular varieties, but, on the other hand, acting to separate and divide different groups. What are, then, these specific linguistic forms (see Bulot 1999, 16) that are characteristic of urban dialects? Calvet points to a number of types of change characteristic of urbanisation linguistique: – Semantic transparency (1994, 64), where opaque forms are replaced by semantically motivated periphrastic constructions; – The systematic elimination of redundant grammatical markers (1994, 64); – The adoption of ‘neutral’ forms (1994, 65) – Traditional language attitudes are replaced by ‘a new identity’ (1994, 67) In support of their claims about linguistic urbanisation, Calvet and others use demographic generalisations, such as that “la ville est le but des migrations” (1994, 8), “partout les ruraux se précipitent vers les fausses promesses de la cité, vers ses lumières, vers l’espoir d’un travail plus lucrative” (1994, 10), “l’urbanité signifie une accélération des processus de vie, de la mobilité des individus…et d’une nouvelle differenciation sociale” (Erfurt 1999, 9).5 I have argued elsewhere (e.g. Britain 2009) that I find this approach flawed. Nobody would argue that cities cannot be sites of dramatic and ongoing demographic upheaval, and that, as a consequence, there are sometimes dramatic linguistic consequences of such population churn. But the linguistic processes they note as being special and particular to the city have nothing to do with the city, per se, but a lot to do with the effects of language and dialect contact – indeed these linguistic and sociolinguistic characteristics are typical of dialect contact situations (e.g. Trudgill 1986). The important point to make here though is the fact that these same linguistic outcomes are typical of dialect contact which takes place in the very most remote and rural locations too. Britain/Matsumoto/Prompapakorn (in press) provide examples of linguistic 4 “The convergence of migrants on the city has linguistic consequences…the city also produces specific linguistic forms, urban dialects… Urban sociolinguistics cannot be content to study urban contexts, it must tease out what is specific about these contexts and build a specific approach to these contexts” (my translation and emphasis). 5 “The city is the target of migration…everywhere, rural people are rushing towards the false promises of the city, towards its lights, towards the hope of more lucrative employment … urbanness means an acceleration of daily life, of individual mobility and of new social differentiation” (my translation). Later, Calvet (2002, 49) became less extreme in this view, suggesting instead that the city “constitue un terrain privilégié” (‘constitutes a privileged terrain’) for the sociolinguist, and moved instead towards an approach that considered linguistic spaces as being shaped by practice, along the same lines as much other scholarship in this area.

‘Rural’ and ‘Urban’ in Dialectology

61

processes such as those listed above shaping change as a result of dialect contact in the rural Fenlands of Eastern England, small Micronesian islands in the Northern Pacific, and in the Thai rainforest. Britain (2009) also points to such change in the isolated and extremely sparsely populated Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. And there are many more examples. Such contact-induced change may well be most intensive and most visible in the city, but it is not confined to an urban context. Unconnected, but in many ways related to the approach of the French linguistic urbanisationists, Pedersen (1994) proposed the idea of examining how language choice might be shaped by ‘mental urbanisation’, how language might correlate with urban patterns of behaviour and ways of living that extended beyond physical urbanisation. Marshall (2004) adopted this view and operationalised it empirically in a study of variation and change in the Highland Scottish village of Huntly. He suggests (Marshall 2004, 41) that this mental urbanisation emerges through exposure to cities (in this case Aberdeen) enabled by transportation connections. “Their earlier conceptions of cities and their inhabitants may change as a result of this mobility”, he argues, and they may become less resistant to the social behaviour patterns emanating from the city. The resulting process of mental urbanisation may mean that the individual becomes less resistant to urban speech norms, and even comes to favour them over local norms, which may take on increased connotations of rural backwardness.

He goes on, then, to define two distinctive life modes, a rural one and an urban one. The rural is characterised by involvement in agriculture, a lack of a sharp distinction between work and leisure, the desire to pass on employment to the next generation, kinship ties in the locality, local orientation of leisure, with a family ideology of mutual responsibility, endurance, independence, co-operation. Urban life modes, on the other hand, are tied to industrial production, with work detached physically and emotionally from family life, and with workers acting in solidarity with colleagues against bosses. Child-minding and food production are delegated to others (Marshall 2004). These sharply distinct categorisations are highly reminiscent both of Tönnies’s (1887) prototypical Gemeinschaft (community) versus Gesellschaft (society) distinction, often indexically linked with rural and urban respectively, and later the work of Wirth (1938) who argued that urbanism represented a distinctive way of life. To operationalise this distinction in his empirical study of language variation, Marshall uses a questionnaire, containing 10 statements to which subjects are asked to express degrees of agreement on a simple Likert scale. High mental urbanisation is signalled by, for example, keeping up with city fashion, watching TV programmes on city life and avoiding environmental programmes, owning a PC, wishing to move to the city, preferring “modern international” food, having modern appliances in the home, and preferring shopping and playing computer games over going for a hike in the mountains. Low mental urbanisation is signalled by the reverse of these traits (2004, 112). Scores on this index were found to correlate with people’s variable language use – the lower the mental urbanisation index, the more likely speakers would

62

David Britain

themselves use traditional rather than Aberdeen dialect forms. But Marshall also finds that mental urbanisation scores correlate with age (higher mental urbanisation = younger) and class (higher mental urbanisation = higher class). The question remains, to what extent ‘mental urbanisation’ is measuring anything necessarily tied to urbanness. What is urban about liking a curry or owning a PC? More critical scholars have charged such approaches as representing a “vulgar Tönnies-ism” (e.g. Hofstee 1960).

4 Rural and urban in traditional dialectology and variationist sociolinguistics Traditional dialectology warmly embraced both the anti-modernity ideologies of the rural, as well as perceptions of the urban as dynamic, diverse, and detrimental to the persistence and transmission of dialect. Variationist sociolinguistics (which has largely replaced it in the Anglophone tradition) saw these aspects of the urban as one of the very motivations to study the city and abandon the countryside. In a sense, they share a set of ideological positions which, because of their goals, led them each to focus on one or the other setting – two sides of the same ideological coin (see Britain 2009; 2012; 2017). Traditional dialectology had a historicist agenda to examine the oldest kind of traditional vernacular…which would demonstrate the continuity and historical development of the language and also serve as a historical baseline against which future studies could be measured (Orton/Sanderson/Widdowson 1978, ii).

The perception of the rural as conservative, traditional, nostalgic, simple, peaceful, unadulterated led the countryside to appear especially appealing to the traditional dialectologists seeking to, in the words of Ellis (1889, 92, author emphasis), determine with considerable accuracy the different forms now or within the last hundred years … in passing through the mouths of uneducated people, speaking an inherited language, in all parts of Great Britain where English is the ordinary medium of communication between peasant and peasant.

Much (but not all, e.g. Ellis 1889) traditional dialectological research before the arrival of variationism tended to concentrate on rural areas because it was felt that there they would be more likely to find the traditional vernacular, untainted by the dialect-deleterious dynamism of the city. In the mid-20th-century Survey of English Dialects (SED), preference was given to agricultural communities that had had a fairly stable population of about five hundred inhabitants for a century or so … newly built up locations were always avoided (Orton/Dieth 1962– 1971, 15).

‘Rural’ and ‘Urban’ in Dialectology

63

The SED avoided urban locations and sought a very specific sort of informant: The kind of dialect chosen for study was that normally spoken by elderly speakers of sixty years of age or over belonging to the same social class in rural communities, and in particular by those who were, or had formerly been, employed in farming, for it is amongst the rural populations that the traditional types of vernacular English are best preserved to-day …. Great care was taken in choosing the informants. Very rarely were they below the age of sixty. They were mostly men: in this country men speak vernacular more frequently, more consistently and more genuinely than women…dialect speakers whose residence in the locality had been interrupted by significant absences were constantly regarded with suspicion (Orton/Dieth 1962, 14–16).

The artifice implicated in this anti-modernist agenda is reiterated in the explicit expunging of any diversity in the sample, as indicated in the quote above. The focus on NORMs – non-mobile old rural men – as suitable informants for dialect investigations generally and the ensuing portraits of rural dialect variation as socially homogeneous but geographically highly differentiated helped feed not only ideologies (including academic ideologies) of rural dialects as highly localised but also of rural locations as sociolinguistically infertile, as hyper-conservative, and as static. Note the association of informants they deem authentic with many of the anti-modernity ideologies of rurality – associations with agriculture, stability, fragility in the face of urban incursion, the traditional. While the types of informants they sought are clearly defined, the extent to which they were able to realise these aims, of course, is another matter. Rural areas during the data collection for the SED, for example, were undergoing quite dramatic demographic change as counterurbanisation – a net population shift out of cities into the countryside – became more significant, as the overwhelming dominance of agriculture in the rural economy began to decline and as commuting and car ownership increased, especially in rural areas. And although many agricultural workers were exempt from military service after the Second World War – agriculture was deemed an ‘essential service’ in the reconstruction process – the SED Basic Materials reveal that many of the SED informants had military experience during World War I, an experience we know to be a significant dialect leveller. This monocultural, fixed, ‘looking to the past rather than the future’ approach to dialectology was one of the triggers for variationism from the 1960s onwards. From this moment on, academic dialectology moved to the city, and has largely stayed there since, especially in Anglo dialectology, despite the salience of the variationist rural work, for example, by Walt Wolfram, Natalie Schilling, and their associates investigating rural communities of the eastern coast of North Carolina and Maryland and the work of Tagliamonte and colleagues investigating relatively isolated British communities. The variationist fascination with the urban is not surprising. Given that one of the central aims of early variationist theory building was to uncover the structured heterogeneity of the speech community (Weinreich/Labov/Herzog 1968), finding order ‘where it’s all happening’, in the hustle and bustle, the bright lights, and the ap-

64

David Britain

parent disorder of the big city was always going to make for a more dramatic and powerful demonstration of the validity of the variationist enterprise than the evidence from a few unrepresentative old men in the deep countryside. As the discipline attempted to embrace social diversity, the population sample diversified to include younger adults (but children only later…), women, socio-economic class differences, and non-local ethnic groups. This work was clearly highly insightful and enabled us to learn more about the social and linguistic embedding of language change in ways that had been inconceivable before, about how changes spread through social groups, about the outcomes of contact, and about the factors that help maintain difference. But the dominance of cities in variationism – indeed at one time the discipline was known as ‘urban sociolinguistics’ – is nevertheless intriguing for a number of reasons. Firstly, when we look more closely at urban dialectological studies, the layers of social diversity examined are often rather limited (Britain 2009). Variationism as we know it today, let us not forget, began in the countryside with Labov’s study of Martha’s Vineyard (1972), a study that in many ways has weathered better over time than his much more extensive research on the Lower East Side of New York City presented in the Social Stratification of English in New York City (Labov [1966] 2006). In contrasting the two, he argued that New York City represented “a much more complex society” (Labov [1966] 2006, 3) than Martha’s Vineyard. His large study of New York, however, distilled the diversity down to the variables of age, class, ethnicity, and gender, factors, which, as is made very clear (Labov 1972) are also some (but not all) of the key pivots of social diversity in Martha’s Vineyard too. In this largely rural community, residents of Portuguese, Native American and other miscellaneous ethnicities make up half if not more of the population (Labov 1972), alongside a small resident population originally from the Mainland and the large numbers of tourists who arrive each summer. Furthermore, these populations are not distributed geographically evenly across the island, and are engaged in a range of different economic activities. As the results of Labov’s analysis showed, the community showed considerable sociolinguistic diversity with respect to age, location, occupation, ethnicity, orientation towards the island, and desire to stay or leave (1972). In terms of social and linguistic structure, Martha’s Vineyard hardly fits the sleepy stable pastoral stereotype, as he so succinctly showed. By contrasting a highly rural area with a highly urban one, Labov actually demonstrated that there are large-scale social(-linguistic) processes which are perhaps most obviously and vividly expressed in cities but are not confined politically, sociologically, or epistemologically to an urban context – language change is mediated by social factors in intimate and complex ways, wherever it takes place. Secondly, variationism lost, for quite some time, its interest in geographical diversity. Since other social factors seemed more pressing than geography at the time – class, ethnicity, gender – spatial variation within the city was largely ignored. Labov’s ([1966] 2006) study of ‘New York City’, for example, was actually a study of just the

‘Rural’ and ‘Urban’ in Dialectology

65

Lower East Side of NYC and, even then, only a part of it (Labov [1996] 2006). So, space was carefully controlled out of the study, and spatial variation within the neighbourhood (let alone within the city) itself not examined. This was not unusual for its time, since a good deal of the social sciences in the 1960s and 1970s, to cite Doreen Massey (1984, 4) continued to function, by and large, as though the world operated, and society existed, on the head of a pin, in a spaceless, geographically undifferentiated world.

Few social dialectological studies of cities opened the urban area up for a closer investigation of its internal geographical diversity (see Trudgill 1974; Milroy 1987). Thirdly, while the diversity of the city was celebrated in variationist sociolinguistics, there were nevertheless limits. In most studies of the first few decades of variationism, non-natives, late arrivals to the community, and mobile people were excluded, as they had been in traditional dialectology, so despite the attraction of finding order in the messiness of the city, a lot of that messiness was sidelined (see Britain 2009; 2012; 2016). The urban focus in variationist dialectology has had further consequences: – The view of urban as innovative, dynamic, and inventive (and rural as conservative, static, and backward-looking) has strongly shaped models of geolinguistic innovation diffusion. Assumptions are made that the city is the source, generator, and projector of change, and that the countryside is the last to ‘benefit’ from this change as it spreads. But since there are so few variationist studies conducted in rural areas, we are not able to confirm this passive, recipient role of the countryside. Indeed, some research has demonstrated that in the right circumstances, for example as a result of contact, innovations can emerge and embed in rural areas too (see Britain 1997; Trudgill 1983). – The view of the city as a diverse and vibrant melting-pot has certainly very strongly shaped variationist examinations of multiethnolects, though, as we saw in the case of New York earlier, diversity is often (understandably) simplified for the purposes of empirical analysis. Sociolinguistic research under the label superdiversity (note the use of the mostly positive prefix super-) is, too, confined to urban locales, despite many rural locations meeting the definitional criteria of superdiversity (Britain 2016; 2017). – Cities are often seen as “par excellence’ places of contact and heterogeneity” (Miller 2007, 1), associated with change-inducing weak social network ties. Yet many social network analyses that have demonstrated the local norm enforcement power of strong multiplex social networks have been carried out in urban areas – Reading (Cheshire 1982), Belfast (Milroy 1987), Brazlandia (Bortoni-Ricardo 1985). The urban, then, retains a good deal of the Calvetian flavour of distinction that we saw earlier. While some sociolinguistic work remembers to note that the distinction be-

66

David Britain

tween the urban and the rural is a problematic one, there is a considerable corpus of sociolinguistic literature which still revels in, and fetishises the urban as being somehow a special site. Pennycook/Otsuji (2015, 30), while recognising that “the rural and urban are problematically juxtaposed”, talk of the “particularities of the city […] that render it distinct”. These are size, diversity, rhythms, mobilities, contestations, and convivialities. None appear, given what is presented about them in the book, to be distinctive to the city, but again, may be simply more obviously visible there. Mac Giolla Chríost (2007, 75) argues that the city causes variation through the intimate juxtaposition of different worlds – peoples, cultures and languages. In the context of the possibility for social mobility between and through these different worlds that is inherent to the urban condition … language is not merely defining feature of such worlds in the city, but it is also a means of transcending them.

These words are extremely close to the deterministic language used by the linguistic urbanisationists. Some other sociolinguists use the label ‘urban’ in their work without appearing to motivate its relevance, rather like the urban bottles and fruit we saw earlier, presumably hoping that some of the hip shine of the concept will refract onto what they are presenting. These presentations of the urban tell us a great deal about how ideologies of the rural are transmitted and reinforced even in academic research: the city is (presented as) diverse, mobile, multicultural and multilingual AND distinctive, with defining peculiarities. The rural, then, ends up being presented, in contrast and by default, as immobile, lacking diversity, monolingual, monocultural. In Britain (2017), I provide evidence, alluded to above, of the highly mobile, diverse, multicultural, multilingual nature of the rural, and suggest that one of the reasons we cling onto the urbanist agenda is simply because we haven’t investigated these phenomena explicitly enough in rural areas, despite evidence of a ripe social and cultural context for similar outcomes to exist. One example of this is the proposition that there might be a multicultural urban youth language spoken across England in cities where there is mixing between local and settled immigrant youths (e.g. Drummond 2018). But what is essentially and necessarily urban about this? If we simply sought evidence of commonalities across ‘multicultural youth language’, would that be different? Or produce fundamentally different results? Surely what is fundamental is not how built-up or populous the site, or however urban might be defined (but rarely is), but the fact that local and non-local youths, through routine interaction, are creating a new variety/ style that combines elements that emerge from a range of linguistic sources and processes.

‘Rural’ and ‘Urban’ in Dialectology

67

5 Geographers on urban and rural We have seen, then, two orientations in dialectology. One proposes that there is something distinctive and explanatory about both the urban and the rural condition, with some sociolinguists arguing that there are certain types of change that can only be found in cities. Another has led dialectologists to focus on particular sites because they appeared to best serve their theoretical goals – the traditional dialectologists focussing on rural areas, because of their perceived isolation from the deleterious and contaminating effects of dialect contact, the variationist focussing on cities as sites of apparently extreme social heterogeneity where it is possible, nevertheless, to unearth evidence of coherent and ornately conditioned linguistic structure. But what do geographers say about this distinction? How do they conceptualise the distinction between rural and urban? Getting to grips with these concepts, rather salient ones for geographers, has understandably triggered considerable and ongoing debate. But although they at one time oriented towards the kinds of distinctions made by Pedersen (1994) and Marshall (2004), they have long rejected the idea that there are characteristics unique to the city or to the countryside. Pahl was one of the first to make this explicit, when he began a paper in 1966 (299): In a sociological context, the terms rural and urban are more remarkable for their ability to confuse than for their power to illuminate.

Part of the problem arises not only in suggesting what is distinctive and unique to cities (or to the countryside), but what it is that is common to all cities (or all rural areas). Pahl (1996, 302) even rejected the then perhaps less extreme idea that there might be a rural–urban continuum and argued that any attempt to tie particular patterns of social relationships to specific geographical milieux is a singularly fruitless exercise.

This view has been central to human geographical theorisation of urbanity and rurality since. Rural and urban social geographers largely accept that a) there are no distinctive causal properties that are intrinsically urban or rural, and so b) look instead for the underlying factors (e.g. aspects of the dominant economic model) which nevertheless manifest themselves in geographical differentiation, and while c) accepting the view that there exist nevertheless ideological discourses of urban and rural which shape how we see and experience these landscapes. So although it is absolutely acknowledged that the terms ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ conjure up very clear and distinct images, it is argued that there are no qualitative absolute differences between the two, the two are very difficult to define, neither demonstrates internal homogeneity, yet both can show very remarkable similarities with each other in some domains. While it may be that cities show certain historical, social, economic, geographical traits more frequently/intensively etc. than rural areas, these are quantitative tendencies rather than absolute differences, and are triggered by un-

68

David Britain

derlying causal processes unrelated to landscape which have had spatially uneven consequences, thus affecting urban areas more than rural or vice versa (Britain 2012). So, Howard Newby (1986, 209) argued, for example, that there is now, surely, a general awareness that what constitutes ‘rural’ is wholly a matter of convenience and that arid and abstract definitional exercises are of little utility.

Hoggart (1988, 35–36), however, is probably the scholar who has made this point most forcefully. He suggests that: Perhaps, as ‘rural’ is a widely understood notion amongst the general population, it seems incongruous to contend that it is an invalid concept. But, for the general public, ‘rural’ only refers to a broadly understood settlement (or landscape) type. The concept is not used for the precise delimitation of rural areas and it is not imbued with powers to explain geographical differences in socioeconomic conditions. For social researchers, however, these are key concerns. Yet when the concept ‘rural’ is used in an explanatory context, far from being helpful, it is a hindrance … Causal processes do not stop at one side of the urban-rural divide.

He goes on: The broad category ‘rural’ is obfuscatory, whether the aim is description or theoretical evaluation, since intra-rural differences can be enormous and rural-urban similarities sharp (Hoggart 1990, 245)…the designation ‘rural’ is for many researchers merely a symbol of interest in small settlements or in particular kinds of economic activity: it is not a statement about unique causal properties…Pahl (1966) sank a wooden stave deep into the heart of the phantom that afforded rural areas peculiar causal properties…To me, if we cannot agree what ‘rural’ is, this does not give us carte blanche to rely on ‘convenient’ definitions of it. Rather it behoves us to abandon the category ‘rural’ as an analytical construct. Failure to do so is like putting together a football team whose players are drawn from Australian rules, gridiron, rugby and soccer, and not telling any of them which set of rules apply on the field… In effect, rural researchers have been focussing their attention on the outfield, with too little appreciation that the same rules of engagement apply in the penalty box…usage [of the term rural] implies a uniformity of condition that is not present (1990, 246)…I do not mean by this that there are no differences between (most) rural and urban places, but rather that, in the main, these are generated by the uneven presence of some known causal factor X, as opposed to either rurality or urbanity. The obvious follow-up point is that for theory to progress we should focus on X (1990, 251; see Britain 2009; 2012; 2017).

Many economic geographers locate capitalism as this X, as the source of the apparent socio-economic differences between the urban and the rural. Doreen Massey (1995, 13) exemplified this from the perspective of economic geography: Some of the highest rates of decline of manufacturing employment in these years were in the… inner urban areas. So many geographers (and by no means only geographers) looked to the inner cities, to their ‘locational characteristics’ for the cause of decline. It was a spatial variant on the general theme of blaming the victim (the inner cities were declining, so there must be something wrong with them).

‘Rural’ and ‘Urban’ in Dialectology

69

She argued there was a need to dig deeper into the factors that caused the specific geographical manifestation of manufacturing unemployment, rather than seeing it as the fault of the sites themselves. She argued that it was uneven development within capitalist production that was responsible for these apparent locational inequalities. Others agree that the uneven distribution of the outcomes of socio-economic processes across rural and urban areas is a by-product of capitalism. Phillips/Williams (1984, 3), for example, argue that This is not to say that the underlying processes shaping socio-spatial patterns in rural areas are different from those in urban areas. On the contrary, the economic, political and social context provided by the development of capitalism is the framework for the study of both kinds of area…Deprivation was first considered only an urban problem, and only later identified as an issue that could affect rural areas. Both urban and rural deprivation can be viewed as outcomes of the same underlying process, the development of late industrial capitalism.

Moving away, then, from attempts to define what was unique about urban or rural sites, geographers began to, in the case of the rural largely for the first time, take seriously social diversity within the landscape. An especially explosive contribution to the emergence of such debates was Philo’s (1992, 200) criticism that rural geography had been too quick to portray rural people as ‘Mr Averages’…men in employment, earning enough to live, white and probably English, straight and somehow without sexuality, able in body and sound in mind, and devoid of any other quirks of (say) religious belief or political affiliation.

Furthermore, geographers began to deconstruct how discourses about rurality and urbanness had been produced, reproduced and transmitted, and, to understand urban and rural as a social construct. While Mormont (1990, 40) argued that the rural, for example, was “a category of thought”6, Cloke (2006, 21) argued that the importance of the ‘rural’ lies in the fascinating world of social, cultural and moral values that have become associated with rurality, rural spaces and rural life.

We arrive, therefore, at rurality and urbanism as discourses, as presented at the beginning of this chapter.

6 Kötter (1996, 377), an invited respondent to Pahl’s critique of the rural-urban continuum, said the same over 40 years earlier: “Urbanismus und Ruralismus sind sicher keine rein geographische Angelegenheit mehr, sondern eher ein “state of mind” [Urban and rural are certainly no longer geographical issues, but rather a state of mind – DB]. Copp (1972, 519), furthermore, argued that “there is no rural and there is no rural economy. It is merely our analytical distinction, our rhetorical device”.

70

David Britain

6 So what? Ideology pervades contemporary dialectology and buys into the idea that the urban is dynamic, inventive, diverse and the rural, on the contrary, is static, conservative, monocultural, conveying the idea that they are mirror opposites. What one isn’t, the other is. Robust evidence, however, has yet to be presented that linguistic change is necessarily of a typologically different nature in the city to that in the countryside, and so consequently our current fetishisation of the city (and the earlier traditional dialectological fetishisation of the rural) are ultimately unproductive cul-de-sacs. We are trapped in the sociolinguistic equivalent of blaming the inner cities for the fact they were declining, rather than examining the causative factors that were impacting the inner cities most detrimentally (see Massey 1995, and the discussion above). Pennycook/Otsuji (2015, 31) lamented the fact that Labov (1966) and Trudgill (1974) had “little to say about the social, physical and cultural spaces” of New York and Norwich respectively7, which are “very particular as cities” with “deep differences between them”. In a sense, Trudgill’s ability to carefully and ornately demonstrate exactly the same social and stylistic embedding of linguistic change as that Labov had articulated in his pioneering work in New York demonstrates the irrelevance of these ‘deep differences’ to the mechanism of change. And as we saw above, Britain/Matsumoto/Prompapakorn (in press) demonstrated that the structural outcomes of dialect contact in some of the very most remote and rural locations were typologically similar to the outcomes of contact in the largest cities. Evidence tells us we should treat sites, urban and rural alike, simply as places, and examine change in each taking account of their different social, demographic, and economic histories. To requote Hoggart (1990, 251), differences between rural and urban areas are generated by the uneven presence of some known causal factor X, as opposed to either rurality or urbanity … for theory to progress we should focus on X.

Change may be more visible, more obvious, more “in your face”, more intensive, more dramatic, more extreme and therefore perhaps more noteworthy, more reportable in cities than in rural areas, but from the geographers’ perspective, our task is not to blame or flatter the site, but to look for the X which is having these uneven yet common consequences in cities and the countryside. What could X be? One possible X (in principle there need not just be one, I assume) could be contact (e.g. Britain 2009; 2010; 2013). Research in sociolinguistic typology has demonstrated (see Trudgill 2011 for a thorough discussion), for example, that the types of change that typically take place in contexts of high interactive contact, especially between post-adolescents (and often these are in urban contexts), are fundamentally different to those which take place in communities with long periods of relatively little contact with outsiders

7 An unfair accusation, in fact.

‘Rural’ and ‘Urban’ in Dialectology

71

(and often these are in rural contexts). Intensity of contact or isolation may correlate in some sense with rural or urban location, but it is not exclusive to one or the other. Just as urban areas can be sites of intensive contact-induced change, so can rural areas, as we have shown elsewhere (e.g. Britain 2009; 2012; Britain/Matsumoto/Prompapakorn in press). And whilst the vast majority of the sites Trudgill (2011) investigated in his search for isolation-induced change are peripheral and often highly rural, some nevertheless also arise in peripheral urban locations. And whilst the investigation of the dynamism and mobility of rural areas has gone under-investigated, so too has the investigation of isolation within cities, or particular types of city (for example the growing number of so-called ‘shrinking’ cities in Europe and North America) (see e.g. Oswalt/Rieniets 2006). We are still in search of the sociolinguistic X. X may be found more intensively, more dramatically, more obviously in the city, but it is not confined to the city. Allowing our ideologies about the city and the countryside to impede our search for X can only hinder us as we move forward.

7 References Bortoni-Ricardo, Stella Maris (1985): The Urbanization of Rural Dialect Speakers. Cambridge. Britain, David (1997): Dialect contact and phonological reallocation: ‘Canadian Raising’ in the English Fens. In: Language in Society 26, 15–46. Britain, David (2009): ‘Big bright lights’ versus ‘green and pleasant land’? The unhelpful dichotomy of ‘urban’ v ‘rural’ in dialectology. In: Enam Al-Wer/Rudolf de Jong (eds.): Arabic Dialectology: In Honour of Clive Holes on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday. Leiden, 223–248. Britain, David (2010): Supralocal regional dialect levelling. In: Carmen Llamas/Dominic Watt (eds.): Language and Identities. Edinburgh, 193–204. Britain, David (2012): Countering the urbanist agenda in variationist sociolinguistics: Dialect contact, demographic change and the rural-urban dichotomy. In: Sandra Hansen/Christian Schwarz/Philipp Stoeckle/Tobias Streck (eds.): Dialectological and Folk Dialectological Concepts of Space. Berlin, 12–30. Britain, David (2013): The role of mundane mobility and contact in dialect death and dialect birth. In: Daniel Schreier/Marianne Hundt (eds.): English as a Contact Language. Cambridge, 165–181. Britain, David (2016): Sedentarism, nomadism and the sociolinguistics of dialect. In: Nikolas Coupland (ed.): Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates. Cambridge, 217–241. Britain, David (2017): Which way to look? Perspectives on ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ in dialectology. In: Emma Moore/Chris Montgomery (eds.): A Sense of Place: Studies in Language and Region. Cambridge, 171–187. Britain, David/Kazuko Matsumoto/Praparat Prompapakorn (in press): Rural koineisation: Three case studies from England, Palau and Thailand. In: Chr. Tzitzilis/Georgios Papanastassiou (eds.): Koine, Koines and the Formation of Standard Modern Greek. Thessaloniki. Bulot, Thierry (ed.) (1999): Langue urbaine et identité. Paris. Bunce, Michael (1994): The Countryside Ideal: Anglo-American Images of Landscape. London. Calvet, Louis-Jean (1994): Les voix de la ville: introduction à la sociolinguistique urbaine. Paris. Calvet, Louis-Jean (2002): La sociolinguistique et la ville: hasard ou nécessité? In: Marges Linguistiques 3, 46–53.

72

David Britain

Chambers, Jack K./Peter Trudgill (1980): Dialectology. Cambridge. Cheshire, Jenny (1982): Variation in an English Dialect: A Sociolinguistic Study. Cambridge. Cloke, Paul (2006): Conceptualising rurality. In: Paul Cloke/Terry Marsden/Patrick H. Mooney (eds.): Handbook of Rural Studies. London, 18–28. Copp, James (1972): Rural sociology and rural development. In: Rural Sociology 37, 515–533. Drummond, Rob (2018): Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity. London. Edensor, Tim (2002): National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life. Oxford. Ellis, Alexander (1889): On Early English Pronunciation: Part V. London. Erfurt, Jürgen (1999): Préface. In: Thierry Bulot (ed.): Langue urbaine et identité. Paris, 7–14. Hofstee, E. W. (1960): Rural social organisation. In: Sociologia Ruralis I, 105–117. Hoggart, K. (1988): Not a definition of rural. In: Area 20, 35–40. Hoggart, K. (1990): Let’s do away with rural. In: Journal of Rural Studies 6, 245–257. Horton, John (2008a): Postman Pat and me: Everyday encounters with an icon of idyllic rurality. In: Journal of Rural Studies 24, 399–408. Horton, John (2008b): Producing Postman Pat: The popular cultural construction of idyllic rurality. In: Journal of Rural Studies 24, 389–398. Hubbard, Phil (2007): City. London. James, S. (1991): The urban-rural myth-or reality? Geographical Papers No. 107. Reading. Karrebæk, Martha Sif/Marie Maegaard (2015): Pigs, herring, and Bornholm on a table: A high-end restaurant’s construction of authenticity. In: Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies 150, 1–35. Kötter, H. (1966): Discussion. In: Sociologia Ruralis 6, 377–378. Labov, William (1972): Sociolinguistic Patterns. Oxford. Labov, William ([1966] 2006): The Social Stratification of English in New York City. 2nd edition Cambridge. Lowenthal, David (1994): European and English landscapes as national symbols. In: David Hooson (ed.): Geography and National Identity. Oxford, 15–38. Mac Giolla Chríost, Diarmait (2007): Language and the City. London. Marshall, Jonathan (2004): Language Change and Sociolinguistics: Rethinking Social Networks. London. Massey, Doreen (1984): Introduction: Geography matters. In: Doreen Massey/John Allen (eds.): Geography Matters! Cambridge, 1–11. Massey, Doreen (1995): Spatial Divisions of Labour. London. Miller, Catherine (2007): Arabic urban vernaculars: Development and change. In: Catherine Miller/ Enam Al‐Wer/Dominique Caubet/Janet C. E. Watson (eds.): Arabic in the City: Issues in Dialect Contact and Language Variation. Abingdon, 1–32. Milroy, Lesley (1987): Language and Social Networks. 2nd edition Oxford. Mormont, Marc (1990): Who is rural? Or, how to be rural: Towards a sociology of the rural. In: Terry Marsden/Sarah Whatmore/Philip Lowe (eds.): Rural Restructuring: Global Processes and their Responses. London, 21–44. Newby, Howard (1986): Locality and rurality: The restructuring of rural social relations. In: Regional Studies 20, 209–215. Orton, Harold/Eugene Dieth (1962–1971): Survey of English Dialects: Basic Materials: Introduction and 4 Volumes (each in 3 parts). Leeds. Orton, Harold/Stewart Sanderson/John Widdowson (1978): A Linguistic Atlas of England. London. Oswalt, Philipp/Tim Rieniets (eds.) (2006): Atlas of Shrinking Cities/Atlas der Schrumpfenden Städte. Berlin. Pahl, R. (1966): The rural-urban continuum. In: Sociologia Ruralis 6, 299–329. Pedersen, I. L. (1994): Linguistic variation and composite life modes. In: Bengt Nordberg (ed.): The Sociolinguistics of Urbanization: The Case of the Nordic Countries. Berlin, 87–115.

‘Rural’ and ‘Urban’ in Dialectology

73

Pennycook, Alastair/Emi Otsuji (2015): Metrolingualism: Language in the City. London. Phillips, David/Allan Williams (1984): Rural Britain: A Social Geography. Oxford. Phillips, Martin/Rob Fish/Jennifer Agg (2001): Putting together ruralities: Towards a symbolic analysis of rurality in the British mass media. In: Journal of Rural Studies 17, 1–27. Philo, Chris (1992): Neglected rural geographies: A review. In: Journal of Rural Studies 8, 193–207. Shirley, Rosemary (2016): Rural Modernity, Everyday Life and Visual Culture. London. Tönnies, Ferdinand (1887): Community and Society. New York. Trudgill, Peter (1974): The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge. Trudgill, Peter (1983): On Dialect. Oxford. Trudgill, Peter (1986): Dialects in Contact. Oxford. Trudgill, Peter (2011): Sociolinguistic Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistic Complexity. Oxford. Tweed: das Magazin für den britischen Lebensstil. 2014. February/March issue. Weinreich, Uriel/William Labov/Marvin Herzog (1968): Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In: W. Lehmann and Y. Malkiel (eds.): Directions for Historical Linguistics. Austin, 97–195. Williams, Raymond (1993): The Country and the City. London. Wirth, Louis (1938): Urbanism as a way of life. In: American Journal of Sociology 44, 1–24. Woods, Michael (2011): Rural. London.

Dieter Hassenpflug

3. Fundamentals of Urban Semiotics: Exemplified by Examples taken from the Chinese City Abstract: Following the influential studies on sociological and spatio-political analysis by Henri Lefebvre (1991), sociology focuses on the semiotics of urban space as advocated for by Mark Gottdiener (1994). The production of urban space is primarily regarded as the result of cultural negotiations, ideological orientations, and political conflicts. Urban semiotics is thus part of theorizing in urban sociology. Rather than following urban sociology and its concept of space, this article presents an intercultural approach that leans heavily on the practices employed in architecture, urban planning, and construction. The sociocultural aspects of the physical and architecturally structured urban space are especially important here. Urban semiotics must therefore move in the direction of morphogenetic and theoretic architectural approaches as proposed by Wolfgang Wildgen (2013) and Umberto Eco (1979). This article sketches a conceptual framework for urban semiotics that includes intercultural perspectives and ideas from urban planning theory. Urban planning and construction in China will exemplify and stress the socio-cultural dimension in the analysis of the urban space. The resulting contrastive perspective on urban planning theory can thus be seen as a constitutive part of a theory of urban planning that includes the relevance of space. 1 2 3 4

Basic concepts of urban semiotics The binary code of urban space Conclusion References

1 Basic concepts of urban semiotics Our assumption is that the built environment is a socio-cultural text that we can read and interpret. Human beings produce spaces for living (in) – and by doing so, they inscribe the forms of their desired, aspired, and actual coexistence in space. Their habitats assume the shape of spatial essays that, if one can read them, tell tales of the life, thoughts, and conflicts of their planners, builders, inhabitants, and users. This is, however, exactly where the problem begins. We may be capable of using and planning urban space – but capable of reading it? How do we read a text that consists not of letters, syllables, and words, but of images, contours, facades, and volumes, of buildings, streets, plazas, parks – and within these, the most diverse assembly of people: poor and rich, young and old, locals and foreigners, men and women, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-004

Fundamentals of Urban Semiotics: Exemplified by Examples taken from the Chinese City

75

all inhabiting this space in endlessly different ways? Understanding physical urban space remains a weak spot of the social sciences despite all recent endeavours to address this shortcoming. In fact, urban sociology still finds itself in need of a hermeneutical tool which ultimately allows for the reading of the built environment as a sociocultural text in a productive manner. That said, my contribution should be understood as an attempt to widen the epistemological foundations of existing concepts related to urban semiotics. My chapter draws upon a range of relevant contributions by Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles Peirce, Roland Barthes, Henri Lefebvre, Umberto Eco, Mark Gottdiener and other prominent scholars. However, I would like to suggest that established ideas in the field need to be advanced in terms of both their methodological and their conceptual dimensions by combining the following three approaches: First, with recourse to a structuralist term introduced by de Saussure, we hold that the city has to be regarded as a syntagma, i.e. a system of structurally interwoven (sociocultural) linguistic units or signs (1983). Secondly, drawing on Peirce, we suggest the method of abduction (a weak form of deduction) as a key approach for understanding the process of decoding urban signs (1991). Finally, we make use of Walter Benjamin’s technique of superposition which helps us to make use of the narrative potential of our built environment (1999, V2). As a result, we get a semiotically strengthened urban theory, based on a structural, i.e. a syntagmatic interpretation of cities, on a better understanding of the role of the observer in the process of generating sense (by drawing abductive or ‘weak’ conclusions instead of questionable certainties); and thirdly on superposition which enables us to avoid mixing the obvious and the significant. While Christopher Alexander’s architectural ‘pattern language’ (Alexander/Ishikawa/Silverstein 1977) is about enhancing design by generating user friendly spaces and supporting participative elements in architectural implementation, urban semiotics is dealing with a better understanding of already existing architecture and urban fabric. The pragmatic pattern language aims at programming the making of our built environment while hermeneutical urban semiotics aims at reading and understanding the existing built environment in order to enhance our socio-cultural – and therein our intercultural – understanding on the field of urban planning and design. Furthermore, the urban spatial categories developed by Kevin Lynch (1960), i.e. paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks, refer to an appropriation and organization of spatial elements for the purpose of orientation. Due to their abstract-universal criteria, they are not suitable for a hermeneutics of urban space aimed at sociocultural signs. From the viewpoint of urban semiotics, elements of urban space are carriers of meaning or sense (called signifiers) that contribute to meaning or sense (called signified). To this extent, urban elements are comparable or rather similar with de Saussures linguistic units being composed of the double entity of image or signifier and meaning or signified (1983). In reference to Roland Barthes (1976) and with regard to

76

Dieter Hassenpflug

the architectural signifiers he researched, Umberto Eco (1979) differentiates between ‘denotative’ and ‘connotative messages’. Primary functions or meanings are denoted, while secondary (subordinate) functions or meanings are connoted. A chair, to quote his example, denotes sitting and connotes wealth, backache, etc. The terms ‘primary function’ or ‘denotation’ refer to the intersubjective validity of the message thus limiting interpretative freedom. In other words: ‘Messages’ are not only made but also received by the observer. Connotations, on the other hand, are subjective assignments, judgments, projections, interpretations etc. A luxuriously and graciously designed villa, for instance, denotes the security, privacy, or intimacy of the family. In this respect, it is not different from a modest apartment in a multi-family residential building. The connotation features, however, what the signifier is associated with subjectively – what is projected onto it; the mere ephemeral or accidental meaning. Thus, the villa may connote affluence, abundance, or exclusiveness, if these are the interpretations of the observer.

Fig. 1: Generic scheme in urban semiotics (Photo: Dieter Hassenpflug).

Denoted meanings, although partly produced by the observer, claim intersubjective validity and may be considered universally valid. Connoted meanings on the other hand are subjectively assigned to the signifier that triggers the associations or projections. It is possible that connotations become denotations. The precondition for this is

Fundamentals of Urban Semiotics: Exemplified by Examples taken from the Chinese City

77

that a majority of observers receive and/or produce the same messages thus giving them a status of inter-subjectivity. All over the world, at all times and in all cultures, people have used dwellings to live in, and it is correct to consider human beings as entities requiring dwelling. The term’s anthropological and transcultural dimension refers to dwelling as a generic concept. In real life, on the other hand, we do not deal with a dwelling as an unchangeable Platonic real category, but with an enormous variety of dwelling forms: with its subjective and objective differences of production, distribution, and use. Dwellings are not only different due to individual taste of their builders or owners, but also due to socio-cultural preferences and practices. We can thus not only find an endless variety of individually different forms of dwelling. We also discover that they can be grouped together according to shared characteristics, e.g. shared cultural features. To give an example: A house or housing estate with a courtyard (Sìhéyuàn or neighborhood courtyard) denotes the primacy of community (family, collective etc.) while a house with extroverted and decorated facade denotes the primacy of association (bourgeois, individualistic society). You might raise the objection that what has been marked with ‘denote’ had better be marked with ‘connote’. This objection is undoubtedly justified. In order to solve this ‘status problem’ (connotation or denotation?) it is absolutely necessary to embed the individual and isolated assignment of sense in broader theoretical context. This is where structuralism or the syntagmatic dimension of the city appears on the scene. We will come back to this later. The aspiration to separate the essential (denotations) from the accidental (connotations) is certainly not a simple task. The reason is that urban signifiers are transmitting without chronological interruption, but do not offer an instruction of how to decode them at the same time. In order to read the city, to understand its urban code, the semiotic toolkit alone is seemingly insufficient. As already mentioned, the receiver of urban signals always contributes to the origination process of the latter’s senses. Only by assigning senses (also described as semiosis) can urban signals be transformed into meaningful messages, i.e. into understanding. But how can observers protect themselves from producing simple projections or arbitrary senses? It is possible that the individual urban sign reveals, when observed, part of its mystery by offering a kind of ‘user manual’ in order to formulate an explanatory hypothesis, as Ugo Volli (2002) describes the inference process of abduction as defined by Peirce (1991). We hence interrelate the term abduction (in contrast to induction – conclusion from single to general case – or deduction – conclusion from general case to single case) with the possibility of discovering the sense of transmitted code in an at least hypothetical or semi-logical way. In this respect, we can assume that the different modes of transmission of urban signs will, in their own way – iconic, indicative, or symbolic – offer pathways to sense that we should dare to explore. To determine meaning that may be based on an explanatory hypothesis is therefore the “basic semiotic act” (Volli 2002, 13ff.).

78

Dieter Hassenpflug

In our opinion, apart from other hypothetical, associative, or semi-logical techniques of sense retrieval, the technique of ‘superposition’ as suggested by Walter Benjamin seems to be particularly helpful for determining the meaning or sense of cultural or rather urban signifiers. Superposition describes the capacity to ‘remember the new’, i.e. to see what has been and is to come within what is present (Benjamin 1999, V 1, 493, 576, V 2, 1023ff.). To superpose means regarding the elements of the contemporary cityscape as elements of an encompassing cultural memory and simultaneously as stops on the urban voyage into the future. In order to be able to assign sense in a meaningful, non-extrinsic, and non-projective way, we need to take possession of the memory that has always been inscribed in animate and inanimate things. This, however, requires substantial knowledge in cultural and intercultural terms. Urban signs do not allow for an easy assignment of convincing messages, such as in Umberto Eco’s example of the chair (as signifier) and sitting (as primary function or denoted sense). In urban semiotics, we require particular knowledge in order to trigger the process of abduction and to begin salvaging the array of meaning incorporated in urban signs. With Benjamin’s (1999) technique of superposition, we find something like an epistemological ‘key’ that permits accessing the signifiers and the meanings hidden in their signals. Based on a classification system suggested by renowned American epistemologist Charles Sanders Peirce, three types of signs can be generally identified. First, iconic signs, if the relationship between sign and meaning is based on similarity; second, indicative signs, if the relationship between sign and meaning is obvious; and third, symbolic signs, if the relationship between sign and meaning seems arbitrary (Peirce 1991). Gates, barriers, walls, and fences can, for instance, be understood as indicative signifiers that refer to a closed spatial unit, which may be a military installation, an industrial park, or a housing estate. For example, if the referent is a residential area in China, then the corresponding signifiers (which are denoting in an indicative mode) are community, exclusion, or introversion. The semiotic analysis of urban space, however, teaches us that especially for complex elements such as housing estates, city centres, suburbs etc., not only all three modes of transmission play a role, but also an overlapping of iconic, indicative, and symbolic messages takes place. In our semiotic research in China, we encounter a memorable case of such overlapping modes of transmission in the example of retrofitted neighborhood gates in German Town Anting in China.

Fundamentals of Urban Semiotics: Exemplified by Examples taken from the Chinese City

79

Fig. 2: Miniature gates in Anting New Town, Shanghai being too small to lock seriously and too enclosed for denoting open space (Photo: Dieter Hassenpflug).

2 The binary code of urban space A reading that aims to break the socio-cultural code of the city only with a sporadic identification of urban signs and related meanings is not satisfactory. Neither is the abductive identification of a particular urban signifier – e.g. introversion – sufficient to serve as proof for the sinicity of urban space production in total. Dominant introverted spatial concepts exist in other cultures as well, e.g. in the Arabian practice of urban space production as in the medina and even in the Western world we detect introverted settlements, e.g. the Wiener Gemeindebau in Vienna that was built during the social democratic regency in the 20s and 30s of the last century. In recent times, we can observe an increase in interior courtyard architecture, especially in association to commercial uses. Assigning sinicity to urban elements thus requires us to assume the presence of a structural or syntactical interrelation between them. We need a framework that allows us to organize particular elements according to their respective degree of affiliation or proximity to what we describe as sinicity. Only when the urban signifieds are detected in this manner, namely as result of a ‘cultural construction’, we can consider the pro-

80

Dieter Hassenpflug

cess of semiosis as complete. We are capable of reading the city because urban space offers a socio-cultural syntagma: a system that is, in principle, open towards the art of structural interpretation of meaning. The purpose of this type of hermeneutics, for which we employ the technique of superposition, is to reveal the immanent (wesensmäßige) interior relationships between urban spatial signs and socio-cultural messages. The result for the Chinese city is as follows: Only a structural hermeneutic of its typical (idiosyncratic or specific) shapes and forms is capable of achieving a morphological integration of identified meanings that allows us to recognize their sinicity. In other words, it is necessary to embed separate interpretations within a system of socio-cultural knowledge in a way that is coherent, rational, and transcends particularistic decodings. We have to complement this with a syntagmatic explanation of the interrelation of the signified’s content, its structure. The following will present a first schematic attempt in this direction.

Fig. 3: The city as a ‘syntagma’.

In order to formulate a rationale for the structural interrelation of the already recognized socio-cultural signifieds, we follow the logic of a dialectic terminological concept, which the structural method always and rightfully demands due to its ontological obviousness. As result, the socio-cultural spatial analysis can be conceived as a system of knowledge based in a specific ‘binary code’. The code that we consider appropriate to the task is the sociological dualism made famous by Ferdinand Tönnies

Fundamentals of Urban Semiotics: Exemplified by Examples taken from the Chinese City

81

(1988) of community (Gemeinschaft) and society (Gesellschaft). Community and society (or also, ‘association’) are the two possible social states or ‘aggregate conditions’ that apply to every human being simultaneously, at any time, and everywhere. Both terms constitute a context of reference that is capable of maintaining the claimed socio-cultural system. Community (Gemeinschaft), the first of the two social states, refers to direct, immediate human relationships. These are based in family relations (‘blood’ or ‘kin’), friendship (‘emotions’), shared opinions (‘interests’), ideologies (‘convictions’), conventions, or also in direct forms of rule. The most ancient and most important form of community is the family and its derivate forms such as clan, tribe, kinship, nuclear family. Oikoi (subsistence units), Christian or other religious congregations, brotherhoods, guilds, and networks can be summed up under the term community as well. Here we posit that Chinese society is decisively more strongly centred on the community than Western or European societies (centred on associations), and that this community orientation informs the production of urban space in numerous ways. In contrast, society (Gesellschaft), the second of the two social states, refers to mediated human relationships and socially constitutive interactions of individuals. From the perspective of society, people are not related, not friends, not enemies, but exclusively contractual partners, buyers, sellers, occupational specialists (professionals, experts). On the theatre stage of society, human beings interact with each other in an indirect, mediated way. The media of this mediation process are money, contracts, and differentiated or specialized institutions. Money and contractual ties allow human beings who are not acquainted with each other, who have no opinion of each other or do not care for each other, to relate to each other in a socially successful way. Society in this regard creates the foundation for a ‘cold’ rational social context of individuals based in reason and institutionalized in division of labour. The origin of each form of societization is the exchange of goods, the market, or the economic mode based on it. We describe the social individual also as an economic or contractual subject. The unfolding of trade, the evolution of products and capital separates community from society. The exchange of goods extracts the ‘me’ from the ‘we’. The interrelation of society, individual, and market contains multiple references to the city: For one, the city as a cultural superstructure is dependent on exchange with the countryside, with agriculture, and the peasantry. From a purely material perspective, rural life is possible without urban life, but urban life unthinkable without rural life. Rural life is rooted in peasantry, but in contrast, the city’s existence is based in the exchange of goods and the economic system it establishes. This is exactly the reason why it is no coincidence that, from a historic perspective, cities were always founded where the commodity character (Warenform) of goods became dominant, where trade and markets developed. The city and the market are indivisible, and all city types that do not meet this basic interrelation can, at most, be described as proto-cities.

82

Dieter Hassenpflug

In real social life, depending on history and culture, the relation of community to society can vary strongly. In so-called ‘traditional societies’, the institutions of social interrelation are primarily based in the community, in family, clan, and tribe. Speaking of traditional societies is contradictory insofar that these societies are rather communities, yet can include proto-societal and societal institutions. In so-called developed societies, the societal character of social interaction leads to an articulated individualization with simultaneous depreciation or weakening of community-related interaction, for instance in the societization of social security functions (social security, senior care, unemployment benefits, child care, education, etc.). But even within the social interrelations characterized by the highest degree of societization, the individual remains ‘downward compatible’ with community life, because community life surrounds and pervades social institutions. An example for this pervasiveness in modern societies is the contractual nature of marriage or also societization in the form of creating legal or juridical persons, common in the business world in various forms. Just like every social interaction, exchange activity also becomes spatialized. The form of the market place reflects this in an ideal-typical manner. Known in history as agora, it is the primordial locus of public space, and as such a “total institution” (Habermas 1986, 235), still incorporating in an undifferentiated form later developed, differentiated social institutions. But the market unfolds its social-systemic potential only in the course of urban history. If we consider the evolution of the marketplace as indivisibly connected to the evolution of the city, then this compels us to view it as the laboratory of individualization and societization. Max Weber (1978) has already shown that the evolution of society occurs along the lines of an individualization process that is characterized by division of labour, institutionalization, bureaucratization, and scientification, for which the city is both theatre stage and audience space. The city is the space in which the division of community and society takes place, a process that is also described as civilizing process. This is why many consider the city as a ‘civilization machine’. This notion prompted Weber (1993, 270) to formulate his famous phrase of the “disenchantment of the world”. Society is spatialized in extroverted spaces. In this regard, open public space, presenting itself in extroverted forms, is a genuinely societal place. In contrast, community is spatialized within spaces that are oriented towards the inside, private, introverted, for instance in interior courtyards. Introversion is a spatial language of a social context that is constituted by direct and immediate interaction, by proximity. Depending on the dominant form of social in a particular cultural context, region, or state, the spatial context will be characterized rather by introverted or extroverted traits. Thus, in community-dominated cultures the courtyard house which demonstrates introversion will play an exceptional role, whereas the open or public space of the place or street will prevail in society-dominated cultures. While society and community represent the binary code of sociology, spatial extroversion and introversion point at the binary code of urban design theory.

Fundamentals of Urban Semiotics: Exemplified by Examples taken from the Chinese City

83

Orient and occident are different precisely in regard to this differentiation of community and society or – in its spatial form – of introversion and extroversion, in a way that is clearly visible and persistent to this day. Extroverted European spatial culture is diametrically opposed to Chinese introverted spatial culture. A systematic, culturally rooted preference for courtyard house architecture comparable to China or to interior courtyards was last seen in Europe in Roman culture and Moorish culture in the Muslim Apennines, in the sacred architectural culture of the cloister – as continuation of the Roman peristyle house typology – and naturally in the worldly architectural culture of the feudal Middle Ages, where castle courtyards and horti inclusi, for instance in the form of patrician Palazzi of the Renaissance, comprised elements of ascending early bourgeois cities. In Europe – and only in Europe – approximately in the 1st millennium C. E. during the reconstruction of the urban culture that collapsed after the decline of the Western Roman Empire, a previously entirely unknown extroverted type of city emerged. We owe this to the specific settlement patterns or synoecism of traders and artisans, i.e. of market economy-oriented and in this regard genuinely urban actors that assembled in craftsmen associations and guilds, Hanseatic leagues, and city alliances of all kinds with the goal of city freedom and resistance against feudal dominance and paternalism. The difference between hierarchical exceptionalism and bourgeois pluralism in design is immediately perceivable if we compare e.g. a Baroque place (Place Royal) with a market place (piazza). While the Baroque signifier presents itself iconologically as monolithic and dramatizes the power of rulers who express their claim by use of axes and geometric arrangement, the market place articulates the idea of bourgeois diversity through its frame composed of decorated facades in lot-based perimeter block construction. Early bourgeois society began the practice of dramatizing public spaces through gable-end facades. Similar to stage backdrops, facades here constitute a frame for places and streets and transform these into theatrical spaces, into theatre stages of urban life. These theatres, with their pluralistically designed stage sets, denote the growing influence of society as opposed to community, if not its dominance over the latter. The facade play of cities was typical for the medieval era and finally gained dominance in the Renaissance as a general characteristic of the European city. It thus became an equal counterpart to the architecture of cathedrals, city halls, and fortifications, pointing out the rise of a gradually individualizing society of citizens. In Imperial China, however, a strict division of community and society, and therefore between country and city or public and private never prevailed. In ancient China, history does not indicate the presence of a culture of public urban space comparable to Europe, not even in generic terms. Streets generally and exclusively functioned as means of access or, as higher-order streets, became symbolic spaces that reflected their orientation, width, spatial sequence, and existing buildings (e.g. Bell Tower, ancestral temple, buildings of urban government), thereby representing the hierarchically structured allocations of meaning related to the Imperial court.

84

Dieter Hassenpflug

Certainly, market places also existed. They were closed at first, but after the late Tang Dynasty (7th to 10th century) open types were found as well, over time accompanied by more and more open market streets. During the Song era (960–1279 C. E.), all urban places and streets dedicated to market exchange were open. However, market rights, market laws, and their enforcement, remained in the hands of the Imperial administration at all times. Thus, synecistic activities for the purpose of creating independent civic governments, also of independent guilds and craftsman associations, could not develop in China. An emancipation of representatives of market trade, of merchants and artisans, did not occur. Therefore, a bourgeois isonomy of economic subjects as in Europe could not develop either. Since trade remained a kind of ‘palace economy’, following the term of Polanyi (1957), strictly supervised by Imperial officers, traders, and artisans became arrested in a proto-bourgeois state. This is the reason why a public culture could never develop in Chinese cities. The Emperor remained the sovereign of all spaces, their representative, resulting in every single bit of the city becoming an element and an extension of the Imperial palace – and thus a carrier of meaning of Imperial power. In other words: even though something like citizen-based or societal (gesellschaftliche) elements developed with the expansion of trade and business, they always remained completely dominated by a community in which the Emperor was its be-all and end-all, its meaning, and its right to exist. Boundless capitalism in today’s China is not all too different from the former palace economy. It is still a politically heavily controlled activity, a free economy under strong restrictions of political centralism. However, the echoes of the former palace economy are now accompanied by another sound. It is the sound of (civil) society developing in the footsteps of (capitalist) market economy and increasingly pervading the secluded world of communities, families, clans, and introverted neighborhoods.

3 Conclusion This article, which is by no means meant to be exhaustive, outlined the conceptual foundation for an approach to an intercultural urban semiotics that also encompasses urban space. It was shown that semiotics, as has been suggested amongst others by Roland Barthes (1986), is applicable for the analysis of physical and geographical signs in an interculturally oriented urban semiotic analysis. I proposed three methods for the analysis and interpretation of urban signs: a structural conceptualization of the city as sociological entity or syntagma, the methodological abduction in the process of assigning meaning to urban signs, and in addition to these morphogenetic decoding practices, the role of superposition in cultural and traditional practices following Walter Benjamin (1999). The main focus lies on the genesis of a concept that illuminates the formative relations between social and spatial conditions. I further discussed the generative power of social categories in sign-making in relation to community to introversion and exclusion, and society to extraversion or inclusion respectively. Com-

Fundamentals of Urban Semiotics: Exemplified by Examples taken from the Chinese City

85

parable relations could be identified for decoding the centrality of urban space, the domination spatial patterns (organic and orthogonal layout of cities) and their functions (mixing, zoning). To conclude, in order to remain practically relevant, urban semiotics has to approach the city like a text that is presented not only as the product of social and political conflicts or aesthetic perceptions, but also the result of persisting sociocultural practices.

4 References Alexander, Christopher/Sara Ishikawa/Murray Silverstein (1977): A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York. Barthes, Roland (1976): The Pleasure of the Text. New York. Barthes, Roland (1986): Semiology and the urban. In: Mark Gottdiener/Alexandros Lagopoulos (eds.): The City and the Sign. New York, 87–98. Benjamin, Walter (1999): The Arcades Project. Cambridge. Eco, Umberto (1979): A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington. Gottdiener, Mark (1994): Urban culture. In: Thomas Sebeok (ed.): Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics. Berlin, pgs. Habermas, Jürgen (1986): The Theory of Communicative Action. Cambridge. Lefebvre, Henri (1991): The Production of Space. Hoboken. Lynch, Kevin (1960): The Image of the City. Cambridge. Peirce, Charles S. (1991): Peirce on signs. In: James Hoopes (ed.): Writings on Semiotics. Chapel Hill. Polanyi, Karl (1957): Trade and Market in the Early Empires. New York. de Saussure, Ferdinand (1983): Course in General Linguistics. New York. Tönnies, Ferdinand (1988): Community and Society: Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. New Jersey. Volli, Ugo (2002): Semiotik. Eine Einführung in ihre Grundbegriffe. Frankfurt/Main. Weber, Max (1978): Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley. Weber, Max (1993): Sociology of Religion. Boston. Wildgen, Wolfgang (2013): Visuelle Semiotik. Die Entfaltung des Sichtbaren. Vom Höhlenbild bis zur modernen Stadt. Bielefeld.

Carsten Junker

4. Experience as Moving Methodology: Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity Abstract: This chapter proposes a moving methodology as a way to reflect on how to find empirical access to and gain experiential knowledge of a subject matter as multifaceted as urban space. For the purpose of relating the complex phenomena that take place in cities to the ways in which we talk about them, particularly in a discourseanalytical framework concerned with social relationality and diversity in scenarios of social inequality, the author proposes a heuristic that consists of three steps: triangulating urban space, placing discourse, and experiencing research. The description of this three-step heuristic is complemented by an outlook that takes methods further. 1 2 3 4 5 6

Delimiting urbanity Triangulating urban space Placing discourse Experiencing research Taking methods further References

1 Delimiting urbanity This chapter makes a discourse-analytical, methodological contribution to urban studies from the interdisciplinary perspective of American studies. Its builds on a broad understanding of language as discourse(s) in and of the city. Taking my cue from Michel Foucault’s call for an archaeological analysis of discourses, mindful of the figurative “spaces of dissension” that constitute them (Foucault 1972, 152), I suggest that an analysis of urban spaces should also seek to describe the manifold literal spaces of dissension that constitute urbanity and its discourses: one that is attentive to the various, highly complex ways in which urbanity is shaped by social, institutional, structural, material and discursive contradictions and tensions. Furthermore, this chapter builds on a model for the study of urbanity that takes into consideration three modes of analysis: dimension (the spatial extension and design of a city), action (the practices in the city), and representation (the semiotic coding of the city) (see Busse/Warnke 2015). My aim, however, is not to directly analyze urbanity in these three modes but to take a step back and provide critical reflections on how researchers can even begin to develop an approach that is based on, concerned with, and verifiable by observation and experience rather than theory or pure logic. This way, the second mode of analysis that Busse/Warnke propose – action – moves to the center of attention, allowing a particular focus on the practices of the researching subject. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-005

Experience as Moving Methodology: Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity

87

The great 20th century writer and activist James Baldwin (1998, 179) concludes his essay Fifth Avenue, Uptown: A Letter from Harlem with the following pronouncement: “Walk through the streets of Harlem and see what we, this nation, have become.” First published in Esquire in 1960, this “Letter” reports on the district of New York City in which Baldwin was born in 1924, Harlem. Harlem lent its name to a movement in the 1920s: the Harlem Renaissance. In this decade, Harlem became the urban center for artistic, musical, literary, and philosophical expressions of self-empowerment by African Americans, an urban symbol for “black liberation and sophistication” (Huggins 1976, 4). The intellectual and cultural accomplishments of the Harlem Renaissance reverberated throughout Baldwin’s lifetime, in part because of the widespread and continued recognition they garnered. In his essay, however, the description of this formerly thriving urban center is one of desolation. He grew up in the area “bounded by Lenox Avenue on the west, the Harlem River on the east, 135th Street on the north, and 130th Street on the south” (Baldwin 1998, 170); now, in the early moment of the 1960s, this decade that saw great social turmoil and upheaval, hope and despair, the block is suffering from the loss of its people, those lost to World War II, the Korean War, police violence, drugs, or “simply, unnatural exhaustion” (Baldwin 1998, 171). Those left behind in the subsidized housing projects of the area leave a bleak impression on Baldwin. With compassion, he speaks of them as “slum dwellers” (Baldwin 1998, 173) – struggling, frustrated, and yet resilient. As a specific urban place, as a ghetto (Baldwin 1998, 174), Harlem has “victimized” those who live there, “economically, in a thousand ways” (Baldwin 1998, 174): Black Harlemites experience the brutality of policemen who “represent the force of the white world” (Baldwin 1998, 176) while the arrival of Puerto Ricans causes “bitterness” (178). A district characterized by “common pain, demoralization, and danger” (Baldwin 1998, 175), Harlem represents “the social and moral bankruptcy” (Baldwin 1998, 173) that also marks social structures on a much broader scale. Baldwin shares his experience of observing a “powder keg” about to explode (Baldwin 1998, 177) with the readers of the Esquire essay to confront them with “a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one’s own: in the face of one’s victim, one sees oneself” (Baldwin 1998, 179). Baldwin derives knowledge about this principle from his very own personal experience. He provides an embodied account of his urban birthplace to make a general statement about his country: “Walk through the streets of Harlem and see what we, this nation, have become” (Baldwin 1998, 179). Walking through the streets, Baldwin insists, enables astute observations not only of a city district, but also of a general kind. Seeing the deplorable conditions of Harlem for themselves, he declares to his readers, will force them to draw their own moral lessons from large-scale historical transformations, indefensible structural disparities, and impending social unrest. I take Baldwin’s plea to walk through the streets in order to see as an urgent call to walk through the streets today so that we can acquire knowledge about urban spaces

88

Carsten Junker

and, by extension, study the complexities of life as they are condensed in cities. Baldwin, then, anticipates the central questions of this handbook chapter: how can we find empirical access to urban space, particularly when this entails a discourse-analytical perspective on social relationality and diversity in scenarios of social inequality? How can we adequately approach research on the city, when built urban space, as well as social actions in and representations of the city, figure as repositories of complexity and contradiction, as architect and urban theorist Robert Venturi (1966) has famously pointed out? How can we gain empirical evidence for the purpose of relating the complex phenomena that take place in cities to the ways in which we talk about them? My answer to the question of how to gain empirical access to a subject matter as complex as urban space is as follows: we must do so through a heuristic. The heuristic I propose in the following consists of three steps: triangulating urban space, placing discourse, and experiencing research.

2 Triangulating urban space Understanding urban space beyond theory-driven urban research entails triangulating different sets of data about urban places. By triangulation, I here mean the process of combining non-quantitative data collected in different urban settings. While we are used to evaluating a broad set of data from a variety of sources such as stories, statistics, films, and oral histories, we often omit personal observations. Personal observations are among the most important sources because they help us observe places but also because they help us see ourselves as observers. Personal observations made during and after walking through urban settings can be recorded as notes. The process of triangulating urban space is composed of (yet another) three steps: singular description, moving in-between, and relational interpretation. The aim of singular description is to focus on the researcher’s description of distinct places in the city such as neighborhoods or areas. The description of a place may be based on personal observations of buildings and social practices; it can also include notes of conversations and interviews with people encountered in the area or reflections on the symbolic representations of an area and other aspects in discourses about it. The data of singular description thus consist of narrative material drawn from highly subjective note taking. Some notes, however, can only be used cautiously for further use keeping research ethics in mind, especially when it comes to personal and private information. To triangulate different sets of material, it becomes necessary to collect notes on different urban spaces and be aware of how the researcher moves in between these different spaces, including the means that facilitate movement, such as walking, biking, driving, or taking public transportation, among others. As the second step in triangulation as understood here, moving in-between different urban spaces dynamizes the note-taking of urbanity by highlighting how observations of different urban settings

Experience as Moving Methodology: Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity

89

are linked by the observers’ movement between them. The aim of relational interpretation, the third step in triangulation, is to relate descriptions of different places to one another, comparing their dimensional, actional, and representational structures with respect to the categories of analysis the observer deems particularly relevant. To illustrate in an exemplary fashion how notes on urban spaces can be triangulated as part of a moving methodology, I present material in the following which is drawn from personal observations of three urban settings in Washington, D.C.: locations in the neighborhoods of Near Northeast, Capitol Hill, and Near Southwest. Washington, D.C., is of course a different city than New York, and Baldwin’s Harlem does not compare to the neighborhoods on which I have taken field notes. Nonetheless, Washington, D.C., is an important city that has received wide attention in urban geography and global city research, not least in the comprehensive study by Ulrike Gerhardt (2015). The material presented below is based on field notes I took for myself during a research residency divided into two periods (from February 11 to March 22, 2019, and from July 30 to September 27, 2019) as a John W. Kluge Center German Federal Fellow at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. The fellowship was jointly awarded by the German Association for American Studies and the Library of Congress, it was funded by the Faculty of Linguistics, Literature and Cultural Studies of the TU Dresden. The fellowship was granted for research on a project about the history and theory of collaborative authorship, situated in the field of American literary and cultural studies which, at first sight, had little to do with methodological questions of urban studies. The present reflections on methodology are thus an unintended effect of the fellowship. It is relevant to point this out explicitly because the methodological considerations here are about the central significance of sideways glances for research. The point of this methodological discussion is to show that theory and method ought not to be separated but that theory should be grounded in everyday experience; knowledge about Washington, D.C., is here obtained from participatory observations of situations, more specifically from my perspective as a white·cis-gendered·able-bodied· queer·male researcher from Berlin, Germany. The following detailed note-taking of places in the city, of moving in and between them, and of relating them to each other, thus serves to overcome a difference between theory and method and to show that hypotheses of urbanity can be generated from material.

2.1 Singular description For a moving methodology, it is necessary to record observations in close detail. Although contingent on a scholar’s perspective that is informed by disciplinary categorizations, such recordings can be partial and personal. Singular description can contain brief impressions and snippets of information which resemble notes taken on a field study. These notes, partially very personal, are structured along spatial areas

90

Carsten Junker

that can later be related and compared to each other. Taking the example of field notes on Washington, D.C., such a structure may look like this: Near Northeast. During my time in Washington, D.C., I am renting a room near H Street in Near Northeast, a neighborhood north of Capitol Hill that, in the past fifteen or so years, has undergone a process of what urban studies scholars call gentrification. Walking through Near Northeast, I notice a heritage trail, the well curated Hub, Home, Heart: Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail (Shoenfeld et al. 2011), which leads pedestrians along eighteen signs through the neighborhood. One such historical marker is located at the corner of 11th Street and H Street NE. Titled “The Changing Faces of H Street” (Shoenfeld et al. 2011), it teaches passersby about the demographics of this area. Near Northeast was a so-called working-class neighborhood with a demographically diverse population. Irish, Italian, Lebanese, Greek, and Jewish immigrants and, after World War II, predominantly African-Americans made this place their home. Near Northeast in the 1960s must have resembled the Harlem that James Baldwin describes in his essay; according to sign sixteen of the heritage trail, street protests occurred in this neighborhood as a reaction to Martin Luther King’s assassination: On Friday, April 5, 1968, the 600-block of H Street went up in flames. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated a day earlier, and grief-stricken, angry men and women had taken to the streets across the city, looting and burning. […] “The riots did not happen in a vacuum,” recalled Sam Smith of the Capitol East Gazette. In 1968, “24 percent of the [area’s] labor force was unemployed or underemployed.” After the smoke cleared, 90 buildings, containing 51 residences and 103 businesses, were gone. Most stores that weren’t destroyed closed, never to reopen (Shoenfeld et al. 2011).

In the 21th century, the neighborhood has seen massive demographic and economic change. The authors of the heritage trail speak of Near Northeast following D.C.’s “trend toward a more racially and economically diverse population” (Shoenfeld et al. 2011). As I am reading this, I cannot help but think of this as a euphemism of urban displacement, in which I undoubtedly have a fair share. “No matter where you’re from, we’re glad you’re our neighbor,” says a front-yard sign I read as I walk back to my temporary home (see Fig. 1). It says it in English as well as Spanish and Arabic. I am from elsewhere, but I am sure the sign does not address me, or does it?

Experience as Moving Methodology: Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity

91

Fig. 1: Front-yard sign. D.C. 2019 (Photo: Carsten Junker).

The place I am staying is in the vicinity of Gallaudet University, named for the educator Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787–1851), who founded the first free American school for Deaf students in 1817. The university’s website discloses: Gallaudet University is the premier institution of learning, teaching and research for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. For more than 150 years, Gallaudet has produced leaders and innovators who have influenced history. There is no other place like this in the world. […] Gallaudet is a rich multicultural and multilingual community; our students are from all over the world. They come from private, public and state schools; they sign, are learning to sign, can hear, can hear with technology, and do not hear at all. Everyone who comes seeks the bilingual learning and multicultural community here at Gallaudet (Who n.d).

I had not been aware of Gallaudet (see Fig. 4) until a few months before, when I was in Germany preparing a seminar session about disability in Hollywood Cinema. We were discussing Children of a Lesser God, a 1986 film that “became a popular and critical hit, partly because it dealt with many of the issues facing deaf people in America in complex, compassionate, humane, and artful ways” (Benshoff/Griffin 2009, 377). In one shot (Children of a Lesser God 1986, 01:20:40), we see a Gallaudet pennant at a party host’s home. Like those of any other American educational institution, Gallaudet paraphernalia serve community-building functions. Finding a place to stay in D.C. just a few blocks away from the campus of Gallaudet University reminded me of that pennant. Being here presents me with a second, more thorough opportunity to encounter American Deaf culture. The Gallaudet community has put a visible stamp on the neighborhood. There are places in the area where the number of people using

92

Carsten Junker

American Sign Language (ASL) outweigh those like me who have no command of it. Meeting and interacting with people who communicate with ASL makes me feel ignorant and at the same time, perhaps ignorantly enough, deeply respectful of people who have built the signing world of Near Northeast in a larger world which generally shows next to no awareness and understanding for the lived experiences of people who sign. Capitol Hill. My days as a fellow at the Kluge Center will be spent traversing the line between these two poles: the room I am renting and a cubicle at the Library of Congress. A distance of 1.4 miles, or 2.3 kilometers, a good twenty-minute walk. As I approach the grand Jefferson Building of the library, the Capitol comes into sight. The Library of Congress is located on the block adjacent to the seat of the Supreme Court; both are facing the U.S. Congress directly. The old Thomas Jefferson Building of the library: as close as it gets to the center of American legislative and judicial power. I am right in the center of American national self-fashioning. Every day I walk there, the very first morning of my fellowship and every following one, the dome of the Capitol catches my attention, overwhelming me with its might as an iconographic cliché. Every day I leave my workplace, I make sure to catch a glimpse of the dome, bringing the images I have of it – in my mind and in my sight – into agreement (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: Capitol and Library of Congress. D.C. 2019 (Photo: Carsten Junker).

Experience as Moving Methodology: Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity

93

The Library of Congress has a special link to power. On a welcome tour for the Kluge fellows, we learn that it was originally opened to serve the U.S. Congress. After the British burnt the old congressional library down – in an act of retaliation for the Americans raiding British settlements in Upper Canada – the library was reopened and restocked with Thomas Jefferson’s private library. Selling it, the indebted statesmen apparently hoped, would boost his finances. No doubt, a library’s knowledge power also speaks of its buying power. The geographical and institutional proximity between politicians and books on Capitol Hill is corroborated on the website about the library’s history: In 1800 […], President John Adams approved an act of Congress providing $5,000 for books for the use of Congress – the beginning of the Library of Congress. […] It was […] former President Jefferson, retired to Monticello, who came to the new Library’s rescue during the War of 1812. In 1814, the British burned Washington, destroying the Capitol and the small congressional library in its north wing. Congress accepted Jefferson’s offer to sell his comprehensive personal library of 6,487 books to “recommence” its own library. […] From today’s perspective, it is obvious that the Library plays important legislative, national, and international roles. However, it was not clear during the Library’s early decades in the U.S. Capitol that it would evolve into more than a legislative institution […]. Although it made popular literature available to the general public, the Library’s primary purpose was to serve Congress (Cole 2017, n.p.).

This proximity to political power is also manifested in the library’s architecture – in a tunnel system built to carry books between the library building and the U.S. Capitol building (see Cole 1972). Walking through the tunnel today takes you to the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. The old library building (named for Thomas Jefferson in 1980) displays stateliness, as it was designed as “a monument to American achievement and ambition” when it first opened its doors in 1897. The library was then the largest in the world (Cole 2017), and this magnificence can still be felt today. Its grandeur also shapes the experience of a Kluge fellowship, which comes with privileges. Whichever books or other kinds of material I order, everything will be delivered to Kluge11S, my cubicle in the Sainsbury wing of the majestic building (see Fig. 3). The fellowship is prestigious; it exudes exclusivity. The fact that my hosts at the Kluge Center are wonderfully welcoming and hospitable corresponds to this entitlement. The endowment of this research center, I hear, is huge.

94

Carsten Junker

Fig. 3: Cubicle Kluge11S. D.C. 2019 (Photo: Carsten Junker).

It is February 15, 2019. President Trump declares a national emergency to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexican border. What shows me that I am situated directly in the center of power, in the eye of the storm, is that nothing feels different here at the Library of Congress. Near Southwest. Ziegfeld’s-Secrets. The name of a club. Or rather two. On the first floor, downstairs, the club hosts drag shows and, every other Saturday, a queer Country-Western dance group called the DC Rawhides that features “Two-step, line dancing, waltz & west coast swing” (meetup n.d., n.p.). On the upper floor, “dancers writhe and sway on poles and podiums, and even behind glass in a steamy shower.” This is the description of what is happening on the official Washington.org website, which lists Ziegfeld’s-Secrets under its list of “15 Gay & Lesbian Bars to Check Out in Washington, DC” (15 n.d., n.p.). What it does not explicitly say is what a friend lets me know: that the dancers wear no clothes. D.C. is home to one of the few gay clubs in the United States that feature nude dancers. He asks, would I want to join him and his friends on a night out to Ziegfeld’s-Secrets? They’re happy to take me. Sure. So, we get to see male bodies dancing on counter tops, bodies flaunting what they got. Putative

Experience as Moving Methodology: Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity

95

secrets exposed, secrets on display. I see naked bodies not quite, but bodies in sturdy shoes, bodies wearing socks, socks holding dollar bills. Some of the nude dancers are actually wearing glasses so they can return the gazes of those who are having a good time on their night out. At the gay nightclub, I am wondering: who is watching whom? What transactions are under way here? The history of the night club is also a narrative of urban transformations, of metropolitan displacement: the club moved to its current location near the Capitol Riverfront, 1824 Half St. Southwest, ten years ago, making room at its former location on 1345 Half Street Southeast for The Nationals Park, the stadium of the Washington Nationals baseball team. As the Washington Post noted in 2006, “The city’s oldest stretch of gay-oriented clubs [Ziegfeld’s, and four other establishments on the same industrial block at Half and O streets], which date back to the 1970s, just happen to sit smack in the footprint of the planned Nationals baseball stadium” (Stuever 2006). The place where nude men once danced is now a place where families with children go to see games. A new soccer stadium – D.C. United’s Audi Field – followed, opening across the street from the club as recently as in 2018. According to an article published on the website of the Washington Blade, which calls itself America’s LGBT News Source, city officials and realtors are gearing up to turn this area “into an upscale retail, residential and entertainment district [with the realty developer planning] to build a 300,000-square-foot multifamily apartment building on the site of Ziegfeld’s-Secrets and adjacent buildings” (Chibbaro Jr. 2016, n.p.). By the time I am writing this, the future of the club is yet again uncertain, as it was “forced to temporarily close in March [2020] due to the coronavirus emergency, [and] will not reopen at its current site but is weighing options for reopening at a new location.” (Chibbaro Jr. 2020, n.p.). So, there are and will be other kinds of masculinities on display in the neighborhood now and in the future, other kinds of money paid and money made. In relation to the narrative about the naked men dancing on counters in the neighborhood’s gay club, the future will obviously provide a different kind of narrative. Near Northeast. At Union Market, I eat my first Cuban sandwich with lechón asado (roast pulled pork), standing right next to two students who are enjoying food from the Italian stall. They laugh as they sign to one another and laugh some more. Then they walk over to the cookie stall where they enter into a lively conversation. I approach the stall and get in line, and when the students leave, I buy a coffee. I confess my ignorance of sign language. Someone tells me in English about their intimacy with the Deaf community and about Gallaudet University.

96

Carsten Junker

Fig. 4: Union Market and Gallaudet University. D.C. 2019 (Photo: Carsten Junker).

I also learn from a friend that some blocks down on H Street everyone who works at the coffeehouse of a Seattle-based chain there is Deaf. To order a coffee, I need to write down what I want – the simple version for those who have no command of ASL. For learners of sign language, it is possible to spell out words in the ASL alphabet, someone at Union Market tells me, showing me a page with the alphabet. I also meet someone during my stay who works for a company that develops technology with which American Sign Language can be translated into English. As I understand it, it takes complicated measures to develop software that translates images into text. Near Southwest. Upstairs, naked men, only wearing shoes, dancing on counter tops. What is this about? My first thought: this is brutal. It makes these men heartwrenchingly vulnerable to the hungry gazes of the guests in the club, to their money. And yet, at second glance, it is the dancers who absolutely have the gaze. They look upon the guests, guests like me who cannot decide between fascination and some embarrassment for staring. These confident men, so they seem, are doing their job professionally. It allows them to pay their bills, which, paradoxically, makes them appear invincible. Or so it seems to me. In between their twenty-minute performances, they put on speedos and mix with the crowd, going around to chat with people. That night I talk to someone in the club who tells me about his experiences of working in a different gay bar. I become aware that I am here not to feel shy but to give the men working in the club money. Sticking dollar bills into the socks of the dancers seems a way to get close to the men. But transgressions are kept in check. Sex is in the air, but money cannot buy it. Touching a dancer above his knees is not allowed. In any case, I am a bad guest be-

Experience as Moving Methodology: Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity

97

cause I am still too shy to leave any money. But then, my friends walk with me up to one of the men, and make me leave him a couple of one-dollar bills. Capitol Hill. I visit a pop-up exhibition in the Hispanic Division Reading Room that is curated by one of my co-fellows. It opens a workshop on Afro-Latin female performance artists. The material they selected from the vast collection of the Library of Congress is intriguing, I learn in particular about the Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias, whose portrait of a woman titled Santoya, or Seventh Avenue Type, from around 1927, to me seems a prototypical case of the expressionist and primitivist style that was en vogue in the 1920s. Representatives of the Harlem Renaissance appropriated and ironized primitivism, seeking to overcome and subvert racist images of the Old South and replace them with empowering, self-respecting images of blackness. It remains an open question whether Covarrubias’s depiction of Santoya presents a caricature of racist images of Black femininity or whether it contributes to their vast repertoire. As I enter the Kluge Center the next Monday morning, I reflect that the Library of Congress seems a very diverse place to me. While it was significantly built by enslaved people, it now seems like an inclusive place for its users and employees. What position does the legacy of enslavement in the U.S. assign me, a white German research fellow, nowadays? During my fellowship, I learn about the work that historians have undertaken in recent years to reverse the amnesia of the fact that building Capitol Hill depended on the contribution of enslaved people (see Arnebeck 2014; Slave n.d.; Woodard 2019). The grandeur, the light sandstone and marble, unthinkable without the labor of those who had no choice but to do the excruciating work of building representative buildings for the nation. Near Southwest. During my second stay in D.C., a second trip to the club with friends is preceded by a dinner over which we talk about gene tests. I am baffled by fuzzy categorizations: what are we reading out of genes here: nationality, ethnicity, race, religion? Throwing gloom over the general social enjoyment, I reject the idea of a test. Perhaps a German attitude, I’m wondering, and thinking of a quote by the French sociologist Colette Guillaumin: “Race does not exist. But it does kill people” (1995, 107). Races do not exist, racism does. Does gender exist? Should it? What about desire? We are about to leave for the club, where one of the friends hadn’t been in two years. As we’re approaching Ziegfeld’s-Secrets this time, he sees Audi Field and can’t believe the urban transition of the area. The cover charge has gone up from 10 dollars last time to 15 dollars this time. Inside, downstairs, segregation becomes visible: there are two white dancers on the stage, two Asian dancers on the counter top. They take turns dancing every half hour or so. Upstairs: four Black dancers, one on a stage, one on a table top near a glass screen behind which dancers can take showers for everyone to see, two dancers on the bar counter top. There’s a group of five Black women on their girls’ night out, looking at them intently. Last time, the bar wasn’t racially self-segregated the way it is today.

98

Carsten Junker

Then, at 11:30 pm, the drag show starts downstairs, integrating the place. This scene points to possibilities of gender fluidity, the permissive place of the club, the energy there. However, we only watch the show for about five minutes, then leave the club, having been there for one hour total. A little boring. That evening, the club is hardly crowded at all, unlike that night in the spring, when it was busting. The club’s policy: cash only. There are ATM machines on every floor. As we are leaving, I hear someone saying, ‘they must be doing badly, raising the cover charge and not accepting credit cards at the bar.’ The next Sunday, at a lunch with my friends who took me along to the club, I meet a girlfriend of theirs. We start talking about the new club payment policies, wondering if it means the club is struggling and what that might mean for those who work there. During my time in D.C., I also hear that some of the dancers are apparently straight or keeping their sexuality intentionally unclear. Perhaps this way, they can collect tips from everyone, no matter what gender and desire. It seems to me that everyone on their night out at Ziegfeld’-Secrets is first and foremost a customer. Such snippets and partial notes on different areas of the city initially seem to stand next to each other as if at random – and there is a certain randomness to them – but they are an important building block in a moving methodology, and lead up to the next step in the process of triangulation, moving in-between.

2.2 Moving in-between The following step of moving in-between breaks up the distinctness of places. It serves to dynamize the participatory observations of different areas by underlining how they are connected by the observers’ movement between them. Moving in-between serves as a reflection on mobility in and between places as well as of the mobilization of research methods. Between Capitol Hill and Near Northeast. It is August 2019. I have been back for my second residency at the Library of Congress for about a week. Settling in has been easy. I have the same cubicle, my library card is still valid, my access card to the building as well. I can even use it for the library wellness center, which I had signed up for in March but never taken advantage of. This time might be different. I want to be more active and forward, going more places on foot and exploring them, taking advantage of my time here, literally broadening my horizon. So, how to spend the first Sunday back in D.C.? Enough of stuffy reading rooms and my air-conditioned cubicle, I’m telling myself. I should go out into nature, see some trees, air out my body and mind. The U.S. National Arboretum is not too far away, I figure, and the biggest park in walking distance. As the map tells me, a 39minute walk. So, I start walking. And leave a gentrified area to enter a poor neighborhood where I find a corner store with a woman who is wearing a hijab screened off behind a safety glass, and I buy a bottle of water. I wonder, has this store seen robberies?

Experience as Moving Methodology: Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity

99

As I keep walking, the area gets more and more run down, homeless people on the sidewalk. The sidewalk eventually ends so I need to continue walking on the busy highway, U.S. Route 50 (see Fig. 5). Certainly, the infrastructure in this country is not laid out for pedestrians like me, well-off Europeans who enter neighborhoods that haven’t waited for them to walk through. I catch myself telling myself how great it is of me to be defying socially as well as racially marked spatial boundaries. Can it get more patronizing than that?

Fig. 5: U.S. Route 50 and U.S. National Arboretum fence. D.C. 2019 (Photo: Carsten Junker).

Then, inside the arboretum: the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum. Fifty-three bonsai trees donated by Japan in 1976, celebrating the bicentennial of American Independence. Japan, a defeated nation, giving away as a gift those beautifully artful little trees to a victor of World War II (see Fig. 6). After the bonsai garden, I walk by themed

100

Carsten Junker

plots of land with herbs and plants native to North America, adjacent to plots with non-native ones. The experiment aims to discover which plot attracts native insects and will keep away those that destroy trees, plants, nature. An ecocritical and patriotic question: protecting, defending American wildlife. Nature’s nation? I overhear a conversation between two white people walking through the park. ‘And this woman on the porch, she said to me, you don’t belong here’. ‘A black woman?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Oh, well’. ‘See, it’s what Trump has done. Divide us’. I am pondering the fact that one of the two is blaming a president for someone articulating her refusal to give in to gentrification, for her sense of loss, for the protest against her potential displacement. On my way back, I pass by a bikeshare station. Since I have my credit card on me, I can sign in. I make my way back along the highway, navigating around the holes in the pavement.

Fig. 6: National Bonsai & Penjing Museum. D.C. 2019 (Photo: Carsten Junker).

Between Near Northeast and Near Southwest. We take the car to the forlorn area of the city where the gay club is located. While city planners and realtors obviously see great potential in the area, as of now it is an abject part of town, just like the club itself: abjected from its previous location, where it made room for the baseball stadium and the promises of gentrification. You need a car to get to this place. Or a taxi, or a ridehailing app. Since I neither have a phone to order a ride, nor am I willing to spend the money to go there by taxi, I am coming along with my new friends. We arrive when a soccer game has just finished and numerous people, families with kids predominantly, are pouring out into the streets, their cars clogging them up and blocking our way. Between Near Northeast and Capitol Hill. My new lifestyle: more mobility, more flexibility. I am now taking a bike back and forth between where I stay and work. Capital Bikeshare is the buzzword: Capital Bikeshare is metro DC’s bikeshare system, with more than 4,300 bikes available at 500 stations across six jurisdictions […]. Capital Bikeshare provides residents and visitors with a convenient, fun and affordable transportation option for getting from Point A to Point B (About n.d.).

Experience as Moving Methodology: Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity

101

Moving from point A to point B by bike – that makes me a privileged person. I participate, I have liberties, I can take the bike whenever I want to, wherever I want to go. Spatial mobility is a sign of social mobility. Before taking a bike, I walked, and took the bus a number of times. Once, when I got off the bus in the Cardozo/Shaw neighborhood, a seemingly homeless man punched me. It was a coincidence that he hit me, but I was thinking his actions were to let me know that I don’t belong there. When I told someone about the occurrence, he said he had never taken a bus. His car was waiting outside the door, ready to be used whenever it was needed. That person had also never taken the streetcar around the corner, on H Street NE. I once hopped on and off as it passed by. The ride is free; the streetcar line was supposed to revitalize the area and “[e]ncourage [its] economic development” (History n.d., n.p.). The streetcar was put back in use in 2016, after a hiatus of more than fifty years. “In 1908 streetcars began connecting H Street to the Navy Yard via Eighth Street, allowing workers to commute” (Shoenfeld et al. 2011). Is history supposed to repeat itself? September 11, 2019. The eighteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. As I stop my bike at a red light on Constitution Ave. NE, I see a woman in a pink convertible driving by, R&B music blasting out loud. I’ve seen her before, I’m establishing a routine. Speaking of which: heading around the corner of the Jefferson building toward the library entrance, I have now passed another woman for the third time: same time, same place. The pleasantness or the boredom of repetition? The second time I saw her, she was carrying an orchid in her hands. Where is she going with it, I was wondering. As a second step in triangulating urban spaces, moving in-between shows mobility in and between distinct urban spaces. Such a focus on movement leads up to the third step in triangulation, in which the partial notes of distinct places are put in relation to each other. This step helps to derive theoretical insights from personal observations and experiential knowledge, allowing structural comparisons between different urban spaces.

2.3 Relational interpretation What added knowledge value does relational interpretation promise? This step is about analyzing asymmetrical power relations with reference to dimensional, actional, and representational structures of different urban spaces; it is about discursive evaluations of these places in relation to each other. We could say that singular description is about descriptions of particular foci, moving in-between is about movement and dynamization, and relational interpretation is about relationality. Taken together, these three steps make up the triangulation of urban space. My days in D.C. are largely spent walking or biking the line between these two poles, the room I am renting near Gallaudet and the research center at the library. Moving between them – and adding my two visits to Near Southwest to the list – I de-

102

Carsten Junker

velop a personal, mental map of the city and begin to grasp its complexity and its contradictions. I observe and experience urban spaces of dissension – built, social, and symbolic tensions in the U.S. capital. These tensions exist within each pole and between them. Power structures are at play among these different places: while the Library of Congress and, by extension, Capitol Hill are largely framed by exclusionary narratives of national self-fashioning, the urban spaces of Near Northeast and Southwest are marked, predominantly, by negotiations of diversity in light of social inequalities. The differences become most startingly obvious in comparison, when relating the different parts of the city to each other. My field notes on Capitol Hill and Near Northeast help me to get an idea of the tensions that can be sensed when moving within and between the poles. Of course, these notes are not part of my original research project on the history and theory of (literary) authorship. But: my general concerns with questions of discursive power, cultural authority, and social difference provide a conceptual framework for my personal observations during my months in Washington, D.C. These field notes enable reflections on diverse manifestations of urbanity, including an interrogation of place-making, urban community building and urban displacement in light of the strictures of social inequalities, and embodiments of citizenship and space in the context of constant urban renewal and transformation. An analysis of the structural tensions, the third steps in the triangulation of urban spaces, is an important building block in a moving methodology. It allows us to situate personal field notes of urban phenomena within a larger discursive framework of discourses about these phenomena. The triangulation of field notes on urban spaces presents an opportunity not least for a literary and cultural studies scholar like me, that is, a non-empiricist, to methodologically consider the methodical and textual practice of field noting as a contribution to the nexus where physical, social, and epistemic mobility intersect. By field notes, I thus also mean taking note of how I position myself and reflect on my own position in both the complex urban contexts in which I move and the discursive fields in which I act.

3 Placing discourse The heuristic process I propose for an adequate consideration of a subject matter as complex as urban space entails – in a step that follows the triangulation of urban space – that certain spaces are related to certain discourses. Relating urban space and discourse involves thinking about ways in which discourses shape places and vice versa. Here, I am loosely drawing on the notion of discourses in place, as suggested by Ron Scollon and Suzie Wong Scollon (2003). Their “preliminary grammar of the ‘placeness’ of discourses in place” combines “sociocultural theory, semiotic theory, and ethnographic studies of signs in place” (Scollon/Scollon 2003, viii) to define a field they call geosemiotics: a “systematic analysis of the ways we interpret language as it is ma-

Experience as Moving Methodology: Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity

103

terially placed in the world” (Scollon/Scollon 2003, xi). Locating discourses in place, in this sense, means that discourses shape and constitute places, and that discourses, in turn, speak through specific urban settings and particular urban places. I take Scollon/Scollon’s analytical approach to literal “emplacement – the when and where of the physical location of language in the world” (Scollon/Scollon 2003, xii) as a cue for a figurative use of the notion of discourses in place which allows us to see how the discourses of the social world, their rules and regulations, are emplaced, manifested in urban spaces, thus transforming them into specific, meaningful places that structure social interaction. This includes how these places in turn can be read as texts from which we can then derive analytical categories and concepts for academic discourses. With these categories and concepts, the possible meanings and effects of places – how they regulate social relations, for instance – can be understood. Locating discourses in place thus also allows us to read places in the framework of discourses. While Scollon/Scollon define discourse both “in the narrow sense [as] language in use [and] in the broader sense [as] a body of language use and other factors that form a ‘social language’ such as the discourse of traffic regulations, commercial discourse, medical discourse, legal discourse” (Scollon/Scollon 2003, 210), I take discourse to refer primarily to a set of constraining rules that enable and regulate the specialized and institution-based forms of knowledge production which we encounter in academic disciplines; it is these disciplines that “constitute a system of control in the production of discourse, fixing its limits through the action of an identity taking the form of a permanent reactivation of the rules” (Foucault 1972, 224). One result of disciplinary discourses, or research in general, is order and coherence. I take up Michel Foucault’s (1972, 149) cautionary remarks here against the “law of coherence”: This law of coherence is a heuristic rule, a procedural obligation, almost a moral constraint of research: not to multiply contradictions uselessly; not to be taken in by small differences; not to give too much weight to changes, disavowals, returns to the past, and polemics; not to suppose that men’s discourse is perpetually undermined from within by the contradiction of their desires, the influences that they have been subjected to, or the conditions in which they live; but to admit that if they speak, and if they speak among themselves, it is rather to overcome these contradictions, and to find the point from which they will be able to be mastered.

With respect to the three places I explored in Washington, D.C., how could academic discourses resolve contradictions, in effect seeking to reduce the complexity which these places present? What central analytical concepts and procedures of categorization would facilitate such ordering and thus constitute the subjects and objects of which they speak in the first place? Given my disciplinary background and personal research foci in American studies, I would offer the following answers: with respect to the library and research center: race; with respect to the university: dis/ability; with respect to the club: gender and sexuality. Capitol Hill. When I frame my observations of the library in the analytical vocabulary of critical-race and postcolonial or decolonial theories that examine race as a

104

Carsten Junker

social and analytical category generally considered to result from Eurocentric projects of colonization and transatlantic enslavement, I might see this institution as a white urban space, a space which is brought forth by and continues to bring forth whiteness and the privileges this signifies – the dimensional, actional, and representational orders associated with it. The building itself materializes and reproduces a racialized order. As built space, the library structure seems to reproduce a hegemonic social and epistemic order in which the low-paid service jobs are primarily performed by less privileged male and female employees of color who serve predominantly white researchers for the ongoing reproduction of knowledge centered around and catering to postEnlightenment epistemes, despite a visibly diversified staff of librarians. Who sits at the cafeteria’s cash register? Who drives the carts in the library’s tunnel system to move books from one building to another (see Fig. 7)? Raising these questions can be linked to many theoretical works on race and structural racism; the critical project of Afropessimism (Wilderson 2020) is of particular relevance in this respect.

Fig. 7: Library of Congress tunnel system. D.C. 2019 (Photo: Carsten Junker).

Near Northeast. While the neighborhood looks back on a history markedly shaped by processes of racialization – white flight to the suburbs by the 1950s, Black urban entrepreneurship and social protest following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in April 1968 – it is also visibly shaped by the life around Gallaudet University, making it the center of American Deaf culture. Deaf culture materializes in the built

Experience as Moving Methodology: Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity

105

space of the campus in the city. Faculty members and students of this “premier research and teaching institution for Deaf and hearing-impaired students in the world” helped to design a new building, the James Lee Sorenson Sign Language and Communication Center (Adams/Reiss/Serlin 2015, 1). To this end, Gallaudet professor Dirksen Bauman held a graduate seminar in 2006 entitled “Deaf Space”: Would a building designed entirely by and for Deaf people look, feel, and be experienced differently from other buildings – and, if so, how might it work? Alternately, because Deaf people already live in the world without specially designated spaces, could there be something fundamentally problematic and even essentialist about creating identifiable “Deaf” space? (Adams/Reiss/ Serlin 2015, 1).

As lived experience, Deaf culture shapes the interactions among as well as between Deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing people on campus and the social practices in the urban settings of cafés, supermarkets, and other places in the Near Northeastern neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Street signs make hearing people attuned to the presence of “Deaf Pedestrians” (see Fig. 8).

Fig. 8: Street sign. D.C. 2019 (Photo: Carsten Junker).

106

Carsten Junker

Disability studies – which “explores the social, cultural, and political dimensions of the concept of disability and what it means to be disabled,” (Adams/Reiss/Serlin 2015, 2) – is rejected by many Deaf people because they do not consider themselves disabled and they do not see disability as a useful category. And yet, this academic field may provide a suitable vocabulary for an understanding of this area, the concept of “Deaf” space being an example. Discourses of disability have undergone far-reaching changes in recent years. Refusing to pathologize people with disabilities vis-à-vis the valorization of the unmarked “normal body” (Kochhar-Lindgren 2007, 85), disability studies has emerged as a field that reflects the power of discourses to create groups of people, homogenizing and pathologizing them. Challenging such processes through activism and scholarship has led to the emergence of an interdisciplinary field that operates with disability as a political and symbolic category rather than a marker of individual problems to be fixed by medicine. And yet, while “innovative scholarship has advanced a more nuanced understanding of the underlying assumptions that make disability the other of normalcy,” claiming “a more visible social space in the public sphere,” Kochhar-Lindgren notes, “one of the problems in using disability as an organizing trope is that it often artificially consolidates a wide array of physical and mental differences under a single term” (Kochhar-Lindgren 2007, 87–8). As such, disability as a keyword that “organizes identity-based legal and cultural fields” (Kochhar-Lindgren 2007, 88) shows the ambivalent consequences of identitypolitical community building inherent in the project of disability studies. In his introduction to the Disability Studies Reader, Lennard J. Davis (2006, xvi) puts this somewhat polemically: Indeed, like the appearance of African-American studies following rapidly on the heels of the civil rights movement, there is a reciprocal connection between political praxis by people with disabilities and the formation of a discursive category of disability studies. That is, there have been people with disabilities throughout history, but it has only been in the last twenty years that one-armed people, quadriplegics, the blind, people with chronic diseases, and so on, have seen themselves as a single, allied, united physical minority.

Scholars in disability studies have responded to the double-edged effects of disciplinary formation – constituting groups that may identify with a concept which can serve community-building functions and, at the same time, refuse homogenization and the naturalization of differences – in a number of ways. They have linked disability “to other major vectors of identity, such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship” (Adams/Reiss/Serlin 2015, 2), thus pointing to the differences within the category of disability. Or they have addressed and corroborated the exclusionary effects of discursive group formation. In a footnote to Davis’s (2006, xviiin3) passage quoted above, he notes: I have deliberately left the Deaf off of this list. (I use the capitalized term to indicate the culturally Deaf, as opposed to the simple fact of physical deafness.) The reason is that many Deaf do not con-

Experience as Moving Methodology: Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity

107

sider themselves people with disabilities but rather members of a linguistic minority. The Deaf argue that their difference is actually a communication difference – they speak sign language – and that their problems do not exist in a Deaf, signing community, whereas a group of legless people will not transcend their motor impairments when they become part of a legless community. The argument is a serious one and, although I personally feel that the Deaf have much to gain by joining forces with people with disabilities, I honor the Deaf argument.

Rather than choosing an approach that analyzes disability by way of attending to “intracategorical” or “intercategorical complexity” (McCall 2005, 1773), thus confirming the overall validity of the concept of disability – and by extension disability in urban space – scholars in the field have also raised general doubts about the assumptive logic on which the discursive order of disability studies rests. It seems that this doubt coincides with an analytical approach which can be related to “anticategorical complexity” (McCall 2005, 1773) – an approach which is based on a methodology that deconstructs analytical categories. Social life is considered too irreducibly complex – overflowing with multiple and fluid determinations of both subjects and structures – to make fixed categories anything but simplifying social fictions that produce inequalities in the process of producing differences.

Robert McRuer’s work can be aligned with such an anticategorical approach when he connects the study of disability with queer theory to expose and interrogate the normalization of certain bodies, desires, communities, and identities and the exclusion of others. Choosing the term crip theory over disability studies, he notes that “queer-crip practices [and theories] have worked to expose the invisibility of […] normative identities, and the larger naturalization of normalcy” (Peers/Brittain/McRuer 2012, 150). As an example of the tedious work that goes into exposing the naturalization of normalcy, consider the lesbian scholar and activist Karla Jay who, in the documentary Visible: Out on Television (2020), shares her experience of once being invited to a live talk show on the topic of disability in the 1970s: the other two guests on the show were a person who was Deaf and a person who had multiple sclerosis. Less than half a century ago, it was considered normal to categorize both homosexuality and disability as deviant and deficient, but as Jay highlights, what a demographic majority once considered normal is subject to change (Visible 2020, ep. 2, 04:54–05:28). Moving through the area and interacting with Deaf people, for instance when I posted letters at the student post office on the campus of Gallaudet University or bought groceries from someone whose native language is ASL, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of anxiety about not sharing the language – becoming aware of the normalcy accorded to English elsewhere. I also felt a reverence for the normalcy of this urban space, a public sphere created by a Deaf community that to me seemed inexhaustibly diverse, and proudly so. Near Southwest. To which academic discourses can the urban space of Near Southwest be related? In light of the assumption that discourses potentially bring order to the objects they constitute, disambiguate and discipline what they are about,

108

Carsten Junker

and generally follow what Foucault (1972, 149) calls the “law of coherence,” I am beginning to realize that my experiences of diversity in the urban spaces through which I move cannot easily be formatted and disciplined into any coherent discursive narrative. This realization has far-reaching repercussions for the ways in which I can relate urbanity to discourses: the relationship between discourses and places is fraught with tensions. Rather than imposing discursive coherence to complex places, my field noting, ultimately, seems to complicate discourses. Although I am encountering specific areas as a scholar with respect to specific aspects and categories of analysis, I observe that various aspects nonetheless converge when I move through the city. Academic discourse can be accountable to such observations when, for instance, it combines the categories of queer with crip, as McRuer proposes, which allows an understanding of how compulsive heteronormativity and compulsive able-bodiedness are intertwined (Peers/Brittain/McRuer 2012, 148), and enables a critique of isolating categories. Furthermore, such an approach facilitates a critique of coherent and normalizing narratives about topics like the embodiment of gender and desire in urban settings based on normative assumptions and binary categorizations such as masculine/feminine, gay/straight, and cis/trans. I take visiting Ziegfeld’s-Secrets as a cue to think about ways I can make the gay club a reference point, an object of knowledge, an entrance point into thinking about the ways in which metropolitan gender performances can be conceptualized (see Fig. 9). Before my first visit to the gay club, I imagined the dancers identified as gay more than queer, cis-male more than trans. Is this also a normative assumption? As a scholar trained in literary and cultural studies, I’m well versed in analyses using these categories. But the practice of field noting presents an opportunity to methodologically explore the conceptual repercussions of going to the club, taking notes, thinking about the process, and reflecting on the embodiment of metropolitan genders, those of the dancers and the patrons of the club alike. It turns out that using my field notes enables me to highlight the complexities of this experience, the various obvious facets that complicate things. It turns out I should be thinking through the nexus between masculinities, desire, consumption, intimacy, gay or queer place-making and community-building in light of the strictures of capitalist transactions of exchange, if I seek to highlight the complexity of my experience.

Experience as Moving Methodology: Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity

109

Fig. 9: Visiting Ziegfeld’s-Secrets. D.C. 2019 (Photo: Carsten Junker).

Again, there are theoretical models that offer neat explanations of some of the phenomena of which Ziegfeld’-Secrets provides an example, and that give answers to questions raised in urban studies. Concerning my personal research focus on diversity in scenarios of social inequality, a model with which to explain my understanding of Ziegfeld’s-Secrets (and a discourse that links Near Southwest and Near Northeast) would be one that explains gentrification, urban displacement, and real estate speculation. A narrative that is too grand, too easy, in my understanding, would be that of white heterosexual, middle-class couples with kids displacing poor people of color, although Washington provides examples of this. There is, for instance, a local funk music style called Go-Go that is emblematic of that kind of gentrification. Go-Go is under threat; it came out of the Shaw neighborhood in D.C. (corner 7th St/Florida Ave. NW) in the 1970s, an area that has been in the focus of real estate speculators – the locations where Go-Go originated hardly exist anymore (see Paz 2019). There is a connection to the Near Northeast neighborhood here: “In the 1960s, long before Chuck Brown, the future ‘Godfather of Go-Go,’ purchased his first guitar at Chuck and Marge Levin’s music store at 1227 H Street [Northeast]” (Shoenfeld et al. 2011); this was long before the gentrification of the area.

110

Carsten Junker

Southwest is another example. Mass sports and entertainment – soccer and baseball as domains that capitalize in particular on straight masculinities – have displaced gay venues and the various performances of masculinity that these places facilitate. The Washington Post writes: “Far from the happy, let’s-walk-the-Labrador-to-WholeFoods realm of Logan and Dupont Circles, the O Street scene [at the old location] was the real deal: grubby, hidden even within sight of the Capitol, and just plain ugly-gorgeous” (Stuever 2006, n.p.) I cannot possibly cover the vast literature on gentrification, but I would like to point out only the work of human geographer Loretta Lees, who has criticized binary research – which contrasts incoming gentrifiers coded as white and middle class (and by extension heterosexual) with displaced residents coded as working-class and Black (and by extension also non-straight). Instead, Lees has noted that such research should be and recently has been challenged by more nuanced studies that take into account the complexity of urban transformations: a keyword here is (intra-, inter-, or anticategorical) intersectionality. Lees cites studies on Black gay gentrifiers in the Castro District of San Francisco in the 1970s, whose social status calls for considering them not as “‘victims’” as it were, but as “‘agents’ of gentrification” (Lees 2010, 392). However, as Lees notes: while the existence of Black gay gentrifiers points to the complexity of classed, raced, and gendered subject positions, with regard to race, Black gay gentrifiers “came up against [the] racism [of their] white gay racist [co-]gentrifiers” (Lees 2010, 392). We see it is important that research aims to be attuned to shifting subject positions, to draw out ambiguities and point out contradictions. Against this backdrop, I am pondering what field-note taking, as I am doing it here, might contribute to such reflections on metropolitan place-making. Field notes provide material that is ever so partial and personal: they are about segments of experience that allow for no generalizable claims about how things should be explained. They are about partial encounters, about fragmented impressions of embodiment, not about seemingly bulletproof empirical research. And thus rightly, the notes of my second visit to the club complicate things. It comes as a surprise to me that, while I had assumed – or wanted to assume – that the dancers self-identified as gay, it is obviously the market place of the club that makes them perform as such. But not even that is the case. Some men perform in ambiguous ways. Their performances can possibly be read as both gay or straight. And they may possibly give patrons of the club attention for money. Things cannot be explained as easily here as they may appear in academic discourses. The reality of the dancers cannot be contained in a simple narrative. Ziegeld’s-Secrets is about sex in the air, a finely calibrated regime of looking relations. There’s an invisible fence between those who look and those who are being looked at, but it remains unclear who is taking what position. Perhaps those who pay and consume look, perhaps those who work do. Is consumption and pay a more adequate framework for an analysis of this urban place?

Experience as Moving Methodology: Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity

111

My expectation that this metropolitan site is about gentrification, about gay nightlife, about phenomena we can put in neat categorical boxes, cannot be met. I am witnessing shifting positions, the re-framing of the dancers and guests at Ziegeld’sSecrets; I gain experiential knowledge from my partial, personal observations. What remains for me: categorical instability. This instability is about urbanity, about complexity and contradiction. What we get is experience of urban, metropolitan diversity in scenarios of inequality.

4 Experiencing research (Not) having a disability, (not) being racialized, (not) identifying as gay. Experience has long been an object of study. In my academic field, experience has been considered a strategy to authorize the subject positions of those who are marginalized on grounds of race, gender, desire, and/or further categories of social stratification. Questions of experience and participation are of central concern as objects of research in American studies, prominently so when issues of diversity – such as cultural recognition and economic redistribution – are at stake. An example is research which focuses on discursive strategies employed by marginalized subjects and their appeals to the authority of experience (see Diamond/Edwards 1977) as an authorizing strategy that validates accounts of lived experiences of exclusion and substantiates claims to participation and a critical stance toward hegemony. Second-wave feminist appeals to ‘the authority of experience,’ for instance, served feminists in the 1970s to “validate women’s actual lives and perceptions over against masculinist constructions thereof” (Bérubé 2005, 122). In her 1991 intervention, Joan Scott challenged such appeals to “experience as uncontestable evidence and as an originary point of explanation” (1991, 777). Put generally, Scott argued that relying on experience as an originary point of explanation forecloses attempts to investigate the sets of discursive conditions that shape perceptions of experiences of inclusion and exclusion in the first place. As a consequence, lived experience can hardly be conceptualized any longer regardless of discursive structures of interpellation and subject positioning and the parameters that transform experience into knowledge. While experience and participation have become central objects of analysis, their methodical potential is woefully underexamined and underdeveloped. The objectbias of experience and participation in a great deal of research corresponds to a lack of methodological reflection on how experience impacts researching subjects. This lack results from continuing claims to scholarly objectivity and the assumption that scholars are observing experts. But those who observe also participate in experience, especially when experiences of diversity in urban settings are concerned. We must think more about how to address this notable lack of interest: where and how can we integrate experience and participation into our methods?

112

Carsten Junker

In other words, experience is also of concern to subjects who do research. Being positioned and implicated in these processes of academic subject constitution is also a matter of experience to the researcher. It is a matter of overcoming the disembodied ideal of academic knowledge production, a matter of acknowledging and consciously incorporating the embodied experience of the researcher, not of observing the experience of others which then become an object of study. So, let us beware of patronizing ethnographic research that keeps those in positions of research in unmarked, default subject positions of discourse. A deliberate academic practice such as field noting – by which we can transform our lived experience into experiential knowledge – allows us to negotiate complex processes of subject constitution, including how we are constituted and constitute ourselves as academic subjects. The method of taking notes while on the move – mobile field noting – has potential as a self-reflective, auto-ethnographic method. Field noting is about going sideways, it is about overcoming pre-scripted scholarship. It invites us to let our experiences make us lose control over our own knowledge systems. The focus of field notes lies on situations generally not researched by oneself, on emergent places, and experiences we have as scholars when we move through space beyond the bounds of our conventional research activities. Being mobile can become a method once we relate such experiences back to scholarly questions and categories. Mobile field noting, then, becomes a method that relates peripheral urban experiences to our research – a crucial building block for experiential knowledge production in fields such as urban studies, discourse studies, diversity studies, and American studies. Field noting is also about accepting the authority and expertise of those who are not necessarily researchers by taking note of their views on the generally unmarked positions of whiteness, masculinity, heterosexuality, and able-bodiedness. It is about reversals of perspective without appropriating the perspectives of subjects for academic self-gain and self-aggrandizement. Walking, observing, taking mental and literal notes also allows us to enter into conversations along the way and listening to the stories of others. Walking this way can become a mobile method that offers new possibilities to do what O’Neill/Einashe (2019, 32) call for, namely to “‘decode[]’, ‘interrupt []’ and challenge[] dominant ideologies of race, class, gender and neoliberalism.” With experience at its core, field noting as a mobile method can complement and challenge more conventional forms of research.

5 Taking methods further As Stephen Greenblatt (2010, 250) notes in his Mobility Studies Manifesto: First, mobility must be taken in a highly literal sense. Boarding a plane, venturing on a ship, […], or simply setting one foot in front of the other and walking: these are indispensable keys to un-

Experience as Moving Methodology: Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity

113

derstanding the fate of cultures. The physical, infrastructural, and institutional conditions of movement – the available routes; the maps; the vehicles; the relative speed; the controls and costs; the limits on what can be transported; the authorizations required; the inns, relay stations and transfer points; the travel facilitators – are all serious objects of analysis. Only when conditions directly related to literal movement are firmly grasped will it be possible fully to understand the metaphorical movements: between center and periphery; faith and skepticism; order and chaos; exteriority and interiority.

What is the figurative meaning of the mobile method of field noting? What is its relevance and meaning for urban studies, discourse studies, diversity studies, American studies? Field noting, I suggest, contributes to key issues of knowledge production. Taking notes of the complex experiences of urban diversity complicates the production of discourses about metropolitan space, particularly when we consider urbanity as a conglomeration of multiple places. Field noting allows us to find empirical access to a subject matter as complex as urban space, and relate experiences to discourses, complicating discourses about urbanity that tend to disambiguate urban phenomena of complexity and contradiction. Field noting should not be based on an easy logic of either/or: either discourse or experience. We should not rely on discursive scripts, and we should not simply move around and become experientially aware of complexity and contradiction (Venturi 1966) in “spaces of dissension” (Foucault 1972, 152). Studying urban space is neither a matter of choosing an immobile method of discourse analysis at my desk, using and applying readily-made concepts and categories of analysis, taking up disambiguating discursive (pre)scripts. Nor is it about moving around and using mobile methods alone. Contradictions need not be resolved in field notes about urbanity so that we obey any “law[s] of coherence” (Foucault 1972, 149), nor need contradictions be the driving motor in making sense of urbanity. Rather, the complexities and contradictions encountered in urban space should and can become points of departure and points of arrival in field notes on the city. Movement allows us to experience and highlight complexities and contradictions as ongoing mechanisms we can use to relate manifold, oftentimes contradictory discourses to each other. Considering movement beyond a literal sense and analyzing the link between literal movement and metaphorical movement, as Greenblatt (1995; 2010) urges us to do, allows us to place the conditions under which we are (un)able to move through analytical frameworks and ask how we can move between orders of knowledge and across epistemic boundaries, how we can translate what we experience when we walk into knowledge. This returns us to James Baldwin (1998, 179), who calls on the readers of his letter to “[w]alk through the streets of Harlem and see what we, this nation, have become”. I take this as an invitation to take methods in urban studies further in the sense of moving methods forward, moving methods in acts of reflecting them, and reflecting methods that move the researcher. This is about developing a methodology. The lesson to take away from Baldwin is that walking is an epistemology.

114

Carsten Junker

6 References 15 Gay & Lesbian Bars to Check Out in Washington, DC. Washington.org. Online at: https://washing ton.org/visit-dc/gay-lesbian-bars-check-out-washington-dc. . About Capital Bikeshare. Capitalbikeshare.com. Online at: https://www.capitalbikeshare.com/about. . Adams, Rachel/Benjamin Reiss/David Serlin (2015): Introduction. In: Rachel Adams/Benjamin Reiss/ David Serlin (eds.): Keywords for Disability Studies. New York, 1–5. Arnebeck, Bob (2014): Slave Labor in the Capital: Building Washington’s Iconic Federal Landmarks. Charleston. Baldwin, James ([1960] 1998): Fifth Avenue, Uptown: A letter from Harlem. In: James Baldwin (ed.): Collected Essays. New York, 170–179. Benshoff, Harry M./Sean Griffin (2009): America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies. Malden, MA. Bérubé, Michael (2005): Experience. In: Lawrence Grossberg/Meaghan Morris/Tony Bennett (eds.): New Key-words: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Malden, MA, 121–23. Busse, Beatrix/Ingo H. Warnke (2015): Sprache im urbanen Raum. In: Ekkehard Felder/Andreas Gardt (eds.): Handbuch Sprache und Wissen. Berlin, 519–538. Chibbaro Jr., Lou (2016): Ziegfeld’s-Secrets building to be sold to developer. Washington Blade: America’s LGBT News Source. Online at: https://www.washingtonblade.com/2016/02/16/zieg felds-secrets-building-sold-developer/. . Chibbaro Jr., Lou (2020): Ziegfeld’s-Secrets ‘closed for good’ at current site, Washington Blade: America’s LGBT News Source, 1 May. Available at: https://www.washingtonblade.com/2020/05/ 01/ziegfelds-secrets-closed-for-good/. . Children of a Lesser God (1986): Directed by Randa Haines, performances by William Hurt and Marlee Matlin, Paramount Pictures. Cole, John Y. (1972): Library’s main building opened to public 75 years ago: Grandeur heightens enjoyment of literary feast. In: Library of Congress Information Bulletin 31, 466–67. Online at: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ufl1.ark:/13960/t70v9mj87&view=1up&seq=2. . Cole, John Y. (2017): History of the library of congress. Library of Congress. Online at: https://www.loc. gov/about/history-of-the-library/. . Davis, Lennard J. (2006): Introduction. In: Lennard J. Davis (ed.): The Disability Studies Reader. New York, xv–xviii. Diamond, Arlyn/Lee R. Edwards (eds.) (1977): The Authority of Experience: Essays in Feminist Criticism. Amherst. Foucault, Michel (1972): The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York. Gerhardt, Ulrike (2015): Global City Washington, D.C.: Eine politische Stadtgeographie. Bielefeld. Guillaumin, Colette (1995): Racism, Sexism, Power and Ideology. London. Greenblatt, Stephen (1995): Racism, sexism, power and ideology. London. History (n.d.): DC Streetcar. Online at: https://dcstreetcar.com/about/information/history/. . Greenblatt, Stephen (2010): A mobility studies manifesto. In: Stephen Greenblatt/Ines Županov/ Reinhardt Meyer-Kalkus/Heike Paul/Pal Nyiri/Frederike Pannewick/Colette Guillaumin (eds.): Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto. New York, 250–253. Huggins, Nathan Irvin (1976): Introduction. In: Nathan Irvin Huggins (ed.): Voices from the Harlem Renaissance. New York, 3–11. Kochhar-Lindgren, Kanta (2007): Disability. In: Bruce Burgett/Glenn Hendler (eds.): Keywords for American Cultural Studies. New York, 85–88.

Experience as Moving Methodology: Notations on the Study of Urban Diversity

115

Lees, Loretta (2010): A reappraisal of gentrification: Toward a “Geography of Gentrification”. In: Loretta Lees/Tom Slater/Elvin Wyly (eds.): The Gentrification Reader. New York, 382–96. meetup (n.d): Online at: https://www.meetup.com/de-DE/GoGayDC/events/gtzwdlyvjbhc/. . McCall, Leslie (2005): The complexity of intersectionality. In: Signs 30.3, 1771–1802. O’Neill, Maggie/Ismail Einashe (2019): Walking borders, risk and belonging. In: WalkingLab (ed): Journal of Public Pedagogies 4, 2019. Online at: http://www.publicpedagogies.org/wp-content/ uploads/2019/11/04-ONeil.pdf. . Paz, Christian (2019): Go-Go music is back at shaw metro pcs after #DontMuteDC protest. NBC Washington, 10 April. Online at: https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/After-Commu nity-Backlash-Go-Go-Music-Is-Back-at-Shaw-Metro-PCS-508379881.html. . Peers, Danielle/Melisa Brittain/Robert McRuer (2012): Crip excess, art, and politics: A conversation with Robert McRuer. In: Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 34, 148–155. Scollon, Ron/Suzie Wong Scollon (2003): Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World. New York. Scott, Joan W. (1991): The evidence of experience. In: Critical Inquiry 17, 773–97. Shoenfeld, Sarah/Jane Freundel Levey/Mara Cherkasky/Sarah Fairbrother/Maggie Downing/Carmen Harris/Cortney Kreer (2011): Hub, home, heart: Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail. Washington, DC. Online at: https://www.culturaltourismdc.org/portal/c/document_library/get_file?uuid= c9ebb5a6-c0a8-459e-a25d-c84243bfc8b0&groupId=701982. . Slave Labor Commemorative Marker (n.d.): Architect of the Capitol. Online at: https://www.aoc.gov/ art/commemorative-displays/slave-labor-commemorative-marker. . Stuever, Hank (2006): Ballpark blues: At a strip of gay clubs in southeast, one last inning before striking out. In: Washington Post, 4 April. Online at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ content/article/2006/04/03/AR2006040301976_pf.html. . Venturi, Robert (1966): Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. New York. Visible: out on television (2020): episode 2, Apple TV+. Online at: https://tv.apple.com/us/episode/ television-as-a-tool/umc.cmc.1u80weyc2q64oi0n62pof7xzi. Who we are (n.d.): Online at: https://www.gallaudet.edu/about/who-we-are. . Woodard, Helena (2019): Slave Sites on Display: Reflecting Slavery’s Legacy through Contemporary “Flash” Moments. Jackson.

II Kommunikationsraum Stadt/ City as Communicative Space

Sam Kirkham

5. Urban Communities of Practice Abstract: This chapter discusses research on communities of practice in urban spaces, with a particular focus on language variation and change in multiethnic communities in Europe. I outline research showing that the community of practice approach is a valuable tool for analysing sociolinguistic dynamics in contemporary urban societies, but also suggest that it can be augmented with other complementary approaches in better understanding the social meanings of linguistic variation. Section 1 provides a brief overview of the community of practice approach and its theoretical basis. Section 2 covers research on urban communities of practice in the study of language variation and change. Section 3 specifically focuses on multiethnic urban communities of practice. Section 4 briefly discusses alternatives to the community of practice approach, as well as some complementary perspectives, whilst Section 5 concludes with some suggestions for future research. 1 2 3 4 5 6

Definitions and key terms Communities of practice and language variation Urban communities of practice in multiethnic contexts The role of friendship networks in urban spaces Summary and future directions References

1 Definitions and key terms The community of practice (CofP) was theorised by Lave/Wenger (1991), who developed the concept in order to understand forms of social learning. They noted that traditional models of learning, such as the transmission of information from a teacher to a student, did not apply to more informal learning situations, such as apprenticeships or particular kinds of workplace socialisation. The CofP approach has been most widely popularised in sociolinguistics by Eckert/McConnell-Ginet, who describe a community of practice as “an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavor” (1992, 464). Communities of practice represent the social groupings that individuals construct for themselves (Moore 2011) and, as such, they contrast with the social structures that analysts may sometimes use to organise their data, such as demographic categories or social networks. Membership in a community of practice differs from some other forms of social categorisation, such as social networks and speech communities, as it is ultimately defined by participation in a shared activity, which is hypothesised to give rise to mutually constituted practices and behaviours. In order to understand the nature of such participation, CofP research is usual-

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-006

120

Sam Kirkham

ly ethnographic in nature, with Moore (2011, note 3) suggesting that “it is not possible to do a community of practice study without ethnography”. Before discussing specific applications of this research, it is first worth unpacking what exactly comprises a CofP. Wenger (1998, 76–84) outlines the three main determinants as follows: (1) Mutual engagement (2) Joint enterprise (3) Shared repertoire One of the key points is that a CofP is not simply a collective of people who engage in the same activity, but a group of people who engage in an activity together, hence the focus on mutual engagement (see Wenger 1998; Holmes/Meyerhoff 1999; Meyerhoff/ Strycharz 2013 for a more detailed discussion). Wenger (1998, 74) stresses that CofP is “not a synonym for group, team, or network” and that membership of a social category or a network of interpersonal relations is not a sufficient condition for a CofP. For example, if a group of adolescents in a school listen to avantgarde electronic music then this does not necessarily entail that they comprise a CofP. What would be important in determining whether they formed a CofP is that their appreciation of avantgarde electronic music is something in which they are mutually engaged as a group. Wenger’s notion of joint enterprise highlights the fact that mutual engagement in shared practices also means engagement in negotiating the meanings and values of those practices. He notes that “practice is about meaning as an experience of everyday life” (Wenger 1998, 52) and that people are engaged in a CofP when they are “engaged in actions whose meanings they negotiate with one another” (Wenger 1998, 73). This consensus-based dimension of CofPs suggests a complex relationship between the individual and the group, with engagement in a joint enterprise being a power-laden and contested notion (Tusting 2005). However, Wenger (1998, 78) points out that “joint” does not necessarily mean that everybody agrees upon everything, but that meaning has instead been “communally negotiated”. The specific processes behind this negotiation are likely to be specific to the CofP in question, but some have criticised the CofP approach for its lack of detail concerning the power dynamics involved in different kinds of CofP membership (e.g. Davies 2005). Subsequent work has increasingly attended to the role of power and the negotiation of participation; for example, Myers (2005) highlights the ideological struggles in contesting what counts as ‘legitimate participation’, whilst Moore (2010a) explores distinctions between peripheral and marginal participation (see also Eckert/Wenger 2005; Meyerhoff 2005; Moore 2006). Moore explains that “[p]eripheral participants are not core members of a CofP, but they nonetheless engage in and contribute to some of the practices of the CofP and, in doing so, can potentially affect the overall CofP style. Marginal participants are involved in the same activity as CofP members, but not in an ‘engaged’ way” (2010a, 126). These are important points in any discussion of urban CofPs, because urban CofPs are commonly situated within very large and complex networks, with individuals potentially experi-

Urban Communities of Practice

121

encing differing types of participation across different CofPs. Notions of peripherality may influence the extent to which an individual participates in the sociolinguistic practices of the group. In addition to this, it may also be important to account for the range of CofPs that somebody belongs to, given that the linguistic practices of an individual are unlikely to be wholly determined by their membership of a single CofP (Moore 2010a). This idea is explored further in Section 4. The final point outlined by Wenger is the idea of a shared repertoire, which is the aspect of CofPs that has received the most focus in sociolinguistic research. Wenger (1998) proposes that mutual engagement in a joint enterprise produces shared ways of doing things, which emerge out of the processes of negotiating and co-constructing meaning (cf. Eckert/McConnell-Ginet 1992). Clearly this is of great interest to those interested in language, as it follows that CofPs are likely to develop shared social practices, one of which is likely to be language (Eckert/McConnell-Ginet 1992; Eckert 2012). This concept will be discussed more extensively in Sections 2 and 3. Importantly, this shared repertoire is not simply some ‘off-the-shelf’ collection of pre-existing semiotic resources. Instead, a CofP’s repertoire may be highly heterogeneous, but it is given coherence through the pursuing of a joint enterprise by the CofP, which allows it to become recognised as a distinctive style (Wenger 1998; Eckert 2012).

2 Communities of practice and language variation 2.1 Urban communities of practice in the study of language variation and change Since Eckert/McConnell-Ginet’s (1992) introduction of the community of practice to sociolinguistics, there has been extensive research into how communities of practice use language variation in urban contexts in order to construct identities and carve out social space. In particular, work on the social meaning of variation has looked towards CofPs in order to situate the local meanings of variation as a social practice. Eckert’s (1989; 2000) research in Detroit is perhaps the most prominent example of a variationist CofP study. She focuses on how two broad CofPs – the ‘Jocks’ and the ‘Burnouts’ – participate in the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, which involves the backing of the DRESS and STRUT vowels, as well as the raising and the backing of the nucleus of the PRICE vowel. The Jocks are pro-school, display a middle-class orientation, and uphold the ethos and cultural values of the school via participation in sports and extracurricular activities. The Burnouts are anti-school, display a stronger orientation to the urban environment, and reject the school’s dominant ideologies surrounding educational aspiration. Whilst Eckert (1989) describes the Jocks and Burnouts as having a middle-class and working-class orientation respectively, she stresses that these orientations do not straightforwardly map onto socioeconomic class. Some Burnouts are from middle-class families and some Jocks are from working-class families. However,

122

Sam Kirkham

Eckert finds that the correlation between CofP and linguistic variation is stronger than the correlation between parental socioeconomic class and linguistic variation, with the Burnouts leading the way in the use of the innovative shifted vowel variants (cf. 2009). This suggests that, in some instances, CofP membership may be a better predictor of linguistic variation than traditional demographic categories, such as age, gender, or socioeconomic class. One of the reasons why CofPs may correlate with variation better than single demographic categories is that they capture individuals’ lived experience of how social categories intersect (Eckert/McConnell-Ginet 1992). Characteristics such as social class, gender, and ethnicity are not experienced in isolation, but intersect with one another in often-complex ways. Researchers do not have access to the underlying power structures that underpin these categories, but can instead only observe the effects of such structures in behaviour. However, given that communities of practice are fundamentally sites for action, they afford an insight into how the power relations that emerge from intersecting identities are inscribed in everyday social practices. For example, another of Eckert’s (2000) findings is that the most extreme Burnout girls lead in all of the linguistic changes, such as the use of shifted vowel variants and negative concord, whereas the Jock girls are the least advanced in their use of innovative variants. Rather than viewing the Burnout girls as ‘trying to sound like boys’, Eckert instead proposes that this can be explained with reference to how gendered ideologies intersect with social practice in the school. The status and social capital of girls is generally more dependent upon semiotic displays, such as appearance and linguistic variation, whereas boys are more likely to differentiate themselves via physical activities and sports (Eckert 2000). Therefore, girls may be more likely to use resources such as appearance and linguistic variation in order to distinguish themselves from other groups in the surrounding social matrix, which explains why the girls occupy the extremes of the linguistic continuum in the school. Kirkham (2013) supports this point in his study of a school in Sheffield, UK. He finds large phonetic differences between female CofPs, but much fewer phonetic differences between male CofPs, with the male CofPs also being much larger in number and more distinct in terms of ethnicity, social class, appearance, and so on. Moore’s (2010b) study of adolescent girls in Bolton also demonstrates the complex intersections between CofPs and social categories in urban contexts. For some of the CofPs in her study, the correlation between social class and nonstandard were is stronger than the correlation between community of practice and nonstandard were. She interprets this in terms of Bourdieu’s (1977) concept of habitus, claiming that “[s]peakers cannot use language agentively if they are in some way constrained from fully engaging in the contexts in which alternative linguistic practices are acquired” (Moore 2010b, 367). This implies that individuals’ use of particular linguistic forms are facilitated by their engagement in particular social practices, but that demographic factors, such as social class, may restrict the extent to which an individual is likely to participate in particular practices. This highlights the fact that CofPs cannot

Urban Communities of Practice

123

capture all of the social practices in which individuals are engaged, as they may belong to a range of CofPs that have variable relevance across different contexts. Moore (2010b) concludes that an analysis of social practices outside the school may reveal more about the patterns in her data that could not be explained with reference to school-based CofPs. Subsequent urban CofP studies have advanced our understanding of the relationship between macro-sociological conceptions of social class and more local CofPbased meanings. Lawson (2009; 2011) examines adolescent Glaswegian males’ linguistic and social practices in an urban secondary school. He focuses on four CofPs: (i) the ‘Alternatives’, who orient towards alternative music, BMX and skateboarding; (ii) the ‘Sports’ CofP, who create their identities around playing football; (iii) the ‘Neds’, who engage in more adult social practices, such as underage drinking and smoking; and (iv) the ‘Schoolies’, who are much more pro-school than the other CofPs. He finds robust differences between CofPs in the phonetic realisation of the CAT vowel, with the main differences between the Ned and Schoolie CofPs, who represent the extremes of the anti-school/pro-school continuum. Lawson suggests that this correlation between Neds and lower/fronter CAT realisations is indexical of an anti-middle-class and antiestablishment identity. However, Lawson also deploys other approaches, such as discourse analysis, in order to further explore the nature of this relationship. For example, Andrew, one of the Schoolie boys, engages in mock imitation of ‘ned’ speech, with his CAT vowels being acoustically lower during this episode of performative speech than in his speech elsewhere in the recordings. Lawson links the use of lowered and fronted CAT realisations, as well as the use of other variables such as TH-fronting, to the linguistic construction of a ‘hard man’ persona, which he describes as an urban working-class male persona in Glasgow (Lawson 2013a; 2013b). Lawson shows that discourses surrounding this persona were most actively reproduced by the ‘Neds’ CofP and, in doing so, demonstrates that the ‘hard man’ persona is locally constructed through a series of phonetic, discursive, and narrative practices.

2.2 Style and social meaning Research on communities of practice has revealed the extent to which variation can be used to express the local social concerns of a community (Eckert 2012). However, variation as a semiotic activity is not independent of other practices and symbolic devices. In Section 1, I mentioned Wenger’s (1998) claim that a CofP’s repertoire may be heterogeneous but is given coherence through its crystallisation into a distinctive CofP style. Style is sometimes defined as a “socially meaningful clustering of features within and across linguistic levels and modalities” (Campbell-Kibler et al. 2006, n.p.), with variation being one social practice amongst others that can comprise a style. In her Detroit study, Eckert identifies a range of non-linguistic stylistic resources that are also used to index social orientations in the urban environment, such as straight-leg

124

Sam Kirkham

jeans versus bell-bottom jeans, dark colours versus pastel colours, and Detroit versus varsity jackets (Eckert 1980). She suggests that the former items listed here index a more urban orientation, being linked to social practices that take place within the surrounding urban environment, and the latter items a more pro-school orientation, which is linked to social practices that are confined to the boundaries of the school. Mendoza-Denton (1996) also identifies interplay between linguistic variation and non-linguistic semiotic resources amongst Latina girls in Northern California, such as the relationship between eyeliner length and gang affiliation. To this end, research on urban CofPs has further advanced the proposal that variation acquires meanings in styles, which are embodied and constructed by CofPs. Whilst CofP styles involve a combination of linguistic and non-linguistic resources, styles are also linguistically complex. Moore/Podesva (2009) consider how one morphosyntactic construction – the tag question – co-occurs with other linguistic resources, such as the phonetic realisation of word-final /t/, in constructing different social meanings between CofPs. They focus on four CofPs from Moore’s ethnographic study: the Townies, Populars, Geeks, and Eden Village girls. All CofPs produce tag questions fairly frequently, but what differs is their grammatical and phonetic makeup, as well as their discourse content. The Townies use tags with non-standard morphosyntax and glottal realisations of word-final /t/, which tend to occur in narratives about older boys, sex, and drugs. The Populars use tags very frequently, which usually feature moderately non-standard morphosyntax and are overwhelmingly used to evaluate other social groups. The Geeks use tags with standard morphosyntax and aspirated word-final /t/, but their tags are rarely used to evaluate others, instead being used to signal knowledge and authority. The Eden Village girls use tags with standard morphosyntax and they generally serve conducive and inclusive interactional ends. Moore/Podesva suggest that an understanding of the social meaning of tag questions amongst the CofPs requires the analyst to look towards the socially and linguistically layered nature of tags, as tags vary in terms of how they are used (e.g. to evaluate others or display knowledge), but also in their grammatical and phonetic composition (see Kirkham/Moore 2016 for a different example of the linguistically-layered nature of social meaning).

2.3 Local and supralocal identities Much CofP research examines very local instances of language use and often focuses on linguistic variants that may be relatively specific to the community under study. However, the CofP approach is also well equipped to help better understand the social dynamics underlying broader kinds of language change. To return to Eckert’s (2000) work in Detroit, she demonstrates how adolescents’ participation in the Northern Cities Vowel Shift interacts with locally meaningful social processes that exist in a dialectical relationship with community-wide trends. To briefly re-cap, the Northern Ci-

Urban Communities of Practice

125

ties Shift involves the backing of the DRESS and STRUT vowels, as well as the raising and the backing of the nucleus of the PRICE vowel, and the urban-oriented Burnouts lead the Jocks in all three sound changes. Eckert explains that the Burnouts may have greater access to these more urban variants through their greater participation in urban neighbourhoods and associated social practices. However, Eckert stresses that the use of these vowel variants is also inherently relational on a more local level, as they serve to phonetically differentiate the Burnouts from the Jocks within the specific context of the school. This suggests that the local social dynamics of urban communities may influence which speakers are likely to participate in a sound change. Wagner (2013) makes a similar point in her analysis of the raising of PRICE before voiceless consonants amongst high school girls in Philadelphia. She carefully traces the social histories of the Irish-American and Italian-American communities in Philadelphia and shows how these histories are magnified in the school context in order to establish differences between ethnically-stratified CofPs. She argues for subtle differences between the two CofPs, with a more backed PRICE nucleus being associated with the Irish girls and a more centralised or fronter nucleus being associated with Italian girls (Wagner 2013). She draws upon previous work claiming that raised PRICE is indexical of working-class men in Philadelphia (Labov 2001) and also suggests that the raised variant is strongly associated with Irish speakers in the city’s Second Street neighbourhood. Based on this, Wagner explores the ways in which these communitylevel associations impact upon local social meanings in the school, whereby ideological links between working-class masculinity and toughness are linked to local stereotypes of Irishness. This facilitates the Irish girls’ CofP rejection of sexualised femininity and, alongside their engagement in traditionally male working-class social practices such as fighting, serves to differentiate them from the Italian girls’ CofP. Eckert’s and Wagner’s research highlights the need to examine how social categories and local social meanings interact with language change in the wider speech community. Kirkham (2015) also shows that community-wide social meanings may be reinterpreted in specific contexts, allowing distinctions such as working-class/middle-class to be projected onto more local categories, such as anti-school/pro-school. Both Wagner’s and Kirkham’s research deal with issues of identity and ethnicity and, to this end, recent research on ethnicity and urban CofPs has increasingly focused on the interplay between different levels of meaning and social structure. Accordingly, the following sections focus more specifically on language and ethnicity in urban CofPs, with a focus on how so-called ‘ethnically-marked’ variants interact with community sound changes, supralocal ethnic speech varieties, and local CofP identities.

126

Sam Kirkham

3 Urban communities of practice in multiethnic contexts 3.1 Indexing beyond ethnicity Early CofP research highlighted that social categories such as gender are not individual attributes or uniform across contexts, but collaboratively constructed through social practices that are embedded in CofPs (Eckert/McConnell-Ginet 1992). Subsequent research has extended this perspective to other social categories, such as ethnicity, in order to better understand the relationship between language and ethnic identities (e.g. Benor 2010). Mendoza-Denton’s (1996; 2008) work on Latina girl gangs in California primarily focuses on two CofPs – the ‘Norteñas’ and the ‘Sureñas’. The Norteñas orient towards a bicultural and modern identity, wheres the Sureñas orient towards a more traditionally Mexican identity. Both groups produce raised KIT vowels more frequently than other CofPs, and central CofP members produce the raised variant more frequently than peripheral members. Mendoza-Denton argues that this indexes a broad Latina identity in this school, but that the social meaning of raised KIT varies depending on the style in which it appears. She suggests that the Norteñas and Sureñas exploit different ideological associations of raised KIT, with the Norteñas’ use indexing their modern English-speaking identity and the Sureñas use indexing pride in their Mexican roots. In doing so, Mendoza-Denton’s work exemplifies the complex nature of social meaning and calls into question assumptions that the same form necessarily indexes the same meaning. It also problematizes straightforward links between variation and ethnicity because, while both CofPs use raised KIT to signal a broader Latina identity, this is clearly not its only indexical value. Eckert (2008a) argues that ethnic variants may often index social characteristics other than ethnicity, which may be ideological related to ethnic identities, or in other instances may be unconnected to ethnicity. For example, Bucholtz (2011) shows that White American students may use linguistic features and styles of address associated with African American English. However, this practice does not mean that those students are attempting to index ‘African Americanness’. Instead, Bucholtz suggests that they are drawing upon social characteristics that are ideologically associated with African American speakers, such as coolness, toughness, and urbanity (cf. Eckert 2008a). Here, ethnicity is just one potential value in the indexical field of a particular variant (Eckert 2008b). Furthermore, as Mendoza-Denton’s work shows, ethnicity may be differently construed by different CofPs within a particular context. In order to more fully explore the complexity of social meaning associated with so-called ‘ethnic’ variants, I present some case studies that focus on the variety that is sometimes called British Asian English. In the United Kingdom it is well known that second-generation immigrants of South Asian origin may share some features that belong to the broader repertoire of ‘British Asian English’ (Sharma 2011). The term Brit-

Urban Communities of Practice

127

ish Asian English is an abstraction, because, as discussed below, the features of this variety are construed in different ways depending upon the social and linguistic dynamics of the local community (e.g. Alam/Stuart-Smith 2011; Kirkham 2011; 2013; Stuart-Smith/Timmins/Alam 2011). However, the phonetic features most commonly associated with British Asian English include: – Retracted or retroflex realisation of the coronal stops /t/ and /d/ (Heselwood /McChrystal 2000; Alam 2007; Lambert/Alam/Stuart-Smith 2007; Alam/StuartSmith 2011; Kirkham 2011; Sharma/Sankaran 2011) – Shorter voice-onset time in stop consonants (Kirkham 2011; McCarthy/Evans/ Mahon 2013) – Clearer realisations of /l/ (Heselwood/McChrystal 2000; Sharma 2011; StuartSmith/Timmins/Alam 2011; Kirkham 2013; Kirkham/Wormald 2015) – Monophthongal and/or closer realisations of the FACE and GOAT vowels (Sharma 2011; Stuart-Smith/Timmins/Alam 2011; Wormald 2014). – Lengthening and raising/fronting of the happY vowel (Heselwood/McChrystal 2000; Kirkham 2015) As noted earlier, Eckert (2008a) suggests that linguistic features that are typically associated with ethnic groups may be used to index more local conceptions of ethnicity or may index something other than ethnicity altogether. Alam/Stuart-Smith (2011) report an ethnographic study of a group of adolescent Pakistani girls at a secondary school in Glasgow that effectively illustrates Eckert’s point. They focus on the acoustic realisation of syllable-initial /t/, which, as reported above, is commonly described as retroflex or retracted in many varieties of British Asian English. In this study, they focus on female Asian speakers, who belong to one of three CofPs – the ‘Conservatives’, the ‘Moderns’, and the ‘Messabouts’. Each CofP differs in terms of its relationship to traditional Pakistani Muslim values in the local community. In order to explore the relationship between CofP membership and phonetic variation, they report a spectral moments analysis of the first ten milliseconds of the stop burst and find a significant effect of CofP for the mean, skew, and kurtosis. For example, the Conservatives produce /t/ with a higher mean frequency than the Modern or Messabout girls, which may reflect a phonetic distinction between the girls who strongly adhere to traditional Pakistani cultural values (Conservatives) and those who engage in social practices that are, to varying degrees, more stigmatised by the Glasgow Asian community (Moderns and Messabouts). Alam/Stuart-Smith’s (2011) results demonstrate that a feature often considered emblematic of ethnic identity – that is, a British Asian identity – may be used to index more local ethnic identities within such a community. This has implications for what whether we can talk of a British Asian accent, given the importance of the local context and the ways in which phonetic features originating in the heritage language interface with the phonetic makeup of the majority language spoken in the local community. Kirkham (2013) also demonstrates the importance of accounting for the local nature of variation within British Asian communities. A previous study reported in Kirk-

128

Sam Kirkham

ham (2011) confirmed predictions in the literature that Pakistani adolescents are more likely to produce word-initial /t/ with acoustic characteristics that infer a more retraced place of articulation. However, a subsequent study of the larger school environment in which these adolescents were involved revealed further patterns. Whilst most studies of British Asian /t/ focus on /t/ retraction or retroflexion, Kirkham (2013) examines /t/ affrication in a multiethnic secondary school in Sheffield, which includes British Asian speakers. The results show that the most striking differences are amongst the female CofPs, whereby two anti-school female CofPs occupy different ends of the /t/ affrication continuum. The Rebellious girls produce highly affricated realisations, whilst the Parkdale girls produce unaffricated (and often unaspirated) realisations. The Twilight girls, an exclusively Pakistani and Somali CofP, and the Ashton girls, an affluent and predominantly White CofP, occupy a phonetic middle ground in-between these groups. Crucially, whilst there may be a link between variation and ethnicity, ethnicity does not determine phonetic realisations in this instance. For example, the speaker with the most affricated realisations is Leila, who is Pakistani, Muslim, and also one of the Rebellious girls, but she remains highly distinct from the larger group of Pakistani and Somali Muslim girls (Twilight girls) who produce less affricated realisations. Kirkham’s study demonstrates that the CofP approach can yield insights that might not always be apparent using other approaches, as the salience of /t/ affrication was only evident via ethnographic observation of communities of practice in the school. For instance, whilst Kirkham (2011) found clear differences in /t/ realisation between White and Pakistani speakers, the subsequent CofP study suggested that affrication may be a more important axis of variation than advancement/retraction in this context. In turn, this shows that it is not only the Pakistani speakers who are doing something different from the canonical aspirated alveolar /t/. Instead, /t/ varies in interesting ways across multiple groups in the school, with the CofPs differing in the degree of affrication of word-initial /t/.

3.2 Multiethnic communities of practice CofP research on ethnicity has typically focused on variation within speakers who belong to a single ethnic group. This has been invaluable in demonstrating the heterogeneity within such groups and problematising the straightforward use of ethnicity as an explanatory variable in sociolinguistic research. At the same time, much research in European cities focuses on very large multiethnic adolescent networks (Kotsinas 1992; Quist 2008; Wiese 2009; Quist/Svendsen 2010; Cheshire et al. 2011; Fox/Khan/ Torgensen 2011). Most work in this area has focused on broader friendship networks rather than CofPs (see Section 4 for more details), but such contexts also present intriguing possibilities for the formation of CofPs. Quist’s (2008) study of a Copenhagen high school focuses on how individuals from different ethnic backgrounds orient towards particular ‘style clusters’, which

Urban Communities of Practice

129

entail a collection of linguistic and other semiotic resources, such as clothing style, school orientation, etc. She explains that “style clusters illustrate that there are regular concurrencies of features that, in the course of time, make it possible to create stylistic meaning” (Quist 2008, 52) and examines how individuals engaged in particular style clusters use or avoid features associated with the Copenhagen multiethnolect. To give a brief example, ‘style cluster 1’ is embodied by White Danish boys, who are disengaged with school, smoke, and drink alcohol. They avoid the use of multiethnolectal features and instead use ‘slang’ and phonetic features such as affricated /t/. ‘Style cluster 2’ is embodied by boys who call themselves foreigners, who are primarily ethnic minority students. They are also anti-school, but are linguistically distinct from the White Danish boys in their use of multiethnolectal features. Finally, ‘style cluster 3’ is embodied by pro-school boys from a range of ethnic backgrounds who actively participate in schooling and avoid more risky social practices. They also avoid the use of multiethnolectal features. Quist’s study illustrates the context-dependent nature of so-called ‘ethnic’ variation. She demonstrates that the ideological cluster of resources that are identified as multiethnolect are best seen as a stylistic practice that is utilised by some speakers in some contexts. This contrasts with a view of multiethnolects as discrete varieties that are spoken by some individuals and not others. Work in the United Kingdom has also focused on urban multiethnolects, most notably in London. Cheshire et al. (2011) emphasise the stylistic dimension of multiethnolects, describing Multicultural London English as a feature pool from which speakers may select particular variants in the construction of a style. This research is discussed further in Section 4, but for now I focus on Fox’s (2007; 2010) research in Tower Hamlets, London, which focuses on the more local social dynamics that might characterise aspects of Multicultural London English. At the time of Fox’s fieldwork, over 50 per cent of children in Tower Hamlets were of Bangladeshi origin and, to this end, she studied a group of Bangladeshi, White and mixed-race adolescents in a youth club located in the borough. She finds that Bangladeshi boys do not use traditional Cockney variants of FACE and GOAT and that the White and mixed-race boys produce these vowels more like the Bangladeshi boys than the White girls. Importantly, she finds that the boys who engaged in higher levels of inter-ethnic contact were more likely to use the variants associated with Bangladeshi boys, such as the use of [ɐɪ] for PRICE. These boys were also the ones who most strongly oriented towards urban ‘street’ culture, which suggests that social practice has a role to play in understanding patterns of variation. In addition to this, there were also differences according to the expressed strength of the Bangladeshi boys’ Muslim identity. Boys who expressed a stronger Muslim identity were less likely to use the [ɐɪ] variant than those with a weaker Muslim identity. In line with the research by Mendoza-Denton (2008) and Alam/Stuart-Smith (2011), Fox’s study foregrounds the important interactions between ethnicity and other factors, such as religion and gender. Kirkham’s (2013; 2015; 2016) study of a secondary school in Sheffield, a city of the north of England, further illustrates some of the social dynamics that can accom-

130

Sam Kirkham

pany multiethnic CofPs. The school is partly characterised by a sharp socioeconomic divide, with affluent White teenagers coming into contact with minority ethnic teenagers from more socioeconomically deprived backgrounds. The social composition of CofP in the school is not wholly determined by ethnicity, but CofP membership does interact with ethnicity in various ways. For example, the ‘Twilight girls’ CofP is exclusively made up of Pakistani and Somali girls who actively identify as Muslim. Their positioning is in part due to their relationship to other girls in the school. The ‘Parkdale girls’ are an anti-school CofP engaged in adult social practices, such as drinking and smoking; the ‘Rebellious girls’ are anti-school CofP who mess about in class; and the Ashton girls are a very affluent pro-school CofP who strongly orient towards displays of individuality. The Twilight girls are often excluded from the social practices of the other groups, as their religious identification makes them less likely to engage in drinking, smoking or anti-school behaviour, because such practices are strongly frowned upon in their traditional Pakistani and Somali communities (see also Alam 2007; Alam/Stuart-Smith 2011). However, at the same time, they lack the economic and cultural capital of the Ashton girls. A phonetic analysis of word-initial /t/ affrication and the realisation of the happY vowel reveal a number of differences between the CofPs. The results for the happY vowel show that the two anti-school CofPs use much laxer realisations, closer to [ɛ̈ ], whereas the pro-school CofPs use tenser realisations, closer to [i]. The pro-/anti-school distinction broadly maps onto to a middleclass/working-class orientation and, in this sense, these results broadly reflect community-wide associations in Sheffield, whereby working-class speakers use lax realisations more frequently (Finnegan 2005; Beal 2004). However, Kirkham (2015) shows that there are subtle differences between the two anti-school CofPs in terms of how the happY vowel is used in interaction. The Parkdale girls’ laxer realisations feature in metalinguistic discourse about having a Sheffield accent, serving to construct themselves as authentic and local, whereas the Rebellious girls draw upon different enregistered associations between the happY vowel and local accents, such as ‘rebellious’ and ‘anti-establishment’. One of the more unexpected findings of Kirkham’s study is that, in contrast to the results for the girls, there were no significant differences between male CofPs in either happY or word-initial /t/. He identified two male CofPs – the ‘Ashton boys’ and ‘Rebellious boys’. The Ashton boys are exclusively White and from very affluent neighbourhoods, whereas the Rebellious boys are more ethnically and socioeconomically mixed. The two CofPs are also engaged in symbolically opposed social practices, with the Ashton boys actively rejecting the urban ‘street’ orientation of the Rebellious boys. One possible reason why boys may not differentiate themselves through the kinds of variation examined here is that they may not share indexical fields for the ‘same’ kinds of variation (Eckert 2008b). They experience very little face-to-face contact with each other and, consequently, rarely talk to each other. This suggests that we may need to be attentive to how gender intersects with ethnicity and social practice in interpreting patterns of variation, given the gendered differences in the social

Urban Communities of Practice

131

composition of peer networks in Kirkham’s study. To this end, it seems that the CofP approach may be well suited for understanding patterns of variation in communities that feature tight-knit groups that sharply differentiate themselves from each other. However, it becomes more challenging for communities that do not feature as many tight-knit smaller configurations of individuals, but instead maintain a series of much larger and much more diverse networks. With this in mind, the next section discusses the CofP approach in terms of previous work that has focused on social networks and friendship networks. I suggest that a combined approach may provide further insights into the different kinds of social organisation that can take place in diverse urban environments.

4 The role of friendship networks in urban spaces As I briefly mention in Section 3.3, the majority of research on multiethnic varieties in Europe has focused on larger configurations of friendship networks rather than CofPs. Previous work has compared the CofP approach to other social and psychological frameworks, such as social identity theory, the speech community, and social networks (Holmes/Meyerhoff 1999). However, the purpose of this section is to discuss the utility of both approaches in better understanding the social composition and linguistic practices of adolescents in multiethnic urban spaces. Friendship networks are variably defined in the literature, but most approaches informally treat them as a type of narrow social network, in which an individual provides a list of their friends (Cheshire et al. 2008). A CofP is essentially a small closeknit social network (Mendoza-Denton 2008), but an individual’s friendship network may also be composed of multiple and sometimes overlapping CofPs. The advantages of friendship networks are that they can provide a more precise measure of contact between individuals from different ethnic groups, as well as better capture the composition of the networks in which an individual is engaged within and without a school context. For example, Cheshire et al. (2008) examine the relationship between the ethnic composition of friendship networks and individuals’ use of innovative linguistic variants in London. They capture information on friendship networks using self-reports and categorise each response on a scale from one-to-five, with one indicating ‘all friends same ethnicity as self’ and five indicating ‘up to 80 % of a different ethnicity’. Their results show that individuals with a more multiethnic friendship network are more likely to use linguistic innovations in London, such as GOOSE-fronting, TH-fronting, and DH-stopping. The higher levels of inter-ethnic contact in these friendship groups may facilitate individuals’ ability to borrow particular linguistic features from ethnic groups to which they do not belong (Rampton 1995). This suggests that ethnicity is an important factor in driving language change, but that the ethnic composition of friendship networks may be an even stronger factor for particular variables.  

132

Sam Kirkham

Friendship networks capture information on a number of ties between individuals. Another example is Sharma/Sankaran’s (2011) use of networks in their study of generational change in London Asian English, focusing on the ‘Asianness’ of each speaker’s network. They found that this was not a significant predictor of /t/ retroflexion for first-generation and younger second-generation speakers, but that it did predict variation for the older second-generation speakers. It is clear that networks provide essential information on the connections that speakers have across a community. However, because they generally represent a much broader level of categorisation than CofPs, they may offer less detailed information on the social practices in which people are engaged. Cheshire et al. (2008) do discuss the social practices of the friendship groups in their study, but they define social practices very broadly, primarily focusing on “common interests in sport, music, fashion” and so on (Cheshire et al. 2008, 4). This is in contrast to CofP studies, where shared interests are not a sufficient condition for CofP membership. Instead, there must be evidence that people are jointly engaged in doing things around those interests. However, a combined approach that integrates CofPs and friendship networks offers much promise to the study of urban multiethnic CofPs. The CofP approach provides a very detailed account of the nature and community-specific meaning of friendship ties, rather than identifying their mere existence. For example, two individuals may have similar friendship network scores, but this does not tell us what ‘multiethnic’ means in different communities of practice and how this impacts upon the social and linguistic practices of those individuals. However, it is not possible to study every CofP in which an individual is engaged and, therefore, a network approach provides information on the type of connections that an individual has beyond the immediate CofP under study (Eckert 1989). Studies that are able to simultaneously capture detail on CofPs and broader networks are likely to be instructive in further understanding the relationship between language, ethnicity, and social practice in urban spaces.

5 Summary and future directions Section 2 highlighted the utility of examining the local meanings of supralocal changes, but what about variation that is not (known to be) a change-in-progress or has no known community-level associations? Eckert (2008b) suggests that most research focuses on variation that is already known to be socially meaningful in some way, which potentially neglects a large amount of socially-relevant behaviour. Uncovering new types of socially meaningful variation is likely to involve ethnography and exploratory analysis, which is time consuming and could lead to a number of dead ends. However, one area for development could be a greater focus on the relationship between variables that are known to vary in the broader community and those that may be highly specific to one particular context. For instance, Kirkham (2013) examines the differences in social meaning between a variable undergoing change in Shef-

Urban Communities of Practice

133

field (happY -tensing) and one that has not previously been reported (/t/ affrication). He suggests that /t/ affrication is adapted for a much wider range of social meanings than happY variation, perhaps because /t/ is not constrained by more enregistered social meanings that are prevalent in the wider community. Nance (2013) also reports CofP-related variation in a Scottish Gaelic medium school in Glasgow. She finds extensive use of variants that have been described in some varieties of English, such as high rising terminal intonation, but that have not been previously described in other Gaelic communities. Whether these kinds of local features are specific to one particular context or are generalizable to the broader community is an empirical question that should motivate future research on the dialectical relationship between CofP-based variation, regional dialects, and supralocal changes. Another area that may facilitate better understanding of urban communities of practice is further work on non-adolescent and non-urban communities of practice (see Eckert 2003; Kirkham/Moore 2013 for a similar point regarding adolescents and linguistic variation). The vast majority of CofP research has focused on adolescent speakers, to the point where Bergvall (1999) claims that the CofP approach may be more suited to adolescents due to the greater focus on self-identification and differentiation during this life-stage (see Kirkham/Moore 2013). However, Meyerhoff/Strycharz (2013) suggest this may be a coincidence, and that the CofP approach can be suitably extended to non-adolescent communities. Perhaps more radically, a greater investigation of non-urban communities of practice would also tell us more about what is and is not unique to urban spaces in general. There is relatively little research in this area to date, but there are some promising exemplars that should motivate further research (e.g. Rose 2006; Mallinson/Childs 2007). In summary, this chapter has reviewed some of the research on urban CofPs and explored how this area has contributed to our understanding of social dynamics and language variation and change in a range of urban contexts. In particular, CofP research has provided a vivid insight into language use in its local social context. This has been highly instructive for the study of sociolinguistic meaning, where meaning is located in the styles that are adopted, created and negotiated by CofPs. It has also produced a better understanding of the structure of urban communities and the ways in which this relates to language variation. Given the increased focus on large multiethnic communities in recent years, it is expected that studying local social practices in CofPs will remain an important perspective on the relationship between language and society in contemporary urban contexts.

134

Sam Kirkham

6 References Alam, Farhana (2007): Language and identity in ‘Glaswasian’ adolescents. MA thesis. University of Glasgow, UK. Alam, Farhana/Jane Stuart-Smith (2011): Identity and ethnicity in /t/ in Glasgow-Pakistani highschool girls. In: Proceedings of the XVII International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 216–219. Beal, Joan C. (2004): English dialects in the North of England: phonology. In: Bernd Kortmann/Edgar W. Schneider (eds.): A Handbook of Varieties of English 1: Phonology. Berlin, 113–133. Benor, Sarah Bunin (2010): Ethnolinguistic repertoire: Shifting the analytic focus in language and ethnicity. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 14, 159–183. Bergvall, Victoria L. (1999): Toward a comprehensive theory of language and gender. In: Language in Society 28, 273–293. Bourdieu, Pierre (1977): Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge. Bucholtz, Mary (2011): White Kids: Language, Race, and Styles of Youth Identity. Cambridge. Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn/Penny Eckert/Norma Mendoza-Denton/Emma Moore (2006): The elements of style. Poster presented at NWAV35, Columbus, OH. Cheshire, Jenny/Sue Fox/Paul Kerswill/Eivind Torgersen (2008): Ethnicity, friendship network and social practices as the motor of dialect change: Linguistic innovation in London. In: Sociolinguistica 22, 1–23. Cheshire, Jenny/Paul Kerswill/Sue Fox/Eivind Torgersen (2011): Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 15, 151–196. Davies, Bethan (2005): Communities of practice: Legitimacy, not choice. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 9, 557–581. Eckert, Penelope (1980): Clothing and geography in a suburban high school. In: Conrad Phillip Kottak (ed.): Researching American Culture. Ann Arbor, MI, 139–144. Eckert, Penelope (1989): Jocks & Burnouts: Social Categories and Identity in the High School. New York. Eckert, Penelope (2000): Linguistic Variation as Social Practice: The Linguistic Construction of Identity in Belten High. Oxford. Eckert, Penelope (2003): Language and adolescent peer groups. In: Journal of Language and Social Psychology 22, 112–118. Eckert, Penelope (2008a): Where do ethnolects stop? In: International Journal of Bilingualism 12, 25–42. Eckert, Penelope (2008b): Variation and the indexical field. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 12, 453–476. Eckert, Penelope (2009): Ethnography and the study of variation. In: Nikolas Coupland/Adam Jaworski (eds.): The New Sociolinguistics Reader. New York, 136–151. Eckert, Penelope (2012): Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of sociolinguistic variation. In: Annual Review of Anthropology 41, 87–100. Eckert, Penelope/Sally McConnell-Ginet (1992): Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. In: Annual Review of Anthropology 21, 461–490. Eckert, Penelope/Etienne Wenger (2005): Communities of practice in sociolinguistics. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 9, 582–589. Finnegan, Katie (2005): Phonological variation and change in Sheffield English: An apparent-time study. MA thesis, University of Sheffield, UK. Fox, Sue (2007): The demise of Cockneys? Language change in London’s ‘traditional’ East End. Dissertation, University of Essex, Colchester.

Urban Communities of Practice

135

Fox, Sue (2010): Ethnicity, religion and practices: adolescents in the east end of London. In: Carmen Llamas/Dominic Watt (eds.): Language and Identities. Edinburgh, 144–156. Fox, Sue/Arfaan Khan/Eivind Torgersen (2011): The emergence and diffusion of multicultural English. In: Friederike Kern/Margret Setling (eds.): Ethnic Styles of Speaking in European Metropolitan Areas. Amsterdam, 19–44. Heselwood, Barry/Louise McChrystal (2000): Gender, accent features and voicing in Panjabi-English bilingual children. In: Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics 8, 45–70. Holmes, Janet/Miriam Meyerhoff (1999): The community of practice: Theories and methodologies in language and gender research. In: Language in Society 28, 173–183. Kirkham, Sam (2011): The acoustics of coronal stops in British Asian English. In: Proceedings of the XVII International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 1102–1105. Kirkham, Sam (2013): Ethnicity, social practice and phonetic variation in a Sheffield secondary school. Dissertation, University of Sheffield, UK. Kirkham, Sam (2015): Intersectionality and the social meanings of variation: Class, ethnicity, and social practice. In: Language in Society 44, 629–652. Kirkham, Sam (2016): Constructing multiculturalism at school: Negotiating tensions in talk about ethnic diversity. In: Discourse & Society 27, 383–400. Kirkham, Sam/Emma Moore (2013): Adolescence. In: Jack Chambers/Natalie Schilling (eds.): The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. 2nd edition. Malden, MA, 277–296. Kirkham, Sam/Emma Moore (2016): Constructing social meaning in political discourse: Phonetic variation and verb processes in Ed Miliband’s speeches. In: Language in Society 45, 1–25. Kirkham, Sam/Jessica Wormald (2015): Acoustic and articulatory variation in British Asian English liquids. In: Proceedings of the XVIII International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 1–5. Kotsinas, Ulla-Britt (1992): Immigrant adolescents’ Swedish in multicultural areas. In: Cecilia Palmgren/Karin Lövgren/Goran Bolin (eds.): Ethnicity in youth culture. Stockholm, 43–62. Labov, William (2001): Principles of Linguistic Change: Volume 2 Social Factors. Oxford: Blackwell. Lambert, Kirsten/Farhana Alam/Jane Stuart-Smith (2007): Investigating British Asian accents: Studies from Glasgow. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 1509–1512. Lave, Jean/Etienne Wenger (1991): Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge. Lawson, Robert (2009): Sociolinguistic constructions of identity among urban adolescent males in Glasgow. Dissertation, University of Glasgow, UK. Lawson, Robert (2011): Patterns of linguistic variation among Glaswegian adolescent males. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 15, 226–255. Lawson, Robert (2013a): The construction of ‘tough’ masculinity: Negotiation, alignment and rejection. In: Gender and Language 7, 369–395. Lawson, Robert (2013b): ‘Don’t even [θ/f/h]ink aboot it’: An ethnographic investigation of social meaning, social identity and (θ) variation in Glasgow. In: English World-Wide 35, 68–93. Mallinson, Christine/Becky Childs (2007): Communities of practice in sociolinguistic description: Analyzing language and identity practices among black women in Appalachia. In: Gender and Language 1, 173–206. McCarthy, Kathleen M./Bronwen G. Evans/Merle Mahon (2013): Acquiring a second language in an immigrant community: The production of Sylheti and English stops and vowels by LondonBengali speakers. In: Journal of Phonetics 41, 344–358. Mendoza-Denton, Norma (1996): ‘Muy macha’: Gender and ideology in gang-girls’ discourse about makeup. In: Ethnos 6, 47–63. Mendoza-Denton, Norma (2008): Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practice among Latina Youth Gangs. Oxford.

136

Sam Kirkham

Meyerhoff, Miriam (2005): Biographies, agency and power. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 9, 595–601. Meyerhoff, Miriam/Anna Strycharz (2013): Communities of practice. In: Jack Chambers/Natalie Schilling (eds.): The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. 2nd edition. Oxford, 428–447. Moore, Emma (2006): ‘You tell all the stories’: Using narrative to explore hierarchy within a Community of Practice. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 10, 611–640. Moore, Emma (2010a): Communities of practice and peripherality. In: Carmen Llamas/Dominic Watt (eds.): Language and Identities. Edinburgh, 123–133. Moore, Emma (2010b): Interaction between social category and social practice: Explaining was/were variation. In: Language Variation and Change 22, 347–371. Moore, Emma (2011): Variation and identity. In: Warren Maguire/April MacMahon (eds.): Variation in English: What We Know, How We Know It, and Why It Matters. Cambridge, 219–236. Moore, Emma/Robert J. Podesva (2009): Style, indexicality and the social meaning of tag questions. In: Language in Society 38, 447–485. Myers, Greg (2005): Communities of practice, risk and Sellafield. In: David Barton/Karin Tusting (eds.): Beyond Communities of Practice: Language, Power and Social Context. Cambridge, 198–213. Nance, Claire (2013): Phonetic variation and identity in Scottish Gaelic. Dissertation, University of Glasgow, UK. Quist, Pia (2008): Sociolinguistic approaches to multiethnolect: Language variety and stylistic practice. In: International Journal of Bilingualism 12, 43–61. Quist, Pia/Bente A. Svendsen (eds.) (2010): Multilingual Urban Scandinavia: New Linguistic Practices. Bristol. Rampton, Ben (1995): Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Ethnicity. London. Rose, Mary (2006): Language, place and identity in later life. Unpublished Dissertation, Stanford University, Stanford, CA. Sharma, Devyani (2011): Style repertoire and social change in British Asian English. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 15, 464–492. Sharma, Devyani/Lavanya Sankara (2011): Cognitive and social forces in dialect shift: Gradual change in London Asian speech. In: Language Variation and Change 23, 399–428. Stuart-Smith, Jane/Claire Timmins/Farhana Alam (2011): Hybridity and ethnic accents: A sociophonetic analysis of ‘Glaswasian’. In: Frans Gregersen/Jeffrey K. Parrott/Pia Quist (eds.): Language Variation: European Perspectives III. Amsterdam, 43–57. Tusting, Karin (2005): Language and power in communities of practice. In: David Barton/Karin Tusting (eds.): Beyond Communities of Practice: Language, Power and Social Context. Cambridge, 36–54. Wagner, Suzanne (2013): We act like girls and we don’t act like men: Ethnicity and local language change in a Philadelphia high school. In: Language in Society 42, 361–383. Wenger, Etienne (1998): Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge. Wiese, Heike (2009): Grammatical innovation in multiethnic urban Europe: New linguistic practices among adolescents. In: Lingua 119, 782–806. Wormald, Jessica (2014): Bradford Panjabi-English: The realisation of FACE and GOAT. In: Proceedings of the First Postgraduate and Academic Researchers in Linguistics at York Conference, 118–138.

Heike Wiese

6. Neue Dialekte im urbanen Europa Abstract: In diesem Kapitel werden neue sprachliche Praktiken unter Jugendlichen im sprachlich diversen urbanen Raum Europas unter der Perspektive urbaner Kontaktdialekte untersucht. Diese Dialekte sind durch eine besondere sprachliche Dynamik charakterisiert, die im Zusammenspiel von Sprachkontakt und binnenstrukturellen Entwicklungstendenzen entsteht und ein Licht auf Spannungsfelder im sprachlichen System wirft. Sie entstehen in Sprechergemeinschaften, die durch vielfältige, heterogene sprachliche Repertoires gekennzeichnet sind und damit einen besonderen Zugang zum Konnex von Sprache und Identität und der situationsspezifischen Wahl bestimmter Varianten erlauben. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Einleitung Dialektentwicklung im urbanen Raum Perspektiven: Varietät, Stil und neue urbane Dialekte Sprachstruktur: Dynamik des mehrsprachigen Kontexts Sprachgebrauch: Diversität und Repertoire Fazit und Ausblick Literatur

1 Einleitung Im urbanen Europa haben sich seit dem ausgehenden 20. Jahrhundert in Kontexten großer sozialer und sprachlicher Vielfalt neue sprachliche Praktiken entwickelt, die in den letzten Jahrzehnten immer mehr in den Fokus der Linguistik getreten sind. Besonders spannend sind hierbei neue Ausprägungen der jeweiligen Majoritätssprachen, die besonders in Peer-Group-Gesprächen jugendlicher Sprecher und Sprecherinnen beobachtet werden. Hierzu gibt es seit den 1990ern eine Fülle sprachwissenschaftlicher Untersuchungen vor allem aus Nordwesteuropa.1 Diese neuen umgangssprachlichen Varianten sind keine fehlerhaften Abweichungen von den jeweiligen Standardsprachen, sondern spiegeln die sprachliche Dynamik und Innovationskraft sprachlich hochdiverser Sprechergemeinschaften wider, die einen hohen Anteil mehrsprachiger Sprecher und Sprecherinnen verschiedener sogenannter ‚Heritage-Sprachen‘ umfassen, d. h. von Sprachen, die sie als Teil des kulturellen Erbes ihrer Familie zusätzlich zur jeweiligen Majoritätssprache beherrschen.  

1 Einen Überblick zu Arbeiten in den letzten Jahren geben beispielsweise Quist/Svendsen (2010), Källström/Lindberg (2011), Kern/Selting (2011), Nortier/ Svendsen (2015), Wiese (ersch.). Als Pionierarbeiten können Kotsinas’ Untersuchungen zum Schwedischen gelten (etwa Kotsinas 1988; 1992), für den deutschsprachigen Raum war – und ist – insbesondere Keim (2007) wegweisend. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-007

138

Heike Wiese

Im vorliegenden Beitrag werde ich wesentliche Befunde hierzu zusammenbringen, um zentrale übergreifende Merkmale dieser Entwicklungen zu erfassen. Den roten Faden wird dabei eine Perspektive auf diese sprachlichen Varianten als urbane Kontaktdialekte bilden. Um zu zeigen, was diese Dialekte konstituiert, werde ich im Folgenden sprachstrukturelle ebenso wie sprecherbezogene Aspekte diskutieren. In Abschnitt 2 werde ich zunächst den Hintergrund für eine solche Untersuchung zur Dialektentwicklung im urbanen Raum klären, indem ich kurz auf die Heterogenität urbaner Sprache eingehe und aufzeige, wie die sich hieraus speisende Dynamik durch die besondere sprachliche Vielfalt im heutigen Europa noch verstärkt wird. Im Anschluss skizziere ich in Abschnitt 3 die unterschiedlichen Perspektiven auf diese neuen sprachlichen Praktiken, die in der sprachwissenschaftlichen Diskussion entwickelt wurden, und gehe in diesem Zusammenhang auch auf die Charakterisierung als ‚Dialekt‘ ein, die ich hier verwende. Abschnitt 4 und 5 diskutieren dann für die beiden Bereiche Sprachstruktur und Sprachgebrauch exemplarische Befunde, die sprach- und länderübergreifende Tendenzen illustrieren und damit einen wesentlichen Zugang zu neuen urbanen Kontaktdialekten in Europa ermöglichen. Abschnitt 6 fasst die Ergebnisse in einem abschließenden Gesamtbild zusammen und beleuchtet den Beitrag, den Untersuchungen zu diesen neuen sprachlichen Varianten über den spezifischen Phänomenbereich hinaus für unser Verständnis von Sprachvariation und -wandel leisten können.

2 Dialektentwicklung im urbanen Raum Traditionell hat sich die sprachwissenschaftliche Untersuchung von Dialekten auf den ländlichen Raum konzentriert. Im Zentrum standen Sprecher, die Chambers/Trudgill (1980) kurz als NORMs, für ‚non-mobile old rural males‘, bezeichnen: In dem Bestreben, einen möglichst stark ausgeprägten, ‚authentischen‘ Dialekt zu identifizieren, wurden insbesondere ältere, männliche Sprecher untersucht, die den Großteil ihres Lebens in der betreffenden ländlichen Region verbracht hatten. Urbane Sprechergemeinschaften wurden dagegen eher vernachlässigt, weil durch die hohe soziale Fluktuation und das hierdurch bedingte Aufeinandertreffen vieler unterschiedlicher sprachlicher Varietäten in urbanen Zentren homogene, sich nur langsam verändernde Dialekte weniger zu erwarten waren. Gerade diese Dynamik macht den urbanen Raum aber interessant für sprachwissenschaftliche Untersuchungen, da sich hier Tendenzen sprachlicher und sozialer Ausdifferenzierung und Entwicklung besonders deutlich zeigen. So hat sich die moderne Soziolinguistik seit den klassischen Arbeiten Labovs aus den 1960/1970ern besonders auf urbane Sprache konzentriert (vgl. Labov 1972). Im deutschsprachigen Raum etablierte sich in dieser Folge etwa seit den 1980ern ein produktives Feld der Stadtsprachenforschung.2

2 Für eine Zusammenschau vgl. etwa Löffler/Hofer (2010).

Neue Dialekte im urbanen Europa

139

2.1 Heterogenität und Dynamik urbaner Sprache Der heterogene und stärker veränderliche Charakter urbaner Sprechergemeinschaften macht sie besonders offen für Sprachvariation und Sprachwandel, sodass sprachliche Entwicklungstendenzen und Neuerungen hier besonders gut erforscht werden können: „urban centers are generally ahead of their hinterland in adopting linguistic innovations […]. Cities often play a pioneering role“ (Vanderkerckhove 2010, 323–324). Diese Pionierrolle macht urbane Sprache nicht nur für primär soziolinguistische, sondern auch für sprachstrukturelle Untersuchungen interessant. So konnte Kerswill (2002) am Beispiel von Milton Keynes, einer erst 20 Jahre zuvor gegründeten britischen Stadt, einen neuen Dialekt quasi in der Entstehung beschreiben. Wie er zeigte, führte hier der durch Binnenmigration bewirkte Kontakt unterschiedlicher englischer Dialekte mit dem ursprünglichen in der Region beheimateten Dialekt zur Koineisierung, der Bildung eines neuen Dialekts mit innovativen Merkmalen (vgl. auch Kerswill/Williams 2000). Eine strikte Zweiteilung in urbane Sprache als dynamisch und innovativ und ländliche Sprache als eher statisch, wie sie zu Beginn der modernen Soziolinguistik und Variationsforschung mitunter implizit angenommen wurde, ist sicher zu stark (vgl. hierzu Britain 2002), dies umso mehr in einer Zeit, in der auch der ländliche Raum in Folge gestiegener Mobilität und Industrialisierung durch Dialektkontakt und größere Heterogenität gekennzeichnet ist (vgl. etwa Auer/Hinskens 1996). Grundsätzlich finden wir aber im urbanen Raum durch die ausgeprägte sprachliche und soziale Vielfalt eine Dynamik, die die Untersuchung sprachlicher Entwicklungen hier besonders interessant macht. Diese Dynamik wird noch verstärkt durch unterschiedliche Formen der Mehrsprachigkeit, die in Folge von Migration entstehen. So beschreibt etwa Wölck (2002) die Entstehung eines neuen urbanen Dialekts in New York State auf der Basis unterschiedlicher Ethnolekte deutscher, italienischer und polnischer Zuwanderer und Zuwanderinnen.3 Wiewohl zunächst in diesen Ethnolekten verwurzelt und damit auf Gruppen eines bestimmten Zuwanderungshintergrunds beschränkt, konnte sich hier ein übergreifender Dialekt etablieren, der mittlerweile in der Region allgemein verwendet wird. Im urbanen Europa wird die Entwicklung urbaner Kontaktdialekte heute durch eine besondere sprachliche Heterogenität unterstützt, die ebenfalls in Folge verstärkter Zuwanderung entstanden ist.

3 Vgl. Clyne (2000) zum Begriff des Ethnolekts.

140

Heike Wiese

2.2 Das urbane Europa als hochdiverser Raum Gestützt durch Migration, generell größere Mobilität und internationale Vernetzung ist das heutige Europa in hohem Maße durch eine kulturelle, ethnisch/soziale4 und sprachliche Vielfalt geprägt, und dies insbesondere im urbanen Raum. Wenn auch zum Anteil der mehrsprachigen Bevölkerung und zu den unterschiedlichen in Familien gesprochen Heritage-Sprachen im Allgemeinen keine verlässlichen Zahlen vorliegen,5 so lässt sich doch aus den verfügbaren statistischen Daten zu Nationalitäten und Familienhintergrund die sprachliche Vielfalt im urbanen Europa zumindest grob extrapolieren. So enthält etwa in Deutschland der Mikrozensus seit 2017 eine Frage zur Sprache in der Familie. Da hier jedoch keine Mehrfachnennungen und Differenzierungen möglich sind, liefert diese keine Basis zur Erfassung der tatsächlichen Mehrsprachigkeit in Deutschland (vgl. hierzu und zu weiteren Problemen Adler 2018). Seit 2003 werden zudem Daten zum ‚Migrationshintergrund‘ erhoben, definiert als Merkmal von Personen, die nach 1949 auf das heutige Gebiet der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zugezogen sind, allen in Deutschland geborenen Ausländern und Ausländerinnen und allen in Deutschland Geborenen mit zumindest einem zugezogenen oder als Ausländer in Deutschland geborenen Elternteil.6 Einen solchen ‚Migrationshintergrund‘ hatten 2012 in Deutschland 20 % der Bevölkerung, bei steigender Tendenz und mit höheren Anteilen in urbanen Gebieten: Nach Angabe des Statistischen Bundesamtes wuchs 2010 in Großstädten mit mehr als 500.000 Einwohnern und Einwohnerinnen fast jedes zweite minderjährige Kind (46 %) in einer Familie mit Migrationshintergrund auf – und damit in einer Familie, in der ein mehrsprachiger Alltag zumindest wahrscheinlich ist. Vergleichbare Anteile finden sich ebenso in vielen anderen europäischen Ländern. So hat etwa in den Niederlanden in den vier großen Städten Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam und Den Haag fast die Hälfte der Bevölkerung eine ausländische Staatsbürgerschaft, nämlich 43 %.7 Knapp 21 % der niederländischen Bevölkerung sind im Ausland geboren oder haben einen im Ausland geborenen Elternteil8, in Frankreich gilt dies ebenfalls für etwa 21 % der Bevölke 

 

 

 

 

4 Der Begriff der ‚Ethnie‘ ist problematisch: Es handelt sich hier grundsätzlich nicht um eine vorgefundene Kategorie, sondern um eine (Eigen- und/oder Fremd-) Zuschreibung, die mit sozial konstruierten Gruppen assoziiert ist (vgl. auch Fought 2002); ich behandele ‚ethnische‘ Vielfalt daher hier nicht als eigene Domäne, sondern im Konnex mit sozialer Vielfalt. 5 Vgl. zu dieser Problematik auch Extra/Yağmur (2004). 6 Diese Kategorie fasst demnach alle Einwohner und Einwohnerinnen mit nicht ausschließlich deutschen Wurzeln zusammen und grenzt damit innerhalb der Menschen mit deutscher Staatsbürgerschaft eine Gruppe ab. Zur Problematik dieser Klassifizierung auch aus sprachwissenschaftlicher Sicht vgl. Scarvaglieri/Zech (2013). 7 Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS) der Niederlande, nach Hinskens (2007). 8 Annual report on integration, Statistics Netherlands, Grafimedia 2012.

Neue Dialekte im urbanen Europa

141

rung9, in Großbritannien für etwa 20 %10, in Schweden für über 26 %11 und in Dänemark für über 10 % der Bevölkerung12. Um die besondere Diversität, die sich damit im urbanen Europa entwickelt hat, zu betonen, wurde in einigen soziolinguistischen Ansätzen ein neuer Begriff Superdiversity geprägt (Vertovec 2007; Blommaert/Rampton/Spotti 2011); allerdings ist noch zu zeigen, ob es sich, gerade auch im Vergleich zu historisch früheren Epochen großer Mobilität, tatsächlich um ein kategorial neues Phänomen handelt, das einen solchen eigenen Begriff rechtfertigt. Die uns hier besonders interessierende sprachliche Vielfalt im urbanen Raum stellt sich dar als eine Vielfalt auf Sprach- ebenso wie auf Sprecher und Sprecherinnen-Ebene: Wir finden eine große Bandbreite von Heritage-Sprachen neben den jeweiligen Majoritätssprachen in jeweils unterschiedlichen Varianten, Dialekten, Stilen, Registern, die zu vielfältigen ein- und mehrsprachigen Sprecherrepertoires beitragen. Gerade für die sprachlich besonders dynamische Gruppe der jugendlichen Sprecher und Sprecherinnen bedeutet dies, dass für die tägliche Sprachpraxis eine ungewöhnliche Bandbreite sprachlicher Ressourcen zur Verfügung steht. Die in Abb. 1 versammelten Liebesschwüre von Spielplätzen und Parks in Berlin-Kreuzberg geben einen ersten Eindruck hiervon:13  

 

 

9 Institut national de la statistique, Report “Fiches thématiques – Population immigrée – Immigrés – Insee Références Édition”, 2008. 10 Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, 2013. 11 Statistics Sweden, „Number of persons with foreign or Swedish background (detailed division) by region, age in ten year groups and sex. Year 2002 – 2012.“ 12 The Ministry of Refugee, Immigration and Integration Affairs Denmark, Statistical overview of integration: Population, education, and employment, 2012. 13 Belege aus dem KiezDeutsch-Korpus, Teilkorpus KiDKo/LL, „Liebesgrüße aus dem Kiez“ (verfügbar unter www.kiezdeutschkorpus.de). Diese Belege für Sprache im öffentlichen Raum dienen hier nur zur Illustration sprachlicher Vielfalt im Kontext neuer urbaner Dialekte. Für eine tiefer gehende Analyse vergleichbarer Daten als Elemente eines Linguistic Landscape vgl. etwa Blommaert (2013) für ein multiethnisches Wohngebiet in Antwerpen oder Warnke (2013) für Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg.

142

Heike Wiese

Abb. 1: Liebesschwüre in Berlin-Kreuzberg (Photo: Heike Wiese).

Wir finden hier – auf Fotos, die in einem relativ kleinen Radius gemacht wurden (Stadtteil ‚SO36‘ in Kreuzberg) – die kreative Verwendung von Sprachen wie Englisch („I L OVE Maria 4EVER “ / forever), Französisch („QUENTIN JTM“ / je t‘aime), Liebesschwüre auf Schwedisch („MIA, JAG ÄLKSER / ÄLSKAR DIG“ / ,Mia, ich liebe dich’), Türkisch („Sİ Z İ çoook SEVIYORUM“ / ,Ich liebe euch seeehr’) und Griechisch (,Mein Papa, ich liebe dich sehr’), die Integration türkischer Ausdrücke ins Deutsche („ich liebe Dich – Bebegim14 [„,mein Baby’] – Ich dich auch“) und die Verwendung des traditionellen Berliner Dialekts („DOLORIS – ICK LIEBE DIR“). Die hier deutlich werdende sprachliche Vielfalt unterstützt eine kreative Verwendung von Sprache, die gekennzeichnet ist durch den unterschiedlichen, situationsspezifischen Einsatz vielfältiger sprachlicher Ressourcen, der sich in Phänomenen wie Sprachwechsel, Sprachmischung, Bricolage und Stilisierung zeigt und, damit zusammenhängend, in der Schöpfung innovativer sprachlicher Formen: Die reichen Gelegenheiten des Sprachkontakts führen zu einer größeren Offenheit gegenüber sprachlicher Variation und stützen damit neue sprachliche Entwicklungen in Herkunftsund Majoritätssprachen, die dem vorhandenen Variantenreichtum weitere Elemente hinzufügen. Für das Türkische als verbreiteter Heritage-Sprache in einer Reihe eu-

14 Im Türkischen selbst würde der Ausdruck als „bebeğım“ verschriftlicht; in der Schreibweise „Bebegim“ zeigt sich eine Integration in das Schriftsystem des Deutschen, das die Grapheme „ğ“ und „ı“ nicht besitzt und Nomen mit Majuskeln kennzeichnet (vgl. hierzu auch Abschnitt 4 unten).

Neue Dialekte im urbanen Europa

143

ropäischer Länder sind solche Entwicklungen beispielsweise unter den Begriff des ‚Nordwesteuropäischen Türkisch‘ gefasst worden (hierzu etwa Boeschoten 2000; Rehbein 2001; Schroeder 2007; vgl. Rehbein/Herkenrath/Karakoç 2009 zum Deutschlandtürkischen). Im vorliegenden Beitrag konzentriere ich mich mit der Darstellung neuer urbaner Dialekte auf neue Varianten der Majoritätssprachen, die sich in Zentren sprachlicher Diversität im urbanen Europa entwickelt haben und hier in Peer-Groups jugendlicher Sprecherinnen und Sprecher ihren Schwerpunkt haben. In der Forschung zu diesen Dialekten lassen sich grob zwei zentrale Herangehensweisen unterscheiden, die konstruktiv miteinander kombiniert werden können.

3 Perspektiven: Varietät, Stil und neue urbane Dialekte Mit Hinskens (2007, 294) kann man zwei zentrale Perspektiven auf neue sprachliche Praktiken im mehrsprachigen urbanen Raum als „language-centered approach“ vs. „ethnographic approach“ unterscheiden. In Studien, die eine stärker sprachzentrierte Herangehensweise verfolgen, wird die Sprache selbst fokussiert, im Zentrum stehen Phänomene beispielsweise lexikalischer, phonologischer oder morphosyntaktischer Natur.15 Demgegenüber fokussieren Studien, die eine stärker ethnographische Herangehensweise verfolgen, die Sprecher und Sprecherinnen in ihrer sprachlichen Praxis, etwa die situationsspezifische Wahl bestimmter sprachlicher Elemente und ihre Funktion für die Selbst- und Fremdpositionierung innerhalb eines sozialen Raums.16 Mit den beiden unterschiedlichen Perspektiven verbunden ist oft eine Sichtweise des betreffenden Sprachgebrauchs als Varietät vs. Stil. Die Beschreibung als Varietät betont die Systematizität innerhalb der sprachlichen Domäne und die Interaktionen zwischen Repräsentationen und Entwicklungen auf verschiedenen grammatischen und außergrammatischen Ebenen; die Sicht auf einen Sprachgebrauch als Stil betont die selektive Wahl sprachlicher Mittel aus einer größeren Bandbreite von Ressourcen durch die Sprecher und Sprecherinnen. Die folgende Gegenüberstellung aus Quist (2008, 49) charakterisiert die unterschiedlichen Fragestellungen, die die beiden Sichtweisen unterstützen:

15 Einige Beispiele sind bereits die Pionierarbeiten Kotsinas‘ zum Schwedischen (etwa Kotsinas 1988), außerdem unter anderem Quist (2000); Wiese (2006; 2009; 2012); Ganuza (2008); Opsahl/Nistov (2010); te Velde (2017); Ekberg/Opsahl/Wiese (2015); Freywald et al. (2015) sowie – in Kombination mit ethnographischen Fragestellungen – Fox/Khan/Torgensen (2011); Cheshire et al. (2011). 16 Beispiele hierfür finden sich unter anderem in Rampton (1995); Fraurud/Bijvoet (2004); Quist (2005); Keim (2007); Cornips/Jaspers/de Rooij (2015); Wiese (2015) sowie – in Kombination mit sprachstrukturellen Fragestellungen – Kern/Selting (2006); Selting (2011).

144

Heike Wiese

The two approaches […] answer different kinds of questions. The variety approach contributes to the description of variation in the speech community and it helps us to find out if there is anything linguistically systematic going on at all. The stylistic practice approach, on the other hand, is a way to examine the social meanings, functions, and consequences of the speech of the adolescents.

Wie hier deutlich wird, handelt es sich nicht um konfligierende und einander ausschließende Modelle, sondern eher um komplementäre Herangehensweisen, die einander ergänzen können. In verschiedenen Ansätzen wird daher eine Kombination der beiden Perspektiven verfolgt, etwa in Quist (2008), die, in Anlehnung an Clyne (2000), den Terminus Multiethnolect vorschlägt, um die Verwendung über Ethnien und Heritage-Sprachen hinweg zu betonen, und für eine Verbindung von Varietätenund Stil-Einordnung unter dieser Bezeichnung argumentiert.17 Cheshire et al. (2011) diskutieren den Terminus als Option, auch eine stärker variationslinguistische Perspektive zu stützen, die den Feature pool betont, den Fundus unterschiedlicher Merkmale, der Sprechern und Sprecherinnen in sprachlich heterogenen Kontexten zur Verfügung steht.18 Um die Überwindung der Dichotomie sprachstruktureller und ethnographischer Herangehensweisen noch weiter zu stützen, habe ich in Wiese (2013a) eine Weiterentwicklung der Feature pool-Metapher zu Feature pond vorgeschlagen. Die Pond-Metapher betont, dass die Merkmale, die Sprecher und Sprecherinnen im sprachlichen ‚Pool‘ vorfinden, nicht zu einer beliebigen, unstrukturierten Zusammenstellung führen, sondern ein Netzwerk ineinandergreifender Elemente unterstützen, d. h. eine reiche sprachliche Ökologie, die interagierende Muster auf verschiedenen sprachlichen Ebenen hervorbringt. Die ‚Feature pond’-Perspektive erlaubt damit einen expliziten Einbezug der Befunde sprachzentrierter Untersuchungen bei der Kombination mit ethnographischen Herangehensweisen: Sie erlaubt es, die soziolinguistischen Repertoires und Entscheidungen von Sprechern und Sprecherinnen zu berücksichtigen, ohne dabei die Systematizität zu vernachlässigen, die die resultierenden Formen des Sprachgebrauchs auch auf sprachstruktureller Ebene besitzen. Eine solche explizite Anerkennung sprachlicher Muster beugt damit der Gefahr vor, systematische sprachliche Praktiken auf sprachstruktureller Ebene lediglich als Abweichungen von der Standardsprache zu beschreiben oder gar als ‚Fehler‘ zu betrachten, wie sie in ausschließlich ethnographisch orientierten Studien mitunter deutlich wird.19 Rampton (2010; 2013) argumentiert für die Bezeichnung contemporary urban vernaculars für die uns hier interessierenden neuen Sprechweisen, die ebenfalls eine Verbindung sprachzentrierter und ethnographischer Herangehensweisen erlaubt und da 

17 In diesem Sinne auch Freywald et al. (2011). 18 Cheshire et al. (2011) beziehen sich mit diesem Konzept des Feature pools auf einen Vorschlag Mufwenes (2001). 19 Vgl. hierzu ausführlich Wiese (2013a).

Neue Dialekte im urbanen Europa

145

bei zugleich die Normalität dieses Sprachgebrauchs im heutigen urbanen Europa betont: If we reclaim an accessible and widely known term like ‘vernacular’ […], then maybe we can also normalise the kind of urban speech we are examining, moving it out of the ‘marked’ margins, not just in sociolinguistic study but maybe also in normative public discourse (Rampton 2013, 78).

In ähnlichem Sinne argumentiert bereits Quist (2008, 49) für den Gebrauch der Bezeichnung ‚Multiethnolect‘ als eines ‚-lect‘-Begriffs, der einer Ausgrenzung und Exotisierung auch außerhalb akademischer Kontexte entgegensteuern kann: The use of a ‘lect’ term signals that this is a parallel phenomenon to other ‘lects’ like sociolects, dialects, chronolects, and so forth, and it ought to be regarded as such, that is, as something mundane and not ‘exotic’. Outside of academia, in a Danish national context, this is arguably strategically and politically important.

Für Kiezdeutsch, die deutsche Variante eines solchen Sprachgebrauchs, habe ich in Wiese (2012; 2013a; 2013b) eine Charakterisierung als ‚Dialekt‘ entwickelt und damit gezielt eine Benennung genutzt, die Aspekte aus beiden Vorschlägen verbinden kann. Der Ausdruck ‚Dialekt‘ entspricht zunächst dem von Rampton vorgeschlagenen Begriff des ‚vernacular‘ insofern, als er durch diese Anknüpfung den betreffenden Sprachgebrauch ‚out of the ‘marked’ margins‘ holt und normalisiert, wobei er wie das englische ‚vernacular‘ typischerweise auf Varietäten außerhalb der Standardsprache beschränkt ist. Im deutschen Sprachraum ist ‚Dialekt‘ dabei zunächst prinzipiell positiv besetzt und wird mit Varietäten assoziiert, die als Teil der Volkskultur akzeptiert sind (wenn auch der tatsächliche Gebrauch dialektaler Merkmale sozial negativ markiert sein kann). Die Bezeichnung als ‚Dialekt‘ auch außerhalb des akademischen Kontexts kann daher eine Einordnung in das Spektrum deutscher Varietäten unterstützen, die einer Ausgrenzung des Sprachgebrauchs selbst ebenso wie seiner Sprecher und Sprecherinnen entgegenwirkt. Dies erlaubt es, in der öffentlichen Diskussion eine Akzeptanz als Nichtstandard-Variante zu fördern, kann hier jedoch gerade durch diese Implikationen mitunter auch starke Abwehrmechanismen auslösen und dabei auch verdeckte xenophobe Tendenzen offenlegen (vgl. Wiese 2015). Mit Blick auf die sprachliche Struktur signalisiert die Bezeichnung ‚Dialekt‘ als ‚lekt‘-Ausdruck sprachliche Systematizität. Ebenso, wie Quist (2008) dies für ‚Multiethnolekt‘ vorschlägt, verbindet ‚Dialekt‘ zugleich Varietäten- und Stil-Perspektiven. Insbesondere kann der Begriff, anknüpfend an Befunde für traditionelle Dialekte, Aspekte wie die Variabilität im Gebrauch bestimmter Merkmale, ihre Sprecher/Sprecherinnen- und Kontextabhängigkeit und graduelle Übergänge zu standardnaher Sprache einbeziehen.20

20 Vgl. Wiese (2013a; 2013b). Dies spricht meines Erachtens gegen Auers (2013) Vorschlag, den Terminus ‚Dialekt‘ hier durch ‚Varietät‘ zu ersetzen. In der englischsprachigen internationalen Diskussion ist

146

Heike Wiese

Unter dieser Perspektive stelle ich in den folgenden Abschnitten nun einige zentrale konvergierende Befunde zu Sprachstruktur und Sprachgebrauch neuer urbaner Dialekte in Europa vor.

4 Sprachstruktur: Dynamik des mehrsprachigen Kontexts Wie bereits oben dargestellt, bietet der mehrsprachige urbane Raum im modernen Europa einen besonders fruchtbaren Boden für sprachliche Entwicklungen: Durch die reichen Gelegenheiten des Sprachkontakts und die vielfältigen Repertoires von Sprechern und Sprecherinnen mit mehrsprachigem ebenso wie (zunächst) einsprachigem Hintergrund finden wir hier eine Sprechergemeinschaft, die besonders offen für sprachliche Variation ist. Die hier entstehenden urbanen Kontaktdialekte besitzen daher eine besondere Dynamik; sie sind gegenüber historisch älteren Varietäten der betreffenden Majoritätssprachen charakterisiert durch eine Lockerung grammatischer Beschränkungen, die ihnen eine leichtere Aufnahme und Expansion laufender Entwicklungen ermöglicht und sprachliche Innovationen besonders begünstigt. Diese neuen urbanen Dialekte nehmen damit eine Sonderrolle im Spektrum der Majoritätssprachen ein, sie sind „in full development, in contrast to the relatively static traditional dialects“ (Hinskens 2011, 125) und bieten daher einen besonderen Zugang zu Sprachvariation und Wandel. Neben sprachspezifischen Charakteristika finden wir hier ganz wesentlich auch Phänomene, die ähnliche Entwicklungsverläufe sprachübergreifend über unterschiedliche Majoritäts- und Heritage-Sprachen hinweg in verschiedenen Ländern widerspiegeln, und dies auf Ebenen von Lexikon, Phonologie, Morphologie und Syntax.21 Sprachliche Entwicklungen sind hier grundsätzlich nicht nur das Ergebnis von Transfer aus bestimmten Heritage-Sprachen, sondern auch – und in weitaus stärkerem Maße – binnenstrukturell gestützt: als dialektale Entwicklungen innerhalb bestimmter Majoritätssprachen bzw. ‑sprachfamilien, die interne Tendenzen widerspiegeln und weiterführen. Der sprachlich vielfältige, ‚superdiverse‘ Kontext neuer urbaner Dialekte begünstigt Neuerungen hier nicht nur durch konkreten Sprachkontakt,

die Charakterisierung der betreffenden Sprachvarianten als ‚dialects‘ unkontrovers (etwa Cheshire et al. 2011 zur ‚dialect formation‘ im urbanen Raum) – zumindest, soweit überhaupt identifizierbare sprachliche Varianten angenommen und nicht, wie in einigen Ansätzen zur Superdiversity, in einem dekonstruktivistischen Ansatz als ideologische Entitäten aufgelöst werden (vgl. etwa Beiträge in Blommaert/Rampton/Spotti 2011). 21 Vgl. Keim (2010) für einen detaillierteren Überblick, Wiese (2009; ersch.) für eine sprachübergreifende Diskussion einiger morphosyntaktischer Merkmale.

Neue Dialekte im urbanen Europa

147

sondern ebenso durch eine generell größere sprachliche Liberalität und Offenheit für Variation, die interne Tendenzen weiter stützt. Interne Tendenzen können in Europa deshalb besondere Wirkungsmacht entfalten, weil hier eine enge Einbindung in das Spektrum der jeweiligen Majoritätssprache geschieht. Als Erbe der Nationalstaatenbildung im 19. Jahrhundert ist Europa in weiten Teilen von einem starken monolingualen Habitus geprägt, der eine Dominanz der Majoritätssprache im öffentlichen und privaten Raum stützt. In einem solchen Kontext sind kontaktsprachliche Entwicklungen stärker beschränkt, und urbane Kontaktdialekte haben typischerweise die Form umgangssprachlicher Varianten der betreffenden Majoritätssprache – anders als etwa in afrikanischen Städten, in denen vergleichbare Kontaktdialekte die Form von ‚Mixed Languages‘ annehmen können, die Elemente und Strukturen verschiedener sprachlicher Quellen systematisch zu innovativen neuen Sprachen integrieren.22 Die besondere Dynamik urbaner Kontaktdialekte in Europa entsteht damit aus einem komplexen Zusammenspiel systeminterner, binnenstruktureller Kräfte mit solchen des Sprachkontakts. Die jeweilige Gewichtung kann dabei ganz unterschiedlich ausfallen. An einem Ende des Spektrums stehen direkte Übertragungen aus spezifischen Heritage-Sprachen, am anderen Ende stehen sprachliche Phänomene, die sich in derselben Form auch in anderen Varianten der betreffenden Majoritätssprachen finden, dort aber weniger stark ausgeprägt oder weniger salient sind. Im Folgenden stelle ich kurz Beispiele für die beiden Extrema und für einige Zwischenstufen in diesem Spektrum vor, die das komplexe Zusammenspiel zwischen Binnendynamik und Sprachkontakt verdeutlichen. Ich konzentriere mich dabei zur Illustration auf Beispiele, in denen das Türkische als Kontaktsprache in Frage kommt. Der direkte Einfluss konkreter Sprachkontaktsituationen findet sich besonders deutlich beim lexikalischen Transfer: Hier findet eine direkte Übertragung von Ausdrücken oder kurzen Routinen aus unterschiedlichen Heritage-Sprachen in die jeweilige Majoritätssprache statt. Abb. 2 gibt ein Beispiel; hier wird auf einer Kritzelei (von einem Spielplatz in Berlin-Kreuzberg) neben englischen Elementen, wie sie generell für Jugendsprache typisch sind, der aus dem Türkischen stammende Ausdruck Canim ‚mein Herz/mein Schatz‘ verwendet:

22 Vgl. hierzu Wiese (ersch.). Zu urbanen Kontaktdialekten in Afrika vgl. auch Mensah (Hg.) (2016); Nassenstein/Hollington (Hg.) (2015); für eine Gegenüberstellung Kießling/Mous (2004); Dorleijn/ Mous/Nortier (2015).

148

Heike Wiese

Abb. 2: Canim als neues Fremdwort in Kiezdeutsch (Photo: Heike Wiese).

Im Unterschied zum Code-Switching, das für homogen mehrsprachige Sprechergruppen charakteristisch ist – etwa in Unterhaltungen zwischen einheitlich deutschtürkisch23 oder deutsch-arabisch mehrsprachigen Sprechern und Sprecherinnen –, werden solche lexikalischen Übertragungen grundsätzlich in die Empfängersprache integriert und entsprechend grammatisch und graphematisch angepasst. Neue Elemente können so sprecherübergreifend und unabhängig von Kompetenzen in bestimmten Heritage-Sprachen verwendet werden. In dem Beispiel in Abbildung 2 zeigt sich dies etwa in der Schreibung ‚Canim‘, die bereits an das Grapheminventar des Deutschen angepasst ist: Das türkische Original wäre ‚canım‘. Die sogenannte ‚m-Reduplikation‘, die sich in Kiezdeutsch findet, ist ein Beispiel für die Übertragung eines Musters oberhalb der Wortebene, vgl. (1):24 (1)

er sagt zu m=meiner cousine so fettsack METTsack [KiDKo, MuH27WT]

Das Muster der m-Reduplikation ist im Türkischen in der gesprochenen Sprache gut etabliert und syntaktisch voll integriert.25 Durch die Duplizierung wird Amplifikation

23 Vgl. hierzu etwa Dirim/Auer (2004). 24 Die Daten in (1) stammen aus dem KiezDeutsch-Korpus (Wiese et al. 2012), vgl. Abschnitt 5/Fn. 47. Versalien signalisieren Hauptakzente. Belege zur m-Reduplikation im deutsch-türkischen Sprachkontakt liefert auch Şimşek (2012). 25 Zur m-Reduplikation im Türkischen vgl. Schroeder (1989); Stolz (2008).

Neue Dialekte im urbanen Europa

149

ausgedrückt (im Sinne von ‚und so weiter‘), die hierdurch erzielte Vagheit kann dabei auch pejorative Effekte haben. Die m-Reduplikation, die wir in Kiezdeutsch finden, basiert jedoch nicht nur auf einem Transfer dieses Musters, sondern entfaltet im Deutschen eine eigene Dynamik und entwickelt sprachspezifische Charakteristika. Syntaktisch ist die Konstruktion hier weniger flexibel als im Türkischen und anders als dort weitgehend auf nominale Basen beschränkt. Durch die Ersetzung des gesamten Onsets durch [m] gelingt die phonologische Integration in das System des Deutschen (während im Türkischen nur der erste Konsonant durch [m] ersetzt wird). Auf pragmatischer Ebene kommt in Kiezdeutsch gegenüber dem Türkischen noch ein jugendsprachlicher Aspekt hinzu: Der Sprecher oder die Sprecherin kann sich durch die Verwendung von m-Reduplikation als lässig, gechillt/cool präsentieren.26 Einen Schritt weiter in Richtung binnenstruktureller Dynamik gehen Entwicklungen, in denen sich zwar parallele Muster in einer Heritage-Sprache finden, zugleich jedoch eine deutliche interne, aus dem System der Majoritätssprache rührende Motivation nachzuweisen ist. Kontaktsprachliche Einflüsse können hier bereits vorhandene Binnentendenzen noch weiter stützen, insbesondere wenn Kompetenzen in der betreffenden Sprache in der Sprechergemeinschaft relativ weit verbreitet sind. Ein Beispiel hierfür ist die Entwicklung von gibs zu einer Existenzpartikel in Kiezdeutsch, vgl. (2):27 (2)

WEIßte doch, die, die in verschiedene FARben gibs? [KiDKo, MuH9WT]

Die Form ‚gibs‘, entstanden aus existenzanzeigendem ‚gibt es‘, steht hier als monomorphematische Form in der Position des finiten Verbs. Die DP (oder Nominalphrase), die das Thema der Existenzaussage anzeigt (hier: die), kann dabei mitunter vom Akkusativobjekt der ursprünglichen Konstruktion mit existentiellem ‚geben‘ zum Subjekt uminterpretiert werden und erscheint im Nominativ: (3)

zeig mir mal, WER alles gibs.28

Das Türkische besitzt mit ‚var‘ (negiert: ‚yok‘) eine ganz ähnliche Existenzpartikel. Da das Türkische eine verbreitete Heritage-Sprache im urbanen Deutschland ist und daher viele Sprecher und Sprecherinnen auf dieses Muster zugreifen können, ist es plausibel, anzunehmen, dass diese Verwendung von gibs durch das Türkische gestützt wird. Der Gebrauch von gibs ist jedoch auch aus dem System des Deutschen selbst motiviert.29 Die herkömmliche Konstruktion ‚es gibt NP[OBJEKT]‘ ist problematisch in Bezug auf die Verbindung syntaktischer und semantischer Argumente: Sie enthält mit

26 Für eine ausführliche Analyse und eine Modellierung der involvierten konzeptuellen Domänen und pragmatischen Netzwerke siehe Wiese/Polat (2016). 27 Zu gibs vgl. ausführlich Wiese/Duda (2012). 28 Wiese/Duda (2012). 29 Vgl. hierzu ausführlich Wiese (2013b).

150

Heike Wiese

dem Expletivum es ein syntaktisches Argument ohne semantisches Gegenstück, und die höchste thematische Rolle (das Thema) korrespondiert nicht mit dem Subjekt, sondern mit dem Objekt. Die Entwicklung, die wir in Kiezdeutsch gegenwärtig beobachten können, führt dagegen zu einer Syntax-Semantik-Alignierung: Das semantisch leere es entfällt, und durch die Uminterpretation des Akkusativ als Nominativ ist die höchste (weil einzige) thematische Rolle nicht länger mit dem Objekt, sondern mit dem Subjekt assoziiert. Dies führt somit zu einer Regularisierung im grammatischen System, die binnenstrukturell motiviert und damit vermutlich wesentlich für die Entwicklungsdynamik der Konstruktion ist. Diese Regularisierung wird in zweifacher Hinsicht gestützt. Erstens ist die Univerbierung von ‚gibt es‘ zu ‚gib(t)s‘ eine generelle Tendenz im gesprochenen, teilweise auch schon im geschriebenen Deutschen, gestützt durch die regelmäßige Klitisierung des schwachen Pronomens es in Wackernagel-Position adjazent nach gibt. Zweitens besteht eine weit gehende Formidentität zwischen Akkusativ und Nominativ, die eine Uminterpretation von Objekt zu Subjekt erleichtert. So könnte die in (2) oben ebenso als Nominativ- wie als Akkusativform gelten. Auf ein Primat der binnenstrukturellen Motivierung weisen auch Daten aus einer Erhebung informeller Sprachdaten Jugendlicher aus der deutschsprachigen Minderheit in Namibia, deren Alltag mehrsprachig Deutsch-Englisch-Afrikaans geprägt ist. (4) gibt ein Beispiel für eine Äußerung, in der gibs ebenfalls mit Nominativ-Ergänzung verwendet wird (hier, ähnlich wie in (3) oben durch den maskulinen Singular vom Akkusativ unterscheidbar):30 (4) da gibs auch n berühmter SÄNger hier in namibia

Im Kontext des Namibiadeutschen spielt Türkisch keine Rolle. Wir finden hier aber, wie im urbanen Deutschland, eine aktiv mehrsprachige Sprechergemeinschaft vor. Dies weist darauf hin, dass für die Entwicklung von gibs als Existenzpartikel die binnenstrukturelle Dynamik des Deutschen eine entscheidende Rolle spielt, schließt dabei aber nicht aus, dass diese Dynamik im Fall von Kiezdeutsch durch den Einfluss des Türkischen noch zusätzlich gestützt wird. Eine Entwicklung, die noch einen Schritt weiter von direktem Transfer entfernt ist, ist der Gebrauch bloßer Nominalphrasen als Lokalangaben. (5) und (6) geben Beispiele hierfür aus Kiezdeutsch und seinem englischen Pendant, dem Multicultural London English: (5) ich war grad alexanderplatz und hab ein AUtounfall gesehn31 (6) cos my mum sent me shop three times32

30 Wiese et al. (2014). 31 Wiese (2013a, 224). 32 Aus: English Language Teaching Resources Archive, Department of Linguistics, QMUL (Jenny Cheshire et al.), http://linguistics.sllf.qmul.ac.uk/english-language-teaching), transcript Courtney and Aimee.

Neue Dialekte im urbanen Europa

151

Abb. 3 zeigt die Konstruktion in einer Kritzelei an einer Toilettentür (Kotti ist hier ein Kürzel für das Kottbusser Tor in Berlin-Kreuzberg, ein Verkehrsknotenpunkt und beliebter Treffpunkt; Bra ist ein Fremdwort aus dem US-Amerikanischen (von ‚brother’), das jugendsprachlich als Anredeform genutzt wird).

Abb. 3: Bloße Lokal-NP in einer Toiletten-Kritzelei (Photo: Heike Wiese).

Die größere Optionalität von Präpositionen in Kiezdeutsch könnte prima facie durch das Türkische gestützt werden, das für Lokalangaben ebenfalls keine Präpositionen nutzt. Zum einen gibt das Türkische stattdessen jedoch ein komplexes System nominaler Suffixe vor, für die es hier kein Pendant gibt. Zum anderen sind Präpositionen in Kiezdeutsch nur unter bestimmten Bedingungen optional, die sich nicht mit dem türkischen Muster decken, nämlich z. B. nicht bei Determinantien (Pronomen, Artikel) und nicht bei ‚woher‘-Gefügen, bei denen der NP-Referent die Quelle einer direktionalen Angabe ist (woher: ‚Ich komme vom Kotti.‘ vs. wo/wohin: ‚Ich bin/gehe Kotti.‘).33 Dagegen bietet das Deutsche auch außerhalb von Kiezdeutsch ein Muster für bloße lokale Nominalphrasen, wenn auch auf eine spezifischere Domäne konzentriert: In Angaben zu Haltestellen werden im gesprochenen Deutschen generell häufig Konstruktionen ohne Präposition und Artikel verwendet (‚Wir sind Hauptbahnhof.‘ / ‚Sie müssen Alexanderplatz umsteigen.‘), teilweise findet man dies auch in der geschriebenen Sprache, etwa in Zeitungstexten, und zumindest für den mündlichen Bereich wurde dieser Gebrauch bereits Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts beschrieben.34 Zudem finden sich Belege für Muster auch außerhalb von Kiezdeutsch, in stärker monolingual deutsch geprägten Kontexten (Wiese/Pohle 2016), und die bloßen Lokalangaben aus einsprachigen Kontexten folgen denselben Mustern wie die aus Kiez 

33 Vgl. hierzu unter anderem Wiese (2012; 2013a); Auer (2013); Wiese/Pohle (2016). 34 Vgl. Wiese (2012, Kap. 3.3); Wiese (2013a).

152

Heike Wiese

deutsch. Kiezdeutsch hat hier somit eher einen quantitativen, nicht qualitativen Vorteil. Dies zeigt, dass das Deutsche eine solche Konstruktion grundsätzlich zulässt und damit binnenstrukturell offen ist für diese Entwicklung, auch ohne eine kontaktsprachliche Stützung. Der Sprachkontakt treibt hier interne Tendenzen voran. Ein Bereich noch weiter am Ende der Skala, an dem direkte kontaktsprachliche Einflüsse keine Rolle mehr spielen, ist die Möglichkeit einer Verbdritt-Stellung (V3) in Deklarativsätzen, die sprachübergreifend für neue urbane Dialekte germanischer V2Sprachen beschrieben wurde. Die folgenden Beispiele illustrieren das Muster mit Daten aus dem Deutschen, Schwedischen, Dänischen und Norwegischen:35 (7) dann ich wollte so über AMpel gehen (8) å sen dom får de(t) [= den] brevet und dann sie bekommen den Brief (9) Normalt man går på ungdomsskolen normalerweise man geht zum Jugendclub (10) I dag hun lagde somalisk mat heute sie macht somalisches Essen

Diese Konstruktionen treten nicht durchgehend auf, sondern werden nur eingeschränkt verwendet, es überwiegen generell Deklarativa (und andere Satztypen) mit standardsprachlicher Verbstellung. Zu dieser Einbettung in die topologische Satzorganisation der Majoritätssprachen passt auch, dass beispielsweise in Kiezdeutsch, wie (8) illustriert, anders als bei SVO-Stellung die Verbklammer in V3-Sätzen erhalten bleibt. Die Verwendung dieser V3-Sätze unterscheidet sich somit, anders als dies in einigen früheren Arbeiten angenommen wurde (Auer 2003), von dem oberflächlich ähnlichen Muster der SVO-Stellung, die auf frühen Stufen des Fremdspracherwerbs auftritt. Hier findet vielmehr eine funktionale Differenzierung statt: V3-Deklarativa nutzen und erweitern die Rolle des Vorfelds germanischer V2-Sprachen bei der Markierung pragmatischer Funktionen, indem sie hier nicht nur ein, sondern zwei Elemente, nämlich Topiks gemeinsam mit Diskurs-Linking-Elementen (z. B. dann, sen, vgl. (7) und (8)) oder Rahmensetzern (etwa i dag, vgl. (10)), vor dem finiten Verb zulassen.36 Der mehrsprachige Kontext wird hier somit nicht in Form von Transfer aus Sprachkontaktsituationen wirksam, sondern stützt die Verwendung nicht-standardsprachlicher Muster auf einer abstrakteren Ebene, indem er eine größere Offenheit gegenüber sprachlicher Variation und Innovation stützt. Auch hier finden sich daher z. B. im Deutschen auch Parallelbeispiele aus einsprachigen umgangssprachlichen Kontexten (Walkden 2017; Wiese et al. 2020). Parallelen  

 

35 (7) aus Pohle (2013, 99), Versalien signalisieren Hauptakzente; (8) aus Ganuza (2008, 111); (9) aus Quist (2000, 152); (10) aus Freywald et al. (2013, 8). 36 Wiese (2009; 2012; 2013a); Freywald et al. (2015); Walkden (2017); Wiese et al. (2020); Schalowski (2014).

Neue Dialekte im urbanen Europa

153

zu früheren Sprachstufen des Deutschen legen hier die Vermutung nahe, dass die V3Option im Deutschen nicht grundsätzlich verloren gegangen ist, sondern nur in der Standardsprache zurückgedrängt wurde (Wiese/Müller 2018). Ein letztes Beispiel, das quasi das Extremum auf dieser Skala markiert, sind Nichtstandard-Phänomene in neuen urbanen Dialekten, die durch ihren innovativen Charakter ein besonderes Licht auf sprachliche Tendenzen werfen und hier besonders stark ausgeprägt oder auch salient sind, aber in anderen Dialekten ebenso auftreten. Ein solcher Fall liegt etwa bei einigen interessanten Verwendungsweisen von deutsch so und seinen Pendants im Schwedischen und Norwegischen, sån und sånn, vor. Diese Elemente können neben ihrer Kernverwendung als Inhaltswörter mit modalindexikalischer Bedeutung auch in semantisch gebleichter Form gebraucht werden und hier zu einem grammatischen oder pragmatischen Funktionswort werden. Im ersten Fall können sie Determiniererfunktionen erfüllen, im Zweiten fungieren sie als Fokusmarker.37 In vielen Verwendungen kommen beide Aspekte zusammen. (11) gibt einige Beispiele aus dem Norwegischen (11a), Schwedischen (11b) und Deutschen (11c, d):38 (11) (a) jeg så på sånn proGRAM på tvnorge (.) ich guckte auf so Program auf TVNorge „Ich habe so‘n Programm auf TVNorge gesehen.“ (b) jag var sån BUse ich war so Raufbold „Ich war so ein Raufbold.“ (c) und so so Polin war auch da. (d) das sieht so INdisch aus.

Einige dieser Verwendungsweisen konnten auch in anderen Varianten der betreffenden Majoritätssprachen, außerhalb neuer urbaner Dialekte, nachgewiesen werden. So findet Ekberg (2010) die hier beschriebenen Verwendungen im Fall des schwedischen sån/såhär auch in stärker monolingualen Kontexten, und Wiese (2011), Wiese (2012) zeigen für so, dass dieses Element auch außerhalb von Kiezdeutsch als Fokusmarker im gesprochenen Deutschen auftritt und dort denselben Mustern unterliegt, mit einem lediglich quantitativen Vorteil bei Kiezdeutsch.39 Neue urbane Dialekte zeigen sich hier deutlich als integraler Bestandteil im Spektrum der jeweiligen Majoritätssprachen. Sie können allerdings als Varietäten, die durch ihre spezielle Dynamik beson-

37 Vgl. Ekberg/Opsahl/Wiese (2015) für eine ausführliche sprachvergleichende Diskussion. 38 (11a) und (11b) aus Ekberg/Opsahl/Wiese (2015), (11c) aus Dirim/Auer (2004, 209), (11d) aus Wiese (2011, 992). 39 Eine Determiniererfunktion von so wurde für das Deutsche außerhalb von Kiezdeutsch bislang noch nicht beschrieben; vgl. aber Hole/Klumpp (2000) zur Entwicklung von son als neue Artikelform des Deutschen, die dem hier beschriebenen Gebrauch zumindest ähnlich ist.

154

Heike Wiese

ders viele Innovationen hervorbringen, einen Kontext liefern, in dem solche Entwicklungen besonders ausgeprägt oder salient sind.

5 Sprachgebrauch: Diversität und Repertoire Zum Gebrauch neuer urbaner Dialekte gibt es zwei zentrale, sprachen- und länderübergreifende Befunde: Sie sind nicht an bestimmte Heritage-Sprachen oder Ethnien gebunden, und sie sind Teil eines größeren Repertoires, in dem sie spezifisch mit informellen Peer-Group-Situationen assoziiert sind. Der erste Punkt, die Diversität der Sprechergemeinschaft, motiviert die oben (in Abschnitt 3) erwähnte Charakterisierung dieser neuen Dialekte als ‚Multiethnolekte‘ oder beispielsweise im Fall von Großbritannien als Multicultural London English. So stellen Fox/Khan/Torgensen (2011, 20) fest: unlike the adoption of out-group language used for stylistic purposes described in earlier work […], Multicultural London English, while drawing on different ethnic varieties, has become the unselfconscious vernacular of some young people regardless of their ethnic origin.

Neue urbane Dialekte umfassen somit, anders als Ethnolekte im engeren Sinne, grundsätzlich Sprecher und Sprecherinnen unterschiedlicher, ein- und mehrsprachiger Repertoires.40 Der zweite Punkt, das weitere Repertoire der Sprecher und Sprecherinnen, reflektiert die in Abschnitt 2 angesprochene große Bandbreite urbaner Sprache. Traditionelle, regionale Dialekte kommen hier zusammen mit anderen informellen Varianten von Majoritätssprache und unterschiedlichen Heritage-Sprachen ebenso wie mit Formen des Zweit- und Fremdspracherwerbs und unterschiedlichen Mustern von Sprachwechsel und Sprachmischung, wie sie für mehrsprachige Kontexte charakteristisch sind. Als Mitglieder solcher Gemeinschaften sind die Sprecher und Sprecherinnen neuer urbaner Dialekte nicht nur mit einer entsprechend großen Bandbreite innerhalb der jeweiligen Majoritätssprache vertraut, sondern kommen regelmäßig auch mit Varietäten anderer Sprachen in Kontakt, die nicht Teil ihrer familiären Sprachpraxis sind, etwa Türkisch im Fall einsprachig deutscher oder mehrsprachig deutsch-arabischer Sprecher und Sprecherinnen in Deutschland. Dies führt typischerweise dazu, dass sie sich zumindest einige Wörter und kurze Routinen aneignen, oft jedoch auch weitaus mehr, bis hin zu Kompetenzen, die ihnen eine Teilnahme an informellen Gesprächen in der betreffenden Sprache erlauben. Dirim/Auer (2004, Kap. 6) beschreiben dies beispielsweise für Türkischkompetenzen von Sprecherinnen und Sprechern aus einsprachig deutschen Familien in

40 Vgl. in diesem Zusammenhang auch Jaspers (2008) zu einer Kritik der Alloethnisierung der betreffenden Sprecher und Sprecherinnen durch den Begriff ‚Ethnolekt‘.

Neue Dialekte im urbanen Europa

155

Deutschland. Die folgende Passage aus einem Interview mit einem Jugendlichen aus Berlin-Kreuzberg illustriert die Integration des Türkischen in das Repertoire eines arabisch-deutschen Sprechers.41 Die Heritage-Sprache des Sprechers ist Arabisch, er erwähnte im Interview aber, dass er auch Türkisch spreche, und erklärte: Ich hab viele türkische Freunde, und davon lernt man das halt. […] Z. B. die telefonieren, wenn die, sagen wir mal, mit deren Familie spricht, und da fragt man halt, „Das hat sich gut angehört, was heißt das denn?“ Und dann benutzt man das halt auch, z. B. indem man das mit dem Deutschen, der deutschen Sprache so switcht (Wiese 2013a, 239).  

Im Bereich der Majoritätssprachen sind neue urbane Dialekte auf Sprecher- und Sprecherinnen-Ebene Teil eines Repertoires, das weitere, informelle und formelle, Varianten umfasst.42 Die folgende Zusammenstellung einiger Beispiele aus Abschnitt 4 mit Produktionen standardnaher Pendants durch dieselben Sprecher und Sprecherinnen illustriert dies:43 (12) (a) ich war grad alexanderplatz und hab ein AUtounfall gesehn [Gespräch mit einer Freundin; bloße NP] (b) ich hab ähm auf meine FREUndin gewartet am alexanderplatz [Gespräch mit einem Erwachsenen; PP[DP]] (13) (a) dann ich wollte so über AMpel gehen [Gespräch mit einem Freund; V3] (b) dann ist plötzlich ein AUto gekommen [Gespräch mit einem Erwachsenen; V2] (14) (a) å sen dom får de(t) [= den] brevet und dann sie bekommen den Brief [Gespräch unter Jugendlichen allein; V3] (b) å sen så f (r) rom [: dom] und dann PART verstehen sie [Gespräch in Anwesenheit eines Lehrers; V2]

Wie die Gegenüberstellung der Beispiele in (a) vs. (b) unterstreicht, ist der Gebrauch neuer urbaner Dialekte mit informellen Peer-Group-Situationen assoziiert, weniger mit formelleren Kontexten. Sie sind damit nicht Ausdruck eingeschränkter Kompetenzen in der betreffenden Majoritätssprache, sondern einer selektiven, situationsspezifischen Wahl. So stellt Ganuza (2008) im Rahmen einer größeren Studie zum Schwedischen im mehrsprachigen urbanen Raum fest, dass Sprecher und Sprecherinnen

41 Wiese (2013a, 239). Vgl. auch bereits Kotsinas (1992) zu ähnlichen Daten aus Schweden, Nortier (2000) zu den Niederlanden. 42 Vgl. exemplarisch Kotsinas (1992), Bodén (2004) und Ganuza (2008) zum Schwedischen, Hewitt (1992) zum Englischen, Quist (2000; 2010) zum Dänischen, Wiese (2006) und Auer (2013) zum Deutschen, Nortier/Dorleijn (2008) und Cornips (2008) zum Niederländischen, Svendsen/Røyneland (2008) und Opsahl/Nistov (2010) zum Norwegischen. 43 (12) aus Wiese (2013a, 224), (13) aus Pohle (2013, 99), (14) aus Ganuza (2008, 111).

156

Heike Wiese

Deklarativsätze, die dem V3-Muster44 folgen, vor allem in Gesprächen mit Peers nutzten, und hier besonders dann, wenn sie in das Gesprochene besonders involviert waren. Opsahl/Nistov (2010) finden im Norwegischen eine ähnliche Wortstellung mehr als drei Mal so häufig in Peer-Group-Gesprächen wie in Interviews, bei neun Sprecherinnen und Sprechern (unterschiedlichen sprachlichen Hintergrunds) war sie ausschließlich auf Peer-Group-Unterhaltungen beschränkt. Pohle (2013) belegt in einer kontrollierten Erhebung formeller und informeller Register mit Kreuzberger Jugendlichen eine weitgehende Beschränkung von V3 auf die Kommunikation (Telefongespräch und SMS) mit Freunden, im Unterschied zu formellen mündlichen und schriftlichen Kommunikationssituationen; Wiese/Pohle (2016) zeigen dies für bloße Lokalangaben. Dies hat generelle Implikationen auch für die Methodik empirischer Datenerhebungen. Zum einen legen die Befunde nahe, unterschiedliche Kommunikationssituationen einzubeziehen, wenn die Bandbreite möglicher Optionen auf Sprecherseite erfasst werden soll. Dies wird beispielsweise im schwedischen SUF-Projekt („Language and Language Use Among Young People in Multilingual Urban Settings“) realisiert, einem größeren Verbundprojekt, das systematisch mündliche und schriftliche, spontane und elizitierte Sprachdaten aus unterschiedlichen formellen und informellen Kontexten erhebt und damit nicht nur breite Sprecherrepertoires erfassen kann, sondern auch gezielte Studien zur Interaktion von Sprache und Identität im urbanen Raum ermöglicht.45 Ein weiteres Beispiel ist das Projekt MULTILIT, das kontrastiv in Deutschland und Frankreich das sprachliche Repertoire von Schülern und Schülerinnen mit türkischem Hintergrund untersucht und dabei mündliche und schriftliche Produktionen aus verschiedenen Erhebungskontexten einbezieht.46 Sprachübergreifend liefert das RUEG-Korpus (Wiese et al. 2019) systematisch elizitierte, vergleichbare Daten aus verschiedenen Kommunikationssituationen, mit formellen und informellen, mündlichen und schriftlichen Sprachproduktionen ein- und mehrsprachiger Jugendlicher und Erwachsener in verschiedenen Ländern einschließlich Deutschland. Zum anderen heben die Befunde innerhalb dieser Bandbreite die Relevanz von Peer-Group-Gesprächen als zentralen Erhebungsort für sprachstrukturelle Untersuchungen zu neuen urbanen Dialekten hervor. Besonders geeignet sind damit spontansprachliche Daten der Sprecherinnen und Sprecher und in informellen Gesprächen untereinander, wie sie etwa auf der Basis von Eigenaufnahmen für das Deutsche im KiDKo (‚KiezDeutsch-Korpus‘)47 oder für das Norwegische im UPUS-Korpus („Developmental Processes in Urban linguistic Settings“)48 verfügbar sind.

44 Ganuza (2008) spricht von ‚non-inversions‘, nicht von ‚V3‘, bezieht sich aber auf dieselben Muster. 45 Vgl. Källström/Lindberg (2011). 46 Vgl. Schellhardt/Schroeder (2015). 47 www.kiezdeutschkorpus.de; vgl. Wiese et al. (2012); Rehbein/Schalowski (2014). 48 Vgl. unter anderem Aarsæther (2010); Svendsen/Røyneland (2008); Opsahl/Nistov (2010); Freywald et al. (2015); Ekberg/Opsahl/Wiese (2015).

Neue Dialekte im urbanen Europa

157

Demgegenüber liefern Gespräche mit externen Interviewern oft stärker formelle Sprache; Hinskens (2011) schließt daher beispielsweise in einer Studie mit Gruppengesprächen alle Äußerungen, die an den Feldforscher gerichtet wurden, systematisch von der Analyse aus. In ähnlicher Weise tendieren Sprecher und Sprecherinnen in Akzeptanztests dazu, standardsprachliche Muster zu fokussieren. Ganuza (2008) nutzt dies, um zu untersuchen, inwieweit die von ihr untersuchten Sprecher und Sprecherinnen auch auf standardsprachliches Schwedisch in ihrem Repertoire zugreifen konnten, und stellt fest, dass die Mehrheit der Teilnehmer und Teilnehmerinnen mit den standardschwedischen Wortstellungsnormen vertraut waren, unabhängig davon, ob sie davon abweichende V3-Muster in informellen mündlichen Gesprächen produzierten. Für das Norwegische betont etwa Aarsæther (2010, 125), dass auch hier das Repertoire der Sprecherinnen und Sprecher neben dem urbanen Dialekt standardsprachliche Kompetenzen umfasst: both reported and observed data show that by far the large majority of the speakers command both standard-like South-Eastern Norwegian and multiethnic youth language.

Für Deutschland belegen bereits Keim/Knöbl (2007) den situationsbedingten Wechsel türkisch-deutscher Jugendlicher von ethnolektal geprägten Formen in den Standard49, Wiese/Pohle (2016) zeigen eine solche Registergebundenheit für Kiezdeutsch. Metasprachliche Daten aus Interviews und Akzeptanztests weisen zudem auf eine bewusste Wahl von Kiezdeutsch für informelle Gespräche im Freundeskreis.50 Zusammengenommen können neue urbane Dialekte damit als Teil eines breiteren Repertoires zum Ausdruck einer gemeinsamen, Heritage-Sprachen und Ethnien übergreifenden Peer-Group-Identität dienen. Sie kennzeichnen Zugehörigkeit im Alltag mehrsprachiger urbaner Wohngebiete, der Jugendliche unterschiedlicher HeritageSprachen, einschließlich der Majoritätssprache, zusammenbringt.

49 Dennoch sieht Dittmar (2013, 202f.) ein ernstes „Registerproblem“ und behauptet: „Über einen innovativen Dialekt […] könnten wir uns noch mehr freuen, wenn klar wäre, dass die Sprecher dieser neuen ‚Redekunst‘ sich auch in allen formellen kommunikativen Gattungen via standardnahes Sprechen behaupten können. Ich rate hier zur Vorsicht: Wir sollten genau hinschauen und bei aller Sympathie für den kreativen sprachlichen Wildwuchs keine Gelegenheit auslassen, darauf hinzuweisen, dass die MED [„multiethnisch geprägtes Deutsch“, H.W.]-SprecherInnen […] sich auch im deutschen Standard üben müssen – nur so können sie wertvolle, unverzichtbare Mitgestalter und kreative Sprachveränderer unserer Gesellschaft sein und in Zukunft auch bleiben.“ 50 Vgl. Wiese (2009); Freywald et al. (2011).

158

Heike Wiese

6 Fazit und Ausblick Der vorliegende Beitrag hat neue Varianten von Majoritätssprachen, wie sie sich heute im mehrsprachigen urbanen Europa entwickeln, als neue urbane Dialekte beschrieben. Diese Perspektive erlaubte es uns, systematische Charakteristika auf sprachstruktureller Ebene ebenso zu berücksichtigen wie ihre Variation in unterschiedlichen sprachlichen und sozialen Kontexten, ähnlich wie wir dies für traditionelle, stärker regional gebundene Dialekte kennen. Gegenüber letzteren werden neue urbane Dialekte durch eine sprachlich besonders vielfältige Sprechergemeinschaft gestützt, die unterschiedliche, ein- und mehrsprachig geprägte Repertoires einbringt. Die Metapher des Feature Pool, die für die vielfältigen sprachlichen Ressourcen vorgeschlagen wurde, auf die diese Sprechergemeinschaft zugreifen kann, wurde hier ergänzt durch eine Metapher des Feature Pond, die das Ergebnis dieses Zugriffs nicht als beliebige, unstrukturierte Zusammenstellung beschreibt, sondern als System ineinandergreifender Elemente: Neue urbane Dialekte basieren nach dieser Auffassung auf einer reichen sprachlichen Ökologie, die interagierende Muster auf verschiedenen sprachlichen Ebenen hervorbringt. Sprecher und Sprecherinnen wählen aus diesem Netzwerk systematisch je nach Gesprächssituation aus. Dies stützt eine integrative Sichtweise, die uns erlaubt, Charakteristika dieser Sprechweisen als Stil vs. Varietät gleichermaßen zu erfassen. Wir können so die Systematik auf sprachlicher Ebene anerkennen, ohne die gezielte Wahl, die Sprecher und Sprecherinnen jeweils treffen, zu vernachlässigen. In den vorangegangenen Abschnitten habe ich neue urbane Dialekte in Europa unter dieser Perspektive beschrieben und hierbei Befunde zu Sprachstruktur und Sprachgebrauch zusammengebracht. Neue Dialekte im mehrsprachigen urbanen Europa stellten sich vor diesem Hintergrund dar als Neuzugänge zum sprachlichen Spektrum der jeweiligen Majoritätssprachen, die durch eine besondere sprachliche Dynamik charakterisiert sind. Der sprachlich heterogene, durch vielfältige Sprachkontaktsituationen gekennzeichnete Kontext stützt eine charakteristische Offenheit gegenüber sprachlicher Variation und erlaubt es diesen neuen Dialekten, interne, binnenstrukturelle Entwicklungen der Majoritätssprachen besonders leicht aufzunehmen. Wie die Beispiele zur Sprachstruktur illustrierten, sind sie entsprechend gekennzeichnet durch ein komplexes, je unterschiedlich gewichtetes Zusammenspiel von Sprachkontakt und binnenstrukturellen Entwicklungstendenzen. Diese Dialekte fügen der Dynamik, die urbane Sprache generell auszeichnet, damit eine neue Qualität hinzu. Eine solche Dynamik findet sich, wie hier deutlich wurde, auch auf Sprecherinnen/Sprecher-Ebene: Neue urbane Dialekte entstehen in Sprechergemeinschaften, die durch vielfältige, heterogene sprachliche Repertoires gekennzeichnet sind. In diesen Repertoires stehen sie neben weiteren, informellen und formellen, Varianten der betreffenden Majoritätssprachen ebenso wie solchen aus anderen Sprachen, wobei Kenntnisse anderer Sprachen nicht an die Grenzen von Heritage-Sprachen gebunden sein müssen. Sprecherrepertoires in solchen sprachlich vielfältigen Gemeinschaften

Neue Dialekte im urbanen Europa

159

überschreiten damit herkömmliche Unterscheidungen von ein- und mehrsprachigen Sprechern ebenso wie die von ‚native vs. non-native speakers‘ der Majoritätssprachen. Neue urbane Dialekte stellen damit eine sprachwissenschaftlich besonders interessante empirische Domäne dar. Ihr sprachlich heterogener Kontext bietet nicht nur ein außergewöhnlich vielversprechendes Labor, um die Rolle des Sprachkontakts für Sprachwandel zu untersuchen. Durch ihre Dynamik können sie auch ein Licht auf Spannungsfelder im sprachlichen System werfen, auf Bereiche mit besonderem Entwicklungspotential, in denen die Interaktion unterschiedlicher grammatischer und pragmatischer Subsysteme neue sprachliche Varianten motiviert. Die heterogenen und variablen Repertoires, in die diese Entwicklungen eingehen, erlauben dabei durch ihre Sprecherinnen/Sprecher- und Sprachenvielfalt einen besonderen Zugang zum Konnex von Sprache und Identität, der situationsspezifischen Wahl bestimmter Varianten und der einstellungsbezogenen Faktoren, die hierbei eine Rolle spielen. Neue urbane Dialekte können damit über ihren spezifischen Phänomenbereich hinaus einen fruchtbaren Beitrag für unser Verständnis der vielfältig miteinander verwobenen Bereiche Sprachvariation, Sprachwandel und Sprachpraxis leisten: Untersuchungen in diesem Bereich sind besonders geeignet, das Zusammenspiel von Sprachkontakt und Sprachentwicklung mit soziolinguistischen Fragestellungen zu verbinden. Wir finden für diese empirische Domäne heute ein noch junges, jedoch rasch wachsendes und hochproduktives Forschungsfeld vor, das bereits eine ganze Reihe neuer Befunde und Ansätze hervorgebracht hat und für die Zukunft, gerade mit der Zunahme disziplinen- und sprachübergreifender Untersuchungen, weitere interessante Erkenntnisse verspricht.

7 Literatur Aarsæther, Finn (2010): The use of multiethnic youth language in Oslo. In: Pia Quist/Bente A. Svendsen (Hg.): Multilingual Urban Scandinavia. Bristol, 111–126. Adler, Astrid (2018): Die Frage zur Sprache der Bevölkerung im deutschen Mikrozensus 2017. Arbeitspapier, Institut für Deutsche Sprache Mannheim. Auer, Peter (2003): Realistische Sprachwissenschaft. In: Angelika Linke/Hanspeter Ortner/Paul R. Portmann-Tselikas (Hg.): Sprache und Mehr: Ansichten einer Linguistik der Sprachlichen Praxis. Tübingen, 177–188. Auer, Peter (2013): Ethnische Marker im Deutschen zwischen Varietät und Stil. In: Arnulf Deppermann (Hg.): Das Deutsch der Migranten: Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Sprache 2012. Berlin, 9–40. Auer, Peter/Frans Hinskens (1996): The convergence and divergence of dialects in Europe: New and not so new developments in an old area. In: Sociolinguistica 10, 1–30. Blommaert, Jan (2013): Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes Chronicles of Complexity. Clevedon. Blommaert, Jan/Ben Rampton/Massimiliano Spotti (Hg.) (2011): Language and superdiversities. In: Diversities [Special Issue] 13.

160

Heike Wiese

Bodén, Petra (2004): A new variety of Swedish? In: Steve Cassidy/Felicity Cox/Robert Mannell/ Sallyanne Palethorpe (Hg.): Proceedings of the Tenth Australian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology. Sydney, 475–480. Boeschoten, Hendrik (2000): Convergence and divergence in migrant Turkish. In: Klaus Mattheier (Hg.): Dialect and Migration in a Changing Europe. Frankfurt am Main, 145–154. Britain, David (2002): Space and spatial diffusion. In: Jack Chambers/Peter Trudgill/Natalie SchillingEstes (Hg.): The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. London, 603–637. Chambers, Jack/Peter Trudgill (1980): Dialectology. Cambridge. Cheshire, Jenny/Paul Kerswill/Sue Fox/Eivind Torgersen (2011): Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of multicultural London English. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 15, 151–196. Clyne, Michael (2000): Lingua franca and ethnolects in Europe and beyond. In: Sociolinguistica 14, 83–89. Cornips, Leonie (2008): Losing grammatical gender in Dutch: The result of bilingual acquisition and/or an act of identity? In: International Journal of Bilingualism 12, 105–124. Cornips, Leonie/Jürgen Jaspers/Vincent de Rooij (2015): The politics of labelling youth vernaculars in the Netherlands and Belgium. In: Jacomine Nortier/Bente Svendsen (Hg.): Language, Youth and Identity in the 21st century: Linguistic Practices Across Urban Spaces. Cambridge, 45–69. Dirim, İnci/Peter Auer (2004): Türkisch sprechen nicht nur die Türken: Über die Unschärfebeziehungen zwischen Sprache und Ethnie in Deutschland. Berlin. Dittmar, Norbert (2013): Reflexionen über das Entstehen eines deutschen Dialekts am Beispiel multiethnisch geprägter jugendsprachlicher Stile in Großstädten. In: Karina Schneider-Wiejowski/ Birte Kellermeier-Rehbein/Jakob Haselhuber (Hrsg.): Vielfalt, Variation und Stellung der deutschen Sprache. Festschrift für Ulrich Ammon. Berlin, 195–207. Dorleijn, Margreet/Maarten Mous/Jacomine Nortier (2015): Urban youth styles in Kenya and the Netherlands. In: Jacomine Nortier/Bente A. Svendsen (Hg.): Language, Youth, and Identity in the 21st Century. Oxford, 271–289. Ekberg, Lena (2010): Extended uses of sån ‘such’ among adolescents in a multilingual context. In: Pia Quist/Bente Svendsen (Hg.): Multilingual Urban Scandinavia. Bristol, 17–30. Ekberg, Lena/Toril Opsahl/Heike Wiese (2015): Functional gains: A cross-linguistic case study of three particles in Swedish, Norwegian and German. In: Jacomine Nortier/Bente A. Svendsen (Hg.): Language, Youth and Identity in the 21st Century. Cambridge, 93–115. Extra, Guus/Kutlay Yağmur (2004): Demographic perspectives. In: Guus Extra/Kutlay Yağmur (Hg.): Urban Multilingualism in Europe. Clevedon, 25–72. Fought, Carmen (2002): Ethnicity. In: Jack Chambers/Peter Trudgill/Natalie Schilling-Estes (Hg.): The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. London, 444–472. Fox, Sue/Arfaan Khan/Eivind Torgersen (2011): The emergence and diffusion of Multicultural London English. In: Friederike Kern/Margret Selting (Hg.): Ethnic Styles of Speaking in European Metropolitan Areas. Amsterdam, 19–44. Fraurud, Kari/Ellen Bijvoet (2004): Multietniska ungdomsspråk och andra varieteter av svenska i flerspråkiga miljöer. In: Kenneth Hyltenstam/Inger Lindberg (Hg.): Svenska som andraspråk. Lund, 377–405. Freywald, Ulrike/Katharina Mayr/Tiner Özçelik/Heike Wiese (2011): Kiezdeutsch as a multiethnolect. In: Friederike Kern/Margret Selting (Hg.): Ethnic Styles of Speaking in European Metropolitan Areas. Amsterdam, 45–73. Freywald, Ulrike/Leonie Cornips/Natalia Ganuza/Ingvild Nistov/Toril Opsahl (2015): Beyond verb second – a matter of novel information-structural effects? Evidence from Norwegian, Swedish, German and Dutch. In: Jacomine Nortier/Bente A. Svendsen (Hg.): Language, Youth and Identity in the 21st Century. Cambridge, 73–92.

Neue Dialekte im urbanen Europa

161

Ganuza, Natalia (2008): Syntactic variation in the Swedish of adolescents in multilingual urban settings: Subject-Verb order in declaratives, questions and subordinate clauses. Dissertation, Stockholm Universitet, Schweden. Hewitt, Roger (1992): Language, youth and the destabilization of ethnicity. In: Cecilia Palmgren/Karin Lövgren/Goran Bolin (Hg.): Ethnicity in Youth Culture. Stockholm, 27–41. Hinskens, Frans (2007): New types of nonstandard Dutch. In: Christian Fandrych/Reinier Salverda (Hg.): Standard, Variation und Sprachwandel in den germanischen Sprachen [Studien zur deutschen Sprache 41]. Tübingen, 281–300. Hinskens, Frans (2011): Emerging Moroccan and Turkish varieties of Dutch: Ethnolects or ethnic styles? In: Friederike Kern/Margret Selting (Hg.): Ethnic Styles of Speaking in European Metropolitan Areas. Amsterdam, 101–139. Hole, Daniel/Gerson Klumpp (2000): Definite type and indefinite token: The article ‘son’ in colloquial German. In: Linguistische Berichte 182, 231–244. Jaspers, Jürgen (2008): Problematizing ethnolects: Naming linguistic practices in an Antwerp secondary school. In: International Journal of Bilingualism 12, 85–103. Källström, Roger/Inger Lindberg (Hg.) (2011): Young Urban Swedish: Variation and Change in Multilingual Settings. Gothenburg. Keim, Inken (2007): Die ‚türkischen Powergirls‘. Lebenswelt und kommunikativer Stil einer Migrantinnengruppe in Mannheim [Studien zur deutschen Sprache 39]. Tübingen. Keim, Inken (2010): Sprachkontakt: Ethnische Varietäten. In: Hans-Jürgen Krumm/Christian Fandrych/ Britta Hufeisen/Claudia Riemer (Hg.): Deutsch als Fremd- und Zweitsprache [HSK 35.1]. Berlin, 447–457. Keim, Inken/Ralf Knöbl (2007): Sprachliche Varianz und sprachliche Virtuosität türkischstämmiger Ghetto-Jugendlicher in Mannheim. In: Christian Fandrych/Reinier Salverda (Hg.): Standard, Variation und Sprachwandel in germanischen Sprachen [Studien zur deutschen Sprache]. Tübingen, 157–199. Kern, Friederike/Margret Selting (Hg.) (2011): Ethnic Styles of Speaking in European Metropolitan Areas. Amsterdam. Kern, Friederike/Margret Selting (2006): Einheitenkonstruktion im Türkendeutschen: Grammatische und prosodische Aspekte. In: Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 25, 239–272. Kerswill, Paul (2002): Koineization and accommodation. In: Jack Chambers/Peter Trudgill/Natalie Schilling-Estes (Hg.): The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. London, 669–702. Kerswill, Paul/Ann Williams (2000): Creating a new town koine: Children and language change in Milton Keynes. In: Language in Society 29, 65–115. Kießling, Roland/Maarten Mous (2004): Urban youth languages in Africa. In: Anthropological Linguistics 46, 303–341. Kotsinas, Ulla-Britt (1988): Immigrant children’s Swedish: A new variety? In: Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 9, 129–140. Kotsinas, Ulla-Britt (1992): Immigrant adolescents’ Swedish in multicultural areas. In: Cecilia Palmgren/Karin Lövgren/Göran Bolin (Hg.): Ethnicity in Youth Culture. Stockholm, 43–62. Labov, William (1972): Language in the Inner City: Studies in Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia. Löffler, Heinrich/Lorenz Hofer (Hg.) (2010): Stadtsprachenforschung: Ein Reader. Hildesheim. Mensah, Eyo (Hg.) (2016): The dynamics of youth language in Africa. In: Sociolinguistic Studies 9. Mufwene, Salikoko. S. (2001): The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge. Nassenstein, Nico/Andrea Hollington (Hg.) (2015): Youth Language Practices in Africa and Beyond. Berlin. Nortier, Jacomine (2000): Street language in the Netherlands. In: Anna-Brita Stenström/Ulla-Britt Kotsinas/Eli-Marie Drange (Hg.): Ungdommers språkmøte: Nord 20. Kopenhagen, 129–139.

162

Heike Wiese

Nortier, Jacomine/Margreet Dorleijn (2008): A Moroccan accent in Dutch: A sociocultural style restricted to the Moroccan community? In: International Journal of Multilingualism 12, 125–142. Nortier, Jacomine/Bente A. Svendsen (Hg.) (2015): Language, Youth, and Identity in the 21st Century. Oxford. Opsahl, Toril/Ingvild Nistov (2010): On some structural aspects of Norwegian spoken among adolescents in multilingual settings in Oslo. In: Pia Quist/Bente A. Svendsen (Hg.): Multilingual Urban Scandinavia. Bristol, 49–64. Pohle, Maria (2013): Registerdifferenzierung bei Kreuzberger Jugendlichen. Masterarbeit, Institut für Germanistik. Potsdam. Quist, Pia (2000): Ny kobenhavnsk ‚multietnolekt. Om sprogbrug blandt unge i sprogligt og kulturelt heterogene miljoer. In: Danske Talesprog 1. Kopenhagen, 143–212. Quist, Pia (2005): Stilistiske Praksisser i Storbyens Heterogene Skole. En etnografisk og sociolingvistisk undersøgelse af sproglig variation. Dissertation. Nordisk Forskningsinstitut, afd. for dialektforskning, Universität Kopenhagen, Dänemark. Quist, Pia (2008): Sociolinguistic approaches to multiethnolect: Language variety and stylistic practice. In: International Journal of Bilingualism 12, 43–61. Quist, Pia (2010): Untying the language-body-place connection: A study on linguistic variation and social style in a Copenhagen community of practice. In: Peter Auer/Jürgen Erich Schmidt (Hg.): Language and Space: Theories and Methods. Berlin, 632–648. Quist Pia/Bente Ailin Svendsen (eds.) (2010): Multilingual Urban Scandinavia: New Linguistic Practices. Bristol. Rampton, Ben (1995): Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents. London. Rampton, Ben (2010): From ‘multi-ethnic urban heteroglossia’ to ‘contemporary urban vernaculars’. In: Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies 61. London. Rampton, Ben (2013): From ‘Youth Language’ to contemporary urban vernaculars. In: Arnulf Deppermann (Hg.): Das Deutsch der Migranten. Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Sprache 2012. Berlin, 59–80. Rehbein, Ines/Sören Schalowski (2014): ‘STTS goes Kiez’: Experiments on annotating and tagging urban youth language. In: Journal for Language Technology and Computational Linguistics 28(1), 199–227. Rehbein, Jochen (2001): Turkish in European societies. In: Lingua e Stile 36, 317–334. Rehbein, Jochen/Annette Herkenrath/Birsel Karakoç (2009): Turkish in Germany: On contact-induced language change of an immigrant language in the multilingual landscape of Europe. In: STUF 62, 171–204. Scarvaglieri, Claudio/Claudia Zech (2013): ‚ganz normale Jugendliche, allerdings meist mit Migrationshintergrund‘. Eine funktional-semantische Analyse von ‚Migrationshintergrund‘. In: Zeitschrift für angewandte Linguistik 1, 201–227. Schalowski, Sören (2014): From adverbial to discourse connective: the function of German ‘dann’ and ‘danach’ in non-canonical prefields. In: Mirjam Fried/Eva Leheckova (Hg.): Connectives as a Functional Category: Between Clauses and Discourse Units. Amsterdam. Schellhardt, Christin/Christoph Schroeder (Hg.) (2015): MULTILIT. Manual, Criteria of Transcription and Analysis for German, Turkish and English. Potsdam. Schroeder, Christoph (1989): Sprachlicher Ikonismus: Theoretische Grundlagen und Beispiele aus dem Türkischen. In: Papiere zur Linguistik 41, 3–76. Schroeder, Christoph (2007): Integration und Sprache. In: APuZ 22/23, 6–12. Selting, Margret (2011): Prosody and uni-construction in an ethnic style: The case of Turkish German and its use and function in conversation. In: Friederike Kern/Margret Selting (Hg.): Ethnic Styles of Speaking in European Metropolitan Areas. Amsterdam, 131–159.

Neue Dialekte im urbanen Europa

163

Şimşek, Yazgül (2012): Sequenzielle und prosodische Aspekte der Sprecher-Hörer- Interaktion im Türkendeutschen. Münster. Stolz, Thomas (2008): Total reduplication vs. echo-word formation in language contact situations. In: Peter Siemund/Noemi Kintana (Hg.): Language Contact and Contact Languages. Amsterdam, 107–132. Svendsen, Bente A./Unn Røyneland (2008): Multiethnolectal facts and functions in Oslo, Norway. In: International Journal of Bilingualism 12, 63–83. te Velde, John R. (2017): Temporal adverbs in the Kiezdeutsch left periphery: Combining late merge with deaccentuation for V3. In: Studia Linguistica 71, 301–336 Vanderkerckhove, Reinhild (2010): Urban and rural language. In: Peter Auer/Erich Jürgen Schmidt (Hg.): Language and Space: Theories and Methods. Berlin, 315–332. Vertovec, Steven (2007): Super-diversity and its implications. In: Ethnic and Racial Studies 30, 1024–1054. Walkden, George (2017). Language contact and V3 in Germanic varieties new and old. In: Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 20, 49–81. Warnke, Ingo (2013): Making place through urban epigraphy: Berlin Prenzlauer Berg and the grammar of linguistic landscapes. In: Zeitschrift für Diskursforschung 2, 159–181. Wiese, Heike (2006): ‘Ich mach dich Messer’: Grammatische Produktivität in Kiez-Sprache. In: Linguistische Berichte 207, 245–273. Wiese, Heike (2009): Grammatical innovation in multiethnic urban Europe: New linguistic practices among adolescents. In: Lingua 119, 782–806. Wiese, Heike (2011): So as a focus marker in German. In: Linguistics 49, 991–1039. Wiese, Heike (2012): Kiezdeutsch. Ein neuer Dialekt entsteht. München. Wiese, Heike (2013a): What can new urban dialects tell us about internal language dynamics? The power of language diversity. In: Linguistische Berichte, Sonderheft 19, 208–245. Wiese, Heike (2013b): Das Potential multiethnischer Sprechergemeinschaften. In: Arnulf Deppermann (Hg.): Das Deutsch der Migranten. Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Sprache 2012. Berlin, 41–58. Wiese, Heike (2015): ‘This migrants’ babble is not a German dialect!’ The interaction of standard language ideology and ‘us’/‘them’-dichotomies in the public discourse on a multiethnolect. In: Language in Society 44, 341–368. Wiese, Heike (ersch.): Urban contact dialects. Ersch. In: Salikoko Mufwene/Anna María Escobar (Hg.): The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact. Cambridge. Wiese, Heike/Sibylle Duda (2012): A new German particle ‘gib(t)s’: The dynamics of a successful cooperation. In: Katharina Spalek/Juliane Domke (Hg.): Sprachliche Variationen, Varietäten und Kontexte. Beiträge zu psycholinguistischen Schnittstellen. Festschrift für Rainer Dietrich. Tübingen, 39–59. Wiese, Heike/Ulrike Freywald/Sören Schalowski/Katharina Mayr (2012): Das KiezDeutsch-Korpus. Spontansprachliche Daten Jugendlicher aus urbanen Wohngebieten. In: Deutsche Sprache 2, 97–123. Wiese, Heike/Hans G. Müller (2018). The hidden life of V3: An overlooked word order variant on verbsecond. In: Mailin Antomo/Sonja Müller (Hg.): Non-Canonical Verb Positioning in Main Clauses. Linguistische Berichte, Sonderheft 25: 202–223. Wiese, Heike/Mehmet Tahir Öncü/Hans, G. Müller/Eva Wittenberg (2020): V3 in spoken German: A natural order of information? In: Theresa Biberauer/Sam Wolfe/Rebecca Woods (Hg.): Rethinking Verb Second. Oxford, 682–699. Wiese, Heike/Maria Pohle (2016). Ich geh Kino oder ‚… ins Kino‘? Gebrauchsrestriktionen nichtkanonischer Lokalangaben. In: Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 35, 171–216.

164

Heike Wiese

Wiese, Heike/Nilgin Tanış Polat (2016): Pejoration in contact: M-reduplication and other examples from urban German. In: Rita Finkbeiner/Jörg Meibauer/Heike Wiese (Hg.): Pejoration [Linguistics Today]. Amsterdam, 243–268. Wiese, Heike/Horst J. Simon/Marianne Zappen-Thomson/Kathleen Schumann (2014): Mehrsprachiges Deutsch: Beobachtungen zu Namdeutsch und Kiezdeutsch. In: Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik. 81, 247–307. Wiese, Heike/Artemis Alexiadou/Shanley Allen/Oliver Bunk/Natalia Gagarina/Kateryna Iefremenko/ Jahns Esther/Martin Klotz/Thomas Krause/Annika Labrenz/ Anke Lüdeling/Maria Martynova/ Katrin Neuhaus/Tatiana Pashkova/Vicky Rizou/Rosemarie Tracy/Christoph Schroeder/Luka Szucsich/Wintai Tsehaye/Sabine Zerbian/Yulia Zuban (2019): RUEG Corpus (Version 0.2.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. Wölck, Wolfgang (2002): Ethnolects: Between bilingualism and urban dialect. In: Li Wei/Jean-Marc Dewaele/Alex Housen (Hg.): Opportunities and Challenges of Bilingualism. Berlin, 157–170.

Christian Bär

7. Urbanes Place-Making und Sprechen über Musik Abstract: Musik ist unter anderem durch räumliche Kategorien beschreibbar. Im urbanen Zusammenhang ist ihre klangliche Erscheinungsweise auch in die Spezifik städtischer Soundscapes eingebunden. Über Musik als kulturelles Ereignis oder Produkt werden Städte zugleich als sogenannte Musikstädte in Szene gesetzt. Hierbei überschneiden sich diskursive Strategien des urbanen Place-Making nicht selten mit der sprachlichen Konstituierung musikalischer Gegenstände. In Diskursen über Musik zeichnen sich derlei Verflechtungen vor allem in Beschreibungen von Musik ab, welche Städtenamen als Etiketten musikalisch-ästhetischer Spezifika führen und in komplexe Benennungseinheiten integrieren. Am Beispiel der beiden Genrebezeichnungen Detroit Techno und Chicago House wird im vorliegenden Beitrag ein korpusempirischer Zugang der diskurslinguistischen Analyse im Zusammenhang des diskursiven Music-Place-Making vorgestellt. Anhand eines thematischen Korpus von ca. 2000 Musikrezensionen aus dem Bereich der elektronischen Musik werden lexikalische Kookkurrenzen der Oikonyme Detroit und Chicago exploriert und exemplarisch diskutiert. Schwerpunkt der Untersuchung ist der Gebrauch beider Städtenamen als Konstituenten im Rahmen von Nominalkomposita sowie als detoponymische Adjektive/Adjektivderivate im Kotext nominaler Gruppen. Von besonderem Interesse ist die auffällige lexikalische Diversität, verbunden mit einer hohen semantischen Dichte in komplexen attributiven Verkettungen. 1 2 3 4 5 6

Musik, Räumlichkeit und Urbanität Diskursives Music-Place-Making Diskurslinguistik/Korpusempirie Sounds und andere musikalische Welten Ausblick Literatur

1 Musik, Räumlichkeit und Urbanität Musik ist auf vielfache Weise als räumliches Ereignis beschreibbar. In Verbindung mit der Dimension der Zeit zählen Raum und Räumlichkeit aus heutiger Sicht zu den grundlegenden Kategorien musikalisch-klanglicher Gestalt sowie ihrer ästhetischen Gestaltung. Raum ist hierbei als ein vieldeutiger und relationaler Begriff zu lesen, dessen Gebrauch eine Reihe heterogener Raumkonzepte impliziert und eine Vielzahl interrelationaler/interdisziplinärer Forschungsperspektiven auf den (akustischen, ästhetischen, kulturellen, historischen u. a.) Gegenstand Musik eröffnet (vgl. Noeske  

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-008

166

Christian Bär

2009). Vermehrt werden diese auch in Relation zu urbanen Phänomenen und Dynamiken reflektiert sowie im Zusammenhang humangeographischer, stadtsoziologischer, klangökologischer, semiotischer und diskursiver Konzepte der Konstituierung urbaner Räume untersucht. In diesem Kontext soll hier ein linguistischer Aspekt des urbanen Place-Making am Beispiel des Sprechens über elektronische Musik im Rahmen von Musikrezensionen aufgegriffen werden. Thematisiert wird die sprachlichdiskursive Verknüpfung musikalischer Gegenstände, etwa bei der Beschreibung/Bewertung stilistischer, ästhetischer oder klanglicher Eigenschaften, mit der Nennung/ Benennung konkreter Städte als ein konstitutives Moment für beide der jeweiligen Bezugsobjekte. Anhand eines thematischen Korpus werden hierbei Nominalkomposita vom Typ Detroitsound sowie detoponymische Adjektivderivate wie detroitig im Kotext von Nominalgruppen exploriert und in Auszügen vorgestellt. Der Beitrag versteht sich als ein Vorschlag des disziplinübergreifenden Arbeitens an den Schnittstellen der linguistischen Diskurs-, Musik- und Urbanitätsforschung. Der Beschreibung und Konzeptualisierung des musikalischen Geschehens wird im Allgemeinen ein hohes Maß an Bildlichkeit, Metaphorizität oder Poetizität nachgesagt. Dies trifft auch auf die eingangs betonte Vielseitigkeit räumlicher Konzepte zu, welche sich im Hinblick auf Musik durch eine besonders auffällige diskursive Produktivität und Variation auszeichnen. Metaphorische Ausdrücke wie Klangraum, Klangarchitektur, Klangskulptur, Klangtextur, Klangfläche aber auch Wortneuschöpfungen wie Soundscape/Townscape, ferner Metonymien wie Musikstadt (siehe Abschnitt 2.1) spiegeln hierbei zum einen die linguistische Bandbreite der sprachlich-diskursiven Diversität, zum anderen die enge konzeptuelle Verflechtung räumlicher Vorstellungen mit musikalischen Kategorien. Sie dokumentieren aus musikhistorischer und -ästhetischer Sicht aber auch eine „verstärkte Hinwendung zum Klang“ (Ott 2012, 266); d. h. eine Hinwendung zur Materialität des Klangs, welche sich unter „den ,klassischen‘ europäischen Kunstformen“ (Ott 2012, 266) vom späten neunzehnten Jahrhundert an in das musikalische Grundverständnis westlicher Prägung einschreibt (vgl. Ott 2012, 266–267). Auch diese musikgeschichtlichen Entwicklungen im engeren Sinn sind mit urbanen Phänomenen im weiteren Sinn verbunden. Musikgeschichtlich gelten insbesondere die diversen Impulse der sogenannten Neuen Musik zu Beginn und in der Mitte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts als Eckpunkte der konzeptuellen und ästhetischen Aufwertung geräuschhafter bis lärmender Klanglichkeit (post)moderner Urbanität, deren ästhetische Adaption und Integration in den Rahmen der künstlerischen und musikalischen Kultursphäre heute bei weitem keine Provokation mehr darstellt. Luigi Russollos (1913) programmatisches musikalisches Manifest L’arte dei rumori sowie die hieran anknüpfenden Geräuschkompositionen auf Grundlage einer Systematik eigens entworfener Geräuschinstrumente (Intonarumori) zählen zu den frühen Beispielen des sogenannten Bruitismus, die bis heute Interesse wecken. Ebenso gelten Pierre Schaeffers akusmatische Studien „von den empirischen Gegebenheiten“ (Frisius [1997] 2016, o. S.) urbaner Klangräume sowie deren künstlerische Verarbeitung durch Collagie 

 

Urbanes Place-Making und Sprechen über Musik

167

rung akustischer Fragmente zu den bekannten Beispielen der Musique Concrète. Musikalisch-ästhetische Ausgangsmaterialen dieser Field Recordings bilden „technisch fixierte Klänge“ (Frisius [1997] 2016, o. S.) wie sie etwa in der Produktion Étude aux chemins de fer (Schaeffer 1948) die Geräusche (an)fahrender Eisenbahnen dokumentieren. Nicht zuletzt durch die technischen Entwicklungen der elektronischen und digitalen Klangerzeugung und Signalverarbeitung hat sich die Kategorie Sound als elementare ästhetische Größe etabliert, deren konstitutiver Charakter auch einen neuen musikalischen Raumbegriff geprägt hat, der heute gegenüber den zeitgebundenen musikalischen Parametern, etwa rhythmischer und melodischer Art, als gleichwertig gilt. Auch in der Musikwissenschaft wird hierbei von einer „Raumwende in der europäischen Kunstmusik“ (Ott 2012, 266) gesprochen, deren Auswirkungen auf die Ästhetiken der Musikproduktion heute nicht minder in den sogenannten populären Musiken relevant sind. Über die Kategorie der Körperlichkeit etwa bindet Diederichsen (2014, 327) die räumliche Dimension des Klangzeichens im Pop an ‚die Semiose der Pop-Musik‘ selbst, die „von Anfang an […] mit räumlicher und körperlicher Ausdehnung verbunden“ sei. Auch im Sounddesign diverser Bereiche spielen die Funktionen und Potentiale klanglich produzierter und konstituierter Räumlichkeit sowie ihre Wirkung eine bedeutende Rolle, nicht zuletzt in städtebaulicher Hinsicht bei der gezielten akustischen Gestaltung urbaner Raum- und Flächengestaltung. Schnittstellen ergeben sich hierbei unter anderem zur Psychoakustik und Lärmwirkungsforschung. Sprachspielerisch und mit betonter Metaphorik sind im Kurzbericht eines Symposiums des Fraunhofer-Instituts für Bauphysik zum Thema ‚Akustische Stadtgestaltung‘ (23.–24. Juli 2015) abschließend gleich mehrere Raumkonzepte in einem vertextet:  

Die mehr als 100 Teilnehmer erlebten die Ruhe eines akustischen Freifeldraumes und einen urbanen Schlussakkord auf der Forschungsorgel des Institutes (Fraunhofer IBP 2020).

Die verstärkte Einbindung der Kategorie des Raumes in die musikästhetische und klangwissenschaftliche Praxis kann mit dem Schlagwort des Spacial Turn assoziiert werden, welcher für diverse sozial- und kulturwissenschaftlich interessierte Forschungsbereiche als Wissenschaftsparadigma statuiert wird (vgl. Bachmann-Medick 2006; Lossau 2012). Im Allgemeinen steht dies im Zusammenhang mit der Konzeptualisierung von Räumen als kontingente Komplexe vieldimensionaler Zusammenhänge; hierbei wird „der Analysefokus auf die Konstitution von Räumlichkeit verschoben“ (Glasze/Mattissek 2009, 7). In kulturwissenschaftlich orientierter Musik- und Klangforschung ist mit diesem Fokus auch eine Sensibilisierung für die akustischen Konfigurationen anthropogeographischer Orte bzw. urbaner Räume angesprochen. Die Einbindung allgemeiner klangökologischer und klanganthropologischer Perspektiven in musikhistorische und -ästhetische Fragen hat hierbei zu einer Öffnung des Feldes zugunsten der kulturwissenschaftlichen Beachtung spezifischer akustischer Arrangements raum-zeitlich gebundener Geräuschwelten des (urbanen) Alltags und deren Einfluss auf die ästhetische Wahrnehmung musikalischer Ausdrucksweisen im Allgemeinen geführt. Der Begriff der Soundscape, der sich hierbei an der Schnittstelle

168

Christian Bär

zwischen künstlerischer und wissenschaftlicher Praxis durchsetzt, nimmt die räumliche Dimension klanglicher und geräuschhafter Umgebungen – Sonic Environments (vgl. u. a. Southworth 1969; Schafer 1969; 1994) – analog zur Topographie einer Landschaft (engl. landscape) in einem Kofferwort auf (vgl. Schafer 1994). In Weiterführung des Grundgedankens der Soundscape wurde der Terminus Townscape geprägt, der unterschiedliche Perspektiven auf das spezifische Gefüge urbaner Klanglandschaften und Geräuschkulissen einfasst. Während der Ausdruck zunächst im Kontext historischer Musik-, Klang- und Stadtforschung gebraucht wurde (vgl. Carter 2002; Garrioch 2003; Payer 2018; Strohm 1990 u. a.), ist das Forschungsfeld Musik und Urbanität (Kaden/Kalisch 2002; Rösing 2002) bzw. Urban Musicology (Carter 2002) heute breit aufgestellt. Auch im Bereich der Pop(musik)forschung greifen im Einzelnen verschiedene interdisziplinäre Schnittstellen der Cultural Studies, Sound Studies und Urban Studies ineinander (vgl. u. a. Belgiojoso 2016; Helms/Phleps 2015; Krims 2007; Lashua u. a. 2019; Mager 2007; Schulze 2008; Widmaier/Grosch 2014).  

 

 

 

2 Diskursives Music-Place-Making In dieses Spektrum an Wechselbeziehungen des musikalischen Geschehens mit räumlichen, urbanen und ästhetischen Perspektivierungen fallen auch solche Aspekte, die sich durch sprachliche Formen und Variationen einer diskursiven Bezogenheit musikkultureller sowie ästhetischer Praktiken und Symbole auf urbane Räume auszeichnen. Und welche sowohl die spezifische Wahrnehmung und diskursive Repräsentation bestimmter Musiken, Genres/Stile und Akteure als auch die mit ihnen verknüpften Orte auf die eine oder andere Weise prägen und/oder konstituieren. Eine solche Perspektive, die hier eingenommen werden soll, nimmt die Impulse der Urban Musicology auf und setzt diese in den Zusammenhang diskursiver Prozesse des sprachgebundenen „urbanen Place-Making“ (Busse/Warnke 2014, 2; Hervorh. i.O.), wie sie jüngst im Rahmen interdisziplinärer Ansätze der linguistischen Urbanitätsforschung zur Debatte stehen. Urban Linguistics wird hierbei „als sprachwissenschaftliche Ausprägung der interdisziplinären Urban Studies“ (Busse/Warnke 2015, 519) verstanden. Ausgangspunkt ist die Grundannahme, dass sich Raum bzw. urbaner Raum als variables und multidimensionales Konstrukt zu verstehen gibt, das auch durch semiotische und sprachlich-diskursive Prozesse gebildet wird. Ort kann hierbei als Variable des urbanen Raumes beschrieben werden, der in Anlehnung an Busse/ Warnke (2015, 529) als spezifische Ausprägung von Urbanität über die „methodologischen Kernkonzepte [der] Singularität und Iteration sowie ihre[r] Mustererkennung“ zu deuten ist. Die Vielschichtigkeit der sprachlich vermittelten Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Räumlichkeit, Musik, Urbanität und Sprache zeigt sich sodann auch bei ihrer linguistischen und diskursiven Inblicknahme. Beispielhaft sollen im Folgenden vor allem sprachliche Strategien der diskursiven ‚Vergegenwärtigung‘ urbaner Räume und Orte

Urbanes Place-Making und Sprechen über Musik

169

in funktionalen Texten über Musik, welche eine breitere mediale Öffentlichkeit adressieren, beleuchtet werden; im weiteren Verlauf wird dann die Textsorte Musikrezension als diskursiver Ort ins Zentrum gerückt (siehe Abschnitt 3 und 4). Sprachliche Bezugnahmen auf anthropogeographische Orte oder Regionen, und insbesondere auf konkrete Städte, sind hierbei mit bestimmten, kontextuell gebundenen, kommunikativen und diskursiven Funktionen verbunden, über welche musikkulturelle Zusammenhänge in je spezifischen Musikdiskursen textpragmatisch strukturiert sowie performativ bis deklarativ hergestellt werden können. In diskursiven Arrangements tritt musikalisches Geschehen, sei es implizit oder explizit, für gewöhnlich als urbanes Phänomen auf, das über die Verortung in gesetzten diskursiven Kulturräumen bzw. über die Koppelung urbaner, musikkultureller und musikalischer Kategorien im engeren Sinne mit kulturellem Wert besetzt wird bzw. werden kann. Jede kontextuell bestimmte toponymische/oikonymische Nennung ist über ihre Funktion der Benennung einer örtlichen Begebenheit hinaus somit immer auch ein performatives Moment der potentiellen Konstituierung anderer diskursiver Aspekte, Kategorien oder Werte, welche dem Ortsnamen anhaften oder angeheftet werden. In Diskursen über Musik, so könnte man allgemein und überspitzt formulieren, formatiert die Funktion von Ortsnamen ein musik(kultur)relevantes Spezifikum – etwa eine ästhetische, stilistische, historische u. a. Besonderheit – als allgemeine (musik)kulturelle bis kulturpolitische Relevanz. Insbesondere Städtenamen treten hierbei als topologische Knotenpunkte dieser Relevanz auf. Dieser gewünschte Nebeneffekt von Oikonymen im Rahmen diskursiver Sinngefüge, der in Bezug auf musikalische Ereignisse etwa im Stadtmarketing systematisch zur Anwendung kommt, kann als Strategie einer Praxis urbaner sowie musikalischer In-Wert-Setzung (Busse/Warnke 2015) aufgefasst werden, welche über das konstitutive Moment der Verzahnung beider Dimensionen eine (potentielle) Steigerung an kulturellem sowie ökonomischen Wert unter anderem mittels diskursiver Bedeutungsanreicherung zum Effekt hat.  

2.1 Musikstadt als Produkt Ein besonders auffälliges Beispiel ist hierbei der anhaltende Trend im städtischen Kulturmarketing und -tourismus – gleichermaßen in regional, national sowie international angelegter Kulturpolitik – musikbezogene und stadtgeschichtliche Ereignisse im weiten Sinne als kulturelle Bedeutungsträger zu perspektivieren sowie zu etablieren. Urbane, kunst- oder musikhistorische Eckdaten, archivarische Dokumente, Bilder und Anekdoten einschließlich urbaner Mythen werden dabei zu rentablen Narrativen verflochten, die unter dem ‚Dach der Stadt‘ als quasi-mythologischer Kulturort geführt werden. Städte werden hierbei qua ihres Namens zu sogenannten Musikstädten oder Cities of Music (UNESCO 2020), d. h. zum Label von ‚Orten der Musik‘. Als solche spezifische Perspektivierungen von Stadt erscheint ‚die Musikstadt‘ im Grunde in allen diskursrelevanten textuellen Formaten; von wissenschaftlicher und populärwis 

170

Christian Bär

senschaftlicher Praxis über das Feuilleton, im Kultur- oder Musikjournalismus sowie insbesondere in Projektbeschreibungen und Broschüren zur Förderung musikkultureller Events, Maßnahmen und Kampagnen der städtischen und kommunalen Freizeit-, Kultur- und Tourismussektion. Hinzu kommt eine Fülle an bisweilen unterhaltsamer oder aufwändig recherchierter und illustrierter Buchprojekte, Stadtführer und Webseiten, welche konkrete Städte durch die musikalische Brille beschreiben, historisch, touristisch oder künstlerisch aufarbeiten und/oder bewerben, etwa in Form einer „lebendige[n] und reich illustrierte[n] Musikgeschichte“ , wie dies die Produktbeschreibung zu Rauhe (2017) – Von der ersten deutschen Bürgeroper bis zur Elbphilharmonie: Die Musikstadt Hamburg und ihr neues Wahrzeichen – ankündigt (vgl. u. a. bücher.de 2020). Nicht nur in Bezug auf Hamburg gilt es an dieser Stelle kritisch und allgemein anzumerken:  

Die Musikstadt […] ist ein Ergebnis von Prozessen – sie ist ein Produkt. Jedoch haftet dem Produkt keine Eindeutigkeit an, da eine Vielzahl an Prozessen auf sie als Produkt eingewirkt haben. Je nachdem, welcher Akteursgruppe man sich nähert, erfährt man andere Vorstellungen davon, was die Musikstadt sein soll, wo sie ist, wozu sie dient und auch wie sie klingt (Knopp 2018, 168).

Unter den zahlreichen Diskursen, welche allein im deutschsprachigen Raum ein solches Produkt (Knopp 2018) auf die eine oder andere Weise herstellen, in Wert setzen oder journalistisch thematisieren, kann hier nur auf einige wenige hingewiesen werden. Neben dem Großprojekt des Baus der Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg hat insbesondere die Stadt Leipzig durch ihre Bewerbung (als Musikstadt) auf die Tentativliste zur Anerkennung als UNESCO-Welterbe im Jahr 2014 (Stadt Leipzig 2020) Aufmerksamkeit auf sich gezogen; unter den deutschen Städten stehen ferner Hannover (Landeshauptstadt Hannover 2020) und Mannheim (Stadt Mannheim 2014) – beide UNESCOdeklarierte Cities of Music 2014 (UNESCO Cities of Music 2020) –, Dortmund (vgl. Keim/Stahlschmidt 2012) oder Köln (vgl. Jacobshagen 2013) im Fokus. In einer Fülle an Online-Music-Guides mit Titeln wie A Music Lover‘s Guide to Chicago (Newhart 2016) werden Städte weltweit mit Verweisen auf konkrete urbane Musikorte wie Konzerthäuser/-hallen, Theater, Clubs, Bars oder Kneipen kartographiert; verwiesen wird ferner auch auf Stadtteile, Straßenzüge, U-Bahn-Stationen oder Parks, welche mit einer musikkulturellen Besonderheit verbunden sind bzw. waren oder gar als repräsentativ für diese gelten. Zu nennen sind nicht zuletzt auch kritisch angelegte Forschungsprojekte wie etwa das Interactive Music Mapping Vienna unter der Leitung von Prof. Dr. Susana Zapke, welches [d]ie Rolle von Musik im urbanen Kontext als gesellschaftliches Identifikationsinstrument und die Frage, wie Musik zu städtischer Symbolpolitik funktionalisiert wird (IMMV 2017)

ins Zentrum rückt.

Urbanes Place-Making und Sprechen über Musik

171

2.2 Orte der Musik und Stellen in der Musik Im Rahmen von Musikdiskursen des Öffentlichen erfüllen Städtenamen und urbane Ortsbenennungen einen doppelten Zweck. Ihr Gebrauch verweist zum einen auf die Faktizität musikkultur- und diskursrelevanter z. B. historischer oder lokaler Gegebenheiten, er eröffnet zum anderen einen diskursiven Raum ihrer Konstituierung und ermöglicht des Weiteren eine Steigerung ihrer diskursiven und musikkulturellen Relevanz. Sowohl durch kulturpolitische und marketingstrategische Verfahren als auch durch sprachlich-diskursive Strategien zeichnen sich diese Prozesse des PlaceMaking durch eine Akkumulierung von Sinn aus, welche meist einen agonalen diskursprägenden Effekt hat und auf das musikkulturelle Geschehen sowie auf die hiermit verknüpften ästhetischen Kategorien einen erheblichen Einfluss nimmt. Vice versa fungieren insbesondere etablierte Musikstädte(namen) auch als Kategorien zur Klassifizierung oder Beschreibung von musikalisch-ästhetischen Charakteristika. Besonders markant tritt dies bei der Klassifizierung musikalischer Genres oder Stile in Erscheinung;  

wie zum Beispiel der sogenannte Motown Sound, Philly Sound; aber auch der soziale Bezug und das kulturelle Identifikationspotential finden sich in regionalen Soundzuweisungen wieder: Liverpool-Sound (Binas-Preisendörfer 2008, 193–194, Hervorh. i.O.).

Im Bereich der Populären Musiken und insbesondere in der sub(pop)kulturellen Sphäre setzen sich Genrebegriffe und vor allem Stilbezeichnungen auch über ortsbezogene Mythenbildungen durch, welche ihrerseits zu besagten sprachlichen Labels oder diskursiven Etiketten entsprechender Musiken, ästhetischer Kategorien oder musikalischer Inhalte avancieren. Letztere können hierbei variabel sein. Der Effekt dieser diskursiven Reifizierung bzw. „Reifikation“ (Berger/Luckmann 1969, 82) betrifft einen weiteren, zwar subtilen, jedoch wirksamen Aspekt des Ineinandergreifens der Kategorien Musik, Urbanität, Diskurs und Sprache. Er betrifft die sprachlich-diskursive Verschränkung des ‚Ortes der Musik‘ mit der ‚Stelle in der Musik‘ insbesondere bei der Beschreibung von Musik im Moment der Bezugnahme auf einen mit einer musikalisch-ästhetischen Qualität assoziierten, anthropogeographischen bzw. urbanen Ort. Die diskurslinguistische Inblicknahme sprachlicher Ausdrücke, der im Folgenden nachgegangen werden soll (siehe Abschnitt 4), legt eine auffällige semantische Dichte der Zeichenkomplexe und -relationen offen, die auf linguistischer Ebene als komplexe Nominationseinheiten diskutiert werden können (vgl. Knobloch 1996; Fleischer 1996; Zifonun 2016) und auf sprachlich-diskursiver Ebene eine Praxis der bewertenden Benennung von Gegenständen und Sachverhalten darstellen. Seiler Brylla (2019, 283) diskutiert dies im Zusammenhang mit Faktizitätsherstellung im politischen Diskurs am Beispiel „des Referenzobjekt[s] ‚Berliner Mauer‘, [das] je nach Kommunikationssituation und Sprachbenutzerin unterschiedlich benannt“ wurde (vgl. auch: Felder 2012). Ähnliche Prozesse, wenngleich politisch weniger brisant, stellen auch einen wichtigen Bestandteil sprachlich-diskursiver Strate-

172

Christian Bär

gien im Sprechen/Schreiben über Musik und Klang dar, insbesondere bei deren Beschreibung, welche im Rahmen von Musikrezensionen einer Art sprachlicher Kartierung des Ästhetischen durch diverse Verortungen und Verdinglichungen des musikalischen Geschehens gleicht. Ein detroitiger Sound etwa (siehe Abschnitt 4.3) bezieht sich im Kontext der elektronischen Musik sowohl auf die Stadt Detroit im Sinne einer quasi-Musikstadt, als auch metonymisch auf einen musikalisch-stilistischen Genrekomplex (Detroit Techno), als auch auf eine markante ästhetische Qualität, die hier einen Stil im Sound ,denotiert‘ (meint) und diesen als detroitig, detroitesk oder – in Bezug auf Chicago – als chicagolastig beschreibt. Auf ähnliche Weise werden auch andere zentrale musikalische Einheiten, Parameter oder Wirkungen lexikalisch mit toponymischem Bezug verbunden und mitunter zu äußerst komplexen, vieldeutigen und bildlichen Einheiten verdichtet. Diese nominalen Verdichtungen einfacher und attributiv erweiterter Nominalphrasen bzw. komplexer Nominationseinheiten vom Typ bilden im Folgenden den Gegenstand der linguistischen Veranschaulichung der Verschränkung von Place-Making und Music-Making anhand des Beispiels der beiden Oikonyme Detroit und Chicago.

2.3 Music-Place-Making am Beispiel Detroit und Chicago Detroit Techno und Chicago House gelten als zwei zentrale Bezugsgrößen auf der höchst differenzierten Landkarte musikalischer Strömungen, die im sehr weiten Sinne unter den Begriff der Electronic Dance Music gefasst werden. Die beiden Bezeichnungen stehen bis heute für zwei musikstilgeschichtliche Prototypen der Genreoberbegriffe des Techno und House – zwei Stilrichtungen, die sich ab Anfang/Mitte der 1980er Jahre als Referenzpunkte im Spektrum der elektronischen Clubmusik herausbilden und jeweils quasi-mythologisch auf die beiden Orte ihrer Prägung verweisen: „Techno kommt [also] nicht aus Berlin, auch wenn das manch hiesiger Zeitgenosse denken mag“ (VICE 2016, o.S.). Und obwohl die musikalischen Neuerungen der deutschen Band Kraftwerk mit ihrem Album Autobahn (1974) maßgeblich Einfluss nahmen, gilt nicht Düsseldorf als Techno City – für Düsseldorf ist in der popmusikalischen Sphäre die Genrebezeichnung Krautrock reserviert –, sondern Detroit (vgl. Rietveld/ Kolioulis 2019). Während in Chicago die House-Musik mit ihren positiven Vibes geboren wurde, entstand Detroit die Urform des Techno – geprägt von einer eher ernsten Stimmung (Kutter 2016, o. S.).  

Parallel zu dieser Entwicklung bildete sich in Chicago ein Stil heraus, dessen Bezeichnung sich toponymisch vom Namen des Ortes seiner Prägung ableitet: It is no accident, then, that the dance music that emerged here was called ‘house music’, with reference to music played at nightclub The Warehouse (Rietveld/Kolioulis 2019, 46).

Urbanes Place-Making und Sprechen über Musik

173

Trotz der teilweise verwobenen stilgeschichtlichen Entwicklung stehen Detroit Techno und Chicago House quasi-mythologisch sowohl für eine jeweilige musikalische Spezifik als auch für eine spezifische Differenz der Stile (vgl. Rietveld/Kolioulis 2019), wobei diese vielmehr diskursiv als musikalisch im strengen Sinn zu verstehen ist, insofern die stilistischen Grenzen der beiden Prototypen heute verschwimmen: It seems that how we decide whether a track is techno or house depends largely on a kind of sixth sense which is hard articulate (Dolan 2020, o. S.)  

wohingegen die epistemische Verankerung der binären Gegenüberstellung beider ‚Welten‘ nach wie vor diskursprägend ist.

Abb. 1: Detroit und Chicago: Zwei Genres, zwei Welten, zwei Schubladen. © Felix Bernoully 1996 (MaxPlanck-Institut für empirische Ästhetik)

3 Diskurslinguistik/Korpusempirie Im Folgenden soll nicht etwa der Frage nach den ästhetischen Ähnlichkeiten und Verschiedenheiten beider Genres nachgegangen werden, vielmehr wird vorgeschlagen, gerade auf Grundlage dieser diskursiv verfestigten Differenz Prozesse des sprachlichdiskursiven Place-Making (Music-Place-Making) auf linguistischer und (trans-)textueller Ebene zu explorieren, die beiden gemeinsam sind. Methodisch liegt es von daher nahe, einen diskurslinguistischen Kontext (vgl. u. a. Busse/Teubert 1994; Gardt 2007; Spitzmüller/Warnke 2011; Warnke 2018a; 2018b; Warnke/Spitzmüller 2008a; 2008b) mit korpusempirischem Schwerpunkt aufzugreifen (vgl. u. a. Bubenhofer 2018; Bubenhofer/Scharloth 2013). Unter der Bezeichnung Diskurslinguistik wird hierbei keine Methodik im engen Sinn verstanden, sondern eine „spezifische Perspektive auf Sprach 

 

174

Christian Bär

daten“ (Kämper 2018, 59), welche in Relation zu Diskurs zu lesen ist und welche, sei es im engeren, weiten oder sehr weiten Sinn eine theoretische, methodische und interpretative Haltung zur Analyse sprachlicher und textueller Daten impliziert, die im Anschluss an Foucault vom grundlegenden Konstruktionscharakter diskursiver Wirklichkeiten ausgeht, zu deren Konstituierung sprachliche Strategien maßgeblich beitragen. Im Anschluss an Reisigl/Warnke (2013, 7) wird Diskurslinguistik verstanden als: […] text-, korpus- und wissensorientierte Form der Aussagenanalyse mit Blick auf transtextuelle sprachliche Phänomene, als eine sprachwissenschaftlich fundierte Analyse kommunikativen Geschehens jenseits der Grenzen einzelner Texte, Gespräche oder sprachlicher Handlungsmuster.

Ferner wird ein Sprachspiel des Sprechens über Musik angenommen, das im Rahmen diverser diskursiver Zusammenhänge, insbesondere in Form von Musikrezensionen, als eine Form der seriellen Text- und Diskurspraxis schriftsprachlich realisiert ist. Musikrezensionen vergegenständlichen Muster und Typik dieses Sprachspiels auf besondere Weise, insofern sie als konventionalisierter Texttyp bzw. als Textsorte einen meist konkreten thematischen Gegenstandsbezug (z. B. ein Album A der Band B) in ein relativ statisches textuelles Framing einbinden, welches sich durch eine Reihe textpragmatischer sowie sprachstruktureller Schemata auszeichnet, deren Füllungen sich allerdings auf lexikalischer, semantischer oder konzeptueller Ebene durch ein hohes Maß an Variabilität und Diversität auszeichnen können. Mit ihrer diskursanalytischen Deutung tritt die Frage nach dem Verhältnis zwischen der Musterhaftigkeit rekurrenter sprachlicher Erscheinungen einerseits und den Möglichkeiten ihrer Variation anderseits in den Vordergrund; das Verhältnis dieser beiden Pole ist auch im Hinblick auf den diskursiven Effekt sprachlicher Verdichtungen bei der Konstituierung urbaner, musikalischer und ästhetischer Diskursgegenstände relevant. Für die diskurslinguistische Analyse wird im Folgenden ein korpusempirischer Zugang gewählt, mittels dessen sprachliche Erscheinungen als diskursive Ereignisse zum einen auf quantitativer Basis exploriert, zum anderen anhand exemplarischer Belegstellen hermeneutisch diskutiert werden. Grundlage hierfür bildet eine Textsammlung von insgesamt 2000 Musikrezensionen aus dem Bereich der Elektronischen Musik. Das Korpus ist in drei Teilkorpora gegliedert, die jeweils drei Medien bzw. Websites der Musikmagazine Groove, Fazemag und De:Bug als Quellen entsprechen. Jede Quelle ist mit 500 bis 1000 einzelnen Textexemplaren repräsentiert (siehe Tab. 1). Jedes Textexemplar (TE) stellt einen individuellen Eintrag des Korpus dar, welcher durch eine Korpus-ID indiziert wurde. Die individuellen URLs der einzelnen Textexemplare sind in den Metadaten eines Eintrags in das Korpus dokumentiert. Um gezielte Suchanfragen zu ermöglichen, wurde das Korpus als linguistisches Korpus aufbereitet, d. h. alle „authentischen (Primär-)Daten“ (Perkuhn/Keibel/Kupietz 2012, 41) wurden nach gängigen Methoden der maschinellen Text(vor)verarbeitung linguistisch angereichert (vgl. Perkuhn/Keibel/Kupietz 2012; sowie Lemnitzer/ Zinsmeister [2006] 2015). In Vorbereitung der Analyse wurden die Rohtexte tokenisiert  

 

175

Urbanes Place-Making und Sprechen über Musik

und auf Basis des erweiterten STTS-Tagsets (vgl. Schiller u. a. 1999) nach Wortarten sowie morphosyntaktisch annotiert und lemmatisiert; hierbei wurde der Korpusmanager Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff u. a. 2014) genutzt. Die Tools der Sketch Engine wurden im weiteren Verlauf auch zur gezielten Korpusabfrage (mittels der implementierten CQL-Syntax) und -analyse eingebunden.  

 

Tab. 1: Index und Übersicht des Korpus ID

TE

Quelle

Website

Zeitraum

Token

Lemmata

DB

001–1000

De:Bug

www.de-bug.de

169/2913–174/2013

108189

17909

FZ

001–500

Fazemag

www.fazemag.de

07.2012–02.2017

68938

12977

GR

001–500

Groove

www.groove.de

09.2013–08.2015

95439

17656

4 Sounds und andere musikalische Welten In den folgenden exemplarischen Analysen soll eine zentrale linguistische Dimension des sprachlichen Bezugnehmens auf den mit Detroit und Chicago verknüpften musikalisch-ästhetischen Raum vorgestellt werden. Dreh- und Angelpunkt der Untersuchung bilden die Struktureinheit der Nominalphrase (NP) bzw. Nominalgruppen (NG) in diskursiver Funktion der Nomination. Ein Schwerpunkt wird hierbei auf pränominale attributive Strukturen gelegt. Von besonderem Interesse sind attributive Adjektive (ADJA) oder Adjektivphrasen (ADJP) als linksseitige Kookkurrenzen der beiden Toponyme/Oikonyme (TOP) Detroit und Chicago sowie rechtseitige (nominale) Kookkurrenzen zu detoponymischen Adjektiven. Zunächst wurden Nominalkomposita extrahiert, welche die beiden Oikonyme jeweils als unmittelbare Konstituenten (UK) in das Wortbildungsmuster TOP[Detroit/Chicago] + N einbinden. (Bindestrichkomposita wurden hierbei strukturell gleichwertig betrachtet; morphosyntaktisch ebenso gleichwertig, jedoch in der Darstellung separiert, sind syntagmatische Kookkurrenzen desselben Strukturmusters.) Diese werden hinsichtlich ihrer semantischen Relation sowie im Hinblick auf das Basisnomen gruppiert und diskutiert (siehe Abschnitt 4.1). Des Weiteren wurden detoponymische Adjektive und Adjektivderivate in attributiver Funktion extrahiert (siehe Abschnitt 4.2). Die Treffer werden zum einen auf ihr Bezugsnomen hin, zum anderen hinsichtlich ihrer syntagmatischen Einbindung in Adjektivphrasen bzw. attributive Ketten nach steigendem Komplexitätsgrad der Gruppen sortiert (siehe Abschnitt 4.3). Einzelne KWiC-Beispiele (Keyword in Context) belegen Fundstellen ferner als nominale Knotenpunkte im Satzzusammenhang. In einem allgemeinen Sinn sei zunächst darauf hingewiesen, dass Detroit und Chicago (nach Berlin) zu den häufigsten Oikonymen des Korpus zählen; Tab. 2 bildet die absoluten Zahlen der Vorkommen ab.

176

Christian Bär

Tab. 2: Auszug der Oikonyme Type

Token

Type

Token

Type

Token

1

Detroit

84

11

Seattle

6

21

London

3

2

Berlin

68

12

Sheffield

6

22

Oakland

3

3

Chicago

58

13

Montreal

6

23

Baltimore

3

4

London

32

14

Hamburg

5

24

Edinburgh

3

5

Paris

21

15

Moskau

5

25

Kapstadt

3

6

New York

28

16

Toronto

5

26

Kyoto

3

7

Amsterdam

12

17

Stuttgart

4

27

Rotterdam

2

8

Köln

10

18

Wien

4

28

Singapur

2

9

Manchester

10

19

Zürich

4

29

Tokio

2

10

Düsseldorf

8

20

Lissabon

3

30

Philadelphia

2

4.1 Nominalkomposita Auch unter den Wortbildungskonstruktionen, welche detoponymische Elemente einbinden, insbesondere unter den Nominalkomposita, sind detroit- und chicago- deutlich stärker präsent als andere Städtenamen. Die folgende Tabelle (Tab. 3) zeigt die absoluten Häufigkeiten der Nominalkomposita mit Chicago- und Detroit- als Erstglieder; sortiert nach Häufigkeiten und Zweitglied (siehe ferner die Word Cloud (Abb. 2) zur Illustration der Lemmata). Tab. 3: Nominalkomposita, Muster UK = Detroit- + N und Chicago- + N Type/Lemma

Token

Type/Lemma

Token

1

Detroitsound

10

1

Chicagosound

3

2

Detroittrack

4

2

Chicagohouse

2

3

Detroitnuance

3

3

Chicagoausläufer

1

4

Detroitstück

3

4

Chicagoblues

1

5

Detroitgefühl

2

5

Chicagobrechhammer

1

6

Detroitwelt

2

6

Chicagodirektheit

1

7

Detroit-Album

1

7

Chicagodiscoremix

1

8

Detroitbassline

1

8

Chicago-Groove

1

9

Detroit-Bass-Schule

1

9

Chicago-House-Ära

1

177

Urbanes Place-Making und Sprechen über Musik

Tab. 3: (fortgesetzt) Type/Lemma

Token

Type/Lemma

Token

10

Detroit-Bossa

1

10

Chicago-House-Bombe

1

11

Detroit-Cut

1

11

Chicago-House-Club

1

12

Detroitdeepness

1

12

Chicago-House-Formeln

1

13

Detroitepigone

1

13

Chicago-House-Generation

1

14

Detroit-Erbe

1

14

Chicago-House-Veteran

1

15

Detroitfläche

1

15

Chicagojazzhouse

1

16

Detroitflair

1

16

Chicago-Killer

1

17

Detroitfundamentalist

1

17

Chicagoklassiker

1

18

Detroit-Funk

1

18

Chicagolabel

1

19

Detroit-Glück

1

19

Chicago-Legende

1

20

Detroithimmel

1

20

Chicagomelodie

1

21

Detroithöhe

1

21

Chicagomonster

1

22

Detroithymne

1

22

Chicagoplatte

1

23

Detroithypnose

1

23

Chicago-Reduktion

1

24

Detroitkillerklassik

1

24

Chicago-Reminiszenz

1

25

Detroitmoment

1

25

Chicagostil

1

26

Detroitnostalgie

1

26

Chicagoswing

1

27

Detroitoutfit

1

27

Chicagoverwandlung

1

28

Detroit-Pathos

1

28

Chicagowelt

1

… 46

36

65

Nominalkomposita, welche Detroit- und Chicago- als Erstglieder enthalten, sind am häufigsten mit dem lexikalischen Zweitglied -Sound/-sound verknüpft, während andere musikbezogene Lexikonwörter (Nomen) unerwartet selten als unmittelbare Konstituenten auftreten; zu nennen sind lediglich -melodie (Token = ), -groove (), -basslinie bzw. -Bass- (, ), welche neben dem interpretationsoffenen Fall einen musikalischen Gegenstand im engeren Sinn benennen/bezeichnen. Zwar handelt es sich bei den gelisteten Treffern um Wortbildungskonstrukte, die rein wortsyntaktisch betrachtet Determinativkomposita darstellen, insofern das Erstglied die Funktion eines pränominalen Attributs einnimmt; dennoch bleiben die lexikalisch-semantischen Relationen innerhalb der Konstituentenstruktur vor dem Hintergrund der diskursiven Funktion

178

Christian Bär

des Gesamtausdrucks im Detail diskussionswürdig. Mittels der toponymischen Referenz im Sinne der Nennung eines Ortes durch das Erstglied der Wortbildungskonstruktionen sind diese partiell exozentrisch; als endozentrische (semantische) Relation der Konstituenten Detroit-/Chicago- zu einem Zweitglied ist diese allerdings in sehr wenigen Fällen (ausschließlich) LOKAL zu interpretieren; etwa als Herkunftsidentifikation ⟨stammt aus⟩ (z. B. oder ) oder als urbane Ortsbestimmung im engeren Sinne ⟨befindet sich in⟩ (z. B. ). Vielmehr handelt es sich, vielfach komplementär zur lokalen Relation, um ein Verhältnis der KONSTITUTION, über welches Erst- und Zweitglied verknüpft sind und sich sodann als Gesamtausdruck auf einen musikalischen Gegenstand beziehen: [{Detroit}TOP {sound}N]; UK2N ⟨zeichnet sich aus durch⟩ UK1TOP oder ⟨ist von der Art⟩. Ohne Einbezug ko(n)textueller Faktoren bleibt die Frage hingegen offen, wodurch sich diese Art der Konstitution auszeichnet, insofern ein spezifisches Wissen über die diskursive Bedeutung bzw. das metonymische Sinnpotential des Oikonyms vorausgesetzt werden muss. Auch der semantische Gehalt sowie die Bezeichnungsfunktion des morphosyntaktisch übergeordneten Zweitglieds gegenüber der semantischen Funktion bzw. des Status des toponymischen Erstglieds sind in vielen Fällen fragwürdig. Dies sei am Beispiel -sound, dem häufigsten Treffer unter den Zweitgliedern der Komposita, veranschaulicht. Das Lexem Sound wird allgemein nicht ausschließlich, und nicht primär, zur Bezeichnung klanglicher Eigenschaften im engeren Sinn verwendet; sein Gebrauch ist partiell und potentiell metonymisch zu lesen sowie diskursiv offen zu interpretieren, insofern sich der Ausdruck nicht selten auf ein im umfassenden Sinne typisches Stil- oder Genremerkmal bezieht, d. h. auf eine Klasse von musikalischästhetischen Merkmalen, die einem Stil zugeschrieben werden; in diesem Fall auf eine über die diskursive oikonymische Klassifizierung identifizierte, musikalisch-stilistische, ästhetische oder musik(sub)kulturelle Spezifik, welcher jeweils das Typische entspricht. Hierbei gilt es erneut anzumerken, dass die beiden Städtenamen zwar eine lokalisierende Teilfunktion übernehmen, jedoch metonymisch oder elliptisch für die beiden Genreklassen House und Techno sprechen: ‚Stil und Ort‘ werden durch Sound somit in eins gesetzt (Binas-Preisendörfer 2008). Diese Beobachtung deckt sich mit dem in der Sphäre des Populären üblichen „diskursive[n] Verständnis von Sound“ (Binas-Preisendörfer 2008, 193), welcher über die diskursive Funktion der musikalischen Klassifikation sowie der musik(sub)kulturellen Identifikation differenzbildend wirkt und somit „als ästhetisches Wertkriterium soziale und kulturelle Positionen“ markiert, „die sich ihrerseits in Repertoiresegmentierungen und Marketingstrategien der Musikwirtschaft wieder finden“ (Binas-Preisendörfer 2008, 194). Auch -groove und selbst -melodie und -bass (siehe in diesem Abschnitt oben) können auf diese Weise als semantisch unterspezifizierte, metonymisch gebrauchte, lexikalische Markierungen der diskursiven Betonung des Typischen und des ästhetisch Wertbildenden am Sound des Chicago House oder des Detroit Techno interpretiert werden. Stellt man dem das Beispiel gegenüber, interpretiert als Detroitsoundflächen – ‚Sounds, die wie Flächen wirken und nach dem typischen Detroiter Sound klingen‘ – wird deut 

 

 

Urbanes Place-Making und Sprechen über Musik

179

lich, dass hierbei, obwohl metaphorisch motiviert, in einem wesentlich spezifischeren Sinn ein musikbezogenes Moment bezeichnet wird. Neben solchen Nomen, die sich als Zweitglieder auf ein musikalisch-ästhetisches Element beziehen, bilden Stilbezeichnungen oder -umschreibungen eine auffällige Gruppe unmittelbarer Konstituenten; abgesehen von Chicagohouse stellen diese Fundstellen Einzelfälle (Token/Types) dar sowie als kompositioneller Gesamtausdruck Ad-Hoc-Bildungen: -ambient , -bossa , -funk , -rave -techno ); -blues , -swing . Eine weitere Gruppe bilden Lexeme, die sich als nominale Zweitglieder auf musikalische bzw. musikproduktionstechnische Einheiten beziehen: z. B. -album, -remix, -platte, -stück, -track.  

Abb. 2: Word Cloud der Detroit- und Chicago-Komposita (Lemmata).

Zudem sind all jene Fälle zu nennen, bei denen das Bestimmungsnomen ein musikalisch-ästhetisches Moment bzw. die Qualität einer musikalischen Welt (/ ) beschreibt. Diese Gruppe der Nominalkomposita ist äußerst heterogen. Die Beispiele hieraus zeigen allerdings am nachdrücklichsten, welche lexikalische Viel-

180

Christian Bär

falt und semantische Dichte, Metaphorizität oder Expressivität der Gebrauch komplexer oikonymisch-musikbezogener Nominationseinheiten aufweisen kann. Darüber hinaus sprechen diese Beispiele von der diskursiven Relevanz des ‚idiosynkratischen Einzelfalls‘, dessen Interpretationsspielraum unter Hinzunahme des Kotextes nicht zwingend eindeutiger wird, sondern den Komplexitätsgrad eher steigert (siehe Abschitt 4.3). Untergruppen bilden hierbei zum einen auf Wirkung bezogene Ausdrücke wie z. B. -flair , -gefühl , -hypnose , welche sowohl explizit mit ästhetischen Wertungen einhergehen (z. B. -glück , -deepness ) als auch implizit, und zwar durch bildliche bzw. metaphorische Ausdrücke: z. B. -monster , -urwald , -Wahnsinn , -wunderland , -bombe , -brechhammer , -direktheit , -himmel , -höhe , -killer , -pathos , -schlösschen . Des Weiteren greifen diese Beispiele auch einen mehr oder weniger starken Bezug auf szenespezifisches Wissen auf; lexikalisch kommt dies etwa durch Schlüsselwörter wie Nostalgie zum Ausdruck, die ebenso als Zweitglieder eingebunden sind (z. B. , ). Die morphosyntaktisch gleichwertige Gruppe syntagmatisch realisierter, also die Wortgrenze überschreitender, nominaler Konstruktionen vom Typ TOP + N tritt zum einen deutlich weniger häufig auf, sie ist zum anderen im Hinblick auf das Basis- bzw. Bestimmungsnomen, auffällig homogen an der Benennung von Genreklassen ausgerichtet (siehe Tab. 4).  

 

 

 

Tab. 4: Rechtsseitige Nomen-Kookkurrenzen 1, Muster = TOP/N N Detroit + N

Token

Chicago + N

Token

1

Techno

8

1

House

6

2

Acid

1

2

Discohouse

1

3

Freejazz

1

3

Sounds

1

4

House

1

4

Technominimalismen

1

5

Sound

1

5

Tek

1

6

Strong-Grooves

1

…

… 12

22

8

13

Urbanes Place-Making und Sprechen über Musik

181

4.2 Detoponymische Adjektive Im Unterschied zu komplexen toponymischen Eigennamen, deren „onymische Basis mit einem determinierenden Adjektiv ‚gekoppelt‘ ist“, etwa in „Flußnamen die Freiberger Mulde, die Thüringische Saale“ (Fleischer 1996, 162; Hervorh. i. O.) treten detoponymische Adjektive im vorliegenden Rahmen nur selten in Verbindung mit Eigennamen auf und beziehen sich, zumindest unter den vorliegenden Fundstellen, nicht als Gesamtausdruck auf ein anthropogeographisches Objekt. Nichtsdestotrotz kommt Ausdrücken wie Chicagoer Getto-House-Szene (siehe Tab. 6) – dies sei hier nur angedeutet – ein Schwellenstatus zu, denn der Gebrauch musikalischer Genrebegriffe operiert generell, aber auch in Verbindung mit Ortsnamen durchaus an der Grenze zur bzw. im Spiel mit den Funktionen von sogenannten Gattungseigennamen (vgl. Döscher 2018), an den Grenzen toponymischer Identifikation zwischen Modifikation und Klassifikation, wie dies auch im Zusammenhang kolonialer Praktiken der Ortsbenennung kritisch diskutiert wird (vgl. Stolz/Warnke 2018).  

Tab. 5: Detoponymische Adjektive Type/Lemma

Token

Type/Lemma

Token

Detroiter

13

Chicagoer

7

Tab. 6: Rechtsseitige Nomen-Kookkurrenzen 2, Muster = TOP/ADJA N Detroiter + N

Type/Lemma

Big (Band)

Ghetto-House-Szene

Duo

Label

Melodienbändiger

Marquis Cooper

Nadelwald

Prägung

Orgel

Trio

Produzent

Zungenschlag

Schule Technoduo Tradition Zungenschlag

182

Christian Bär

+ N: KWiC-Beispiele im Satzfenster (1) (2) (3)

GR051 Elf Tracks dunkel futuristischen Electros in der Detroiter Tradition von Drexciya, Dopplereffekt und vor allem Underground Resistance. DB741 Eine freundliche, uns nicht unbekannte Detroiter Orgel bahnt sich immer wieder den Weg an die Oberfläche, die von dichtem Rauschen beherrscht wird. DB269 Und verläuft sich gleich zu Beginn in ‚Dusty Socks‘ im dichten Detroiter Nadelwald der harmonsichen Verschwurbelung.

+ N: KWiC-Beispiele im Satzfenster (4) GR464 Juke, das ist jener rasante Nachfahre der Chicagoer Ghetto-House-Szene um Labels wie Dance Mania: Halsbrecherische Beats mit 160 Beats pro Minute, dem Rap entlehnte Catchphrases, markerschütternde 808-Sub-Bass-Triolen, zerhackstückte Snare-Rolls, Elemente aus Bass, HipHop, R&B, Drum’n’Bass und Techno, ein ständiger Wechsel zwischen Halftime-Passagen und brutalen 4/4-Bassdrum-Parts. (5) GR004 Musikalisch lässt sich Universes am äußersten Rand von House der Chicagoer Prägung ansiedeln.

Eine weitere, auch in syntagmatischer Hinsicht produktive Gruppe detoponymischer Adjektive bilden spezifische Adjektivderivate; dieser Typus der Bildung auf -ig, -sch und -esk stellt unter den toponymischen Vorkommen des Korpus eine Ausnahme dar (siehe Tab. 7). Dabei ist die Bildung bzw. der Gebrauch von denominalen Adjektivderivaten mit Bezug auf soundige Gegenstände und Sachverhalte im Rahmen des Beschreibens von Musik durchaus üblich; das Suffix -ig ist hierbei in der Verwendung sehr flexibel: sound-ig, bass-ig, groov-ig, tripp-ig, rock-ig, punk-ig, wav-ig, kraut-ig etc.; aber auch Suffixoide wie -lastig, -mäßig oder -bestimmt sind allgemein verbreitet. Tab. 7: Detoponymische Adjektivderivate Type/Lemma

Token

1

detroitig

17

2

detroitsch

2

3

detroitesk

1

4

detroitbestimmt*

1* 20

1

Type/Lemma

Token

chicagolastig

3

3

Neben ist ein weiteres musikbezogenes Adjektivderivat der Bildung auf -esk nennenswert: . (6) FZ398 Zwischen ambientesken Soundlayern und griffigen Rhythmen pendelnd wird der Zuhörer in einen Klangrausch getaucht.

Urbanes Place-Making und Sprechen über Musik

183

Das Beispiel soll hier aufgegriffen werden, um abschließend noch einmal auf die Verschränkung von Ort und Stelle, Stil und Sound hinzuweisen, denn typisch für die genannten Suffixe ist ihre semantische Funktion der beschreibenden Kennzeichnung einer Ähnlichkeit zwischen den allgemeinen semantischen Eigenschaften der nominalen Derivationsbasis (hier: Ambient) und dem Bedeutungsumfang des Bezugsnomens N (hier: Soundlayer), welcher durch das gebildete Adjektivderivat in attributiver Position ADJA (hier: ambientesk) modifiziert, klassifiziert und/oder konstituiert wird. Eine verdichtete Bezugnahme auf Ort und Musik zugleich liegt also über eine Beschreibung wie durchaus nahe, insofern nicht nur Track näher bestimmt wird, sondern auch Detroit als potentieller Modifikator/Klassifikator reifiziert wird. Die über die Städtenamen abgeleitete, indirekte Bezugnahme auf den Genrekomplex Techno setzt hierbei auch das kontextuelle Wissen über die mit den Städten verknüpften, musikalisch-ästhetischen und szenebezogenen Qualitäten vor; müssen schlichtweg schon einmal gehört und benannt worden sein, um sie als solche bezeichnen und hören zu können. Die Frage, wie sich eine oder ein klingend zu verstehen geben, muss an dieser Stelle offen bleiben (siehe Tab. 8 und 9).

4.3 Nominale Gruppen/Attributive Ketten Eine Reihe der detoponymischen Adjektive sind linksseitig in einen mehrgliedrigen nominal-syntagmatischen Zusammenhang eingebunden, der sich durch attributive Ketten auszeichnet, die etwa als Adjektivphrasen auf den Kopf der nominalen Gruppe bezogen sind; diese sind zudem nicht selten auch rechtseitig erweitert (siehe Tab. 9). Lexikalisch-semantische Komplexitätssteigerungen durch attributive Verkettungen sowie die Bildung von expressiver Bildlichkeit, die hierdurch entsteht, sind typisch für das Sprechen über Musik im Sinne ihres Beschreibens/Bewertens im Rahmen von Musikrezensionen des Populären. Die Verknüpfung toponymischer Verweise mit musikalisch-ästhetischen Kategorien oder metaphorischen Konzepten erscheint vor diesem Hintergrund als konsequente Füllung eines im Allgemeinen höchst produktiven Schemas bzw. Strukturmusters komplexer musikbezogener Nominalgruppen, welche in unterschiedlichen syntaktischen Gesamtgefügen strukturelle Cluster und semantisch dichte Nominationseinheiten bilden. Bemerkenswert und nicht verwunderlich ist nicht zuletzt, dass die Lexik der Kopfnomen den nominalen Basen bzw. Zweitgliedern der im Abschnitt 4.1. diskutierten Nominalkomposita mit toponymischem Erstglied (z. B. ) durchaus ähnelt.  

184

Christian Bär

Tab. 8: ADJP-N/NP-Kookkurrenzen, KWiC = detroitig/ADJA ADJA

ADJD

deepe

ADJA

ADJA

N/NP

detroitiges

Album

detroitiger

Beschwörung

detroitiger

Dichte

detroiteske

Evokation

detroitigeren

Momenten

detroitigen

Synths

detroitsche

Techtunes

swingend

detroitige

Tracks

tänzelnd

detroitigen

Nuancen

elektroid

detroitige

Track

futuristisch

detroitige

Bahn

technoider

detroitiger

Sound

sanft

darker

detroitiger

Stimmungen

euphorisierend

geheimnivoll

detroitiger

Intros

versponnen

straighterer

/ADJA: KWiC-Beispiele im Satzfenster DB833 Der Japaner zeigt auf den zwei neuen Tracks in welche deepe/ADJA und/CONJ versponnen/ADJD futuristisch/ADJD detroitige/ADJA Bahn/N sich sein Album bewegen wird, das wohl im Sommer erscheint und lässt dabei auch soulige Fusion nicht aus. (8) DB659 Byallo hat auf seinem Label in den letzten Monaten einen Hit nach dem anderen produziert und gönnt sich jetzt auf Release Sustain mit den zwei Tracks Wiring Range und A Red Dilemma eine genüssliche Auszeit voller stimmungsvoller Synths in tiefen Bassgräben, schuffelnder Grooves und sanft/ADJD darker/ADJA detroitiger/ADJA Stimmungen/N. (7)

Tab. 9: ADJP-N/NP-Kookkurrenzen, KWiC = detroitig/ADJD ID

ADJA

DB090 DB086 DB857

schwergewichtig

KWiC/ADJD

ADJA

N/NP

detroitig

schimmernde

Tracks

detroitig

säuselndes

Technomonster

detroitig

verwirrte

Openair-Hymne

Urbanes Place-Making und Sprechen über Musik

185

/ADJD: KWiC-Beispiel im Satzfenster (9) DB086 Molosser ist das schwergewichtig/ADJD fast/ADV detroitig/ADJD säuselnde/ ADJA Technomonster/N, das sich gerade aus dem Jahrtausende währenden Winterschlaf zum ersten Mal wieder bewegt […].

5 Ausblick Alle Städte sind Musikstädte, insofern Musik, nicht nur aber insbesondere in Städten, stattfindet. Hingegen ist eine Stadt, die als Musikstadt im Diskurs erscheint, ob kulturpolitisch flankiert und wirtschaftlich gefördert oder nicht, immer mehr und zugleich weniger als das Produkt, deren Namen sie führt und deren musikalisches Geschehen sie an sich bindet. Diskurse, welche musikkulturelle Eckpunkte als prägend für eine Form des städtischen Kulturlebens perspektivieren, imprägnieren darüber hinaus auch das musikalische Geschehen selbst. Urbanes Place-Making in Verbindung mit Musik ist immer auch mit Einschreibungen in das Musikalische und Ästhetische selbst verbunden; in vielerlei Hinsicht ist es immer auch Teil des Making-of der Musik. Nimmt man diesen weit gespannten Bogen vor dem Hintergrund einer diskurslinguistischen Herangehensweise auf, so erscheint die Komplexität der Thematik nicht minder im sprachlichen Detail. Verflechtungen der Kategorien des Urbanen, Musikalischen/Ästhetischen und Musikkulturellen sind im diskursiven Zusammenhang des Sprechens/ Schreibens über Musik Teil eines Sprachspiels, bei welchem um den Gegenstand, der besprochen wird, immer ein Stück weit gerungen werden muss. Dabei zeigt sich die Komplexität an unterschiedlichen Knotenpunkten, etwa anhand der Frage, wie das Bezugnehmen/Benennen von Städten einhergeht mit der Beschreibung musikalisch-ästhetischer Momente oder Merkmale, welche als jeweils szenetypisch oder spezifisch gesetzt werden und hierbei musikkulturelle Topoi sprachlich-diskursiv verfestigen, verdinglichen oder konstituieren. Insofern Städtenamen als performative Labels für bestimmte musikrelevante Diskursgegenstände fungieren, lässt sich ein solcher Knotenpunkt vom oikonymischen/nominalen Zentrum sprachlicher Einheiten ausgehend explorieren und operationalisieren sowie mit linguistischen und hermeneutischen Mitteln systematisch in den Blick nehmen. Der korpusempirische Ansatz, welcher gezielte linguistisch informierte Suchanfragen, quantitative Methoden der Exploration sowie frequenzbasierte Beschreibungen mit exemplarischer diskursanalytischer Hermeneutik kombiniert, erweist sich gerade im Hinblick auf Fragestellungen des sprachlichen Place-Making als ergiebig. Im Schnittstellenbereich quantitativer und qualitativer Forschung ist der Zugang auch anschlussfähig an Methoden der Visualisierung sprachlicher Daten im Text Mining (vgl. u. a. Bubenhofer/Kupietz 2018; Bubenhofer/ Scharloth 2013; Kath/Schaal/Dumm 2015), etwa in Form von visuellen Netzwerkanalysen (siehe beispielhaft in Abb. 3).  

186

Christian Bär

Abb. 3: Netzwerkgraph der Keywords techno und house des Teilkorpus FZ.

6 Literatur DB = De:Bug. Magazin für elektronische Lebensaspekte, Musik, Medien, Selbstbeherrschung. Online unter: https://de-bug.de/pdfs. . FZ = Fazemag. Online unter: https://www.fazemag.de/. . GR = Groove: Elektronische Musik und Clubkultur. Online unter: https://groove.de/. . Bachmann-Medick, Doris (2006): Cultural turns: Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften. Reinbek. Belgiojoso, Ricciarda (2016): Constructing Urban Space with Sounds and Music. New York. Berger, Peter L./Thomas Luckmann (1969): Die gesellschaftliche Konstruktion der Wirklichkeit. Eine Theorie der Wissenssoziologie. Frankfurt a. M. Bernoully, Felix (1996): Detroit und Chicago: Zwei Genres, zwei Welten, zwei Schubladen. Binas-Preisendörfer, Susanne (2008): Rau, süßlich, transparent oder dumpf – Sound als eine ästhetische Kategorie populärer Musikformen. Annäherung an einen populären Begriff. In: Kaspar Maase (Hg.): Die Schönheiten des Populären: Zur Ästhetik der Gegenwart. Frankfurt a. M./ New York, 192–209.  

 

Urbanes Place-Making und Sprechen über Musik

187

Bubenhofer, Noah (2018): Diskurslinguistik und Korpora. In: Ingo H. Warnke (Hg.): Handbuch Diskurs. Berlin, 208–241. Bubenhofer, Noah/Marc Kupietz (Hg.) (2018): Visualisierung sprachlicher Daten: Visual Linguistics – Praxis – Tools. Heidelberg. Bubenhofer, Noah/Joachim Scharloth (2013): Korpuslinguistische Diskursanalyse: Der Nutzen empirisch-quantitativer Verfahren. In: Ulrike Hanna Meinhof/Martin Reisigl/Ingo H. Warnke (Hg.): Diskurslinguistik im Spannungsfeld von Deskription und Kritik. Berlin, 147–168. bücher.de (2020): Produktbeschreibung ISBN-13: 9783831906840. Online unter: https://www.bu echer.de/shop/buecher. . Busse, Beatrix/Ingo H. Warnke (2014): Ortsherstellung als sprachliche Praxis – sprachliche Praxis als Ortsherstellung. In: Beatrix Busse/Ingo H. Warnke (Hg.): Place-Making in urbanen Diskursen. Berlin, 1–7. Busse, Beatrix/Ingo H. Warnke (2015): Sprache im urbanen Raum. In: Ekkehard Felder/Andreas Gardt (Hg.): Handbuch Sprache und Wissen. Berlin, 519–538. Busse, Dietrich/Wolfgang Teubert (1994): Ist Diskurs ein sprachwissenschaftliches Objekt? Zur Methodenfrage der Historischen Semantik. In: Dietrich Busse/Wolfgang Teubert/Fritz Hermanns (Hg.): Begriffsgeschichte und Diskursgeschichte. Methodenfragen und Forschungsergebnisse der historischen Semantik. Opladen, 10–28. Carter, Tim (2002): The sound of silence: Models for an urban musicology. In: Urban History 29, 8–18. Diederichsen, Diedrich (2014): Über Pop-Musik. Köln. Dolan, Jack (2020): House vs. techno: What is the real difference? Online unter: https://www.dee phouseamsterdam.com/house-vs-techno-real-difference/. . Döscher, Jascha (2018): Wie viel ‚Gattung‘ haben Geo-Objekte? Gattungseigennamen aus kolonialtoponomastischer Perspektive. In: Thomas Stolz/Ingo H. Warnke (Hg.): Vergleichende Kolonialtoponomastik. Strukturen und Funktionen kolonialer Ortsbenennung. Berlin, 77–94. Fraunhofer IBP (2020) [Fraunhofer-Institut für Bauphysik]: Akustische Stadtgestaltung. Online unter: https://www.ibp.fraunhofer.de/de/ueber-uns/initiativen/akustische-stadtgestal tung.html. . Felder, Ekkehard (2012): Pragma-semiotische Textarbeit und der hermeneutische Nutzen von Korpusanalysen für die linguistische Mediendiskursanalyse. In: Ekkehard Felder/Marcus Müller/ Friedemann Vogel (Hg.): Korpuspragmatik. Thematische Korpora als Basis diskurslinguistischer Analysen. Berlin, 115–174. Fleischer, Wolfgang (1996): Phraseologische, terminologische und onymische Wortgruppen als Nominationseinheiten. In: Clemens Knobloch/Burkhard Schaeder (Hg.): Nomination – fachsprachlich und gemeinsprachlich. Opladen, 147–170. Frisius, Rudolf ([1997] 2016): Musique concrète. Zur Terminologie. In: Laurenz Lütteken (Hg.): MGG Online (2016–). Online unter: https://www.mgg-online.com/mgg/stable/15057. . Gardt, Andreas (2007): Diskursanalyse – Aktueller theoretischer Ort und methodische Möglichkeiten. In: Ingo H. Warnke (Hg.): Diskurslinguistik nach Foucault. Theorie und Gegenstände. Berlin, 27–52. Garrioch, David (2003): Sounds of the city: The soundscape of early modern European towns. In: Urban History 30, 5–25. Glasze, Georg/Annika Mattissek (Hg.) (2009): Vorwort. In: Georg Glasze/Annika Mattissek (Hg.): Handbuch Diskurs und Raum: Theorien und Methoden für die Humangeographie sowie die sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Raumforschung: Bielefeld. Helms, Dietrich/Thomas Phleps (Hg.) (2015): Sound and the city: Populäre Musik im urbanen Kontext. Bielefeld.

188

Christian Bär

IMMV (2017) [Interactive Music Mapping Vienna]: Exploring a city. 1945 up to the present day. Online unter: http://www.musicmapping.at. . Jacobshagen, Arnold (2013): Musikstadt Köln: Geschichte und Gegenwart. Köln. Kaden, Christian/Volker Kalisch (Hg.) (2002): Musik und Urbanität: Arbeitstagung der Fachgruppe Soziologie und Sozialgeschichte der Musik in Schmöckwitz/Berlin vom 26. bis 28. November 1999. Essen. Kämper, Heidrun (2018): Diskurslinguistik und Zeitgeschichte. In: Ingo H. Warnke (Hg.): Handbuch Diskurs. Berlin, 53–74. Kath, Roxana/Gary S. Schaal/Sebastian Dumm (2015): New visual hermeneutics. In: Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik 43, Themenheft “Maschinelle Textanalyse”, 27–51. Keim, Stefan/Didi Stahlschmidt (Hg.) (2012): Schwingungen: Dortmund – Die Musikstadt. Essen. Kilgarriff, Adam/Vít Baisa/Jan Busta/Milos Jakubícek/Vojtech Kovár/Jan Michelfeit/Pavel Rychlý/Vít Suchomel (2014): The Sketch Engine: Ten years on. In: Lexicography Journal of ASIALEX 1, 7–36. Knobloch, Clemens (1996): Nomination: Anatomie eines Begriffs. In: Clemens Knobloch/Burkhard Schaeder (Hg.): Nomination – fachsprachlich und gemeinsprachlich. Opladen, 21–53. Knopp, Sönke (2018): Das Making Of einer Musikstadt. Hamburg im Spannungsfeld von musikalischer Praxis, Politik, Marketing und imaginaire der Stadt. Dissertation. HafenCity Universität Hamburg. Krims, Adam (2007): Music and Urban Geography. New York. Kutter, Philipp (2016): Chicago House. Online unter: https://www.vice.com/de/article/rkap8e/genrefr-dummies-chicago-house-384. . Landeshauptstadt Hannover/o.A. (2020): Warum Hannover eine City of Music ist. Online unter: https://www.hannover.de/UNESCO-City-of-Music/Wir-sind%C2 %AD-City-of-Music. . Lashua, Brett/Stephen Wagg/Karl Spracklen/M. Selim Yavuz (Hg.) (2019): Sounds and the City. Volume 2. Basingstoke. Lemnitzer, Lothar/Heike Zinsmeister ([2006] 2015): Korpuslinguistik. Eine Einführung. 3. Aufl. Tübingen. Lossau Julia (2012): Spatial Turn. In: Eckardt Frank (Hg.): Handbuch Stadtsoziologie. Wiesbaden, 185–198. Mager, Christoph (2007): HipHop, Musik und die Artikulation von Geographie. Heidelberg. Newhart, Elizabeth (2016): A music lover’s guide to Chicago. Online unter: https://theculturetrip.com/ north-america/usa/illinois/articles/a-music-lovers-guide-to-chicago/. . Noeske, Nina (2009): Musikwissenschaft. In Stephan Günzel (Hg.): Raumwissenschaften. Frankfurt a. M., 259–273. Ott, Michaela (2012): Musik. In: Stefan Günzel (Hg.): Lexikon der Raumphilosophie. Darmstadt, 266–267. Payer, Peter (2018): Der Klang der Großstadt. Eine Geschichte des Hörens. Wien 1850–1914. Wien. Perkuhn, Rainer/Holger Keibel/Marc Kupietz (2012): Korpuslinguistik. Paderborn. Rauhe, Hermann (2017): Von der ersten deutschen Bürgeroper bis zur Elbphilharmonie: Die Musikstadt Hamburg und ihr neues Wahrzeichen. (Herausgegeben von der Johannes-BrahmsGesellschaft Hamburg). Hamburg. Reisigl, Martin/Ingo H. Warnke (2013): Diskurslinguistik im Spannungsfeld von Deskription, Präskription und Kritik. Eine Einleitung. In: Ulrike Hanna Meinhof/Martin Reisigl/Ingo H. Warnke (Hg.): Diskurslinguistik im Spannungsfeld von Deskription und Kritik. Berlin, 7–35. Rietveld, Hillegonda C./Alessio Kolioulis (2019): Detroit: Techno city. In: Brett Lashua/Stephen Wagg/ Karl Spracklen/M. Selim Yavuzu (Hg.): Sounds and the City. Volume 2. Basingstoke, 33–53. Rösing, Helmut (2002): Soundscape: Urbanität und Musik. In: Christian Kaden/Volker Kalisch (Hg.): Musik und Urbanität: Musik und Urbanität: Arbeitstagung der Fachgruppe Soziologie und Sozialgeschichte der Musik in Schmöckwitz/Berlin vom 26. bis 28. November 1999. Essen, 24–35.  

 

Urbanes Place-Making und Sprechen über Musik

189

Russolo, Luigi (1913): L’arte dei rumori. Milano. Schaeffer, Pierre (1948): Étude aux chemins de fer. Paris. Schafer, Murray R. (1969): The New Soundscape: A Handbook for the Modern Teacher. Scarborough. Schafer, Murray R. (1994): The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Rochester. Schiller, Anne/Simone Teufel/Christine Stöckert/Christine Thielen (1999): Guidelines für das Tagging deutscher Textcorpora mit STTS (Kleines und großes Tagset). Universität Stuttgart/Universität Tübingen. Online unter: https://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/documents/ressourcen/lexika/tag sets/stts-1999.pdf . Schulze, Holger (2008): Sound Studies: Traditionen – Methoden – Desiderate. Eine Einführung. Bielefeld. Seiler Brylla, Charlotta (2019): Strategische Benennungen: Zur Sprachgeschichte des geteilten Deutschland in einem deutsch-schwedischen Kontext. In: Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 49(2), 279–301. Southworth, Michael (1969): The sonic environment of cities. In: Environment and Behavior 1, 49–70. Spitzmüller, Jürgen/Ingo H. Warnke (2011): Diskurslinguistik. Eine Einführung in Theorien und Methoden der transtextuellen Sprachanalyse. Berlin. Stadt Leipzig/o.A. (2020): UNESCO-Welterbe-Bewerbung der Stadt Leipzig – Leipziger Notenspur. Online unter: https://www.leipzig.de/freizeit-kultur-und-tourismus/kunst-und-kultur/musik/ bewerbung-europaeisches-kulturerbe-siegel/unesco-welterbe-bewerbung-der-stadt-leipzig/. . Stadt Mannheim/o.A. (2014): Mannheim ist UNESCO City of Music, 01.12.2014. Online unter: https://www.mannheim.de/de/nachrichten/mannheim-ist-unesco-city-of-music. . Stolz, Thomas/Ingo H. Warnke (2018): System- und diskurslinguistische Einblicke in die vergleichende Kolonialtoponomastik. In: Thomas Stolz/Ingo H. Warnke (Hg.): Vergleichende Kolonialtoponomastik. Strukturen und Funktionen kolonialer Ortsbenennung. Berlin, 1–76. Strohm, Reinhard (1990): Music in Latemedieval Bruges. Oxford. UNESCO (2020) [UNESCO Creative Cities Network]: Cities of Music. Online unter: https://citiesofmu sic.net/music-cities/. . VICE/o.A. (2016): Detroit Techno. Online unter: https://www.vice.com/de/article/ypjzxw/genre-frdummies-detroit-techno-808. . Warnke, Ingo H. (Hg.) (2018a): Handbuch Diskurs. Berlin. Warnke, Ingo H. (2018b): Verdichtete Programmatik vor weitem Horizont. In: Ingo H. Warnke (Hg.): Handbuch Diskurs. Berlin, IX–XXXIV. Warnke, Ingo H./Jürgen Spitzmüller (Hg.) (2008a): Methoden der Diskurslinguistik. Sprachwissenschaftliche Zugänge zur transtextuellen Ebene. Berlin. Warnke, Ingo H./Jürgen Spitzmüller (2008b): Methoden und Methodologie der Diskurslinguistik. Grundlagen und Verfahren einer Sprachwissenschaft jenseits textueller Grenzen. In: Ingo H. Warnke/Jürgen Spitzmüller (Hg.): Methoden der Diskurslinguistik: Sprachwissenschaftliche Zugänge zur transtextuellen Ebene. Berlin, 3–54. Widmaier, Tobias/Nils Grosch (Hg.) (2014): Populäre Musik in der urbanen Klanglandschaft: Kulturgeschichtliche Perspektiven. Münster/New York. Zifonun, Gisela (2016): Attribute unterschiedlicher Modifikationstypen und ihre Kombinatorik in sprachvergleichendender Persepektive. In: Mathilde Henning (Hg.): Komplexe Attribution: Ein Nominalstilphänomen aus sprachhistorischer, grammatischer, typologischer und funktionalstilistischer Perspektive. Berlin, 213–247.

III Mobilität, Fluidität und Konstruktionen in städtischen Zeichenarealen/ Mobility, Fluidity and Constructions in Urban Semiotic Areas

Dennis Zuev and Monika Büscher

8. Mobilities and Mobile Methods Abstract: This chapter uses a mobilities research approach to explore practices of urban living and discourse. Through descriptions of multiple (im)mobilities of people, objects, information, ideas, and linguistic, textual, embodied, material, and visual communicative practices in a range of settings we trace continuities and transformations. The investigation moves across different scales of mobilities – from inside taxis to benches, to the mobility of places and the networked mobilities of digitally augmented communications and discourse to highlight how an analytical orientation towards (im)mobilties and mobile methods can contribute to the study of language and urban space and how, vice-versa, a focus on discursive urbanisms can deepen and broaden our understanding of (im)mobilities. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Introduction On the move Riding along Language and small urban space Language, public space, and politics in the city Representations of the city: Cities on the move Networked cities Discussion References

1 Introduction From Simmel’s ([1900, 1907] 1978; [1903] 1971) inquiries into the metropolis to studies of digital urbanism in the ‘iphone city’ (Bratton 2008), analysts have been sensitive to the movement of people, goods, objects, ideas, and information in the city. Cities are spaces of multiple flows, dynamic contextures of private and public spaces, places to meet, linger, or converge in celebration or protest; they are constituted by rhythms and patterns of movement and immobility. In this chapter, we analyze examples and argue that cities are spaces of multiple interactions that involve mobility of people, objects, and meanings, where situations often involve and/or are mediated by languages, visual and oral discourses and narratives. De Certeau’s (1984) analysis of walking, reading, and writing the city is perhaps the most evocative study to explicitly link the discursive with the mobile, but a number of studies have explored the entanglement of discourse, movement and the city. They find that practices, rhythms and patterns of movement, blocked movement and stillness are at the heart of lived urban Note: Research and writing for this chapter was undertaken in 2014. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-009

194

Dennis Zuev and Monika Büscher

reality, ranging from the legibility of the city and its different neighborhoods (Lynch 1960), the production of urban diversity and tolerance (Jacobs 1961; Glaeser 2011), the performance of civility and social obligations in the urban interaction order (Goffman 1971; Whyte [1943] 1993; 1980), architectural and technological transformations (Zukin 2010; Licoppe 2009). Intensified mobilities are acknowledged as a critical dimension of civic life, such as in Habermas’ observation that urban public spaces have been overrun by ‘private cars’ (Habermas 1991; Sheller/Urry 2003), and sociological zeitdiagnosis places mobilities at the centre of a ‘liquid modernity’ where people experience a “growing gap between the condition of individuals de jure and their chances to become individuals de facto” (Bauman 2000, 39). Movement, blocked movement, and stillness at multiple scales – from the blood rushing through citizens’ veins to the airplanes crossing over the city – are entangled with discourse and ontogenetic in the production of urban spaces, places, identities, and agencies. Moreover, mobilities and discourse both operate across different registers from the embodied everyday life experience of individuals to the systemic complexity of global inter-urban informational mobilities, interconnecting ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ levels, and both encompass a continuum between stillness and (hyper-)mobility on the one hand and silence and cacophony on the other. Mobilities research brings an analytical orientation to the multiple (im)mobilities of people, objects, information, ideas that can critically augment studies of urban linguistics. It is concerned not only with what is (im)mobilized, but also with how stillness or movement are done – the lived experiences and practices of urbanism. With mobile methods such as shadowing, go-alongs, walking interviews or various ways of ‘following’ the information and the actors, objects, flows and rhythms that make the city, it makes phenomena of arrested movement and the hypermobilities of the 21st century open for analysis in new ways (Büscher/Urry/Witchger 2011). It resonates productively with discourse analysis, conversation analysis; linguistic approaches that are concerned with silence, pauses, talk, text, and the circulation of messages in real and virtual spaces. As Warnke (2013, 161) reminds us, cities are fluid processes of constant becoming at the intersection of material dimension, action, and representation: “They are always constituted by what happens in them and what people know or believe to know about them”. This chapter moves across different registers of mobilities and discourse to highlight how an analytical orientation towards (im)mobilties and mobile methods can contribute to the study of language and urban space and how, vice-versa, a focus on discursive urbanisms can deepen and broaden our understanding of (im)mobilities. We start with a selective review of mobilities studies, then turn to particularly interesting modes of (im)mobility, such as talk on the move and discursive interactions in places of transitory engagement, such as benches and street corners. We show that cities themselves can be on the move through discourse and explore lived examples of networked urbanism. Each of these sections mixes insights from our own research with a selective discussion of exemplary studies from the field of mobilities research

Mobilities and Mobile Methods

195

that explore the relationship between discourse, mobility, and the city through new mobile methods or traditional methods that have been ‘mobilized’ to provide insight from an analytical perspective of (im)mobilities. We would like to bring into conversation a body of literature that explicitly comes from a mobilities perspective with studies from different fields, from conversation analysis, discourse analysis, urban studies, urban sociology, and geography that explore how cities are constructed in discourse, but that also address dimensions of mobility.

2 On the move The mobilities paradigm highlights that existing approaches in the social sciences often deal poorly with the fluid, the fleeting, the non-causal, distributed, multisensorial, and complex (Law/Urry 2004) and suggests novel approaches. Fincham/McGuiness/ Murray (2009) and Büscher/Urry/Witchger (2011) showcase methods that are ‘on the move’: tracking their research subjects, following the movement of people, images, information, and objects as well as being moved themselves, “tuning into the social organization of ‘moves’” in interaction (Büscher/Urry/Witchger 2011, 7). The mobilities paradigm and mobile methods help us to investigate the intricacies of ‘interactional adaptations’, where technologies, objects, people, information and ideas are increasingly ‘on the move’, digital, physical, private and public spaces overlap and urban realities are ‘remediated’ (Crang/Crosbie/Graham 2007). Even places are not fixed within one location, but move around as geographies are stretched, contracted and folded through the opening or closure of airports, news of conflict or environmental devastation, the award of favourable ratings in newspaper travel pages or online blogs, or the algorithmic logic of search engines (Büscher/Urry 2009, 108).

The complex interactions between city, places, and people need to be approached as dynamic encounters. However, as Haddington/Mondada/Nevile (2013) have argued, the analysis of social interaction has largely been focused on static encounters and situated actions. There is a dearth of research on various language interactions in the city from a mobilities perspective, where visible and invisible material infrastructures of the cities shape trajectories of real living people and their everyday language interactions. Conceptualizations of cities so far have been dominated by grand theories of networks, globalization, and governance but tended to omit the everyday level of flow and mobility in the city (Jensen 2006). But everyday encounters and their contexts can usefully be approached from a sociology of mobilities perspective that among other things stresses a dialectic between moorings and movement (Urry 2003), and physical and informational mobilities (Sheller/Urry 2003). Jensen (2006) assumes that the contemporary city is characterized by increased flows of people, symbols, and material goods, suspended by multiple global-local networks of such flows and the rising intensity and connections we experience create a situation of ‘accelerating mobility’.

196

Dennis Zuev and Monika Büscher

Such speed-up significantly affects the nature and quality of conversation and social interactions and relations in the city. Jensen builds on Simmel’s and Goffman’s work to connect global flows to everyday levels of social practice. Both sociologists investigated the mundane, familiar, and taken for granted details of social existence. For example, at the dawn of the 20th century Simmel ([1908] 1992) observed how urbanites in transit on trains, trams, and cars began to gaze at the world in motion, in the process remediating land and landscape, city and metropolis, citizenship, and interaction order. Simmel’s methods are hard to pin down, his style of work characterized as impressionist, his practice as that of the “sociological flaneur … who goes botanizing on the asphalt” (Benjamin, in Frisby 2013, 78). Similarly, we can argue that private mobile media such as the mobile phone have become part of a transformation of zones of public coexistence as well as places of intimate social interaction (transportation, buildings, shops, bus stops, cafes, restaurants, the home). When strangers encased together witness snatches of private conversations, with different intensities of voice and gesture depending on the locality or provenance of the speaker, remote and disembodied strangers and situations are brought into the interaction order. Hirschauer (2014) talks of ‘intersituativity’ to capture the intensified, yet fleeting, interconnections between people and places that blur the boundaries between local and mediated interactions elsewhere. Availability of WiFi networks is shaping the nature of public parks and cafes (Hampton/Livio/Sessions 2010) and regulatory interventions, such as a request to refrain from talking on the phone on the metro in Japan (Fig. 1) reflect frictions that can arise from such remediations of interaction.

Mobilities and Mobile Methods

197

Fig. 1: ‘Please do it at home’ (Saltuari 2008).

Scollon/Scollon (2001) demonstrate the analytical purchase of mobilizing Goffman’s concept of an interaction order in their work on urban place semiotics. In his 1963 study of “Behaviour in public places”, Goffman outlines what he later called the interaction order (cf. Goffmann 1983), by which he means an order in the sense of a logical domain of analysis and a practical and moral order dynamically produced in and through interaction. Although public behavior may sometimes look chaotic or actually be riotous – for example during a political protest – in all its forms, chaotic or well-ordered, human behavior is socially organized (see also Blumer 1951). Indeed, interaction is generative of social order. Scollon/Scollon (2001) suggest three ways in which language can be located in the material world: the interaction order (including speech, movement, gesture), visual semiotics (including text and images), and place semiotics (architectural and infrastructural forms). This provides a useful sociosemiotic framework to develop a deeper understanding for how texts encountered in

198

Dennis Zuev and Monika Büscher

the city tend to contribute to temporary social organization. In a similar vein, Cronin (2008) uses the nexus of mobility (as energy)-time-space to examine the advertising industry and production of visual texts in the city in a study of commercial advertising. Through a critical analysis of marketing practices, the study allows insight into how mobile city-dwellers are understood in, and constituted through commercial texts. She shows how market research practices focus on mobility, framing movement as attention or a kind of ‘mobile reception’ and “creates for the city’s inhabitants alternative modes of seeing and knowing urban space” (Cronin 2008, 96). In these marketing practices, advertisements are sometimes reduced to snatches of text and color of images, detached from the wider context of the urban environment where they were placed, meant to be assembled in motion into a tapestry of meaning. The different speeds and rhythms of urban meaning-making in motion making can interfere or even conflict with advertisers’ intentions. Advertising texts become a colorful urban wallpaper. The study demonstrates that interactions of language and mobility need to be studied not only in terms of face-to-face interactions but also in terms of ‘rhythmanalytic language’, suggested by Lefebvre (2004). Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis implies that one should not just see the city but listen to it. In the seeming cacophony of the city one simply has to be grasped by rhythms, abandon oneself ‘inwardly’ to how time is rhythmed and experience accidental and determined encounters that make polyrhythmic structures of the city. His observation was that every gathering of bodies in the city is polyrhythmic. This observation makes a valuable addition to the interaction order conceptualization by Goffman (1983), by emphasizing the performative nature of mobilities, discursive interactions, and their different temporal modes. Most importantly, the space-temporality or rhythm of the city implies a cyclical movement in the city, city life as much as an ocean or an individual human being is governed by cosmic, lunar, and seasonal rhythms, high and low tides, various periods of activity, noise and traffic during the day or times of the year. This is not only important for understanding social encounters in global cities, but it also reminds us of large-scale natural features that can shape the interaction order. In Nordic (lunar) towns and Mediterranean (solar) towns flows of time affect talk with strangers, talk on the street, not talking in a hurry. It is much more inviting to linger on a sunny street corner than it is at a cold, dark and windy one. Thus, the rhythms and flows of the city may affect the language interaction to a significant degree. Urban rhythms shape everyday language etiquettes, everyday practices and speech patterns, and their daily movement in the city. When people walk in Lisbon or Izmir, they often stop to greet the shopowners on the way, exchange a few phrases with the neighbors, while cars may stop as the driver meets people on the street and greets them. Such stop and go rhythms are often the norm in Mediterranean cities, while in a Nordic city this might be considered as annoying and disrupting. Rhythmanalysis is a stimulating resource for researchers interested in the intersections between mobilities, language, and linguistic practices in urban spaces, and it can shed light on emergent new forms of language on the move. A rhythmanalytical perspective suggests that presence is of an innately tempor-

Mobilities and Mobile Methods

199

al character, and practices of presence can be grasped through the analysis of rhythms, that is social practices performed through time. Spinney (2010), a prominent researcher of cycling mobilities theorized how affordances of different mobile technologies determine heterogeneous rhythms in the city traffic. He particularly emphasized how the discursive materialities of the bike and the built environment (traffic lights, holes in the road, other vehicles, high curbs) may intersect with the immaterialities of vulnerability (safety), time, and energy which are in turn productive of rhythmic variation in the city. Different forms of infrastructural mobilities, too, can significantly affect the everyday rhythms of urban interactions. Spinney/Lin (2018), studying electric mobility in China, noted that e-taxi drivers in Shenzhen have to charge their cars and wait at least an hour, time that they spend talking or having tea with their colleagues or friends. The practice of charging the battery of the electric vehicle requires more time than filling the car with petrol and thus generates different work-break rhythms and different spaces for discursive engagement. Consequently, the practices of charging have a social component, where situations of forced co-presence are best analyzed as being performed through a particular rhythm, that is having a different time perspective. Modern city life is characterized by myriad ethnic, cultural, and language flows, confluence and conflict between them, and accelerating multi-ethnic diversity which is manifested in multi-language protocols in some urban districts. Multi-language competence and cultural awareness have become increasingly useful resources – a form of mobility capital or motility (Kaufmann 2002) – for the urban resident/tourist navigating in the modern city. For instance, a resident in Shanghai would on a daily basis hear several different dialects and languages from his own countrymen – rural migrants coming to Shanghai to work. Global cities such as Shanghai have become iconic nodes of large-scale flows of languages, goods, cultural objects, and national and international migrants, while some urbanites, the inhabitants of big cities are accumulating social and cultural motility, it has often eluded sociologists to get down to multiple scales and specific located practices as sites where flows of language shape the city and its social uniqueness. Bringing a mobilities perspective to the analysis of cities and the role of language in cities opens up new sites and avenues for research. Cities are multi-dimensional topological entities composed of representations, myths, symbols, and discourses, as well as the patterned flows, movements, blocked movements, stillnesses, and rhythms of people, objects, ideas, and information. Language interactions happen in the city not only in seemingly static spaces, but they also happen on the move: in vehicles and while people are moving, and they in turn connect and mobilize people, objects, ideas, information and multi-sited situated action. The city’s fabric is diverse and has different/uneven density of ‘knots’ of language interaction and mobility. The city and its distinct areas undergo changes in terms of the density of ‘knots’ over the rhythms of the day and the year, while the discursive load of each particular settlement/district shapes the overall cityscape. Thus, cities

200

Dennis Zuev and Monika Büscher

have distinct life-rhythms that also shape the imaginary of the city. Mobility transforms our ways of knowing (Sheller/Urry 2003) and in particular how we learn about each other through everyday encounters. For example, mobile technologies enable new forms of communicative mobility that complicate conceptions and practices of co-presence, leading to new forms of present absence, absent presence, connected presence (Licoppe 2004). In this chapter, we explore the intersection of language and mobility in the city at different scales of observation to gain insight into the experiences and practices involved in these transformations (Desjeux 1996). We start with the most obvious scale, where the moving objects – vehicles and passengers inside them – are involved in language exchanges. The contents of the conversations in the interior of their enclosure is much determined by the exterior: landscape, infrastructure, and visibility. Thus, the methodological perspective we start with is that of the language produced on the move. This scale of observation from inside is disrupted when passengers leave their private vehicles or buses and engage in language interactions where the materiality of the urban landscape comes into effect: the small urban places (Whyte 1980), the street-corners (Whyte [1943] 1993), the benches (Temelová/Novák 2011), the fitting room (Weilenmann 2003). These interactions require a different methodological stance: participant ethnographic observation and recording of patterns. At the scale where large masses communicate and create human aggregations in public space we deal with a macroscale of observation (such as interactions of football fans at a stadium or protesters during a protest rally). At this scale, a more careful investigation of the semiotics of public space, the coding and decoding processes of language exchange is required. The analytical scale increases even more when we conceptualize the city itself as a text, as a lived and discursively produced constellation of districts and areas, which have their distinctive myths, representations and vocalizations. The imago of the city as a product of media discourse circulates in a galaxy of similar images produced and distributed by the media, eventually intersecting and networking on the level of visual and verbal discourses. The following sections are structured in a way that allows us to move across different registers in which mobilities and language intersect. Along with the diversity of the language-related phenomena, we would like to emphasize the necessity to go beyond the city centre and take into consideration the relationships between intra-urban areas and see the city as a “concentration of multiple rationalities” (Amin/Graham 1997, 7), with different zones and clusters, that have their own logics of communication, contact, knowledge-production and representation.

3 Riding along Often social interactions in the interior of moving enclosures – buses, cars, taxis, trains, planes remain unexamined, but the language and paralinguistic phenomena

Mobilities and Mobile Methods

201

that become a part of the moving objects and mobilities can be a fruitful field for interrogation. Laurier et al. (2008), for example, examine the ordinary organization of car travel and suggest the need for a sociology of passengering and driving, where two different processes form an interactional configuration where outside and inside contexts constitute a relational dynamic to the practices and contents of people’s everyday discourse. The outside of the moving object – infrastructures, movements, disturbances often shape what happens inside and high-grain ethnographic methods reveal that the reality outside of the car, bus, or taxi is also shaped by the interaction on the inside. Such matters of everyday practice are often overlooked as we rarely pause to question the “familiar, routine and trustworthy appearances” (Laurier et al. 2008, 4) of everyday environments. Laurier et al.’s (2008) ethnomethodological perspective on traffic talk provides an approach to understanding the naturally organized ordinary activities. In the peculiar context of studying the traffic talk, the video material they collected reminds us of the actual, lived analytic event. Qualitative analysis of videos through a grounded theory inspired approach revealed many features of car-specific properties of car-talk: interruptible conversations, new expectations in relations when sharing a vehicle, significance in family socialization and specific visual arrangements that provided for a different dynamics of traffic talk. The driving together experience is not only characteristic for individual cars, but also for taxis. Often, despite being equipped with a GPS navigation system, the driver asks which is the best or preferred way for the customer to get to the destination. And often at the final stage of arriving to the destination, the passenger gives more nuanced instructions to the driver where to turn and where it is better to stop, even if not prompted by the driver. Arriving at a destination thus becomes a shared accomplishment when successful verbal exchange is crucial. The passenger can even evaluate the way the driver rides – suggesting to open/close the windows, to turn up/down the music and to drive faster/slower or even reprimand the driver for overspeeding. These elements can all be negotiated to accomplish pleasant experience of being transported for money. The rules for talking while moving can be directly linked to the rules of safety – hence the prohibition of using mobile phones in some countries by drivers and the requirement to use hands-free equipment in the car. One also has to attend to the fact that although being on the move, the passengers inside the car are immobile and have a very rigid sitting arrangement (Laurier et al. 2008), and the interior of a vehicle can be strictly ‘zoned’, with taxi-drivers in some countries protected by a plexiglass shield, which can also affect the conversation as certain expectations and asymmetries in how the talk is organized will emerge. By describing these features, the socio-material ordering of urban lives becomes visible, enabling insight into the interactional and material discursive dynamics of transformations, such as those described below. Informal car-based transport models such as car-pooling or car-sharing, a critical practice within niche innovations around the sharing economy (Sheller/Urry 2016) ex-

202

Dennis Zuev and Monika Büscher

hibit private-public space distinctions that are far more unclear. In these contexts, there is a hospitality ethic between the driver as the host and the passenger as a guest to be taken care of. This sharing of the vehicle creates a different dynamic of discursive interaction, where the polite indifference of public transport is not always possible. As suggested by some scholars, new skills of civility evolve, for example of not discussing the tastes, driving skills, and preferences of the host, as these can be contentious topics, as well as new obligations, for example expectations to listen to the driver’s “life story” (Bialski 2012, 60). Unlike in the money-based transport economy, whilst one may feel entitled to request certain favors from a taxi-driver, in a shared car one has to be more diplomatic and perhaps express gratitude for being offered a lift, especially if the lift is for free. Being a passenger in a taxi or a private car is, of course, also significantly different from being enclosed in a larger vehicle, such as a bus or a minibus. The following example of a multilingual ecology in a minibus provides insight into discourse, language and mobility in mobile public urban spaces. It illustrates that being mobile can be a multilingual experience that can reflect and enact wider societal frictions as well as specific social and language asymmetries, but that can also foster trust and civility. Migration flows from different sociocultural locales have been intensively shaping the discursive landscape of big cities. In some of the cities in Russia migrants have found two important employment niches in the urban transport sector: driving city minibuses (marshrutka) and informal taxi-driving (especially in Moscow until it was decided to strictly regulate the taxi business when the new city authorities came to power in 2011 (Rozovskaya 2013). Often newcomers from Central Asia do not know their way around in a big Russian metropolis but have to succeed in an occupation that requires spatial navigation and local spatial knowledge. In minibuses in particular, conductors, who are responsible for calling out the names of the bus-stops, do not necessarily know them and pronounce them with an accent, at the same time chatting to the driver, who shares the same language. The languages that color the accent (most often Central Asian: Uzbek, Tajik, Kyrgyz or Caucasian ones, such as Azeri or Georgian) are not understood by the predominantly Russian passengers (Sanina 2011) who frequently complain or openly express their hostility towards these ‘deformations’ of the dominant language. A study of attitudes (Zuev/Habeck 2019) towards migrants among the students of a foreign language department in a large Siberian city in 2008 revealed that neither the command of the foreign language nor their experience of traveling abroad makes young people ‘global’ cosmopolitan citizens; more than half of the interviewees (mostly female) reflected that the language and behavior of the driving team (conductor plus driver) in marshrutka was disrespectful in the sense that the names of the stops were distorted and spoken in a ‘very bad’ form of Russian language. In an interesting socio-material move the language issue of the bus-stop names is sometimes resolved by using recorded bus-stops, pronounced in the dominant Russian language, silencing diversity and placing the conductor and the driver in a private ‘bubble’ of

Mobilities and Mobile Methods

203

their own language. D’hondt (2009) in his study in Dar-Es-Salam, Tanzania observed that such relatively simple exchanges related to calling out the names of the bus-stops (conductor calls the stop, passengers respond, conductor passes on that information to the driver) can be analyzed as hands-on solutions to organizational challenges particular to this low-tech environment. Through the analysis of ‘deviant cases’ (in which a driver or passengers correct the conductor) he demonstrates, that this practice of calling the stops requires participants to observe a multiplicity of spatial frameworks and meanings. Sanina (2011) in her study of marshrutka as a ‘fleeting community’ in St. Petersburg attended to another particular aspect of minibus driver communication and creativity by studying self-made ‘marshrutka art’: images, decorations, posters, and inscriptions in the interior of the vehicle. Some of them communicate contact requests and often have a humorous note or irony (paraphrasing Soviet slogans), many also have erotic meanings or assuring suppositions. Sanina contends that jokes and irony created by drivers in the context of marshrutka help to create a comfortable microcosm, facilitate trust and perhaps also help passengers to overcome their national antipathies towards the drivers. Another very relevant mobile setting of language interaction is investigated by Lorenza Mondada (2009), who examined the situation of asking for directions and showed that the organization of the convergence of two walking trajectories in public space is not a straightforward matter, depending on intensive multimodal interactive work done by co-participants which involves mobilization of different resources: walking trajectories, body postures, mutual gaze, vocal and verbal materials. Specifically, Mondada (2009) by using visual recording and conversation analysis techniques is able to highlight how the approach of one participant to another for an itinerary request is the result of a search for a person whose categorization is relevant for giving directions. Locals, especially people with children and dogs, are approached more frequently and the visual appearance of strangers is utilized as suggestive of their level of local knowledge, their amenability, and safety as an urban interlocutor. Attention to talk and language literally produced on the move, shaped by and shaping the outsides and insides of urban experience, develops analytical sensitivities towards how discursive mobilities constitute urban realities. If we maintain these sensitivities towards what is – through movement and through language – being (im) mobilized and how, but move from a concern with being literally mobile to a focus on public space we can see how language and mobilities intertwine. In the next section, we discuss how particular elements of spatial frameworks in public space can stimulate or inhibit talk and engender different types of discourses, whilst at the same time being enacted by the movements and exchanges in, through and about these spaces.

204

Dennis Zuev and Monika Büscher

4 Language and small urban space The micro-elements of city design can affect and structure language and conversation, and everyday material settings and spatial frameworks are integral to how we talk in public. This shapes personal and political relations between the private and the public. To a remarkable extent, the material affordances of city design also construct the rhythm of our conversations, the topical variety and the intensity of emotions invested into the talk. These language phenomena need to be analyzed beyond the visual methodologies and observations used by Whyte (1980) in his ground-breaking study of street-corner society and the life of plazas in big American cities. It requires techniques of moving with the flow of people, talk and activities, listening to and analyzing conversations in detail with the help of recordings of the conversational practices as they unfold in relation to different spatial frameworks. In this section, we use the bench to explore the intersections of physical and informational mobilities in urban contexts. The bench or a city corner provide useful opportunity for considering the taken for granted elements of material culture and arrangement of the city’s space that become the site of social (Schatzki 2002). The language that emerges in these settings is meshed with various activities and it is characterized by the transitory nature of social contact. The settings support a certain kind of fleeting relationship. Their arrangement in the textures of the city affects the life between buildings (to use the name of Gehl’s 2006 book) as elements of the urban landscape stimulate or inhibit gatherings and social interactions. The bench provides an example that stands both for isolation and contact; one can sit to one side or in the middle, with the back to the back of the bench, or perched on the back – all forms of embodied conduct that are expressive of certain communicative stances towards others. The bench can stimulate talk with strangers depending on the flow of people and location, but also through the material it is made of – it can be warm wood or cold steel/stone. The bench is a mundane post for observing the language interactions of other people without participating in them. There is no need to talk, sociability may be practiced silently (e.g. by nudging across to make room for another) and there are passive pleasures of sociability to simply be amongst people talking. The contact that develops due to specific emplacements in public space can be evanescent: an exchange of a few words or a short conversation, but these language interactions can also grow into longer or more regular meetings and co-presences (Gehl 2006), and, using methods of interaction and conversation analysis Licoppe (2004) suggests how they may intertwine with conversations that rely on connected presence (Fig. 2).

Mobilities and Mobile Methods

205

Fig. 2: Connected and disconnected (Hume 2017).

Fig. 3: Playing games in the park (Photo: Dennis Zuev).

The bench can be used as a station for organizing one’s daily face-to-face or digital communications (Temelová/Novák 2011), and in some spaces intersect with activities in public space such as playing games (Fig. 3) stimulating discursive interaction. Benches that offer a view of ongoing events are used more frequently than benches that do not, sometimes providing a ‘ticket to talk’, that is, a legitimate excuse for opening a conversation, a move that might otherwise be constructed as overfriendly (Gehl 2006; Sacks 1992; Sokoler/Svensson 2007). As many cities have come to arrange free WiFi zones that enable connection to the Internet on the move and the use of apps that track location and movement, such encounters take on an increasingly hybrid character (Hampton/Livio/Sessions 2010). Different temporalities emerge, as Bissell (2007) highlights in relation to the ever-increasing role of digital technologies in travel-time use for work in his study of waiting and immobilities, while Licoppe (2009) explores

206

Dennis Zuev and Monika Büscher

remediations of social obligations arising from co-proximity, and De Souza e Silva/ Frith (2010) study transformations of privacy through the changed availability of location data. Socio-technical practices of appropriating services such as Foursquare or Grindr, or location-based urban games such as Mogi or Ingress transform public space into a space where complex individual and networked socialities can be physically and virtually embodied and lived. To some extent these socio-technical innovations transform the nature of communication – reducing occasions for spontaneous co-present engagements and encouraging more ‘productive’ use of time while on the move in the city. From the small-scale setting of the bench and street corner we shall now move to linguistic exchanges and communications in places where urban multitudes can converge. The square, the plaza and large avenues in the city create a different dimension for public expression and can specifically become a physical space where political mobilization in the city can be observed.

5 Language, public space, and politics in the city In this section, we address mobilities of, in, and through language in the city in relation to some of the macro-features of the city: the planning layout and large elements of the city grid such as squares, zones and architectural styles, how they inhibit or stimulate conversation, everyday language and public voice. Historically, cities have been places of power concentration and forms of urban planning have evolved to facilitate state control and regulate public discourse and crowd aggregation (Harvey 1973; Ford 2014). Wide streets and boulevards were created in Paris by Haussmann in order to avoid the barricades of the previous revolutions, the multilane wide avenues in Yangon, the capital of Myanmar, are designed so that the access of the military cannot be hindered and crowd can be dispersed. Tahrir Square has become the symbol and physical space where the streets of the capital converge, allowing people to voice political dissent. In Ancient Greece agoras were places with dual function: they served as market places where citizens could shop as well as places where people could gather and raise their public voice or listen to political proclamations. In medieval cities, a market square, or piazza was a central assembly place, where political messages were communicated, gatherings, celebrations, and disciplinary judgments were held. With their open space, they provided an arena for itinerant musicians, performers, and traders to create an emotional focus of attention for multiple publics (Collins 2004). It is considered that medieval cities are excellent examples of livable, person-centred cities, not artificially planned but having evolved naturally, undergoing processes of construction around the core. Gehl (2006) suggests as an example the Piazza Del Campo in Siena, which has a spatial design and surrounding architectural and infrastructural arrangement that is suited to make it a place for public gatherings – a public re-

Mobilities and Mobile Methods

207

ception room for the Sienese. In smaller cities or villages, the emotional focus of attention was often centred around a public water fountain, where women and men gathered and communicated in between chores. The open public space in the city draws attention to how language is generated by various elements of the city, and how stratifications of class, ethnicity, gender, cultural and social capital, and motility structure the experiences and spaces of urban life. Different social assemblages are prompted by the materiality of public space, and they result in specific conversations and arrangements for conversations and individual expression. The square or a large open space occupied by political activists or protesters helps the protest gather momentum physically. But often, such spaces are highly securitized, controlled, and subject to sanctions, sometimes to a degree where public space in a political sense is not available at all. In cities where the public cannot find space to voice their protest, they may resort to creative means of communication. Whereas in New York protesters would organize sit-ins, in Erriadh there would be drive-outs or drive-ins. A similar kind of mobile urban protest was also used in Russia, where ordinary drivers humourously protested against privileged blue-light escorted cars that used reserve lanes, by placing a blue bucket on the roof of their car. Menoret (2014) demonstrates with an example of marginalized male youth from migrant communities living in Saudi Arabian suburbia, how in a car-centric society such as Saudi Arabia, young people have little space and options for political expression and protest. In authoritarian states such as Saudi Arabia, limited opportunities to be engaged in political communication in public spaces and to express dissent led to the emergence (Menoret 2014) of a subculture of tafhit, specific to Saudi Arabia (particularly Riyadh), especially among young people, which basically means driving fast and recklessly, drifting. Thus, being denied the opportunity to have a voice in physical public space or cyberspace, dissenters have found alternative everyday forms of discursive resistance against the authorities (police). An interesting detail is that acts of urban hooliganism are a celebrated topic for a specific genre of folklore – the popular songs kasrat which glorify the drivers as street heroes (Menoret/al-Utaybi 2009). While new urban configurations have always impeded or facilitated changes in patterns of power, cities today have become a stage for emerging subcultures and social movements that creatively use urban space for communicating their dissent with authorities. In the next section, we will speak about the city not as a space for talk and narratives, but a city and its space as an object for this talk and narratives.

6 Representations of the city: Cities on the move We began this chapter with a quote highlighting how even places move. In this section, we explore how cities can be like ‘ships moving around the globe’; travelling relationally, as airports are built, stories about tourist sights or environmental or economic de-

208

Dennis Zuev and Monika Büscher

terioration, and images and memories of people who have been there or wish to be there circulate (Sheller/Urry 2004; Freire-Medeiros 2009). This section is different from the previous three, as we focus on the city as an object for talk, narratives and social representation in the media. We choose the case of Detroit, a city that has undergone drastic social and spatial transformation, a process that has been very much in the news and aestheticized by visual artists. The process of deindustrialization in Detroit has led to what Graham/Marvin (2001) coined splintering urbanism, where social and infrastructure networks that once integrated different areas of the city became obsolete, decayed and started to split urban areas (Komez 2014). The urban post-industrial Detroit became an undesired, problematic, ‘splintered’ city with uncertain prospects. The case of Detroit illustrates how powerful a language the visual becomes when representing the city and creating a space for talking about the city. Here the sociology of Georg Simmel serves as an analytically generative approach, allowing us to observe the city as a form of social life, where conflicts and reconciliations oscillate. Forms are never pure to Simmel; every social phenomenon contains a multiplicity of elements. That is a highly instrumental starting point for seeing the city as a conglomerate of conflicting and parallel discourses/representations, movement and stasis. Many metaphors for the city: bazaar, jungle, machine, moloch, matrix, ruin find their way into the everyday discourse of inhabitants, visitors and travellers, and mobilize fantasies about the city (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4: Michigan Central Station, Detroit (Krishnamurthy 2020).

Mobilities and Mobile Methods

209

Representations of the city, despite their selective vision, are necessary for constructing a multi-dimensional analysis of urbanity, where conflicting and hybrid representations coexist (Shields 1996). Detroit can be conceptualized as a crumbling city, materially mobile, and a ‘city on the move’ or in flux, a city that has become highly visible as an outstanding example of decaying urban space, the city that is moving downwards – crumbling, falling apart, moving from the future to the past. This complex temporality of Detroit is an engine for intersections between visual and linguistic expressions and multiple (im)mobilities. In his essay on the ruin, Georg Simmel ([1911] 1959) captures some of this dynamic. He shows that the ruin is an extreme intensification and fulfilment of the present and transitory form of the past. The ruin makes tangible for the spectator or visitor that life with its wealth and its mundane concerns once dwelled in constitutes only an immediately perceived and transitory presence. The ruin creates the present form of a past life, not according to the contents or remnants of that life, but according to its past as such. Images of emptiness and abandoned buildings place Detroit in a mythic past, emphasizing the past rather than the here and now and almost completely erasing any possibility of a future. The visual language of numerous blogs, books, anthologies, and news sources builds a complex ecology of a modern city that has moved from a stage of industrially backed urban growth to standstill causing large social recomposition and decline (Millington 2013). The language that depicts the city has been surprisingly homogeneous – with ruin photography being repetitive as photographer after photographer visualizes the same sites in similar ways (Millington 2013). The images circulated about Detroit accompany an ambivalent discourse of conveying the city’s move from the hustle and bustle of an industrial hub for automotive innovation to emptiness, stasis, physical and moral decay, while at the same time celebrating a picturesqueness and romantic charm of this transformation, unfamiliar to most of the functioning big (American) cities. As Simmel noted, a ruin is a reminder of a transitory stage in the process of transformation, where the progression building up and up has been followed by the movement of crumbling downwards, in fact representing a return to the ‘good mother’ Nature, when all that is human “is taken from earth and to earth shall return” (Simmel [1911] 1959, 262). This deurbanization of Detroit or its slow ‘return to mother Nature’ is mythologized by the much-screened transformation of public space into postapocalyptic urban prairies, a Kassandra projection of the ‘beautiful, horrible decline’ of human civilization at large (Boisvert 2012). This attracts the artist’s and the tourist’s gaze, prompting calls for the skyscraper core of Detroit to be preserved as an urban ‘monument valley’, as argued by one of the long-time documentary photographers of Detroit – Camilo José Vergara (in O’Boyle 2010, xi), enabling pleasures of experiencing the crumbling modern ruins. In this context, the city’s landscape moves from a place of lived culture and civilization to a ‘spectacular’ place slowly being taken back by nature, nature reclaiming the space once embodied by people. Quite poignantly, the icon of decaying Detroit is the place that was

210

Dennis Zuev and Monika Büscher

once the hub and one of the most dynamic places in the city – Michigan Central Station (Fig. 4). The images of Detroit posted and discussed in blogs become deeply embedded in the established conventions of Detroit’s visual language industry. The blogs and articles take us on virtual ruination tours (Millington 2013), while over and over reproducing the most used citations of the ruined city: Michigan Central Station, overgrown house, Packard Plant. The imagery of the ruined variety colonizes the gaze and suggests the dominant reading of the city as a downward progressing ruin ignoring the hybrid metanarrative of the city. The tales and discourses from Detroit (including stories about pheasant and raccoon hunting (Millington 2013) spread fast across America and became popular topics for editorials and TV shows. The visual discourses are representative of a set of issues that arise about complex urban problems and suggest that representations of the city’s present ‘frontier status’ can define a city’s future and influence whether the city will survive or not. The visual media and films put us on a virtual tour of the future of the city: Detroit in 2030 is depicted as a crime-ridden lawless megapolis in Robocop (RoboCop 1987), where social problems of injustice and corruption challenge a corporate law enforcement cyborg to reassert his humanity. The representations of Detroit as well as narratives of decay, danger, and moral degradation also allow us to glimpse the city’s shifting meaning for multiple publics in the global information environment – a contextual interpretation comprised of a galaxy of images, comments, impressions and ideological frames that produces a ‘public screen’ (Sheller/Urry 2003) – everyone with access to global media or with web access can participate in this narrative reproduction of a particular geographic location. In the mobile discursive process, the city of Detroit literally moves on people’s map of potential places to visit, to invest in or to retire to. Spirou (2011, 179) describes how Detroit has become a magnet for newly retired professionals, who find that “the areas incomplete resurgence may make newcomers feel like urban pioneers”, but who are attracted by the dynamic cultural and sporting facilities and programmes. It is important to keep in mind this processual, mobile nature of the city, its placement in a national and global order and the constant transformation of its borders. These shifting and relational dynamics affect the individual’s relation with the city and the memories of it, which constitute an important part of the urban discourse, when they are publicly shared. How cities are associated through their image in our memory, the linguistic equipment of the city that allows us to remember these cities, and mobilize cities as recollections in images and stories. In the next section, we discuss how the cities and representation of cities create more complicated networks of physical and informational mobility as well how language becomes an important issue in the analysis of global mobility of information and people between cities.

Mobilities and Mobile Methods

211

7 Networked cities With this section, we conclude the analytical journey through phenomena of mobilities and language in urban space. We discuss how different cities co-produce language, representations, and discourse about them and how tourism, hospitality as well as a concern with the suffering of others reflect the relational quality of urban discourse and urban mobilities. Despite the intensification of electronic telecommunications linking global cities, the necessity for face-to-face co-presence and collaboration has grown (Amin/Graham 2001). One example here is the hospitality network Couchsurfing and its commercialized offspring AirBnB. Couchsurfing is a social hospitality network that allows people to meet first online, then offline and host each other for free. The goal of the network participants is not online communication, but interaction online in the private spaces of houses and apartments, aimed at facilitating future visits. Most couchsurfers are city dwellers, and the popularity of Couchsurfing has led to the emergence of several global couchsurfing cities – cities that have the largest numbers of registered users. Couchsurfing as a hospitality network has a collaborative consumption logic, as the hosts who agree to take a traveller in their apartment play an active role in the traveller’s experience, while the traveller also has obligations towards the host. The private space of the local city dwellers becomes a xenotopos, a space, which is conducive to cosmopolitan learning, intensive exchange between strangers from unfamiliar cultures, and the process of familiarization (Zuev 2011). This practice of traveling puts an emphasis on communication while being mobile. Some of the studies of couchsurfing have demonstrated how profoundly the tourist’s experience of the city change when tourists are allowed the perspective of everyday rhythms of the local population and can engage with them in everyday communication (Bialski 2012; Germann-Molz 2012; Picard/Buchberger 2013). Certainly, as with any global flows there are complex inequalities in who benefits: there are host communities where the hosts themselves have few resources for travelling and becoming guests, and more affluent communities where hosts and guests exchange hospitality services. Couchsurfing as a form of computer-mediated mobility is a vibrant phenomenon of urban linguistic expression and multiple (im)mobilities. The participants often possess different degrees of knowledge of a foreign language and sometimes a primary motivation to host is the wish to talk to a foreigner and learn about life in another country. Knowledge about the city for a guest-tourist is thus constructed not only on the basis or representations and images from the guidebooks and other official sources, but also the actual conversations with people who provide bridges into the local culture, which may often otherwise be inaccessible to tourists, due to language and cultural barriers. Informal communication in the space of the host’s kitchen, their sofa, their favorite café or family picnic spot, where the guest is invited, produce a cosmopolitan logic where visitors and hosts can go beyond the ceremonial language exchange and grasp the rhythms and realities of local life. Needless to say, the weaving

212

Dennis Zuev and Monika Büscher

of such a network on a global scale requires support for trust maintenance and collaboration from all members. Bialski (2012) shows how couchsurfers produce and inhabit infrastructures that support the production of a mobile moral order of rights, responsibilities and obligations, moving across online and offline spaces. Couchsurfing also supports the argument by Amin/Graham (2001) that shared space and co-presence are crucial in creating an environment for creativity and innovation, knowledge exchange and learning. In a rather different context, lived urban linguistic and mobilities intersect in ways that amplify and further develop such forms of relational morality and creativity. January 2014 was the 4th anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, where over 220,000 people were killed and over 300,000 were injured. The earthquake made more than 1.5 million people homeless, and resulted in an “immense humanitarian crisis, highlighting long-lasting development challenges” (Oxfam 2014, n.p.). With the Haiti earthquake two important and related things changed in how cities respond to disaster: self-organized mass-reporting with digital media took place in unprecedented numbers and at the same time “online communication enabled a kind of [global] collective intelligence to emerge” (OCHA 2013, n.p.). Thousands of volunteers from all over the world aggregated, analyzed, and mapped the flow of messages coming from Haiti. Using Internet collaboration tools and modern practices, they wrote software, processed satellite imagery, built maps, and translated reports between the three languages of the operation [...] (OCHA 2013, n.p.).

Haitians affected by the disaster coordinated the provision of a Freephone number, where 80,000 text messages (SMS) providing situation reports from local people were received. They were in Creole, a language few international crisis response agencies understand. Local and online volunteers from across the globe coordinated a network that utilised the skills of a globally distributed Haitian diaspora to translate and map the messages (Munro 2012). The volunteers used crowd-sourcing tools, including OpenStreetMap and Ushahidi, a free, open-source crowdmapping tool that was initially developed in the aftermath of the 2008 elections in Kenya. Following the Haiti earthquake, the Ushahidi Haiti Project (UHP) map provided valuable support to inthe-field rescue organizations, including the US Marines and the United Nations Disaster Assessment Search and Rescue teams (Morrow et al. 2011). In their evaluation report of the initiative Morrow et al. describe how the Department of State Analysts for the US government interagency task force and US marines used UHP information to enhance situation awareness and identify ‘centres of gravity’ for the deployment of field teams. However, three important lines of analysis highlight some ambiguities in this ‘digital humanitarianism’. Firstly, while these efforts to mobilize resources clearly made some difference, some professional responders called it a “shadow operation that was not part of the emergency response plan” (Morrow et al. 2011, 16). Secondly, studies have shown that these success stories neglect wider implications and effects. Mimi Sheller (2013) highlights asymmetries of colonial power re-enacted through the activ-

Mobilities and Mobile Methods

213

ities. She shows that the physical and digital influx of highly mobile international responders, from the World Bank to the voluntweeters (Starbird/Palen 2011), with their birds-eye maps coincided with a local population who mostly had neither the means nor the right to move outside the danger zone. Thirdly, many Haitians were unaware of the digital humanitarian response or did not have a voice in evaluating its usefulness (Clémenzo 2011).

8 Discussion Language is produced on the move and the patterns of this production can be observed and investigated at multiple scales and in the context of different material objects. We started our movement from the most basic language interactions on the move and being at rest: talking in the car or a minibus, asking directions in an unfamiliar city, sitting on the bench in the park. A mobilities perspective provides us with a methodological platform for a richer understanding of the complexities and practices of discursive mobilities and discourse on the move. We argued that the study of the mobilities in the city is impossible without paying attention to discursive and linguistic practices, and lived interaction. Similarly, analysis of language in, about and of the city swiftly leads into a recognition that (im)mobilities are an integral aspect of discursive and linguistic practices. The continuously changing, processual momentum of talk on the move is performative of social, material and moral interaction orders. Moving with these phenomena reveals different rhythms and the ways in which mobility and language weave the texture of everyday life. An analytical orientation towards mobilities provides a heightened sensitivity for the range of social processes related to communication and human interaction in cities, and it reminds us of the various modes and scales of language and mobility, from silence to noise, from the instantaneity of digital communication to the restful stillness of a moment on a sunny bench, from networking cities, connected or disconnected by crises to individuals meeting each other in the private space of their apartments or in the public space of a city park. We have also highlighted that technology is not only influencing the enactment of modern mobility and language in the city but has significant influence on how social interactions and mobilities in the city can be studied: it provides new instruments to visualize and record invisible or taken for granted features and patterns of social life and language exchange, especially ones which are ‘fleeting’, fluid, multi-sensorial, and dispersed.

9 References Amin, Ash/Stephen Graham (1997): The ordinary city. In: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 22, 411–429. Bauman, Zygmunt (2000): Liquid Modernity. Cambridge.

214

Dennis Zuev and Monika Büscher

Bialski, Paula (2012): Becoming Intimately Mobile. Frankfurt am Main. Bissell, David (2007): Animating suspension: Waiting for mobilities. In: Mobilities 2, 277–298. Blumer, Herbert (1951): Collective behavior. In: Alfred M. Lee (ed.): Principles of Sociology. New York. Boisvert, Will (2012): Call of the wild: Detroit onsScreen. In: The Baffler 21, 114–119. Bratton, Benjamin H. (2008): ‘iPhone City’. Online at: http://www.bratton.info/projects/texts/iphonecity/pf/. . Büscher, Monika/John Urry (2009): Mobile methods and the empirical. In: European Journal of Social Theory 12, 99–116. Büscher, Monika/John Urry/Katian Witchger (eds.) (2011): Mobile Methods. London. Clémenzo, Jean-Yves (2011): Ushahidi Project and Mission 4636 in Haiti: Participation, representation and political economy. MA Thesis, London School of Economics, UK. Online at: http://jeanyve sclemenzo.ch/Nouveausite/Recherches/DFA24093-B92E-4A34-9746-564DE2E4BC0A_files/Re searchUshahidi.pdf. . Collins, Randall (2004): Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton. Crang, Michael/Tracey Crosbie/Stephen Graham (2007): Technology, timespace and the remediation of neighbourhood life. In: Environment and Planning A 39, 2405–2422. Cronin, Anne (2008): Mobility and market research: Outdoor advertising and the commercial ontology of the city. In: Mobilities 3, 95–115. Desjeux, Dominique (1996): Scales of observation: A micro-sociological epistemology of social science practice. In: Visual Sociology 11, 45–55. D’hondt, Sigurd (2009): Calling the stops in a Dar-es-Salaam Minibus: Embodied understandings of place in a drop-off routine. In: Journal of Pragmatics 41, 1962–1976. De Certeau, Michel (1984): The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley. De Souza e Silva, Adriana/Jordan Frith (2010): Locational privacy in public spaces: media discourses on location-aware mobile technologies. In: Communication Culture Critique 3, 503– 525. Fincham, Ben/Mark McGuinness/Lesley Murray (2009): Mobile Methodologies. Basingstoke. Ford, Matt (2014): A dictator’s guide to urban design: Ukraine’s Independence Square, and the revolutionary dimensions of public spaces. In: The Atlantic. Online at: http://www.theatlantic.com/ international/archive/2014/02/a-dictators-guide-to-urban-design/283953/. . Freire-Medeiros, Bianca (2009): The favela and its touristic transits. In: Geoforum 40, 580–588. Gehl, Jan (2006): Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space. Copenhagen. Germann-Molz, Jennie (2012): Travel Connections: Tourism, Technology and Togetherness in a Mobile World. New York. Glaeser, Edward (2011): Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier. Oxford. Goffman, Erving (1963): Behaviour in Public Places. New York. Goffman, Erving (1971): Relations in Public: Microstudies in the Public Order. New York. Goffman, Erving (1983): The interaction order. In: American Sociological Review 48, 1–17. Graham, Stephen/Simon Marvin (2001): Splintering Urbanism. London. Greenfield, Adam (2006): Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. Berkeley. Habermas, Jürgen (1991): The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Boston. Haddington, Pentti/Lorenza Mondada/Maurice Nevile (eds.) (2013): Interaction and Mobility: Language and the Body in Motion. Berlin. Hampton, Keith N./Oren Livio/Lauren Sessions (2010): The social life of wireless urban spaces: Internet use, social networks, and the public realm. In: Journal of Communication 60, 701–722.

Mobilities and Mobile Methods

215

Harvey, David (1973): Social Justice and the City. Athens, Georgia. Hirschauer, Stefan (2014): Intersituativität: Teleinteraktionen und Koaktivität jenseits von Mikro und Makro. In: Zeitschrift für Soziologie, Sonderheft Interaktion, Organisation und Gesellschaft, 109–133. Hume, Christin (2017): Bench Work. Unsplash. Online at: https://unsplash.com/photos/OQ2OjujcP9o. . Jacobs, Jane (1961): The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York. Jensen, Ole (2006): ‘Facework’, flow and the city: Simmel, Goffman, and mobility in the contemporary city. In: Mobilities 1, 143–165. Kaufmann, Vincent (2002): Re-Thinking Mobility. Burlington. Kitchin, Rob/Martin Dodge (2011): Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life. Cambridge, Mass. Komez, Esin (2014): Architectural contextualism and emerging hybrid morphologies: The case of the olympic sculpture park for the seattle art museum. In: Roberto Cavallo/Joran Kuijper (eds.): New Urban Configurations. Amsterdam, 361–369. Krishnamurthy, Paul (2020): Michigan Central Train Depot. Unsplash. Online at: https://unsplash. com/photos/VU5MZW_D1Nk. . Laurier Eric/Hayden Lorimer/Barry Brown/Owain Jones/Oskar Juhlin/Allyson Noble/Mark Perry/Daniele Pica/Philippe Sormani/Ignaz Strebel/Laurel Swan/Alex S. Taylor/Laura Watts/Alexandra Weilenmann (2008): Driving and ‘Passengering’: Notes on the ordinary organization of car travel. In: Mobilities 3, 1–23. Law, John/John Urry (2004): Enacting the social. In: Economy and Society 33, 390–410. Lefebvre, Henri (2004): Rhythmanalysis. Space, Time and Everyday Life. London. Licoppe, Christian (2004): Connected presence: The emergence of a new repertoire for managing social relationships in a changing communication technoscape. In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 22, 135–156. Licoppe, Christian (2009): Recognizing mutual ‘proximity’ at a distance: Weaving together mobility, sociality and technology. In: Journal of Pragmatics 41, 1924–1937. Lynch, Kevin A. (1960): The Image of the City. Cambridge. Menoret, Pascal/Awadh al-Utaybi (2009): Urban unrest and non-religious radicalization in Saudi Arabia. In: Madawi Ar-Rashid/Marat Shterin (eds.): Dying for Faith: Religiously Motivated Violence. London, 123–137. Menoret, Pascal (2014): Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism, and Road Revolt. New York. Millington, Nate (2013): Post-Industrial imaginaries: Nature, representation and ruin in Detroit, Michigan. In: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37, 279–296. Mondada, Lorenzo (2009): Emergent focused interactions in public places: A systematic analysis of the multimodal achievement of a common interactional space. In: Journal of Pragmatics 41, 1977–1997. Morrow, Nathan/Nancy Mock/Adam Papendieck/Nicholas Kocmich (2011): Independent evaluation of the Ushahidi Haiti Project, Development Information systems International 2011. Online at: http://www.alnap.org/pool/files/1282.pdf. . Munro, Robert (2012): Crowdsourcing and the crisis-affected community. In: Information Retrieval 16, 210–266. O’Boyle, Shaun (2010): Modern Ruins: Portraits of Place in the Mid-Atlantic Region. University Park, Penn. OCHA (2013): Disaster Relief 2.0: The Future of Information Sharing in Humanitarian Emergencies. Online at: http://www.unocha.org/top-stories/all-stories/disaster-relief-20-future-informationsharing-humanitarian-emergencies. . Oxfam (2014): Haiti earthquake: 4 years later. Online at: http://www.oxfam.org/en/haitiquake. .

216

Dennis Zuev and Monika Büscher

Picard, David/Sonja Buchberger (2013): Couchsurfing in Lisbon, Tunis and Brisbane. In David Picard/ Sonja Buchberger (eds.): Couchsurfing Cosmopolitanisms: Can Tourism Make a Better World. Bielefeld, 25–80. RoboCop. Directed by Paul Verhoeven, Orion Pictures, 1987. Rozovskaya, Anastasia (2013): The effect of single –fare policy in the taxicab market: the case of Moscow. MA Thesis, Central European University. Budapest. Sacks, Harvey (1992): Lectures on Conversation: Volumes I and II. Oxford. Saltuari, David (2008): Please, do it at home. flickr. Online at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/saltuari/2643380302/in/photolist-5RTwog-4Epb3n-7MNzrw-7UKEEM-5s9AE1-52A1Ss-72AwzY5sVQ5R-5Gwk8o/. . Sanina, Anna (2011): The Marshrutka as a socio-cultural phenomenon of a Russian megacity. In: City, Culture and Society 2, 211–218. Schatzki, Theodore R. (2002): The Site of the Social. University Park, Penn. Scollon, Ron/Suzie Wong Scollon (2001): Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World. London. Sheller, Mimi (2013): The islanding effect: post-disaster mobility systems and humanitarian logistics in Haiti. In: Cultural Geographies 20, 185–204. Sheller, Mimi/John Urry (2003): Mobile transformations of ‘public’ and ‘private’ life. In: Theory, Culture & Society 20, 107–125. Sheller, Mimi/John Urry (eds.) (2004): Tourism Mobilities: Places to Play, Places in Play. London. Sheller, Mimi/John Urry (2016): Mobilizing the new mobilities paradigm. In: Applied Mobilities 1, 10–25. Shields, Rob (1996): A guide to urban representation and what to do about it: alternative traditions of urban theory. In: Anthony D. King (ed.): Re-Presenting the City: Ethnicity, Capital and Culture in the Twenty-First Century Metropolis. Basingstoke. Simmel, Georg ([1911] 1959): The ruin. In: Kurt H. Wolff (ed.): Georg Simmel 1858–1918: A Collection of Essays, with Translations and a Bibliography. Columbus, 259–266. Simmel, Georg ([1903] 1971): The metropolis and mental life. In: Kurt H. Wolff (ed.): The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York. Simmel, Georg ([1900, 1907] 1978): Philosophy of money. Ed. by David Frisby. Transl. by Tom Bottomore and David Frisby. London. Simmel, Georg ([1908] 1992): Soziologie: Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. Frankfurt am Main. Sokoler, Tomas/M.S. Svensson (2007): Embracing ambiguity in the design of non-stigmatizing digital technology for social interaction among senior citizens. In: Behaviour & Information Technology 26, 297–307. Spinney, Justin (2010): Improvising rhythms: Re-Reading urban time and space through everyday practices of cycling. In: Tim Edensor (ed.): Geographies of Rhythm. Nature, Place, Mobilities and Bodies. Farnham, 113–127. Spinney, Justin/Wen-I Lin (2018): Are you being shared? Mobility, data and social relations in Shanghai’s public bike sharing 2.0 sector. In: Applied Mobilities 3, 66–83. Spirou, Costas (2011): Urban Tourism and Urban Change: Cities in a Global Economy. London. Starbird, Kate/Leysia Palen (2011): ‘Voluntweeters’: Self-Organizing by digital volunteers in times of crisis. In: Proceedings of the 2011 Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Vancouver. Temelová, Jana/Jakub Novák (2011): Daily Street life in the inner city of Prague under transformation: The visual experience of socio-spatial differentiation and temporal rhythms. In: Visual Studies 26, 213–228. Urry, John (2003): Global Complexity. Cambridge.

Mobilities and Mobile Methods

217

Warnke, Ingo H. (2013): Making place through urban epigraphy – Berlin Prenzlauer Berg and the grammar of Linguistic Landscapes. In: Beltz Juventa, Zeitschrift für Diskursforschung 2, 159–181. Weilenmann, Alexandra (2003): ‘I can’t talk now, I’m in a fitting room’: Formulating availability and location in mobile-phone conversations. In: Environment and Planning A 35, 1589–1605. Whyte, William H. (1980): The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. New York. Whyte, William F. ([1943] 1993): Street Corner Society. Chicago. Zuev, Dennis (2011): Couchsurfing as a spatial practice: Accessing and producing Xenotopos. In: Hospitality and Society 1, 227–244. Zuev, Dennis/Joachim Otto Habeck (2019): Implications of infrastructural and technological change for a lifestyles in Siberia. In: J. O. Habeck (ed.): Lifestyle in Siberia. OpenBook Publishers: Cambridge pp. 35–104. Zukin, Sharon (2010): Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places. New York.

Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz

9. Linguistic Landscapes Abstract: This chapter reviews the literature within the sub-field of linguistic landscapes within urban spaces by showing examples from global cities. A major focus of this chapter is on the city of Donostia-San Sebastián in the Basque Country in Spain, which has witnessed multilingual developments within its public signage over the last 35 years. The chapter first discusses early studies within LL as well as the various methodological approaches employed that consist of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed approaches. Afterwards, we analyze recurring themes from numerous linguistic landscape studies, some of which include English as a global language, language policy, minority languages, and the context of education. The chapter ends with general conclusions and what remains to be done in future studies. 1 2 3 4 5

Introduction Methodological approaches Recurring themes Conclusion References

1 Introduction The linguistic landscape of the city of Donostia-San Sebastián, located in the Basque Country in Spain, has gone through an important development over the past 35 years. The linguistic landscape of the city streets and other public spaces has evolved into a complex multilingual assemblage. During the Franco dictatorship (1939–1975), the city had a predominately monolingual Spanish urban decor, but after the Transición (‘transition’) to democracy in the late 1970s, the regional minority language Basque received strong support by the government and the population of the region. Increasing the use of Basque among the population is an important aim of the language policies at regional and local levels; these policies include the visibility of the minority language in public signage. The city of Donostia-San Sebastián is located at the southern coast of the Bay of Biscay, only twenty kilometres off the border with France. It is one of the important urban centres of the Basque Country, a region straddling the border between Spain and

Acknowledgment: This chapter was written with the assistance of the research grant EDU2015-63967 from MINECO/FEDER, Spain and Basque Government funding for the Donostia Research group on Education and Multilingualism (DREAM) (IT1225-19). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-010

Linguistic Landscapes

219

France. Although a small city (186,000 inhabitants; its metropolitan area reaches close to half a million), it has a cosmopolitan look and is a popular tourist destination. Our investigations into the ‘multilingual cityscape’ of Donostia-San Sebastián will be used throughout this chapter to illustrate developments in the young and expansive research field of linguistic landscape studies. Donostia-San Sebastián, of course, is only one among many cities where interesting linguistic landscape studies have taken place, and thus relevant examples of research studies from several other urban centres will be presented, among others from Jerusalem, Tokyo, Rome, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, and Washington, D.C. The use of language in its written form in the public space is the main focus of linguistic landscape studies (Gorter 2006), although it is not an easy task to demarcate the field. For example, Spolsky (2009a) asks the question, “What is the field of linguistic landscape?” He sees the study of public multilingual signage developing into a sub-field of sociolinguistics and of language policy. In his earlier work (Spolsky/Cooper 1991) he considered “public signage as evidence of the sociolinguistic ecology of a geographically determined multilingual (or rather, multiliterate) speech community, a neighbourhood whose boundaries might be defined geographically” (Spolsky 2009a, 25). But he then goes on to consider the possibility that linguistic landscape as a field should rather be fitted into the general study of signs, semiotics, or into the study of literacy. Spolsky (2009a, 32) develops a model for the choice of language for public signage in multiliterate areas and he claims that linguistic landscape has proven “its worth as a tool exploring and characterizing the multiliterate ecology of cities”. Semiotics as a discipline has, of course, a long tradition for the study of signs and meaning making of signs and sign processes. But semioticians have given relatively little attention to urban signage in public spaces as such. Another relevant research field for the study of linguistic landscapes concerns advertising, but also in this specialization few researchers have specifically focused on language use in public signage, even when an important part of those signs is commercial. Landry/Bourhis (1997, 23) are often credited for defining linguistic landscape studies as a field in terms of “the visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs”. They introduced the concept in its current most common meaning and they also provided a list of six different types of signs that combine to form the linguistic landscape: public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings. Such a list could easily be made longer by adding other types of signs, such as posters, stickers, or sidewalk sandwich boards, or some more recent signs such as video-screens, foam boards, or scrolling banners. As most researchers carry out their studies in urban settings and focus on more than one language, the alternative denomination as ‘multilingual cityscape’ could be more precise (Gorter 2006). Other authors prefer other terms to designate the linguistic landscape, such as “the words on the walls” (Calvet 1990, 73), “the decorum of

220

Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz

the public life” (Ben-Rafael et al. 2006, 10), “the linguistic items found in the public space” (Shohamy 2006, 110), “environmental print” (Huebner 2006, 31), or “word on the street” (Foust/Fuggle 2011). Jaworski/Thurlow (2010) prefer the concept of semiotic landscapes. In this chapter, we will use the designation linguistic landscape, because it has caught on as the preferred term in the literature. We should bear in mind that in academic literature the concept of linguistic landscape can also be used with completely different meanings, for example to refer to the language situation in general or to linguistic diversity (Gorter 2006). Essentially, a basic characteristic of the field are its fluid and undetermined boundaries. Shohamy/Waksman (2009) suggest to extend linguistic landscape studies beyond the written texts displayed in public space, and they opt for a somewhat radical view of linguistic landscape as an ecological arena that includes oral language, images, objects, placement in time and space, and also how people interact with signs (see also Shohamy/Ben-Rafael 2015). The circumstance that the field is not precisely established encourages a great variety of theoretical approaches and allows for the use of different research methods. Shohamy/Waksman (2012, 109) point out that for the study of language in public space “it is possible to identify patterns which are anchored in theories of politics, policy, identities, multilingualism, geography and economics.” The linguistic landscape studies included in this chapter are our own investigations, but we also report on examples of investigations in urban centres around the world. The text is not a chronological overview as was provided by Backhaus (2007), who summarized previous research in the new field of linguistic landscape studies (until 2006). He listed 10 publications before 1998 and another 20 from 1998 to 2006. Troyer (2014) presented a bibliography of linguistic landscape publications in English, including some media and advertising publications. In his list of 287 publications only 12 appeared before 1998, another 40 between 1998 and 2006, and no less than 235 publications have appeared since 2007. These figures are a clear demonstration of the rapid growth of the field, which has continued since. Recent overviews of the field can also be found in Gorter (2013), Shohamy (2012), and Van Mensel/Vandenbroucke/ Blackwood (2016). In this chapter, we will begin by briefly discussing some of the early studies into linguistic landscape (section 1.1). We will then go on to discuss different methodological approaches (section 2). First, we look into quantitative approaches by discussing our research carried out in Donostia-San Sebastián, as well as in Leeuwarden-Ljouwert (the Netherlands) and in Rome (section 2.1). Thereafter we summarize a number of qualitative studies (section 2.2) and also projects that have used a combination of different methods (section 2.3). We continue by selecting some recurring themes from linguistic landscape studies (section 3). Those are English as a global language (section 3.1), language policy (section 3.2), minority languages (section 3.3), and the context of education (section 3.4). We end the chapter by drawing some general conclu-

Linguistic Landscapes

221

sions (section 4). As said, we base the chapter on our own linguistic landscape studies, but we will intersperse those with several other contributions to the field.

1.1 Early studies It is near to impossible to point to the start of linguistic landscapes studies, because as Coulmas (2009, 13) pointed out, “linguistic landscaping is as old as writing […] and some of its earliest functions are bound to public display”. The origin of writing coincided with the emergence of cities as complex forms of social organization. Coulmas demonstrated these origins of linguistic landscapes in urban contexts with examples of inscriptions that are thousands of years old, such as the Codex Hammurabi in Old Babylonian language in cuneiform script or the Rosetta Stone which contains two languages and three scripts and was crucial for the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. It is an important example because, as Coulmas (2009, 18) concluded, “the Rosetta Stone embodies many of the intricacies of language contact and linguistic hierarchy that form the substance of linguistic landscape research”. An early example of an investigation of a linguistic landscape was carried out as part of a larger study that took place in the city of Jerusalem. There Rosenbaum et al. (1977) studied the use and the spread of English in one street, Keren Kayemet Street. They collected sociolinguistic data on spoken language by means of interviews and encounters, and they also counted and analyzed the signs of shops, restaurants and offices in the street. They distinguished three types of signs: no Roman script, some Roman script but Hebrew script dominant, and both Roman and Hebrew script, where Roman script matches mostly with English. It turned out that each of these three categories contains about one third of the signs. Further they found that the Roman script is more common on bottom-up than on top-down signs, which showed a difference between the official policies that supports Hebrew-only signs and the use of mainly English in commercial signs. The preponderance of English they explain by its “snob appeal” (Rosenbaum et al. 1977, 151). A similar prestige factor is mentioned in many studies of the spread of English, even though usually referred to with other concepts. English as a global language is a theme which is present in many later linguistic landscape studies (see section 3.1).

2 Methodological approaches Over the years researchers have approached the study of the linguistic landscape in different ways, using different methodological approaches and building upon different theoretical frameworks. We will use here a categorization into three approaches that characterize most work on linguistic landscapes. We begin by looking into the quantitative approach (section 2.1), where the emphasis is on the distribution of differ-

222

Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz

ent languages in the linguistic landscape of usually a particular urban area. Some authors have criticized the quantitative approach as limited (see section 2.2) and propose a qualitative approach instead. This is the second approach we will summarize briefly. Finally, we will look into a number of studies that have explicitly chosen to combine different quantitative and qualitative methods (section 2.3).

2.1 Quantitative approaches The study of linguistic landscapes in Israeli cities was carried forward by Ben-Rafael et al. (1998; 2006; also Ben-Rafael 2009). They studied the linguistic objects that mark the public space by sampling signs in eight localities with Jewish, Palestinian Israeli, and non-Israeli Palestinian communities in different cities and towns, and in East Jerusalem. Some research sites are homogeneous and others mixed in terms of the groups studied. They focus on the distribution and the visibility of Hebrew, Arabic, and English on private and public signs. Theoretically, the linguistic landscape is seen by these authors as the symbolic construction of the public space, which they base first on three and later on four sociological ideas or “structuration principles” (Ben-Rafael et al. 2006, 9). The first idea is the principle of the presentation of self, based on the work of the American sociologist Erving Goffman, where signs become attractive to different actors because of their uniqueness (Goffman 1981). The second idea is the good-reasons principle which anticipates clients’ cost-and-benefit considerations, involving instrumental and rational calculations. Thirdly, the principle of power relations uses the theories of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, which can explain the signage in terms of dominant and subordinate groups (Bourdieu 1993). The final principle considers signs as collectiveidentity markers of groups. Signs can illustrate forms of multiculturalism because they may be designed to assert a commitment to the identities of the actors. In this way Ben-Rafael (2009) demonstrated the usefulness of existing sociological theories for linguistic landscape analysis (see also Ben-Rafael/Shohamy/Barni 2010). In their studies, Ben-Rafael et al. (1998; 2006) looked at the geographic distribution of the signs and showed that different patterns exist in the communities: Hebrew/English signs dominate in Jewish communities; Arabic/Hebrew ones in IsraeliPalestinian communities and Arabic/English ones in East Jerusalem. They also took into consideration the dimension of top-down signs, as determined by government policy and bottom-up signs put up by private initiative. In top-down signs Hebrew is dominant because of language policy, except in East-Jerusalem where it is Arabic that dominates. In private signs English has a strong presence, mainly in combination with either Hebrew or Arabic. Overall, English is gaining in importance so much that according to Ben-Rafael et al. (2006, 12), English would better be described as a “nonforeign language”. The linguistic landscape is constructed by many actors and has a chaotic character, but in its totality, it is perceived as one structured space, a Gestalt

Linguistic Landscapes

223

(Ben-Rafael 2009, 42). Multilingualism is one of the characteristics of language signs, but the researchers concluded that the linguistic landscape as a whole is not a true reflection of the diversity of Israel’s languages. Inspired by the earlier work done in Israel, we collected photographic data of one street in the city of Donostia-San Sebastián (Cenoz/Gorter 2003). We used the examples of Rosenbaum et al. (1977), focusing on only one street, and the coding-scheme of Ben-Rafael et al. (1998) in order to establish an inventory of all observable language related signs. Our first study of one street led to a second more elaborate study in which we systematically photographed all the signs in the main shopping street of Donostia-San Sebastián, which was then compared to a similar street in LeeuwardenLjouwert in Friesland, the Netherlands (Cenoz/Gorter 2006). In both cases we used the same quantitative data-collection techniques and therefore could explicitly reflect on how to count the signs and the decisions to be taken about the unit of analysis. We decided not to take just a small sample but to count all visible signs, large and small: A shop front is a unit, but an individual street sign or a poster as well. Even though some arbitrariness could not be avoided in determining the unit of analysis, our sampling technique has the advantage that comparisons are possible. Through our quantitative approach we can determine how many languages are used, which languages those are and how bilingual and multilingual signs can be characterized.

Fig. 1: Boulevard, Donostia, Basque Country (Photo: Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz).1

1 All photos were taken by us; copyright is our own.

224

Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz

Fig. 2: Nieuwestad, Leeuwarden – Ljouwert, Friesland (Photo: Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz).

We found that 55 % of the signs in Donostia-San Sebastian and 44 % of the signs in Ljouwert-Leeuwarden were bilingual or multilingual (Cenoz/Gorter 2006). The resulting patterns of multilingualism index differences in language policies towards the regional minority languages Basque and Frisian. The effects of language policy are clearly reflected in the linguistic landscape because the two regions differ in important ways. In both cases public signage is dominated by the state language (Spanish and Dutch), but there are significant differences between the visibility of Basque and Frisian, the two minority languages. Due to a strong language policy Basque has a substantial presence on the signage, but in contrast a relatively weak language policy in Friesland implies that Frisian is seen only occasionally. In both cities English as an international language also has an important presence. The linguistic landscape not only reflects the outcome of status and power differences between language groups in a community, but it is a two-way process because public signage acts as a force which shapes how languages are perceived and used by a population. A very large quantitative study of a linguistic landscape was undertaken in Tokyo by Backhaus (2006; 2007). For his sample, he selected the 29 stations of the circular railway line connecting Tokyo´s major city centres, and for each station he selected a stretch of a street between two consecutive traffic lights, an average of about 150 meters. Backhaus (2007, 66) defines a sign as “any piece of written text within a spatially definable frame”. In his theoretical framework, he distinguished between the origin of a sign, the reader of a sign, and the dynamics of the languages and scripts in contact.  

 

Linguistic Landscapes

225

He found that about 80 % of the almost 12,000 signs he counted were monolingual in Japanese. Tokyo is a city that is often thought to be monolingual Japanese, but Backhaus’ research revealed a multilingual reality. He focused on multilingualism in Tokyo and he only analyzed the signs that contained more than one language. He categorized 2,321 items as multilingual signs and identified 14 different languages. Japanese was clearly the dominant language, but he also found other languages such as English, Chinese, Korean, or Latin (Backhaus 2007). Still, 97.6 % of the bilingual signs contained English, thus in the end Backhaus (2010, 362) concluded that “the visibility of English is so salient that one may say multilingualism in Tokyo’s linguistic landscape is for the most part Japanese-English bilingualism”. Backhaus made clear that the field of linguistic landscape studies is valuable for the analysis of multilingualism. The method of collecting a large database of photographs of signs has become typical for linguistic landscape studies taking a quantitative approach, following the examples of Backhaus (2006; 2007), Ben-Rafael et al. (2006), and Cenoz/Gorter (2006). This type of study provides additional information about a specific sociolinguistic situation, and in that sense the method is comparable to a population census, a language survey, or a questionnaire. Several researchers have adopted this quantitative-distributive approach in their studies of linguistic landscapes, among others Coluzzi (2009), Edelman (2006), Gorter (2009), Lado (2011), Muth (2012), Lai (2013) Lyons/Rodriguez (2017) and Amos/Soukup (2020). Some of their outcomes in different urban contexts can be briefly summarized here. Coluzzi (2009) followed the methodology of Cenoz/Gorter (2006) while he investigated the linguistic landscape in Milan and Udine, two Northern Italian cities. He recorded signs in two central streets of a similar length, but did not include the central shopping areas to avoid the influence of the presence of tourists. For the analysis, he only included multilingual signs or signs where the local language was present, the other signs were counted as monolingual Italian (or English). He found that most of the signs were in Italian with a small presence of English and other foreign languages. The local minority languages, Milanese and Friulian, had a minor presence, mainly in some stickers. In his conclusions, he mentioned that “the Italian linguistic landscape is basically monolingual with a moderate presence of English”, and that “in most cases local languages in Italy lack visibility, while the languages of immigrants share only a limited part of the linguistic landscape” (Coluzzi 2009, 306, 311). In the framework of a large European project on “Sustainable Diversity in a Diverse World” (SUS.DIV), we also carried out a study in Italy, where we investigated the linguistic landscape of Rome (Gorter 2009). To reflect some degree of multi-ethnic and multi-cultural diversity in this city, a corpus of 1,365 signs from four neighbourhoods in the centre was collected. A total of 18 different languages was found, with Italian as the clearly dominating language (around 70 % of all signs contained Italian). English was used more often in tourist areas, on almost 25 % of all signs (including a combination with Italian and/or other languages). Furthermore, in the neighborhood of Esquilino (near the central station), where many immigrants live, more signs were in Chi 

 

 

 

226

Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz

nese or Indic languages, such as Bengali or Hindi (around 10 % each). The study could demonstrate that the linguistic landscape can be an important additional tool to map linguistic diversity in an urban context. Around the same time, Barni (2006) also studied the presence of immigrant languages in the signage of the Esquilino neighborhood in Rome. With great cartographic detail, she mapped exactly where on which street which languages were used on the signs. In that way, she could show the different symbolic strengths of immigrant languages in a complex urban linguistic landscape. Due to changes in the local policy which were aimed at reducing the number of signs in Chinese only (Bracalenti/Ferrer/Valente 2009), the linguistic landscape of this neighborhood underwent an important change toward more bilingual signs (Barni/Vedovelli 2012). Edelman (2006) carried out a large linguistic landscape study for her PhD in Amsterdam and Friesland, the Netherlands. In a pilot study she analyzed the linguistic landscape of Amsterdam’s main shopping street, Kalverstraat (Edelman 2006). In this context tourism and globalization are important factors that promote the use of English. An analysis of almost 300 signs in this street showed that 11 languages, mainly European, were used. Most of the signs were monolingual while almost a quarter of the signs contained more than one language. On most of the multilingual signs, the information given in the different languages was complementary. Both on monolingual and on multilingual signs, Dutch and English played the most important role, and their presence was about equal. Compared to findings in central shopping streets of other European cities, the proportion of English in Kalverstraat seems strikingly large. Later Edelman extended her study to include five shopping centres in Amsterdam and three shopping streets in three towns in Friesland. She found that the relative numbers of immigrants in some neighborhoods in Amsterdam left their traces in the linguistic landscape, although the presence of immigrant minority languages is relatively small. In Friesland, there is a difference between more urban and more rural municipalities both in the percentage of speakers of Frisian and in the presence of Frisian as a minority language (Edelman 2010). Thus, the linguistic landscape as such is only a limited reflection of the languages spoken in the respective communities (see also Edelman 2014; Edelman/Gorter 2010). Lado (2011) collected 248 signs in two commercial streets of two urban sites, Valencia and Gandia in the autonomous community of Valencia, Spain. Here Catalan, or by its local name Valencian, is the co-official language along with Spanish. The language policy promoting the regional minority language is framed by an ideological debate over claims whether Valencian and Catalan are two different languages, which creates ambiguity towards the languages in the community. Lado’s data uncovered that unlike the Basque Country (Cenoz/Gorter 2006), in the Valencian Community, the top-down language policy did not have any effect on the bottom-up signs due to the ambiguous point of view of the government (Lado 2011). Muth (2012) collected his data in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, and Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. He included 1,309 items from four districts in Chisinau and  

Linguistic Landscapes

227

808 items from also four districts in Vilnius. In the city of Chisinau three languages clearly dominated the public space: Romanian as the official language, Russian as minority language and English as global language. Other minority languages such as Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Gagauz were not found, except for a few restaurants that used some Gagauz. In the city of Vilnius Lithuanian and English emerged as the most frequently used languages, and Russian and the other minority language Polish were practically not used. For this reason, there were remarkable differences in the representation of the minority languages in the linguistic landscape of both cities, where the number of speakers of minority languages in both cities is fairly similar (around 30 %). These differences have their origins in historical and political reasons related to the Soviet Russian period. Lai (2013) investigated the linguistic landscape of Hong Kong where English is one of the two official languages next to Chinese. She studied four areas of the city and collected 1,160 signs. Just over half of those were monolingual, mostly in Chinese or English, whereas just under half were bilingual, almost all Chinese-English. Less than 2 % of the signs had three or more languages, including Japanese, French or Korean. In terms of the relative importance of languages in terms of placement and size of fonts, Lai (2013) concluded that Chinese is more prominent in the Hong Kong linguistic landscape. Overall, Hong Kong continues to display a highly bilingual profile of Chinese and English. Collaborating in an interdisciplinary team with economists, we used our linguistic landscape data to develop an innovative methodology for exploring the usage of econometric models in order to analyze the public signage as an example of linguistic diversity, and to look into the use and non-use values of the signs (Cenoz/Gorter 2009; Nunes et al. 2008; Onofri et al. 2013). In one study, we applied the Contingent Valuation Method as used in environmental economics to an allocation scenario in which persons were asked during street interviews to answer standardized questionnaires about the linguistic landscape. One research question concerned preference structures (What languages do the interviewees prefer?), and another question was about priorities (How much is it/are they worth to them?) (Aiestaran/Cenoz/Gorter 2010). It turned out that both Basque and Spanish speakers agree in their preference for bilingual and multilingual signs over monolingual signs. In terms of economic value, Basque speakers were ready to pay a higher amount for their preferred way of having the signage than Spanish speakers. Coupland/Garrett (2010, 12) were rather critical of quantitative studies of linguistic landscapes and want them to “move beyond descriptivist and distributional approaches” and “be more sensitive to historical processes and contexts, as well as to textual nuances”. They argued that a merely quantitative approach “tends to sacrifice local contextual detail for ‘big-picture’ distributional trends” (Coupland/Garrett 2010, 13), and they hold a plea for qualitative approaches that can ask different questions. For example, they want to carry out analyses in terms of different meanings and value-systems that bring forth a profile of linguistic landscapes, and of the meanings  

 

228

Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz

that people take from the linguistic landscape. In fact, several quantitative studies also provide great sensitivity to historical developments and local social contexts. Lyons/Rodriguez (2017) take a variationist sociolinguistic approach in their analysis of the linguistic landscape of the gentrified neighborhood of Pilsen in Chicago. They collected 425 signs in five different areas, but they excluded smaller signs such as stickers as well as official government signs and street names. They categorized the signs into frames such as familial, established, recent immigrants, and alternative and through sophisticated statistical analysis they found differences between frames of Spanish and English as languages represented in different parts of the neighborhood. Amos/Soukup (2020) address some of the challenges of a quantitative approach where all signage in a given area is recorded in order to compile a corpus from which general trends and unusual occurrences may be drawn. They use examples from existing large corpora (>15,000 items) collected in various cities in France and Austria and they propose to develop a standard quantitative linguistic landscape methodology. Looking into numerical distribution does not prevent researchers from having an eye for the details or the meaning of specific signs. Both types of approaches, quantitative and qualitative, are necessary and valuable in linguistic landscape studies. In the next section, we will discuss more qualitative approaches and thereafter some studies that explicitly combine them.

2.2 Qualitative approaches A qualitative approach was used in one of our publications (Cenoz/Gorter 2008) where we explored possible relationships between second language acquisition (SLA) and languages on signs. With examples of signs from Donostia-San Sebastián we showed that bilingual and multilingual signs can be “authentic, contextualized input which is part of the social context” (Cenoz/Gorter 2008, 274), and we suggested that they may play a role in the acquisition of pragmatic competence and literacy skills of second language learners of Basque. For those learners signage can function as an additional source of language input. At the same time, English is also present in the linguistic landscape along with other languages in multilingual and multimodal texts, including symbols and icons. There are single words, short chunks, formulae, standard phrases, brand names, and utterances in English in particular on commercial signs. For us the signage often displayed soft boundaries between English and other languages and between different modes (Cenoz/Gorter 2008).

Linguistic Landscapes

229

Fig. 3: Commercial sign: Authentic contextualized input (Cenoz/Gorter 2008).

A general qualitative approach for studies of signage in the linguistic landscape was developed by Scollon/Scollon (2003) in their monograph on ‘geosemiotics’. Their work is more closely related to semiotics in general, and their aim is to analyze the meaning of signs by looking at their emplacement in their social and cultural context. Geosemiotics is defined as “the study of social meaning of the material placement of signs and discourses and of our actions in the material world” (Scollon/Scollon 2003, 2). According to them, we can only interpret the meaning of public texts like road signs, notices, and brand logos by considering the social and physical world that surrounds them. General principles of layout, how and where signs are placed, give signs their meaning. Geopolitical location refers to how languages on a sign index the community in which they are used, and sociocultural associations symbolize an aspect that is not related to the place where the sign is located (Scollon/Scollon 2003). Thus, an English sign may index an English-speaking community, but the same sign can also symbolize foreign taste and manners. Their work is theoretically rich and demonstrates that linguistic landscapes can profit from in-depth qualitative analyses of individual signs. The geosemiotic approach of Scollon/Scollon was the framework for the study by Lou (2007; 2016) about shop signs in Chinatown, Washington, D.C. During her ethnographic fieldwork, she not only looked at signs, but also observed community meetings and held interviews with neighborhood residents. Through geosemiotic analysis she uncovered the nuances between the Chinese signage adopted by the non-Chinese stores and those of the Chinese stores. She concluded that “through diachronic comparison with historic photographs of Chinatown more than a century ago and synchronic comparison between Chinese and non-Chinese stores, their nuances as well as similarities can be discerned” (Lou 2007, 191). Stroud/Mpendukana (2009) also took a qualitative approach in which they stressed the importance of multilingual mobility and of multimodal representations.

230

Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz

They demonstrated how multilingual and multimodal resources of signage are linked, and they argued for a more refined notion of space based on a material ethnography of multilingualism. Their analysis suggested “an approach to linguistic landscapes in terms of a sociolinguistics of multilingual mobility rather than linguistic localization” (Stroud/Mpendukana 2009, 381). When they analyzed signage in a township in South Africa and how languages are differently organized there, they drew on Bourdieu by introducing the concepts of sites of necessity (which display ordinary, daily products) and sites of luxury (where expensive products are advertised). In a later publication, they called them signs of ‘low’ and ‘high’ investment (Stroud/Mpendukana 2012). They also recognized that such distinctions are more and more erased and dispersed, and thus in sites of implosion signage is common that consists of blended forms, hybrids, linguistic fragments, and turns of phrase. Lanza/Woldemariam (2013) used these ideas to analyze brand names and English in sites of luxury in the linguistic landscape of Addis Ababa, where the use of English and international brand names have a high value and serve to index identities associated with distinction, luxury, and modernity (Lanza/Woldemariam 2013). The ideas of Stroud/Mpendukana on a material ethnography of linguistic landscapes are central to the approach to linguistic landscape studies developed by Blommaert (2013). He studied social change, complexity, and superdiversity in his own neighborhood of Berchem in the city of Antwerp, Belgium. He further took geosemiotics as a second central point of departure. As Blommaert (2013, 41) stated, according to GS [geosemiotics], a better comprehension of the socio-cultural meaning of language material requires ethnographic understanding rather than numbers, and that signs are necessarily addressed as multimodal objects rather than as linguistic ones.

Based on these two premises, Blommaert (2013) provided a fascinating account of how multilingual signs in the linguistic landscape can be read as telling the history of social change. Blommaert acknowledged the importance of counting signs in a quantitative approach, and he did some of it himself (Blommaert 2013), but according to him “by introducing qualitative distinctions between signs […] we can make the move from counting languages to understanding how they can inform us about social structure” (Blommaert 2013, 64). He provided a strong case for linguistic landscape studies as ethnography, microscopic, and detailed investigations, in order to “bring out its full descriptive and explanatory potential” (Blommaert 2013, 16). He is even more ambitious and wants to move to a more general goal because work on linguistic landscapes “can make the whole of sociolinguistics better, more useful, more comprehensive and more persuasive, and […] offer[s] some relevant things to other disciplines in addition.” (Blommaert 2013, 4). Later Blommaert/Maly (2016) developed the Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Approach (ELLA). Using this qualitative approach based on the signage these researchers diagnosed the Rabot neighborhood in Ghent, Belgium and they created a detailed analysis of the population distributions and historical demographic layers. They distinguished between established and more recent

Linguistic Landscapes

231

groups of inhabitants and also relationships between different groups. Qualitative aspects of neighborhood signage can illustrate the ambitions and identities of various groups undergoing social change in such superdiverse neighbourhoods. Authors like Moriarty (2013) and Milani (2013) have recently expressed the view that studies of linguistic landscapes shift entirely towards qualitative approaches. They seem to believe that the field has taken a qualitative turn in contrast to how studies were carried out before (Moriarty 2013; Milani 2013). However, their observations do not seem to be in agreement with all the continuing stream of publications where a quantitative approach is applied or where both quantitative and qualitative approaches are combined (see also Gorter 2019).

2.3 Mixed methods approach Mitchell (2010) is an excellent example of the successful application of combined methods (triangulation). His study was about a neighborhood in Pittsburgh, USA. He combined the discourse analysis of a newspaper report that contained metaphors of invasion and flood and a discourse of fear about Latino immigrants with a quantitative investigation of signage in the linguistic landscape and with the languages he overheard spoken in the street. The outcome was an overwhelmingly monolingual linguistic landscape (96.5 % English only signs) and a similar soundscape (80.7 % of the people overheard spoke English). Also, Papen (2012) in her study of the trendy and expensive neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin used a combined methods approach. She sampled signs of a block of six streets leading to a central square by taking detailed notes of all signs as well as numerous photos. She also carried out 25 semi-structured interviews with sign producers, such as shop owners, activists and street artists, who enabled her to “identify and analyse some of the different voices present in the linguistic landscape” (Papen 2012, 77). Her results contained an analysis of individual signs intertwined with comments by its producers/owners. She demonstrated that the linguistic landscape “is part of what makes the neighbourhood fashionable and attractive” (Papen 2012, 75).  

 

3 Recurring themes In linguistic landscape studies there are a number of themes that come back many times. Among those recurring themes are English as a global language (section 3.1), language policy as a means to regulate the linguistic landscape (section 3.2), minority languages used in writing in public space (section 3.3) and signage in an educational context (section 3.4).

232

Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz

3.1 English as a global language English can be observed in almost any linguistic landscape worldwide, at least in commercial signage. As we stated in one of our publications, “the omnipresence of English in linguistic landscapes is one of the most obvious markers of the process of globalization” (Cenoz/Gorter 2009, 57). Researchers of linguistic landscapes around the globe have focused their attention on the spread and use of English. In the sections above we already saw that many studies mentioned in one way or the other the importance of English in public signage. Rosenbaum et al. (1977) found a strong presence of English in one street in Jerusalem they studied; this was confirmed by Ben Rafael et al. (2006) in their study of different neighborhoods in Israel. In our own comparative study of the Basque Country and Friesland we emphasized the usage of English on the signs in addition to the bilingualism of the majority and the minority language (Cenoz/Gorter 2006). Studies of the dissemination of English on shop signs and in other public spaces have been carried out in several cities or countries, among others in Milan (Ross 1997), Bulgaria (Griffin 2001), Tokyo (MacGregor 2003), Rome (Griffin 2004), Macedonia (Dimova 2007), Portugal (Stewart/Fawcett 2004), Cape Town and Delhi (McCormick/Agnihotri 2009), Singapore (Ong/Ghesquière/Serwe 2013), Zurich and Uppsala (McArthur 2000), and extended by Schlick (2002) with Klagenfurt, Udine and Ljubljana. In all those cases English had an important presence, even though with variations. Dowling (2012) pointed to the dominance of English in Cape Town, a city which gives visitors the impression of being situated in a monolingual English country, even if South Africa is officially a multilingual state with eleven recognized languages. Later the signage at most gives you “fragments of the Xhosa language as if it were an interesting fossil or a quaint ethnic artefact” (Dowling 2012, 245). Bruyél-Olmedo/Juan-Garau (2013) noticed that despite their discovery of 21 different mother tongues among their 400 respondents, the linguistic landscape in the two research sites on the tourist island of Mallorca is largely dominated by four main languages. English came out as most frequent, as it is used on 72.1 % of the signs included in their sample (N=736), on its own or in combination with one or more languages. Spanish came second with 48.9 %, followed by German (27.5 %) and Catalan (15.2 %). The presence of these languages and the differences among them came about due to the different roles the languages play for locals and tourists. Similarly, Laitinen (2014) showed that English has a high visibility in public spaces in Finland, not only in urban by also in rural areas far away from tourist destinations. The journal World Englishes published a special issue on linguistic landscape. In the introduction Bolton (2012, 32) argues that “the broader implication of linguistic/semiotic landscapes is to point towards new directions in world Englishes research”, because English on signage is in contact and in conflict with other languages.  

 

 

 

Linguistic Landscapes

233

Fig. 4: Four main languages in the linguistic landscape of Mallorca (Photo: Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz).

3.2 Language policy Shohamy (2006, 112) conceives of “linguistic landscape as a mechanism of language policy”. In her view, linguistic landscape is part of the agenda of language policy studies, despite the fact that researchers did not consider it in earlier studies. Our studies in the city of Donostia-San Sebastián confirm that language policy studies can no longer neglect the linguistic landscape as an important element. More attention for the linguistic landscape could imply a visual turn in language policy studies (Gorter/ Aiestaran/Cenoz 2012). The language policy at regional and local levels in the Basque Country is committed to revitalizing the minority language Basque. A robust policy has been developed that aims at the revival of the Basque language. This policy is combined with substantial economic investments and a lot of human effort, social activism, and enthusiasm. The language policy has had an important impact on the educational system and on the demand for Basque in society in general (Gorter et al. 2014). One of the important challenges that remain is to increase the oral use of Basque. Today the Basque Country is a multilingual society with Basque and Spanish as the official languages that have different and partially overlapping functions, alongside with English on a much smaller scale and a number of other languages spoken by migrants or used by and for tourists and other visitors. In relative terms, the language policy to protect and promote Basque is strong and substantial, and probably no other European minority language, with the exception of Catalan, has so much economic support. The policy is based on the principle of equality of both official languages, which translates into the aim for the linguistic landscape to have a strong presence of Basque and Spanish in both official governmental signage and supporting the private

234

Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz

use of the minority language, also by means of grants (Gorter/Cenoz 2011). Our studies have taken place predominately in the city of Donostia-San Sebastián, which has a similar local language policy to strengthen the use of Basque, also in public signage (Gorter/Aiestaran/Cenoz 2012). The main concern is the recuperation of Basque, and the policy wants to provide an equal place to both languages on public signs (and in other domains). Street signs are an important part of the policy because they are put up by the local authorities themselves. The most visible outcome of the language policy was, in 2009, the replacement of all street name signs in the city, with a preferred option to use Basque only. This contrasted with the former strictly bilingual policy. The result was a new pattern in which “the minority language is no longer placed on equal footing with the majority language, but it is given preference where possible” (Gorter/Aiestaran/Cenoz 2012, 159). The attitude of the population is largely positive towards multilingualism as a characteristic of the linguistic landscape (Aiestaran/ Cenoz/Gorter 2010).

Fig. 5: Replacement of street name signs in Donostia-San Sebastián (Photo: Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz).

Numerous other researchers have taken a language policy perspective as their point of departure for the study of linguistic landscapes. Spolsky (2009b) introduced a language policy model that has three components: language beliefs, language practices, and language management. The linguistic landscape is considered a part of the language practices in a community. According to this theoretical framework, the practices reflect certain beliefs (or ideologies) and, in most cases, originate from deliberate acts from language policy makers. Language management includes not only explicit regulations coming from the government, but also implicit forms of language policy, such as those present in education or propaganda. Spolsky argued that a language

Linguistic Landscapes

235

policy can be well analyzed through public signs that display actual language use. The ideas of Spolsky on language management have inspired various studies, such as for example Yanguas (2009) who studied the linguistic landscape of Hispanic neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., Van Mensel/Darquennes (2012) who analyzed developments in the German speaking area in Belgium or Anuarudin/Heng/Abdullah (2013) who studied language use on billboards in Malaysia. Shohamy (2006) continued along the same lines of reasoning as Spolsky and referred to the linguistic landscape as a public arena where language battles take place, and where the choice of languages can establish domination of space. Shohamy (2006, 129) stated that “the public space is […] a most central relevant area to serve as a mechanism for creating de facto language policy”. Linguistic landscape items are mechanisms of language policy that can perpetuate ideologies and enhance the status of certain languages and not others. A clear example is the contestation of language as it is made apparent in the painting over of signs or parts of signs in a so-called ‘wrong’ language. That is an activity which is well known among several minority language groups (Gorter/Aiestaran/Cenoz 2012). Puzey (2012) used the ideas by Spolsky and Shohamy to analyze authorship processes and showed how complex and multifaceted those can be, in particular as topdown authorities are caught in the interplay of state nationalism, technocracy, and language politics. For Puzey (2012) the relationship between linguistic landscape and the sociolinguistic situation is bidirectional because it can reflect the political circumstances of a language, but it can also influence a language policy (see also Hult 2018).

3.3 Minority languages One of our first studies had linguistic landscapes and minority languages explicitly in their title (Cenoz/Gorter 2006). It focused on the presence (and absence) of Basque and Frisian as unique European minority languages in public signage in the cities of Donostia-San Sebastián and Ljouwert-Leeuwarden (in Friesland, the Netherlands). One main difference between Basque and Frisian is that Basque is also spoken by a minority of the inhabitants in its own area, whereas Frisian is a minority in the Netherlands but (still) spoken by a majority of the population of the province of Friesland, the area where it is spoken. This is a trait it shares with some other European minority languages (Extra/ Gorter 2007). In the Basque Country there are also some areas where a majority of the population speaks Basque, mainly in small towns and villages in the province of Gipuzkoa, but only about one third of the inhabitants of the city of Donostia-San Sebastián, the capital of Gipuzkoa, are Basque speakers. Most of our studies have thus taken place in this context where the minority language Basque plays an important part. In a quantitative approach to the signs in the linguistic landscape it might be hypothesized that the number of speakers in a community is reflected in the number of signs in the language of those speakers. Such a reflection thesis could not be con-

236

Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz

firmed by our studies. Quite the opposite, the number or the percentage of speakers does not seem to be a significant factor for the number of signs in the minority language, in our case Basque. Other factors, such as the strength of the language policy, public support, literacy, or economic incentives seem to play a more important role and to have a greater impact. At the same time, however, the public signage can be an important indicator of the symbolic value attached to a minority language. Even if Basque has a relatively strong presence in the linguistic landscape of Donostia-San Sebastián (Cenoz/Gorter 2006), and even if that presence is supported by its inhabitants (Aiestaran/Cenoz/Gorter 2010), in many ways the linguistic landscape also indicates that Basque is in a minority position and that Spanish is the majority language. The symbolic function of the use of a minority language came strongly to the foreground in a study by Puzey (2011), who carried out a comparative study of the politics of language in Italy, Norway, and Scotland as reflected in the placement of signs in minority languages. In particular, he investigated place-names on road signs in the Sámi and Kven languages in Norway, in the Gaelic language in Scotland, and in the local dialects of Varese and Milano in the North of Italy. In one case, he found that the part on a road sign written in Sámi was destroyed at least five times by being shot at using firearms due to ‘disagreement’ between the minority and the majority (Puzey 2011). Thus, place-names not only have a referential function to a location, but they can also be hotly debated and contested. It can be even more telling which languages are not used. Such an absence of a language was studied by Marten (2012) in the region of Latgale in Eastern Latvia. There the regional language Latgalian is spoken, but the centralist state ideology towards Latgalian denies it access to the linguistic landscape. The official regulations regarding public signage stipulate the use of the state language Latvian only, although on private signs other languages are tolerated next to Latvian. In a survey of 830 signs in the town of Rezekne, Latvian had a presence of 86.4 % and English 28.9 %, whereas less than 1 % was found to contain the minority language Latgalian (Marten 2012), and thus the language is almost completely absent on public signage. Visibility or non-visibility is an important issue for minority languages that may vary on a continuum from being completely ignored, as in the case of Latgalian, to a full-fledged revitalization policy as for Basque. The variety in situations was also demonstrated in a collection of 20 case studies of European minority languages in the linguistic landscape (see Gorter/Aiestaran/Cenoz 2012). In our reflections on the importance of linguistic landscape studies for minority languages, we observed that “being visible may be as important for minority languages as being heard” (Marten/ Van Mensel/Gorter 2012, 1). We also showed that researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds do identify benefits of the linguistic landscape studies to deepen understanding of different types of minority language situations. The dimensions of power and co-existence in a place are important. However, the presence of minority languages usually is no threat to the majority language. For example, Blackwood (2010) compared the minority languages Breton and Corsican in the linguistic land 

 

 

Linguistic Landscapes

237

scape, and he concluded that the dominant position of the majority language French is not seriously challenged by any of the minority languages in France. His conclusion would probably hold for most minority languages around the world (see also Gorter/ Marten/Van Mensel 2019).

3.4 Education Studies of the linguistic landscape in educational contexts are an area which has received some attention by a number of scholars. In a recent study we explored the linguistic landscapes of primary and secondary schools in the Basque Country (Gorter/ Cenoz 2015). We conceptualized the linguistic landscape as a web of significance where languages are used in different ways conveying different meanings, and are used with different aims in mind. The linguistic landscape of the educational sphere has characteristics that are not the same as the ones of public space. For example, there are differences in the degree of monolingualism and multilingualism of signage. Also, the production of signs is often less professional because many signs are made by the students themselves.

Fig. 6: Signs displayed in primary schools in the Basque Country (Photo: Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz).

Another interesting example of the application of a linguistic landscape approach can be encountered in the study by Brown (2012). She studied the regional language Võru, spoken in an area in the south of Estonia. The re-emergence of this language was studied by means of signage in schools. Based on anthropological fieldwork she identified the regional language as enriching national culture, but at the same time as an historical artefact. She analyzed these two central themes in what she called “school spaces” using the signs encountered in the linguistic landscape inside the schools (Brown 2012, 282). The linguistic landscape can also provide a way to teach about literacy and language awareness. In the Canadian cities of Vancouver and Montreal, Dagenais et

238

Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz

al. (2009) documented the literacy practices of elementary school children. They made the children examine multilingualism and language diversity in their communities by giving them disposable cameras and tell them to photograph their surroundings. For the children, their cities can be viewed as “dense with signs that must be deciphered, read, and interpreted” (Dagenais et al. 2009, 255). They demonstrated that attention to the linguistic landscape in an educational context can be a promising way to teach about language awareness and literacy practices. Following the Canadian example Clemente/Andrade/Martins (2012, 267) applied a similar didactic strategy in a Portuguese primary school in a project called “learning to read the world, learning to read the linguistic landscape” (see also Santos/Pinto 2019). Also, university students can profit from working with the linguistic landscape. Lazdina/Marten (2009) reported on a study in the Baltic States in which they demonstrated some advantages of linguistic landscape methods for educational purposes among university students; in particular, in order to create awareness of multilingualism and a better understanding of hierarchies of language use and prestige. From our own experiences, we can confirm Lazdina/Marten (2009, 212) who describe the linguistic landscape as “an easy and enjoyable way of involving students into field work”. The support of literacy skills of signage for language learners was also demonstrated by Rowland (2013), who asked Japanese university students to answer the question, “How and why is English used on signs in Japan?” They were given one week to collect as many photos as they could. In this way Rowland could corroborate the claims that language learners can benefit from the linguistic landscape, in particular from authentic, contextualized multilingual input (Rowland 2013). Nowadays many people own a digital camera, which can help a teacher to give students an assignment on linguistic landscape in a course on sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, or a course of English as a foreign language (Gorter 2018).

4 Conclusion Evidently, the field of linguistic landscape studies as a whole is built on different theoretical assumptions. Over the years, numerous theoretical ideas have been applied in linguistic landscape studies, and each has contributed valuable insights to the use of different languages in signage. Many of those theoretical reflections can be found, among others, in the edited volumes of Ben-Rafael/Shohamy/Barni (2010), Blackwood/Lanza/Woldemariam (2016), Hélot et al. (2012) Jaworski/Thurlow (2010), Malinowski/Tufi (2020), Pütz/Mundt (2019), or Shohamy/Gorter (2009). The field continues to develop in different directions without any theoretical framework or methodological approach being dominant. For us, the linguistic landscape is a workplace for conducting scientific research on issues of multilingualism, minority languages, and policies in the city of Donos-

Linguistic Landscapes

239

tia-San Sebastián. This urban centre resembles a laboratory in as much that it offers opportunities for observation, practice, and experimentation. The public space functions as an additional data resource to obtain further knowledge about language diversity and multilingual processes. The placement of the different languages on the signs is not coincidental but planned. Every sign has a meaning and is always designed with future readers in mind. The way languages are displayed and their placement in the public space are not random. It is obvious that the overall impression that such a complexity of language use gives of a street, a neighborhood, or a city can vary when you move from the individual sign to a consideration of the entire visual field. After all, our impression of an area is not limited to one individual sign or even a series of signs, but to the broader visual space because we also observe how the signs fit into the environment (Gorter 2021). The field of linguistic landscape studies has undergone a rapid development over the past years, but it is still in the early stages of theoretical and methodological developments. Of course, this cannot be an excuse for researchers to insufficiently follow accepted methodological practices, and they should aim to make studies replicable and results verifiable by other researchers (Gorter 2019). In several publications thus far, there seems to be a need for a more rigorous approach. It seems obvious that linguistic landscape studies can result in important reflections on some of the core issues of applied linguistics and sociolinguistics (Blommaert 2013). Diversity in approaches and heterogeneity of disciplinary backgrounds of researchers probably remain an intrinsic trait of the field of linguistic landscape studies, but they can call into question the basic concept of language per se, or lead to innovative ideas about English as a global language, the analysis of language policy, of minority languages, or multilingual education.

5 References Aiestaran, Jokin/Jasone Cenoz/Durk Gorter (2010): Multilingual cityscapes: Perceptions and preferences of the inhabitants of Donostia-San Sebastián. In: Elana Shohamy/Eliezer Ben-Rafael/ Monica Barni (eds.): Linguistic Landscape in the City. Bristol, 219–234. Amos, William H./Barbara Soukup (2020): Quantitative 2.0: Toward variationist linguistic landscape study (VaLLS) and a standard canon of LL variables. In: David Malinowski/Stefania Tufi (eds.): Reterritorializing Linguistic Landscapes: Questioning Boundaries and Opening Spaces. London. Anuarudin, Aini S.A./Chan Swee Heng/Ain N. Abdullah (2013): Exploring multilingual practices in billboard advertisements in a linguistic landscape. In: Social Sciences & Humanities 21, 783–796. Backhaus, Peter (2006): Multilingualism in Tokyo: A look into the linguistic landscape. In: International Journal of Multilingualism 3, 52–66. Backhaus, Peter (2007): Linguistic Landscapes: A Comparative Study of Urban Multilingualism in Tokyo. Clevedon.

240

Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz

Backhaus, Peter (2010): Multilingualism in Japanese public space: Reading the signs. In: Japanese Studies 30, 359–372. Barni, Monica (2006): From statistical to geolinguistic data: Mapping and measuring linguistic diversity. In: Nota di lavoro 53, Milan: FEEM. Online at: http://www.feem.it/NR/rdonlyres/ E84B10B4-E739-49AF-B535-9316BF38D1F1/1944/5306.pdf. . Barni, Monica/Massimo Vedovelli (2012): Linguistic landscape and language policies. In: Christine Hélot/Monica Barni/Rudi Janssens/Carla Bagna (eds.): Linguistic Landscapes, Multilingualism and Social Change. Frankfurt, 27–38. Ben-Rafael, Eliezer (2009): A sociological approach to the study of linguistic landscapes. In: Elana Shohamy/Durk Gorter (eds.): Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. New York, 40–54. Ben-Rafael, Eliezer/Elana Goldberg Shohamy/Muhammad Amara/Nira Trumer/Merkaz Tami Shtainmets le-mehkere shalom (1998): Linguistic Landscape and Multiculturalism: A Jewish-Arab Comparative Study. Unpublished manuscript, Tel Aviv University, Israel. Ben-Rafael, Eliezer/Elana Shohamy/Muhammad Hasan Amara/Nira Trumper-Hecht (2006): Linguistic landscape as symbolic construction of the public space: The case of Israel. In: Durk Gorter (ed.): Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism. Clevedon, 7–30. Ben-Rafael, Eliezer/Elana Shohamy/Monica Barni (2010): Introduction: An approach to an ‘ordered disorder’. In: Elana Shohamy/Eliezer Ben-Rafael/Monica Barni (eds.): Linguistic Landscape in the City. Bristol, xi–xxviii. Blackwood, Robert J. (2010): The linguistic landscape of Brittany and Corsica: A comparative study of the presence of France’s regional languages in the public space. In: Journal of French Language Studies 21, 111–130. Blackwood, Robert/Elizabeth Lanza/Hirut Woldemariam (eds.) (2016): Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes. London. Blommaert, Jan (2013): Ethnography, Superdiversity, and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity. Bristol. Blommaert, Jan/Ico Maly (2016): Ethnographic linguistic landscape analysis and social change: A case study. In: Karel Arnaut/Jan Blommaert/Ben Rampton/Massimiliano Spotti (eds.): Language and Superdiversity. London, 191–211. Bolton, Kingsley (2012): World Englishes and linguistic landscapes. In: World Englishes 31, 30–33. Bourdieu, Pierre (1993): The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. New York. Bracalenti, Raffaele/Catia Isabel Santonico Ferrer/Carla Valente (2009): Case study: The memorandum of understanding between the city of Rome and the Chinese community signed in May 2007. In: Raffaele Bracalenti/Catia Isabel Santonico Ferrer/Carla Valente (eds.): Roma multietnica (i cambiamenti nel panorama linguistico/Changes in the Linguistic Landscape). Rome, 59–122. Brown, Kara D. (2012): The linguistic landscape of educational spaces: Language revitalization and schools in South eastern Estonia. In: Durk Gorter/Heiko F. Marten/Luk Van Mensel (eds.): Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape. Basingstoke, 281–298. Bruyèl-Olmedo, Antonio/Maria Juan-Garau (2013): Shaping tourist LL: Language display and the sociolinguistic background of an international multilingual readership. In: International Journal of Multilingualism, 12, 1–17. Calvet, Luis J. (1990): Des mots sur les murs. Une comparaison entre Paris et Dakar [The words on the walls. A comparison between Paris and Dakar]. In: Robert Chaudenson (ed.): Des langues et des villes (Actes du colloque international à Dakar, du 15 au 17 décembre 1990). Paris, 73–83. Cenoz, Jasone/Durk Gorter (2003): The linguistic landscape of Erregezainen/Escolta Real. Paper presented at the Third Conference on Third Language Acquisition and Trilingualism, September 2003, Tralee, Ireland.

Linguistic Landscapes

241

Cenoz, Jasone/Durk Gorter (2006): Linguistic landscape and minority languages. In: Durk Gorter (ed.): Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism. Clevedon, 67–80. Cenoz, Jasone/Durk Gorter (2008): Linguistic landscape as an additional source of input in second language acquisition. In: IRAL – International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 46, 257–276. Cenoz, Jasone/Durk Gorter (2009): Language economy and linguistic landscape. In: Elana Shohamy/ Durk Gorter (eds.): Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. New York, 55–69. Clemente, Mariana/Ana Isabel Andrade/Filomena Martins (2012): Learning to read the world, learning to look at the linguistic landscape: A primary school study. In: Christine Hélot/Monica Barni/ Rudi Janssens/Carla Bagna (eds.): Linguistic Landscapes, Multilingualism and Social Change. Frankfurt, 267–285. Coluzzi, Paolo (2009): The Italian linguistic landscape: The cases of Milan and Udine. In: International Journal of Multilingualism 6, 298–312. Coulmas, Florian (2009): Linguistic landscaping and the seed of the public sphere. In: Elana Shohamy/Durk Gorter (eds.): Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. New York, 13–24. Coupland, Nikolas/Peter Garrett (2010): Linguistic landscapes, discursive frames and metacultural performance: The case of Welsh Patagonia. In: International Journal of the Sociology of Language 205, 7–36. Dagenais, Diane/Danièle Moore/Cecile Sabatier Bullock/Patricia Lamarre/Françoise Armand (2009): Linguistic landscape and language awareness. In: Elana Shohamy/Durk Gorter (eds.): Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. New York, 253–269. Dimova, Slobodanka (2007): English shop signs in Macedonia. In: English Today 23, 18–24. Dowling, Tessa (2012): Translated for the dogs: Language use in Cape Town signage. In: Language Matters 43, 240–262. Edelman, Loulou (2006): The linguistic landscape of Kalverstraat: A pilot study. In: Tom Koole/ Jacomine Nortier/Bert Tahitu (eds.): Artikelen van de vijfde sociolinguïstische conferentie. Delft, 148–155. Edelman, Loulou (2010): Linguistic landscapes in the Netherlands: A study of multilingualism in Amsterdam and Friesland. Dissertation, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Edelman, Loulou (2014): The presence of minority languages in linguistic landscapes in Amsterdam and Friesland (the Netherlands). In: International Journal of the Sociology of Language 228, 7–28. Edelman, Loulou/Durk Gorter (2010): Linguistic landscapes and the market. In: Helen Kelly-Holmes/ Gerlinde Mautner (eds.): Language and the Market. London, 96–108. Extra, Guus/Durk Gorter (2007): Regional and immigrant minority languages in Europe. In: Marlis Hellinger/Anne Pauwels (eds.): Language and Communication: Diversity and Change (Handbooks of Applied Linguistics, Vol 9, Part 1). Berlin, 15–52. Foust, Elisha/Sophie Fuggle (eds.) (2011): Word on the Street: Reading, Writing and Inhabiting Public Space. London. Goffman, Erving (1981): Forms of Talk. Philadelphia. Gorter, Durk (ed.) (2006): Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism. Clevedon. Gorter, Durk (2009): The linguistic landscape in Rome: Aspects of multilingualism and diversity. In: Raffaele Bracalenti/Giulio Cederna/Giovanni Piperno (eds.): Roma multietnica (i cambiamenti nel panorama linguistico/Changes in the Linguistic Landscape). Rome, 15–55. Gorter, Durk (2013): Linguistic landscapes in a multilingual world. In: ARAL – Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 33, 190–212. Gorter, Durk (2018): Linguistic landscape and trends in the study of schoolscapes. In: Linguistics and Education 44, 80–85.

242

Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz

Gorter, Durk (2019): Methods and techniques for linguistic landscape research: about definitions, core issues and technological innovations. In: Martin Pütz/Neele Mundt (eds.): Expanding the Linguistic Landscape: Multilingualism, Language Policy and the Use of Space as a Semiotic Resource. Bristol, 38–57. Gorter, Durk (2021): Multilingual inequality in public spaces: Towards an inclusive model of linguistic landscapes. In: Robert Blackwood/Deirdre Dunlevy (eds.): Multilingualism in the Public Space: Empowering and Transforming Communities. London, 13–30. Gorter, Durk/Jokin Aiestaran/Jasone Cenoz (2012): The revitalization of Basque and the linguistic landscape of Donostia-San Sebastián. In: Durk Gorter/Heiko F. Marten/Luk Van Mensel (eds.): Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape. Basingstoke, 148–163. Gorter, Durk/Jasone Cenoz (2011): Multilingual education for European minority languages: The Basque country and Friesland. In: International Review of Education 57, 651–666. Gorter, Durk/Jasone Cenoz (2015): Linguistic landscapes inside multilingual schools. In: Bernard Spolsky/Michal Tannenbaum/Ofra Inbar (eds.): Challenges for Language Education and Policy: Making Space for People. New York, 151–169. Gorter, Durk/Heiko.F.Marten/Luk Van Mensel (2019): Linguistic landscapes and minority languages. In: Gabriele Hogan-Brun/Bernadette O’Rourke (eds.): The Handbook on Minority Languages and Communities. New York, 481–506. Gorter, Durk/Victoria Zenotz/Xabier Etxague/Jasone Cenoz (2014): Multilingualism and European minority languages: The case of Basque. In: Durk Gorter/Victoria Zenotz/Jasone Cenoz (eds.): Minority Languages and Multilingual Education: Bridging the Local and the Global. Berlin, 278–301. Griffin, Jeffrey L. (2001): Global English invades Bulgaria. In: English Today 17, 54–60. Griffin, Jeffrey L. (2004): The presence of written English on the streets of Rome. In: English Today 20, 3–8. Hélot, Christine/Monica Barni/Rudi Janssens/Carla Bagna (eds.) (2012): Linguistic Landscapes, Multilingualism and Social Change. Frankfurt. Huebner, Thom (2006): Bangkok’s linguistic landscapes: Environmental print, codemixing, and language change. In: Durk Gorter (ed.): Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism. Clevedon, 31–51. Hult, Francis M. (2018): Language policy and planning and linguistic landscapes. In: James W. Tollefson/Miguel Perez-Milans (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Language Policy and Planning. Oxford, 333–351. Jaworski, Adam/Crispin Thurlow (eds.) (2010): Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space. London. Lado, Beatriz (2011): Linguistic landscape as a reflection of the linguistic and ideological conflict in the Valencian community. In: International Journal of Multilingualism 8, 135–150. Lai, Mee Ling (2013): The linguistic landscape of Hong Kong after the change of sovereignty. In: International Journal of Multilingualism 10, 37–41. Laitinen, Mikko (2014): 630 kilometres by bicycle: Observations of English in urban and rural Finland. In: International Journal of the Sociology of Language 228, 55–78. Landry, Rodrigue/Richard Y. Bourhis (1997): Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality: An empirical study. In: Journal of Language and Social Psychology 16, 23–49. Lanza, Elizabeth/Hirut Woldemariam (2013): Indexing modernity: English and branding in the linguistic landscape of Addis Ababa. In: International Journal of Bilingualism 18, 491–506. Lazdina, Sanita/Heiko F. Marten (2009): The ‘linguistic landscape’ method as a tool in research and education of multilingualism: Experiences from a project in the Baltic States. In: Anju Saxena/ Åke Viberg (eds.): Multilingualism Proceedings of the 23rd Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, Uppsala University 1 – 3 October 2008. Uppsala, 212–225.

Linguistic Landscapes

243

Lou, Jackie Jia (2007): Revitalizing Chinatown into a heterotopia: A geosemiotic analysis of shop signs in Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown. In: Space and Culture 10, 170–194. Lou, Jackie Jia (2016): The Linguistic Landscape of Chinatown: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography. Bristol. Lyons, Kate/Itxaso Rodriguez (2017): Quantifying the linguistic landscape: A study of Spanish-English variation in Pilsen, Chicago. In: Spanish in Context 14, 329–362. Malinowski, David/Stefania Tufi (eds.) (2020): Reterritorializing Linguistic Landscapes: Questioning Boundaries and Opening Spaces. London. Marten, Heiko F. (2012): Latgalian is not a language: Linguistic landscapes in eastern Latvia and how they reflect centralist attitudes. In: Durk Gorter/Heiko F. Marten/Luk Van Mensel (eds.): Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape. Basingstoke, 19–35 Marten, Heiko F./Luk Van Mensel/Durk Gorter (2012): Studying minority languages in the linguistic landscape. In: Durk Gorter/Heiko F. Marten/Luk Van Mensel (eds.): Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape. Basingstoke, 1–15. MacGregor, Laura (2003): The language of shop signs in Tokyo. In: English Today 19, 18–23. McArthur, Tom (2000): Interanto: The global language of signs. In: English Today 16, 33–43. McCormick, Kay/Ramy K. Agnihotri (2009): Forms and functions of English in multilingual signage. In: English Today 25, 11–17. Milani, Tommaso (2013): Whither linguistic landscapes? The sexed facets of ordinary signs. In: Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies 53. Tilburg. Mitchell, Thomas D. (2010): A Latino community takes hold: Reproducing semiotic landscapes in media discourse. In: Adam Jaworski/Crispin Thurlow (eds.): Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space. London, 168–186. Moriarty, Máiréad (2013): Contesting language ideologies in the linguistic landscape of an Irish tourist town. In: International Journal of Bilingualism 18, 464–477. Muth, Sebastian (2012): The linguistic landscapes of Chişinău and Vilnius: Linguistic landscape and the representation of minority languages in two post-soviet capitals. In: Durk Gorter/Heiko F. Marten/Luk Van Mensel (eds.): Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape. Basingstoke, 204–224. Nunes, Paulo/Laura Onofri/Jasone Cenoz/Durk Gorter (2008): Language diversity in urban landscapes: An econometric study. Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei. Working Paper 199. Ong, Kenneth K. W./Jean F. Ghesquière/Stefan Serwe (2013): Frenglish shop signs in Singapore: Creative and novel blending of French and English in the shop fronts of beauty and food businesses in Singapore. In: English Today 29, 19–25. Onofri, Laura/Paolo Nunes/Jasone Cenoz/Durk Gorter (2013): Linguistic diversity and preferences: Econometric evidence from European cities. In: Journal of Economics and Econometrics 56, 39–60. Papen, Uta (2012): Commercial discourses, gentrification and citizens’ protest: The linguistic landscape of Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 16, 56–80. Pütz, Martin/Neele Mundt (eds.) (2019): Expanding the Linguistic Landscape: Multilingualism, Language Policy and the Use of Space as a Semiotic Resource. Bristol. Puzey, Guy (2011): Signscapes and minority languages: Language conflict on the street. In: Elisha Foust/Sophie Fuggle (eds.): Word on the Street: Reading, Writing and Inhabiting Public Space. London, 33–52. Puzey, Guy (2012): Two-way traffic: How linguistic landscapes reflect and influence the politics of language. In: Durk Gorter/Heiko F. Marten/Luk Van Mensel (eds.): Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape. Basingstoke, 127–148. Rosenbaum, Yehudit/Elizabeth Nadel/Robert L. Cooper/Joshua A. Fishman (1977): English on Keren Kayemet Street. In: Joshua A. Fishman/Robert L. Cooper/Andrew W. Conrad (eds.): The Spread of English: The Sociology of English as an Additional Language. Rowley, MA, 179–196.

244

Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz

Ross, Nigel J. (1997): Signs of international English. In: English Today 13, 29–33. Rowland, Luke (2013): The pedagogical benefits of a linguistic landscape project in Japan. In: International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 16, 494–505. Santos, Sara/Susana Pinto (2019): Languages in the Avenida Lourenço Peixinho in Aveiro: Educational potential to raise awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity. In: Indagatio Didactica 11, 241–260. Schlick, Maria (2002): The English of shop signs in Europe. In: English Today 18, 3–7. Scollon, Ron/Suzie Scollon (2003): Discourses in Place. London. Shohamy, Elana (2006): Language Policy: Hidden Agendas and New Approaches. New York. Shohamy, Elana (2012): Linguistic landscapes and multilingualism. In: Marilyn Martin-Jones/ Adrian Blackledge/Angela Creese (eds.): The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism. London, 538–551. Shohamy, Elana/Eliezer Ben-Rafael (2015): Introduction: Linguistic landscape, a new journal. In: Linguistic Landscape 1, 1–5. Shohamy, Elana/Durk Gorter (eds.) (2009): Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. New York. Shohamy, Elana/Shoshi Waksman (2009): Linguistic landscape as an ecological arena: Modalities, meanings, negotiations, education. In: Elana Shohamy/Durk Gorter (eds.): Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. New York, 313–331. Shohamy, Elana/Shoshi Waksman (2012): Talking back to the Tel Aviv centennial: LL responses to topdown agendas. In: Christine Hélot/Monica Barni/Rudi Janssens/Carla Bagna (eds.): Linguistic Landscapes, Multilingualism and Social Change. Frankfurt, 109–127. Spolsky, Bernard (2009a): Prolegomena to a sociolinguistic theory of public signage. In: Elana Shohamy/Durk Gorter (eds.): Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. New York, 25–39. Spolsky, Bernard (2009b): Language Management. Cambridge. Spolsky, Bernard/Robert L. Cooper (1991): The Languages of Jerusalem. Oxford. Stewart, Penny/Richard Fawcett (2004): Shop signs in some small towns in Northern Portugal. In: English Today 20, 56–58. Stroud, Christopher/Sibonile Mpendukana (2009): Towards a material ethnography of linguistic landscape: Multilingualism, mobility and space in a South African township. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 13, 363–386. Stroud, Christopher/Sibonile Mpendukana (2012): Material ethnographies of multilingualism: Linguistic landscapes in the township of Khayelitsha. In: Sheena Gardner/Marilyn Martin-Jones (eds.): Multilingualism, Discourse, and Ethnography. New York, 149–162. Troyer, Rob (2014): Linguistic landscape: Bibliography of English publications. Online at: https://www.zotero.org/groups/linguistic_landscape_bibliography. Van Mensel, Luk/Jeroen Darquennes (2012): All is quiet on the Eastern front? Language contact along the French-German language border in Belgium. In: Durk Gorter/Heiko F.Marten/Luk Van Mensel (eds.): Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape. Basingstoke, 164–180. Van Mensel, Luk/Mieke Vandenbroucke/Robert Blackwood (2016): Linguistic landscapes. In: Ofelia García/Nelson Flores/Massimiliano Spotti (eds.): Oxford Handbook of Language and Society. Oxford, 423–449. Yanguas, Iñigo (2009): The linguistic landscape of two Hispanic neighborhoods in Washington D.C. In: Revista Electrónica de Lingüística Aplicada 8, 30–44.

Jennifer Smith

10. Semiotic Landscapes Abstract: This chapter outlines the characteristics of semiotic landscaping and discusses the role of multimodality in discursive place-making. The notion of ‘indexicality’ is explored and how it relates to the study of language and signs in urban places. After an overview of studies that look at the linguistic sign and what constitutes as an urban place, the most common methods, data types and research questions are considered and the key terms and important concepts in semiotic landscape research are introduced including the crucial distinction between ‘space’ and ‘place’. There is emphasis on identity as a recurring theme in semiotic landscape research in urban settings. 1 2 3 4 5 6

Interacting with signs: From ‘linguistic’ to ‘semiotic landscapes’ The prominence of indexicality in semiotics Characteristics of semiotic landscape research Semiotic landscape research: Two recent developments Conclusions and future avenues of research References

1 Interacting with signs: From ‘linguistic’ to ‘semiotic landscapes’ “When language touches land, place is created” (García 1983, 37). In Gorter/Cenoz’s chapter (this volume), we were introduced to the methods, tools, and current trends in Linguistic Landscape (‘LL’) studies, where researchers analyse “language in textual form” (Gorter 2006, 1) of and in public space. It should have become clear that the term ‘LL studies’ describes a multitude of different methodologies, research goals and, most importantly, different interpretations of the term (linguistic) ‘landscape’ (cf. Gorter 2006). Although most LL studies still take the following definition by Landry/Bourhis (1997, 10) as the basis of their approach, [t]he language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings com-bines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglom-eration

it has become increasingly difficult to define unifying characteristics of such undertakings that go beyond the fact that they investigate language(s) in (typically urban) space (see Britain 2009b, ‘urban turn’). Moreover, “the methodologies employed in the collection and categorisation of written signs [are] still controversial” (Tufi/Blackhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-011

246

Jennifer Smith

wood 2010, 197) and different schools of thought have emerged when it comes to how signs found in public space should be classified and analysed. This is mirrored in the fact that different terminologies and taxonomies have been introduced to the field, among them the fairly new notion of semiotic landscapes (henceforth ‘SL’). As the sections in this chapter will discuss, introducing specifically semiotic deliberations into the study of language in space stresses the material aspects of signs and furthermore points to the ideological discourses they (along with those reading and producing them) may be placed in (cf. among others, Stroud/Mpendukana 2009; Kerry 2017). A general sense of the field being somewhat underdetermined partly stems from the topic’s interdisciplinary research potential, since the study of semiotics landscape(s) is located “somewhere at the junction of sociolinguistics, sociology, social psychology, geography, and media studies” (Sebba 2010a, 74) and, therefore, offers varied points of entry and trajectories. While this article cannot provide insight into all research foci of current studies, it will, however, trace two of the major developments in research on the interplay between language/signs, space/place and society. These will help us to contextualise the turn towards ‘expanding the scenery’ (Shohamy/Gorter 2009), so to speak, by shifting analytic focus away from language alone to all visible inscriptions in and of public space. On the one hand, many LL/SL studies have recently set out to not merely quantitatively link instances of linguistic material on public signage with the ‘ethnolinguistic vitality’ of specific languages in a designated area as Landry/Bourhis (1997) suggested in their seminal study. Rather, they intend to uncover complex correlations between signs and, for example, discursively constructed social realities or attitudes (e.g. Blommaert 2013b), (perceived) patterns of linguistic variation (cf. Heller 2011; Makoni/Pennycock 2007) or social practices (e.g. Heller 2012; Pemberton/Phillimore 2018) as well as shifting socio-demographic and ethno-graphic mappings in ‘super-diverse’ communities (cf. Vertovec 2007; Blommaert/Rampton 2011) with the help of both quantitative and qualitative methods of data analysis. On the other hand, Adam Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow, two of the most important representatives of the field, justify their decision to advance such a conceptual shift when they begin their ground-breaking introductory chapter to the collection Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space with a reference to Kress/van Leeuwen’s (2001, 46) concept of ‘multimodality’: [S]emiotic modes other than language are treated as fully capable of serving for representation and communication. Indeed, language […] may now often be seen as ancilliary [sic.] to other semiotic modes.

This points to the fact that investigations into the semiotic make-up of place(s) will most likely still include the analysis of the “visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs” (Landry/Bourhis 1997, 23). They are, however, – and this shall serve as a first definition of ‘SL Studies’ – simultaneously interested in em-

Semiotic Landscapes

247

phasizing “the way written discourse interacts with other discursive modalities: visual images, nonverbal communication, architecture and the built environment” (Jaworski/Thurlow 2010, 2). To make these complex developments clearer, this article will first comment on the phenomenon of ‘indexicality’ and how it relates to the study of language and signs in urban places. Leading up to a structured overview of recent studies that have engaged with the semiotic make-up of urban places, the second part of the paper will first comment on common methods, data types, and research questions, while also introducing the most important terms and concepts utilised in SL research, including the vital distinction between ‘space’ and ‘place’. The third part will elaborate on two recent developments in semiotics and in sociolinguistics that both have at the heart of their investigations the notion of indexicality. Throughout, special emphasis will be laid on the concepts ‘identity’, ‘ideology’, and ‘globalization’ which have proven to be among the most common recurring themes in semiotic landscape research in urban settings (cf. e.g. Ben Rafael/Ben-Rafael 2016; Blackwood/Lanza/Woldermariam 2016; Kerry 2017). Finally, the chapter will be wrapped up by addressing some of the ongoing debates and open questions regarding the research of urban semiotic landscapes, as well as some further avenues for investigation.

2 The prominence of indexicality in semiotics 2.1 The linguistic sign The most commonly used semiotic notion in linguistic studies is surely that of the linguistic sign. In most ‘Introduction to Linguistics’ courses, students learn about Ferdinand de Saussure’s (1993) dyadic model of the linguistic sign, consisting of the signifier and the signified. Although critics have found fault with Saussure’s structuralist notion of the sign because it is based “solely on ‘psychological impressions’” (Heyd 2014, 494) and remains on a highly abstract level (cf. Blommaert 2013a), it has remained a widely used basic tool for describing the workings of linguistic signs. Peirce’s triadic re-interpretation of Saussure’s model adds the ‘real-world referent’ as a third node, and is as a result able to describe the reciprocal relationships between the ‘sign (vehicle)’, the ‘interpretant’, and, thirdly, the (real world) ‘object’ (cf. Freadman 2001). Of course, even more nuanced semiotic models that go beyond the notion of the linguistic sign have emerged since, including Bühler’s ([1934] 1999) ‘Organon Model’ and Roman Jakobson’s (1960) related ‘Communication Model’. Both of them aim to distinguish different communicative functions of signs that must be present in “any given act of verbal communication (= speech event) […] for it to be operable” (Waugh 1980, 57). Especially Jakobson’s six-fold segmentation of the ‘referential, the expressive, the conative, the poetic, the phatic and the metalingual function’ (cf. Waugh

248

Jennifer Smith

1980) accounts for the different forces at work in communicative situations, including addresser, addressee and the (social and discursive) context. Dell Hymes (1977) developed a similar communicative model with the goal of capturing the full extent of a ‘speech event’. The mnemonic name of the model is, tellingly, ‘SPEAKING’, and it stands for: “setting/scene; participants; ends or goals; act sequences; key; instrumentalities; norms; genre” (Huebner 2009, 71). We shall revisit the importance of finding approaches to semiotic theory that are (more) attuned to communicative, social, and interactional processes (e.g. Hodge/Kress’s (1988) Social Semiotics) in sections 3 and 4. For now, let us return to Peirce, who investigated the various relationships between signs and their ‘real-world referents’ in more detail and subsequently came to differentiate between the three categories icon, index, and symbol (cf. Eco 1991; Freadman 2001). Each type of sign differs with regard to the meaning-making processes that are involved when decoding or understanding it: While symbols have a convention-based relationship with their referents (e.g. numbers, grammatical morphemes, many lexical items) and are constructed/agreed upon by a community of practice (cf. the globally recognised meanings of %, &, $, €), icons have certain ‘physical’ properties in common with the entity they refer to. Iconicity would, then, for example, include the likeness between a person and their portrait, or the similarity between a Google maps image of Times Square in New York City and the layout of the ‘actual’ streets and buildings to be found in that specific geographical location (“topological similarity”, cf. Sebeok 1994, 28).1 Thirdly, Peirce (1955) describes another type of sign as indexes (indices) which ‘point’ or refer to their objects via a ‘real’ connection between the sign and what it stands for, that is, an existential, physical and/or effectcause relationship that exists irrespectively of human interpretation (Johansen 2002). Importantly, indexicality need not always be achieved through language: A “clock indicates the time of day […]. A rap on the door is an index […]. Anything which focuses the attention is an index” (Peirce 1955, 109). Another act of indexing something or someone would be, for example, “the simple gesture of pointing” (Scollon/ Wong Scollon 2003, 27). Several semioticians have noted (Scollon/Wong Scollon 2003; 1988; Eco 1991), however, that it is oftentimes difficult to ‘segment’ a sign (or sign conglomerate) and allocate it to a single one of these three categories because different semiotic processes can overlap. This rings true especially when we think of the “heterogenous, multifor 

1 Peirce classifies his three types of signs into further subsets (for a full overview of the terminology, see Freadman 2001). The relationship between the aforementioned map of Times Square and the actual location would be labelled ‘diagrammatic iconicity’; the difference between paw prints in the snow and the prior presence of an animal or supposing fire somewhere because we see smoke (both indexical relationships) lie in Peirce’s terms between ‘tracks’ and ‘symptoms’ (Johansen 2002). Not coincidentally, Peirce viewed the symbol/index/icon triad as “the most fundamental division of signs,” (Johansen 1988, 90) and even newer approaches to semiotics continue to make use of it (e.g. Scollon/ Wong Scollon 2003).

Semiotic Landscapes

249

mal, dense, and simultaneous” characteristics of (signs in) urban places (cf. Busse/ Warnke’s (2015) urbanity model). Johansen (1988, 499) offers the following simple example of a photograph to make this plain: it has properties in common with its object, and is therefore an icon; it is directly and physically influenced by its object, and is therefore an index; and lastly it requires a learned process of ‘reading’ to understand it, and is therefore a symbol.

Peirce’s differentiation between these three types of signs can nonetheless be utilised fruitfully in the study of semiotic landscapes and particularly Scollon/Wong Scollon’s (2003) framework of Geosemiotics offers critical reflections on the applicability of indexicality to discourses in place.

2.2 (Linguistic) signs in semiotic landscape research No matter which school of thought researchers align themselves with when analysing signs in public space or what their individual research questions might be (see Gorter/ Cenoz (this volume) and section 4 for examples), they must most likely establish how signs ‘mean’, how they refer to the real world, and which strategies are employed by sign ‘authors’ to resonate with potential audiences. According to the urbanity model proposed by Busse/Warnke (2015), ‘complexity’ and ‘contradictoriness’ are actually inherent ‘transversal’ characteristics of urban places in general, and of their semiotic coding in particular (my translation; cf. also Venturi 1966). Thus, overlap and (contradicting) cross-references between signs is a very common, and even defining, aspect of signs in urban space. In this context, Scollon/Wong Scollon (2003, 30), among others (e.g. Blommaert 2011), have made the significant observation that the notion of indexicality ‘surpasses’ or, to formulate it in more neutral terms, is more far-reaching than the idea of symbols and icons: Whether a sign is an icon, a symbol, or an index, there is a major aspect of its meaning that is produced only through the placement of that sign in the real world in contiguity with other objects in that world.

Put differently, Scollon/Wong Scollon (2003) suggest that every sign has indexical potential and, importantly, establishes a connection between the semiotic/linguistic material at hand and certain social realities. It is this discursively constructed connection that is at the heart of inquiries into the semiotic landscape of (urban) spaces. Penelope Eckert (2008, 453, emphasis by author) furthermore ascertains that “the meanings of [linguistic] variables are not precise or fixed but rather constitute a field of potential meanings – an indexical field, or constellation of ideologically related meanings, any one of which can be activated in the situated use of the variable”. Although Eckert (2008) is concerned here with linguistic variation only, she foreshadows one of the main tenets of investigating the semiotic make-up of landscapes,

250

Jennifer Smith

namely, that selecting certain signs indexes (‘activates’) certain ideologically charged meanings. Thus, Eckert (2008) presupposes a sign’s (or linguistic variable’s) meaning to be an actively construed notion (c.f. ‘place-making’ in section 3.1). This approach to meaning-making takes into account that (a) the use and choice of linguistic (semiotic) variables is a context-dependent, situated practice, embedded in various, often overlapping texts or discourses (see for example Spitzmüller/Warnke 2011) and (b) their understanding and reception is somewhat ideologically motivated and also discursively construed.2 Thus, signs, their authors, and recipients are first and foremost viewed as embedded in the discourses in and of space(s). If space itself, then, is seen simultaneously as both a physical and a discursive formation, it follows that the process of ‘reading’ or ‘entextualizing’ linguistic signs in said space is necessarily a meta-discursive as well as an ideological act (Jaworski/Thurlow 2010; cf. also Silverstein/Urban 1996). When reflecting on the notion of ‘signs’ in semiotic landscape research, it is important to note that most LL and SL studies make use of further distinctions between sign types, the most common of which are not directly connected to the notion of indexicality. One important differentiation is made based upon the question ‘who authored/ authorized the sign’ as well as on its situatedness in a specific place. The terms usually employed to differentiate between ‘official’, government-/ authority-issued, on the one hand, and ‘non-official’, business or personal signs, on the other, include ‘top-down’ vs. ‘bottom-up’, or ‘in vitro’ vs. ‘in vivo’ signs. These terms mark what is written by the authority (the names of roads, for instance, or traffic rules signs) and what is written by the citizens (the names of shops, graffiti, commercials, etc.). There are two different ways of marking the territory, two inscriptions into the urban space (Calvet 1975, 75; cited in Backhaus 2006, 53).

Ben-Rafael et al. (2006, 11), for example, use the juxtaposition of top-down and bottom-up signs in their analysis of the linguistic landscape in Jerusalem which is, overall, guided by their research question “which languages [are] used on signs?”. They nonetheless distinguish further (sub)categories: Top-down signs were coded according to their belonging to national or local, and cultural, social, educational, medical or legal institutions. Bottom-up items were coded according to categories such as professional (legal, medical, consulting), commercial (and subsequently, according to branches like food, clothing, furniture etc.) and services (agencies like real estate, translation or manpower) (Ben-Rafael et al. 2006, 11).

2 Heller (2012, 27), for example, suggests thinking of “institutions as discursive sites” which are defined by the value of “the resources they distribute”. For further information on discourse linguistics (influenced by Michel Foucault), see Spitzmüller/Warnke 2011; Warnke 2007; Roth/Spiegel 2013.

Semiotic Landscapes

251

However, if we take Scollon/Wong Scollon (2003) seriously in their endeavour to advocate the emplacement of signs and their discursively constructed indexical potential, clear-cut allocations to such categories, of course, become difficult to rely on and, importantly, ideologically charged. Thus, Jaworski/Thurlow (2010, 14, with reference to Coupland 2008; see also Kallen 2009) make it their explicit goal to “complicate some of the taken-for-granted dichotomies in favour of more nuanced, genre- and context-specific analyses of language in ‘landscape text’”. Lately, two research strands have developed within the emerging field of SL that both focus on indexicality as a key concept and on the challenges that arise when investigating correlations between signs and the (urban) places they designate – but they each lay emphasis on different aspects of said relationship (see chapters 4.1 and 4.2, respectively). These two research strands, ‘Materialist Semiotics’ and linguisticanthropological work on ‘enregisterment’ (Agha 2007), i.e. “processes through which a linguistic repertoire becomes differentiable within a language as a socially recognized register of forms” (Agha 2003, 231), will be elaborated on in the upcoming chapters with reference to some exemplary studies.

3 Characteristics of semiotic landscape research We will revisit at this point the question what it is exactly that defines semiotic landscape research projects and how they might be distinguished from linguistic landscape studies – if at all. In the literature, we find such a great variety when it comes to terminology that it almost seems expedient to fervently hold on to terminological technicalities or to interpret SL studies as an entirely separate approach to analysing (written) language use in public space (Gorter 2006; see also Gorter/Cenoz this volume). Rather, they function as a conglomerate of critically and semiotically informed, materialist methodologies that take their cues from an array of disciplines, including human geography, anthropology, and ethnography. If one does attempt to draw a distinction between LL and SL studies, it could, however, be argued that studies to be found more on the ‘linguistic landscape’ end of the spectrum are rooted in research traditions such as multilingualism or language planning (e.g. Landry/Bourhis’ (1997) use of the ‘ethnolinguistic vitality’ framework), and are less concerned with metadiscursive or -pragmatic practices. One might even interpret the developments under discussion as a semiotic turn in sociolinguistic research of language in space, since the combination of ‘semiosis’ and ‘landscape’ addresses the friction between the complex dichotomies of ‘land’ and ‘landscape’, ‘space’ versus ‘place’ (see below) and the dynamic relationship between what is ‘visible’ in space and what is ‘sayable’ in and about certain spaces (cf. Foucault [1969] 1981). All of these categories are, importantly, at once settings, research objects as well as “the discursive terrain across which the struggle between the different, often hostile, codes of meaning construction has been engaged” (Daniels/Cosgrove 1993, 59).

252

Jennifer Smith

With regard to the juxtaposition of ‘land’ and ‘landscape’, John Urry (1995; 2007) explains how our understanding of spaces, of ‘land’ has changed. In Western thought, ‘landscape’ has taken on a more abstract meaning, that is, in daily life it has oftentimes come to designate “a place of affect, contemplative looking, gazing, connoisseurship” (Jaworski/Thurlow 2010, 4) etc. This evokes a sense of Consuming Places (Urry 1995) rather than the concrete, tangible connotations associated with the term ‘land’; a commodity “to be toiled, bought and sold, and passed on from generation to generation” (Jaworski/Thurlow 2010, 4). Expanding on Urry’s deliberations, Jaworski/ Thurlow (2010, 6) stress that it is therefore important to take notice of the dialectic nature of landscape, both as physical (built) environment, a context for human action and socio-political activity, while at the same time a symbolic system of signifiers with wide-ranging affordances activated by social actors to position themselves and others in that context.

Considering exactly such multifaceted and maybe even contradictory concepts is, therefore, characteristic of SL studies. More often than not, they are correlated with similarly complex processes; ‘gentrification’ (e.g. Papen 2012; Warnke 2013) and ‘globalization’ (e.g. Ben-Rafael/Ben-Rafael 2016; Blommaert 2013a; Bolton 2012; Piller 2010) seem to be among the most commonly investigated phenomena – which, naturally, correlates with a strong interest in urban, heterogeneous, multilingual etc. places and their representations in, e.g. political debates or art (see Jaworski/Thurlow 2010). Further constitutive characteristics of SL studies include the quantitative (if possible) and/or qualitative examination of (1) place-making activities, that is turning ‘spaces’ into places’ (e.g. Friedmann 2010, see below), (2) the mapping of social identities in and onto space, and lastly, (3) the multimodal (Kress/van Leeuwen 1996; 2001) and mediatized nature of materialist and social landscapes (cf. Jewitt/ Triggs 2006), which comes along with a holistic view of possible data sets (including the notion of ‘multisensory’ idea, e.g. sound- or smellscapes, cf. Hua/Otsuji/Pennycook 2017). To sum up the discussion so far, a great number of semiotic landscape studies are concerned with finding adequate methodologies, terminologies, and frameworks in order to answer research questions of the following type: Which (social) phenomena and/or discourses does the semiotic material index? Which communicative functions are expressed by the signs? Which relationships can be established between signs and the places they are to be found in? And finally: How do authors and audiences inscribe themselves into/onto spaces (cf. Bourdieu 1991; Krais/Gebauer 2002 for Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’) via the production and interpretation of signs. The latter has been complicated especially by various processes, including the economic and political re-orderings of “capitalism, intense patterns of human mobility, the mediatization of social life […], and transnational flows of information, ideas and ideologies” (Jaworski/Thurlow 2010, 1, with reference to Fairclough 1999; Appadurai 1990; 1996). Put differently, SL studies are moving away from the question ‘what is space’ towards

Semiotic Landscapes

253

inquiries into “how is it that different human practices create and make use of different conceptualizations of space?” (Harvey 2006, 126).

3.1 Creating places in, out, and through space: The concept of place-making So far, the terms ‘space’ and ‘place’ have been used (almost) interchangeably. In order to make a clearer, more informed distinction between the two terms, Harvey’s question – which Jaworski/Thurlow (2010, 7) chose as their opening statement – should be further commented on because it encapsulates the vital distinction between ‘spaces’ and ‘places’ and turns our attention towards processes of spatialization, “the different processes by which space comes to be represented, organized and experienced”. Since the 1990s, interest in space, and especially said distinction (see e.g. Entrikin 1991; Lefebvre 1991), has surged across a spectrum of the social sciences and the humanities. Philosophers and urban planners alike have come to distinguish between ‘space’ as something ‘objective’, independent of human consciousness and ‘place’ as a more ‘subjective’, discursively construed notion (Jones 2013; Entrikin 1991; Higgins 2017). In short, human (inter)action turns spaces into places, because place is constituted through reiterative social practice […]. [It] becomes an event rather than a secure ontological place rooted in notions of the authentic. Place as an event is marked by openness and change rather than boundedness and permanence (Cresswell 2004, 39).

For the study of signs in space, it is both the creation of places – the act of ‘place-making’ – through language in the form of declarative spoken and written speech acts (cf. Searle 1975; Busse/Warnke 2014) as well as the way locations function as fields for human action (see Jones/Norris 2005; Jones 2013) that are most relevant. Jones (2013, n.p.) simply states that “what makes a space a ‘place’ is what we are able to ‘do’ in it”, which one could rephrase as ‘what we are able to linguistically and semiotically do in/ with/about a place’ when we are either referring to it, naming it as such or when we are indexing a certain image of it and of ourselves in it. In the latter case, we are “anchoring” it [and ourselves] both “socially” (Hanks 2001, 119) and in time and space. Any visible inscription made in and about a specific space can be interpreted as a ‘placemaking’ strategy. Two further ideas should be mentioned here, viz. Blommaert’s (2005) notion of layered simultaneity and Scollon’s (2001) term sites of engagement, which introduce the idea that all actions take place on multiple spatial and temporal scales: What occurs in a moment also simultaneously takes place in different ‘temporal frameworks’ (a year, a day, a month,…) and what happens in a certain neighbourhood also happens in the context of an entire city, a nation, and, lastly, also in the context of manifold global networks. Jones (2013) rightly points out that it is impossible to be aware of and critically reflect on all of these scales at once, if only for the fact that ‘we would

254

Jennifer Smith

never get anything done if we did’. If we are talking about a space that has been turned into a place by fulfilling Cresswell’s (2004) criteria of being “small, three-dimensional, inhabited, and [having] come to be cherished or valued by its resident population for all that it represents or means to them” (Friedmann 2010, 154), it is instead the case that we, according to Scollon (2001), construct sites of engagement. These structures focus our attention and highlight a specific set of the available discourses; the selection, in turn, together with the human practices said discourses entail (e.g. behavioural patterns, including linguistic choices, or spatial patterns of social interaction, including mobility) can then be indexically connected to the ‘place’ itself. Finally, it is important to note that viewing ‘places’ as something construed and performed by human intervention brings to the fore the idea that places are “constantly struggled over and reimagined” (Cresswell 2004, 39) because different actors with varying agendas and levels of institutionalization are vying for their own interpretation of a space to become the dominant way of ‘reading’ it as a ‘place’ or ‘brand’. Thus, the topic of ‘place-making’ has immense political and social relevance in that it addresses questions such as ‘whom does the city belong to’ (cf. Ditges 2015; cf. also Pemberton/Phillimore 2018), ‘whom should it be built, (re)designed or planned for’ and ‘who are the (global) players entering the oftentimes “fierce inter-city competition for footloose capital”’ (Friedmann 2010, 149). The studies discussed below under the heading ‘enregisterment’ heavily rely on the idea of place-making strategies because spoken and written language found in space is analysed with regard to its potential to index particular localities, on the one hand, and identity claims as well as power relations in and of certain places, on the other (cf. Johnstone 2004).

3.2 Multimodal ways of meaning-making While the other research tradition discussed below, ‘Materialist Semiotics’, is similarly invested in the discursive construction of ‘places’ through language in and about space, its focus on the different modes and materialities for communication calls for further discussion of the topic of ‘(multi)modality’ (cf. Jewitt 2014). In short, the notion of multimodality (Kress/van Leeuwen 2001) has great potential to describe in even more detail the processes at work when signs are created, seen, talked about or even replicated because it is concerned with the Grammar of Visual Design (Kress/van Leeuwen, 1996), that is, with how signs are arranged and how they mean. Simply put, ‘what I can express in text is different from what I can express with a photograph or with a YouTube video’ (Jones 2013). Kress/van Leeuwen insist that all representations are never innocent or neutral reflections of reality, “that is, they offer not a mirror of the world but an interpretation of it” (Midalia 1999, 31). When researchers choose to investigate semiotic landscapes in certain places, it is important, in other words, that they not only analyse the content of the available mes-

Semiotic Landscapes

255

sages but take a holistic view of the mechanisms that contribute to the meaning-making process signs. For Kress/van Leeuwen (2001, 22), this includes first and foremost the medium, that is, “the material resources used in the production of semiotic products and events, including both the tools and the materials used, e.g. the musical instrument and air; the chisel and the block of wood”, and all of the modes, e.g. “images, wording, colour, layout [or] typography” (Nørgaard/Busse/Montoro 2010, 117). To make the differentiation between ‘mode’ and ‘medium’ clearer, Kress/van Leeuwen (2001, 22) add that “modes are semiotic resources which allow for the simultaneous realization of discourses and types of (inter)action”, that is, they create recognizable patterns of how discourses are formulated (cf. Guilat 2016). Media, on the other hand, can become modes once their principles of semiosis begin to be conceived of in more abstract ways […]. This in turn will make it possible to realise them in a range of media. They lose their tie to a specific form of material realisation” (Kress/van Leeuwen 2001, 22).

All in all, semiotics has seen an increasing awareness of the interplay of different visual stimuli (although a considerable amount of research has been done on soundscapes, e.g. Moore 2010; Bijsterveld 2013). Just as space has been interpreted as a multiplicity (Massey 2005, ‘spatial turn’), semiotic repertoires have come to be realised as mediatized with the help of multiple modes and materialities. Together with the idea “of space and place as the physical context of signs and meaning-making” (Heyd 2014, 494), this development has been described as the gradual emergence of a ‘materialist semiotics’.

4 Semiotic landscape research: Two recent developments 4.1 The materiality of signs: Everything has indexical potential The first group of undertakings in SL research to be discussed here includes studies indebted to ‘Social Semiotics’ (Halliday 1978; Kress 2010), ‘Multimodal Discourse(s)’ (cf. Kress/van Leeuwen 1996; 2001), ‘Materialist Semiotics’ (Blommaert 2013a; cf. also Rossi-Landi 1974), or ‘Geosemiotics’ (Scollon/Wong Scollon 2003). These projects focus on the aforementioned idea that to understand a sign’s maximum meaning, one needs to look at its material but also historically motivated situatedness in space as well as at the intersemiotic correlations that emerge through this ‘emplacement’ (Scollon/Wong Scollon 2003). At this point, it is important to note that the study of semiotics has significantly changed over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries with the introduction of new concepts and currents, which can be subsumed for now as the “gradual rematerializa-

256

Jennifer Smith

tion” (Heyd 2014, 494) of semiotic theory. Along the lines of what was discussed in the previous chapter, this term outlines the development towards an increasing awareness of the multimodal materiality of culture and the concept of space functioning as “the physical context of signs” (Heyd 2014, 494). It was mentioned earlier that Saussure’s structuralist idea of ‘semiology’ as he termed it was a “necessarily timeless and context-less […] ‘achronic’ system because it did not claim to have any empirical existence” (Blommaert 2013, 29). According to Blommaert (2013, 30), the simple truth that signs “rarely have a general meaning and mostly have a specific meaning” needs to be, however, reflected in an approach that encompasses the idea that, with time, a series of layered or ‘laminated’ places (Goffman 1974) are created, “each depending on the other for its status as a place” (Jones 2013, n.p.). Szerszynski/Urry (2006), for example, show how highly mobile, middle class professionals, who have moved to a certain area in rural Northern England interpret and experience their new environment in more romanticised ways – more ‘landscape’ than ‘land’ (see above) – in contrast to less mobile, working class inhabitants of the area, who tend to focus on the more ‘concrete characteristics of the same terrain’ (cf. Jaworski/Machin 2013). Interestingly, the demarcations between and characteristics of both ‘readings’ of the (semiotic) landscape come to the fore all the more when compared and contrasted to one another. Significantly, materialistically motivated investigations of SLs call for a revaluation of the general workings of deixis, especially in urban settings because uncovering indexical relationships between signs and their (actual and implied) referents necessarily deals with ‘situated’ social practices performed by oftentimes highly mobile individuals or groups (‘mobilities turn’, cf. Büscher/Urry/Witchger 2011). Mondada (2013) points out that traditional views of spatial deixis (and therewith the notion of indexicality) presuppose “a static origo” (Bühler [1934] 1999), a static reference point “building complex systems around the opposition between here and there” (Mondada 2013, 465). Realistically, it is, of course, very difficult to maintain a static view of indexical processes in an ever-changing, fleeting, ‘heterogeneous, simultaneous, intersemiotic and multiformal’ (cf. Busse/Warnke 2015) urban semiotic landscape that is often experienced ‘in passing’. Methodologically speaking, this impetus has to translate into a carefully considered combination of different methods (cf. Büscher/Urry 2009, ‘mobile methods’) and ways of choosing and recording the area of research (e.g. video, audio, photography, mapping the area of research, etc.). It is up to the researcher to decide which aspects of the communicative situation in urban space to emphasise, i.e. the spatial (mobility) patterns of the recipients, the ‘primary’ discourses and the actual ‘places’ that the semiotic material is embedded in, the ‘secondary’ discourses that evolve during and after the reception process, or the place-making activities employed by sign authors and audiences, etc. It is thus important to note that an SL approach “cannot make everything rest on signs by themselves” (Rossi-Landi 1974, 486); the aspects mentioned in this chapter (context, materiality, modality, place-making, discursive embed-

Semiotic Landscapes

257

ding, etc.) as well as the communicative situation (cf. Hymes 1977, ‘SPEAKING model’) are to be seen as the frame within which signs operate. Heyd (2014) points out that a materialistic approach to signs in public space correlates with an increased interest in the (qualitative) analysis of photographic material of and in that space because it offers to capture both the linguistic material itself and its multimodal mediatization. However, photographic data sets are oftentimes accompanied by further hybrid data types. For example, Collins/Slembrouck (2007, 335) use photographic, observational, and interview data “from a multisited ethnographic study of language contact” and focus on the recipients of signs or, to be more precise, their interpretations and judgments about the linguistic choices made on signs in what they call “polyglot immigrant neighborhoods”. They demonstrate in their study on the use of multiple languages on shop and café signs in Ghent, Belgium that it can be challenging to understand the discursive layering of representations in an area when trying to find an answer to the question which “hierarchical frames of interpretation and evaluation are brought to bear on the reading” of signs (Collins/Slembrouck 2007, 336). They conclude that shop signs are complex indices of “source, addressee, and community, which are manifest in different readers’ interpretations” (Collins/Slembrouck 2007, 336), that “social life involves genre expectations”, and that “institutional(ized) positions are enacted by language users” (Collins/Slembrouck 2007, 340). When it comes to the embedding of semiotic repertoires into certain discourses, Collins/Slembrouck (2007) use the term ‘field’ to distinguish between different reactions to reading signs. An example would be signs that stress language errors, which embed them into normative discourses surrounding education and (integration) politics (Collins/Slembrouck 2007). To tackle such complicated research undertakings, Jaworski/Thurlow (2010, 3–4) point out that future studies of semiotic landscapes need to take heed of the ideological and cultural implications of the aforementioned interplay between different layers of semiotic systems in a globalized world: [L]andscape […] is a broader concept pertaining to how we view and interpret space in ways that are contingent on geographical, social, economic, legal, cultural and emotional circumstances, as well as our practical uses of the physical environment as nature and territory, aesthetic judgments, memory and myth, for example drawing on religious beliefs and references, historical discourses, politics of gender relations, class ethnicity, and the imperial projects of colonization […]: position[ing] the idea of landscape within the sphere of social and cultural practice, as our ways of seeing are subject to a number of competing […] ‘visual subcultures’.

Through and with these changes, the field of semiotics has moved towards more informed and differentiated views of the complex discursive processes involved in meaning- and sign-making (e.g. Scollon/Wong Scollon 2003; Heyd 2014; Blommaert 2013a). The term ‘semiotic’ landscape, of course, attempts to embrace such state-ofthe art advances in semiotics, (socio-)linguistics and the study of language in space (see Auer/Schmidt 2009; Jaworski/Machin 2013).

258

Jennifer Smith

Influenced by these greater theoretical and philosophical currents, semiotic landscape research is situated firmly in the context of the urban, mobilities, linguistic and spatial turns meaning that many tenets of classical sociolinguistic studies are questioned and often abandoned in favour of more discursive notions of ‘space’, meaning-making processes, and variation (see e.g. Döring/Thielmann 2008; Britain 2009a; Büscher/Urry 2009). One of the newest inquiries in this direction is Pennycook/Otsuji’s (2015) concept of Metrolingualism which seeks to move beyond “current terms such as multilingualism and multiculturalism” (Otsuji/Pennycook 2010, 244) by exploring how relations between language and social variables (including space) “are produced, resisted, defied or rearranged; its focus is not on language systems but on languages as emergent from contexts of interaction” (Otsuji/Pennycook 2010, 246). Otsuji (2011, 29) explains that this new term is to be seen as a “productive linguistic space” itself that moves between normative “more fluid (hybrid) and dynamic understandings” of language (use). Again, we find linguistic choices to be correlated with context of interactions, for example when Otsuji/Pennycook (2010) analyse data from workplaces where multi-/metrolingual language use is common. When speaking of modes and media, Kress/van Leeuwen (2001) highlighted that both phenomena create recognizable patterns of how discourses are formulated. What was not mentioned in this context was that buildings, architecture, and interior design are also to be seen as ways of “organizing space for their users” (Markus/Cameron 2002, buildings as ‘social objects’) because they (re)produce “particular social values (e.g. ‘privacy’ vs. ‘community’), relations (e.g. dominant power structures), and encourage[e] particular types of activities and social encounters” (Jaworski/Thurlow 2010, 19). These discourse organisations, are, of course, also similarly (re)produced by language in and about the buildings, including texts (e.g. pamphlets, plaques, information brochures, but also political communiques about urban planning strategies), on- and offline conversations, and other linguistic practices so that “architecture and language form a multilayered landscape or cityscape” (Jaworski/Thurlow 2010, 20). This proves especially significant in the face of globalization: If the meaning of signs is tied to the discourses and spaces they are found in, this simultaneously entails that these meanings and discourses do not translate 1:1 when they are exported to different places (cf. Blommaert 2005). They are, so to speak, “re-semioticized” (Jaworski/ Thurlow 2010, 18) and ‘re-emplaced’ into other, new ‘orders of indexicality’ (Silverstein 2003). Since the array of communication channels has all but exploded with the use of new technologies, it has become more and more difficult to trace and classify such developments in ‘superdiverse’ communities (Vertovec 2007; Bynner 2019; Moriarty/Järlehead 2019; Watt/Llamas 2017; Canagarajah 2017; King/Carson 2016). Studies interested in globalization and its effect on language in space include Martínez 2005; Pennycock 2012; Pennycock/Otsuji 2015, ‘metrolingualism’. Even when discourses are not ‘travelling’, it is often the case that the constructed, contested character of places becomes noticeable and visible “where the continuity of the urban palimpsest has been disrupted” (Chmielewska 2005, 246). Another topic

Semiotic Landscapes

259

that has been discussed in much detail in sociolinguistics in this context is ‘graffiti’ or ‘graffscapes’ (Pennycock 2010) because it automatically entails a layering of different discourses. Viewing graffiti as an inherently ‘transgressive’, i.e. ‘illegal’ or ‘wrongly placed’ mode is, however, problematic, because this means that one “privileges the hegemonic order as the ‘legitimate order’” (Jaworski/Thurlow 2010, 29; see also Scollon/Wong Scollon 2003, 146, 188). Two analyses that elaborate on ‘unauthorised’ or ‘unofficial’ modes of place-making in SLs are Papen’s (2012) study “Commercial Discourses, Gentrification and Citizens’ Protest” and Warnke’s (2013) description of (masked) ‘protest and gentrification dynamics’, both situated in Berlin neighbourhoods (Prenzlauer Berg and Kreuzberg, respectively). While Papen (2012) interprets the presence of graffiti and street art as an emblem of the democratization of space which is countered by the prominent discourses of gentrification processes and changes Prenzlauer Berg has undergone since German reunification, Warnke (2013) performs a (critical) discourse analysis of urban revaluation processes, i.e. the gentrification in Berlin Kreuzberg (cf. also the newer study by Muth (2016) on the commercialization impetus of street art in public space). With recourse to empirical data and the semiotic configuration of a specific anti-gentrification protest (“Gentrifiziererin 2010”) in Berlin, he investigates the semiotic material in relation to the three modes ‘dimension’, ‘action’ and ‘representation’ (see chapter 2.2). Warnke reveals how certain opinions are made visible in and through the semiotic landscape in recognisable patterns, that is genres or ‘modes’, by unauthorised, anonymous discourse participants. Uta Papen, on the other hand combines interviews with the discourse participants with textual and visual analyses of the linguistic landscape. Other studies that deal with the complex relationship of materiality, emplacement, power and marginalization of discourses include Stroud/Mpendukana’s (2009) article on the material ethnography of South African townships; and other more qualitative, ethnographically oriented studies of ‘language in place’ (Kallen 2009; Sebba 2010b; Coupland 2010; Pennycook 2010; Piller 2010). While multilingualism remains a common theme, these studies agree on the fact that the mere prominence of a certain language is not necessarily the most accurate indicator of the ethnolinguistic vitality of its speakers. Rather, the presence or absence of a language on public signage, in combination with the type (or genre) of signs, their contents and style, are indicative of public and private language ideologies (Jaworski/Thurlow 2010, 10).

4.2 Indexing spaces as ‘local’ or ‘global’: Processes of enregisterment We have already encountered a few concrete examples of SL studies that deal in one way or another with the developments of ‘ideology’, ‘identity’ and/or ‘globalization’. While researchers such as Barbara Johnstone (e.g. 2009; 2010; Johnstone/Andrus/

260

Jennifer Smith

Danielson 2006), Joan Beal (2009a; 2009b), or Penelope Eckert (e.g. 2004), are also interested in exactly these concepts, their approach to language in space concentrates more on how the use of certain signs, e.g. linguistic varieties, can index certain anthropological social meanings. Such studies draw ‘inspiration from the work in humanistic geography’ or anthropological linguistics and can involve the study of linguistically indexing ‘the local’ ‘through different kinds of performances’ (Jaworski/ Machin 2013). In other words, we create our identities in part through mapping our identities onto and in relation to space and make sense of our (social and linguistic) identities in terms of our environment. Strategies employed in this context include “the process of geographical imagining, the locating of self in space, claiming the ownership of specific places, or by being excluded from them, by sharing space and interacting with others” (Jaworski/Thurlow 2010, 7). In one way or another, certain locations come to be known both sensually and intellectually as ‘places’ by means of semiotic framing strategies (cf. also Blunt/Dowling 2006 on the idea of ‘home’). This is where Asif Agha’s (2003; 2007) concept of enregisterment comes into play because linguistic forms come to bear social meanings, which are oftentimes closely correlated with specific places. Using the discursive ‘systems’ (cf. Foucault’s ([1969] 1981) notion of the ‘archaeology’ of knowledge) that led to RP becoming the standard phonolexical register of British English as an example, he posits that enregisterment encompasses the “processes through which a linguistic repertoire becomes differentiable within a language as a socially recognized register of forms” (Agha 2003, 231). Furthermore, proponents of enregisterment mechanisms correlate this development with Michael Silverstein’s (2003) notion of several ‘orders of indexicality’. In this framework, (non-referential) indexical relationships between linguistic items and the social meanings they evoke (e.g. register, stance, or social variables such as class, ethnicity, gender, etc.) can consolidate at various levels of abstraction, at various ‘orders of indexicality’ (see Johnstone/Andrus/Danielson 2006). Silverstein (2003, 193) claims that the concept of indexical order is necessary for “showing us how to relate the micro-social to the macro-social frames of analysis of any sociolinguistic phenomenon”. Auer/Schmidt (2009) show very distinctly how these indexical relationships have become more and more important in modern and postmodern times and that different orders of indexicality correlate with the connection of ‘language – body – place’: Whereas ‘pre-modern speakers’ confirmed and (re)produced said ‘natural’ connection through every day face-to-face interaction and were, thus, unaware of the potentially indexical relationship between their linguistic repertoire and the region they came from (= first-order indexicality), the idea of the ʻnation state’ added the idea of an (imagined) state community (cf. Anderson [1990] 2006), which made it possible for the indexical meanings evoked by the use of either regional or standard varieties to be rendered recognizable (= second-order indexicality). Nowadays, where the connection between origin, place and language has all but dissolved, Auer/Schmidt (2009) speak of a ‘compositional linguistic identity’ which indexes in very complicated ways the past experiences of speakers that locate their experiences in terms of social vari-

Semiotic Landscapes

261

ables, and importantly, place. No matter which order of indexicality has been reached, the recognition of indexical relationships always depends on, generally speaking, the context and, specifically, which aspects are picked up on by the recipients. Therefore, it can be the case that certain features have been endowed with different social meanings, by different people, to varying degrees. Similarly, to the notion of ‘place’, the process of enregisterment constantly remains in flux and changes with the organisation of the discourses surrounding the phenomena in question. Being aware of the fact that linguistic research would need to adapt to these complexities, Eckert (2012) has summarised the evolution of variationist work utilising the metaphor of three waves, where the first wave was dominated by Labov’s (quantitative) survey methods and the second by ethnographic methodological paradigms; both with a strongly dialect-based approach. The third wave, which includes works on enregisterment, then, focuses on the social meaning of variables: It views styles, rather than variables, as directly associated with identity categories, and explores the contributions of variables to styles. […] [I]n shifting the focus from dialects to styles, it shifts the focus from speaker categories to the construction of personae (Eckert 2012, 90).

Elaborating on Eckert’s and Auer/Schmidt’s conceptualizations, the study of indexicality in this research tradition is highly linked to the distinctions between ‘self’ and ‘other’ and between ‘in-’ and ‘out-group’ members. Especially in a postmodern, globalized, ‘metrolingual’ (see Pennycock/Otsuji 2015) setting, mapping our identities onto space and locating ourselves in space has become a vital means of creating places, of indexing notions such as ‘home’, and ‘belonging’ by forms of semiotic framing in place (Entrikin 1991). We thus create reciprocal relationships between language and social variables (styles), and by joining in metalinguistic or metadiscursive practices, we overlay this, or rather all language use and the discourse presentation forms with value. One of the most important investigations of enregisterment processes where linguistic features have come to be connected explicitly with ‘place’ is Johnstone’s long-term project on Pittsburghese (e.g. 2009; Johnstone/Andrus/Danielson 2006). Here, certain phonological and lexical features that were originally used by members of Pittsburgh’s working class, which again remained unnoticed by speakers themselves because they were not confronted with other speech styles, have come to index Pittsburgh as a place; in Pittsburgh and even nationwide. This shift was made possible through the increasing mobility of Pittsburgh residents which turned the potential (first-order) indexicality into a recognised and recognisable (second-order) phenomenon. In a further step, Johnstone (2009) realised that these features were being commodified, that is, printed and sold on T-Shirts, mugs, post cards and other materials typical of souvenir shops. Interestingly, they are oftentimes presented in certain modes, evoking local institutions such as the Pittsburgh football team ‘the Steelers’ (through their team colours, black and yellow). While this reference evokes Pittsburgh’s industrial past in the steel industry, it also points to the ‘typically Pittsburgh-

262

Jennifer Smith

ese’ (= enregistered) pronunciation of the football team’s name by spelling it ‘Stillers’.3 Other studies which have investigated how ‘localness’ is performed by linguistic and semiotic means include Beal (2009a; 2009b), Mac Giolla Chríost (2007), and Modan (2007). Vice-versa, many studies have focused on how the use of English as a lingua franca (or other languages, e.g. Dutch in Blommaert/Maly 2014) indexes global attributes (e.g. Androutsopoulos’ (2013) account of the ‘discourse functions of English resources in the German mediascape’). Furthermore, Blommaert (2013b) elaborates on how globalization has shaped our membership to different communities, which come into play whenever we recognise our and others’ ‘communicative resources’ to be meaningful. We are, thus, always members of different groups that are located on different scales (as part of institutions, private, public, etc.) but our statuses in these groups necessarily vary: “we are ‘old’ and ‘expert’ members of our families but can be ‘young’ and apprentice’ members of professional communities, hobby groups and so forth” (Blommaert 2013b, 7). Indexing these group memberships through semiotic and linguistic means is an extremely complex and differentiated research ‘object’ and can occur via equally complex multimodal means of communication.

5 Conclusions and future avenues of research The present chapter has shown that the phenomenon of indexicality is an important concept in several subdivisions of linguistic and semiotic research, including pragmatics, semantics, or also urban linguistics, but it surpasses the level of language alone (see Scollon/Wong Scollon (2003), ‘geosemiotics’). ‘Indexicality’ can furthermore shed light on highly complex discursive meaning-making processes operating through various modes, media, and materialities. While such meanings were at one point conceptualised with specific recipients and specific communicative agendas in mind, their trajectory is more volatile than that. Not only are inscriptions in public space not exclusively ‘read’ by such targeted audiences but meanings are not always picked up on, understood or deciphered, for example with regard to linguistic and stylistic choices, cultural references or discursive frameworks. A final example shall indicate the great variety and potential that this research field has to offer and point to possible future avenues of SL studies: Visual semiotics is not only applicable to physical space but also translates and expands to digital spaces and networks. Heyd (2014) brings together the two research strands sum-

3 Heyd (2014, 490, emphasis original) argues in this context: “The notion that objects can work as semiotic codes […], that an analysis of discourse can include signs AND things, or even signs AS things, has gradually become a more common modus operandi in sociolinguistic analysis. […] For example, the notion of indexicality as proposed by Silverstein (2003), as well as Johnstone’s (2009) work on commodification, are strongly based on underlying notions of semiotic codes as commodities”.

Semiotic Landscapes

263

marised in this article by elaborating on folk-linguistic landscapes, on the one hand, and the visual semiotics of digital enregisterment, on the other. She describes the ideological, prescriptivist discourses at work in digital forms of (social) media, which become apparent in her analysis of photo blogs where images of ‘wrong’ language are found in the real, i.e. not digital, world but are then made available online. She locates these blogs in discourses of ‘grassroots prescriptivism’ or ‘prescriptivism from below’ (e.g. also Beal 2010) because they are not tied to institutions and typically display a highly participatory organisation, especially through digital channels (Heyd 2014). The inclusion of digital metalinguistic and metapragmatic practices into the field of Semiotic Landscapes (see also Stæhr 2014; Androutsopoulos/Juffermans 2014), renders the conceptualisation of semiotic patterns which organise the meaning of spatial and social practices enacted in space even more complex – but in a highly stimulating and thought-provoking way that is definitely worthy of further pursuit. All in all, the call for interdisciplinary methods and approaches to the study of signs has become louder as it has become apparent how difficult it is to employ satisfactory methodologies and (hybrid) data sets that may account for the ideas of the “physical emplacement” of signs (cf. al Zidjaly 2014, 70), on the one hand, and the various discourses of (and in) place (Scollon/Wong Scollon 2003) as the context of any given instance of visible inscription, on the other. It is this highly interdisciplinary potential that makes Semiotic Landscape research such a viable and socially relevant research undertaking. Due to the high level of complexity and the strong need for exact differentiation, SL investigations have to be very precise in choosing which (quantitative and/or qualitative) methods and data sets are to be used, which categorization of sign types to implement, and in defining how their classification relates to their research question(s), respectively. In short, choosing the label ‘SL’ brings with it an enhanced interest in: – “any (public) space with visible inscription made through deliberate human intervention and meaning making” (Jaworski/Thurlow 2010, 2); – place-making activities (Busse/Warnke 2015; Auer/Schmidt 2009; Friedmann 2010); these strategies are furthermore marked by six ‘moments’ or ‘activities’: language/discourse; beliefs/values/desires; institutions/rituals; material practices; social relations; power (Jaworski/Thurlow 2010); – the materiality and multimodal make-up of signs (Kress/van Leeuwen 1996; 2001; Blommaert 2013a) and their ‘emplacement’ (Scollon/Wong Scollon 2003) in various discourses; – discursively construed notions of ‘identity’ and how they are mapped onto spaces (Johnstone 2009; Beal 2009a; 2009b; Eckert 2012); – aligning oneself with the Third Wave of variationist studies (Eckert 2012), which moves away from dialectological research questions and is interested in linguistic material that serves a social and/or stylistic purpose; – the correlation between physical space and how it is used, experienced, thought of and evaluated by the people that inhabit and use it;

264

–

Jennifer Smith

anthropological and ethnographic research questions rather than ontological investigations.

These developments, together with a noticeable emerging interest in digital semiotic landscapes (see section 4.2), bear witness to the fact that traditional views of places as static, a priori locations of persons (and objects) in space has been slowly replaced (see Jaworski/Thurlow 2010) by more dynamic and performative conceptualizations of ‘places’.

6 References Agha, Asif (2003): The social life of a cultural value. In: Language and Communication 23, 231–273. Agha, Asif (2007): Language and Social Relations. Cambridge. Androutsopoulos, Jannis (2013): English ‘on Top’: Discourse functions of English resources in the German mediascape. In: Sociolinguistic Studies 6, 209–238. Androutsopoulos, Jannis/Kasper Juffermans (2014): Digital landscapes: Digital language practices in superdiversity. In: Discourse, Context & Media 3, 1–120. Appadurai, Arjun (1990): Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. In: Theory, Culture and Society 7, 295–310. Appadurai, Arjun (1996): Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis. Auer, Peter/Jürgen E. Schmidt (2009): Introduction. In: Peter Auer/Jürgen E. Schmidt (eds.): Language and Space: An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation. Theories and Methods, Vol 1. Berlin, vii–xvi. Backhaus, Peter (2006): Multilingualism in Tokyo: A look into the linguistic landscape. In: International Journal of Multilingualism 3, 52–66. Beal, Joan C. (2009a): Enregisterment, commodification, and historical context: ‘Geordie’ versus ‘Sheffieldish’. In: American Speech 84, 138–156. Beal, Joan C. (2009b): ‘You’re not from New York City, you’re from Rotherham’: Dialect and identity in British Indie music. In: Journal of English Linguistics 37, 223–240. Beal, Joan C. (2010): An introduction to Regional Englishes. Edinburgh. Ben-Rafael, Eliezer/Miriam Ben-Rafel (2016): Berlin’s Linguistic Landscapes: Two faces of globalization. In: Blackwood, Robert/Elizabeth Lanza/Hirut Woldemariam (eds.): Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes. London, 197- 213. Ben-Rafael, Eliezer/Elana Shohamy/Muhammad Hasan Amara/Nira Trumper-Hecht (2006): The symbolic construction of the public space: The case of Israel. In: Durk Gorter (ed.): Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism. Clevedon, 7–30. Bijsterveld, Karin (2013): Soundscapes of the Urban Past: Staged Sound as Mediated Cultural Heritage. Bielefeld. Blackwood, Robert/Elizabeth Lanza/Hirut Woldemariam (eds.) (2016): Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes. London. Blommaert, Jan (2005): Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge. Blommaert, Jan (2013a): Semiotic and spatial scope: Towards a materialist semiotics. In: Margit Böck/ Norbert Pachler (eds.): Multimodality and Spatial Semiosis: Communication, Meaning-making, and Learning in the Work of Gunther Kress. New York, 29–38. Blommaert, Jan (2013b): Language and the study of diversity. In: Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies 74, 1–14.

Semiotic Landscapes

265

Blommaert, Jan/Ico Maly (2014): Ethnographic linguistic landscape analysis and social change: A case study. In: Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies 100, 1–27. Blommaert, Jan/Ben Rampton (2011): Language and superdiversity. In: Diversities 13, 1–21. Blunt, Alison/Robyn M. Dowling (2006): Home. London. Bolton, Kingsley (2012): World Englishes and linguistic landscapes. In: World Englishes 31, 30–33. Bourdieu, Pierre (1991): Physischer, sozialer und angeeigneter physischer Raum. In: Martin Wentz (ed.): Stadt-Räume: Die Zukunft des Städtischen. Frankfurt, 25–34. Britain, David (2009a): ‘Big bright lights’ versus ‘green and pleasant land’? The unhelpful dichotomy of ‘urban’ versus ‘rural’ in dialectology. In: Enam Al-Wer/Rudolf de Jong (eds.): Arabic Dialectology. Leiden, 223–248. Britain, David (2009b): Language and space: The variationist approach. In: Peter Auer/Jürgen E. Schmidt (eds.): Language and Space: An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation. Theories and Methods, Vol 1. Berlin, 142–162. Bühler, Karl ([1934] 1999): Sprachtheorie: Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Stuttgart. Büscher, Monika/John Urry (2009): Mobile methods and the empirical. In: European Journal of Social Theory 12, 99–116. Büscher, Monika/John Urry/Katian Witchger (2011): Introduction: Mobile methods. In: Monika Büscher/John Urry/Katian Witchger (eds.): Mobile Methods. London, 1–19. Busse, Beatrix/Ingo H. Warnke (2014): Ortherstellung als sprachliche Praxis: Sprachliche Praxis als Ortsherstellung. In: Beatrix Busse/Ingo H. Warnke (eds.): Place-Making in urbanen Diskursen. Berlin, 1–7. Busse, Beatrix/Ingo H. Warnke (2015): Sprache im urbanen Raum. In: Ekkehard Felder/Andreas Gardt (eds.): Handbuch Sprache und Wissen. Berlin, 519–538. Bynner, Claire (2019): Intergroup relations in a super-diverse neighbourhood: The dynamics of population composition, context and community. In: Urban Studies 56, 335–351. Calvet, Louis-Jean (1975): Des Mots sur les Murs: Une Comparaison entre Paris et Dakar. In: Robert Chaudenson (ed.): Des Langues et des Villes. Paris, 73–83. Canagarajah, Suresh (ed.) (2017): The Routledge Handbook of Migration and Language. Abingdon. Chmielewska, Ella (2005): Signs of a place: A close reading of the iconosphere of Warsaw. In: Arnold Nartezky/Marina Dmitireva/Stefan Troebst (eds.): Neue Staaten: Neue Bilder? Visuelle Kultur im Dienst staatlicher Selbstdarstellung in Zentral- und Osteuropa seit 1918. Köln, 243–356. Cresswell, Tim (2004): Place: A Short Introduction. Oxford. Collins, James/Stef Slembrouck (2007): Reading shop windows in globalized neighbourhoods: Multilingual literacy practices and indexicality. In: Journal of Literacy Research 39, 335–356. Coupland, Nikolas (2008): Review of Peter Backhaus, Linguistic Landscapes: A comparative analysis of urban multilingualism in Tokyo (2007) and Durk Gorter, Linguistic Landscape: A new approach to multilingualism (2006). In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 12, 250–254. Coupland, Nikolas (2010): Welsh linguistic landscapes ‘from above’ and ‘from below’. In: Adam Jaworski/Crispin Thurlow (eds.): Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space. London, 77–101. Daniels, Stephen/Denis Cosgrove (1993): Spectacle and text: Landscape metaphors in cultural geography. In: James Duncan/David Ley (eds.): Place/Culture/Representation. London, 57–77. Ditges, Anna (dir.) (2015): Wem gehört die Stadt: Bürger in Bewegung. Schwarzweiss. Film. Döring, Jörg/Tristan Thielmann (eds.) (2008): Spatial Turn: Das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften. Bielefeld. Eckert, Penelope (2004): Variation and a sense of place. In: Carmen Fought (ed.): Sociolinguistic Variation. New York, 107–120. Eckert, Penelope (2008): Variation and the indexical field. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics, 453–476.

266

Jennifer Smith

Eckert, Penelope (2012): Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of sociolinguistic variation. In: Annual Review of Anthropology 41, 87–100. Eco, Umberto (1988): Einführung in die Semiotik. München. Eco, Umberto (1991): Semiotik: Entwurf einer Theorie der Zeichen. München. Entrikin, Nicholas J. (1991): The Betweenness of Place: Towards a Geography of Modernity. Baltimore. Fairclough, Norman (1999): Global capitalism and critical awareness of Language. In: Language Awareness 8, 71–83. Foucault, Michel ([1969] 1981): Archäologie des Wissens. Transl. by Ulrich Köppen. Frankfurt am Main. Freadman, Anne (2001): The Classifications of signs (II): 1903. In: Mats Bergman/João Queiroz (eds.): The Commens Encyclopedia: The Digital Encyclopedia of Peirce Studies. Online at: http://www.commens.org/encyclopedia/article/freadman-anne-classifications-signs-ii-1903 . Friedmann, John (2010): Place and place-making in cities: A global perspective. In: Planning Theory & Practice 11, 149–165. García, Reyes (1983): Senses of place in ceremony. In: MELUS 10, 37–48. Goffman, Erving (1974): Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York. Gorter, Durk (2006): Introduction: The study of the linguistic landscape as a new approach to multilingualism. In: International Journal of Multilingualism 3, 1–6. Guilat, Yael (2016): Redefining the public space as a semiotic resource through institutional art events: The Bat Yam Biennale of landscape urbanism as a LL case study. In: Blackwood, Robert/ Elizabeth Lanza/Hirut Woldemariam (eds.): Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes. London, 163–179. Halliday, M. A. K (1978): Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. London. Hanks, William F. (2001): Indexicality. In: Alessandro Duranti (ed.): Key Terms in Language and Culture. Malden, 119–121. Harvey, David (2006): Spaces of Global Capitalism. London. Heller, Monica (2011): Paths to Post-Nationalism: A Critical Ethnography of Language and Identity. Oxford. Heller, Monica (2012): Rethinking sociolinguistic ethnography: From community and identity to process and practice. In: Sheena Gardner/Marilyn Martin-Jones (eds.): Multilingualism, Discourse, and Ethnography. London, 24–33. Heyd, Theresa (2014): Folk-linguistic landscapes: The visual semiotics of digital enregisterment. In: Language in Society 43, 489–514. Higgins, Christina (2017): Space, place, and language. In: Suresh Canagarajah (ed.): The Routledge Handbook of Migration and Language. Abingdon, 102–116. Hodge, Robert/Gunther Kress (1988): Social Semiotics. Cambridge. Hua, Zhu/Emi Otsuji/Alastair Pennycook (2017): Multilingual, multisensory and multimodal repertoires in corner shops, streets and markets: Introduction. In: Social Semiotics 27, 383–393. Huebner, Thom (2009): A framework for the linguistic analysis of Linguistic Landscapes. In: Elana Shohamy/Durk Gorter (eds.): Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. London, 70–87. Hymes, Dell (1977): Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach. London. Jakobson Roman (1960): Closing statement: Linguistics and poetics. In: Thomas Sebeok (ed.): Style in Language. Cambridge, Mass. Jaworski, Adam/David Machin (2013): The sociolinguistics of space and semiotic landscapes: An Introduction. In: Semiotix XN 10, n.p.

Semiotic Landscapes

267

Jaworski, Adam/Crispin Thurlow (2010): Introducing semiotic landscapes. In: Adam Jaworski/Crispin Thurlow (eds.): Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space. London, 1–40. Jewitt, Carey (2014): The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis. London. Jewitt, Carey/Teal Triggs (2006): Editorial: Screens and the social landscape. In: Visual Communication 5, 131–140. Johansen, Jørgen Dines (1988): The distinction between icon, index, and symbol in the study of literature. In: Michael Herzfeld/Lucio Melazzo (eds.): Semiotic Theory and Practice 1. Proceedings of the Third Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. Berlin, 497–504. Johansen, Jørgen Dines (2002): Signs in Use: An Introduction to Semiotics. New York. Johnstone, Barbara (2004): Place, globalization and linguistic variation. In: Carmen Fought (ed.): Sociolinguistic Variation: Critical Reflections. New York, 65–83. Johnstone, Barbara (2009): Pittburghese shirts: Commodification and the enregisterment of an urban dialect. In: American Speech 84, 157–175. Johnstone, Barbara (2010): Language and geographical space. In: Peter Auer/Jürgen E. Schmidt (eds.): Language and Space: An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation. Berlin, 1–17. Johnstone, Barbara/Jennifer Andrus/Andrew E. Danielson (2006): Mobility, indexicality, and the enregisterment of ‘Pittsburghese’. In: Journal of English Linguistics 34, 77–104. Jones, Rodney H. (2013): Space, technology, and attention structures. In: Semiotix XN 10, n.p. Jones, Rodney H./Sigrid Norris (eds.) (2005): Discourse in action: Introducing mediated discourse analysis. London. Kallen, Jeffrey (2009): Tourism and representation in the Irish linguistic landscape. In: Elana Shohamy/Durk Gorter (eds.): Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. London, 270–283. Kerry, Victoria J. (2017): The construction of hegemonic masculinity in the semiotic landscape of a CrossFit ‘Cave’. In: Visual Communication 16, 209–237. King, Lid/Lorna Carson (eds.) (2016): The Multilingual City: Vitality, Conflict and Change. Bristol. Krais, Beate/Gunter Gebauer (2002): Habitus. Bielefeld. Kress, Gunther (2010): Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London. Kress, Gunther/Theo van Leeuwen (1996): Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London. Kress, Gunther/Theo van Leeuwen (2001): Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London. Landry, Rodrigue/Richard Y. Bourhis (1997): Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality an empirical study. In: Journal of Language and Social Psychology 16, 23–49. Lefebvre, Henri (1991): The Production of Space. Malden. Mac Giolla Chríost, Diarmait (2007): Language and the City. Basingstoke. Makoni, Sinfree/Alastair Pennycook (2007): Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages. Clevedon. Markus, Thomas A./Deborah Cameron (2002): The Words between the Spaces: Buildings and Language. London. Martínez, Glenn A. (2005): Globalization, urban space, and the linguistic landscape along the US–Mexico border. In: Geolinguistic Inquiry 30, 103–115. Massey, Doreen (2005): For Space. London. Midalia, Susan (1999): Textualising Gender. In: Interpretations 32, 27–32. Modan, Gabriella G. (2007): Turf Wars: Discourse, Diversity, and the Politics of Place. Malden. Mondada, Lorenza (2013): Commentary. Being mobile, talking on the move: Conceptual, analytical and methodological challenges of mobility. In: Peter Auer/Anja Stukenbrock/Benedikt Szmrecsanyi (eds.): Space in Language and Linguistics: Geographical, Interactional, and Cognitive Perspectives. Berlin, 464–469. Moore, Paul (2010): From the semiotics of sight to the semiotics of sound: Teaching the creation of soundscapes. In: Journal of Media Practice 1, 148–156.

268

Jennifer Smith

Moriarty, Máiréad/Johan Järlehed (2019): Multilingual creativity and play in the semiotic landscape: An introduction. In: International Journal of Multilingualism 16, 1–6. Muth, Sebastian (2016): Street art as commercial discourse: commercialization and a new typology of signs in the cityscapes of Chisinau and Minsk. In: Robert Blackwood/Elizabeth Lanza/Hirut Woldemariam (eds.): Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes. London, 19–36. Nørgaard, Nina/Beatrix Busse/Rocío Montoro (2010): Key Terms in Stylistics. London. Otsuji, Emi (2011): Metrolingualism and Japanese language education: Linguistic competence across borders. In: Literacies 9, 21–30. Otsuji, Emi/Alastair Pennycook (2010): Metrolingualism: Fixity, fluidity and language in flux. In: International Journal of Multilingualism 7, 240–254. Papen, Uta (2012): Commercial discourses, gentrification and citizens’ protest: The linguistic landscape of Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 16, 56–80. Peirce, Charles S. (1995): The Philosophical Writings of Peirce. Ed. by Justus Buchler. New York. Pemberton, Simon/Jenny Phillimore (2018): Migrant place-making in super-diverse neighbourhoods: Moving beyond ethno-national approaches. In: Urban Studies 55, 733–750. Pennycook, Alastair (2010): Spatial narrations: Graffscapes and city souls. In: Adam Jaworski/Crispin Thurlow (eds.): Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space. London, 137–150. Pennycook, Alastair/Emi Otsuji (2015): Metrolingualism: Language in the City. London. Piller, Ingrid (2010): Sex in the city: On making space and identity in travel spaces. In: Adam Jaworski/ Crispin Thurlow (eds.): Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space. London, 123–136. Rossi-Landi, Ferruccio (1974): Materialistic semiotics. In: Thomas Sebeok (ed.): Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics. Berlin, 485–487. Roth, Kersten S./Carmen Spiegel (eds.) (2013): Angewandte Diskurslinguistik. Felder, Probleme, Perspektiven. Berlin. de Saussure, Ferdinand (1993): Course in General Linguistics. Ed. by Charles Bally and Roy Harris. London. Scollon, Ronald (2001): Mediated Discourse: The Nexus of Practice. London. Scollon, Ronald/Suzie Wong Scollon (2003): Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World. London. Searle, John R. (1975): A taxonomy of illocutionary acts. In: Keith Gunderson (ed.): Language, Mind, and Knowledge. Minneapolis, 344–369. Sebba, Mark (2010a): Review of linguistic landscapes: A comparative study of urban multilingualism in Tokyo. In: Writing System Research 2, 73–76. Sebba, Mark (2010b): Discourses in transit. In: Adam Jaworski/Crispin Thurlow (eds.): Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space. London, 59–76. Sebeok, Thomas A. (1994): Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics. Toronto. Shohamy, Elana/Durk Gorter (eds.) (2009): Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. London. Silverstein, Michael (2003): Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. In: Language and Communication 23, 193–229. Silverstein, Michael/Greg Urban (1996): The natural history of discourse. In: Michael Silverstein/ Greg Urban (eds.): Natural Histories of Discourse. Chicago, 1–17. Spitzmüller, Jürgen/Ingo H. Warnke (2011): Diskurslinguistik. Eine Einführung in Theorien und Methoden der transtextuellen Sprachanalyse. Berlin. Stæhr, Andreas (2014): Metapragmatic activities on Facebook: Enregisterment across written and spoken language practices. In: Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies 124, 1–27. Stroud, Christopher/Sibonile Mpendukana (2009): Towards a material ethnography of linguistic landscape: Multilingualism, mobility and space in a South African township. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 13, 363–386.

Semiotic Landscapes

269

Szerszynski, Bronislaw/John Urry (2006): Visuality, mobility and the cosmopolitan: Inhabiting the world from afar. In: British Journal of Sociology 57, 113–131. Tufi, Stefania/Robert Blackwood (2010): Trademarks in the linguistic landscape: Methodological and theoretical challenges in qualifying brand names in the public space. In: International Journal of Multilingualism 7, 197–210. Urry, John (1995): Consuming Places. London. Urry, John (2007): Mobilities. Cambridge. Venturi, Robert (1966): Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. New York. Vertovec, Steven (2007): Superdiversity and its implications. In: Ethnic and Racial Studies 30, 1024–1054. Warnke, Ingo (ed.) (2007): Diskurslinguistik nach Foucault: Theorie und Gegenstände. Berlin. Warnke, Ingo (2013): Urbaner Diskurs und maskierter Protest: Intersektionale Feldperspektiven auf Gentrifizierungsdynamiken in Berlin Kreuzberg. In: Kersten S. Roth/Carmen Spiegel (eds.): Angewandte Diskurslinguistik. Felder, Probleme, Perspektiven. Berlin. Watt, Dominic/Carmen Llamas (2017): Identifying places: The role of borders. In: Chris Montgomery/ Emma Moore (eds.): Language and a Sense of Place: Studies in Language and Region. Cambridge, 191–214. Waugh, Linda R. (1980): The poetic function in the theory of Roman Jakobson. In: Poetics Today 2, 57–82.

IV. Historizität der Stadt im Diskurs/ Historicity of the City in Discourse

Jennifer Cramer

11. Folk Linguistics and the Nostalgia of the Past City Abstract: Folk linguistics, a subtype of ethnolinguistics, is a theoretical framework that studies the beliefs that nonlinguists have about language. This study uses a folk linguistics approach to explore the concept of nostalgia and anti-nostalgia which can be used by Louisvillians to justify the regional placement of the urban city Louisville, Kentucky. The regional identity of the city is complex with Louisvillians shifting between Southern and non-Southern identities. While there is some deprecation towards Southern varieties due to their connection to the past and certain connotations that this entails, the residents do not reject all aspects of Southernness meaning there is still a degree of nostalgia present. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Introduction Nostalgia, language, and identity in Louisville Folk linguistic nostalgia Mental maps as discourse Conversations about regionality Conclusion References

1 Introduction As much as some professional linguists might bemoan the ‘expert’ status nonlinguists assert with respect to language by simple virtue of their being speakers of some language, it is important to recognize that the beliefs held by nonlinguists are of the utmost importance in our understanding of linguistic variation. Folk linguistics is the study of the overt knowledge and beliefs nonlinguists have about language, and the study of such knowledge and beliefs is “one of the ethnographies of a culture” (Niedzielski/Preston 2000, vii). As a whole, folk linguistics seeks to highlight the importance of popular discourses about language within the context of the scientific study of linguistic variation. Some popular discourses about language have to do with nostalgia, in which one embraces a sentimentality for a bygone time or place with which one has (generally) positive associations. Nostalgia, in general, is thought to serve many functions, such as bolstering social connections, increasing self-esteem, and generating positive emotional impacts (Wildschut et al. 2006). Nostalgia can also be an escape. In post-communist Eastern Europe, where the West is still often portrayed as utopian, the expression of nostalgia serves “as a way to distance oneself from the communist era – the https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-012

274

Jennifer Cramer

final destruction of its horror by mocking the system and making it absurd” (Głowacka-Grajper 2018, 931). Nostalgic thoughts, however, need not point to a time one has actually experienced; rather, people may be nostalgic about a time in history before they were born that is perceived to have been more positive than their current era (Stern 1992). But “[t]his is rarely the past as actually experienced, of course; it is the past as imagined, as idealized through memory and desire” (Hutcheon/Valdés 2000, 20). As such, nostalgic discourses similarly need not center on language as actually experienced, and the beliefs about language held by nonlinguists often fall into this category. In this chapter, I discuss how nonlinguists in Louisville, Kentucky (a somewhat large urban center in a rather rural state, located in the southern United States) describe language and identity in their city, state, and region in ways that do not seem to suggest a longing for days gone by. I will refer to this lack of nostalgia, and, in some cases, deprecation of nostalgia, as anti-nostalgia.1 Regional identity in the city, both linguistic and otherwise, has been shown to be neither simple nor straightforward, with residents constantly shifting between Southern and non-Southern identities (i.e., Cramer 2010; 2016a). I argue that Louisville’s position at many kinds of borders (e.g., linguistic, geographic, historic) impacts Louisvillians’ linguistic acts of identity (Le Page/Tabouret-Keller 1985) such that their linguistic production and perception of such identities is entangled with their recognition of these borders and their need to negotiate (and in particular, to contest) their sense of regional belonging. As will be discussed in the following sections, this negotiation is often achieved through strategies of anti-nostalgia.

2 Nostalgia, language, and identity in Louisville Nostalgia has been shown to play a key role “in identifying speakers as representative of a certain place and of a given language” (Higgins 2019, 195), and the specific ways in which nostalgia about language sometimes appears in a form that highlights the differences between some currently spoken variety and some (real or imagined) previously spoken variety that is typically perceived to be somehow more pure or correct. For example, one of the great language myths is that today’s English-speaking youth can no longer speak or write properly (Milroy 1999), suggesting the existence of some ‘Golden Age’ of literacy to which English speakers must return lest they find themselves in peril. Harkening back to previous times when language was ‘better’ is a common phenomenon, and a simple Google search2 for “kids can’t speak properly

1 This term appears to be in circulation in cultural studies (cf. Pine 2011) and elsewhere, but it does not seem to be a term used by linguists. 2 Search conducted in October 2019.

Folk Linguistics and the Nostalgia of the Past City

275

anymore” reveals more than 41 million raw hits, most of which have nothing to do with physical or mental disabilities that might make any type of speech difficult or impossible. Nostalgia in language goes beyond simple discussions of some standard variety as it compares to a nonstandard dialect. Often, when asked about one’s own language, there is a tendency for respondents to link the language varieties they speak to their identities (e.g., Turner 1999; Bucholtz/Hall 2004; 2005), which often results in nostalgic discussions of prior selves. Indeed, the connection between language and identity is quite pervasive, and Le Page/Tabouret-Keller’s (1985) theory of acts of identity captures the generalizations of identity construction and the ways in which linguistic performance aids in this construction. Each time we speak, we align with some group and seek other like-minded individuals to join our group. These groups have their own social histories, both real and imagined, and it is with reference to these histories that we can claim to belong to these groups. However, as Bucholtz/Hall (2005, 586, emphasis mine) explain, “[i]dentity is the social positioning of the self and other”. A person claiming a particular identity not only positions himself or herself as being similar to some defined group but also as different from others. Thus, identifying with a group requires describing and defining an other against whom one compares oneself. Often group members rely on stereotypes, attitudes, and ideologies to designate the out-group, thus highlighting the importance of folk notions in processes of identification. Identities, of course, take many forms and are linked to varying social characteristics with which people connect. For example, linguistic studies have dealt with how language is used to construct gendered identities (cf. Bucholtz/Liang/Sutton 1999; Holmes 1997; Eckert/McConnell-Ginet 1992) and ethnic identities (cf. Joseph 2004; Fishman 1999; Le Page/Tabouret-Keller 1985), among others. For many Americans, another important identity is a regional identity, one that addresses “how speakers conceive of themselves in relation to their local and larger regional communities” (Hazen 2002, 241). These regional identities are important to Americans because, as Conforti (2001, 1–2) explains, regions bring geographic and cultural order to the sprawling continental United States. Regions help make America geographically comprehensible. Regions are not only concrete geographic domains but also conceptual places. Humans define regions; they are not geographic entities that define themselves. Regional identity is not simply an organic outcome of human interaction with the physical environment – the geology and climate, for example – of a particular place. Regions are real places but also historical artifacts whose cultural boundaries shift over time.

In terms of regional identification, Louisvillians find themselves in a particularly difficult situation for defining their city’s proper identity. Louisville (see Fig. 1) is the largest city in the state of Kentucky, with a (consolidated city-county) population of over 760,000. The state as a whole, however, only boasts a population of about 4.4 million. Since Louisville is the only city in the state with a population over 100,000, the re-

276

Jennifer Cramer

mainder of the state population can be understood to be spread rather thinly across the more than 40,000 sq. mi. state. Thus, Louisville is somewhat of an enigma in the predominantly rural state; as the only real urban center, Louisville is often positioned (and positions itself) as ‘inauthentic’ Kentucky.

Fig. 1: Map of Kentucky (Kentucky Geological Survey 2014).

Moreover, Louisville is positioned in such a way that it is not only seen as not belonging to Kentucky but also not belonging to the Southern cultural region. Indeed, the entire state suffers from this seeming lack of regional identity, as outsiders and insiders alike tend to disagree on whether Kentucky is Southern (Cramer 2013a; 2013b; 2016a; 2016b). Taking geography as a starting point, the complex nature of regionality in Louisville can be elucidated. One description, taking Louisville’s physical position on the Ohio River as the key factor of its geography, claimed that the idea that Louisville is located between the Midwest and the South was reinforced by a large electric sign that was located for many years at the southern end of the Clark Memorial Bridge [crossing from Indiana into Kentucky] on the Louisville Gas and Electric Power Plant proudly proclaiming Louisville as the ‘Gateway to the South’ (Kleber 2001, 335).

The Ohio River seems to play a large role in Louisville’s identity. The river served as the reason for the city’s founding and currently serves as the political boundary between Kentucky and Indiana just to the north of Louisville. It also serves as the north-

Folk Linguistics and the Nostalgia of the Past City

277

ern boundary of the South in many regional characterizations, such as the U. S. Census’ regional divisions. Additionally, the river was the dividing line between the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War. And while the river no longer physically prohibits interaction between people on either side as it might have in the time of Louisville’s founding, as evidenced by the fact that many Louisvillians find work in southern Indiana (and vice versa), its presence certainly still impacts how Louisvillians discuss their own identities. Louisville can be seen, then, as being located at many kinds of borders, including the geographic, political, and historical boundaries discussed above, but the most crucial boundary for this study is the linguistic border. Just as the Ohio River forms the northern boundary of the state and the larger Southern cultural region, it has long been shown to be the northern boundary of the Southern dialect region (cf. Carver 1987; Labov 1991; Labov/Ash/Boberg 2006). The designation for this border is based on the presence or absence of linguistic features, usually phonetic or lexical, associated with a particular region. For example, monophthongization of /ai/ in words like tie and tied is shown in Labov/Ash/Boberg’s (2006) Atlas of North American English to be the defining characteristic of the South, and the northern boundary for this isogloss follows the Ohio River closely, placing Louisville at the intersection of the Southern and Midland dialect regions. This tenuous position, plus many other social facts, brings the nature and status of Louisville’s Southernness into question. As I have argued elsewhere (i.e., Cramer 2010; 2013a; 2016a; 2016b), these borders impact Louisvillians’ acts of identity such that the linguistic production and perception of regional identity in the city is neither simple nor straightforward. The data discussed here are provided as a folk linguistic exploration into how nonlinguists in Louisville view and talk about regional identity, revealing that regionality is indeed complex and tied up with notions of nostalgia and anti-nostalgia.

3 Folk linguistic nostalgia Folk linguistics is the study of what the folk (i.e., nonlinguists) believe about language. It is a form of ethnolinguistics such that the role these beliefs play in the lives of nonlinguists is thought to be a central focus in the linguist’s search for what people do with language and why. People have knowledge and dispositions with respect to all aspects of the human experience, including language, and such information can be used to the advantage of those seeking to better understand more than human nature and cognition; the practical application of folk knowledge in arenas like tourism (e.g., Sofield/Guia/Specht 2017) and language policy and planning (e.g., Albury 2017) have the potential to give agency to those who are impacted by such arenas. Popular discourses about language are “ubiquitous and strong” (Niedzielski/Preston 2000, xii) and can be a major force behind language change. Therefore, folk perceptions about language are critical for understanding linguistic diversity.

278

Jennifer Cramer

Research conducted within a folk linguistic framework takes many forms. In the modern tradition of perceptual dialectology, a branch of folk linguistics focusing specifically on what nonlinguists believe about linguistic variation (i.e., where it comes from, why and where it exists, etc.), scholars use mental maps, language attitude studies, and placing voices tasks (cf. Preston 1989; 1999) to determine how nonlinguists divide the dialect landscape. Other folk linguistic studies take conversational data as a starting point, encouraging nonlinguist participants to discuss their beliefs about language broadly (cf. Niedzielski/Preston 2000; Cramer 2013a). Because nostalgia, language, and identity are so intricately intertwined, the link between these concepts naturally becomes part of the discussion in folk linguistic studies. Dailey-O’Cain’s (1999) research in post-unification Germany, for example, utilized pleasantness and correctness surveys to explore how the memory of the Berlin Wall has impacted Germans from former East Germany and former West Germany in differing ways. She found that residents of former West Germany viewed their own variety and other western varieties as significantly more correct and pleasant than eastern varieties. For residents of former East Germany, there was no significant difference between eastern and western varieties in terms of correctness, but they perceived western varieties to be more pleasant. Such results indicate that West Germans are more likely than East Germans to long for and identify with a time when the Berlin Wall still stood as a barrier between these two locales. In conversations about nonlinguists’ beliefs about language, respondents often come to the task as storytellers, relating information about language experiences in their past. These more qualitative approaches to folk beliefs supplement the more quantitative data of perceptual dialectology and provide a wider lens with which to view such beliefs. Niedzielski/Preston (2000) showed, for example, that people who have moved around the United States can easily recall a time when they sounded different than when the recordings were taking place. These memories, however, do not typically take the form of nostalgia as much as a form of anti-nostalgia. This is especially true for people born in the southern United States in that they do not typically long for the days when they had such an accent.3 These conversations center on some event when a speaker realized he/she had an accent that was different than the one spoken in the new locale and on the reasons why and ways by which they changed their speech to accommodate to the local variety, likely because they perceived the original variety to be bad in some way. Thus, folk linguistics must consider nostalgia and anti-nostalgia as possible justifications used by nonlinguists for certain beliefs about language and reasons for language change. People from the southern United States are particularly prone to such

3 Indeed, the speech of the American South is typically negatively stereotyped as that belonging to poor, uneducated, racist whites (see Lippi-Green 2012 for a longer discussion of the stereotypes of non-standard varieties of American English).

Folk Linguistics and the Nostalgia of the Past City

279

nostalgic and anti-nostalgic responses. Southerners have often been called storytellers (cf. Berry 2000), and many of them talk about life in the South in a wistful way that suggests this longing for days past, such that the Southern imagination has been described as “excited by events in time and has found the most profound truths of the present and future in the interpretation of the past” (Holman 2008, 1). A sense of home and community stereotypically pervades how Southerners talk about the South. And while many folk linguistic studies have found them to be anti-nostalgic about their accents (e.g., Preston 1996; Niedzielski/Preston 2000), other accounts suggest that losing unique linguistic items of the Southern dialects is thought to be tragic (e.g., Miller 2009). The question of interest here, then, relates to how Louisvillians use nostalgia and anti-nostalgia in constructing a regional identity for Louisville. Do they harken back to days when language was better? Do they make connections between their way of speaking and a better time? Do they exhibit Southernness in their attempts to present a regional identity for their city? I attempt to answer these questions by examining two data sources: mental maps and language attitude surveys with 23 Louisvillians and excerpts from folk linguistic interviews with ten Louisvillians. The mental map task asked participants to draw dialect boundaries on a map of a small region of the United States and answer questions about each variety they delimited in order to explore how Louisvillians perceive the dialect landscape in which they live. The interviews were conducted to determine how Louisvillians process and perceive regionality in the city. These interviews were loosely constructed such that I, as interviewer, asked broad questions to stimulate discussion, but participants were encouraged to pursue other topics of interest.4

4 Mental maps as discourse One way in which folk linguistics aims to discover the sentiments about language held by nonlinguists is through the drawing of mental maps, a construct common in cultural geography (e.g., Gould/White 1986) that has been utilized extensively in the modern tradition of perceptual dialectology (e.g., Preston 1989; Montgomery/Cramer 2016). In this task, participants are asked to draw the boundaries of the dialects they perceive in a given dialect landscape and give those varieties labels. In Preston’s earliest work (e.g., Preston 1989), participants were asked to complete this task with a map of the entire United States. Full-country maps have been used extensively in this methodological tradition, both in the United States and abroad (e.g., Preston 1989; Dailey-O’Cain 1999; Long/Yim 2002; Montgomery 2007; 2016; Jeon/Cukor-Avila 2016). Recently, however, researchers have used maps of various sizes, including smaller regional maps

4 For a fuller description of the study, its participants, and the methods of data collection and analysis, see Cramer 2010; 2016a.

280

Jennifer Cramer

(e.g., Cramer 2010; 2016a; 2016b; Braber 2016), individual states (e.g., Benson 2003; Evans 2011; Cukor-Avila et al. 2012; Evans 2013; Cramer 2016a; 2016b; Evans 2016), and even individual cities (Lonergan 2016). In this project, participants were given a map of a small region of the United States with Kentucky at its center, as the initial goal of the data collection was to determine if Louisvillians perceived the Ohio River as a dialect boundary (Cramer 2010; 2016a). Taking this same data, I explore how those participants make recourse to nostalgia and anti-nostalgia in constructing the regional identity of Louisville, especially with reference to its position within Kentucky. There was a tendency for participants in this study to claim Louisville as a distinct dialect region. Several participants circled the area around Louisville, often linking it with Lexington, the state’s second largest city, as separate from the rest of the state. Only one participant, however, made any distinctions within Louisville. The map in Fig. 2 below shows the tripartite division made between the East End, the South End, and Old West End.5 The participant described (in the language attitudes portion of the study) the last region as belonging to older generations, those educated in the 1930s through the 1950s. He claimed that this style of speech has actually dispersed across the city due to ‘white flight,’ which saw the exodus of middle class whites in the city to the suburbs in the 1960s and 1970s (cf. Kruse 2005). The participant further claimed that the region is now ‘mostly black and language is different there.’ He ultimately said the speech in this area was akin to what he has labeled as South End, but his ratings of these regions tell a slightly different story. Of the three regions drawn in Louisville, the Old West End was rated as least educated and least formal in the language attitudes survey that accompanied the map drawing task. While it is not completely clear from his descriptions whether he was rating the speech of the older generations he mentioned or the new population of black speakers, it appears that race is a strong tool for this participant in his classificatory system. He was the only participant to also indicate that Black English was a variety one could find across the South. But his mention of ‘white flight’ and a brief connection he made between the Old West End variety and his own family suggests that the participant has a preference for the old, middle class white speech that no longer exists in the area. In some sense, this appears to be nostalgia for a time when white speech was more prevalent in the city.

5 Interestingly, like the regional labels employed in the state-map study (Cramer 2016a), these labels are common geographical monikers used in the larger discourse to describe areas of Louisville.

Folk Linguistics and the Nostalgia of the Past City

281

Fig. 2: Map drawn by 31-year-old white male Louisvillian (Photo: Jennifer Cramer).

Many participants, however, focused more on how Louisville could be seen as separate from the rest of Kentucky. The participant who produced the map in Fig. 3 circled and connected the areas around Louisville and Lexington in such a way as to depict them as little urban islands in the rest of what she has labelled as rural KY.6 While this respondent made no clear recourse to nostalgia or anti-nostalgia, this positioning of Louisville as different from the rest of the state because of its urbanity is a common discursive tactic for constructing Louisville’s regional identity, and this theme will be taken up further in the next section.

6 It appears to actually be a trichotomy, such that the eastern portion of the state is encompassed in what I’ve described elsewhere as a mountain rural area (Cramer 2016b).

282

Jennifer Cramer

Fig. 3: Map drawn by 40-year-old white female Louisvillian (Photo: Jennifer Cramer).

The other major tendency in this map drawing activity was to place Louisville as a separate variety located at the border of two other varieties. In Fig. 4 the Southern region just barely reaches the southern boundaries of a region encompassing only Louisville, which he has labeled Mid Southern/Midwest. This map also features a Northern Midwest region that comes very near to the northern boundary of the area encircling Louisville. This participant has clearly positioned Louisville as a ‘place between places’ (Llamas 2007) in his map. Additionally, in the language attitudes survey about the Mid Southern/Midwest variety, he claimed that the speech is ‘not as slow as southern dialect but not as fast as midwest’ and that ‘it has the inbetween qualities.’ Referencing the pace of one’s speech was common; the stereotype of the slow Southerner is pervasive in the data set. This slowness is often equated with a slow pace of life that is also considered by some participants to be ‘old-timey,’ and the rejection of the slow Southerner stereotype for Louisville serves as a form of anti-nostalgia; that is, Louisvillians connect Southern speech to a particular point in time in the past that they do not associate with Louisville speech, therefore not only rejecting the stereotype of slowness but also of clinging to bygone eras.

Folk Linguistics and the Nostalgia of the Past City

283

Fig. 4: Map drawn by 38-year-old white male Louisvillian (Photo: Jennifer Cramer).

In addition to specifically classifying Louisville within a specific dialect area, participants made claims about Louisville’s regional identity by categorizing other areas, especially those located in Kentucky, thus establishing the other in their regional classifications. Many participants used words like backwards and down home to reference other parts of the state and the South in general, suggesting a link to the past that Louisvillians do not have or do not want. In general, Kentucky as a whole and Appalachia, the mountainous region within which the eastern portion of the state is encompassed, more specifically were rated much lower than Louisville in terms of education and level of correctness (Cramer 2016a; 2016b). Indeed, in this and other research (see Cramer 2013a; 2016a; 2016b), Louisville has been commonly associated with standard or ‘newscaster’ speech, while Appalachian Kentucky has been depicted as ‘resistant to standard American English,’ which indicates that participants link a perception of poor education with the areas in the state outside of Louisville. These maps, labels, and survey results paint a picture of a city that stands out in a rather rural state for its perceived higher levels of education and, to some extent, ability to ignore the past (see below for further information on this matter). Through these data, some of the ways in which regional identity is constructed by Louisvillians are made apparent. These participants perceive their speech to be distinct from the rest of the state and somehow both Southern and non-Southern. In what follows, I explore how Louisvillians utilize nostalgia and anti-nostalgia in talk about how they experience linguistic variation in the region. These discourses mirror those found in the map drawing task in interesting ways, and the analysis of these conversations further indicates the complex nature of regionality for Louisvillians.

284

Jennifer Cramer

5 Conversations about regionality The data explored in this section come from interviews with several Louisvillians on the topic of regional identity in the city (Cramer 2010; 2013a). Each interview was about 30 minutes in length and was conducted in the home of one of the participants. Names provided are pseudonyms. Each interview involved two to four participants who were selected using the friend-of-a-friend method (Milroy 1980). The excerpts presented here do not necessarily explicitly discuss linguistic variation; however, as this theme was the focus of the interviews, it is assumed that statements about regionality more generally also apply to the language varieties under discussion. It has been said that “[n]o matter how far her children roam, once a Kentuckian, always a Kentuckian” (Butler 1929, n. p.). Despite characterizations of Louisville as ‘inauthentic Kentucky’, Louisvillians regularly express sentiments similar to the quote above. The couple that I interviewed in excerpt (1) had spent some time living in areas that are more quintessentially Midwestern (Indianapolis, Indiana and Milwaukee, Wisconsin) but eventually made their way back to their hometown. In this exchange, after having heard about their lives elsewhere, I asked them why they came back.  

(1)

Jennifer: What do you think it is about Louisville- like you’ve both gone away and come back, so what is it about Louisville that makes you want to come back or (0.8) Mark: I mean, for me- for me I mean it’s just- just- I don’t know maybe it’s just what I’m comfortable with but I just I- it’s not too big of a city I think it’s friendly Jennifer: Uh-hm Mark: And it’s a pretty reasonable standard of living. I mean I thought- you know I think that you know it was probably part of it but it’s just a really good place to raise a family Jennifer: Uh-hm Mark: And to live. It’s what I’m comfortable with. Jennifer: What do you think? Fran: I think family has a lot to do with it. Because when he lived in Indianapolis, we were dating Jennifer: Uh-hm Fran: And I was here (.) you know there was- there was a time when it was like “do I move there or does he move here?” Mark: Yeah Fran: And it was pretty much- you know “both of our families are here” Jennifer: Uh-hm Fran: “It would be much easier for you to move” Jennifer: Uh-hm Fran: When you start to raise a family and you have family to help you out it sure makes life easier … Mark: It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t come back.

In this exchange, Mark and Fran both connect their experiences in Louisville with sentiments that are typical among other Kentuckians and Southerners in general. Mark says the city is “not too big”, suggesting he perceives Louisville to be more like a small

Folk Linguistics and the Nostalgia of the Past City

285

town than other cities he has experienced. Indeed, while Louisville is the largest city in the state, it is one of only seven cities in the entire southeastern United States with a population of over a half million.7 Urbanity is not generally associated with Southernness, and Mark’s rejection of Louisville’s urban nature suggests a possible (though limited) connection between Louisville and Southernness. The connection is bolstered, however, by Mark and Fran’s insistence on Louisville as a place for family. While their focus here seems to be on their extended families being located in Louisville, they mention that “it’s just a really good place to raise a family,” a theme that they returned to in other parts of the interview. The importance placed on family values is another stereotype of Southerners. In the excerpt in (2), then, I decided to ask the couple whether they actually think of Kentucky as Southern. (2)

Jennifer: Do you think Kentucky’s a Southern- would you say Kentucky is a Southern state (.) if you had to classify the state as Southern? Or would you maybe say it’s something else? Fran: Man! We’re just right on the border! Mark: Yeah, I don’t know I mean I don’t know if I’d go with Southern or Midwestern Jennifer: Uh-hm Mark: I thought it was amusing that there was some show called “Southern Belles” or something and it was filmed here in Kentucky- it was filmed in Louisville- it was following these five Southern ladies and they were all from here and I thought “Well, that doesn’t make any sense. Why don’t they go to Savannah Georgia?” Fran: Right, exactly, I agree.

Here, Mark and Fran make it clear that the regional designation for Louisville is not straightforward. As I have discussed elsewhere (Cramer 2013a), this excerpt shows that the participants have an idea of what the ‘real’ South is and that Louisville does not fit this idea. Mark suggests, when discussing a television show called Southern Belles: Louisville, that the real South is in Savannah, Georgia, thus establishing the Southern/non-Southern dichotomy that pervades many interviews with Louisvillians. The claim of real Southernness for Savannah likely entails an association between that city and a previous era, one associated with plantations (see below), and can therefore be seen as a form of anti-nostalgia for Louisvillians. Without recourse to some point in history where Louisville clearly meets the definition of Southern, whatever that may be, Louisvillians do not see this classification as appropriate. For many of these participants, the notion of belonging, with respect to Louisville’s debated Southernness, was tied up with nostalgic representations of the American South. To explore regionality further, I discussed the show Southern Belles: Louisville with another group. I explained that the show tried to position Louisville as part of the South, but not the stereotypical South (e.g., Beverly Hillbillies). In the excerpt in

7 These figures come from the United States Census Bureau estimate of the population in 2009. See http://www.census.gov/popest/data/metro/totals/2012/tables/CBSA-EST2012-01.csv for more information.

286

Jennifer Cramer

(3), Ellen explains why she thinks the name Southern Belles was a poor choice for a show set in Louisville. (3)

Jennifer: So, um, what do you think about calling something- a show from here, calling it “Southern Belles,” what do you think about that? Is thatEllen: I don’t think it fits. Jennifer: Okay, why? Ellen: Because Louisville’s just not the South to me. Lexington, for some reason, would be (.) more Southern belle country, I guess because there used to be plantations in Lexington, and Louisville’s not known for plantations. So when you think of the SouthJim: I think of Southern belles, I think of MississippiEllen: I think of plantations. Jim: I think of Deep South. Ellen: Lexington had, Louisville’s never had plantations. And that’s where a Southern belle comes from. Plantations.

It is not clear from this interaction whether having plantations is perceived in a positive way, but Ellen’s insistence on Louisville’s lack of plantations as evidence for its lack of Southernness suggests that this historical artifact is a necessary prerequisite for claiming such a regional identity: Thus, Louisville cannot be claimed to be Southern. At other times, respondents seemed less concerned with talking about Louisville’s belonging to the larger region than in Louisville’s belonging to Kentucky. In (4), I asked the participants to discuss how they see Louisville as being distinct from the rest of the state, and one of the points of discussion had to do with dialect. (4) Jennifer: Ok, so then, um what about Louisville as distinct from (.) Kentucky- like do you think it’s different from the rest of the state? (.) Would you maybeMark: I- yeah Jennifer: Yeah? Mark: Yeah I would- I would say I mean just in terms of the dialect and (.) you know, frankly the standard of living and everything I mean I’ve had-I’ve had people say and I guess maybe I agree to a certain extent it’s like there’s Louisville and Lexington (.) and then there’s the rest of the state-

To further this claim, Fran uses anti-nostalgia to point to why she sees Louisville as different from Kentucky, as in (5), where she explores a not-so-pleasant previous experience that highlights how people elsewhere in the state perceive Louisville. (5)

Jennifer: Do you think there’s any negative feelings about Louisville and Lexington because of that? Fran: Um-hum … Fran: I know there is cause um (.) when- when I was in college I dated a guy that lived in Paintsville Kentucky Jennifer: Um-hum

Folk Linguistics and the Nostalgia of the Past City

287

Fran: In the mountains. And um his parents (.) were not real fond of him dating a girl from Louisville. Jennifer: Yeah? Fran: Yeah. Jennifer: What did they think? Fran: That she was from the city. Jennifer: Uh-huh. And so what does that mean? Fran: That I would not (1.0) do very well (.) in a small town. … Jennifer: so they were worried about how you would fit in in theirFran: Exactly. Jennifer: -their community. Fran: Yeah. Or- or they thought maybe I thought (.) that they would be beneath me or something like that too. … Jennifer: They thought you thought you were better Fran: Right. They had that impression because I was from Louisville.

Fran expresses the idea that Louisville’s urban nature causes people from other areas of Kentucky to perceive Louisville as different, just as Louisvillians perceive themselves to be different. This story is anti-nostalgic in the same way as those found in many other folk linguistic studies (cf. Niedzielski/Preston 2000) where the respondent recalls a time when his or her dialect was perceived to be somehow deficient. In this case, however, the problem seems less related to fixing one’s dialect as with other forms of belonging (i.e., standard of living, lifestyle habits). Still, there is the possibility that the underlying reason for how Fran was characterized was related to language, and because she perceived this experience negatively, the excerpt serves as anti-nostalgic discourse related to the rural/urban dichotomy she perceives in the state. In these interviews, participants also seemed to conflate notions of Southernness with rurality, thus causing them difficulty in categorizing Louisville as Southern. The concept of Southernness, for many Americans, is similarly confused. In the popular imagination, fueled by specific kinds of media depictions (compare Beverly Hillbillies and Gone with the Wind), the label American South might refer to people who are considered to be hicks, to live in poverty, and to lack education, but it might also refer to aristocratic and sophisticated elites of a bygone era (cf. Cramer/Preston 2018). Southerners are perceived to be friendly but racist, charming but stupid. As these excerpts show, these sentiments were expressed by some of the interview participants in my study. Ultimately, these interviews show how Louisvillians use varying techniques to classify their city in terms of region. The picture of regional identity in this city is blurry for these participants, but through the use of nostalgic and anti-nostalgic sentiments, participants construct a complex identity that highlights the importance of the border in Louisvillians’ linguistic production and perception of regionality.

288

Jennifer Cramer

6 Conclusion In this chapter, I have provided a brief glimpse into how nostalgia and anti-nostalgia can be used by Louisvillians to justify the regional placement of Louisville. Obviously, the question of regional belonging does not have a simple answer for Louisvillians, as showcased here and elsewhere in their mental maps, labelled varieties, language attitudes, and conversational data. While Louisvillians take many different paths for constructing the regional identity of Louisville, sentiments of belonging still often appear connected to either an acceptance of the past or a rejection of it. What I hope to have shown is that anti-nostalgia, like nostalgia itself, can also be used as a means to bolster social connections and increase self-esteem. Louisvillians can deprecate Southern varieties for their inherent connection to a previous time in history that they do not necessarily value, thus establishing the other against whom they define themselves. However, the fact that Louisvillians do not reject all aspects of Southernness means that nostalgic discourses may still be available to them. In constructing what appears to be a best-of-both-worlds kind of identity, Louisvillians simultaneously produce regionality in such a way as to position the city as both non-rural and non-urban; and because of the conflation of rural and Southern, Louisvillians also construct identities that are both Southern and nonSouthern. In future work, it would be important to interview older Louisvillians to see how they perceive language to have changed in Louisville over time. Such an explicit investigation would allow for a more thorough understanding of how nostalgic and anti-nostalgic discourses about language and regional identity circulate in the city. I have argued that it is the border position that impacts Louisvillians in this way. Their linguistic production and perception of regionality is intertwined with their understanding and recognition of the borders present in their city, and they use varying kinds of nostalgic and anti-nostalgic discourses to exemplify and amplify their regional position. Respondents utilize nostalgic and anti-nostalgic discourses about race, education, Southern and rural stereotypes, and plantations to negotiate and contest their sense of belonging in the larger regional landscape of the United States and within the state of Kentucky.

7 References Southern Belles: Louisville (2009): Created by Bruce Romans. The Beverly Hillbillies (1962–1971): Created by Paul Henning. Gone with the Wind (1939): Directed by Victor Fleming, Selznick International Pictures, MetroGoldwyn-Mayer. Albury, Nathan J. (2017): The power of folk linguistic knowledge in language policy. In: Language Policy 16, 209–228.

Folk Linguistics and the Nostalgia of the Past City

289

Benson, Erica J. (2003): Folk linguistic perceptions and the mapping of dialect boundaries. In: American Speech 78, 307–330. Berry, J. Bill (2000): The southern autobiographical impulse. In: Southern Cultures 6, 7–22. Braber, Natalie (2016): Dialect perception and identification in Nottingham. In: Jennifer Cramer/Chris Montgomery (eds.): Cityscapes and Perceptual Dialectology: Global Perspectives on Non-Linguists’ Knowledge of the Dialect Landscape. Berlin, 209–231. Bucholtz, Mary/Kira Hall (2004): Language and identity. In: Alessandro Duranti (ed.): A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology. Malden, Mass, 369–394. Bucholtz, Mary/Kira Hall (2005): Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. In: Discourse Studies 7, 585–614. Bucholtz, Mary/A. C. Liang/Laurel A. Sutton (eds.) (1999): Reinventing Identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse. Oxford. Butler, Lorine Letcher (1929): My Old Kentucky Home. Pittsburgh. Carver, Craig M. (1987): American Regional Dialects: A Word Geography. Ann Arbor. Conforti, Joseph A. (2001): Imagining New England: Explorations of Regional Identity from the Pilgrims to the Mid-Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill. Cramer, Jennifer (2010): The effect of borders on the linguistic production and perception of regional identity in Louisville, Kentucky. Dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana IL. Cramer, Jennifer (2013a): Styles, stereotypes, and the south: Constructing identities at the linguistic border. In: American Speech 88, 144–167. Cramer, Jennifer (2013b): ‘That’s a silly question!’: Rating correctness, pleasantness, and degree of difference in Kentucky. Paper presented at the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics 80, Spartanburg, SC. Cramer, Jennifer (2016a): Contested Southernness: The Linguistic Production and Perception of Identities in the Borderlands. Raleigh. Cramer, Jennifer (2016b): Rural vs. urban: Perception and production of identity in a border city. In: Jennifer Cramer/Chris Montgomery (eds.): Cityscapes and Perceptual Dialectology: Global Perspectives on Non-Linguists’ Knowledge of the Dialect Landscape. Berlin, 27–53. Cramer, Jennifer/Dennis R. Preston (2018): Introduction: Changing Perceptions of Southernness. In: American Speech 93, 337–343. Cukor-Avila, Patricia/Lisa Jeon/Patricia C. Rector/Chetan Tiwari/Zak Shelton (2012): ‘Texas – it’s like a whole nuther country’: Mapping Texans’ perceptions of dialect variation in the Lone Star State. In: Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Symposium About Language and Society–Austin, 55, 10–19. Austin, TX. Dailey-O’Cain, Jennifer (1999): The perception of post-unification German regional speech. In: Dennis R. Preston (ed.): Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology. Vol. 1. Amsterdam, 227–242. Eckert, Penelope/Sally McConnell-Ginet (1992): Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. In: Annual Review of Anthropology 21, 461–490. Evans, Betsy E. (2011): Seattletonian to Faux Hick: Mapping perceptions of English in WA. In: American Speech 86, 383–413. Evans, Betsy E. (2013): Seattle to Spokane: Mapping perceptions of English in WA. In: Journal of English Linguistics 41, 268–291. Evans, Betsy E. (2016): City talk and country talk: Perceptions of urban and rural English in Washington State. In: Jennifer Cramer/Chris Montgomery (eds.): Cityscapes and Perceptual Dialectology: Global Perspectives on Non-Linguists’ Knowledge of the Dialect Landscape. Berlin, 55–72. Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.) (1999): Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity. Oxford. Głowacka-Grajper, Małgorzata (2018): Memory in post-communist Europe: Controversies over identity, conflicts, and nostalgia. In: East European Politics & Societies and Cultures 32, 924–935. Gould, Peter/Rodney White (1986): Mental Maps. 2nd edition. Boston.

290

Jennifer Cramer

Hazen, Kirk (2002): Identity and language variation in a rural community. In: Language 78, 240–257. Higgins, Christina (2019): Place-based narratives among new speakers of ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi. In: Roberta Piazza (ed.): Discourses of Identity in Liminal Places and Spaces. New York, 193–216. Holman, C. Hugh (2008): The Immoderate Past: The Southern Writer and History. Athens, GA. Holmes, Janet (1997): Women, language and identity. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 1, 195–223. Hutcheon, Linda/Mario J. Valdés (2000): Irony, nostalgia, and the postmodern: A dialogue. In: Poligrafias 3, 18–41. Jeon, Lisa/Patricia Cukor-Avila (2016): Urbanicity and language variation and change: Mapping dialect perceptions in and of Seoul. In: Jennifer Cramer/Chris Montgomery (eds.): Cityscapes and Perceptual Dialectology: Global Perspectives on Non-Linguists’ Knowledge of the Dialect Landscape. Berlin, 97–116. Joseph, John E. (2004): Language and Identity: National, Ethnic, Religious. Basingstoke. Kentucky Geological Survey (2014): Kentucky Geologic Map Information Service. Online at: http://kgs. uky.edu/kgsmap/kgsgeoserver/viewer.asp. . Kleber, John E. (ed.) (2001): The Encyclopedia of Louisville. Lexington, KY. Kruse, Kevin M. (2005): White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism. Princeton. Labov, William (1991): The three dialects of English. In Penelope Eckert (ed.): New Ways of Analyzing Sound Change. New York, 1–44. Labov, William/Sharon Ash/Charles Boberg (2006): The Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change, a Multimedia Reference Tool. Berlin. Le Page, Robert B./Andrée Tabouret-Keller (1985): Acts of Identity: Creole-Based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity. Cambridge. Lippi-Green, Rosina (2012): English With an Accent. London. Llamas, Carmen (2007): ‘A place between places’: Language and identities in a border town. In: Language in Society 36, 579–604. Long, Daniel/Young-Cheol Yim (2002): Regional differences in the perception of Korean dialects. In: Daniel Long/Daniel R. Preston (eds.): Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology. Vol. 2. Amsterdam, 249–275. Lonergan, John (2016): Real and perceived variation in Dublin English. In: Jennifer Cramer/Chris Montgomery (eds.): Cityscapes and Perceptual Dialectology: Global Perspectives on Non-Linguists’ Knowledge of the Dialect Landscape. Berlin, 233–256. Miller, Zell (2009): Purt Nigh Gone: The Old Mountain Ways. Macon, GA. Milroy, James (1999): Children can’t speak or write properly any more. In: Laurie Bauer/Peter Trudgill (eds.): Language Myths. London, 58–65. Milroy, Leslie (1980): Language and Social Networks. Oxford. Montgomery, Chris (2007): Northern English dialects: A perceptual approach. Dissertation. University of Sheffield, Sheffield. Montgomery, Chris (2016): Perceptual prominence of city-based dialect areas in Great Britain. In: Jennifer Cramer/Chris Montgomery (eds.): Cityscapes and Perceptual Dialectology: Global Perspectives on Non-Linguists’ Knowledge of the Dialect Landscape. Berlin, 185–207. Montgomery, Chris/Jennifer Cramer (2016): Developing methods in Perceptual Dialectology. In: Jennifer Cramer/Chris Montgomery (eds.): Cityscapes and Perceptual Dialectology: Global Perspectives on Non-Linguists’ Knowledge of the Dialect Landscape. Berlin, 9–24. Niedzielski, Nancy/Dennis R. Preston (2000): Folk Linguistics. Berlin. Pine, Emilie (2011): The Politics of Irish Memory: Performing Remembrance in Contemporary Irish Culture. Basingstoke. Preston, Dennis R. (1989): Perceptual Dialectology: Nonlinguists’ Views of Areal Linguistics. Dordrecht.

Folk Linguistics and the Nostalgia of the Past City

291

Preston, Dennis R. (1996): Where the worst English is spoken. In: Edgar W. Schneider (ed.): Focus on the USA. Amsterdam/Philadelphia. Preston, Dennis R. (ed.) (1999): Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology. Vol. 1. Amsterdam. Sofield, Trevor/Jaume Guia/Jan Specht (2017): Organic ‘folkloric’ community driven place-making and tourism. In: Tourism Management 61, 1–22. Stern, Barbara (1992): Historical and personal nostalgia in advertising text: The Fin de Siècle Effect. In: Journal of Advertising 21, 11–22. Turner, John C. (1999): Some current issues in research on social identity and self-categorization theories. In: Naomi Ellemers/Russell Spears/Bertjan Doosje (eds.): Social Identity: Context, Commitment, Content. Oxford, 6–34. Wildschut, Tim/Constantine Sedikides/Jamie Arndt/Clay Routledge (2006): Nostalgia: Content, triggers, functions. In: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91, 975–993.

Joan Beal

12. Historical Discourse about Cities Abstract: Historical discourse about urban speech has always attributed to the languages spoken in cities the values associated with the cities themselves. It is therefore appropriate to discuss such discourse within the framework of indexicality and enregisterment developed by Silverstein (1993) and Agha (2003; 2007). After outlining this framework, this chapter discusses the ways in which urban language is discussed from antiquity to the present day and demonstrates how this discourse both reflects contemporary ideas about the cities concerned and shapes attitudes towards the urban varieties spoken there. Although there will be some reference to other languages, this chapter will concentrate on evidence relating to urban varieties of English. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Enregisterment Early times: From antiquity to the Middle Ages Early Modern English (1500–1700) Late Modern English (1700–1900) The 20th century and beyond Conclusion References

1 Enregisterment Silverstein (1993) presents a model for the association of linguistic features with social factors, described in terms of orders of indexicality. At the first order, a correlation between a particular linguistic form and a social category may be observed by an expert such as a linguist, but speakers who use the form concerned are not aware of this correlation. At the second order, speakers come to rationalize and justify the link between the linguistic form and the social category, and their use of the feature may come to vary according to self-consciousness, identity, style, etc. At the third order of indexicality, linguistic forms which have been associated with social categories become the subject of overt comment. The respective stages thus outlined correspond to Labov’s (1972) categories of indicator, marker and stereotype, but, whereas Labov defines a stereotype as a feature which has become so overtly stigmatized that it is bound to disappear, Silverstein’s model allows for positive as well as negative associations and makes no predictions of obsolescence. Agha (2003) elaborated on Silverstein’s model, applying it to historical evidence for the emergence of Received Pronunciation (RP) in 18th- and 19th-century Britain. Metapragmatic discourse, or, as Johnstone/Andrus/Danielson (2006, 84) describe it, “talk about talk”, associated the whole repertoire of linguistic forms which make up the accent known as RP, with a set of social values associated with élite status. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-013

Historical Discourse about Cities

293

Agha’s evidence for the enregisterment of RP was taken from a range of sources, including prescriptive texts such as pronouncing dictionaries, and literary representations of speech. These sources provide evidence for the enregisterment of non-standard urban varieties as well as of RP and so reflect contemporary attitudes to urban speech. Historical evidence for the enregisterment of urban speech is less abundant the further back in time we go, but the following sections attempt to demonstrate how attitudes to urban speech reflect ideas about urbanity at different points in time. Apart from the next section, which deals with a long stretch of time from which we have little evidence, the periodisation used in this chapter is conventional in most recent histories of the English Language (Curzan 2012). It also corresponds fairly well with Hohenberg/Lees’ (1985) division of the phases of urban development in Europe into pre-industrial (11th to 14th centuries), proto-industrial (15th to 18th centuries) and industrial (19th and 20th centuries).

2 Early times: From antiquity to the Middle Ages Although there is very little evidence of metapragmatic discourse from classical times, city states such as Athens and Rome imposed their languages on their respective empires, setting the standard for classical Greek and Latin. Anybody outside the civilizing reach of these city states was described as barbarous, a word derived from the Greek βάρβαρος (barbaros), which imitated the perceived babbling of those who did not speak Greek. The Romans subsequently used this term for anybody outside the Roman Empire, so, for instance, the part of Britain beyond Hadrian’s Wall was known as “Britannia barbara”. In English, barbarous has been used as an antonym of terms such as polite and civil to distinguish stigmatized, non-standard language from that of the élite, but, as we shall see, urban speech would later be viewed as either civil or barbarous depending on the social class of the speaker. Thus Puttenham (1589, 296– 297) recommends as a model the language of “men ciuill and graciously behauoured and bred” within a sixty-mile radius of London, but warns his readers to avoid “the speech of a craftes man or carter, or other of the inferior sort, though he be inhabitant or bred in the best towne and Citie in this Realme”. There is little evidence for attitudes to urban speech in early Britain, partly due to the paucity of surviving documents, but also because there were few sizeable towns and cities. The same could be said of most of Europe: as Lodge points out “the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century led to the progressive break-up of the urban network of Antiquity and a large-scale shift of population from town to country” (2004, 26). Hohenberg/Lees (1985) provide a table showing the ten largest cities in Europe in the years 1000, 1400, 1700 and 1900. In 1000, most of the ‘top ten’ are in eastern or southern Europe, the two largest being Constantinople and Cordoba each with populations of 450 thousand. No British city appears in the table until 1700, when London suddenly takes second place, behind Constantinople and ahead of Paris.

294

Joan Beal

Biddle (1985, 78–79) tells us that the number of towns in England increased from “perhaps ten to about fifty” between 880 and 930, to about seventy by 1,000, and “by the time of the Conquest more than a hundred places had some claim to be regarded as urban”. However, these urban settlements were very small by modern standards. Biddle estimates that by the eleventh century, London may have had 20,000 inhabitants and Winchester 10,000 but the population of most towns was only 2,000 to 3,000. The larger towns would have been places of trade and therefore of language contact: Bede (2011, 89) discussing the East Saxons, whose kingdom was divided from Kent by the River Thames, wrote that “[T]heir metropolis is the city of London, which is situated on the bank of the aforesaid river, and is the mart of many nations resorting to it by sea and land”. However, there is no extant evidence of contemporary awareness of the effect of language contact on the English of London or any other town. Nor is there any indication at this early stage that the speech of London or any other sizeable town had prestige, for the obvious reason that English itself was not an élite language. The language of education, literacy and religion was Latin and, after the conquest, also French, so the way to avoid the charge of barbarity was to use these languages rather than or as well as English. Likewise, in other expanding European cities such as Paris, Latin rather than an élite form of the vernacular would have “enjoyed very special status as the H-language” (Lodge 2004, 99) in diglossic communities. By the 14th century, English was gaining prestige and was used by court poets such as Chaucer and Gower. There is evidence both for incipient standardization and for increasing awareness of the diversity of dialects in England, but discourse about language at this point tends to be of a very general nature. Whilst a good deal of research has been conducted on the English of London in this period (see, for instance, Wright 1996a), this is in the form of objective analysis by modern linguists rather than metalinguistic comment by medieval Londoners, and therefore corresponds to the first level of indexicality outlined above. One statement that is often quoted as evidence for the enregisterment and stigmatization of northern English in this period, does, however, make explicit mention of a particular town. This statement was first made by Higden in about 1327, but translated and elaborated by Trevisa in 1385–7, and printed by Caxton in 1480. Transliterated into modern spelling, the statement reads as follows: All the language of the Northumbrians, and especially at York, is so sharp, slitting and unshaped, that we Southern men may that language unnethe (= ‘hardly’) understand (Trevisa 1385, trans. Caxton 1480).

Katie Wales (2006) has pointed out that the explicit reference to York could be a comment on the effect of language contact in what was effectively the capital of Viking England, and the alliterative, sound-symbolic adjectives used to describe northern language could evoke the perceived sound of Norse-influenced English. The language of the North is also enregistered as different (though not necessarily inferior) to that of the South, and therefore of the author, in the representation of the speech of the north-

Historical Discourse about Cities

295

ern students in Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale, but, unless we take this as an indirect comment on dialect contact in Cambridge, no particular town is mentioned. Likewise, Caxton’s (1490, n.p.) complaints about the diversity of English are very general, merely noting that “that comyn englysshe that is spoken in one shire varyeth from another”. However, the very fact that Caxton chose to site his printing business in London testifies to the growing importance of the capital as the centre of government as well as commerce as the Middle Ages drew to a close. As we shall see in the next sections, the association of at least upper-class London English with the status of the city as the seat of power was to contribute to its enregisterment as the most prestigious variety of English in the 16th century.

3 Early Modern English (1500–1700) By the beginning of the 16th century, a standard variety of English had been established, and this variety was beginning to take over from Latin and French in prestigious registers and domains. Scholars such as Dobson (1955), Samuels (1963), and Fisher (1977) have argued that this standard variety had mixed origins (though see Wright (1996b) for a re-evaluation of these ideas). However, as far as 16th- and 17thcentury commentators were concerned it was the English of London, and, more specifically, of the Court. The association of a particular repertoire of linguistic features with élite speakers who used them led to the enregisterment of London English as the ‘best’ variety. At this time, the very fact that a variety was spoken in the capital was enough to lend it prestige, since a person’s character was judged to have been developed by the environment in which that person was raised. This is articulated by Thomas Wilson in the Arte of Rhetorique (1560): The Realme declares the nature of the people. So that some Countrey bringeth more honor with it, then an other doth. To be a French man, descending there of a noble house, is more honor than to be an Irish man: To bee an English man borne, is much more honor then to bee a Scot, because that by these men, worthie Prowesses haue beene done, and greater affaires by them attempted, then have been done by any other. The Shire or Towne helpeth somewhat, towardes the encrease of honor: As it is much better to bee borne in Paris, then in Picardie: in London then in Lincolne. For that both the ayre is better, the people more ciuill, and the wealth much greater, and the men for the most part more wise (quoted in Mair 1909, 13–14).

Although Wilson does not mention language here, he expresses the view that Londoners are inherently more civil than those born in the provinces. In the 16th century, the word civil had connotations closer to its etymological association with the Latin civis ‘citizen’, the sense described in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as follows:

296

Joan Beal

That is in a condition of advanced social development such as is considered typical of an organized community of citizens; characteristic of or characterized by such a state of development; civilized. Now rare. Freq. contrasted with barbarous, savage (OED, “civil”, 5.).

The OED’s comment that civil was frequently contrasted with barbarous brings to mind the classical attribution of barbarity to the speech of anybody outside the sphere of influence of the city state. This emphasis on civility in 16th-century discourse about the English language was also a feature of metalinguistic discussions on and in other European languages at the time. As Lodge (2004, 115) points out, this was a result of the Renaissance. The Renaissance gave birth to what we now regard as the classical notions of ‘culture’ and ‘civiliisation’ […]. Implicit in them is a set of oppositions segregating high culture (associated with urbanitas) from the low, popular culture (associated with rusticas).

The élites in this period were, according to Lodge (2004, 115) “increasingly located in towns”. In a much-quoted extract, Puttenham (1589, n. p.) explicitly associates the language of London with this quality of civility. Here, he is advising aspiring poets on the variety of English most appropriate for literary registers:  

This part in our maker or Poet must be heedyly looked unto, that it be naturall, pure, and the most usuall of all his countrey: and for the same purpose rather that which is spoken in the kings Court, or in the good townes and Cities within the land, then in the marches and frontiers, or in port townes, where straungers haunt for traffike sake.... But he shall follow generally the better brought vp sort... men ciuill and graciously behauoured and bred... neither shall he take the termes of Northern-men, such as they use in dayly talke, whether they be noblemen or gentlemen, or of their best clarkes all is a matter: nor in effect any speach used beyond the river of Trent, though no man can deny but that theirs is the purer English Saxon at this day, yet it is not so Courtly nor so currant as our Southerne English is, no more is the far Westerne mans speach: ye shall therefore take the vsuall speach of the Court, and that of London and the shires lying about London within lx myles, and not much aboue.

Puttenham’s (1589) statement is usually cited as evidence for the stigmatization of Northern and Western dialects and for the very specific geographical pinpointing of the sixty-mile radius of London as the locus of the ‘best’ English. However, there is also explicit reference here to “the good townes and Cities” as opposed to “port townes, where straungers haunt for traffike sake”, implying the kind of hierarchy of prestige alluded to in Wilson’s statement cited above. It is worth noting that “port townes” are associated with less prestigious speech because of the language contact occurring there, as are the “marches and frontiers”, where contact with Welsh and Scots would take place. John Hart (1570, n. p.) likewise referred to “the Court, and London, where the flower of the English tongue is used” and based his reformed spelling on the pronunciation of the capital. Evidence that London English was considered, as Puttenham  

Historical Discourse about Cities

297

(1589) terms it, “the most usual” is also provided in the literature of this period, where other dialects are represented as departing from the norm. A good example of this is provided in William Bullein’s (1564) Dialogue Against the Fever Pestilence. In the opening scene of this dialogue, the main characters Civis (‘citizen’) and Uxor (‘wife’) encounter Mendicus, a beggar from the far North. Mendicus’s first speech is characterized as northern by his use of a number of dialect features including words such as barnes (‘children’) and spellings representing northern pronunciations such as halie for holy. Uxor comments on his speech right away: “What countrie man be you? [...] What doest thou here in this Countrie? me thinke thou art a Scot by thy tongue” Bullein (1564). We later learn that Civis is himself a northerner who has moved to London, but his speech is represented as ‘normal’, as would be expected of a citizen. RuanoGarcia (2010, 55–56) suggests that it is in Bullein’s Dialogue that “northern traits were first used with specific purpose in the Early Modern period” and further discussion of this text as evidence for the enregisterment of northern English can be found in Beal (2016), but in presenting northern English as outside the norm, Bullein is also reinforcing the enregisterment of London English as the language of the civilized, the citizens. Of course, not all Londoners used the language of the Court. Puttenham (1598, n.p.) also advises his reader to avoid “the speech of a craftes man or carter, or other of the inferior sort, though he be inhabitant or bred in the best towne and Citie in this Realme” but to “follow generally the better brought up sort... men civill and graciously behavoured and bred”. However, although scholars such as Nevalainen (2012) and Nevalainen/Raumolin-Brunberg (2003) provide evidence of the kind of social and stylistic variation which is typical of second-order indexicality, there is no indication that specific lower-class urban dialects were enregistered at this time. Paula Blank (1996, 40) points out that there is no literary representation of such dialects in this period, and that [I]n the absence of a clear, widely recognized ‘Cockney’ or other lower-class London idiom, Renaissance authors tend to mark the social class of certain characters with a variety of broad linguistic cues.

Indeed, the word Cockney was only just beginning to be applied to Londoners at this time. The Oxford English Dictionary charts the development of this term’s meanings from ‘a squeamish or effeminate fellow’ (OED, “cockney”, 2.a), to ‘a townsman’ (OED, “cockney”, 3.) (as opposed to a hardy country person), to its first citation meaning a Londoner in 1600: “S. Rowlands Letting of Humors Blood iv. 65.I scorne. To let a Bow-bell Cockney put me downe” (OED, “cockney”, 4.). These early references to Cockneys as Londoners are all derogatory, in contrast with the view expressed by Wilson that the inhabitants of London were superior to those of other towns and cities. However, there are at this time no references to a Cockney dialect: the OED gives its first citation of cockney with the meaning “The dialect or accent of the London cockney or of those from the East End of London generally” as late as 1890, but the enregisterment of Cockney as a stigmatized urban variety in direct contrast to the correct Eng-

298

Joan Beal

lish of the upper-class Londoner was evident more than a century before this date. Although no explicit metalinguistic description of lower-class London English can be found in this period, there is evidence that the equivalent social dialect in Paris was becoming enregistered as early as the 16th century. Although there was no equivalent label to Cockney, Lodge provides several examples of discourse in which specific features of Parisian French are stigmatized. Examples of this are the pronunciation of words spelt with /jo/ and as /we/: To be avoided, however, is the highly defective pronunciation of this triphthong found in the Parisian populace, namely L’iaue and siau for beau, seau, rouisseau and so on (Bèze 1584, 53, trans. Lodge 2004, 119). For voirre or, as others write, verre, people in Paris pronounce (and write) in a very vulgar way voarre (Bèze 1584, 52, trans. Lodge 2004, 200).

Lodge (2004, 135–136) also notes that, in literature as well as in the metalinguistic remarks of grammarians such as Bèze, contrasting stereotypes of the bon usage of the Honnête Homme (‘gentleman’) and the mauvais usage of what Lodge terms the Paysan de Ville (‘urban peasant’) were emerging. The reason why this enregisterment of lower-class Parisian usage takes place earlier than its equivalent in London is probably due to the earlier expansion of Paris’s population and development of Paris as the dominant city of France. The earlier codification of ‘good’ French usage by the Académie Française (founded in 1635) probably played its part in this process, too.

4 Late Modern English (1700–1900) The 18th and 19th centuries correspond to what Hohenberg/Lees (1985) term the industrial phase of European urbanization. Lodge (2004, 193) states that “the onset of industrialization in the late 18th century introduced changes to the urban landscape of Europe which were unprecedented in scale” and that “in those industrial cities that mushroomed out of small townships, lie Manchester, Saint Etienne and Dortmund, new urban varieties arose as modified forms of their hinterland dialect”. In Britain, the Industrial Revolution led to massive growth in both the size and the number of towns and cities, and improvements in transport made movement between these urban settlements much easier. Beckett (1985, 225) tells us that “the proportion of the total English population living in towns of 5,000 inhabitants or more increased from 16 per cent in 1700 to 27 per cent in 1801”. In the 19th century, this growth in the urban population was even more dramatic, as enumerated by Rose (1985). Between the 1821 and 1831 censuses, there was a growth of sixteen per cent in the population of England and Wales as a whole, but the population of Manchester increased by 45 per cent and that of Bradford by 65 per cent. “By 1900, almost 80 per cent of the population lived in urban districts with populations of 10,000 or more. In the space of a hun-

Historical Discourse about Cities

299

dred years, Britain had been transformed into an urban society” (Rose 1985, 277). The emergence and growth of urban areas in the North and Midlands of England did not diminish the dominance of London, which continued to grow both in population and in influence. Robinson states that the population of London “increased sevenfold” in the course of the 19th century, and that “by 1901, one in five people in England and Wales lived in London” (Robinson 2011, n.p.). Whilst the major towns and cities in Scotland and Ireland also experienced significant growth in this period, the urban varieties spoken in centres such as Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dublin were considered inferior to that of London, especially after the Act of Union (1707) united the Parliaments of England and Scotland. The 18th and 19th centuries also saw an increase in social mobility, creating a market for texts which claimed to provide guidance for upwardly-mobile readers who wished to acquire genteel speech and manners. As Holmberg (1964, 20) points out “it is in the eighteenth century that the snob value of a good pronunciation began to be recognized”. Such texts provide exactly the kind of discourse which provides evidence for the enregisterment of higher-class, educated London speech as the favoured variety, and for the stigmatization of other urban (and rural) varieties, along with Cockney. Of course, as Agha (2003; 2007) demonstrates, this discourse also contributed to the enregisterment of these varieties. Authors of elocution guides and pronouncing dictionaries in the 18th century are practically unanimous in their assertion that the variety described in their texts and aspired to by their readers is that of London. Johnston (1764, 1) describes his model as “that pronunciation...in most general use, amongst people of elegance and taste of the English nation, and especially of London”, and Kenrick (1773, vii) claims to describe “the actual practice of the best speakers; men of letters in the metropolis”. This attitude is also articulated by authors who were not themselves Londoners, such as the Scots William Perry and James Buchanan. Perry (1775, vi) wrote that it was “from the practice of men of letters, eminent orators, and polite speakers in the metropolis”, that he had “deduced the criterion of the following work, on the merit of which the learned part of mankind are capable of determining for themselves”. Buchanan (1757, xv) states in the preface to the Linguae Britannicae Vera Pronuntiatio that “the people of North Britain [= Scotland] seem, in general, to be almost at as great a loss for proper accent and just pronunciation as foreigners” and promises that, after studying his work, they may in a short time pronounce as properly and intelligibly as if they had been born and bred in London and be no more distinguished by that rough and uncouth brogue which is so harsh and unpleasant to an English ear.

One of the most successful elocutionists of the 18th century was Thomas Sheridan (1761, 29–30), an Irishman, who makes the following comment:

300

Joan Beal

Almost every county in England has its peculiar dialect [...] One must have preference, this is the court dialect, as the court is the source of fashions of all kinds. All the other dialects, are sure marks, either of a provincial, rustic, pedantic or mechanical education, and therefore have some degree of disgrace annexed to them.

The term provincial is a keyword in 18th-century discourse about language, applied to any feature of speech not conforming to the London-based model advocated by the elocutionists. Walker (1791, xiii) notes that [T]hose at a considerable distance from the capital do not only mispronounce many words taken separately, but they scarcely pronounce with purity a single word, syllable or letter,

citing as an illustration of this point the pronunciation of in the North. If the short sound of the letter u in trunk, sunk etc., differ from the sound of that letter in the northern parts of England, where they sound it like the u in bull, and nearly as if the words were written troonk, soonk, etc., it necessarily follows that every word where that letter occurs must by these provincials be mispronounced.

In the course of his dictionary, Walker (1791, n. p.) condemns various proscribed pronunciations as ‘provincial’, including the loss of /g/ in words such as strength and length “the sure mark of a provincial pronunciation”, and the pronunciation of incapable with a short /a/ in the second syllable, “a provincial pronunciation that must be carefully avoided”. Mention of pronunciations associated with specific towns or cities outside of London is rare in these 18th-century texts, but an exception to this can be found in Kenrick’s (1773, 31) discussion of the pronunciation of /r/:  

In the northern parts of England, particularly in and about Newcastle, we find the r deprived of its tremulating sound, and very awkwardly pronounced somewhat like a w or oau. Round the rude rocks the ragged Rachel runs is a line frequently put into the mouths of Northumbrians, to expose their incapacity of pronouncing the r, as it is sounded by the inhabitants of the southern counties: and indeed their recital of it has a singular and whimsical effect.

This pronunciation, later termed the ‘Northumbrian burr’, was discussed by several 18th-century authors, starting with Daniel Defoe (1724–27), but Kenrick’s (1773) comment suggests that Londoners were aware of at least some of the features of the urban vernacular of Newcastle. Although the speech of educated, upper-class Londoners was prescribed as the norm in the 18th century, authors such as Walker provide evidence for the stigmatization of Cockney. After enumerating the specific ‘faults’ in the speech of the Irish, Scots and Welsh, Walker (1791, xii) goes on to list those of his “countrymen, the Cockneys; who, as they are the models of pronunciation to the distant provinces, ought to be the more scrupulously correct”. The attitude expressed here is that Londoners, who have the advantage of hearing the model of pronunciation provided by educated speakers in the capital, should know better than to speak ‘incorrectly’. This negative attitude to the non-standard speech of the capital is also apparent in discourse about lower-class

Historical Discourse about Cities

301

Parisian French. Lodge (2004, 7) represents the prescriptive viewpoint still prevalent in discourse about this variety as follows. “The mouthings of the Parisian populace, with its français populaire, are […] doubly reprehensible: these people have the standard language on their doorstep and choose willfully to disregard its norms”. Walker (1791, xii–xiii) goes on to list four specific ‘faults’ of Cockney speech: “pronouncing s indistinctly after st”, “pronouncing w for v, and inversely”, “not sounding h after w” and “not sounding h where it ought to be sounded, and inversely”. The second of these ‘faults’ had already been represented as a characteristic of Cockney speech in Samuel Foote’s The Mayor of Garratt (1764) and both this and the fourth ‘fault’ were to become stock stereotypes of Cockney in the literature of the 19th century. Walker (1791, xii–xiii) discusses these features in terms which are highly derogatory and which enregister them as associated with the lower classes. The first and second ‘faults’ are explicitly associated with “the lower orders” and as “the greatest blemish in speaking” and “a blemish of the first magnitude” respectively (Walker 1971, xii–xiii). The fourth ‘fault’ is described as “a still worse habit” than the third, and “a vice perfectly similar to that of pronouncing the v for the w and the w for the v” (Walker 1791, xiii). This discourse indexes the distinctive pronunciations of Cockney as shameful, suggesting to readers that to speak in this way will mark them out as lower-class, stained and vicious. Such attitudes were to be even more explicitly stated in the numerous ‘penny manuals’ of the 19th century, several of which were dedicated to the issue of h-dropping, a feature which, by then, had become associated with social class rather than the specific location of London (see Mugglestone (2003) for a full account of these). Walker (1791, xiii) follows his account of the ‘faults’ of the Cockneys with a reiteration of the superiority of London speech to that of the provinces: Thus I have endeavoured to correct some of the more glaring errors of my countrymen; who, with all their faults, are still among the best pronouncers of the English language. or though the pronunciation of London is still erroneous in many words, yet, upon being compared with that of any other place, it is undoubtedly the best; that is, not only the best by courtesy, and because it happens to be the pronunciation of the capital, but best by a better title; that of being more generally received.

Although this statement predates the recognition of Received Pronunciation as a distinct variety, Walker (1791, xiii) is here asserting that the speech of London is the best because it is “generally received”, that is, because it is generally acknowledged to be the best. Alongside the general condemnation of provincial speech by authors such as Walker, popular and scholarly interest in regional dialect was growing in this period. Burke (1978, 9) writes about ‘the discovery of the people’ across Europe from the late 18th century onwards, leading to “a new interest in spoken as well as written language, in the illiterate, and in dialect”. In Britain, this interest manifested itself in literature and in antiquarian collections of songs and folklore, such as John Bell’s (1812/1971) Rhymes of Northern Bards and John Marshall’s (1818) Collection of Songs,

302

Joan Beal

Comic, Satirical and Descriptive, Chiefly in the Newcastle Dialect, and Illustrative of the Language, and Manner, of the Common People on the Banks of the Tyne and Neighbourhood. As can be seen from the title of Marshall’s collection, this interest in the language of ‘the people’ included some urban areas, notably Tyneside, but also, as the 19th century the industrialisation of towns and cities progressed, Lancashire and Yorkshire. Joyce (1991, 60) argues that the intellectual climate in which dialect literature developed was one in which language and literature carried versions of nation and people that offered the labouring classes the possibility of inclusion in the body of society rather than the exclusion so evident in other respects.

This urban dialect writing was designed to entertain, for the music hall or in popular publications such as the Yorkshire almanacs, and, as Joyce (1991) goes on to relate, its heroes were drawn from the urban working class. “Dialect literature created its own symbolic working heroes, with the characters of the Weaver in Lancashire and Yorkshire, the pitman and keelman in the northeast, embodying the symbolic virtues of the ‘gradely’ or the ‘canny’ lad.” (Joyce 1991, 172, see Beal 2000 and Wales 2006 for further discussion) Urban dialect was the medium of these writings and they also contained metalinguistic comments about the dialects, such as in the Tyneside music hall entertainer Joe Wilson’s (cited in Wales 2006, 138) song Varry Canny: A Sooth Country fellow one day says te me Ye Newcastle foaks is queer tawkers Ye puzzle us sair wi’ the words you’ll not find I’ Johnson’s or Webster’s, or Walker’s

A further impetus to the study of dialect came with the emergence of philology in the 19th century. Philologists advocated a scholarly approach to the study of dialects, which were viewed as linguistic systems in their own right, such that Joseph Wright (1892) was able to produce A Grammar of the Dialect of Windhill on the assumption that even the small village of his birth had its own dialect and this was worthy of study. Unfortunately, the ideology of the philologists emphasized the historical importance of dialects and the ‘purity’ of isolated, rural varieties, to the detriment of the urban dialects evolving in industrial centres. Peter Wright (1890, 57; cited in Wright 1981, 7–8) cites A. J. Ellis as stating that all London north of the Thames [...] is essentially a place where dialect could not grow up because of the large mass of changing and more or less educated population.

and himself (1981, 9) notes that whereas the dialects of many country villages have been meticulously collected, that of London with its teeming millions has been almost studiously ignored, chiefly it seems because quaintness adds a glamour to rural dialects.

Historical Discourse about Cities

303

Matthews, whose Cockney Past and Present (1938) is a notable exception to the neglect described by Wright, cites the following damning statement from a report of the Conference of the Teaching of English in London Elementary Schools (1909, cited in Matthews 1938, vii): The Cockney mode of speech, with its unpleasant twang, is a modern corruption without legitimate credentials, and is unworthy of being the speech of any person in the capital city of the Empire.

Here, we find echoes of Walker’s judgement that Londoners should set a better example. By the early 20th century, the influence of philology meant that educated writers paid lip service to traditional dialects, but Cockney lacked the ‘legitimate credentials’ of these varieties and so was condemned. Other urban dialects were studied in this period, notably those of Sheffield (Hunter 1829; Bywater 1839; Addy 1888) Leeds (Smith 1862) and Newcastle (Brockett 1825; Heslop 1892), but even in these works concerns are raised about the adulteration of urban dialects, such as in the following extract from Addy (1888, viii): The town of Sheffield has overspread a large area of ground, and the great increase of streets, together with the influx of strangers, has done much to obliterate old words, manners, and customs, so that it is rather amongst the people living in the outlying villages than in the town itself that the remains of ancient language and customs fast fading are to be found. The immigration of strangers, owing chiefly to the development of the cutlery trade and to the large number of apprentices who, as the books of the Cutlers’ Company show, have for at least two centuries come into the town from various parts of England, has probably also tended to adulterate the dialect.

Discourse about urban speech in the 18th and 19th centuries was dominated by, on the one hand, the prescriptive view that the speech of educated, upper-class Londoners was the model of correctness against which all other varieties were found wanting, and, on the other hand, the Romantic idealisation (also espoused by ‘scientific’ philologists) of the ‘pure’ rural dialect, according to which urban varieties were adulterated and not worthy of the name ‘dialect’. Since both the Romantic movement and philology were Europe-wide phenomena, the same kind of discourse could be found with reference to other urban vernaculars. Lodge attributes the lack of scholarly interest in lower-class Parisian French at least partly to the persistence of the ideology of ‘pure’ dialects amongst historians of French. Lodge (2004, 8) notes that, according to this ideology, low-class-speech in Paris failed on more or less all counts: not only was it not a ‘pure’ form of dialecte, but it even failed to qualify as a patois.

Lodge (2004, 8) goes on to cite the 19th-century French dialectologist:

304

Joan Beal

Ce langage, que j’appelle patois, pour être bref, ne mérite guère ce nom, pris surtout dans le sens de dialecte; il n’en a ni lunité, ni l’originalité, ni les règles.1

5 The 20th century and beyond At the beginning of the 20th century, Received Pronunciation was reified in publications such as Daniel Jones’s (1917) English Pronouncing Dictionary. By this time, RP was associated with a particular social class rather than with London. Jones (1917, 4) himself defined RP as “the form which appears to be most generally used by Southern English persons who have been educated at the great English public boardingschools”, and H.C. Wyld (1920, 3–4) wrote of what he termed “Received Standard”: This form of speech differs from the various Regional Dialects in many ways, but most remarkably in this, that it is not confined to any locality, nor associated in any one’s mind with the area; it is in its origin, as we shall see, the product of social conditions, and is essentially a Class Dialect. Received Standard is spoken, within certain social boundaries, with an extraordinary degree of uniformity, all over the country. [...] If we were to say that Received English at the present day is Public School English, we should not be far wrong.

Discourse about London speech from this time on tends to focus on the non-standard varieties of the capital, and on what was perceived as the pernicious effect of London’s influence on the speech of other areas. Dialect studies in the late 19th century were conducted in a climate for widespread concern about the deleterious effects of urbanisation, as can be seen in the quote from Addy (1888) in the previous section. In urban areas, migration of workers led to dialect contact, which would result in the levelling of traditional dialect features and the formation of new urban dialects. In the 20th century, the growth and spread of major cities, especially London, also provoked comments about the diffusion of these urban vernaculars to the surrounding areas. An early example of such a comment is provided in Gepp’s (1923, 150–151, as cited in Wright 1981, 142) Essex Dialect Dictionary: Modern Cockney language has now crept in among us, and is creeping more and more, and we regret and resent it [...] the deadening influence of London is seen for many miles out [...] the poison is in the air, and the blighting Cockney’s Sahfend (Southend), Borking (Barking) and Elstead (Halstead) and the like show us what we may come to. Heaven preserve us!

The language here is highly emotive and peppered with metaphors of disease (“deadening”, “poison”, “blighting”), but Gepp’s statement was prescient, foreshadowing

1 ‘This language, which I call patois for the sake of brevity, hardly deserves this name, especially taken in the sense of dialect; it has neither the homogeneity, nor the originality, nor the rules.’ (my translation).

Historical Discourse about Cities

305

the late 20th-century moral panic about the spread of Estuary English (Rosewarne 1994). The levelling of dialects in the South-east of England has been largely attributed to the large-scale resettlement of Londoners after World War II. Those from the East End of London (the true Cockneys) tended to be re-homed in Essex, a county which is now a byword for urban working-class language and lifestyle, as personified in the cast of the TV reality show The Only Way is Essex. During World War II, evacuation of urban families and conscription led to dialect contact on an unprecedented scale. One effect of this was to increase the awareness of urban vernaculars: servicemen and women from different parts of the country met and befriended each other, and the ensuing banter enregistered their urban dialects. The first citations in the OED of nicknames for several urban dialects date from this period: Brummie (Birmingham) is first cited from 1941, Scouse (a native of Liverpool) from 1945. The first citation for Brummie is taken from a novel about wartime experience: “1941 G. Kersh They die with their Boots Clean ii. 65 You’re a Brummy Boy. I can tell by your accent.” (OED, “brummy”) The context of the citation is exactly the situation in which dialect contact leads to discussion and therefore enregisterment of the dialects concerned: the meeting in barracks of soldiers from different towns and cities. Pooley (1996, 10) suggests a similar, though earlier, origin for the ethnonym given to the urban dialect of Lille and its region, Nord Pas de Calais: Originally a pejorative nickname given to northern soldiers by their comrades in the 1914–18 War, based on a combination of two patois words heard in their conversations, i.e. ch’ti ‘celui’ and mi ‘moi’, Ch’timi or its shortened form Ch’ti has become a designation which signals pride in the region.

Dialectologists were aware of the effect of World War II on the dialects of England, and the Survey of English Dialects was launched in the immediate post-war period as a response to the perceived threat of these effects on the viability of traditional dialects. This, along with the historical orientation of the project, meant that the survey concentrated its efforts on collecting data from small villages with a stable population of about 500, but exceptions were made for the cities of Leeds, Sheffield, and London. Wright (1981, 7–8) gives a first-hand account of his experiences as a fieldworker for the survey: Does London really have a dialect? To investigate this I was specially sent round the metropolis in 1952 as first fieldworker for the well-known Leeds University Survey of English Dialects under Professor H. Orton because his co-director of the Survey, the eminent Swiss dialectologist Professor Eugen Dieth, doubted whether any Cockney remained. [...] How pleased, therefore, Professor Dieth was when my London recordings refuted the theory that its dialect was dead.

Wright’s (1988) volume on Cockney emerged from the wave of urban dialectology in the latter half of the 20th century, when scholars such as Labov in the USA and Trudgill in the UK developed the methodology of what was to become known as sociolinguistics by drawing on the practices of sociology to study the dialects of cities. Chambers/Trudgill (1998, 45–46) give an account of the rise of urban dialectology:

306

Joan Beal

It [...] gradually came to be realised that the focusing of traditional dialectology on rural dialects had led to an almost total neglect, in many countries, of the speech forms used by the majority of the population, namely, those who lived in towns and cities. This was particularly true of heavily urbanised countries such as England, where perhaps 90 per cent of the population live in towns.

Whereas the philologists and dialectologists of the 19th and early 20th centuries had tended to consider urban dialects less ‘genuine’ than traditional rural varieties, sociolinguists following Labov saw this focus on the language of small, isolated villages as unrealistic. Labov (1972, 112) defines the vernacular as “the style which is most regular in its structure and in its relation to the evolution of the language” and “in which the minimum attention is paid to speech”. According to this principle, every speaker of whatever social class and in whatever location has a vernacular style, so the processes of linguistic change can be traced in the language of inner-city residents just as well as in that of isolated communities. If anything, the work of Labov and the sociolinguists who followed him tended to view the language of the inner city as the most ‘authentic’, as Eckert (2003, 393) points out in her critique of what she terms the ‘gendering’ of authenticity: And sociolinguists have participated in this gendering in, for example, focusing studies of African American Vernacular English on the speech of urban boys. These boys’ authenticity as speakers of AAVE is tied to their participation in urban male street life, and in certain authentically urban male speech events (e.g. playing the dozens).

Eckert’s point here is that the speech of African-American girls could be equally ‘authentic’, but the focus on the urban nature of AAVE is relevant. The word urban has, in the late 20th and early 20th centuries, developed a meaning that is synonymous with ‘black’. The OED defines this usage as follows: Of or relating to any of a variety of genres of popular music of a type chiefly associated with black performers; designating this type of music (“urban”, 4.a). Esp. of fashion: characteristic of or relating to the subculture associated with this type of music. Also: of or relating to black (esp. African-American) popular or youth culture generally (“urban”, 4.b).

The most recent focus of sociolinguistic research on urban varieties has been on the speech of multilingual and multicultural cities. Cheshire et al. (2011, 152) point out that “in a number of European cities, the latter part of the twentieth century has seen the emergence of new, distinct varieties of the host languages in multilingual, working-class neighbourhoods”. Examples of these varieties and the names given to them include Kiezdeutsch (Wiese 2012) and Rinkebysvenska (Kotsinas 1988). In Britain, this variety has come to be known as Multicultural London English, defined by Cheshire et al. (2011, 154) as “the overall range of distinctive language features used in multiethnic areas of London”. The findings of the Multicultural London English project were widely reported in the British media in an alarmist fashion: typical headlines were

Historical Discourse about Cities

307

“Is this the end of Cockney? Hybrid dialect dubbed ‘Multicultural London English’ sweeps across the country” (Daily Mail) and “Cockney to disappear from London within 30 years” (BBC News). Ironically, the very dialect which, in the early twentieth century was deemed a threat to areas outside London is now viewed as endangered and in need of preservation.

6 Conclusion In this historical overview of discourse about urban language, we have seen how metalinguistic comments about speech in towns and cities at any stage in history reflect the prevailing attitudes to urbanity. When a standard variety of English was emerging in London, this variety was indexed as prestigious because of the association of the capital city with the royal court. London then as now was multilingual and a site of dialect contact, and, indeed, the standard variety of English that emerged in the Early Modern period had mixed dialect origins, but this was not the focus of contemporary comment. As the standard variety became codified and prescribed in the 18th century, London English was still cited as the model of correct usage, but with the caveat that this usage was that of educated, upper-class Londoners. Cockney was reviled as inexcusably vicious and a bad example to the provinces, and, later, to the Empire. With the Romantic movement of the 19th century, urban varieties were viewed as inauthentic, lacking the historical credentials of traditional rural varieties, and this attitude was also expressed by the more ‘scientific’ philologists of the time. Even so, popular writings in the new towns and cities of the Industrial revolution expressed a more positive view of the emerging urban vernaculars as the ‘voice of the people’. In the late 20th and 21st centuries, discourse about urban language has been centered on various types of dialect contact: the levelling in towns and cities throughout the UK reported in, for instance Foulkes/Docherty (1999); the spread of “Estuary English” in the South-East of England, and, most recently, the rise of Multicultural London English and its spread to other major conurbations. Although this chapter has concentrated on discourse about urban language in Britain, and more specifically England, similar patterns can be found in other European languages.

308

Joan Beal

7 References Addy, Sidney O. (1888): A Glossary of Words Used in the Neighbourhood of Sheffield. London. Agha, Asif (2003): The social life of a cultural value. In: Language and Communication 23, 231–273. Agha, Asif (2007): Language and Social Relations. Cambridge. BBC News (2010): Cockney to disappear from London ‘within 30 years’. Online at: http://www.bbc.co. uk/news/10473059. . Beal, Joan C. (2000): From Geordie Ridley to Viz: Popular literature in Tyneside English. In: Language and Literature 9, 343–359. Beal, Joan C. (2016): Enregistering the north. In: Anita Auer/Victorina Gonzalez-Diaz/Jane Hoidson/ Violeta Sotoriva (eds.): Linguistics and Literary History. Amsterdam, 13–30. Beckett, John V. (1985). The economy: Towards industrialization. In: Christopher Haigh (ed.): The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland. Cambridge, 225–229. Bede (2011): Bede’s ecclesiastical history of England. Project Gutenberg Ebook #38326. Online at: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=38326. . Bell, John [1812], Ed. David Harker (1971): Rhymes of Northern Bards. Newcastle upon Tyne. Bèze, Théodore de (1584): De Francicae Linguae recta pronuntiatione tractatus. Geneva. Biddle, Martin (1985): Economy: farming, trade and manufacture. In: Christopher Haigh (ed.): The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland. Cambridge, 78–80. Blank, Paula (1996): Broken English: Dialects and the Politics of Language in the Renaissance Writings. London. Brockett, John T. (1825): A Collection of North Country Words. Newcastle upon Tyne. Buchanan, James (1757): Linguae Britannicae Vera Pronunciatio. London. Burke, Peter (1978): Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. London. Bullein, William (1564): A Dialogue both Pleasant and Pitifull, wherein is a Goodlie Regiment against the Fever Pestilence, with a Consolation and Comfort against Death. London. Bywater, Abel (1839): Sheffield Dialect. Sheffield. Caxton, William (1490): Eneydos. Westminster. Chambers, Jack/Peter Trudgill (1998): Dialectology. 2nd edition Cambridge. Cheshire, Jenny/Paul Kerswill/Sue Fox/Eivind Torgensen (2011): Contact, the feature pooland the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 15, 151–196. Curzan, Anne (2012): Periodization in the history of the English language. In: Alexander Bergs/Laurel J. Brinton (eds.): English Historical Linguistics: An International Handbook. Vol. 2. Berlin, 1233–1256. Daily Mail Online (2013): Is this the end of Cockney? Hybrid dialect dubbed ‘Multicultural London English’ sweeps across the country. Online at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article2498152/Is-end-Cockney-Hybrid-dialect-dubbed-Multicultural-London-English-sweepscountry.html. . Defoe, Daniel (1724–27): A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain. London. Dobson, Eric J. (1955): Early Modern Standard English. In: Transactions of the Philological Society, 25–34. Eckert, Penelope (2003): Elephants in the room. In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 7, 392–397. Ellis, Alexander J. (1890): English Dialects: Their Sounds and Homes. London. Fisher, John H. (1977): Chancery and the emergence of a standard written English in the fifteenth century. In: Speculum 52, 870–899. Foote, Samuel (1763): The Mayor of Garret. London. Foulkes, Paul/Gerard Docherty (1999): Urban Voices. London. Hart, John (1570): A Methode or Comfortable Beginning for all Unlearned. London.

Historical Discourse about Cities

309

Heslop, Richard O. (1892): Northumberland Words. London. Higden, Ranulph (1480): The Description of Britayne & also Irlonde taken out of Polychronicon. Transl. by William Caxton. Westminster. Hohenberg, Paul M./Lynne H. Lees (1985): The Making of Modern Europe, 1000–1994. Cambridge, MA. Holmberg, Borje (1964): On the Concept of Standard English and the History of Modern English Pronunciation. Lund. Hunter, Joseph (1829): The Hallamshire Glossary. London. Johnston, William (1764): Pronouncing and Spelling Dictionary. London. Johnstone, Barbara/Jennifer Andrus/Andrew E. Danielson (2006): Mobility, indexicality, and the enregisterment of ‘Pittsburghese’. In: Journal of English Linguistics 34, 77–104. Jones, Daniel (1917): An English Pronouncing Dictionary. London. Joyce, Patrick (1991): The people’s English: Language and class in England c.1840–1920. In: Peter Burke/Roy Porter (eds.): Language, Self and Society: A Social History of Language. Cambridge, 154–190. Kenrick, William (1773): A New Dictionary of the English Language. London. Kotsinas, Ulla-Britt (1988): Immigrant children’s Swedish: A new variety? In: Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 9, 129–140. Labov, William (1972): Some principles of sociolinguistic methodology. In: Language in Society 1, 97–120. Lodge, R. Anthony (2004): A Sociolinguistic History of Parisian French. Cambridge. Mair, George H. (ed). ([1560] 1909): Wilson’s Arte of Rhetorique. Oxford. Marshall, John (1818): A Collection of Songs, Comic, Satirical and Descriptive, Chiefly in the Newcastle Dialect, and Illustrative of the Language, and Manner, of the Common People on the Banks of the Tyne and Neighbourhood. Newcastle. Matthews, William (1938): Cockney Past and Present. London. Mugglestone, Lynda (2003): Talking Proper: The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol. 2nd edition Oxford. Nevalainen, Terttu (2012): Mapping change in Tudor English. In: Lynda Mugglestone (ed.): The Oxford History of English, updated edition Oxford, 219–261. Nevalainen, Terttu/Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, (2003): Historical Sociolinguistics: Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England. London. OED. “Brummie, n. and adj.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2022. Web. . OED. “civil, adj., n., and adv.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2022. Web. . OED. “cockney, n. and adj.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2022. Web. . OED. “scouse, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2022. Web. . OED. “urban, adj. and n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2022. Web. . Perry, William (1775): The Royal Standard English Dictionary. Edinburgh. Pooley, Tim (1996): Chtimi: The Urban Vernaculars of Northern France. Clevedon. Puttenham, George (1589): The Arte of English Poesie. London. Robinson, Bruce (2011): London: A Modern Babylon. Online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/ victorians/london_modern_babylon_01.shtml. . Rose, Michael E. (1985): Society: The emergence of urban Britain. In: Christopher Haigh (ed.): The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland. Cambridge, 276–281. Rosewarne, David (1994): Estuary English: Tomorrow’s RP? In: English Today 37, 3–8. Ruano-Garcia, Javier (2010): Early Modern Northern English Lexis: A Literary Corpus-Based Study. Bern. Samuels, Michael L. (1963): Some applications of Middle English dialectology. In: English Studies 44, 81–94. Sheridan, Thomas (1761): A Dissertation. London.

310

Joan Beal

Silverstein, Michael (1993): Metapragmatic discourse and metapragmatic function. In: Lucy, John A. (ed.): Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics. Cambridge, 33–58. Smith, John R. (1862): The Dialect of Leeds and its Neighbourhood. London. Wales, Katie (2006): Northern English: A Social and Cultural History. Cambridge. Walker, John (1791): A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary. London. Wiese, Heike (2012): Kiezdeutsch: Ein neuer Dialekt entsteht. München. Wilson, Thomas (1560). Art of Rhetoric. University Park, PA. Wright, Joseph (1892): A Grammar of the Dialect of Windhill. London. Wright, Laura (1996a): Sources of London English: Medieval Thames Vocabulary. Oxford. Wright, Laura (1996b): About the evolution of standard English. In: Elizabeth M. Tyler/Jane M. Toswell (eds.): Studies in English Language and Literature: ‘Doubt Wisely’, Papers in Honour of E. G. Stanley. London, 99–115. Wright, Peter (1981): Cockney Dialect and Slang. London Wyld, Henry C. (1920): South-Eastern and South-East Midland Dialects in Middle English. London.

Christian Bendl

13. Polyhistorizität im öffentlichen Raum Abstract: This contribution presents the formation of space and time in communicative practices at and about public places. An interdisciplinary as well as socio- and discourse linguistic perspective is taken to highlight how space, time, and communicative practices are conceptually interrelated. These concepts are regarded as dynamically construed aspects of social life that communicatively refer to values (ideologies) and social positionings. They are functionally relevant in everyday life and at specific acts (e.g. memorial events). Both, the analyses of the semiotic landscapes as well as of a tweet illustrate the interdependence of material places, discursive spaces and times, and communicative practices. Especially polyhistoricity, meaning the contextualization of multi-layered timeframes, has a remarkable impact in the discursive constituting of space-time and of a (unified) social reality. 1 2 3 4 5 6

Einleitung Kommunikative Praktiken vor Ort und im Raum Zeit und Raum-Zeit in Diskursen Linguistische Anwendungsfelder: Semiotic Landscapes und diskursive Zeit-Räume Schlussfolgerungen Literatur

1 Einleitung Räume, Zeiten und kommunikative Praktiken stellen in ihrer gegenseitigen Bedingtheit ein komplexes, aber linguistisch beschreibbares Geflecht dar. Die Konstruktion sozialer Wirklichkeiten in der lokalen Materialität sowie in diskursiven Raumkonstituierungen ist das bestimmende Merkmal der Verknüpfung dieser Diskurselemente. Konzeptuell wie empirisch sind in der kommunizierten Raum-Zeit ganz eigene Dynamiken und bedingte Wechselbeziehungen zu beobachten, die eine detaillierte Darlegung ihrer je eigenen Formen und Funktionen verdienen. Während die Lokalität sowie die praktische Ausführung der kommunikativen Handlung unmittelbar fassbar aus diesem Komplex hervorstechen, mag die Zeitlichkeit mehr als kontextueller Rahmen denn als diskursive Größe greifbar sein. Zeit stellt jedoch in sozio- und diskurslinguistischen Raumanalysen jene Kategorie dar, die einerseits Veränderungen und Umbrüche, andererseits eine (vermeintliche) Stabilität und Traditionalität anzeigt. Insbesondere in den Urban Linguistics sind zeitrelationale Raumaneignungen sowie Zeit selbst zentrale Untersuchungsgegenstände. So treffen in Praktiken der Urbanisierung oder Gentrifizierung Zeiten aufeinander, die unmittelbar in der Materialität, in Diskursthemen und in diskursiven Strategien kommunikativer Raumaneignungen und des Place-Makings erfahrbar sind. Bewertungen des Vorhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-014

312

Christian Bendl

maligen und des Kommenden bestimmen auch urbane Praktiken der Restaurierung, des Umbaus und der Umbenennung sowie die (graphische) Inszenierung von Plänen und den Widerstand gegen urbane Dynamiken. Schließlich ist auch die soziale Ebene in räumlichen Praktiken ein Untersuchungsfeld, da beispielsweise Gedenkorten eine (akteursbezogene) Geschichte und damit Identität zugeschrieben wird, eine Identität, die es unter Umständen vor Veränderungen zu schützen gilt oder die aber auch in die Örtlichkeit neu implementiert werden soll. Zeit und Raum besitzen also konzeptuell diskurskonstituierende Funktionen. Sie referieren auf Wissensbestände, die sozial und gesellschaftlich verstanden und geteilt werden, unterliegen zugleich aber auch selbst diskursiven Konstruktionen, die durchaus unterschiedliche Charakteristiken aufweisen. Zeit und Raum befinden sich daher selbst in Aushandlungsprozessen bzw. Generierungen von Wissensbeständen und gestalten diese als Diskurselemente selbst mit. In kommunikativen Praktiken sind die Begriffe Zeit und Raum (bzw. ihre Abwandlungen) Bestandteile der Konstruktion sozialer Wirklichkeiten. Ihr Schein und ihre Größe, ihre alltägliche kommunikative Präsenz ebenso wie ihr herausragender Status beispielsweise bei feierlichen Anlässen sind Qualitäten und Bewertungen, die soziale Positionierungen erlauben. Neben der lexikalischen und grammatikalischen Realisierung ist daher auch die Frage nach den Funktionen von Kontextualisierungen einer Zeitlichkeit und Lokalität in kommunikativen Praktiken analytisch beachtenswert. Ziel dieses Beitrages ist es, die wechselseitige Bedingung von Zeiten, Räumen und kommunikativen Praktiken aus sozio- und diskurslinguistischer Perspektive in den Fokus zu stellen. Dieser in kommunikativen Praktiken vereint gedachte Raum-ZeitKomplex wird am Beispiel des urbanen, öffentlichen Raumes gemessen. Ein kollaboratives und interdisziplinäres Vorgehen steht dabei im Zentrum der Diskussionen. Dafür wird zunächst eine Definition des Konzepts Raum im Rahmen kommunikativer Praktiken vorgestellt, die den Ausgangspunkt für die darauffolgende Diskussion von Zeit und Polyhistorizität darstellt. Die konzeptuelle Zusammenführung beider Größen wird um methodologische Reflexionen erweitert und in Anwendungsbeispielen präzisiert. Eine Zusammenfassung dieses Vorgehens sowie weitere forschungsrelevante Anschlusspunkte schließen den Beitrag ab.

2 Kommunikative Praktiken vor Ort und im Raum Die sozio- und diskurslinguistische Konzeptualisierung und empirische Operationalisierung von Raum und Raum-Zeit erfordert stets die Abbildung dynamischer Konstruktionen sozialer Wirklichkeiten. Der disziplinenübergreifende spatial turn (Bachmann-Medick 2016) stellt diesen wandelbaren, laufend ko-konstruierten und von Akteurinnen und Akteuren unterschiedlich wahrgenommenen sozialen Raum in den Fokus, erkennt aber dennoch eine gewisse Materialität der Lokalität an. Diese Unterscheidung wird in Disziplinen wie der Humangeographie, Soziologie und Philoso-

Polyhistorizität im öffentlichen Raum

313

phie, als auch in sozio- und diskurslinguistischen Subdisziplinen und Diskussionen verschiedentlich vollzogen, wodurch sich nicht nur die Charakterisierungen, sondern auch die Benennungen der örtlichen bzw. räumlichen Elemente voneinander unterscheiden können (vgl. bspw. die Raumkonzepte und Benennungen im Place-Making bei Busse/Warnke 2014; Domke 2014). Auf Henri Lefebvres soziologischer und philosophischer Raum-Triade ([1974] 2016; vgl. ferner Schmid 2010) und Brigitta Buschs (2013) Adaptionen dieser in soziolinguistischen Untersuchungen bauend, wird im Folgenden ein diskursiver Raum (space, espace) von einem materiellen Ort (place, lieu) differenziert. In der Soziolinguistik – und nicht nur dort – wird Lefebvres Raumkonzept durchaus unterschiedlich interpretiert (vgl. bspw. Purkarthofer 2016; Bendl 2018; 2020). Das liegt einerseits an den Aufgabenstellungen der Arbeiten, andererseits aber auch daran, dass Lefebvre ([1974] 2016) selbst nur verstreut linguistische Reflexionen in seine Konzeption einfließen lässt. Ein interdisziplinärer Zugang zum Untersuchungsfeld ist dennoch entsprechend der diskurs- (vgl. Spitzmüller/Warnke 2011) und urbanlinguistischen Perspektive (vgl. Warnke 2017) sinnvoll. Er erlaubt insgesamt die Bildung einer stabilen Basis, anhand derer kommunikative Konstruktionen im materiellen und sozialen Feld sowie ihre wechselseitigen Beeinflussungen veranschaulicht werden können. Lefebvre versteht Raum als von drei interdependenten Dimensionen gestaltet, die jeweils eine räumliche und eine subjektbezogene Charakteristik aufweisen (vgl. die nachfolgenden Bezeichnungen in Klammern). Diese analytisch-interpretativ getrennten, aber konzeptuell vereint betrachteten Dimensionen beschreiben die Praktiken im, durch und zum Raum (vgl. Lefebvre [1974] 2016; Busch 2013). So besteht (1) die erste Dimension aus regelmäßigen und traditionalisierten Handlungen im Raum (pratique spatiale und espace perçu). Aus soziolinguistischer Sicht informiert diese Dimension über soziale Ordnungen, die einerseits über Handlungsmuster, also Genres und Genreerwartungen (vgl. Bauman/Briggs 1992; ferner Spitzmüller 2013), und andererseits der materiellen Örtlichkeit der Semiotic Landscapes in den Analysefokus geraten. Der (2) konzipierte Raum wiederum gibt Reglementierungen und Vorstellungen zu dem Raum wieder (représentations de l‘espace und espace conçu), die ebenfalls Aufschlüsse über die soziale Ebene, namentlich in sozialen Vorstellungen von Räumen, geben. Sozio- und diskurslinguistisch betrachtet sind diese Konzeptionen in zugeschriebenen Wertigkeiten, den Ideologien (vgl. Silverstein 1979; Busch 2019), fassbar. Der (3) ‘dritte Raum’ (third space, vgl. Bhabha 1994; Soja 1996) schließlich entspricht symbolisierten Abstraktionen von Raumerfahrungen oder zugeschriebenen Bedeutungen und stellt zugleich die Erfahrungswelten der Akteurinnen und Akteure hervor (espaces de représentation und espace vécu). Die diskurslinguistische Adaption erlaubt hier einen Zugang zu (allgemeinen) Raumbeschreibungen sowie zu sozialen Positionierungen zu Räumen, Zeiten, Akteurinnen und Akteuren und Diskursen (vgl. Spitzmüller/Flubacher/Bendl 2017; Spitzmüller 2019). Zwar lassen sich einzelne Raumdimensionen analytisch hervorheben und einzelne Vorgänge detailliert beschreiben, die diskursive Raumkonstituierung ist aber nur in

314

Christian Bendl

ihrem Zusammenwirken der einzelnen Dimensionen als Ganzes zu erfassen. Dies liegt darin begründet, dass alle drei räumlichen und sozialen Dimensionen über die Konstituierung von Wissen miteinander verknüpft sind. Wissen wird, diskurslinguistisch gesprochen (vgl. Spitzmüller/Warnke 2011), durch soziale, kommunikative Praktiken konstruiert. Praktiken unterscheiden sich von lokalen Praxen dadurch, dass sie musterhaft sind und soziale Strukturen über einzelne Kommunikationsanlässe hinaus diskursiv konstituiert bzw. gepflegt bzw. transponiert werden (Spitzmüller/Flubacher/Bendl 2017, 8).

Eben dieses wiederholte Handeln ist grundlegender Bestandteil der Konstruktion geteilten Wissens, sowie ihrer Argumentation und Distribution und erfasst alle Ebenen des Raumes (zu Typen der Wissenskonstituierung vgl. Warnke 2009). In linguistischen Theoretisierungen und Analysen sind Räume also keinesfalls abstrakte Kategorien oder rein materielle Objekte. Sowohl in Betrachtung kommunikativer Praktiken vor Ort (bspw. von Reden), als auch in Kontextualisierungen, die entsprechende Kontextualisierungshinweise (‚contextualization cues‘; Gumperz 1992) aufweisen und Anzeichen kommunikativer Aushandlungen bzw. Generierungen von Wissen (im Sinne Foucaults) sind, treten Räume zutage. Diese cues basieren auf sowohl kognitiv vorhandenen als auch diskursiv konstituierten Wissensbeständen und können in allen kommunikativen Formen in Erscheinung treten. Kontextualisierungshinweise in der Prosodie oder Lexik sind „polyfunctional“ (vgl. Spitzmüller 2013, 178; orig. Hervorh.) und unterliegen damit der jeweiligen Interpretation der Rezipientinnen und Rezipienten, sind zugleich aber im Rahmen der Kontextualisierung an Erwartungen, Positionierungen und vorhergehende Wissensbestände geknüpft. Die einzelnen cues stehen damit im Rahmen der Kontextualisierung, der dynamischen Praktiken und der sie definierenden Genres, die wiederum „selbst das Resultat rekurrenter, reflexiver Praktik und metapragmatischer Reflexion“ (Spitzmüller 2019, 21) sind. Hinsichtlich des Raumes (und im nächsten Kapitel der Historizität) gilt es also expliziten und impliziten lokalen Referenzen und der räumlichen Indexikalität selbst zu folgen, um die jeweilig kontextualisierte Charakteristik von Raum zu erheben. Zu diesem Verständnis von kommunikativen Raumaneignungen (vgl. ‚appropriations of space‘ bei Lefebvre [1974] 2016) zählt konsequenterweise auch, dass die Kontextualisierung eines Ortes der Konstruktion eines Raumes entspricht und damit eine Orts-Raum-Kongruenz in kommunikativen Praktiken besteht. Die Relation des Örtlichen zum Räumlichen (und umgekehrt) ist daher auch in der Betrachtung von Objekten im öffentlichen Raum konsequent zu berücksichtigen. Ortsobjekte, wie Statuen oder Monumente, sind in der Kontextualisierung Raumobjekte, und zwar unabhängig davon, ob die Kontextualisierung durch die Forscherinnen und Forscher geschieht oder sie sich in ihren Daten finden lässt. Das im Raum vertretene Objekt, seine jeweilig kontextualisierte Materialität und Geschichte sind also ebenfalls durch diskursive Wissensbestände und durch sprachliche Praktiken (temporär) konstruiert.

Polyhistorizität im öffentlichen Raum

315

Davon abgeleitet präsentieren sich öffentliche Räume, die das primäre Untersuchungsobjekt linguistischer Raumanalysen darstellen, in ihrer Mehrschichtigkeit: Sie bestehen sowohl in der materiellen Konstruktion des öffentlichen Ortes, als auch in der diskursiven Konstituierung der Öffentlichkeit des Raumes. Beide Dimensionen bedingen sich wechselseitig und können dennoch einzeln beschrieben werden. Untersuchungen der Linguistic Landscape geben beispielsweise über Adressierungen, Reglementierungen und (Sprach-)Ideologien Auskunft. Analytisch stehen dabei öffentliche Zeichen im urbanen Raum im Fokus (vgl. bspw. Vandenbroucke 2015). Allerdings dürfen – mit Blick auf die Geosemiotik – öffentliche Räume auch als ein „continuum“ (Scollon/Scollon 2003, 169) zwischen verschiedenen Räumen verstanden werden, indem nicht nur Reglementierungen, sondern auch Handlungsgewohnheiten und letztendlich Praktiken eine Öffentlichkeit determinieren (vgl. Scollon/Scollon 2003). Ein Beispiel hierfür stellen jene Kreisverkehre dar, die in der frühen Phase der Proteste der gilet jaunes in Frankreich 2018 blockiert wurden und sich zugleich als Räume mitunter hitziger Debatten herausstellten. Davon abgesehen finden sich öffentliche Räume mit spezifischen diskursiven Funktionen insbesondere im Urbanen, wo alltägliche Praktiken an öffentlichen Orten im Rahmen von Protesten temporär neu definiert werden (vgl. bspw. hinsichtlich Proteste am Syntagma-Platz Goutsos/Polymeneas 2014; allgemein dazu Spitzmüller/ Bendl 2022). Diese und ähnliche Raumaneignungen geschehen dort entlang der sechs von Busse/Warnke (2015) bestimmten Merkmale der Urbanität (Größe, Heterogenität, Multiformalität, Dichte, Simultanität und Intersemiotizität) und den urbanen Modi der Dimension (Größe und Dichte), der Aktion (Heterogenität und Simultanität) und der Repräsentation (Multiformalität und Intersemiotizität). Öffentlichkeit (bspw. als nationale Relevanz, öffentliches Interesse) kann also anhand eines materiell und diskursiv mehrschichtigen Raumes, der von mehreren Praktiken (Heterogenität) bestimmt wird, konstruiert werden (vgl. bspw. die Konstruktionen des Wiener Heldenplatzes als Protestraum in Bendl (2018), als Gedenkraum in Bendl (2020) oder als mehrschichtiger Raum in Bendl 2021). Diese Mehrdimensionalität des Raumes besteht allerdings wiederum aus einer temporären Eindimensionalität in Praktiken vor Ort und Diskursen über den Raum, beispielsweise in Form einer Veranstaltung, die von einer spezifischen Anzahl von Akteurinnen und Akteuren (1. Dimension), zu einem Zweck (2. Dimension) und in einer Form (3. Dimension) realisiert wird. Eine solche Kontextualisierung des einen Raumes ist also – angesichts der konzeptuellen Mehrdimensionalität des urbanen Raumes – analytisch besonders relevant. Insgesamt bezeichnet ein öffentlicher Raum einerseits einen (temporär) frei zugänglichen Ort, andererseits einen Raum, der als öffentlich oder für ein breites Publikum, inszeniert bzw. kommunikativ konstruiert wird. In Raumkonstituierungen besteht eine zwingende Verbindung von kommunikativen Praktiken, den Akteurinnen und Akteuren und den Wissensbeständen, wodurch auch in kommunikativen Konstruktionen von Räumen Sprache ein „Faktor der Vergemeinschaftung“ (Spitzmüller 2019, 12) ist.

316

Christian Bendl

Bisher konnten Räume als kommunikative Konstrukte charakterisiert werden, die in sozialen Interaktionen eine materielle und diskursive Position einnehmen. Räume verlieren angesichts dieser belebten Raumdimension (vgl. Lefebvres espace vécu im vorigen Abschnitt) ihren ansonsten möglicherweise abstrakt anmutenden Charakter. Raumanalysen stellen allerdings nur einen temporären Ausschnitt von Raumkonstruktionen dar, denn: Die Bedeutung, der Status, die Wahrnehmung und der Wert von öffentlichen urbanen Räumen sind dabei in Zeit und Raum höchst dynamisch (Busse/Warnke 2014, 3).

Die Veränderlichkeit des Räumlichen ist also an eine weitere Dimension, jene der Zeit, gebunden, die schließlich auch die wechselseitige Bedingung von Räumen und kommunikativen Praktiken tangiert.

3 Zeit und Raum-Zeit in Diskursen Zeit bzw. Historizität kann, ebenso wie Raum, als eine dynamische Diskursdimension beschrieben werden, die in Kontextualisierungen diskurskonstituierend erscheint und zugleich selbst diskursiven Konstruktionen untersteht. Analog zu obigen Ausführungen werden daher nachfolgend Untersuchungen aus der Sozio- und Diskurslinguistik sowie anderen Disziplinen hinsichtlich der Konstruktion des Zeitlichen befragt, um raum-zeitliche Relationen zu definieren und sie in ein Verhältnis zu kommunikativen Praktiken stellen zu können. In Diskursen ist Zeit ein grundlegender Faktor, wie Foucault hinsichtlich des historischen Aprioris ausführt (vgl. Foucault [1969] 2013). Dieses entspricht der „zeitlichen Streuung“ (Foucault [1969] 2013, 185), die Diskurse besitzen und ihr „wirkliche[s] Werden[...]“ (Foucault [1969] 2013, 185) beschreiben. In linguistischen Diskursanalysen ist dieser Umstand, jedenfalls hinsichtlich der Historizität, selbstverständlich: Diskursanalyse ist ein genealogisches Projekt per se und impliziert damit ebenso Geschichtlichkeit wie sie diese rekonstruiert. Ihr Gegenstand – der Diskurs oder die Diskurse – ist damit wesentlich als eine historisch gebundene Formation semiotischer Positivität mit Aussagenfunktion zu verstehen (Kämper/Warnke/Schmidt-Brücken 2016, 1).

Auch aus soziolinguistischer Sicht ist Zeit bzw. Historizität in einer Mehrschichtigkeit und in ihren Modalitäten Geschwindigkeit und Veränderung grundlegend in kommunikativen Praktiken verankert: In a complex system, we will encounter different historicities and different speeds of change in interaction with each other, collapsing in synchronic moments of occurance. Long histories – the kind of history that shaped ‘English’, for instance – are blended with shorter histories – such as the one that produced hip-hop jargon, for instance (Blommaert 2016, 251).

Polyhistorizität im öffentlichen Raum

317

Blommaert (2005, 252) definiert darauffolgend Historizität (historicity) als „quality of being historical, i.e. being imbued with features that derive from human intervention over a span of time“. Auch Kämper/Warnke/Schmidt-Brücken (2016, 3; orig. Hervorh.) heben die zeitliche Eigenschaft von Historizität hervor, als „Zustand von etwas […], der semantisch mit dem Adjektiv historisch zu erfassen wäre, also so etwas wie Geschichte betreffend meint“. Sie präzisieren aber die allgemeine zeitrelationale Bedeutung und führen damit von einer Einschränkung des Konzepts auf Geschichtlichkeit weg, indem sie Historizität als „Diskurskonstante“ verstehen, „mit der zum Ausdruck gebracht wird, dass jede Position im Diskurs ausschließlich zeitgebundene Kontexte referiert und konstituiert“ (Kämper/Warnke/Schmidt-Brücken 2016, 5; orig. Hervorh.). Die Konsequenz daraus ist weitreichend: Unabhängig davon, ob Diskursanalysen historisch ausgerichtet sind oder gegenwärtige Diskurse analysieren, ist Historizität damit eine Bedingung der empirischen, methodologischen und theoretischen Konzeption von Diskursanalyse (Kämper/Warnke/Schmidt-Brücken 2016, 5; orig. Hervorh.).

In ihrer theoretischen Verankerung im Diskurs ist Historizität also auch grundlegender Bestandteil gegenwärtiger Generierungsprozesse von Wissen und damit von sozialen Positionierungen und Bewertungen. Damit ist schließlich auch ihre Verankerung auf der sozialen Ebene von Diskursen ausgemacht, denn theoretisch wie empirisch muss davon ausgegangen werden, dass die Historizität von Aussagen den Blick freigibt auf historisch geteiltes Wissen, auf das, was eine Diskursgemeinschaft als Gewissheit annimmt (Spitzmüller/Warnke 2011, 194).

Zu diesen Ausführungen dürfen nun zweierlei konzeptuelle Aspekte ergänzt werden, die nachfolgend in einer interdisziplinären Diskussion eingebettet werden. Zunächst wird an dieser Stelle für ein Verständnis von Historizität plädiert, das – wie angedeutet – eine generelle Zeitlichkeit meint. Dieser Schritt basiert auf erwähnter Geschichtlichkeit jeglicher Praktiken, sei es in Form bekannter Handlungsgenres oder allgemein diskursiver Wissensbestände, die aber immer auch reflexiv zu anderen Zeiten geschehen. Keine Praxis und kein Diskurs ist also sowohl ohne gegenwärtige wie auch vergangene Bezüge denkbar; jegliche kommunikative Praktik (re-)kontextualisiert Zeiten. Historizität deutet also eine Eigenschaft an, die auf mehreren Zeitdimensionen basiert, auch der zukünftigen. Daher meint im Folgenden Historizität immer die Eigenschaft der Zeitlichkeit selbst, wenn auch ihr geschichtlicher Charakter – aufgrund der Fundierung von diskursivem Wissen im Vergangenen – prononciert bleibt. Aus analytischer Sicht ist die Bestimmung von Zeitlichkeit allein allerdings wenig zielführend. Kontextualisierte Zeiten besitzen viel eher Qualitäten, Werte und Positionen im Zeitverlauf und geben so Auskunft über Prozesse der Diskurskonstituierung. Außerdem sind Praktiken und Diskurse mit mehreren Zeiten verbunden, denn eine – beispielsweise – gegenwärtige Handlung trägt immer Wissensbestände des Vergangenen und kann zugleich auf Zukünftiges implizit oder explizit verweisen. Dieses Ver-

318

Christian Bendl

ständnis der Mehrzeitigkeit von kommunikativen Praktiken sowie ihre Fundierung in der Historizität ist im Konzept der Polyhistorizität vereint (vgl. Bendl 2018; 2021, als ‚polyhistoricity‘ in 2020). Polyhistorizität ist sowohl kommunikativen Praktiken und Diskursen eigen, als auch konkret in Kontextualisierungen zu erheben, beispielsweise wenn einer gegenwärtigen Lage eine vergangene Ursache beigestellt wird und eine zukünftige Veränderung als Ziel konstruiert wird. Zeit als dynamisch und mehrschichtig zu betrachten hat beispielsweise in der Geschichtswissenschaft eine lange Tradition und dort insbesondere im Zeit-Verständnis Ferdinand Braudels und der französischen Annales-Schule des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts (vgl. hierzu Blommaert 2005, und die layers of historicity in Abschnitt 4). Braudel ([1958] 1977) beschreibt Zeit als in dreierlei Zeitabläufen bestimmt: Der Alltag ist vom ‚kurze[n] Zeitablauf‘ (Braudel [1958] 1977, 51) bestimmt, während längerfristige Zeitperioden einen „Zyklus“ (Braudel [1958] 1977, 53) aufweisen. Im „sehr langen Zeitablauf[...]“ (Braudel [1958] 1977, 50), der longue durée, sind – aus analytischer Sicht – schließlich Veränderungen und Muster ersichtlich. Entscheidend, insbesondere für einen linguistischen Anschluss, der sich für die soziale Ebene interessiert, ist aber, dass diese Ebenen als miteinander verknüpft konzipiert werden. Die longue durée vereint alle vorhergehenden Zeiten und damit die individuelle, „mikrosoziologische[...] Ebene“ (Braudel [1958] 1977, 75) mit den ganze Gesellschaften verbindenden Zeiten. Alle Zeit-Ebenen stehen miteinander im Kontakt. Aus linguistischer Sicht sind diese Relationen in kommunikativen Praktiken konstruiert und daher beschreibbar. Auch kann hier eine auf Foucault ([1971] 2014) basierende Diskurslinguistik rasch an die Serie von Ereignissen anknüpfen, um die Modalitäten der Regelhaftigkeit, Diskontinuität, Abhängigkeit, Transformation und des Zufalls hinsichtlich ihrer zeitlichen Beschaffenheit zu analysieren. Ebenso wie Braudel adressiert später auch Reinhart Koselleck zunächst die Geschichtswissenschaft und fokussiert dabei auf die innerdisziplinäre Diskussion von Geschichte. Allerdings geben seine Reflexionen des Sprachgebrauchs und der „historische[n] Semantologie“ (Koselleck 2015a, 154) auch der Linguistik sowohl Auskunft über die zyklische und geschichtete Zeit – Gedankengänge, die direkt an Braudel anschließbar sind –, als auch über ihr Verhältnis zum Raum. Beide Aspekte sind, wie sogleich ersichtlich wird, anschlussfähig zu sozio- und diskurslinguistischen Fragestellungen. Koselleck (2015b, 10) erkennt in der Zeitlichkeit mehrere, „sich einander überlagernde[...] Zeiten“, sodass Zeit nichts Absolutes ist, sondern gerade durch die „Erfahrungsbefunde“ (Koselleck 2015b, 20), die diese Zeitschichten ausmachen, definiert ist. Ähnlich wie Braudels Konzeptualisierung der Zeitabläufe beschreibt auch Koselleck (2015b, 20) drei Ebenen von Zeitschichten: Es gibt (1) Ereignisse der Einmaligkeit, die Übergänge und „Wenden“ markieren; die (2) Zeitschicht der Rekurrenz wiederum besteht aus Praktiken, anhand derer Geschichte geteilt (bzw. konstruiert) wird und innerhalb von Generationen stabilisierend wirkt. Die (3) transzendente Zeitschicht schließlich ist generationenübergreifend in der wahrgenommenen Zeitlichkeit vorhan-

Polyhistorizität im öffentlichen Raum

319

den. Sie besteht unter anderem aus religiösen und wissenschaftlichen „Wahrheiten“ bzw. „Einstellungen“ (Koselleck 2015b, 25). Hinsichtlich ihrer kommunikativen Konstruktion können sich diese Zeitschichten überlagern und ergänzen, oder in Widerstreit zueinander geraten. Werden diese Zeitschichten nun als diskursive Wissensbestände, die potentiell wahrgenommen werden können, interpretiert – was sehr nahe an Kosellecks Ausführungen liegt –, dann sind gerade die konzeptuelle Omnipräsenz mehrerer Zeitschichten einerseits und die selektive Kontextualisierung einzelner Zeitschichten andererseits von analytischem Interesse. Schließlich ist auch die metapragmatische Konstruktion der Zeiten, also Attribuierungen und Wertzuschreibungen zu Ereignissen als einmalige, rekurrierende oder transzendente Zeitschicht von grundlegendem analytischem Interesse. Neben Raum ist nun auch Zeit bzw. Polyhistorizität als dynamische und sozial relevante Diskurskonstituente in die kommunikative Situation getreten. Wenngleich die isolierte Erkundung jeweils einer der Dimensionen nach wie vor bedeutsam bleibt, muss nun im Folgenden nach ihrer konzeptuellen Vereinigung gefragt werden. Als Ausgangspunkt für die Überlegungen dürfen abermals Räume herangezogen werden. So erkennt Lefebvre ([1974] 2016, 37; orig. Hervorh.) eine Verbindung in der gegenwärtigen materiellen Örtlichkeit und den dort manifestierten Spuren der Vergangenheit: The historical and its consequences, the ‚diachronic‘, the ‚etymology‘ of locations in the sense of what happened at a particular spot or place and thereby changed it – all of this becomes inscribed in space. The past leaves its traces; time has its own script. Yet this space is always now and formerly, a present space, given as an immediate whole, complete with its associations and connections in their actuality. Thus production process and product present themselves as two inseparable aspects, not as two separable ideas.

Im Detail betrachtet, ist es also nicht nur der Ort, der Zeiten trägt, sondern auch der Raum bzw. mehrere Räume, die aus dem ‚production process‘ entstehen. Wird diese Produktion in ihrer sozialen und – konsequenterweise – diskursiven Dimension betrachtet, ist auch die Raumaneignung eine des Individuums und anderer Akteurinnen und Akteure. Zeit- und raumrelationale, lokale Praxen und gesellschaftliche Diskurse vereint auch Koselleck im „Zeitraum[...]“ (Koselleck 2015b, 90) welcher durch Bewegung, Nähe und Distanz definiert bzw. – darf im Sinne der Diskurslinguistik gesagt werden – konstruiert wird. Einsicht über das Zeitliche erfährt man über sprachliche Praktiken bzw. Phänomene: Wer über Zeit spricht, ist auf Metaphern angewiesen. Denn Zeit ist nur über Bewegung in bestimmten Raumeinheiten anschaulich zu machen. Der Weg, der von hier nach dort zurückgelegt wird, das Fortschreiten, auch der Fortschritt selber oder die Entwicklung enthalten veranschaulichende Bilder, aus denen sich zeitliche Einsichten gewinnen lassen (Koselleck 2015b, 9).

Mit Kosellecks Auslegung von Zeit lassen sich also mehrere Ebenen diskursiver Praktiken vereinen: Die individuelle Raumaneignung („Fortschreiten“) ebenso wie sozial konstruiertes und geteiltes Wissen („Fortschritt“). Vergleichbar damit erscheint ab-

320

Christian Bendl

schließend das literaturwissenschaftliche Konzept des Chronotopos (Bachtin [1975] 2008; linguistische Adaptionen bspw. in Sonnleitner 2018). Es bezeichnet das raumund zeitrelationale Verhältnis von Autorinnen und Autoren zu Texten auf der einen Seite und von den Leserinnen und Lesern zu den Texten auf der anderen Seite. Diskurslinguistisch gesprochen, entsprechen sie (re-)kontextualisierten Wissensbeständen, die raum-zeitlich bedingt sind und zugleich raum-zeitliche Momente markieren (z. B. Krisen und Wendepunkte, vgl. Bachtin [1975] 2008). Chronotopoi verweisen dementsprechend kommunikativ auf Emotionen und Werte (Bachtin [1975] 2008). Zusammenfassend darf die Relevanz einer als dynamisch und mehrschichtig konzipierten Zeitlichkeit, die in kommunikativen Praktiken und im Raum ihren Ausdruck findet, wenigstens in drei Punkten festgestellt werden: Zunächst ist der existentialistisch anmutende, jedenfalls aber abstrakte Charakter einer als singulär vorhandenen Zeit in keinster Weise ein fruchtbringendes Konzept für die dynamischen Prozesse in kommunikativen Praktiken. Die oben skizzierten Diskussionen Braudels und Kosellecks zielen stattdessen auf individuell und gesellschaftlich erfahrene Zeiten ab, die aufgrund der handlungsgeleiteten Dimensionierung dynamisch sind. Zeit ist also zugleich wechselhaft und relativ stabil in ihrer kommunikativen Ausgestaltung und – in dieser konzeptuellen Charakteristik – vergleichbar mit Orten und Räumen. Der zweite wesentliche Punkt ergibt sich aus dem ersten Schritt: Zeitschichten sind sozial konstruiert und können daher – umgekehrt – zur Konstruktion und damit zu Inklusion und Exklusion von Gruppen und Gesellschaften kontextualisiert werden (bspw. unsere Geschichte; vgl. im Detail Abschnitt 4). Diskursive Konstruktionen einer Zeitschicht stehen umso mehr im analytischen Interesse, als von individuellen Variationen der Wahrnehmung von Zeitschichten ausgegangen werden kann. Ein mehrere Akteurinnen und Akteure vereinendes Zeitverständnis verdient daher einen (kritischen) Blick. Schließlich müssen die beschriebenen Charakteristiken von Zeit nicht nur auf die Daten, sondern auch auf den Forschungsprozess angewandt werden, denn – wie erwähnt – richten sich beide, Braudel und Koselleck, an die Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler. Auch Lefebvre ([1974] 2016) benennt explizit die handlungsfähigen wissenschaftlichen Akteurinnen und Akteure, die den konzipierten Raum konstruieren. Nachdem Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler selbstverständlich nicht von individuellen und gesellschaftlichen Zeitschichten – also den zeitrelationalen Wissensbeständen in Diskursen – ausgenommen werden können, sie zugleich aber, wie oben erwähnt, explizit Einfluss auf die transzendente Zeitschicht ausüben, wäre die jeweils gewählte wissenschaftliche Positionierung hinsichtlich der untersuchten Zeitschichten selbstreflexiv zu kontextualisieren. Ist die „wissenschaftliche[...] Einstellung“ (Koselleck 2015b, 25) transparent? Wie weit reicht der methodische Rahmen? Wie ist die Positionierung hinsichtlich der Themen und der kontextualisierten Zeiten? Insgesamt kann also gesagt werden, dass so, wie jegliche kommunikative Praxis über einen Ort ihre Räumlichkeit diskursiv konstituiert und sozial relevant macht (vgl.  

321

Polyhistorizität im öffentlichen Raum

Orts-Raum-Kongruenz, Abschnitt 2), auch die Verbindung von einer kontextualisierten Zeit zur Polyhistorizität zu denken ist. Die kommunizierte Raum-Zeit ist damit ein sozial konstruiertes Diskurselement mit ganz konkreten kommunikativen Realisierungsformen, die konzeptuell und empirisch erfassbar sind.

4 Linguistische Anwendungsfelder: Semiotic Landscapes und diskursive Zeit-Räume Die folgende Präsentation sozio- und diskurslinguistischer Anwendungsfelder obiger Konzepte erfolgt in zwei Schritten. Zunächst werden die kommunikativen Realisierungsformen von Historizität bzw. Polyhistorizität im Rahmen von Diskursen im, durch und zu Räumen vorgestellt und methodologische Konsequenzen vorgestellt. Danach folgen exemplarische Analysen zweier unterschiedlicher Datenfelder. Welche Zeiten lassen sich nun hinsichtlich des Raumes beschreiben? Und wie gelingt die gezielte Beobachtung zeitrelevanter Konstruktionen? Entsprechend der OrtsRaum-Kongruenz liegt die Antwort auf diese Fragen in zweierlei Weisen vor: Historizität ist sowohl in der örtlichen Materialität, als auch in Diskursen über den Raum linguistisch fassbar. Wie die vielfältigen linguistischen Raumanalysen bezeugen, sind Spuren des Zeitlichen in der Materialität vorhanden, beispielsweise in den Gebrauchsspuren und Spuren der Verwitterung und Mehrschichtigkeit (vgl. Scollon/Scollon 2003). Auch Räumliche Palimpseste zeigen mehrere Spuren von Zeitschichten an, die mal verdeckt, mal sichtbar sind (vgl. Busch 2016). Außerdem geraten die Inszenierung (vgl. Blommaert 2013), die diskursive Kontextualisierung von Zeitlichkeit (z. B. historische Räume, zukunftsweisende Architektur) und auch Beschriftungen in den Analysefokus. Schrift- und Sprachwahl, architektonische Inszenierung und die indexikalischen Referenzen (bspw. auf historische Akteurinnen und Akteure oder Ereignisse) bleiben vielleicht im Alltag wenig beachtet, können zu bestimmten Anlässen aber als relevant rekontextualisiert bzw. resemiotisiert werden (vgl. Velásquez Urribarrí 2020). Ähnliches gilt für Kontextualisierungen von Ereignissen bzw. räumlichen Praktiken, in denen vor Ort oder eben auch über den Raum (Poly-)Historizität konstruiert wird. Im Rückgriff auf oben ausgeführte Konzeptualisierung von Historizität als die Eigenschaft zeitlich zu sein und von Polyhistorizität als das Anzeigen einer Mehrzeitigkeit, werden diese temporären Modi in kommunikativen Praktiken vielseitig ersichtlich. Beispiele lassen sich hinsichtlich Veränderungen und der Mobilität (bspw. Geschwindigkeit, Vor- und Nachzeitigkeit) finden (vgl. Blommaert 2016). Zudem ist die sense of time in örtlichen Praktiken ein empirisches Forschungsfeld (vgl. Scollon/ Scollon 2003; Blommaert 2013), ebenso wie (typo)graphische Kontextualisierungen von Historizität (vgl. Spitzmüller 2013). Diese zeitrelationalen Phänomene sind zwar unterschiedlich geformt, ihre konzeptuelle Ausgestaltung als Historizitätsindikatoren und Historizitätsideologien ist aber  

322

Christian Bendl

vergleichbar. Bei Spitzmüller (2013) bezeichnen Historizitätsindikatoren zunächst graphische cues (s. Abschnitt 2) von Zeitlichkeit, wie beispielsweise Schriftwahl, Materialität und Farben. Die Bestimmung von Historizitätsindikatoren im Raum wiederum basiert auf Kontextualisierungshinweisen, die Zeitlichkeit lokal manifestieren, wie Bewegung vor Ort oder Verfallserscheinungen an Gebäuden. Solche „memory traces“ bzw. „ghost trails“ (Shep 2015, 211) gestalten die linguistic und semiotic landscape und Diskurse mit. Auf Textebene markieren Jahreszahlen, Angaben von Epochen und weitere zeitdeiktische Kontextualisierungen Historizität und Polyhistorizität. Historizitätsideologien (vgl. Bendl 2018) wiederum geben Wertungen über Zeiten wieder, die sich direkt auf einen Zeitaspekt beziehen können (Gestern war kein guter Tag.) oder eine zeitliche Bewertung eines anderen Objektes meinen (Moderne Architektur auf historischem Boden?). In beiden Fällen ist die Referentialität zu Zeitschichten und ihren Bewertungen gegeben. Konzeptuell vergleichbar damit sind außerdem auch Raumideologien zu verstehen (vgl. Bendl 2018), die Bewertungen über räumliche Qualitäten und Charakteristiken wiedergeben (bspw. Größe; vgl. mit den Merkmalen der Urbanität in Abschnitt 2) und ebenfalls situativ zu interpretieren sind (Dieser Raum ist [ganz schön] groß). Wie im vorigen Abschnitt erwähnt, macht schließlich auch die Genreanalyse zeitliche Aspekte sichtbar. Erwartungen sind zeitrelational, da sie im Verhältnis zu bereits konstruierten Wissensbeständen stehen, die bestimmte Praktiken, Akteurinnen und Akteure und vollzogene Wertungen bevorzugen (z. B. Vorwissen, Ankündigung einer zukünftigen Veranstaltung). Genreerwartungen werden also im Verbund mit Wissensbeständen über konventionalisierte Praktiken vor Ort konstruiert (z. B. Durchführung eines Konzerts in einem Konzertsaal) oder sie zeigen einen Bruch mit eben denselben an (z. B. Besetzung des Konzerthauses). Solche Erwartungen können relativ stabil sein oder laufenden Veränderungen unterliegen. Immer jedoch sind sie an Wissensbestände geknüpft, die Auskunft über raum- und zeitrelationale Erwartungen, beispielsweise als Common Sense und Tradition, geben. Raumanalytisch besehen, sind solche Konstruktionen des Selbstverständlichen besonders interessant, geben sie doch soziale Ordnungen im Räumlichen und Zeitlichen wieder, die erhalten oder verändert werden sollen. Raum und Zeit sind in diesen Fällen die primären Diskursfelder, die zur Etablierung eines (vereinten) sozialen Feldes herangezogen werden. Hinsichtlich methodologischer Reflexionen der Position von Zeitlichkeit in kommunikativen Praktiken gibt Kämper (2018, 58) zu bedenken, dass – wenigstens im Rahmen zeitgeschichtlicher Fragestellungen – die situative Kontextualisierung um die „von der (Sozial-) Geschichte bereitgestellten Daten/Befunde“ zu erweitern ist. Sie plädiert insgesamt für ein transdisziplinäres Vorgehen (vgl. Kämper 2018). Auch in Bezug auf metasprachliche Diskurse um „Sprachurteil“ hält Spitzmüller (2015, 324– 325) fest, dass sie  

 

 

sowohl über längere Zeiträume als auch detailliert in bestimmten Zeitabschnitten zu betrachten [sind], einerseits um einschätzen zu können, wie viel Tradition in spezifischen Debatten enthal-

Polyhistorizität im öffentlichen Raum

323

ten ist, andererseits aber auch, um die Zeitgebundenheit und die historische Kontextualisierung der jeweiligen Debatten angemessen herausarbeiten zu können.

Dieser Umstand kann um in Abschnitt 3 abgeleitete Relevanz selbstkritischer Positionierungen, die eigene Wissensbestände (und Positionierungen) der Forscherinnen und Forscher explizit in die Interpretation einführen, erweitert werden. Die analytische Arbeit verläuft also über mehrere Zeitschichten, die verstreut implizit oder explizit in den Kontextualisierungen vertreten sind. In Bezug auf die Verbindung der Räume mit den Zeiten, sind also nicht nur Veränderungen und örtliche Bedingungen zu verschiedenen Zeiten beachtenswert (vgl. Stroud/Jegels 2014), sondern auch die gesamte diskursive Ebene in den – konzeptuell an Braudel ([1958] 1977) angelehnten – layers of historicity (vgl. Blommaert 2005). Die Kontextualisierungen basieren diesem Konzept folgend nicht nur auf Wissensbeständen der gegenwärtigen Situation und ihrer kommunikativen Generierung, sondern auf älteren Wissensbeständen, die – im Sinne der Polyhistorizität – potentiell auch in die Zukunft weisen. Das bedeutet: Kommunikative Praktiken und Diskurse sind immer mehrzeitig. Die analytische Interpretation der Kontextualisierungen kann sich zwar auf diese oder jene Zeitschicht konzentrieren; ihr Zustandekommen und ihre Form sind aber immer an verschiedene Zeiten gebunden und spielen daher potentiell immer eine Rolle. Diese Umstände bedeuten für die Sozio- und Diskurslinguistik, dass die Kontextualisierung einer einzigen Zeit immer auf einer zeitlichen Komplexität (complexity, vgl. Blommaert 2013) basiert und damit auf Polyhistorizität. Die Kontextualisierung einer einzigen Zeitschicht (bspw. Geschichte) verdient daher, wie bereits erwähnt, besondere analytische Aufmerksamkeit, kann sie doch auf spezifische Qualitäten, Ideologien und Akteurinnen und Akteure verweisen und sie konstruieren (bspw. unsere Geschichte). Tritt nun noch die Raumebene in den analytischen Fokus (bspw. der Veranstaltungsort oder ein diskursiver Raum), dann sind die (relativ stabile) Materialität sowie geteilte bzw. konstruierte Wissensbestände Teil der Zeitkonstruktion. Diese verhältnismäßig komplexe Situation kann wiederum selbst in ihrer Zeitlichkeit beachtet werden (Wiederholung, Einmaligkeit) und ein komplexes, vielschichtiges, aber distinktiv geformtes Profil der kommunikativen Ereignisse freilegen. Für die sozio- und diskurslinguistische Anwendung der oben dargestellten Konzeptualisierung bietet sich nun die weitere analytische Annäherung anhand der Datenfelder des Orts, der Historizität und des Raumes an, die in einem vierten Schritt vereint diskutiert werden. Ob sie nun hintereinander ausgeführt werden, oder ob ihr Zusammenspiel im laufenden interpretativen Prozess veranschaulicht wird, kann beispielsweise aufgrund der Perspektivenstärkung oder der Größe des Datenkorpus changieren; als wichtig erscheint aber die Zusammenführung der Teilanalysen, die die unterschiedlichen, diskurskonstituierenden Perspektiven und voices einzeln sowie in ihrem Verbund darzustellen vermag. Folgende Beispiele basieren auf einem Korpus, das aus der Aufnahme der Semiotic Landscape am Wiener Heldenplatz und von Online-Zeitungsberichten österrei-

324

Christian Bendl

chischer Tageszeitungen zu ihm über die Jahre 2015 bis 2017 gewonnen wurde (für Teilanalysen vgl. Bendl 2018; 2020; 2021). Der Wiener Heldenplatz liegt zentral in der Wiener Innenstadt und befindet sich in der unmittelbaren Nähe mehrerer Museen, des Parlaments und des Rathauses. Gebäude, die ihn örtlich eingrenzen, sind die Hofburg (mit der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek und Museen) und das Äußere Burgtor, das Gedenkräume beinhaltet. Seine bauliche Geschichte reicht in das frühe 19. Jahrhundert zurück. Örtliche Praktiken der Wiederholung, wie die alljährlichen Feierlichkeiten zum Österreichischen Nationalfeiertag, und Einmaligkeit, wie Adolf Hitlers sog. Anschluss-Rede 1938, sowie die diskursive Raumkonstruktion im Rahmen künstlerischer Aneignungen (bspw. durch Ernst Jandls Gedicht wien : heldenplatz von 1966 und Thomas Bernhards Stück Heldenplatz von 1988) führ(t)en auch über die Ländergrenzen hinaus zu einer Distribution entsprechender Wissensbestände zu diesem Raum. Aus sozio- und diskurslinguistischer Sicht betrachtet ist dieser Raum eine Mehrzahl an Räumen: So sehr auch eine grobe Abgrenzung zu anderen Orten gezogen werden kann – sofern fließende Übergänge zur örtlichen Definition verstanden werden – so schwierig ist es, die eine diskursive Charakteristik zu bestimmen; sie existiert schlichtweg nicht einfach. Stattdessen konstruieren örtliche und diskursive Praktiken einen mehrschichtigen Raum. Einem solchen räumlichen Palimpsest nun die eine Bedeutung zuzuschreiben mutet also, aus dieser Sicht, seltsam an und geschieht dennoch – wie Analysen zeigen (Bendl 2021) – wie selbstverständlich. Analytisch treten dann Verbindungen zu anderen Diskursdimensionen in den Vordergrund, insbesondere zur sozialen Ebene (Identitätskonstruktionen, soziale Positionierungen) und Zeitebene (Konstruktionen von Geschichte und zukünftigen Utopien), die schließlich im Raum vereint werden (Geschichte einer Nation, akteursbezogene Heilserwartungen). Auf diesen Überlegungen aufbauend, werden nun zwei analytische Anwendungsfelder vorgestellt, um die Relation des Raumes und der Zeit zu veranschaulichen. In Beispiel 1 wird eine größere Gewichtung auf die örtlichen Gegebenheiten und die Semiotic Landscape gelegt. Beispiel 2 wiederum geht von der Textebene aus.

Polyhistorizität im öffentlichen Raum

325

Beispiel 1: Semiotic Landscape der Zeitlichkeit

Abb 1: Äußeres Burgtor, Richtung Nordost (Heldenplatz) (Foto: Christian Bendl).

Abb. 1 zeigt das bereits erwähnte Äußere Burgtor vom Ring kommend. Der Ring ist jene stark befahrene, mehrspurige Straße, die den 1. Bezirk Wiens (Innenstadt) umschließt. Hinter dem Burgtor und seinen fünf Durchgängen bzw. Durchfahrten befindet sich der Heldenplatz. Wie am Taxi, der Bushaltestelle, dem regulierenden Straßenschild, dem breiten Gehsteig und den Passantinnen ersichtlich, ist dieser Vorraum zum Heldenplatz – ebenso wie er selbst – ein öffentlicher Raum der Mobilität. Ergänzende ethnographische Aufnahmen zu verschiedenen Tages- und Jahreszeiten unterstützen diesen Schluss. Methodologisch betrachtet verhindert also der Einbezug dieser und anderer Erfahrungsdimensionen in die Semiotic- und Linguistic-Landscape-Analyse einen verkürzten und isolierten Blick auf die Fotografie allein. Zudem verweist die Indexikalität sowohl der Architektur des Gebäudes als auch der Inschrift in goldenen Lettern auf eine Historizität, die – bei entsprechend bestehenden Wissensbeständen – die Kategorisierung als historischen Raum zulassen. Dazu genügt die Wahrnehmung und Reflexion der lateinischen Inschrift bzw. ihrer Inszenierung und (erhöhten) Positionierung. Sind Wissensbestände zur Architektur und/oder der Sprache vorhanden, treten zu diesen Historizitätsindikatoren auf der Oberfläche noch weitere Inhalte, wie das Lesen eben dieser Inschriften oder Teile davon (z. B. ‚Imperator‘, ‚Austriae‘ oder der Jahreszahlen). Die Detailanalyse offenbart ein Konglomerat aus sich überlappenden Bedeutungsebenen, ein historisches Raumpalimpsest, das in diesem Fall mehrere parallel bzw. gleichzeitig wahrnehmbare Zeitschichten enthält: Obige Inschrift ist eine Widmung an Kaiser Franz I. und nennt die  

326

Christian Bendl

Jahreszahl 1824, während die untere Inschrift (und die gleichfarbigen Wappen sowie die goldenen Lorbeerblätter in der Mitte) auf eine Spendenaktion aus dem Ersten Weltkrieg verweist (datiert auf 1916). Die Datierungen sind bereits vor Ort eindeutige Historizitätsindikatoren und auch die Historizitätsideologie (Materialität, Positionierung an diesem Ort) kann mit geringem Aufwand wahrgenommen werden. Die inhaltliche Ebene (bes. zur Spendenaktion) ist allerdings von externem Wissen abhängig, das – zum Untersuchungszeitraum 2015 – nur durch einen Folder in der Krypta, die sich im Inneren des Burgtores befindet, vor Ort zur Verfügung stand. Was besagt nun die Analyse der örtlichen, räumlichen und zeitlichen Gegebenheiten? Diese Diskursebenen sind gerade in ihrer werttragenden Inszenierung sprechend, da sie über die Örtlichkeit und Zeitgebundenheit hinaus auf die soziale Ebene verweisen: Es gab und gibt Akteursverhältnisse, die ein Oben und Unten gutheißen, rekontextualisieren und ergänzen. Außerdem ist die saliente örtliche und bauliche Platzierung bzw. Inszenierung in einer Öffentlichkeit an eben diese Adressaten gerichtet und zugleich akteurskonstituierend (abermals über die räumliche Dichotomie). Der Belass des Vergangenen im Gegenwärtigen im räumlichen Palimpsest billigt schließlich die Vermittlung dieser Werte, und sei es auch nur aus touristischen oder denkmalerischen Gründen. Ein Beispiel für die Billigung des Inkompatiblen stellt die Fahne der Republik Österreich über einer Widmung an den Kaiser dar. Die konstruierte Polyhistorizität besteht zwar in einem Widerspruch aus der (imperialen) Vergangenheit und (republikanischen) Gegenwart; die hohe Bewertung des Historischen im Österreichischen bzw. in Österreichs Geschichte ist aber durch die Platzierung (Erhöhung und Wahl des Ortes) und der multimodalen Inszenierung in einem nun geschichtstragenden, historischen Raum Österreichs salient. Es ist also die bauliche Inszenierung eine diskursive Konstituierung dieses Raumes als historisch bedeutsam, politisch zeittragend und politisch hochstehend. Heute hat diese Historizität im öffentlichen Raum eher, wie angedeutet, touristische Relevanz. Darauf weisen die Informationstafel rechts vom Eingang (mit den Fahnen der Landeshauptstadt Wien) und das hohe Aufkommen touristischer Akteurinnen und Akteure vor Ort hin, wenn auch nur der Einbezug weiterer Quellen detaillierte Aussagen über einen etwaigen touristischen Raum erlauben würde (bspw. über Analysen von Netzseiten verschiedener Akteurinnen und Akteure, Reiseführern usw.). Zugleich steht der Konstruktion eines (nationalen) politischen Raumes nichts im Wege, sind die dazu kompatiblen Historizitäts- und Raumideologien doch verhältnismäßig dauerhaft vor Ort platziert – eine Manifestation, die insgesamt eine Legitimierung durch entsprechende räumliche Aneignungen vor Ort bzw. in den diskursiven Räumen (eher) erlaubt (zu Strategien der (De-)Legitimierung vgl. Rothenhöfer 2014). Das folgende Beispiel wird eine entsprechende diskursive Rekontextualisierung wiedergeben, die explizit auf genannte Raum- und Zeitqualitäten verweist, ohne die oben besprochene Örtlichkeit explizit zu nennen. Sie rekontextualisiert und konstruiert also zugleich einen der vielen diskursiven Heldenplätze.

Polyhistorizität im öffentlichen Raum

327

Beispiel 2: Politischer Tweet Das zweite hier zu diskutierende Beispiel bezieht sich auf ein Tweet des damaligen ÖVP-Chefs Reinhold Mitterlehner, in dem er den Vorschlag des SPÖ-Kanzleramtsministers Thomas Drozda, den Heldenplatz in Platz der Republik oder Platz der Demokratie umzubenennen, ablehnt. Nach Drozdas Vorschlag, den er einen Tag zuvor in einem Interview in der Tageszeitung Die Presse äußerte, entspann sich ein ganzer Umbenennungs-Diskurs, der in den Tageszeitungen von Vertreterinnen und Vertretern der Politik, Journalistinnen und Journalisten sowie Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern (in Gastkommentaren) konstituiert wurde. Mitterlehners Tweet wurde in fünf Online-Artikeln von vier österreichischen Tageszeitungen vollständig zitiert (Die Presse, Der Standard und Kurier vom 19.2.2017 und in der Wiener Zeitung vom selben und darauffolgenden Tag) und darüber hinaus mehrfach paraphrasiert. #Heldenplatz hat gute und schlechte Zeiten erlebt, aber ist fixer Bestandteil d. österreichischen Geschichte. Sehe keinen Grund f. Umbenennung – Reinhold Mitterlehner (@MitterlehnerR) 19. Februar 2017

Neben parteipolitischen Aspekten, die an dieser Stelle nicht diskutiert werden können, ist die bereits aus Beispiel 1 ersichtliche Verknüpfung aus den Diskurselementen Raum (Hashtag, Praxis des Umbenennens), Zeit (Zeiten, Geschichte) und der Akteursebene (Österreich, Mitterlehners Positionierung) augenfällig. Dieses Arrangement wird in der Weise funktional in einen Zusammenhang gebracht, dass die Positionierung des Heldenplatzes über die Konstruktion eines intertextuellen Hashtag-Raumes und seiner Einbettung in seiner existenziell erscheinenden Polyhistorizität geschieht. Letzteres ist in der Historizitätsideologie gute und schlechte Zeiten auffällig ausgedrückt. Diese Bewertung wird aber fest (‚fix‘) in eine konstruierte Akteursgruppe (‚Österreich‘) und ihrer ‚Geschichte‘ verankert. Dieser Raum ist nun zweifach belebt, einmal im Sinne von Lefebvres drittem Raum und der vollzogenen Raumaneignung, und einmal ‚erlebt‘ er sein ihm hier zugeschriebenes Schicksal explizit. Das tut der Heldenplatz sozusagen wortlos – die voice, die Positionierung und das Recht auf Mitbestimmung seines Namens wird ihm explizit von Mitterlehner abgenommen (Hashtag, ausbleibende Gründe für Umbenennung). Mitterlehner hebt also nicht nur mit der im Korpus häufig vertretenen und von verschiedensten Akteurinnen und Akteuren geäußerten Konstruktion eines organischen Heldenplatzes (bes. Geschichte erleben, geschichtsschwanger bzw. geschichtsträchtig sein) die scheinbare Lebendigkeit des Raumes hervor; er gibt dem Heldenplatz u. a. über diese Metapher seine, ihm scheinbar eigene Geschichte und stellt sich zugleich schützend vor ihn. Diskurslinguistisch ist außerdem festzuhalten, mit welcher Selbstverständlichkeit diese Geschichte kontextualisiert wird. Mitterlehner bewertet die Zeiten des Raumes, nennt sie aber nicht. Es werden also Wissensbestände angenommen oder eben  

328

Christian Bendl

eine Selbstverständlichkeit im Wissen um den Raum konstruiert, sodass (anscheinend) keine Nachfragen notwendig sind – was der Heldenplatz ‚war‘ und ‚ist‘, ist (spätestens jetzt anscheinend) Common Sense. Demzufolge wäre auch die Entscheidung Mitterlehners ‚richtig ‘und ‚legitim‘. Im Gegensatz zum ersten Beispiel ist die Raumqualität, ein öffentlicher Raum zu sein, in diesem Beispiel diffiziler im Diskurs platziert. Zunächst ist hier keine Örtlichkeit anzutreffen. Der einzige Hinweis hierauf mag in der Benennung der Lokalität verortet sein. Die Öffentlichkeit wird also über die diskursive Ebene konstruiert, einerseits – wie oben – über die Adressierung und (mediale) Platzierung (welche über Twitter intertextualisiert und durch die Online-Zeitungsberichte vervielfacht wird), und andererseits über die kontextualisierte Akteursebene, die eine öffentliche Relevanz mit dem Raum verbindet (Österreich und dessen Geschichte). Der Heldenplatz wird von einem Politiker in die Öffentlichkeit hineingetragen und erhält dabei eine soziale Relevanz, die eine ganze Nation umgreift.

5 Schlussfolgerungen Räume, Orte, Zeiten und kommunikative Praktiken stehen in fundamentalen Verbindungen zueinander. Linguistische Stellungnahmen dazu gelingen in ihren materiellen und diskursiven Manifestationen. So kann Zeit in sprachlichen Praktiken im und über den Raum sozial relevant gesetzt und bewertet werden. Dies betrifft alltägliche und einmalige oder wiederholte Praktiken allgemein, aber auch dezidiert raum-zeit-relationale Veranstaltungen (bspw. Praktiken des Gedenkens) bzw. ihre Orte (bspw. sog. historische Orte). Im Verbund werden temporäre Konstruktionen salient, die beispielsweise eine Geschichte eines Ortes, Landes und/oder einer Akteursgruppe bezeichnen und so diskursiv rekontextualisierbar sind bzw. – bei entsprechender örtlicher Manifestation – auch potentiell länger bleiben. Insbesondere öffentliche Räume weisen aufgrund ihrer relativ konstant erscheinenden Materialität über längere Zeitschichten hinweg auf diese anscheinend legitim rekontextualisierten Diskursebenen hin. Außerdem kann die Etablierung einer zeitbezogenen Folge-Wirkung-Relation unter Konstruktion einer Polyhistorizität sowie die – eventuell wiederholte – kommunikative Bündelung sozialer Akteursgruppen aufgrund einheitlicher zeittragender und raumrelationaler Wissensbestände (Erinnerung, nationales Gedächtnis) ein Forschungsfeld für diesen interdisziplinären Ansatz sein. Dadurch, dass soziale Handlungsfelder räumlich und zeitlich konstruiert werden, erlauben auch Rekontextualisierungen von Wissensbeständen zu Genres Anknüpfungen an Bewährtes und Traditionen. In gleicher Weise sind auch Brüche mit den Handlungserwartungen diskurskonstituierend. So sehr nun die Legitimierung für Praktiken im Raum generiert wird, muss dennoch unter Umständen die verhältnismäßig stabile Materialität und Diskursivität des Ortes bedacht werden, die wie ein Gegenpol zur so stark dynamisierten Räumlichkeit bestehen.

Polyhistorizität im öffentlichen Raum

329

Ihre Relevanz erfahren Analysen von kommunikativen Praktiken vor Ort und im, durch sowie zum Raum schließlich in der Fokussierung auf die zugeschriebenen sozialen Wertigkeiten und sozialen Positionierungen. Insbesondere in urbanen Lokalitäten ist dieser Umstand angesichts der bereits im Forschungsobjekt angelegten örtlichen bzw. räumlichen Öffentlichkeit beachtenswert. Vertiefende Aussagen über das eigene (Akteurinnen und Akteure und Akteursgruppen) und urbane Raum-Verständnis (diskursive Wirklichkeit) können dann über die detaillierte Diskussion von Polyhistorizität (beispielsweise Veränderungen) gewonnen werden. Wie urban oder öffentlich ein Raum letztlich ist, entscheiden die sprachlichen Praktiken, die in der Mitte der kontextualisierten, wechselseitigen Beziehung von Räumen, Orten, Zeiten und Akteurinnen und Akteuren stehen.

6 Literatur Bachmann-Medick, Doris (2016): Cultural Turns: New Orientations in the Study of Culture. Berlin. Bachtin, Michail M. ([1975] 2008): Chronotopos. Frankfurt am Main. Bauman, Richard/Charles L. Briggs (1990): Poetics and performances as critical perspectives on language and social life. In: Annual Review of Anthropology 19, 59–88. Bendl, Christian (2018): Protest als diskursive Raum-Zeit-Aneignung. Das Beispiel der Identitären Bewegung Österreich. In: Zeitschrift für Angewandte Linguistik 68, 73–102. Bendl, Christian (2020): Appropriation and re-appropriation: the memorial as a palimpsest. In: Robert J. Blackwood/John Macalister (Hg.): Multilingual Memories: Monuments, Museums and the Linguistic Landscape. London, 263–284. Bendl, Christian (2021): Polyhistorizität im öffentlichen Raum: Zur Konzeptualität und Funktion semiotisch-diskursiver Raum-Zeit-Aneignungen am Wiener Heldenplatz. Berlin. Bhabha, Homi K. (1994): The Location of Culture. London. Blommaert, Jan (2005): Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge. Blommaert, Jan (2013): Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity. Bristol. Blommaert, Jan (2016): From mobility to complexity in sociolinguistic theory and method. In: Nikolas Coupland (Hg.): Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates. Cambridge, 242–259. Braudel, Ferdinand ([1958] 1977): Geschichte und Sozialwissenschaften. Die ‚longue durée‘. In: Claudia Honegger (Hg.): Schrift und Materie der Geschichte. Vorschläge zur systematischen Aneignung historischer Prozesse. Frankfurt am Main 1977, 47–85. Busch, Brigitta (2013): Mehrsprachigkeit. Wien. Busch, Brigitta (2016): Überschreibungen und Einschreibungen. Die Gedenkstätte als Palimpsest. In: Daniela Allmeier/Inge Manka/Peter Mörtenböck/Rudolf Scheuvens (Hg.): Erinnerungsorte in Bewegung. Zur Neugestaltung des Gedenkens an Orten nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen. Bielefeld, 181–198. Busch, Brigitta (2019): Sprachreflexion und Diskurs: Theorien und Methoden der Sprachideologieforschung. In: Gerd Antos/Thomas Niehr/Jürgen Spitzmüller (Hg.): Handbuch Sprache im Urteil der Öffentlichkeit. Berlin, 107–139. Busse, Beatrix/Ingo H. Warnke (2014): Ortsherstellung als sprachliche Praxis – sprachliche Praxis als Ortsherstellung. In: Ingo H. Warnke/Beatrix Busse (Hg.): Place-Making in urbanen Diskursen. Berlin, 1–8.

330

Christian Bendl

Busse, Beatrix/Ingo H. Warnke (2015): Sprache im urbanen Raum – Konzeption und Forschungsfelder der Urban Linguistics. In Ekkehard Felder/Andreas Gardt (Hg.), Handbuch Sprache und Wissen. Berlin, 519–538. Domke, Christine (2014): Die Texte der Stadt. Wie Beschilderungen als Be-Wertungen von Innenstädten fungieren. In: Ingo H. Warnke/Beatrix Busse (Hg.): Place-Making in urbanen Diskursen. Berlin, 59–90. Foucault, Michel ([1969] 2013): Archäologie des Wissens. 16. Aufl. Frankfurt am Main. Foucault, Michel ([1971] 2014): Die Ordnung des Diskurses. 13. Aufl. Frankfurt am Main. Goutsos, Dionysis/George Polymeneas (2014): Identity as space: Localism in the Greek protests of Syntagma Square. In: Journal of Language and Politics 13, 675–701. Gumperz, John J. (1992): Contextualization and understanding. In: Alessandro Duranti/Charles Goodwin (Hg.): Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge, 229–252. Kämper, Heidrun (2018): Diskurslinguistik und Zeitgeschichte. In: Ingo H. Warnke (Hg.): Handbuch Diskurs. Berlin, 53–74. Kämper, Heidrun/Ingo H. Warnke/Daniel Schmidt-Brücken (2016): Diskursive Historizität. In: Heidrun Kämper/Ingo H. Warnke/Daniel Schmidt-Brücken (Hg.): Textuelle Historizität, Berlin, 1–8. Koselleck, Reinhart ([1989] 2015a): Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. 9. Aufl. Frankfurt am Main. Koselleck, Reinhart ([2003] 2015b): Zeitschichten: Studien zur Historik. 4. Aufl. Frankfurt am Main. Lefebvre, Henri ([1974] 2016): The Production of Space. Malden. Mitterlehner, Reinhold [@MitterlehnerR]. Twitter, 19. Februar 2017, twitter.com/MitterlehnerR/status/ 833221455525601280 Purkarthofer, Judith (2016): Sprachort Schule. Zur Konstruktion von mehrsprachigen sozialen Räumen und Praktiken in einer zweisprachigen Volksschule. Klagenfurt. Rothenhöfer, Andreas (2014): Der Heidelberger Stadthallenstreit 2009 bis 2010 Bürgerprotest als Einforderung kollaborativen Place-Makings. In: Ingo H. Warnke/Beatrix Busse (Hg.): Place-Making in urbanen Diskursen. Berlin, 11–40. Schmid, Christian (2010): Stadt, Raum und Gesellschaft. Henri Lefebvre und die Theorie der Produktion des Raumes. 2. Aufl. Stuttgart. Scollon, Ronald/Suzanne B. K. Scollon (2003): Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World. London. Shep, Sydney J. (2015): Urban palimpsests and contending signs. In: Social Semiotics 25, 209–216. Silverstein, Michael (1979): Language structure and linguistic ideology. In: Paul R. Clyne/William F. Hanks/Carol L. Hofbauer (Hg.): The Elements: A Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels. Chicago, 193–247. Soja, Edward W. (1996): Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Cambridge. Sonnleitner, Julia (2018): Chronotopes of Apartheid: Transmitted memory as positioning practice among the born-free generation of South Africa. In: Wiener Linguistische Gazette 83, 28–47. Spitzmüller, Jürgen (2013): Graphische Variation als soziale Praxis. Eine soziolinguistische Theorie skripturaler „Sichtbarkeit“. Berlin/Boston. Spitzmüller, Jürgen (2015): Sprache im Urteil der Öffentlichkeit. In: Ekkehard Felder/Andreas Gardt (Hg.): Handbuch Sprache und Wissen. Berlin, 314–332. Spitzmüller, Jürgen (2019): ‚Sprache‘ – ‚Metasprache‘ – ‚Metapragmatik‘: Sprache und sprachliches Handeln als Gegenstand sozialer Reflexion. In: Gerd Antos/Thomas Niehr/Jürgen Spitzmüller (Hg.): Handbuch Sprache im Urteil der Öffentlichkeit. Berlin, 11–30. Spitzmüller, Jürgen/Christian Bendl (2022): Veränderung durch Stabilität. Konturen einer Protest(meta)pragmatik. In: Mark Dang-Anh/Dorothee Meer/Eva Lia Wyss (Hg.): Protestkommunikation im Wandel. Berlin, 27–59.

Polyhistorizität im öffentlichen Raum

331

Spitzmüller, Jürgen/Mi-Cha Flubacher/Christian Bendl (2017): Soziale Positionierung als Praxis und Praktik. Einführung in das Themenheft. In: Wiener Linguistische Gazette 81, 1–18. Spitzmüller, Jürgen/Ingo H. Warnke (2011): Diskurslinguistik. Eine Einführung in Theorien und Methoden der transtextuellen Sprachanalyse. Berlin. Stroud, Christopher/Dmitri Jegels (2014): Semiotic landscapes and mobile narrations of place: performing the local. In: International Journal of the Sociology of Language 228, 179–199. Vandenbroucke, Mieke (2015): Language visibility, functionality and meaning across various TimeSpace scales in Brussels’ multilingual landscapes. In: Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 36, 163–181. Velásquez Urribarrí, Jessica (2020): Resemiotisations across time, space, materials and modes: An analysis of political signage in Venezuela. In: Social Semiotics, 1–20. Warnke, Ingo H. (2009): Die sprachliche Konstituierung von geteiltem Wissen in Diskursen. In: Ekkehard Felder/Marcus Müller (Hg.): Wissen durch Sprache. Theorie, Praxis und Erkenntnisinteresse des Forschungsnetzwerkes ‚Sprache und Wissen‘. Berlin, 113–140. Warnke, Ingo H. (2017): Raum, Ort, Arena und Territorium – vier Ebenen der Analyse verorteter Schrift. In: Jin Zhao/Michael Szurawitzki (Hg.): Nachhaltigkeit und Germanistik. Fokus, Kontrast und Konzept. Frankfurt, 135–158.

V Experimente/ Experiments

Ingo H. Warnke

14. Melancholy Objects Remixed: A Multimodal Counterstatement on Photography in Urban Linguistics Abstract: The chapter discusses the use of photographs in research on Linguistic Landscape. Based on the observation of a widespread use of photographic documentation, the status of photographs is critically reflected. The focus lies on a reading of Susan Sontag’s ([1977] 2014) Melancholy Objects. Here, conceptions of description and documentation are questioned, as they are common for some linguistic works, especially in the field of Urban Studies. Of particular importance is the examination of the tension between realism and surrealism as well as the question of the extraction of reality. The text, which is a remix of Susan Sontag’s ([1977] 2014) thoughts, is complemented by twenty photographs that address the limits of photographic representation in the linguistic text. 1 2 3

Introduction Plate section References

1 Introduction The sociolinguistic and urban linguistic interest in writing in public space in the socalled Linguistic Landscape (LL) – comparable also to semiotic landscape research – is coupled with the presence of photographs in linguistic publications. As long as these photographs seem necessary for documentary purposes, they are supposedly taken for granted; but this is only because photography here has the status of a research datum and is part of a research repository of digital access to space, not least to the space of the city. Today’s hassle-free digital photography allows uncomplicated access to everything we encounter visually, so that almost all LL is available for appropriate access to documentation. Puzey (2016, 398) states: “one element that most LL research has in common […] is the technique of photographic data collection.” The options for storing visual data associated with digital photography also correspond to the growing importance of digital research infrastructures and data management specifications. For LL research, a corpus can be compiled via smartphone and then be stored and kept available. Flipping through the relevant volume by Shohamy/Gorter (2009), one finds a separate plate section in the middle of the book, which contains no less than 121 illustrations, most of them photographs, linked to the essays in the volume through counting https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-015

336

Ingo H. Warnke

and labeling; this corresponds to the classic plate section of older forms of multimodal publishing. In the book published by Shohamy/Ben-Rafael/Barni (2010) one year later, the total of more than ninety photographs has the status of integrated illustrations, which are inserted into the respective discussion like example sentences in traditional linguistic forms of publication. But the quantity of photographic data collection, data storage, and especially data representation can go well beyond this. For example, in the approximately twenty-page text by Jaworski (2015), published in the journal Linguistic Landscape, there are more than thirty photos alone. The photograph becomes the companion of a specific kind of sociolinguistic research and practice of documentation or visual communication. Troyer/Szabó (2017) correctly state that LL research relies on the collection of visual data, especially on the use of still images. In their considerations, however, they also go further and discuss possibilities of digital videography for the documentation of LL. It remains to be expected, however, that the photo, too, will certainly find longer use in linguistic journals, books, conference presentations, or shared videoconference screens, as opposed to videos, due to its easy publishability in formats of static publication and due to the easy discussability of still images. There are numerous examples for the methodological use of photography in LL research; I mention Dressler (2015) as an example, where the essential procedures of linguistic photography can be found in a compressed form: signs are photographed, saved, tagged, sorted, classified, and deskilled in Microsoft Excel; if the entire data collection has not already been carried out by app. This, or something similar, is how this is often done. This is especially true for urban linguistics, which is interested in the occurrence of writing in public space, because the photo can be taken in a particular place, on site, but its processing and analysis is possible in a time-distant and placedistant manner. In this respect, there are hardly any hurdles in collecting data; one can walk through a city in a directed manner and compile data along the way. It seems that this is an ideal way to capture language use. And this is true, but the question is, what does it mean to document language use in this way. First of all, however, it remains to be stated that photos, similar to classic corpus data, can be counted, including their assigned features; they can be coded and evaluated accordingly and thereby always convey the impression of an immediate, replicable act of interpretation. Working with the photo in this way is like being co-present in the act of photographing. In this respect, photos of LL research have become a widespread method of language documentation, similar to photographs or digital corpora of mass-media language occurrences. Photos of LL research belong to the material of linguistics and are a means of its preservation. In this respect, research practice does not differ from a journalistic perspective of the world, at least when it comes to reportage or photojournalism. The scholarly handling of photographs, however, can quickly slide into naivety if one takes the photograph for the datum itself. Anyone who has ever perceived themselves as alienated in a photograph and, moreover, has seen others captured only partially well in photographs, knows that photographs as iconic signs have their limits and tendencies. Likewise, it seems a useless practice to photograph e.g., a touristic monument

Melancholy Objects Remixed

337

that has already been photographed many times, when it is possible to look at countless pictures of it on the Internet at any time. But what is at stake here is the act of photographing, which is inscribed equally in the photographic image of us and in our photograph of a monument. Because, of course, photography is never free of purpose, it carries within itself the functions of its creation and its looking relations. In this sense, photography does not differ from recording language or collecting corpus linguistic data, which also and necessarily bear traces of those who select the material. Even if photography has the appearance of securing linguistic reality in the project of reportage, this is precisely what it does only to a limited extent. Where photography seems to document with particular precision this, in fact, is an expression of a specific gaze. I call this the paradox of documentation in photography. The more documentary status a photograph has in LL research, the more it is an index for a specific photographic perspectivization. The photo shows what the photographer knows; the photographer sees what the photo is supposed to show. Despite the functionality of photography in research on LL, there is reason for doubt. The paradox of documentation demands a highly reflective approach to the medium of photography. This is all the more important since photography has long been discussed in terms of its supposedly documentary function. But I suggest that we question the documentary function of photography in LL research. I first refer here to Gorter (2018), who raises some hope for a critical engagement that has already taken place. In a longer section of his account of the methods and techniques of LL research, he pays attention to photography (Gorter 2018). In this context, he discusses three aspects: “(1) the LL researcher as photographer; (2) the LL photo as data or ‘LL genre’; and (3) the author and the readers of an academic text featuring pictures” (Gorter 2018, 47). However, the considerations about linguists as photographers are limited to technical issues and to their ability to reach a certain qualitative standard which is more than “amateurish snap-shot photography” (Gorter 2018, 48). The other considerations are also less focused on the mediality of photography per se. Here, questions of the reception of linguistic photo-documentation are perhaps the most interesting. Gorter actually only calls for doing things better in the future than they have been done before. The status of images as data is not in question: “But in a general sense, photographs are like any other data source” (Gorter 2018, 48). This is where my criticism comes into the picture. I doubt this and, second, refer in this context also to Nash (2016; cf. Gorter 2018), who has already raised fundamental doubts about the simple function of documentation of photographs in LL research. For Nash (2016, 4), photography is not an uncomplicated thing; on the contrary, he rejects the supposed simple possibility of photography in LL research when he remarks, “such a perspective undermines the seriousness and insight required of an LL scholar or any sociolinguist or landscape student who uses photographic means to interact with and collect data in languaged landscapes”. I share this criticism of the lack of serious engagement with the medium of photography in LL research. However, I go a few steps further.

338

Ingo H. Warnke

This leads me to Susan Sontag, whose work on photography is known to be a vital contribution to the historical and functional analysis of the medium. In particular, her text Melancholy Objects, the third part of On Photography from 1977, is groundbreaking for questioning the documentary status of photography. I would like to start with a close reading and highlight some aspects that to me seem extremely relevant for a reflection on photography in linguistics. Afterwards, in the photographic part of this chapter, I aim to appropriate the attitude of melancholy itself and thus comment on the status of photography in LL research in a multimodal counterstatement. Susan Sontag ([1977] 2014, 51) writes: (1)

Photography has the unappealing reputation of being the most realistic, therefore facile, of the mimetic arts. In fact, it is the one art that has managed to carry out the grandiose, century-old threats of a Surrealist takeover of the modern sensibility, while most of the pedigreed candidates have dropped out of the race.

This is a rather radical turn, speaking of linguistics and data documentation and suddenly being thrown back on surrealism. But this shift is useful because it can demonstrate the artificiality of the entire linguistic claim to documentation, an artificiality that is nevertheless always concerned with not confusing linguistics with art. Surrealism, for all the breadth of definitions that are probably conceivable, is in the first instance everything but realism. But when we commonly speak of linguistic data, this is exactly what we mean: the realism of the scholarly project, the claim to the descriptiveness of the reality of language, which we also think we grasp through photography, for example, when we deal with signs in public spaces. But how can photography, of all things, contribute to a realistic recording of linguistic reality if it is in fact a surreal empowerment of perception? One thing already becomes obvious here: photographic documentation in LL research and Susan Sontag are not easy to reconcile. This is also true when linguistics is even concerned with having translated the unsympathetic reputation of realism that Sontag speaks of into the sympathetic, because data documentation is supposed to be precisely about realism. Sontag ([1977] 2014, 51) starts here from photography as art, but one should not conclude too hastily that what she attributes to art is suspended in its documentary use: (2)

photography is the only art that is natively surreal […].

Following this statement, photography has its origin in the surreal. And it cannot discard this origin by transforming it in the linguistic project. It is of particular importance here that photography acquires its surreal character above all from the technique of doubling the world: (3)

Surrealism lies at the heart of the photographic enterprise: in the very creation of a duplicate world, of a reality in the second degree, narrower but more dramatic than the one perceived by natural vision (Sontag [1977] 2014, 52).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

339

And this is exactly what characterizes the surreal intensification of the linguistic view of written occurrences in public space. The camera, the smartphone directed at writing, a blow-up of linguistic data – these give mono- or multilingualism, language art, features of varieties, etc. the status of distinct data only through the photograph. The main characteristic here is to connect the collection of individual glimpses of something with the assertion of a landscape that, in fact, does not exist. LL as landscape is a fiction, a virtual synopsis, an act of compiling gazes that takes place beyond (urban) space in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets or other forms of the tabular ordering of material. LL as landscape is nothing but the result of a pointed arrangement, a surreal collage with the aim of capturing the idea of a manifestation of language. We are faced here with linguists who photograph and who construct their object in the first place, even if they subsequently handle their so-called data as reality. In this respect, the designation landscape is even highly appropriate; however, landscape is not something that exists, but which becomes a coherent imagination. The sentence What a beautiful landscape, this is after all precisely not talking about the reality of a perceivable world, but an expression of a specific, highly individual perception, from a particular vantage point, a view caught by a camera. Perspective, outlook, vastness, panorama, these are the features of creating coherence in the gaze, and thus prerequisites for talking about a landscape. LL as landscape is the result of this coherence-creating act, in which a menu and a sticker on the streetlamp are the visual utensils of a panorama. Even if we were then to describe these details in tension with each other, a perception of interrelations persists – otherwise we could not speak of a landscape. Like paparazzi, LL researchers are on the lookout for a linguistic motif that will always be found, especially in cities, and linguists who photograph go in search of a story, which in this case is the discovery of a landscape. A dramatized form of linguistic reality that exaggerates, far from realistic perception. This reminds me of example sentences in grammars or dictionaries taken from canonized literature, artificial constructions that show possibilities of language, but nothing more. But the point of LL research is actually to document the ‘real’ appearance of language in everyday spatial life. Yet the collected photos are no more than a collection of stage sets in the eye of the photographer and, in the best case, the stage set of a staged landscape of language staged by a linguist. The linguistic paper that sets up these sceneries is the performance of a look. Linguists get on stage and explain that which they have put together themselves. We create the objects we study. Now, one might be inclined to object that photography captures precisely that which simply exists, which carries within it a moment of discovery, in contrast to a constructed linguistic phrase in the novel of a Nobel Prize winner that we can find as an example sentence in a grammar book. This is the data I found, this would be a conceivable attitude here. But here, too, Sontag ([1977] 2014, 52) has long since gone a step further, because it is this attitude of discovery that she finds constitutes surrealism in particular:

340

Ingo H. Warnke

(4) Surrealism has always courted accidents, welcomed the uninvited, flattered disorderly presences.

I am reminded of Blommaert’s (2013) Chronicles of Complexity. Here, the linguist decodes disorder and recognizes a superdiverse order in this endeavor: “when we encounter a forest of signs, such as in London Chinatown or in superdiverse Berchem, we can then now understand that this abundance of signs does not reflect a chaotic, disordered pattern, but reflects a form of complex order that begs investigation” Blommaert (2013, 47). However, disorder itself is not questioned; on the contrary, the surreal pleasure of discovering what seems messy is at stake here, because it can be ordered in the subsequent linguistic act of analysis. In doing so, the sociolinguist enters the stage as a surreal realist: “The neighborhood, I would say, is chaotic; but, as we know by now, that means that it is in order” (Blommaert 2013, 106). The surreal jouissance of discovering disorder thereafter assembled into an ordered landscape carries within it a class signature, the indexicality of social belonging. The search for diversity in so-called LL and its discovery are an expression of a bourgeois antinormativity that can be afforded especially by those who are able to live within a normative framework, but who can also leave it to enter a diverse open space. Sontag resolutely elaborates on the class signature of surrealism and photography. I relate this once again pointedly to Blommaert; however, this should not be misunderstood as a personal remark. I am only concerned with photography. When Blommaert (2013) documents the occurrences of language in public space, the project bespeaks what Sontag ([1977] 2014, 54) calls “irrefutable pathos” – a delight in discovering diverse-looking menus and stick-on notes as messages from another world. Using experience of difference as scholarly discovery is a class gesture. (5)

Surrealism is a bourgeois disaffection […] (Sontag [1977] 2014, 54).

Of course, one could simply say that Susan Sontag is not a sociolinguist: She is not part of what needs to be read here, as a linguist I am interested in other texts. Such a gesture of ignorance, however, would deprive us of the chance to expose descriptive claims inscribed in linguistics, at least in part, as a fabrication. This begs the question of what contradictions one gets caught up in when using photography in urban linguistics and overlooking the surreal nature of the medium. Contradictions that do not seem to me to be very productive, but rather refer back to a fundamental doubt about the possibility of capturing language descriptively. Sontag ([1977] 2014, 54–55) uses harsh words that linguistics must endure when drawn to photography: (6) The view of reality as an exotic prize to be tracked down and captured by the diligent hunterwith-a-camera has informed photography from the beginning, and marks the confluence of the Surrealist counter-culture and middle-class social adventurism. [...]

Melancholy Objects Remixed

341

Gazing on other people’s reality with curiosity, with detachment, with professionalism, the ubiquitous photographer operates as if that activity transcends class interests, as if its perspective is universal.

I actually find these words difficult to bear in light of the proliferation of LL research, and I do by no means enjoy grappling with them. Like a blinding mirror that does not let us see ourselves in a productive way, but rather troubles us and questions something fundamental: the linguistic gaze. Sontag ([1977] 2014, 55) shows us that photography was developed “as an extension of the eye of the middle-class flâneur,” and we have to face the question whether we do not exactly match this in the LL project. (7)

The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes (Sontag [1977] 2014, 55).

It may seem impolite given the author’s importance, but Blommaert’s (2013, 15) alarmist rhetoric ties in seamlessly: “The neighborhood has become distinctly superdiverse; it is an area where, over the past decades, several layers of migration have resulted in an extremely multilingual and multicultural environment, with a very high level of instability.” Following the general fashion, I myself undertook an almost complete documentation of the LL in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg at about the same time as Blommaert. My collection of data consists of an exhaustive survey of 6,952 photographic data of epigrammatic markers of place on buildings and signs. My attention here was focused on place-marking or place-declaring symphysical inscriptions. At that time, I covered the entire area because I felt that privileging specific parts of it was problematic from a sociolinguistic point of view. I (i) obtained the nearly 7,000 data photographically through complete, structured area surveys, (ii) spatially coded and tagged them with linguistic metadata, (iii) categorized them in a hypothesis-generating manner using grounded-theory methods, and (iv) complemented them with a few supplementary guideline-oriented interviews. The project yielded some rather interesting results which one could present and discuss, for example on the toponymic LL. Of the N = 6,952 epigrammatic place markers I surveyed, n = 959, or 13.8 %, are epigrammatic toponyms that appear patterned and reveal territorial orders in social space. But I did not publish these data and did not finish the planned book, although I was quite far; the so-called data are still in the folder of a cloud. I acted no differently than a voyeur who sometimes returned home partially disappointed by the boredom of the street. Perhaps the monolingual uniformity could be an interesting subject for the gentrified, segregated habitat of Prenzlauer Berg, I thought. Yet despite such ideas, I had reservations about making generalizations from the so-called material, which was nothing more than a large collection of photographs. The coding of the so-called data was nothing other than a surrealistic attempt to design a landscape. At least that is how it seems to me today when I read Susan Sontag ([1977] 2014, 74):  

342

Ingo H. Warnke

(8) Surrealism is the art of generalizing the grotesque and then discovering nuances (and charms) in that.

To look for the extraordinary and to cut it out photographically, a written note on the wall of a house, for example, to generalize it as LL, to find a category and then to classify what is seen as something to be observed, that seems to me to be structurally nothing essentially different from what Sontag is talking about. It is the photography that makes the datum happen, a perceptual detail that conceals the photographer’s perspective behind the declared claim of documentation. The problem arises in particular when a virtue is made of the construction of the linguistic datum, as if photography were particularly well suited to capture something which, however, it actually produces in the first place. To hold on to something, a reality of language, which after all is nothing more than a snapshot of language, thus a glimpse of it. As a glimpse of language, photos of LL research would indeed be interesting, except then collections on LL would not be data, but objects with which landscape is made. (9) Photographs furnish instant history, instant sociology, instant participation. But there is something remarkably anodyne about these new forms of packaging reality (Sontag [1977] 2014, 75).

One could call the procedure of using photography in LL research Instant Linguistics. And it is not surprising that what is supposedly specific in the multilingual or somehow diverse city seems more interesting than the allegedly conflict-free boredom of signposts of a hiking trail in a monolingual province. In an astonishing way, linguistics corresponds to what Sontag ([1977] 2014, 77) also notes for photography, namely, an ambivalent attitude toward the possibility of taking sides through the photographic project: (10) The history of photography discloses a long tradition of ambivalence about its capacity for partisanship: the taking of sides is felt to undermine its perennial assumption that all subjects have validity and interest.

The primacy of description (cf. Klein 2004) overrides the actual achievement, even of linguistic photography, of discussing a point of view and revealing the descriptive project as negotiable. And here it is becoming increasingly clear that linguistics in and of itself resembles photography, and consequently the linguist resembles the photographer. To declare everything, linguists discover something in language to be real – they understand a store label or a menu as part of the planting of an existing landscape, and recognize patterns not as an expression of their own desires for order bound to origin and class, but as linguistic reality. The documented epigrammar is not sufficient, but requires the organizing hand of the expert, who with their knowledge demonstrates that it takes their landscape-organizing intervention to recognize the existence of language, and that means order in the first place. The reality of the photo-

Melancholy Objects Remixed

343

graphing linguist is a reality that requires its act of realization in the data set, in the data landscape. Documentation of reality is therefore highly contradictory, just as this also applies to the photographic assertion of reality: (11) the photographer’s insistence that everything is real also implies that the real is not enough (Sontag [1977] 2014, 80).

This brings us closer to the title of Sontag’s text: Melancholy Objects. The ephemeral nature of writing in public space, which seldom has the character of antique marble inscriptions, but rather disappears with the next rain, renovation, or bankruptcy, and thus already carries within itself the destiny to fade out, is apparently particularly suited to the melancholy project of photography, which, according to Sontag, is central to the medium. Even if this does not comply with the language of linguistics, the following formulation expresses the whole claim of the landscape linguist to capture something, to snatch a state of language from fleetingness: (12) Photography is the inventory of mortality (Sontag [1977] 2014, 70).

Let me once again refer to Blommaert (2013, 15–16), who, probably not by chance, precisely notes the transitoriness of spatial presences as a research occasion and subject matter: “I have lived in this neighborhood for close to 20 years now, and I have been a direct witness to almost all of the transitions in the looks, structure and composition of the area over that period.” The research area is one of transition and consequently signs of transition become the real object of interest: “Let us now look at some examples. I will focus, first, on degrees of solidity in organization, readable from the ‘amateurish’ nature of some signs. After that, I will focus on ephemeral signs, signs that inform us about occasional, accidental or nomadic presences in the neighborhood” (Blommaert 2013, 62). I read this as an unintended paraphrase of Susan Sontag ([1977] 2014), who shows that photography celebrated the ephemeral and transient from early on, for example in works by Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget. In that sense, the unmasking of the perhaps naïve linguistic reliance on photographic documentation and the photographic gaze, as is imperative with the re-reading of Susan Sontag, would perhaps be no more than a footnote to linguistic methods. But Sontag ([1977] 2014, 65) does not stop at these observations and exaggerations, and her text is also about plundering, about the photographic extraction of reality. (13) American photographers are often on the road, overcome with disrespectful wonder at what their country offers in the way of surreal surprises. Moralists and conscienceless despoilers, children and foreigners in their own land, they will get something down that is disappearing – and, often, hasten its disappearance by photographing it (Sontag [1977] 2014, 65).

I also take up this aspect when I ask, inspired by Sontag, whether linguists are not equally on the lookout for the exciting datum, for the oblique and unexpected brokenness of language, for the deviations in learner language, for the obscure and striking, for the multilingual contrasts and all that they perceive as salient. Like web crawlers to-

344

Ingo H. Warnke

day or gold diggers of days gone by in search of the date or riches they extract and expropriate from those who made it visible, collaging it into a power point presentation in which LL is transformed into a much-loved garden show. Linguistic photography as an “inventory of the world” (Sontag [1977] 2014, 59), this requires the extrac-tion of situations. For documentation can also mean annihilation, a Hegelian Aufhebung in the double sense. I aim to capture this thought, which Sontag ([1977] 2014, 76) pinpoints in quotation (14), by raising a question for linguistics after Sontags's words: (14) From the start, photographers not only set themselves the task of recording a disappearing world but were so employed by those hastening its disappearance.

What if the documentation of superdiverse landscapes and linguistic monotony or diversity in LL ends up being displayed in the showcases of the certified publications of Global Academic English, to be sure – but what if, at the same time, the practices of monolingual peer-communication accelerate its displacement of diversity? Here I would like to refer again to my own work, which in this case I undertook together with Anne Storch and which is documented in a joint book: Sansibarzone (Storch/Warnke 2020). There are photographs in this book as well. However, we try to thematize the ruination of global neocolonial tourism in such a way that the photographs in the text become a visual game treading the fine line between description and critique. They are anti-photos. Again, it is Susan Sontag ([1977] 2014, 64), who has long underscored the special alliance between photography and tourism: (15) The predatory side of photography is at the heart of the alliance […] between photography and tourism.

Generating linguistic data in LL qua photography is also a tourist practice, a tour into the material. And just as the tourist marvels at (and photographs) everything they see in the Other, so is generating photographic data in linguistics no more than the expression of the claim to encounter meaning. The scholarly project must be as neutral as possible. But what about the possibility of linguistic photography to take sides? Our handling of photographs as linguists probably limits this repeatedly and lets us fall into the trap of documentary intention. In the LL project, every linguistic sign is of equal value, and this is precisely what expresses an impartiality that is surreal at its core: (16) In principle, photography executes the Surrealist mandate to adopt an uncompromisingly egalitarian attitude toward subject matter (Everything is “real.”) (Sontag [1977] 2014, 78).

But what else could one do with photos in linguistic publications? One way is to “camp” them; to put them in quotes, to refer here to another text by Susan Sontag: Notes on ‘Camp’ (Sontag [1964] 2018; also cf. Warnke 2021). In Melancholy Objects Sontag ([1977] 2014, 56) notes that “[b]etween 1874 and 1886, prosperous Londoners could subscribe to the Society for Photographing the Relics of Old London.” This is exactly what I reperform with the following images, which I understand as a multimodal

Melancholy Objects Remixed

345

counterstatement on photography in urban linguistics, a visual commentary on my remarks and on photography in LL research. The following twenty photos presuppose the normality of a superdiverse, communicatively vibrant presence in a metropolis like Berlin through melancholic documentation of decay and ruin. Like a tourist, I walk the streets and with my photographs I create the class signature of an observer of social change. The photos seem to critically note a transition, but they are entirely uncritical and do the opposite of what they claim to do: to document the world. The subsequent photographs rather decriticize the gaze and relocate the scholarly imagery of a communicative fading out into the realm of melancholic pleasantness, the expression of which is the alas, back when in the showcases still..., when everything was still superdiverse. As prepandemic words still referred to contemporary practices such as party, club, cinema, theater, lecture hall, vacation, etc. However, what is actually at stake is the surrealistic work of data extraction, the fate of others becomes the datum of the next publication. To emphasize the surreal quality of this absurd project, and to “camp” it at the same time, I have added captions to the images that refer to urban linguistic forms as documented in the Urban Dictionary. Ultimately, even this lexicographic documentation is no more than a surreal endeavor – and sociolinguists would have to ask themselves whether one should not have read more Susan Sontag. Put another way, the paradox of documentation in photography raises uncomfortable questions for LL research. Shot in the spring of 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic, the photographs in the plate section express the surreal search for truth in transience as supposed documents of an urban, and at times linguistic, landscape: “The hidden truth is, moreover, often identified with the vanishing past” (Sontag [1977] 2014, 56). Here one can visit what once was and what remains when communication has died. The great fading out of the linguistic landscape, its swan song, which is not safe from the linguistic, that is, surreal photographic gaze. A found motif that invites a snapshot and suggests the next project: on The Communicative Void of Pandemic Urbanity. The melancholy of the images corresponds to the discovery of the beauty of ruins: (17) Photography extends the eighteenth-century literati’s discovery of the beauty of ruins into a genuinely popular taste. And it extends that beauty beyond the romantics’ ruins […] to the modernists’ ruins – reality itself (Sontag [1977] 2014, 79).

Technically speaking, the following photographs are a classic plate section, as we know it from art-historical publications. The traditional function of such a plate section is to illustrate or document written texts. But how can a critical reflection and partial questioning of photography as a data basis and documentation of linguistic work itself be illustrated in a plate section? Only by making failure itself the subject, or, to put it more succinctly along the lines of Susan Sontag’s thoughts, by demonstrating the surreal content of the project of reality documentation itself. On the one hand, this performance of a hiatus between word and image should speak for itself;

346

Ingo H. Warnke

on the other, it probably makes sense in the context of a handbook to explain the ambiguity of the procedure by way of example. For this purpose, we have to make two distinctions: (i) we can understand the plate section as a whole and coherent documentation, or (ii) we can deal with the function of each individual photograph. Moreover, we can distinguish two levels in the single-image view, corresponding to the demarcation of reality and the surreal: (i) the level of the supposed documentation of the real and (ii) the level of the surreal photographic gaze. Let’s play this through with some photos, without wanting to deprive readers of the pleasure of making their own discoveries as well. If we first look at the plate section as a whole, the photographs show one urban world as one network of places and niches that appears patterned – which is admittedly more real in the plate section than in the documented public space of Berlin – a network that can be read as an effect, as a causal consequence and thus index of the pandemic. The photographs exhibit an isotopia whose characteristics are the closed public space (Fig. 1), the absence of urban normality and thus liveliness documented in the display (Figs. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 17), emptying (Figs. 9, 11, 14, 15), the emergence of new regulations (Figs. 3, 10, 19, 20), traces of protest (Fig. 13), normalization (Fig. 18), ephemeral everyday life (Fig. 16), and signals of departure (Fig. 2). The plate section as a text tells us about a city of the closure of a presupposed public, whose emblem is the omnipresent absence of normality; density and crowdedness are emptied, and in this emptiness a barely comprehensible but nevertheless flagged new pandemic reality of regulation, protest, and new normality takes place. So much for the narrative. Here already, one can hardly miss a melancholic arrangement of gazes. In this respect, the entire plate section is also an exhibition of melancholic objects. But by way of example, let’s also look at individual photos with regard to their supposed documentation on the one hand and their indexing of the surreal photographic gaze on the other. Fig. 2 shows a section of the display window of a store which is completely taped up and has an LL date, as if made for linguists. Here, in the middle of the center of Berlin, there is quite expectedly no German on display and also no superdiverse multilingualism, but English; however, we are encountering incorrect so-called broken English or the agrammatic variant (1.1) of the presumably meant sentence 1.2: 1.1 1.2

*WE ARE SOON FOR YOU THERE WE ARE HERE FOR YOU SOON

The status of English as a lingua franca, even if only as an emblem of commodification, is documented. But the photo is, of course, far more; it is an index of a gaze that deems the date worthy of inclusion in the documentation in the first place. Why? Because here we encounter the paradoxical inversion of emptying? Who opens a store in these pandemic times of lockdown? The photo shows that the photographer is willing to document that here, a difference becomes recognizable, the particular, the down-

Melancholy Objects Remixed

347

right paradoxical. Through the photo and its integration into the documentation of pandemic urban space, this observation of difference is generalized. This brings us exactly to Susan Sontag (see quote 8 above) and into the midst of surrealism. Fig. 14, like comparable subject matters of fading out, stands for empty linguistic data. In LL, such phenomena are of interest because they can initially be read as phenomena of negation. When showcases or the like remain empty, the absence of language or communicates is marked, so the linguistic reading here is always already 2.2: 2.1 2.2

X Y

The scope of negation is unusual here because of the spatial contextualization and symphysis; Fig. 14 looks like the space of a stage. Here, language or the communicate itself is negated. A radical linguistic nihilism. The absence of LL or the negative LL or even emptiness as a sign of negation are unquestionably important linguistic objects when it comes to the occurrence of writing in public space and especially to expectations of it. And this is exactly what the photographic gaze goes along with. Why then is this photograph included in the narrative of an orphaned city in the pandemic? Because what is not shown, the disappeared world, is the actual subject matter of the picture. This is indeed what Susan Sontag ([1977] 2014) speaks of for the surreal arrangement of the world, for instance in quotations (12) and (14), of the inventory of mortality and of the photographers’ co-responsibility for the disappearance of the world. The linguistic photographic documentation of absence is a code number of the desire to record precisely what is absent as a marked datum. How much melancholy lies in it is evident. If the search for the great fading out is the program of every photo safari in lost places, the documented claim and the surreal revelation in fig. 19 is more complex. What do we see linguistically? The arrangement of chance; the photo is a typical snapshot, captured in passing. As such, the datum is rich, and here that means (i) multimodal, (ii) emergent, and (iii) situational. The sign Einbahnstraße finds itself placed temporarily, a situation is produced here, with signs, objects, cues, bids. Such transitive spaces with their random LL are very typical of tents for medical testing and examination in the pandemic, they carry traces of the exceptional. Language here serves the purpose of concise instruction. One could now, if one wanted to, deal with the LL of these transitive pandemic sites. This would be a suitable datum for it. Photographing something like this seems to be an obvious thing to do when thinking about places of the pandemic. But the gaze adopted in the process is by no means new, it is much older, it is practiced in the paradoxical translation of what is sought in the supposedly random, the structured and orderly search for corresponding motifs while at the same time staging the image as a document of the roadside taken by chance. Susan Sontag also speaks of this, and here we can think in particular of the quotation explained above (4), where disorderly presence is mentioned. Fig. 19 is almost contradictory to

348

Ingo H. Warnke

fig. 14, here the disorderly casualness of multimodal LL, there the staged-seeming austerity of a linguistically empty place that looks like an installation at a biennial. Photographers of these images subsumes both under the theme of Berlin’s pandemic city center, which reveals much about their bourgeois gaze, in which both unplanned casualness and emptiness seem worth documenting. For fig. 13, too, we can play through the two levels of (i) photographic documentation and (ii) the photographic gaze once again. The LL is obvious, a subversive communicative of a sprayer, smeared guerilla-like on the clean facade, making it clear that one does not express oneself here as an invited speaker, but authorizes oneself communicatively by breaking the rules. The capital-critical call, carefully signed, is a perfectly formalized datum for protest communication. Interpreted sociolinguistically, what is at stake here is the appropriation of urban space and discursive space in equal measure. This is not about coincidence, but about a programmatic, which is also recognizable by the fact that the LL sentence is multipresent, as a Google search quickly shows. What is productive here is a sentence pattern that is also documented by 3.2: 3.1 3.2

Make the rich pay for covid19 Make the rich pay for climate change

But the supposedly objective documentation of protest communication also turns out to be a surreal arrangement upon closer examination of fig. 13 and an engagement with the photographic gaze. In contrast to the aesthetic emphasis on documenting randomness in fig. 19, the photograph of fig. 13 is obviously taken lying down and from the ground up, with a dramatizing underview; it focuses on the contrast of the well-off business or gallery lighting of the gentrified area with the subversive undermining through language, thus literally underlining the supporting meaning of language, which, however, remains subordinate in the actual passing. Such a datum is a stroke of luck of every LL safari, to be shot and ranked in the visual corpus. Susan Sontag once again makes a point about this practice of appropriation when she reveals the habitus of middle-class social adventurism in quotations (6), making it clear how the gaze, appropriately constructed through photography, goes hand in hand with the assertion of universal relevance. One can literally hear the linguist lecturing here about protest communication, gentrification, displacement, and so on. Photographing linguists themselves will probably not dare such an urban intervention by spraying language on a facade, but from a distance, and be it lying on the street, they will adopt a perspective from which they claim to document language with a picture. We conclude the illustrative explanation of the following plate section here only with a quick remark and then better let the pictures speak for themselves in their ambiguity. Fig. 16 is a beautifully ugly picture. Linguists might be interested in it because it might give them the idea of dealing with embodied language. Just as dog harnesses

Melancholy Objects Remixed

349

are already adorned with LL data, so are masks that can be ordered with a few clicks. As a quick search shows, the mask displays the inscription: 4.1

#stayhealthy #staychic GLAMBOU.COM

The photographic datum, however, can only be understood as a deconstruction of a healthy and chic consumer world through the muck of what remains of the day: butts. This is a sensual extreme. Susan Sontag’s reflections in quotation (7) come to mind here. To state it once again in all clarity: the following photographs are a staged, “camp” narrative, which shows the possibilities of linguistic data in the LL of the pandemic with every single photo, but which above all reveals an unavoidable ambiguity of the photographs. The photographic documentation of reality is nothing but the arrangement of a surreal landscape – photographed LL is a landscape of the surreal. And this is exactly where the propositional exegesis ends and the images can begin to speak for themselves and finally reveal what this paper is meant to talk about.

2 Plate section

Fig. 1: ticked off »upset,angry,annoyed« »An intermediate stage between being annoyed and being pissed off« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

353

354

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 2: mistakeholder »Someone with a vested interest in a topic but has all the facts wrong (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).«

Melancholy Objects Remixed

355

356

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 3: appalled »to fill or overcome with horror/dismay/fear/consternation.« »I am appalled at your mistakes (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).«

Melancholy Objects Remixed

357

358

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 4: café crawl »Going from one café to the next within a city or town« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

359

360

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 5: Theatregoist »A term to describe one who enjoys going to the theatre. They may enjoy the atmosphere, the aspect of watching shows, or the overall experience of going to the theatre« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

361

362

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 6: Mirrorlize »Examine yourself instead of judging others« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

363

364

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 7: restauraint »A so-called food establishment that isn’t fit to eat in« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

365

366

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 8: Rotate and potate »a term used when doing any form of rotation« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

367

368

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 9: containerize »verb meaning in military terminology ‘to place in a container.’ In actuality however, it means ‘to transform into a container’« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

369

370

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 10: directioneer »One who navigates or offers direction. More comical than navigator« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

371

372

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 11: street cred »Commanding a level of respect in an urban environment due to experience in or knowledge of issues affecting those environments« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

373

374

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 12: no »An elite word that you use too often to make people mad and use it in the wrong context« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

375

376

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 13: graffitical »Some one who is extremely talented in the art of graffiti« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

377

378

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 14: nothing to sneeze at »A true challenge; not to be taken lightly« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

379

380

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 15: Melancholic »Extremely fucking sad« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

381

382

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 16: uncomfortality »to have a uncomfortable mindset« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

383

384

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 17: funeralopolis »A lifeless area of sickness, death and decay« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

385

386

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 18: Coronation »The time period in which the entire world experienced the Coronavirus outbreak« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

387

388

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 19: pattence »An embarrassing situation; can be used as any article of speech« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

389

390

Ingo H. Warnke

Fig. 20: lecturd »A thoroughly unsatisfactory lecture.« »I got out of bed at 1pm for this? What a fucking lecturd!« (Photo: Ingo H. Warnke).

Melancholy Objects Remixed

391

392

Ingo H. Warnke

3 References 3.1 Literature Blommaert, Jan (2013): Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity. Bristol. Dressler, Roswita (2015): Signgeist: Promoting bilingualism through the linguistic landscape of school signage. In: International Journal of Multilingualism 12, 128–145. Gorter, Durk (2018): Methods and techniques for linguistic landscape research: About definitions, core issues and technological innovations. In: Martin Pütz/Neele-Frederike Mundt (eds.): Expanding the Linguistic Landscape. Bristol, 38–57. Jaworski, Adam (2015): Word cities and language objects: ‘Love’ sculptures and signs as shifters. In: Linguistic Landscape: An International Journal 1, 75–94. Klein, Wolf Peter (2004): Deskriptive statt präskriptiver Sprachwissenschaft!? Über ein sprachtheoretisches Bekenntnis und seine an-alytische Präzisierung. In: Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik 32, 376–405. Nash, Joshua (2016): Is linguistic landscape necessary? In: Landscape Research 41, 380–384. Puzey, Guy (2016): Linguistic landscapes. In: Carole Hough (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Names and Naming. Oxford, 395–411. Shohamy, Elana/Eliezer Ben-Rafael/Monica Barni (2010): Linguistic Landscape in the City. Bristol. Shohamy, Elana G./Durk Gorter (eds.) (2009): Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. New York. Sontag, Susan ([1964] 2018): Notes on ‘Camp’. New York. Sontag, Susan ([1977] 2014): On Photography. London. Storch, Anne/Ingo H. Warnke (2020): Sansibar-zone: Eine Austreibung aus der neokolonialen Sprachlosigkeit. Bielefeld. Troyer, Robert A./Tamás Péter Szabó (2017): Representation and videography in linguistic landscape studies. In: Linguistic Landscapes 3, 56–77. Warnke, Ingo H. (2021): To other one’s self: On linguistic practices of meta-othering. In: Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics 4, 115–133.

3.2 Web links to Urban Dictionary references Fig. 1: ticked off https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ticked%20off Fig. 2: mistakeholder https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mistakeholder

Fig. 3: appalled https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=appalled Fig. 4: café crawl https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=café%20crawl Fig. 5: Theatregoist https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Theatregoistic Fig. 6: Mirrorlize https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Mirrorlize Fig. 7: restauraint https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=restauraint Fig. 8: Rotate and potate https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Rotate%20and%20 potate Fig. 9: containerize https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=containerize Fig. 10: directioneer https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=directioneer

Melancholy Objects Remixed

393

Fig. 11: street cred https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=street%20cred

Fig. 12: no https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=no Fig. 13: graffitical https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=graffitical Fig. 14: nothing to sneeze at https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nothing%20to% 20sneeze%20at Fig. 15: Melancholic https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Melancholic Fig. 16: uncomfortality https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=uncomfortality

Fig. 17: Funeralopolis https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Funeralopolis

Fig. 18: Coronation https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Coronation Fig. 19: pattence https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pattence Fig. 20: lecturd https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lecturd

Beatrix Busse

15. The HeiURBAN Database: A Brief and Unconventional Position Piece Abstract: This paper illustrates how the model of urbanity (Busse/Warnke 2015) can be realized from the collection of a variety of data types into a database structure. It is also an attempt to give a hands-on illustration and visualization of the data types that may account for the complexity of urban discursive place-making. These include hitherto neglected formats, such as names for WiFi networks (Service Set Identifiers) or #-Twitter data referring to a particular urban space, such as #Brooklyn. For this, the author draws on the dataset of the heiURBAN database, which stores linguistic and other semiotic data collected in selected neighbourhoods of Brooklyn, New York. Another aim of this paper is to show the subjective bias of the urban data collection process and why it is therefore both difficult and complex to account for the social detail(s) that marks urban discursive place-making mechanism in linear handbook formats. 1 2 3 4 5

Introduction The heiURBAN database structure Data types Where to go in urban linguistic data compilation References

1 Introduction Urbanity is anything but easy to grasp. To account for what human agents do with various practices of sign-making in specific urban spaces, the model of urbanity (Busse/ Warnke 2015, see also the introduction to this handbook) embraces the modes of dimension, action, and representation. Busse/Warnke (2015) point out that these may result in discursive acts of urban place-making, which are complex and often contrary in the ways meanings are seen to be reflected and created through language and other semiotic modes. We also stress that the variety of place-making practices must embrace a diversity of multimodal data types, and that it is also the research team construing the description and analysis of the urban place under investigation. The aims of this brief experimental outlook are threefold. (1) I would like to give a visualization of what complexity of urban data types, their interplay and the ways they are generated in urban space entail – both by means of processes of urban signmaking through various agents and through how we as linguists gaze at them, observe and construe them to be of importance, retrieve, analyze and assess them. It is https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-016

The HeiURBAN Database: A Brief and Unconventional Position Piece

395

an attempt to do justice to this complexity and to show how the various data types may interact both in the moment of recording, diachronically, and through their multimodality. I will provide examples which – at least in parts – illustrate potential new types of urban semiotic data, which not only have the potential for meaning-making in urban spaces but also have been neglected in urbanity research so far. These include, for example, WiFi Service Set Identifiers (SSID). (2) This illustration and description of new data types will attempt to show the broad design of the relational database in which my urbanity data are stored. It refrains, however, from a detailed description of data compilation, curation etc. At the same time, this description will illustrate the limits of the linear format used in classic handbook formats, in which the virtual, material and momentous interaction and the network between ephemeral multimodal recordings of sign-making in urban space cannot be captured. These considerations have an additional dimension: They also entail a plea for different kinds of publication formats in need to be accepted by academic communities and also for the recognition of the description and creation of databases, corpora, and software as open-access products of data-intensive research. (3) Furthermore, it will have to be stressed that whatever the data types as well as the methods applied to the repository are, the outcome is always what Warnke (this volume) calls the product of the linguist’s voyeurism on the discursive practices of an urban space. Therefore, that the illustrations in this paper heavily rely on photographic documentation and a visual recording of, for example, the WiFi SSIDs to disclose the current form of our data repository also has to be seen with the highly critical lens Warnke (this volume) elaborates on in the first part of the final section which we call “Experiments – Experimente.” I draw on the heiURBAN database, which is a corpus of Brooklyn data and which I have compiled since 2012. Among others, it consists of semi-structured interviews, semiotic landscape data, that is mostly photographs, WiFi SSIDs, Twitter data recorded in selected neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York, such Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, Park Slope, Bushwick, Greenpoint, or Red Hook. The data were collected in field trips in 2012, 2015 and 2017; the Twitter data has been continuously collected since February 2017.

396

Beatrix Busse

2 The heiURBAN database structure Types of data and the MySQL database structure of the heiURBAN database Here are the data types so far compiled for the heiURBAN database: – Semi-structured interviews, currently ca. 1,3 million words – Semiotic landscape photographs, currently ca. 8,000 photographs – WiFi SSIDs, currently ca. 47,000 unique SSIDs – Twitter data: currently more than 120,000,000 million tweets, constantly growing at a current rate of approximately 1000 tweets per hour (averaged). They either include: brooklyn #dumbo #brooklynsmainstreet #brooklynbridge #onlyinbrooklyn #Ltrain #Brooklyn #brooklyn #williamsburg #bushwick #nyc #newyork #carrollgardens #prospectheights #parkslope #gowanus #redhook #bedstuy #crownheights #greenpoint #bedfordave or are geotagged for the Brooklyn area – Fictional data The data are all georeferenced, fictional data, such as literature, will be added. The Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) was automatically generated using DrawSQL for the MySQL database powering the heiURBAN platform (Fig. 1). Given that the platform is under active development, the underlying Entity-Relationship Model is still regularly changing. Tweets are stored in an additional NoSQL MongoDB which cannot be meaningfully visualized. This is then followed by a discussion of individual data types, documented multimodally through photographic representation.

The HeiURBAN Database: A Brief and Unconventional Position Piece

Fig. 1: Image of SQL database structure.

397

398

Beatrix Busse

3 Data types Semi-structured interviews File ID: 7VT-3B10498D-13 File Name: BK2017-0706-ND-170607_0212-BM.wav This is an excerpt from one interview held at 637 Union St. in Gowanus during the 2017-field-trip. The interviewee, at the time, was a 34-year-old owner of a hair salon. The interview contains a number of linguistic strategies which we construe to create patterns in urban discursive place-making in Brooklyn, New York. I have argued elsewhere (Busse 2019; 2021) that particular semantic fields are used to describe and evaluate the gentrified character of a neighborhood, that is, for example, the change it is undergoing and with it the mundane atmosphere it is about to bring about. In the example cited, it is, for example, the reference to the transformation of Gowanus – in the repetition of the verb change – and to the trendiness of that particular neighborhood – in the use of the compound adjective up-and-coming. Below there is the waveform as well as the spectral frequency display for the same excerpt as displayed by Adobe Audition. In the database, the actual audio file is accessible to provide researchers with the additional possibility for dialect and variationist research. Here, these visualizations, aside from a phonetic transcription, are the closest approximation of the data I was able to think of.

The HeiURBAN Database: A Brief and Unconventional Position Piece

399

Interviewer: [00:00] Do you live in this area? Interviewee: [00:01] I do, yes. Interviewer: [00:02] How would you describe this area? Interviewee: [00:04] Um, like well, my business is in the area. I live down on Atlantic, like in Boerum Hill. Do you mean Gowanus in general, or Brooklyn, or? So, Gowanus is definitely changing a lot. My business has been here for three years. Um, when we opened on Union Street there were, like, not very many businesses coming up that were new. There were a lot of old businesses. And in the [00:30] last three years, it’s been growing very rapidly on this specific block, and then on Third Avenue as well. Um, it’s, it feels safe to me. It feels, you know, obviously it’s gentrifying, which is negative, um, in general, but, uh, you know, it’s a battle to figure out how to [01:00] not gentrify a space and um, keep it, like, accessible. I don’t know. Um, my clients really love that I’m in Gowanus, because they think it’s up-and-coming and they love being in a different neighborhood, even though it’s just literally across the street from park Slope. But they like that it’s up-and-coming. There’s a lot of energy in that. Um, [01:30] yeah.

Fig. 2: Spectral frequency display from the interview.

400

Beatrix Busse

Semiotic landscape from Brooklyn neighborhoods, New York Artist and photographer Zun Lee allowed me to use the photograph for my academic purpose. It was taken in November 2012 and used in a 2018-exhibition by Lee called “Father Figure – Exploring Alternate Notions of Black Fatherhood” at the Bronx Documentary Center. In the photograph, Jerel Willis carries his son Fidel over the Brooklyn Bridge. The photo has two discourse dimensions: a) b)

the photographer Zun Lee having taken this photo through his lens and deciding to use it as an item for his exhibition; and what is depicted on the photo: Jerell Williams showing his naked back with both the tattoo generically referring to Brooklyn as a borough and depicting the big apple through which we can also see the Brooklyn bridge, while at the same time walking it.

This reference to Brooklyn could not have been more iconic; it is a practice of urban discursive place-making that is written on the body, and is, hence, corporal. I have fully analyzed this photograph in Busse (2021).

The HeiURBAN Database: A Brief and Unconventional Position Piece

Fig. 3: Image of father carrying his son across the Brooklyn Bridge © Zun Lee 2012.

401

402

Beatrix Busse

WiFi Service Set Identifiers (WiFi-SSIDs) WiFi Service Set Identifiers are names people give to their wireless networks. Their representation is primarily linguistic. Hence, they offer the potential for linguistic creativity and expression. They are mutable and ephemeral, as people may change the names. WiFi SSIDs can only be seen using a WiFi-enabled device such as a smartphone, which means again, it is the linguist disclosing certain linguistic data which s/he considers to be noteworthy of linguistic investigation or, as was mentioned in the introduction to this paper, neglected in linguistic research (see Warnke, this volume). WiFi SSIDs can be construed to be semantically and pragmatically meaningful, as hidden practices of place-making in urban discourse. I make them visible here, and have described how I collected them in Busse (2021), well knowing that this might be seen as both a selfish, Westernized way of structuring the world of WiFi-SSIDs according to certain norms I set up (see Warnke, this volume). In the screenshot, we can see some of the findings mapped via Google Maps. Each WiFi-icon symbolizes one of these data points. In Busse (2021), I explain that linguistic realizations of these WiFi SSIDs range from phrases to sentences and that reference is made to personal names, acronyms or initials. Mention is also made of the neighborhoods (Williamsburg, Dumbo) or Brooklyn as a borough. Other WiFi SSIDs express political opinions, comment on the process of gentrification, or describe one’s property in terms of the neighborhood (e.g., AuthenticWilliamsburgArtistLoft). WiFi SSIDs also interact with potential addressees through various types of speech acts, which are initially hidden.

The HeiURBAN Database: A Brief and Unconventional Position Piece

403

Fig. 4: Location of the WiFi SSID “Don’t throw food in our yard”.

“Don’t throw food in our yard” was first found at 40.68971440, -73.95265430 and in six data points in Bedford Stuyvesant during our data collection process in June 2017. The illocutionary force is that of a directive.

Fig. 5: Location of the WiFi SSIDs “Gentrification Blight”.

“Gentrification Blight” was first found at 40.67794110, -74.00967551 and in 22 data points in Red Hook during our field trip in June 2017. The noun phrase criticizes gentrification in Brooklyn, New York.

404

Beatrix Busse

Linking Google Street View with WiFi-SSID illustration On the screenshot, we can see where the restaurant with the name of Pig Beach is located. Also, we can see that they have a wireless network called “PB WiFi,” referring to the name of the restaurant “Pig Beach” and “PB,” which modifies the noun phrase “WiFi”. Looking at the same location in Google Street View reveals additional details about the neighborhood as well as street art, including another “Pig Beach” mural next to the door stating “Greeting from Pig Beach.” Hence, Street View, here represented only as a screenshot, provides us an additional digital feel for the environment. It contextualizes virtual data with material practices of place-making. It may illustrate the linguistic dance of the various types of data at hand. Note: Given that this is a restaurant, one could also consider looking at restaurant reviews as another source of data. For example, one reviewer on Google Maps, Leonardo Torres, stated in June 2021 that they “love the seating arrangements along the newly cleaned Gowanus Canal” [sic!; highlighted].

The HeiURBAN Database: A Brief and Unconventional Position Piece

405

Fig. 6: Pig Beach Brooklyn, 480 Union St, Brooklyn, NY 11231, United States.

Fig. 7: Screenshot of Google Street View within the heiURBAN platform near the Pig Beach restaurant, Gowanus, Brooklyn, New York.

406

Beatrix Busse

Twitter data Twitter data of #Brooklyn networks may be construed as meaningful digital ways of creating urban places in Brooklyn neighborhoods. Over the course of over three years, starting in February 2017, I have compiled and stored Brooklyn and Brooklyn-related Tweets and hashtags in order to investigate how these are tagged further and related to other topic markers (Zappavigna 2015). Currently, there are approximately one hundred twenty million Tweets and metadata in the database. The sampling process is depicted in the image on the next page.

The HeiURBAN Database: A Brief and Unconventional Position Piece

Fig. 8: TweetPinna Dashboard.

407

408

Beatrix Busse

#Bushwick Some of the tweets around the #Brooklyn discourse which we analyzed from both a quantitative perspective, using network theory, and from a qualitatively perspective, analyzing the tweets in context, also display several revealing linguistic strategies (see also Busse 2021): – Comparisons are made between various neighborhoods – Reference to the neighborhoods refer to characteristic features, e.g., for Bushwick it would be #streetart. – Tweet agents express their emotions or evaluations. The example illustrates these strategies and highlights a starting knot #-Bushwick. It also displays how the tweet is stored in the database. The tweet, as a screenshot from Twitter, as well as the truncated JSON data, includes metadata on the tweet and the account sending it, as it has been stored on our server. Examining the tweet closely, we see that it also references an Instagram post, emphasizing how the data is referential and networked.

The HeiURBAN Database: A Brief and Unconventional Position Piece

Fig. 9: Referenced Twitter screenshot.

Fig. 10: JSON data and metadata of the tweet.

409

410

Beatrix Busse

#Bushwick #brooklyn The tweet on the next page was selected because while it is also about Bushwick it is somewhat more critical in tone. This tweet by @100Bogart, quotes and comments another tweet by @DNAinfoNY. The quoted tweet, which reads “Bushwick is hot. We want to move in the upper crust whites, the tenants who can pay more.” then references a URL. Unfortunately, the URL does not exist anymore (it links to an unrelated product page). While @DNAinfoNY, a news outlet focused on NYC, still exists, their URL shortening service (dnain.fo) went out of service, rendering all of these older links inaccessible to us.

The HeiURBAN Database: A Brief and Unconventional Position Piece

Fig. 11: Example of tweet referencing a neighborhood in Brooklyn.

411

412

Beatrix Busse

4 Where to go in urban linguistic data compilation This final paper of the handbook and of the so-called “Experiements – Experimente”section has illustrated the potential of urban linguistics for including multimodal and new types of data. It can therefore be read as a hands-on realization of the urbanity model. It is also an attempt to capture the interplay between various types of semiotic data in the moment of the presence, – although it is only a recorded one and can therefore also unfold a diachronic perspective. However, Warnke (this volume) needs to be heard. Referring to Susan Sontag’s “On photography” ([1977] 2014), he stresses that we record, display, categorize, pattern, and structure only what we as linguistics would like to see, to gaze at and what we know. I believe that to come closer to the multiplicity of semiotic data interacting in urban spaces in complex ways is an attempt to stress the fact that this is but one reading of the urban discursive place-making we may encounter. Although the heiURBAN database aims to follow the FAIR data principle, it cannot be and will never be a neutral objectified presentation of what is really at stake when language creates realities and makes places. It is my team’s and my own reading and way of creating a stateof-the-art of database which combines corpus linguistic methodology with that from sociolinguistics, computer science, and machine learning, which combines the quantitative with the qualitative or AI with close reading. It is this interdisciplinary view which both allows us to share the data in new ways and brings us closer to accepting that what we do in urban linguistics is a mundane (re-)construal of what we think urbanity is like. Hence, for us, the online presentation of the database should look similar to what you see in Figure 12 – a combination of the data types, which are visualized and can be accessed because of the fact that the database will be openly accessible online.

The HeiURBAN Database: A Brief and Unconventional Position Piece

Fig. 12: Screenshot from the heiURBAN website.

413

414

Beatrix Busse

5 References Adobe Audition CC (2017): 0.2, Adobe Systems Incorporated. 100Boggart [@100Bogart]. Twitter, Online at: twitter.com/100Bogart/status/821359910935 994373. . Busse, Beatrix (2019): Patterns of discursive urban place-making in Brooklyn, New York. In: Viola Wiegand/Michaela Mahlberg (eds.): Corpus Linguistics, Context and Culture. Berlin, 13–42. Busse, Beatrix (2021): Practices of discursive urban place-making in Brooklyn, New York: (Hidden) digital and embodied discourse. In: Text & Talk 41, 617–641. Busse, Beatrix/Ingo H. Warnke (2015): Sprache im urbanen Raum: Konzeption und Forschungsfelder der Urban Linguistics. In: Ekkehard Felder/Andreas Gardt (eds.): Handbuch Sprache und Wissen. Berlin, 519–538. drawSQL (2021): DrawSQL, . Fordyce, Bec [@becfordyce]. Twitter, Online at: twitter.com/becfordyce/status/ 819603919508742145. Lee, Zun (2012): Jerell Willis Carries His Son Fidel across the Brooklyn Bridge. PhotoJournal. Online at: http://www.zphotojournal.com/zun-lee. . MySQL. 8.0.28, Oracle Corporation, . Sontag, Susan ([1977] 2014): On Photography. London. TweetPinna. 1.1.2, Ingo Kleiber, . Zappavigna, Michele (2015): Searchable talk: The linguistic functions of hashtags. In: Social Semiotics 25, 1–18.

Index Action 5, 9, 21, 28, 56, 86, 88, 89, 101, 104, 122, 194, 199, 253, 259, 394 Adjectives 397 (Adjektive) 165, 166, 175, 181, 182, 183, 317 – Detoponymische Adjektive 165, 166, 175, 181, 182, 183 Authentic 11, 12, 39, 52, 54, 55, 63, 130, 228, 229, 238, 253 – Inauthentic 276, 284, 306, 307, 401 Authenticity see Authentic Berlin 9, 10, 17, 22, 89, 141, 142, 147, 151, 155, 171, 172, 175, 176, 231, 259, 278, 341, 345, 346, 348 Bilingualism 91, 223–228, 232, 234 Brooklyn 12, 28, 394–403, 405, 407, 409, 410 Capitol Hill 89, 90, 92, 93, 97, 98, 100, 102, 103 Change 7, 12, 13, 16, 19, 22, 23, 26, 35–38, 40– 42, 52, 53, 59–61, 63–65, 67, 70, 71, 90, 119, 121, 124, 125, 131–133, 211, 226, 230, 231, 253, 277, 278, 306, 316, 345, 397 Chicago 165, 170, 172, 173, 175–180, 228 China 20, 74, 78, 83, 84, 199 Cityscape 24, 78, 199, 219, 258 – Networked Cities 211, 407 Cockney 129, 297–301, 303–305, 307 Contradiction 4–7, 14, 15, 86, 88, 102, 103, 110, 111, 113, 340 Countryside 2–6, 13, 17, 19, 52–56, 59, 62–65, 67, 70, 71, 81 Commodification 11, 12, 17, 262, 346 Communicative Space 18, 21 (Kommunikationsraum) 18, 21 Complexity 4–7, 14, 15, 22, 27, 88, 102, 103, 107, 108, 110, 111, 113, 126, 194, 230, 239, 249, 263, 323, 394, 395 (Komplexität) 185, 323 Community 11, 12, 20–22, 36, 40, 41, 44, 53, 54, 56, 61, 63–65, 77, 78, 81–84, 91, 95, 102, 106–108, 119, 125, 127, 130–133, 144, 203, 219, 224, 226, 229, 234, 235, 248, 257, 258, 260, 279, 287, 296 (Gemeinschaft) 61, 81 – Community Of Practice (Cofp) 12, 40, 119–128, 130–133, 248 Connotation 76, 77 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296334-017

Corpus 15, 27, 28, 66, 225, 228, 335–337, 348, 395, 411 (Korpus) 141, 148, 156, 157, 165, 166, 174, 175, 182, 186, 323, 327 o Korpusempirie 165, 173, 174, 185 Data Collection 27, 35–39, 63, 223, 279, 280, 335, 336, 394, 402 Denotation 76, 77 Detroit 23, 24, 35, 42, 121, 123, 124, 165, 166, 172, 173, 175–185, 208–210 Dialect 1, 11, 12, 19, 22, 23, 26, 37, 44, 55, 56, 60–63, 67, 70, 80, 133, 145, 146, 195, 199, 236, 252, 261, 275, 277–280, 282, 283, 286, 287, 294–298, 300–307 (Dialekt) 137–139, 141–143, 145–147, 152– 159 – Kontaktdialekt 137–139, 146, 147 – Neue Dialekte 137, 153, 158 – Urbane Dialekte 143, 152–155, 157–159 Dialectology 16, 19, 35–37, 42, 43, 52, 53, 62, 63, 65, 67, 70, 278, 279, 305, 306 Dimension 1, 2, 5–10, 17, 20, 26, 28, 48, 74, 75, 77, 86, 89, 101, 104, 106, 120, 129, 194, 195, 199, 206, 209, 222, 236, 254, 259, 394, 395, 399 (Dimension) 165, 167–169, 175, 313–317, 319, 320, 324, 325 Disability 91, 106, 107, 111, 275 – Deaf Space 105 Discourse 2, 3, 11, 15, 17–19, 21, 23–26, 40, 46– 48, 86, 88, 102, 103, 108, 109, 112, 113, 123, 124, 130, 145, 193–195, 200–202, 206, 208–211, 213, 231, 247, 250, 255, 258, 259, 261–263, 279, 287, 292–294, 296, 298– 301, 303, 304, 307, 399, 401, 407 (Diskurs) 25, 152, 165, 166, 168–171, 173– 175, 177, 178, 180, 185, 311–324, 326– 329 – Discourse Linguistics 17, 26, 250, 311 (Diskurslinguistik) 173, 174, 316, 318, 319, 323 – Historical Discourse 292 Diversity 4, 8, 10, 17, 20, 21, 26, 36, 43, 57, 63– 66, 69, 83, 86, 88, 102, 108, 109, 111–113, 194, 199, 200, 202, 220, 223, 225–227, 238, 239, 277, 294, 295, 340, 344, 394

416

Index

(Diversität) 141, 143, 154, 165, 166, 174 – Linguistic Diversity 17, 220, 226, 227, 277 – Urban Diversity 86, 113, 194 Donostia-San Sebastián 24, 25, 218–220, 223, 224, 228, 233–236, 238 Dynamic 5–7, 10, 12–14, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 26, 54, 57, 62, 65, 70, 119, 120, 124, 125, 127, 129, 133, 193, 195, 197, 201, 202, 209, 210, 224, 251, 258, 259, 264, 311 (Dynamik) 137–139, 146, 147, 149, 150, 153, 158, 159, 166, 311, 312 Education 24, 218, 220, 234, 237, 239, 257, 283, 287, 288, 294, 300 Early Modern English 26, 295 Enregisterment 1, 7, 10–14, 16, 25, 26, 56, 130, 133, 251, 254, 259–263, 292–295, 297–299, 301, 305 Epistemology 20, 64, 75, 78, 113 Epistemological see Epistemology Ethnicity 41, 64, 97, 122, 125–132, 207, 257, 260 Ethnography 5, 8, 15, 17, 21, 23, 25, 46–48, 102, 112, 120, 124, 127, 128, 132, 143, 144, 200, 201, 229, 230, 251, 257, 259, 261, 264, 273, 325 Europe 20–23, 37, 71, 81, 83, 84, 99, 119, 128, 131, 225, 226, 233, 235, 236, 273, 293, 294, 296, 298, 301, 303, 306, 307 (Europa) 137–141, 143, 145–147, 158 Experiencing Research 21, 86, 88, 111, 209 Experiential 21, 86, 101, 111, 112 Folk Linguistics 25, 263, 273, 275, 277–279, 287 Friendship Network 128, 131, 132 Geosemiotics see Semiotics German 17, 18, 20, 23, 55, 78, 89, 91, 97, 211, 232, 235, 259, 262, 278, 346 (Deutsch) 138–140, 142, 143, 145, 148–157, 170 – Kiezdeutsch 17, 23, 141, 145, 148–153, 157, 306 Global 2, 3, 8, 16, 17, 24, 25, 89, 194–196, 198, 199, 202, 210–212, 218, 220, 221, 227, 231, 232, 239, 248, 253, 254, 259, 262, 344 – Global Language 24, 218, 220, 221, 227, 231, 232, 239

Heiurban 28, 394–396, 403, 411, 412 Heterogeneity 5, 14, 36, 40, 43, 53, 63, 65, 67, 128, 239 (Heterogenität) 138, 139, 315 Historicity 16, 25–27, 311, 317, 318, 323 (Historizität) 18, 25, 314, 316–318, 321– 323, 325, 326 – Polyhistoricity 27, 311, 318 o (Polyhistorizität) 311, 312, 318, 319, 321–323, 326–329 Identity 8, 11, 13, 17, 25, 26, 40, 60, 103, 106, 123, 125–127, 129, 131, 222, 245, 247, 254, 259–261, 263, 273–281, 283, 284, 286– 288, 292 – Linguistic Identity 260 – Local Identity 11 – Place Identity 13 – Regional Identity 273–277, 279–281, 283, 284, 286–288 Ideology 2, 11, 13, 19, 20, 27, 47, 52–57, 59, 61– 63, 66, 70, 71, 81, 112, 121, 122, 234–236, 247, 252, 259, 275, 302, 303, 311 (Ideologie) 313, 315, 323 Indexical see Indexality Indexicality 8–13, 16, 25, 26, 57, 61, 123, 125, 126, 130, 245, 247–251, 254–256, 258, 260– 262, 292, 294, 297, 340 Interview 36, 38, 39, 55, 155, 257, 284, 285, 287, 288, 327, 397, 398 Iteration 14, 168 Kentucky 25, 273–276, 280, 281, 283–288 Knowledge Production 3, 103, 112, 113, 200 Language Contact 16, 19, 22, 23, 221, 257, 294, 296 (Sprachkontakt) 137, 146–148, 152, 158, 159 – Language Policy 24, 218–220, 222, 224, 226, 231, 233–236, 239, 277 Late Modern English 298 Linguistic Landscape 24, 25, 218–239, 245, 250, 251, 259, 263, 315, 325, 335, 336, 345 – Semiotic Landscape 8, 25–28, 220, 232, 245–247, 249–252, 254–259, 263, 264, 311, 313, 321–325, 335, 395, 399 Local 8, 11–13, 17, 21, 25, 37, 45–47, 55, 60, 61, 63–66, 109, 121, 123–125, 127, 129, 130,

Index

132, 133, 195, 196, 202, 203, 211–213, 218, 222, 225–228, 230, 232–234, 236, 250, 254, 259–262, 275, 278, 304 Localities see Local Location 8, 16, 27, 45, 46, 60, 62–65, 68–71, 89, 95, 100, 103, 109, 110, 195, 204–206, 210, 229, 236, 248, 253, 260, 264, 301, 306, 319, 402, 404 London 26, 55, 129, 131, 132, 150, 154, 176, 293– 307, 340, 344 Louisville 25, 26, 273–277, 279–288 – Louisvillians 273–275, 277, 279, 280, 282–285, 287, 288 Majority Language 22, 23, 127, 234, 236, 237 Mapping 5, 170, 212, 246, 252, 256, 260, 261 – Mental Map 25, 102, 273, 278, 279, 288 Masculinity 110, 112, 125 Materiality 200, 207, 255, 256, 259, 263 (Materialität) 166, 311, 312, 314, 321–323, 326, 328 Method 1, 3–5, 7, 14–17, 19–25, 27, 28, 35–40, 43–48, 75, 80, 84, 86, 89, 98, 102, 107, 108, 111–113, 193–196, 200, 201, 204, 213, 218, 220–222, 225, 227, 228, 231, 238, 239, 245–247, 251, 252, 256, 261, 263, 279, 284, 305, 312, 317, 320–322, 325, 336, 337, 341, 343, 395, 411 (Methode) 156, 168, 173, 174, 185 – Mixed Methods 19, 24, 231 – Mobile Methods 16, 23, 112, 113, 193–195, 256 – Moving Methodology 86, 89, 98, 102, 113 Methodology see Method Melancholy Objects 27, 335, 338, 343, 344 Minority Language 24, 25, 218, 220, 224–227, 231, 235–239 Mixed Languages 147 Mobility see also Mobile Methods 1, 7, 8, 10, 12– 16, 18, 22–24, 44, 47, 52, 60, 61, 66, 71, 98, 100, 101, 102, 112, 193–195, 198–200, 202, 210, 211, 213, 229, 230, 252, 254, 256, 261, 299 Monolingual 19, 35, 66, 151, 218, 225–227, 231, 232, 341, 342, 344 Monolingualism see Monolingual Multiethnolect 129, 144, 145

417

Multilingual 4, 16–18, 24–26, 43, 66, 91, 156, 202, 218–220, 223–230, 232–234, 237– 239, 251, 252, 258, 259, 306, 307, 339, 341– 343, 346 – Multilingualism See Multilingual (Mehrsprachigkeit) 139, 140 – Urban Multilingualism 4 Multimodal 6, 11, 12, 16, 25, 28, 203, 228–230, 245, 246, 252, 254–257, 262, 263, 326, 335, 336, 338, 344, 347, 348, 394–396, 411 Multimodality see also Multimodal Music 23, 101, 109, 120, 123, 132, 165, 168–170, 172, 173, 302, 306 (Musik) 165–175, 177–183, 185 – Musikstadt 166, 169, 170, 172, 185 Nominalkomposita 165, 166, 175–177, 179, 183 Nominale Gruppen 183 Nostalgia 11, 25, 26, 273–275, 277–281, 283, 288 – Anti-Nostalgia 274, 277–283, 285, 286, 288 Open Space 79, 206, 207, 340 (Öffentlicher Raum) 315, 325, 328 (Ort) 168, 169, 171, 178, 183, 312–315, 319– 322, 326, 329 – Ortsobjekte 314 Pattern 1, 4, 10, 11, 14, 15, 19, 27, 36, 38, 40, 41, 44, 47, 61, 67, 69, 75, 83, 85, 123, 128–131, 193, 198–200, 207, 213, 220, 222, 224, 234, 246, 252, 254–256, 258, 259, 263, 307, 340–342, 346, 348, 397, 411 Photo 27, 28, 225, 229, 231, 238, 249, 254, 263, 335–337, 339, 341, 342, 344–349, 395, 399 – Photograph see Photo – Photography 27, 209, 256, 335–345, 348, 411 Photographic see Photography Place-Making 1, 7–16, 23, 25, 102, 108, 110, 165, 166, 168, 171–173, 185, 245, 250, 252–254, 256, 259, 263, 311, 313, 394, 397, 399, 401, 404, 411 Placing Discourse 21, 86, 88, 102 Politics 206, 220, 235, 236, 257

418

Index

Qualitative Approaches 227, 228, 231, 278 Quantitative Approaches 220, 222 Racialization 104, 111 Received Pronunciation 26, 260, 292, 293, 301, 304 Regionality 26, 276, 277, 279, 283–285, 287, 288 Relational Interpretation 21, 88, 89, 101 Repertoire 10, 97, 120, 121, 123, 126, 154–157, 251, 260, 292, 295 Representation 5, 9, 14, 28, 43, 86, 194, 200, 208, 210, 227, 246, 259, 294, 297, 313, 335, 336, 394, 396, 401 Rural 1–3, 5–7, 10, 19, 20, 22, 25, 35, 36, 42, 43, 47, 52–57, 59–71, 81, 138, 199, 226, 232, 256, 274, 276, 281, 283, 287, 288, 299, 302, 303, 306, 307 – Rurality 2, 3, 5, 19, 52, 53, 55, 56, 59, 63, 67–70, 287 – Rural Ideology 19, 53 – Rural Idyll 19, 54, 56, 59 Semantic 5, 18, 60, 397 (Semantik) 150 – Semantische 149, 150, 153, 165, 171, 174, 175, 177, 178, 180, 183, 317 Semiotics 20, 24, 25, 74–76, 78, 84, 85, 197, 200, 219, 229, 245–248, 251, 254, 255, 257, 262, 263 – Geosemiotics 18, 102, 229, 230, 249, 255, 262 – Semiotic Landscape 8, 25, 27, 28, 245, 247, 249–252, 255–259, 263, 322–325, 335, 395, 399 – Urban Semiotics 18, 23, 84, 247, 256, 395 Sign 2, 6, 8, 14, 20, 24, 25, 27, 55, 75, 77–80, 84, 90, 91, 92, 95, 96, 101, 102, 105, 107, 219– 239, 245–260, 262–263, 276, 336, 338, 340–344, 347, 394, 395 – Bilingual Signs 225, 226 – Multilingual Signs 24, 25, 219, 223, 225– 228, 230 – Public Signs 218, 219, 222, 224, 227, 232, 234–236, 245, 246, 259 – Signage 24, 25, 218, 219, 222, 224, 226– 238 Singularity 14

Society 11, 19, 20, 22, 41, 42, 61, 64, 65, 77, 81– 84, 133, 204, 207, 233, 246, 299, 302 (Gesellschaft) 61, 81 Sociolinguistics 1, 13, 14, 16, 18–20, 22, 25–27, 35–45, 47, 48, 52, 59, 60, 64–66, 70, 71, 119, 121, 128, 133, 145, 219, 221, 225, 228, 235, 251, 258, 260, 262, 306, 335, 336, 341 (Soziolinguistik) 138, 139, 313 – Urban Sociolinguistics 42, 60, 64 Sociology 16, 19, 20, 25, 43, 44, 48, 74, 75, 82, 195, 201, 208, 246, 305, 342 – Urban Sociology 20, 74, 75, 195 Socio-Cultural 8, 20, 23, 26, 74, 75, 77, 79–81, 85, 102, 202, 229, 230 Social Action 21, 88 Social Meaning 12, 22, 40, 47, 48, 121, 123, 124, 126, 133, 144, 229, 260, 261 Social Reality 27, 48, 311 Sound 15, 23, 36, 38, 40, 69, 84, 122, 125, 166– 168, 171, 172, 175–178, 180, 182–184, 278, 294, 300, 301 – Soundscape 23, 165–168, 231, 252, 255 Space 1–11, 13–21, 23–28, 44, 45, 47, 53, 60, 65, 69, 70, 74, 75, 78–85, 86–89, 101– 108, 112, 113, 119, 121, 131–133, 193–195, 198–200, 202–209, 211–213, 218–220, 222, 227, 230–232, 235, 237, 239, 245– 247, 249–264, 311, 313, 314, 319, 335, 336, 338–341, 343, 346–348, 394, 395, 398, 411 (Raum) 137–141, 143, 145–147, 155, 156, 165–171, 175, 180, 311–316, 318– 329 – Kommunikationsraum 18, 21 – Raumobjekte 314 – Public Space 24, 27, 82, 83, 193–195, 200, 202–207, 209, 213, 218–220, 222, 227, 231, 232, 235, 237, 239, 245, 246, 249, 251, 257, 259, 262, 263, 335, 336, 338–340, 343, 346, 347 – Social Space 4, 45, 106, 121, 341 Spatiality 35, 36, 42 Style 10, 13, 19, 22–24, 36, 38–40, 66, 97, 109, 120, 121, 123, 124, 126, 128, 129, 133, 206, 259, 261, 280, 292, 306 Superdiversity 4, 65, 141, 230 Survey of English Dialects 37, 62, 305

Index

Toponym 6, 341 (Toponymische) 169, 172, 175, 178, 181– 183 (Detoponymische Adjektiven) 165, 166, 175, 176, 181–183 Town 42, 54, 55, 100, 198, 222, 226, 235, 236, 285, 287, 293–300, 302, 303, 305–307, 358 Townscape 166, 168 Triangulation 15, 21, 86, 88, 89, 98, 101, 102, 231 Twitter 28, 328, 395, 396, 405, 407, 408 Urban Linguistics 1–7, 9–11, 13–19, 157, 168, 194, 211, 212, 226, 262, 311, 335, 336, 340, 345, 411 Urban Planning 20, 24, 74, 75, 206, 258 Urban Varieties 26, 292, 293, 297–299, 303, 306

419

Urbanity 1–10, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 25, 28, 42, 43, 52, 53, 67, 68, 70, 86, 88, 89, 102, 108, 111, 113, 126, 209, 249, 281, 285, 293, 307, 345, 394, 395, 411 (Urbanität) 165, 166, 168, 171, 315, 322 – Model of Urbanity 5–8, 14, 25, 28, 394 Variationist 1, 19, 20, 22, 35–48, 52, 53, 62–65, 67, 121, 228, 261, 263, 397 Variety 13, 18, 22, 25, 26, 57, 66, 77, 126, 127, 144, 204, 210, 236, 251, 262, 274, 275, 278– 280, 282, 295, 296, 297, 299, 301, 306, 307, 394 (Varietät) 138, 143, 145, 146, 153, 154, 158 Washington DC 21, 89, 90, 94, 102, 103, 105 WiFi SSID 24, 28, 196, 205, 394, 395, 401, 402, 404