PLENARIES - Urząd Miasta Łodzifilolog.uni.lodz.pl/pill/downloads/abstracts.docx · Web...
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PLENARIES Alex Frame University of Burgundy, Dijon, France [email protected] Identities in interpersonal interactions: from intersubjective performance to cultural change Identity is fundamental to the communication process. What we say and what we do are strongly influenced by the way we define who we and others are, in a given social context. We thus call upon our multiple identities - our own and those of others - to make sense of and for one another in interpersonal communication. This fundamentally social (intersubjective) and dynamic process is simple enough for every normally socialised adult to master without thinking, yet describing and analysing that apparently simple process is altogether another matter. Firstly, when we go about trying to understand what goes on in an interaction, how we make sense of and for one another, we need to take into account underlying cultures and basic knowledge of codes, norms, representations and values that we use to understand the physical and social worlds and the place we occupy in them, including knowledge of language(s) and communication competence. Secondly, we need to think about the social situation we are in, the respective roles we are playing, the relationships which link us to the people we are with, our prior knowledge of them and their different identities, what and whom they may be representing, their aims and goals, as well as our own. We need to take into account our immediate environment, the various pressures which may be weighing upon us, our physiological and emotional condition and those of our interlocutors. Finally, we must be attentive to the immediate interactional context: what has already been said and done in the encounter so far, the identities which have been implicitly or explicitly evoked, mutually established cues
Transcript of PLENARIES - Urząd Miasta Łodzifilolog.uni.lodz.pl/pill/downloads/abstracts.docx · Web...
PLENARIES
Alex Frame
University of Burgundy, Dijon, France
Identities in interpersonal interactions: from intersubjective performance to cultural change
Identity is fundamental to the communication process. What we say and what we do are strongly influenced by the way we define who we and others are, in a given social context. We thus call upon our multiple identities - our own and those of others - to make sense of and for one another in interpersonal communication. This fundamentally social (intersubjective) and dynamic process is simple enough for every normally socialised adult to master without thinking, yet describing and analysing that apparently simple process is altogether another matter.
Firstly, when we go about trying to understand what goes on in an interaction, how we make sense of and for one another, we need to take into account underlying cultures and basic knowledge of codes, norms, representations and values that we use to understand the physical and social worlds and the place we occupy in them, including knowledge of language(s) and communication competence. Secondly, we need to think about the social situation we are in, the respective roles we are playing, the relationships which link us to the people we are with, our prior knowledge of them and their different identities, what and whom they may be representing, their aims and goals, as well as our own. We need to take into account our immediate environment, the various pressures which may be weighing upon us, our physiological and emotional condition and those of our interlocutors. Finally, we must be attentive to the immediate interactional context: what has already been said and done in the encounter so far, the identities which have been implicitly or explicitly evoked, mutually established cues as to what we and others are thinking, how we and they are feeling, how various parties have suggested they might react to a particular line of action, and so on. It is the necessity to master simultaneously all of these different considerations, and others, that makes interpersonal communication such a complex matter, to study or even ‘simply’ to perform.
Building on symbolic interactionist approaches to interpersonal communication as a process combining prefigured and emergent forms and involving intersubjective identification, this presentation will seek to provide a comprehensive framework to help us take into account the different levels of ‘sense-making’ at work in an interaction. In doing so, it aims to shed light on the relationship between cultures and interactions, between the macro, the meso and the micro, and the multiple mediations at work as we move from one to the other. Finally, we will think about interactions as the locus of cultural change and about the fundamental role played by identities in this ongoing social process.
Alexandra Georgakopoulou
King’s College London, UK
Making the political personal: Rescripting stories & identities on social media
Small stories research (Georgakopoulou 2007; 2008) has argued for a shift of emphasis to the relational construction of self through everyday life, often fragmented and ‘incomplete’, stories. More recently, I have shown how small stories genres and social practices associated with them proliferate in various social media platforms (2013, 2014), partaking in processes of circulation and user-generated content. In this talk, I will single out what I call rescripting as a social media-enabled practice that involves visually and verbally manipulating previously circulated stories, in particular through spoof videos and comments on YouTube. My focus will be on news stories involving incidents with politicians in the context of the financial crisis in Greece, that have become viral. First, I will show the forms that rescripting takes and the modes of audience engagement connected with them. I will then argue that rescripting allows personalization through story making on two levels: making the politicians ‘ordinary people’ and placing the ‘users’ in current affairs as storytelling participants, thus rendering public incidents as ‘their’ stories. Finally, I will discuss the implications of these narrative-related identity and (dis)identification positions for socio-political engagement on the one hand and for narrative & identities analysis on the other.
Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk
University of Łódź, Poland
Language and leadership in online discussions
The focus of the present paper is to identify, by means of linguistic and discourse analysis of online discussions, most active users and, through this, to make an attempt to determine the most characteristic identity properties of the leading positions and leadership in CMC.
As convincingly argued by Atkinson et al. (2012), it is much less problematic to detect dominance and leadership in encounters engaging vision such as in interaction on platforms which offer such a possibility and, primarily, in face-to-face encounters. By examining body posture and gestures, paralinguistic properties of intonation, tone of voice, etc., as well as, most often, having outside knowledge of the interactant’s social position, rank, etc., dominance can be revealed almost fully automatically from non-verbal behavioural clues.
The paper presents a first attempt to identify dominance and leadership in online discussions of newspaper articles (compare Trusov et al. 2010) referring to political and social matters on the basis of English and Polish comments. The results, juxtaposed also with face-to-face interaction data, shed some light on the idea of the primacy of certain interactional properties such as those represented by the Interconnectivity Value (Lewandowska-
Tomaszczyk 2012, 2015) as well qualitative features of the language used, including stand, degrees of assertiveness, metaphoricity, and so on, to identify most influential online users. These linguistic properties are proposed to be important predictors of online discussion leadership, which are likely to contribute towards understanding personal attributes of linguistic attractiveness as judged by other community members and the influence on online sites activity. Predictions of this kind can carry vital significance not only for research purposes, but they also constitute an important aid for managerial staff, ad buyers and online application-based specialists to improve precise targeting of site members and online users in general.
ReferencesAtkinson, J. D., Rosati, C., Stana, A. and S. Watkins (2012). The performance and maintanace of standpoint within an online community. Communication, Culture and Critique
5.4. 600-617.Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, B. (2012). Blurring the boundaries: A Model of Online Computer-Mediated Communication Activities (OCA). In: Adam Bednarek (ed.)
Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Cross-Cultural Communication. Muenchen: Lincom Publishers. 8-35.
Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, B. (2015a). Emergent Group Identity Construal in Online Discussions: A Linguistic Perspective. In: Frauke Zeller, Cristina Ponte and Brian O’Neill (eds.). Revitalising Audience Research: Innovations in European Audience Research. Routledge. 80-105.
Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, B. (2015b). Dynamicity axis and stand as identity indicators in Face-to-Face and Compter-Meiated-Communication. Paper delieverd at ICA Lodz Regional
Conference, 9-11 April 2015.Trusov, M. A.V. Bodapati, & R.E. Bucklin (2010). Determining Influential Users in Internet Social Networks. Journal of Marketing Research Vol. XLVII (August 2010), 643–658.
SESSIONS
Abdulrahman Alfahad
King Saud University College of Arts Arabic Department, Saudi Arabia
Forms of Address in Arabic News Interviews
It has been widely accepted that forms of address can provide information about the way that individuals regard each other, and reflect social relations among speakers. Using conversation analysis approach, this paper examines qualitatively some examples that demonstrate the tendency by Arab participants to decrease the distance among themselves during formal news interviews. Previous studies have discussed the level of formality indicated by forms of
address in news interviewers in Anglo-American and Australian news interview, and found that journalists tend to use formal terms to address their guest/s, either referring to their professional or institutional role (e.g. Doctor, Prime Minister) or employing their title plus surname (e.g. Mr. Howard). Guests, in contrast, usually address the interviewer by his/her given name (e.g. Catherine, Matt). With respect to Arabic interviews, this papers shows that Arab interviewers occasionally address their guests by their given name or using teknonymic forms, while Interviewees add forms of address such as ‘my brother’ and adjectives such as ‘dear’ to address their guests. These examples indicate that the way in which participants address each other can act as a means of personalizing the interview and making the interaction more relaxed and friendly.
Linda Bäckman
Åbo Akademi University / University of Birmingham, Finland/UK
'The prologue of my story' – collective identities in accounts by adult children of migrants
Stories, long or short, elicited for research purposes or occurring in everyday talk, have proven to be a fascinating site for the analysis of identity positioning (see e.g. Georgakopoulou 2006, De Fina 2003). An analytical differentiation between represented and enacted contents illuminates the different ways that the speaker creates who they are and how they wish to perceived at the present moment (Wortham 2001). The focus in this paper is on accounts by adults whose parents were migrants to Finland, Sweden and the UK. The participants are of different backgrounds when it comes to for example age, occupation, and parents' country of origin, and the data was collected as part of an on-going study on questions of language and identity in the post-migration generation. Through talking about their parents' journeys of migration, the participants align themselves with collective identities of the family, at the same time as they may evaluate the represented contents to reflect their personal views and value judgements. Using an approach outlined by Wortham (2001), the analysis is built around linguistic cues such as reported speech and evaluative indexicals as sites of negotiation of identity. This paper hopes to highlight how personal accounts tie with collective identities, and how the starting point of a life story need not be the birth of the speaker. As expressed by one of the participants in the study; in a story about her life, her parents’ story would be the prologue. References: De Fina, A. 2003. Identity in Narrative: A study of immigrant discourse. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Georgakopoulou, A. (2006). Thinking big with small stories in narrative and identity analysis. Narrative – State of the Art. Special Issue of Narrative Inquiry 16: 1. 122-130. Wortham, S. 2001. Narratives in Action: A Strategy for Research and Analysis. New York & London: Teacher's College Press.
Natalia Badiyan-Siekierzycka
University of Gdańsk, Poland
Language and Albanian self-identity
Albanian language played a siginificant role in the construction of Albanian self-identity in the 19th century during the period of Albanian national awakening which had place from 1878 to 1912. This process was influenced by Albanian political leaders, historians as well as intellectuals and writers. In the nineteenth century Albanians were one of the most isolated people in comparison to their neighbours in the Balkans. The country also faced some other serious obstacles which effectively retarded the process of self-identity constructing. There was no single cultural, economic, administrative or religious centre which could play the role of an unifying national factor. Under these circumstances where most of the factors which usually help in building self-identity Albanian language was this factor which became the main element of national unity. After approximately five centuries under the Ottoman domination Albanians discovered the chance to develop an independent country. Albanian nationalist leaders propagated the language as an instrument for achieving national independence. Albanian nationalist activists considered albanian language to be the most important aspect in the construction of self-identity, which played an extremely great role in preserving cultural and political Albanian existence. Albanian language underwent the evolution transforming from a legal feature which was used mainly to mark the existence of the Albanian nation and self-identity in the first stage of the Albanian national movement to a functional perception imagining the Albanian language as a factor which internally unites Albanian self-identity being under constructing.
Isa Yusuf Chamo
Department of Linguistics, Bayero University Kano, Nigeria
Language and Identity in Africa: An Analysis of the Use of Place Names as Part of Person’s Name in Hausa
Place names are labels attached to one’s surroundings. The concept of identity helps to describe the way individuals and groups define themselves and are defined by others on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, language and culture (Deng 1995:1). Identity distinguishes one group from another and is also an instrument that people use to present themselves to other people that are different from them. It also involves the question of “We and They”. Hausa is the name by which the people of the ethnic group call themselves and are understood as such by many other people, though, of course, different peoples have different local names for them. Hausa is also the name of the language of the people (Adamu 1974:1). Hausa is a major world language, spoken as a mother tongue by more than 30 million people in Northern Nigeria and Southern parts of Niger, in addition to the Diaspora communities of traders,
Muslim scholars and immigrants in urban areas of West Africa (Southern Nigeria, Ghana and Togo, and the Blue Nile Province of the Sudan). It is widely spoken as a second language and expanded rapidly as a lingua franca (Jaggar, 2001:1).This paper investigates the use of place names as part of person’s name in Hausa. The aim is to find out why some Hausa people used place names as part of their personal names. An ethnography research method and questionnaire are used to collect data and social identity theory to analyze the data. The result of the analysis shows that some Hausa people use place names to construct personal identity which reveals the place they belong. It also reveals that place names can serve as an identity markers both from an individual and social point of view.
Ivana Djurovic
University of Iowa, USA
Girls Creating Power Asymmetry
The existence of speech differences based on gender has long been acknowledged by sociolinguistic and related theories. Even Jespersen noted that women tend to be more conservative than men, avoiding slang and profanities and are more prone to euphemisms (Haas, 1979). Indeed, the works of Lakoff (1973, 1975) and Tannen (1975, 1979) show a wide gap between male and female genderlects within certain social groups. Their research, however, is almost solely based on circles of white middle-class Americans, and therefore hardly universally applicable. In fact, more recent developments exemplified by the research of Goodwin (2002), Bucholtz (2002) and Baxter (2009) show that various socio-economic and even cultural factors can alter the ways and degrees to which genderlects differ, when they do. This paper presents a small-scale study on building power asymmetries in the discourse of sixth grade girls during a drawing task in an EFL class in Belgrade, Serbia. Three girls were told they are a part of a school-wide competition, and that they had to draw 4 elements (of varying complexity) on the whiteboard using only one marker. They had to negotiate issues like the distribution of the elements to draw, the possession of the marker, the right to add or erase parts of each other's work, etc. The findings suggest that when placed in a time-sensitive, competitive environment, the discourse of twelve year-old girls from working-class families in Serbia is anything but cooperative, polite and directed towards building intimacy, characteristics which are too frequently attributed to women’s talk. e.g. 1 ali nemoj da mi sve obrišeš jer ću da te ubijem but don't me all you-erase because I-will you I-kill But don't erase all [my work] or I will kill you. 2 ućutite! stvarno ste dosadne shut up-IMP-PL really are-you-PL annoying Shut up! You are really annoying!
Tomasz Dobrogoszcz
Institute of English Studies, University of Łódź, Poland
“The Other who speaks from my place”: the structuring of the symbolic identity through language in Ian McEwan’s The Children Act
The main protagonist of Ian McEwan’s latest novel is Fiona Maye, a 59-year-old High Court Family Division judge, who has to arbitrate in a problematical case of a Jehovah Witness teenager refusing to undergo a blood transfusion, the only reliable treatment for his leukaemia. But Fiona’s judgement in this case has to be reached when she herself is in a state of personal crisis and instability: her marriage is breaking down. After visiting the leukemic boy in the hospital, the judge develops an emotional bond with him, but her professional rigidity commands her to sever it. The paper endeavours to employ theoretical tools supplied by Jacques Lacan’s theory in order to examine the role of language in structuring Fiona’s symbolic identity. As she conceals the kernel of her subjectivity, deciding to openly adopt the conventions of the Symbolic Order, Fiona is interpellated into a public persona of a judge. In this way, she becomes ensnared by Lacanian Big Other, the unconscious system of interrelations, and also the system of language. She undergoes what Lacan calls ‘symbolic castration’, the split between her direct psychological identity and the symbolic identity bestowed upon her by the title she wears. Captivated by the legal discourse and by the signifiers of social class which structure her reality, she compliantly disowns her desire and maintains her secure stable position in the world.
Joanna Dyła-Urbańska
University of Łódź, Poland
"The ruled take over the language of their rulers" - Post-Colonial Identity Through an English Lens.
In my paper I attempt to analyze the problem of identity of contemporary authors of Indian novel written in English through a lens of their post-colonial language. One of the most significant features of this "new" Indian novel is its subversive use of the English language as, according to Ashcroft et al., authors of "The Post-Colonial Studies Reader", "language is a fundamental site of struggle for post-colonial discourse because the colonial process itself begins in language." In the Indian context this subversive variety of English has been diversely named. Authors and critics speak of among others "hinglish", "masala English", "chutnified English" and this variety, nativized and acculturated, juxtaposed with the standard English imposed by the colonizers, is an excellent tool in the process of the appropriation and redefinition of the language of the metropolitan centre. In my paper I attempt to examine Indian post-colonial English and, using the examples of selected contemporary Indian novels, try to discuss the ways in which these writers carry the weight of Indian (post-)colonial experience and define their identity in order to, to use Salman Rushdie's famous words, describe the phenomenon of "the Empire writing back with a vengeance."
Hulya Emek Grosse
MS-TESOL student, USA
L2 and L3 Turkish Speakers Perception of Accent Identification, Accuracy & Attitudes
This study investigates twenty eight adult female Turkish English language learners and their comfort level pertaining to English accents, their preferences regarding various types of accents, and their accuracy in identifying the four varieties of accents presented. In addition to the accent analysis, the study looked at whether or not the participants’ perceptions of accents were impacted by their country of origin. The data obtained from the twenty eight adult native Turkish speakers whose L2 was English. Each participant listened to a one minute prompt read by four speakers with different accents of English: General American, Turkish, Uzbek and Crimean Tatar. . The findings revealed that when participants were asked to identify the country of origin of the four English accents, the majority of the participants (89 %) accurately identified the speaker’s country of origin. Although all of the subjects’ first language is Turkish, an unanticipated result was that Turkish subjects could not identify the bilingual (Turkish-Russian) Uzbek and Crimean Tatar speakers’ accents with a high percentage of accuracy. Similarly, bilingual (Turkish-Russian) speakers could not identify Turkish (natives of Turkey) accented speech successfully. Since Berger, Rosenholtz, and Zelditch (1980) stated that accented speech is supposed to be a status cue used to infer ethnic identity, this finding was unexpected. This is in contrast to the present study as well as Phoebe Riches & Margaret Foddy’s study (1989). The findings of this study suggest that Russian and Turkish speech properties play an important role in both identification and misidentification of the speech samples. Furthermore, the present study’s results suggest that the ability to identify the speaker’s perceived accent is influenced by familiarity.
Noemi Fazakas
Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Romania
Identity and language: the construction of a new minority (Hungarians in Romania after 1918)
The years 1918–1920 brought about great changes in the Transylvanian society, and in particular in the case of the Hungarian community. My presentation aims to outline the issues of displacement from a majority status to a minority one of the Hungarian community in Romania after 1918, based on the corpus of texts of articles published in the „Keleti Újság”. “Keleti Újság” [‘Eastern Newspaper’] was a Hungarian daily newspaper published in Cluj-Napoca between 1918 and 1944, and is considered one of the most important journals of the period between the two World Wars in Transylvania. Covering a large range of topics and genres (from politics to social issues, from literature to advertisements) it was also the most important periodical of the Hungarian community, publishing articles on the state of the community in the new political context, as well as overtly and covertly outlining attitudes towards the mother tongue and the language of the state that determine the way in which the new minority identity of the community was to be shaped. My presentation aims to outline the attitudes towards language in the theoretical framework of the monolingual paradigm, as well
as to identify the strategies with the help of which the newspaper’s editors aimed to form the opinions of their readership regarding the attitudes towards the mother tongue and the language of the state. It also wishes to grasp how the new minority identity came into being through the lens of these attitudes towards the mother tongue and the language of the state.
Rana Hafez
MA TESOL student, Egypt
Different Factors Affecting Code Switching between English and Arabic
There has been a growing interest in the study of Code Switching (CS) in the Arab world among sociolinguists. Egypt provides an interesting context for the study of code switching, which occurs frequently in language used by Egyptians in everyday life. This code switching may occur between diglossic variants of Arabic i.e. Standard Arabic (SA) and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA) or between Arabic and English or other foreign languages. The present study aims at analyzing code switching using a framework of indexicality. The theory of indexicality developed from Pierce’s index which is based on a relationship that consists of physical, temporal or casual collocation, meaning that the relationship is one of a sign and referent that co-occur (Atkins, 2013). The study explores different factors that affect the process of code switching between Arabic and English among a specific cohort (board members) within a charity and community service club in Alexandria, Egypt and in both formal and informal contexts. The study investigates CS practices of a charity club in Alexandria. It explores different factors which trigger code switching between Arabic (ECA and MSA) and English and how speakers position themselves and reflect their identity by using the different associations of different codes in formal vs. informal settings. Different identities will be discussed, such as personal, religious, and social identity. The participants are 8 board members of this charity club, in which they hold different positions. The present study adopts an exploratory approach aiming at exploring sufficient information to get accurate answers and results to the suggested Research Questions. The study adopts a qualitative method of data collection. Observations, recordings (both audio and video) and interviews are utilized to investigate the problem. Preliminary findings show that more than one factor influence the participants Code Switching process Rana Hafez MA Tesol Student The American University in Cairo
Martin Hinton
University of Łódź, Poland
Identity as argumentation: Argumentation as identity
The relationship between identity and argument has not received great attention in the literature of argumentation,which is more concerned with whether or not arguments put
forward are reasonable and convincing than with who is making them and what they may wish to say about themselves by doing so. In this paper, however, I discuss two occasions, which, I believe, are common enough, when they are closely linked: how the expression of identity may be used as a substitute for argument, and how argumentation may be used to build identity. In his essay on 'Self-reliance', R.W. Emerson wrote: 'If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument.' (1841) He was in no doubt that this was a bad thing, that every individual should put forward his own ideas not those of a group with which he identifies, but for many people a sense of belonging to a particular group with a defined set of beliefs or values may be a convenient way of setting out one's position to others without having to actually go through the arguments oneself. I investigate whether this can ever be an acceptable form of argument or whether we might identify an Emersonian 'sect fallacy'. Others, however, may wish to avoid labelling themselves and rather build an expression of their own identity via the arguments they put forward. Robert Asen (2005) raises the idea of functions of argument outside the usual scope of justification. One of these, he suggests, is 'identity formation'. I look at the degree to which this is possible and discuss how we should consider such arguments in the light of J. Anthony Blair's (2005) insistence on a strict dichotomy of 'incidental uses' and 'inherent purposes' of argumentation.
Małgorzata Kniaź
Katedra Porównawczych Studiów Cywilizacji, UJ, Poland
Functions of diglossic and Arabic/English code-switching in identity construction in Egypt
The linguistic situation in the Arab World is usually referred to as diglossia. According to Ferguson’s classical concept, diglossia means that in a speech community, there are two varieties of a language in use. These varieties fulfill different functions and are used in different circumstances. In Arabic they are: Modern Standard Arabic, common to all Arabic speaking communities, and a variety of vernaculars. However, this linguistic dichotomy is not reflected in actual language use; native speakers tend to combine elements from both varieties within a single speech event, i.e. they switch codes between the standard and vernacular varieties. In Egypt, besides diglossic code-switching, Arabic/English code-switching is becoming more and more popular among the upper and upper-middle classes. This is mainly a result of the growing role of English in education and the labor market since the 1990s and, consequently, the emergence of a large group of bilingual Egyptians using the linguistic resources of both the vernacular and English in private and professional communication. The varieties in question index different identities. They also differ in terms of social perception. Standard Arabic is identified with Arabness and Islamic heritage, Egyptian Arabic with Egyptianness, whereas English is associated with social mobility and professionalism on the one hand, and with colonialism on the other hand. The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of how diglossic and Arabic/English code-switching is used to construct desirable identities. The data come from Egyptian TV talk-shows. Special attention will be given to bilingual code-switching due to Egyptians' ambivalent attitude towards English and Arabic/English code-switching.
Krzysztof Kosecki University of Łódź, Poland
On Representations of Countries and Ethnic Groups in Signed Languages
The analysis focuses on selected names of countries and ethnic groups as represented in diverse sign languages, for example American, British, Czech, German, Polish, Swedish, and others (Kosiba and Grenda 2011; Sign Language Dictionary). It is argued that all these representations are based on metonymic models (Lakoff 1987; Radden and Kövecses 1999), some of which reflect stereotypes. The stereotypes are often similar to those functioning in phonic communication.
A classification of the forms of signs and motivations for them will be provided, for example signs relying on reference to geographical factors (e.g. ‘Japan’ in various languages; ‘India’ in British Sign Language/BSL), clothes (e.g. ‘Holland’ in Polish Sign Language-Polski Język Migowy/PJM), folk culture (e.g. ‘Ireland’ and ‘Scotland’ in BSL), stereotypes (e.g. Poland’ in German Sign Language-Deutsche Gebärdensprache/DGS and ‘Germany’ in BSL). In addition, the impact of the concept of political correctness on the stereotype-based signs (Sutton-Spence and Woll 2010) will be considered.ReferencesESLC/European Sign Language Centre. 2014. Sign Language Dictionary. Retrieved 17
January, 2015 from http://www.spreadthesign.com/pl.Kosiba, Olgierd, and Piotr Grenda. 2011. Leksykon języka migowego [A Lexicon of Sign
Language]. Bogatynia, Pol.: Silentium.Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about
the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Radden, Günter, and Zoltán Kövecses. 1999. Towards a Theory of Metonymy. In Klaus-
Uwe Panther and Günter Radden (eds), Metonymy in Language and Thought, 17-59. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Sutton-Spence, Rachel, and Bencie Woll. 2010. The Linguistics of British Sign Language: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bartłomiej Kruk
Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland
1. Identity Work in the Context of Caregiving for a Relative with Dementia
While most linguistic research focuses on dementia patients (e.g. Hamilton 2010; Shenk 2005), few discourse analytic studies have examined family caregivers’ identity work and personal experience. In fact, caregiving for dementia relatives constitutes a particularly distressing experience. It can thus be conceptualized as ‘biographical disruption’ (Bury 1982) or a critical situation (Giddens 1979), as the disease breaches carers’ biographical continuity
of their commonly taken-for-granted kin relationships with patients, which in turn brings chaos to their lives and severely undermines their sense of self and stability. With this in mind, this paper investigates how, in the context of an interview, dementia caregivers interactionally construct disruption to their own identity and family relations brought about by their relatives’ decline in cognitive functioning. The tools of conversation analysis (Antaki and Widdicombe 1998) and membership categorization analysis (Stokoe 2012) are applied to a corpus of data comprising audio-taped open-ended interviews with American caregivers of dementia relatives. Approaching the interview as “reflecting reality jointly constructed by the interviewee and the interviewer” (Rapley 2001: 304), the analytic focus of this paper falls on the interviewer’s questions and the respondents’ accounts. The analysis illuminates the meaning that the respondents discursively ascribe to their loved ones’ dementia as their own biographical disruption. Particular consideration is thus given to what facets of their identities get redefined and remain intact in this qualitatively new situation. Discursive and interactional strategies are identified and examined for their import in the encoding and accomplishment of the caregivers’ biographical disruption. In the spirit of practical relevance of discourse analytic studies, the research findings are discussed as offering valuable insights into the lived experience of dementia family caregivers which professionals may not easily access. Accordingly, such lay perspectives should be seriously considered especially in view of insufficient support services and family caregivers’ central role in relationship-centred care.
2. The Construction of Gender Roles in Polish EFL Textbooks
As gender is constructed and regulated in cultural and institutionalized contexts (Jones 2006), schools take an active part in students’ exposure to, and the formation of, their gender-binary identities. Through curricular choices, including EFL materials, and classroom interactions schools have the potential to reinforce, challenge, or reduce gender dichotomies (Connell 1996), for example, between the subordinate role of girls/women, and the dominant role of boys/men. In particular, EFL textbooks seem to be a vital gender socialization agent, because they can portray stereotypical role gender modeling, and therefore be a potential source of gender bias, to which young students are especially vulnerable (Porecca 1984). This paper is part of a larger British Council-funded project entitled «Investigating gender and sexuality in the ESL classroom: Raising publishers’, teachers’ and students’ awareness». In this paper, we look into the context of Polish EFL education to qualitatively scrutinize the discursive and visual construction of the categories of masculinity and femininity. The analysis focuses on the representation of the social roles of men/boys and women/girls, and discourses of masculinity and femininity in three different EFL textbooks at primary, junior and secondary school levels. The collected data have been analysed with the insights of multimodal discourse analysis (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006) and feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (Lazar 2005; 2014). The nuanced and rigorous examination of the analysed materials demonstrates how gender emerges as a salient social category in the educational setting of EFL learning (and teaching). In the analysis, distinctions are made between the semiotic potential of various sub-genres (dialogues, readings, grammatical and vocabulary exercises). This allows to expose gender critical points (Sunderland et al. 2002) but also to capture patterns in the post-modern patchiness of the social positionings of men/boys and women/girls. The analysis thus illuminates how visual and textual modalities jointly construct
different masculinities and femininities in different contexts/genres and with different communicative aims. REFERENCES: Connell, R. 1996. “Teaching the boys: new research on masculinity, and gender strategies for schools”. Teachers College Record 98 (2), 206-235. Jones, S. 2006. Antonio Gramsci. London: Routledge. Kress, G. R. and T. Van Leeuwen. 2006. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London and New York: Routledge. Lazar, M. M. 2005. Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis: Gender, Power, and Ideology in Discourse. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lazar, M. M. 2014. “Feminist critical discourse analysis: Relevance for current gender and language research” , in: S. Ehrlich, M. Meyerhoff and J. Holmes (eds.), The Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 180–199. Porreca, K.L. 1984. Sexism in current ESL textbooks. TESOL Quarterly 18(4), 705-724. Sunderland, J., M. Cowley, F. A. Rahim, C. Leontzakou and J. Shattuck. 2002. "From representation towards discursive practices: Gender in the foreign Language textbook revisited" , in: L. Litosseliti and J. Sunderland (eds.), Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 223-256.
Iga Maria Lehman
University of Social Sciences, Warszawa, Poland
“Cherry’s contribution to the rhetorical theory for self-representation: ethos and persona. Does the ‘real self’ of the writer exist? ” “Cherry’s contribution to the rhetorical theory for self-representation: ethos and persona. Does the ‘real self’ of the writer exist? ” "Cherry's contribution to the rhetorical theory for self-representation:ethos and persona. Does the 'real self' of the writer exist?"
This paper sets out to contest Cherry’s (1988) view of two modes of authorial self-representation in written discourse: ethos and persona; referred to as “audience addressed” represented by ethos (the writer’s ‘real’ self) and “audience invoked” represented by persona (the writer’s ‘fictional’, ‘social’ self). Cherry associates ethos with personal qualities which a reader might attribute to a writer on the basis of evidence in the text (e.g., being compassionate, reflective, knowledgeable and so on) and views persona as various social ‘selves’ the author may employ in the act of writing (e.g., being a native speaker of Polish, a student, an academic writer or a jazz lover). According to Cherry, although ethos and persona interact and overlap in many complex ways, ethos remains a stable entity of the ’real’ self and only persona is open to contestation and change. Drawing on Harré’s, Fairclough’s and Hall’s work, and my own focus on the relationship between students’ identities and their experience of academic writing, I claim that authorial identity establishes itself in the form of various ‘selves’ writers employ in the act of writing, which locates identity in socio-cultural and institutionally defined subject positions. Therefore, my purpose in this paper is to question the existence of the stable nature of a ‘real’ self. I will argue that all aspects of the writer's identity are multiple, intertwined and subject to change as the author develops their life experience and knowledge, and as the context of writing changes. I will also show how to make use of the distinction between ethos and persona within the broader framework of the
discoursal construction of a writer’s self, but will treat both ethos and persona as discoursally constructed aspects of authorial identity.
Sonia Lenk
Western Kentucky University, USA
Discourse, Identity & Belonging: The Case of Two Indigenous Communities in Ecuador
Ethnolinguistic vitality (EV) "...that which makes a group likely to behave as a distinctive and active collective entity in intergroup situations." (Giles et al, 1977, p. 308) has been a very fertile area of research since its introduction as a notion in the late 70s. It was developed to understand intergroup relations, and especially, the power struggle between groups. Thus, particularly, subjective ethnolinguistic vitality had its origins in social identity theory as developed by Tajfel and Turner (1986). In this presentation, I will analyze, using social identity theory, the elite interviews with indigenous leaders of Imbabura, Ecuador. Then, I will contrast them with the results of two studies I carried out, one in 2002 and the other one in 2011, in two Quichua-speaking communities - one urban and one rural, in Imbabura, Ecuador - using the beliefs reflecting EV . The goal is to better understand the icons that stand out in the indigenous leaders' discourse and how they use them to appeal to the in-group identity. It is also important to see how this is related to the beliefs the residents of these two communities hold and the language choices they opt for when talking to different members of their in-group. Some of the findings show that indigenous leaders place a great deal of importance on the display of visible signs such as the traditional attire, cultural values, solidarity and the Quichua language. On the community side, the beliefs related, not to themselves, but to the resources they perceived are and will be available to their in-group in the next 20 years showed significant correlation to their use of Quichua. Finally, I will revisit how EV and social identity theory influence language maintenance of the subordinate language or shift to the dominant language.
Rotem Leshem and Rakefet Sela-Sheffy
Unit of Culture Research, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
Reflexivity and Emotions as cultural tools: Accounts on negative experiences of young Israeli males
All cultures provide their members with various interactional models to conceptualize, analyze and communicate negative experiences. The qualitative interview is one type of a reflexive, therapy-like interaction, in which the interviewee is often encouraged to talk freely about their troubles by resorting to emotional discourse. As such, it is a useful platform for examining culture-dependent models of acting in reflexivity-inducing interactions and of accounting retrospectively for one’s experiences in such interactions, using emotional self-
analysis. We use materials from a study on 30 young Israeli males' talk-in-interaction in two consequent events: (1) an aggressive negotiation where their self-image was threatened and (2) a personal interview, where they were solicited to elaborate on their relations vis-à-vis their counterpart and their past experiencing selves in this negotiation. Our previous analysis revealed an alienated-aggressive interactional model performed by over half of the subject in our sample during the aggressive negotiation event. In the present paper we focus on these subjects’ reflexive accounts and emotional self-analysis in the interviews. We apply two-dimensional analysis: narrative analysis and conversation analysis of "troubled-talk". Findings reveal narrative discursive strategies employed by the subjects to maintain dignity in accounting for their face-threatening past experiences, ranging between identification with and dissociation from their past experiencing self. At the same time, their conversational techniques disclose implicit negative emotionality regarding their performing selves during the past event. Identifying a repertoire of shared explicit and implicit discursive techniques and patterns of maneuvering between them contributes to understanding reflexivity and emotions as cultural tools at disposal of this group of young Israeli males in managing aggressive interaction and in reconstructing it in retrospect.
Olga Łabendowicz
University of Łódź, Poland
Lost Belongingness? Re-Creating Cultural Identity in Audiovisual Translation
Belongingness, closely related to the notion of identity, is the human emotional need to be an accepted member of a group. An attempt to transfer the sense of belongingness that is usually created in audio-visual materials strongly rooted in the source culture (SC) into the target culture (TC) by the means of audiovisual translation (AVT) is one of the greatest challenges translators must face. Translation of audiovisual materials marked strongly with culture is always problematic. It is not only for the constraints particular for a given mode of AVT but more importantly due to the existence of elements impossible to be rendered into target culture without confusing target audience. Such lacunas are traditionally defined as gaps, missing parts or deficiencies (Merriam Webster Dictionary). The choice of a respective mode of AVT – may it be subtitling, voice-over or dubbing, usually strongly affects the intended effect on target audience. The presented analysis is an attempt to present different ways of shifting the original sense of belongingness into a more appealing for target audience on the basis of audiovisual materials that aim at maintaining a strong sense of cultural belongingness.
Olga Majchrzak
University of Łódź, Poland
The construction of writerly identity in the second language: The case of Polish advanced learners of English
What is identity? According to social constructionist view, identity is not only the product of individuals` minds and intentions but “the result of affiliation to particular beliefs and possibilities which are available to them in their social context” (Ivanic 1998: 12). Others claim that identity is more of a life history or – going even further – an interpretation of their life history (Gidden 1991), and that it changes over lifespan (Honess & Yardley 1987). To make matters even more complicated, language and identity are believed to be inextricably linked (Ortmeier-Hooper 2013). It may be observed in the case of bilinguals who struggle with defining their true mother tongue and what follows – their true identity (as described by Chiang & Schmida 1999) or in the examples of refugees to English speaking countries (as depicted in Ortmeier-Hooper 2013). However, a similar situation may be observed in the case of advanced learners of English with all their experience in writing in the second language (English), including extensive practice in English composition and feedback they received. The present study focuses on six Polish advanced learners of English, doing their final year of English studies at the M.A. level. On the basis of the interviews conducted with them as well as journal entries they wrote, it is claimed that their preference to write in the English language is connected with a variety of factors, which could be centred around the following concepts: language as a protective shield, language as a door to access higher-status community, language as a tool to organize one`s thoughts and language as a creator of a different self. The respondents` beliefs about the two languages differ: they see English as more direct than Polish, and English as more reader-oriented. When performing in Polish, they have requirements to meet, e.g. being linguistically correct, sounding “posh”; in other words, they want to sound competent as the native speaker of this language; also, they often find themselves creating an image of somebody who is competent enough to be accepted within the group that a particular text is addressed at. On the other hand, writing in English gives them freedom – of being themselves (in comparison to striving to sound as someone who they are not in Polish), of making linguistic mistakes but also of having no ties and not being identified with any group in this language; in other words, it is associated with new opportunities, of exploring something new and unknown. Hence, in English they are capable of creating a whole new identity of themselves, not only as writers, but also as humans.
Paulina Mirowska
University of Łódź, Poland
Silent Victims and Smug Oppressors: the Language of Power Viewed through Harold Pinter’s Political Lens
In his acceptance speech on being awarded the honorary doctorate of the University of Sofia in April 1995, Harold Pinter highlighted a vital intersection between his dramaturgy and his political preoccupations: It probably won’t surprise you to hear that words have dominated my life. In my own work, I’ve always been aware that my characters tend to use words not to
express what they think or feel but to disguise what they think or feel, to mask their actual intentions, so that words are acting as a masquerade, a veil, a web, or used as weapons to undermine or to terrorise. But these modes of operation are hardly confined to characters in plays. In the world in which we live, words are as often employed to distort or to deceive or to manipulate as they are to convey actual and direct meaning. So that a substantial body of our language is essentially corrupt. It has become a language of lies. These lies in themselves can become so far-reaching, so pervasive, so consuming that even the liar thinks he is telling the truth. As has also been demonstrated many times, when words are used with a fearless and rigorous respect for their real meaning, the users tend to be rewarded with persecution, torture and death. (qtd. in Billington 1996, 371) Pinter stressed in the speech that his prime, unswerving interest had always been in language and went on to articulate his keen awareness of the alarming relationship between the creative possibilities of language and grievous official mendacity, decrying the political rhetoric that fosters the fabrication of illusions employed by perpetrators of oppression to justify their actions and maintain power. The paper examines Pinter’s fierce political stances embodied in his provocative political theatre conveying the dramatist’s skepticism as regards the possibility of effecting an intellectual or ethical conversion in an audience implicated in established inequity and oppression, or making theatregoers acknowledge their complicity in the atrocities of the modern world. In Pinter’s explicitly political works of the 1980s and 90s, power—linked intimately to language use, misogyny and scorn for a social other—brutally asserts itself by delegitimizing and stifling opposition, triumphing in the enforced muteness of dissident voices. The discussion in my paper will centre on Pinter’s mature minimalist torture plays, particularly One for the Road (1984), dramatizing an unsettling confrontation between power and powerlessness, and between voice and speechlessness, culminating in moments of grisly silence that index the suppression of dissent by coercive power structures apparently impervious to critique and cast doubt on the possibility of an empathetic politics. I will address the plays’ examination of the relationship between individual psychology and power, and the notion of whether there is a type of personality drawn to authoritarian stances. I will deal with Pinter’s dramatic probing into the psychology of a torturer, or a leader, who has no scruples about brutalizing or sacrificing others for his political or religious beliefs, as well as the dramatist’s grappling with the question of how such a person may reconcile monstrous acts with a positive self-perception.
James Moir
Abertay University, Scotland, UK
Global Citizenship: An Education or an Identity?
This paper considers the recent focus on citizenship within education by taking curricular reform within Scottish secondary schooling and its linkage with higher education as a case study. In Scotland the Curriculum for Excellence reform places citizenship as one of four main capacities that pupils must work towards as part of their education. Likewise, there has been a move in within the Scottish higher education Enhancement Themes framework to
include citizenship as part of graduate attributes that students work towards as they progress through their courses. A unifying theme in these reforms is the need for students to take a global perspective and work across different disciplines by, for example, considering how knowledge relates to wider issues such as in relation to sustainable development, e-democracy or human rights. One feature that unites these disparate areas is that, above all, students must learn to be active through the acquisition of appropriate knowledge and skills. In this model of citizenship education, learners are enabled to develop their sense of citizenship identity in response to a fast-paced world of innovation and change. Citizenship is therefore linked to a futurist agenda, where the learner-citizen is positioned as an ongoing project, as something to be worked at or perhaps worked on. However, this kind of notion of agency is an expression of an ideological construction of the citizen as a flexible resource for society. Such citizens are active in the sense of being adaptive to change through utilizing intellectual skills but without a sense of identity grounded in one’s commitments or reflexive engagement with different forms of understanding. The paper offers a critical assessment of this learner-citizen discourse as focusing on ratiocination rather than relational identity.
Daniel Nagy
Loránd Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary
Redundancy as a tool for identity-creation – the narration scenes in Thomas Mann’s Joseph and his brothers
One of the most conspicuous features of Thomas Mann’s monumental novel cycle (written in the 1930s and 40s), Joseph and his brothers, is that its characters often tell stories of their ancestors and of their own past over and over again. It is also noticed by the novel’s narrator, that these re-narrations are practically redundant since neither of the participants acquires any piece of “new” information, they just re-tell stories which all of them are already familiar with. This could be considered as a function of language which is completely independent from the transmission of information – in these beautiful conversations (schönes Gespräch) the participants use language and narration in a quasi-sacral action which contributes to the establishment of their identity. According to Mann’s own point of view, it is intended to serve as a model of archaic/mythic consciousness. In a famous letter to Karl Kerényi, Mann wrote that the goal of his novel is “to take myth out of the hands of fascism and to re-function it to the field of humanity”. Accoring to this either the novel itself should not be considered as merely an artistic re-creation of a mythic story, but a monumental “redundant narration” as well - by this the novel is not just an artistic model of the identity-crating power of narrative conversations, but it also brings this force into effect by attempting to strengthen the identity of the devotees of humanism against the power of Nazi barbarism. In my paper I will try to show how narration could become a device of establishing identity, and how identity could be itself conceived as a semiotic system in its interaction with language.
Wasiu Ademola Oyedokun-Alli
Department of English and Literary Studies, Federal University, Oye Ekiti, Nigeria
Language of Representation: A Semantic Reading of Nigerian English (Ne) in Selected Literary Works
The freshness, vitality and passion with which Nigerian critics debate the issues concerning the roles of English during the colonial and post-colonial periods has continued to gain currency in national discourse. Wide-ranging disputations regarding the status of English, as a major medium of communication in a multilingual country like Nigeria also abound in scholarly debates. The issue of a choice of an indigenous language to “replace” the English language in Nigeria has remained largely unresolved. As Nida and Wonderly (1971) rightly observe, in Nigeria, there is simply no politically neutral language. The three major tribes, namely Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo cling primordially to their languages, leaving the English language as the only viable option. This paper examines the various attempts at domesticating the English language in the works of Achebe and Tutuola, and posits that more scholarly works should be carried out with a view to resolving the national language question in favour of the English language as the only realistic option available in the Nigeria’s quest for global relevance.
Debora Quattrocchi
Open University, London, UK
Issues of identity in an intercultural learning context: a case study.
In 14/15 the Open University, UK, launched a new module, ‘Exploring Languages and Cultures’, compulsory to undergraduate students enrolled on language programmes. The module addresses the need to develop intercultural competence in an increasingly interconnected world. It is taught in a blended format, through face to face and synchronous online tutorials as well as asynchronous online forum activities. The first of these activities asked students to reflect on the following: • Do you think your accent in English is an integral part of your identity? • Has it changed at all in the course of your life? • Do you sometimes modify it, depending on the circumstances? • Can you remember any occasions where your accent has worked to your advantage / disadvantage? Out of 93 students enrolled within the London area, 70 replied. The responses showed real engagement with the module but above all the need to debate issues such as the relationship between accent, language and identity and the importance of carving an identity for oneself, taking into account the participants’ different backgrounds, within a metropolis like London, in the context of globalization and easier access to communication. The notion of identity is more fractured and complex for late bi-/multilinguals, who have to accommodate new language(s) and cultural coordinates later in their lives, when the knowledge of mother tongue / 'mother culture' has already settled. Stemming from the forum's contributions, this case study explores how participants attempt to negotiate their sense of identity across geographical, linguistic and cultural spheres. With
particular focus on bilingual participants, it looks at how they position themselves (or are positioned) as cross-cultural intermediaries; how they portray themselves through language; how they mediate cultural adjustments. Ultimately this paper intends to contribute to research on the role of identity in engaging with 'otherness' in an intercultural context.
Kujtim Rrahmani
Institute of Albanian Studies, Kosovo
From I to HE: Intern and Extern Poetics of Identity
This paper aims to explore the specific relationships of the human being with its own intern and extern poetics of identity. I intend to renew the status of intern and extern within the setting of poetics of identity, having in mind their perpetual interplay as well. I envisage this poetic interplay as a parallel human walk toward the self and the other, toward the intuition and rationality, toward the irrationality and the touchable, toward the soul and the body – from the singular to the plural. The singularity of poetic identity is strongly connected to individual imaginary (I) while the plurality of poetic identity seeks to find liaison with the poetics of community through the transcendences of I to ER or THEY. The notion of identity in literary imagination became a common instrument in measuring the social habitus and the individual state of mind within the imaginary world. Is an entity of individual identity a potential counterweight of identity in terms of social identity or vice versa? This paper will deal with such questions and will try to offer a contribution toward the imaginary of the identity, looking for the arch between the poetics of identity from I to ER. At the same time the examples of these identity phenomena will materialise their literary and social existence.
Aleksandra Sokalska-Bennett
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
(Re-)Construction of bereavement identity in miscarriage narratives
The death of a close family member can be characterized as a `disruptive event' or a `critical situation' (Bury 1982) in the lives of survivors, who remain and have to process the loss. The death of an unborn child, still often covered in a veil of silence, in both public and private spheres, is not only devastating, but involves a uniquely complicated grieving process due to the character of the bereavement. This study investigates women’s phenomenological experiences of miscarriage and looks into how women’s biographical narratives of loss allow for performing various aspects of identity work. By applying the insights and methods of discourse analysis and membership categorization analysis (Stokoe 2012) I discuss the discursive realization of identity performance in the context of societal constructions of motherhood, femininity and bereavement. Membership categorization analysis is particularly suited to examining the ways in which speakers utilize and interpret categorizations of
themselves and others in a given context and, moreover, how those categorizations emerge within their situated cultural knowledge (Stokoe 2003). Furthermore, this methodological framework can be applied to analyze how far certain socially constructed notions are perceived by the respondents to be either restrictive or permissive (Adams and Dell 2008) in relation to their miscarriage experiences. The analyzed data were collected through nine semi-structured individual interviews with women in the UK and Poland. The results are of direct practical relevance for healthcare and psychological professionals working with women who have experienced a miscarriage.
Agnieszka Stępkowska
Społeczna Akademia Nauk, Warszawa, Poland
Multilingualism with a commentary: An introspection
This paper will draw on theory and research available in sociolinguistics and use a qualitative method of an intrinsic case study in order to describe multilingualism in Poland and explicate its drivers. Based on a self-testimony, I will investigate how multilinguals fare in the Polish conditions that result from the global position of my mother tongue. The aim of this paper lies in the contribution that increased self-awareness can make to the account of an individual’s multilingual profile in a monolingual country. The objectives of this paper are to (1) answer the question of the extent to which language learning promotes multiculturalism; (2) determine reasons for individual multilingualism; and (3) elucidate implications for language attitudes and the way of impacting on them. This knowledge will allow to better understand how multilingualism compensates for cross-cultural opportunities and sustains the quality of social life. The analysis will include the issues concerning both facts (the organization of language learning, the system of awards and the system of assessment), and the cognitive and cultural perspective (opinions, beliefs, attitudes in linguistic interactions). The list of information relating to the problem of individual multilingualism will focus, among others, on the language repertoire, the aspects of language acquisition sequence, language competences, language motivation, the domains of use of foreign languages and opinions on languages, and the wider context of the lingua franca question. The technical procedure of data collection and analysis will be coding which splits into two basic types, substantive and theoretical. The former refers to the tangible conceptualization of a given research area, whereas the latter concerns the conceptualization of mutual relationships between particular categories, i.e. building the hypotheses. The decision about the selection of given categories for the analysis will be followed by the process of specifying its properties to illustrate the undertaken problem.
Marcin Trojszczak
University of Łódź, Poland
How metaphorical conceptualizations of memories affect the way we perceive them? – a corpus-based cognitive linguistics study
The aim of this study is to present the way in which memories are conceptualized in English and Polish and to discuss the implications of these findings in relation to the issues of linguistic relativity and self-concept. The study approaches conceptualization of memories from the perspective of corpus-based cognitive linguistics. It combines the theoretical framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the methodological workbench of corpus linguistics. The analysis is based on the data extracted from the British National Corpus (BNC) and the National Corpus of Polish (NKJP). The main part of the study focuses on a corpus-based examination of the selected conceptualizations of memories in English and Polish. It presents the conceptual metaphors of memories and compares them in terms of their source and target domains. The concluding part discusses the implications of the findings for the questions of linguistic relativity and self-concept by pinpointing interesting areas for further research.
Ewelina Twardoch
Institute of Audiovisual Arts, Jagiellonian University, Poland
If there is no identity without language, is there no ethics as well? Language as a guardian of “I” in John Maxwell Coetzee works
Language appears in Coetzee’s works in many forms and variants. The most interesting of them seem gibberish and silence – that stay in opposition, but express a similar idea. We can read them in the post-colonial key (is the most popular one), but I would like to introduce also the universal face of language and refer to both: the question of the experience of another being (mostly human, but in the works of Nobel Prize winner is strongly marked the problem of animals and their world as well) and to experience of self, of creating and finding the own identity. My observations and analysis will be accompanied by one of the most interesting readings of Coetzee's works, which made Derek Attridge in his concept of ‘ethics of reading’. In my speech, I would like to refer to the two Nobel Prize winner’s novel: “In the heart of country” and “Foe”. Gibberish is present in the novel In the Heart of the Country, one of the most difficult works of the author in terms of reception, in a very distinct way. The notion of gibberish in itself is a border category – it always depends on the subjective perspective, meaning some absurdity, the inability to fully understand something. The main character and narrator of the novel is a spinster harmed by her father, immersed in her inner world, afflicted with psychosis (the embodiment of stratified Africa, which, in the face of colonial invasions of its “fathers,” lost the ability to develop naturally and freely). Throughout the whole novel, the woman narrates in a manner that could be called a deformed stream of consciousness, in which the events usually do not have any logical sense, do not develop linearly and are accompanied by perseverations, different variants of the same story. In this novel, Coetzee seems to be testing the reader, showing how difficult access to the world of another person’s feelings is (an important aspect of this relationship is the ethics of reading). The language
used by the protagonist constitutes the border of access because it turns out that even if people speak the same language, the infringement of certain conventions and codes makes linguistic statements gibberish, creates the barrier of strangeness and misunderstanding. The main character may also be interpreted as the personification of Africa, in which the indigenous people were treated as gibberish without identity – something to which one cannot listen, something exceeding the border of understanding and experiencing. Silence, on the other hand, is one of the most important concerns of the novel Foe. The former is a subversive story of Robinson Crusoe, Friday and William Defoe renamed as the mysterious Foe. Friday remains silent and his silence is all the more symptomatic and destructive of the reader’s comfort because the character has been deprived of his tongue – his silence is forced on him by his physiology. Therefore, the lack of the tongue is literal and becomes the testament to the colonial policy of the invaders in relation to the indigenous people; however, it also functions as a symbol. The lack of the tongue means silence, which establishes the distance between Friday and a white woman named Susan (the counterpart of Robinson Crusoe); it builds the border of understanding as well as the compassion that follows. Language in this novel by Coetzee has significant ethical functions: from the story it arises that in spite of all our efforts we are unable to fully and selflessly empathize with someone whose inner world and culture we do not understand and who cannot tell us about it. This person always remains the alien, the Other; language establishes the border of culture and the border of another person’s experience and identity. It is similar with animals, as the Nobel Prize laureate shows in his quasi-novel The Lives of Animals, where the impossibility of translating their emotions and the reality they perceive makes them resemble objects. Here, silence specifies also the border of ethics and epistemology. Without an access to someone’s language, we don’t have such access to someone’s identity as well. In order to conclude my presentation, I will juxtapose the various functions that gibberish and silence fulfill in Coetzee’s works. I will also summarize the relation of silence and gibberish with culture and empathy as well as, finally, consider whether the border created between those variations of language is crossable. References D. Attridge, J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading. Literature in the Event, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago-London 2004. J. M. Coetzee, W sercu kraju, przekł. M. Konikowska, Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2004. J. M. Coetzee, Życie i czasy Michaela K., przekł. M. Konikowska, Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2007. J. Gitzen, The Voice of History In the Novels of J. M. Coetzee, „FALL”, vol. XXXV, nr 1, 1993. J. Koch, Wenus Hotentocka i inne rozprawy o literaturze południowoafrykańskiej, Warszawa 2008 S. Masłoń, Coeztee. Przewodnik krytyki politycznej, Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej, Warszawa 2009. R. M. Post, Opression in the Fiction of J. M. Coetzee, nr 27/2,1986. E. W. Said, Culture and Imperializm, London 1993. H. Siewierski, Po stronie wszelkiego cierpiącego stworzenia, „Znak” nr 12/2007.
Jadwiga Uchman
University of Łódź, Poland
Phatic and rhetoric mode of speech, and “two to one dialogue” situation in Harold Pinter’s Birthday Party
The article discusses Harold Pinter’s Birthday Party from the point of view of phatic and rhetoric mode of speech which can be perceived in the context of Eric Berne’s Games People Play. In this drama, just as in other plays written by this Nobel laureate, the characters play different kinds of language games, the basic ones employing the phatic mode, containing a series of irrelevant questions and seeking to establish contact between the characters, and the rhetorical, the dividing mode, where one of the partners evidently aims at establishing his domination over the other. In this context the paper also discusses the “two to one” dialogue situation, which, according to Herta Schmid, is the characteristic feature of the theatre of the absurd. The aim of the paper is to specify to what extent the use of a concrete mode reflects the mutual relationships of the characters and tensions and threats which quite often, but not always, are hidden under the seemingly polite and even friendly verbal exchanges.
Natalia Wiśniewska
Uniwersytet Warmińsko-Mazurski w Olsztynie, Poland
The European identity of Poles. A linguistic analysis based on Polish media discourse.
The main aim of the research is to find out, whether Poland is considered to be a European state (not only geographically European but also having all of the characteristics of what is considered to be a European state) by Polish journalists. It is common knowledge that media texts influence the society's views and opinions in a very powerful way. The concept of Poland which is created by the Polish media discourse has a great impact on how people perceive their own country. The first stage of the analysis would be devoted to the dictionary definitions (both contemporary and historical) of the adjective 'European' ('europejski') and the noun 'state' ('państwo'). The second stage would be devoted to creating a linguistic corpus based on the usage of the phrase 'European state' in terms of Poland in selected Polish newspapers and weekly newsmagazines. Then, the results of the discourse analysis would be compared to those from the dictionary analysis. The components of the concept of the state in Polish media discourse would be revealed and described. This would allow to describe, whether Poland is considered to be a 'real European state' by Polish journalists.
Halina Zawiszova
Charles University in Prague, Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic
How do close friends talk? A report on findings from the analysis of the Japanese young people’s friendly conversational interactions
The study concerns various linguistic practices and discourse strategies Japanese young people routinely employ in face-to-face and text-based computer-mediated conversational
interactions with their peers for performing and negotiating their identities as those of close friends. The studied patterns thus include not only those, which might be regarded as intrinsically signalising alignment and involvement, but also such behaviour as teasing, cursing, or quarrelling. The subject matter looked into by the present paper forms a part of the author’s larger scale research, which investigates the linguistic practices and discourse strategies used by the Japanese native speakers falling into different contextually defined age categories in their friendly conversational interactions in order to establish, maintain, or manifest such feelings as closeness, unity, solidarity, and intimacy. The research project is theoretically informed primarily by interactional sociolinguistics and (computer-mediated) discourse analysis. The data consist of audio recordings of spontaneous face-to-face conversational interactions of Japanese young people who define themselves as close friends and samples from their text-based computer-mediated conversational interaction threads on social networking sites, further supplemented by follow-up interviews with the speakers.
