Why diachronicity matters in the study of linguistic landscapes

It is commonly argued that the proliferation of urban writing known as linguistic landscapes represents “a thoroughly contemporary global trend” (Coupland, 2010: 78). The purpose of this paper is to show that linguistic landscapes are by no means modern phenomena and to draw on our shared interest in multilingual empires to highlight the importance of diachronic inquiry and productive dialog between sociolinguists of modern and ancient societies. We will argue that while signs do operate in aggregate, the common focus on all signs at a single point in time on one street is problematic because the interpretation of signs is diachronic in nature, intrinsically linked to the preceding signs in the same environment and to related signs elsewhere, and the process of reading “back from signs to practices to people” (Blommaert, 2013: 51) is not as unproblematic as it is sometimes made to look

Discovery of Negative Superhumps during a Superoutburst of January 2011 in ER Ursae Majoris

We report on a discovery of "negative" superhumps during the 2011 January superoutburst of ER UMa. During the superoutburst which started on 2011 January 16, we detected negative superhumps having a period of 0.062242(9) d, shorter than the orbital period by 2.2%. No evidence of positive superhumps was detected during this observation. This finding indicates that the disk exhibited retrograde precession during this superoutburst, contrary to all other known cases of superoutbursts. The duration of this superoutburst was shorter than those of ordinary superoutbursts and the intervals of normal outbursts were longer than ordinary ones. We suggest a possibility that such unusual outburst properties are likely a result of the disk tilt, which is supposed to be a cause of negative superhumps: the tilted disk could prevent the disk from being filled with materials in the outmost region which is supposed to be responsible for long-duration superoutbursts in ER UMa-type dwarf novae. The discovery signifies the importance of the classical prograde precession in sustaining long-duration superoutbursts. Furthermore, the presence of pronounced negative superhumps in this system with a high mass-transfer rate favors the hypothesis that hydrodynamical lift is the cause of the disk tilt.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, Accepted for publication in PASJ Lette

MN Dra - In-the-Gap Dwarf Nova With Negative Superhumps

The multi-site photometric observations of MN Dra were made over 77 nights in August-November, 2009. The total exposure was 433 hours. During this time the binary underwent two superoutbursts and five normal outbursts. During the course of first superoutburst period of positive superhumps decreased with extremely large $\dot P = -1.5 \times 1.0^{-4}$ for SU UMa-like dwarf novae, confirming known behavior of MN Dra [1]. Between the superoutbursts MN Dra displayed negative superhumps. Their period changed cyclically around 0.096-day value.Comment: 17TH European White Dwarf Workshop. AIP Conference Proceedings, Volume 1273, pp. 320-323 (2010