Newfies, Cajuns, Hillbillies, and Yoopers: Gendered Media Representations of Authentic Locals

This paper investigates how popular media representations of Newfies, Cajuns,Yoopers, and Hillbillies maintain gender-based language stereotypes. The authenticity of these locals is in part due to their language use; they are also the "best" speakers of the local variety. In addition, the stereotypes include the notion that the "best speaker" and the "authentic local" are male, and that the standard speaker and non-local is female, or males who do not fit traditional notions of masculinity

Identity, Language Practices and Ideologies among Nepali-Bhutanese in West Michigan

The languages that we use are a result of our identities and the social contexts and related roles in which we participate. The language practices of one small community of ethnic Nepali-Bhutanese who were revoked citizenship in Bhutan, expelled into refugee camps in Nepal for nearly twenty years, and who now reside in Grand Haven, Michigan were of interest here. Identity, Language Practices and Ideologies among Nepali-Bhutanese in West Michigan builds on previous research that examines the relationship between language choice and socio-cultural factors such gender, age, language proficiency, education, citizenship, and context among multi-lingual speakers (Baquedano-López 2009, Booth 2009, Grimley 2001, Kachru et al 2009, Meinhof & Galasinski 2005, Fillmore 2000). In the current study we examined the linguistic means by which Nepali-Bhutanese negotiate American English speaking culture while simultaneously retaining their Nepali-Bhutanese languages and culture. Data included recorded ethnographic interviews, participant observation, and written texts such as email, Facebook wall posts, and essays, and were organized on axes of grammatical indicators of identity, language loss, language perception and cultural identity formation through language. A potential benefit of this study is to aid ESL (English as a Second Language) tutors and teachers, social workers and the wider community of West Michigan in better serving, assimilating and welcoming this growing population. In addition, the results of the project may help trained educators, volunteers, and the Nepali-Bhutanese better understand language practices and their effects on identity, cultural assimilation and accommodation, as well as the teaching and learning of ESL

Jobs are Going Overseas: The Discursive Construction of Outsourcing

In this article we examine the discourse of outsourcing and globalization in India and the US as represented in global popular media; and show that it is rooted in a given range of ideological positions—revealed by identifying key arguments, vocabulary and linguistic structure of the texts. Ideological material, we argue, is enacted in the discursive structures of the text; and that the role of the state is discursively constructed through those positions

Displays of Authenticity in The Finnish American Nesting Place

The objectification of language is central to displays of Finnish American identity in Michigans Keweenaw Peninsula, advertised as the Finnish American nesting place and pivotal center for Finnish American culture. Individuals rely on discursive, metadiscursive, and multimodal practices to claim Finnishness. The significance of language in defining \u27Finnish American\u27 and locating it in the Keweenaw is evident in souvenirs, naming practices, and in particular, in advertisements, websites, events, and activities at folk festivals. Meanings associated with these practices are reinforced and legitimized through historical records, census maps, traditional folkways, the use of Finnish, and references to historical Finnish texts and folklore. Individuals from outside the region and who do not claim Finnish American identities, recognize this speech community, where it is located, and what it means to be \u27Finnish American\u27 through linguistic and metalinguistic awareness, particularly enregistered features such as yah and the shibboleth sauna [saŠnY]. While enregisterment and related levels of indexicality are key in both the performance and recognition of these symbolic social and linguistic practices (Beal 2009; Johnstone 2010; Purnell, Raimy, & Salmons 2009), historical processes also link Finnish American identity, language use, and the Keweenaw, for it is historicity that legitimates these connections (Milroy 2002). Thus, historical, discursive, and ideological processes contribute to the creation of this speech community, one defined by the idea of an authentic ethnic identity and located in language specific to a place. References Beal, Joan. 2009. Enregisterment, commodification, and historical context: Geordie versus Sheffieldish. American Speech, 84 (2): 138-156. Johnstone, Barbara. 2010. Locating language in identity. In Carmen Llamas and Dominic Watt, eds., Language and identitites, pp. 29-38. Edinborough: Edinborough University Press. Milory, James. 2002. The legitimate language: Giving a history to English. In Richart Watts & Peter Trudgill (eds.), Alternative Histories of English, pp. 7-25. Routledge: New York. Purnell, Thomas, Eric Raimy, and Joseph Salmons. 2009. Sarah Palins speech and Upper Midwestern English. Journal of English Linguistics 37: 331-355

Reproduction, Resistance and Gender in Educational Discourse: The Role of Critical Discourse Analysis

Classrooms provide lessons not only in subject content but also in socially approved forms of academic discourse. Moreover, they may function to reproduce normative social values, attitudes and beliefs. This paper focuses on the reproduction of and resistance to traditional gender roles in the classroom discourse of university students. By some measures (turn and word counts), women appear to have achieved an equal access to the public floor in these academic exchanges, yet a closer examination of the content and contexts of their discourse reveals complex struggles for control of the conversational floor. Women\u27s control may be contested by task-divergent behaviors (such as derisive asides) that uphold the status quo in which men control public space, yet women may also enact divergent but essentially task-continuative behaviors that contest prevailing, restrictive norms by restructuring discourse to exercise other choices. Critical discourse analysts may play an important role in challenging the passive reproduction of repressive practices, by analyzing and promoting the liberatory discourse choices that arise from non-elites who resist the status quo in their conversation

A Tour of the UP\u27s Linguistic Landscape

The presentation will analyze the linguistic landscape of the UP to investigate the role of tourism in defining the dialect what it means to sound like a Yooper and in shaping perceptions of the dialect. An examination of language in public spaces from tourist brochures, to t-shirts, web sites, and bumper stickers provides visible evidence of how marketing the UP as a tourist destination is tied to a positive value of the dialect

What's left when a language recedes? Belonging and place-making in the linguistic landscape of Hancock, Michigan

Our study examines how meanings related to Finnishness are reflected in the linguistic landscape of Hancock, Michigan, a small town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Centering on Benedict Anderson’s (1983/2003) concept, imagined communities, we investigate how discursive strategies in public spaces index belonging and place-making. The social correlates that underpin this reimagining affect ways of understanding larger sociocultural meanings about identity, place, and language use (Cornips & de Rooij 2015; Blommaert 2013; Bucholtz & Hall 2004; Leeman & Modan 2009). We aim to answer three questions: 1) how is Finnishness discursively indexed in Hancock’s linguistic landscape?; 2) how are meanings represented as recognizable and valued?; and 3) what are the ideological effects of the discursive practices and related meanings? Our analysis demonstrates that both linguistic and metalinguistic practices are abundant in Hancock. The ideological effects of Finnishness in the landscape reinforce values of Finnish identity and language, while simultaneously erasing (Gal & Irvine 2000) languages and identities of other residents, past and present. The collective discursive practices function ideologically to affect belonging and place-making

Yoopers, Trolls, and Detroiters: The Perceptual Dialectology of Michigan

Perceptual dialectology finds that non-linguists determine dialect boundaries by linguistic features (e.g., Mase 1964; Lance 1999; Benson 2003; Evans 2012), along political and civil boundaries (e.g., Sibata 1959; Preston 1986; Inoue 1996; Lance 1999), and according to cultural differences (Preston 2002). Most importantly, these perceptions directly correspond to attitudes about groups of speakers (e.g. Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner & Fillenbaum 1960; Giles 1970; Giles & Ryan 1982; Niedzielski & Preston 2003). This study investigates how Michigan residents divide their state into dialect regions and groups of speakers. Perceptions such as these within one state can reveal local social categories, including urban/rural distinctions or the belief in the absence of dialect in a specific area or among certain groups of speakers. A focus on Michigan is particularly significant because unlike most states, it has two distinct regions, so distinct that residents separate the two areas physically, socially, and linguistically. This study contributes to perceptual dialectology studies of individual states (Benson 2003; Bucholtz et al. 2007; Evans 2012) and to research on Michigan dialects (e.g. Simon 2005; Remlinger 2006, 2007a & b, 2009; Remlinger, Salmons, & von Schniedemesser 2009). Methods include those established by Preston (e.g., 1986, 1993a, 1993b, 1996a, 1996b), Benson (2003), and Bucholtz et al (2007): an outline map, survey questions, a degree-of-difference task, and Likert scales. Analysis relies on a language ideology framework (e.g. Lippi-Green 1997; Irvine & Gal 2000; Silverstein 2003), which explains how attitudes and resulting prejudices reside within the articulation of specific linguistic features and social characteristics