In this study we address ethnolinguistic identity using Bakhtin's (1981) notion of chronotope. Taking an ethnographic approach to linguistic data from Azerbaijani and Uzbek communities, we trace the impact of various chronotopes on our participants’ acts of ethnolinguistic identification. Building on Blommaert & De Fina (2017), we illustrate how ethnolinguistic identification is an outcome of the interaction between multiple levels of large- and small-scale chronotopes. Furthermore, we argue that chronotopes differ in terms of their power, depending on the ideological force behind them. We demonstrate how power differentials between chronotopes can account for certain interactional and linguistic patterns in conversation. The power inherent in chronotopes that link nationhood with specific languages makes the notions of discrete languages and static identities ‘real’ for our participants. Therefore, discussions of language and identity as flexible and socially constructed, we argue, must not obscure the power of these notions in shaping the perceptions of sociolinguistic subjects. (Chronotope, ethnolinguistic identity, power, Uzbek, Azeri/Azerbaijani, nationalism, language mixing, language ideology)*
I address how U.S.‐based Iranian transnationals’ migration paths affect their (re)‐construction of chronotopes of the ideal life. Adopting an ethnographically grounded, discourse‐analytic approach, I illustrate how participants with student visas and U.S. Green Cards position themselves differently relative to images of success here [in the U.S.] and lack of success there [in Iran]. I argue that the chronotopes of success here and lack of success there (re)‐constructed by non‐resident Iranian students are prompted by a large‐scale cultural chronotope which pertains to their aspiration to stay in the U.S. This chronotope of ‘life beyond’ is less about a ‘remove from homeland’ and more about an ideal future in the host country. Migrants’ desires and anxieties, I argue, can determine what receives topical prominence in migration chronotopes – as in the case of Iranian educational migrants whose future positionings make temporality topically more prominent than spatiality.
In this article, I argue for a chronotopic-scalar system of images and resolutions in the analysis of language use in general and multilingual practices in particular. Drawing on data from Iranian Azerbaijanis, I argue that availability and accessibility of linguistic/semiotic resources, and their categorizations as languages or language varieties, are constrained by participants’ chronotopization histories. That is, the scaled images participants develop through socialization about different time–space frames and the peoples, relations, discourses, and resources therein guide their language use both from and about particular contexts. I discuss the utility of spatiotemporal understandings of repertoires of resources and normalcies in capturing the variability, dynamicity, and complexity of semiotic practices and also in addressing the controversies among scholars regarding the ‘realness’ of languages and hybridity of multilingual practices. Through decentralizing language(s) and foregrounding context(s) and contextualization, I argue, the chronotope enables us to analyze not only social actors’ hybrid utilization of semiotic resources in meaning-making processes, but also their language ideologies and language-ideological practices, which rely heavily on the perceptions of languages as discrete systems.
This paper focuses on how information accessed through new media is discursively represented by migrants. Taking an ethnographic approach to the analysis of Uzbek and Iranian migration discourse, we show how the underspecified and decontextualized information received via technology is combined with the “imagined homeland” in order to reconstruct images of life there‐and‐now. Since images of the homeland are chronotopic in nature, we argue that the reconstruction of these images can be understood as rechronotopization. The rechronotopized image, then, operates as a lens through which migrants socially position themselves relative to the homeland. More specifically, we show how the conflict between prior images and rechronotopized images are invoked to construct difference and discuss disconnection. Thus, while technology facilitates connection, we argue that because it reminds migrants of how things have changed since they left, it may also lead to feelings of disconnection.
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