Belonging through Languagecultural Practices in the Periphery

Abstract

In this article, we will present two case studies of language and cultural practices that are part of or strongly related to carnival, in the Dutch peripheral province of Limburg, and more precisely in the southern Limburgian city of Heerlen, which in turn is considered peripheral vis-à-vis the provincial capital Maastricht. We will consider carnival as a political force field in which opposing language and cultural practices are involved in the production of belonging as an official, public-oriented 'formal structure' of membership, and belonging as a personal, intimate feeling of being 'at home' in a place (placebelongingness) (Antonsich 2010;Yuval-Davis 2006). In the case studies presented here, we take seriously the idea that ideology, linguistic form and the situated use of language are dialectically related (Silverstein 1985). In doing so, we wish to transcend disciplinary boundaries between anthropology and (socio)linguistics in Europe.

Locating place in variationist sociolinguistics: Making the case for ethnographically informed multidimensional place orientation metrics

“…Sociolinguistics has arguably seen a "place turn" in recent years (Montgomery & Moore, 2017;Cornips & de Rooij, 2018), driven initially by Barbara Johnstone's work on Pittsburghese (e.g., Johnstone, 2004;Johnstone, Andrus & Danielson, 2006), which has captured the ways that class-based linguistic variables in the city of Pittsburgh have come to index place identity over time. Though much sociolinguistic research on place is discursive in nature (e.g., Modan, 2007;Ilbury, 2021), there is evidence that variationist research can benefit from further theorization about place as well.…”

Urban Youth Style or Emergent Urban Vernacular? The Rise of Namibia's Kasietaal

“…These functions are manifested by manipulative strategies at the lexical, morphological, and semantic levels, which-in the case of ethnolinguistically diverse settings-feed on fluid "translanguaging" practices, including "crossing" into other ethnolinguistic identities (Beyer 2015;Rampton 2017). Some of these practices may become enregistered as part of multimodal styles-indexically tied to young male members of marginalised multicultural CoPs-whose deployment reflects place-making strategies, that is, the appropriation of exclusive social spaces (Hollington and Nassenstein 2015; see further Cornips and De Rooij 2018). Although the linguistic component of these styles may undergo continuous recomposition to keep performing concealing functions, such as among gang subcultures, there is European evidence that some youth language practices with originally anti-linguistic functions have become part of "vernacularised," restructured varieties, as has notably been shown with Multicultural London English and Kiezdeutsch (Cheshire et al 2013;Wiese 2009).…”

Ethnic labeling among pupils with migration backgrounds

“…Interpretation of this short interaction requires an analysis of the connotations of the polonaise and of 'foreigners' in this specific context. Hatice (who commonly labeled herself Turk or buitenlander) comments that 'all the buitenlanders' (thereby including herself ) did the polonaise: a kind of conga line that can be perceived as 'typically Dutch' , and in this local context also has connotations of Carnival celebrations and may index a regionalized identity (Cornips & De Rooij, 2015 styles or behaviors that they considered typically 'Dutch' or 'Limburgish' . Possibly, Hatice found it worthy of recounting that buitenlanders did a dance seen as typically Dutch or Limburgish because to her this was categorically incongruent and therefore humorous.…”