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Chapter 2. The boundaries of belonging

A commentary
  • Jürgen Jaspers
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The Sociolinguistics of Place and Belonging
This chapter is in the book The Sociolinguistics of Place and Belonging

Abstract

The chapters in this section form a fascinating combination in describing how quite different types of speakers negotiate a radical uprooting of their self-understanding, sense of place, and belonging. From the Bosavi villagers struggling to redefine themselves in the face of religious colonization in Bambi Schieffelin’s chapter, to the elderly miners still honoring their local speech style long after the forces of deindustrialization atrophied their community in the chapter by Peter Auer and Leonie Cornips, to the isolated Japanese expatriate wives who are trying to (re)create some kind of connectedness in Anna Banaś’ chapter, in each of these analyses we see speakers maintaining ways of belonging in the face of serious adversity. Below I will first explain that ideas of language, place and belonging are strongly influenced by discourses of modernity, and that sociolinguists have been trying to go beyond the legacy of this master narrative, before addressing the linguistic ways in which the speakers discussed in these chapters set out to construct a sense of place, group, and belonging.

Abstract

The chapters in this section form a fascinating combination in describing how quite different types of speakers negotiate a radical uprooting of their self-understanding, sense of place, and belonging. From the Bosavi villagers struggling to redefine themselves in the face of religious colonization in Bambi Schieffelin’s chapter, to the elderly miners still honoring their local speech style long after the forces of deindustrialization atrophied their community in the chapter by Peter Auer and Leonie Cornips, to the isolated Japanese expatriate wives who are trying to (re)create some kind of connectedness in Anna Banaś’ chapter, in each of these analyses we see speakers maintaining ways of belonging in the face of serious adversity. Below I will first explain that ideas of language, place and belonging are strongly influenced by discourses of modernity, and that sociolinguists have been trying to go beyond the legacy of this master narrative, before addressing the linguistic ways in which the speakers discussed in these chapters set out to construct a sense of place, group, and belonging.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Chapter 1. Introduction 1
  4. Part I. Interpersonal relations, place, and belonging
  5. Chapter 2. The boundaries of belonging 17
  6. Chapter 3. Language socialization and making sense of place 27
  7. Chapter 4. Cité Duits 55
  8. Chapter 5. Us, them and all the others 89
  9. Part II. Parodic performances from the margins
  10. Chapter 6. Playing against peripheralization 115
  11. Chapter 7. The politics of place-making and belonging through language choice within center-periphery dynamics in Limburg, The Netherlands 125
  12. Chapter 8. Peripheral performances 149
  13. Chapter 9. What’s up in town 177
  14. Part III. Agency in linguistic place-making
  15. Chapter 10. Language, place, agency 207
  16. Chapter 11. Place-making and dialect 213
  17. Chapter 12. Alternative place naming in the diverse margins of an ideologically mono-lingual society 239
  18. Chapter 13. Yooperisms in tourism 261
  19. Subject index 287
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.45.02jas

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Chapter 1. Introduction 1
  4. Part I. Interpersonal relations, place, and belonging
  5. Chapter 2. The boundaries of belonging 17
  6. Chapter 3. Language socialization and making sense of place 27
  7. Chapter 4. Cité Duits 55
  8. Chapter 5. Us, them and all the others 89
  9. Part II. Parodic performances from the margins
  10. Chapter 6. Playing against peripheralization 115
  11. Chapter 7. The politics of place-making and belonging through language choice within center-periphery dynamics in Limburg, The Netherlands 125
  12. Chapter 8. Peripheral performances 149
  13. Chapter 9. What’s up in town 177
  14. Part III. Agency in linguistic place-making
  15. Chapter 10. Language, place, agency 207
  16. Chapter 11. Place-making and dialect 213
  17. Chapter 12. Alternative place naming in the diverse margins of an ideologically mono-lingual society 239
  18. Chapter 13. Yooperisms in tourism 261
  19. Subject index 287
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