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Chapter 9. What’s up in town

Place-making through the use of dialect in a Facebook chronicle of Leskovac (Southeast Serbia)
  • Tanja Petrović
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The Sociolinguistics of Place and Belonging
This chapter is in the book The Sociolinguistics of Place and Belonging

Abstract

This chapter discusses linguistic strategies employed by the author of the Facebook page Koe ima po grad (What’s up in the town), who in his posts discusses various events and issues from local urban life of Leskovac, a city in Southeastern Serbia. Combining dialect with recognizable genres and discourses, he makes local idiom appropriate for use in diverse realms of communication, as well as an effective medium for place-making. Leskovac depicted in the Koe ima po grad texts is the place marked by deindustrialization, impoverishment, and the dysfunctional administration. Its citizens use dialect to critically and self-ironically relate to this reality. At the same time, they love their city and the local, real, and symbolic geographies that define it, and enjoy the sociality based on the use of local dialect.

Abstract

This chapter discusses linguistic strategies employed by the author of the Facebook page Koe ima po grad (What’s up in the town), who in his posts discusses various events and issues from local urban life of Leskovac, a city in Southeastern Serbia. Combining dialect with recognizable genres and discourses, he makes local idiom appropriate for use in diverse realms of communication, as well as an effective medium for place-making. Leskovac depicted in the Koe ima po grad texts is the place marked by deindustrialization, impoverishment, and the dysfunctional administration. Its citizens use dialect to critically and self-ironically relate to this reality. At the same time, they love their city and the local, real, and symbolic geographies that define it, and enjoy the sociality based on the use of local dialect.

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.45.09pet

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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