Where are you heading, boys and girls?

Research output: Contribution to conferenceConference abstract for conferenceResearchpeer-review

  • Astrid Ravn Skovse
This study examines the intricate relationship between everyday mobility, place, linguistic practice, and gender among adolescents in two very different Danish settings: a rural, mono-ethnic village, Bylderup, and an urban, poly-ethnic residential area, Vollsmose.
In a globalized world, differences in mobility practice matter substantially in reference to e.g. educational opportunities and career prospects. Young Danes differ with regard to their degree of geographical and socio-economical mobility as more women than men move to the cities to study after graduating from high school.
However, it is still unclear if such a difference in mobility practice shows as early as in primary school. It is not thoroughly examined how gender aspects interact with the ways adolescents make use of, conceptualise and relate to their local place and to how they linguistically index the local (Johnstone 2010b). And how do place-specific characteristics such as local history, physical layout, and demography come into play in this connection?
The study looks into this matter empirically via data obtained through participant observation, sociolinguistic interviews, mapping methods, questionnaires, and peer group recordings.
Results are expected to show that adolescents in both localities use linguistic features from different scale-levels (Blommaert 2010) in order to signal attachment to/dissociation from the local place. It is also expected that a high degree of attachment to the local place as well as a larger use of local linguistic features are connected to ‘displays of masculinity’ more so than to ‘displays of femininity’.

References:
Blommaert, Jan (2010). The Sociolinguistics of Globalization Cambridge University Press
Johnstone, B. (2010b). Indexing the Local. Handbook of Language and Globalization N. Coupland. Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell
Original languageEnglish
Publication date16 Oct 2015
Number of pages1
Publication statusPublished - 16 Oct 2015
EventWhere Geography meets Language: Interdisciplinary conference studying the transcultural dynamics of contemporary urban spaces from the combined perspective of linguistics and cultural geography - University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Duration: 17 Oct 201518 Oct 2015

Conference

ConferenceWhere Geography meets Language
LocationUniversity of Bern
CountrySwitzerland
CityBern
Period17/10/201518/10/2015

ID: 156583218