- Home
- e-Journals
- Language, Culture and Society
- Previous Issues
- Volume 5, Issue 1, 2023
Language, Culture and Society - Volume 5, Issue 1, 2023
Volume 5, Issue 1, 2023
-
Granola Nazis and the great reset
Author(s): Catherine Tebaldipp.: 9–42 (34)More LessAbstractThis paper analyzes the naturalization of Nazism, through semiotic processes of enregisterment, circulation, and regimentation of the register “nature-tradition” associated with a characterological figure I term the Granola Nazi. Granola Nazi is assembled through a rhematized set of semiotic elements, images, practices and forms of talk, which have come to indicate socially typified personae – strong virile white farmers, traditional earthy homesteading moms – and the moral order they embody. Using linguistic anthropological and digital methods, this analysis draws on 885 Instagram accounts as well as linked data from YouTube and print media (i.e. cookbooks, diet advice), to explore how the worlds of far right neo-folkish movement intersect with discourses of health and wellness, creating moralized discourses of “natural beauty” and “folk vitality” which naturalize far- right racial hierarchies. This is at once a co-option of discourses of health and environment, but also one which reveals the how the naturalization of Nazism is made possible by racism and sexism in long present in liberal talk about nature, beauty or wellness.
-
Negotiating identities in stories of anti-Chinese racism during the COVID-19 pandemic
Author(s): Anastasia Stavridou, Haiyan Huang, Kim Schoofs, Stephanie Schnurr and Dorien Van De Mierooppp.: 43–72 (30)More LessAbstractSince the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, there has been an upsurge of anti-Chinese racism. This paper investigates the socio-pragmatic processes through which Chinese international students in Belgium discursively deal with othering processes in the stories they tell about racist incidents during semi-structured research interviews. These processes are closely linked to various identities which are sometimes projected upon them and often take the form of the Standardised Relational Pair of victim and perpetrator. Our analysis illustrates the complexities of these multi-directional othering processes which span a continuum from merely acknowledging to challenging and rejecting. Findings not only contribute to current conceptualisations of othering, but also give a voice to those who are othered and demonstrate that they can be powerful agents who may find ways of speaking up and re-claiming agency rather than silently accepting the victim identities that are often assigned to them.
-
Researching ideologies
Author(s): Mojtaba Soleimani Karizmeh and Naseh Nasrollahi Shahripp.: 73–93 (21)More LessAbstractPrevious critical studies of language textbook analysis have explored politics of content selection in textbooks, examining the way selection of certain materials instead of others or the interaction between various multimodal contents selected for textbooks reinforces certain ideological meanings at the expense of certain others. The current study views language textbooks through lenses of politics of content creation, analyzing such politics in a series of English as a Foreign Language textbooks produced by Iranian Ministry of Education. Using a theoretical framework that draws on theories of language ideology and social semiotic theories of multimodality, the study explores the way ideological meanings are simultaneously created at different orders of language and the way such created meanings multimodally shape different contents of the textbooks, such as lessons and learning activities. The study contributes to the filed of critical language textbook analysis by uncovering the relation between power and ideologies within the generic structure of language textbooks.
-
Boundaries of belonging
Author(s): Natalia Ganuza and Maria Rydellpp.: 94–120 (27)More LessAbstractThis article uses contemporary Swedish fiction to explore sociolinguistic phenomena, and argues that literature constitutes an important arena for studying the (re)production and circulation of sociolinguistic experiences and ideas at a particular time and place. It builds on qualitative analysis of 65 Swedish books, published between 2000 and 2020, which depict protagonists with multilingual and migrant backgrounds. The study examines patterns of repetition in these works of fiction. It foregrounds recurring sociolinguistic experiences that are made relevant in the depiction of the fictional characters’ lives, and how they are emotionally interpreted. The analysis shows that the narrated experiences are often told and organized in similar ways and they tend to use the same social images of speakers to highlight processes of boundary-making and social differentiation. Language is used as an important part of the entextualization of these social experiences. For example, the authors often depict “the immigrant” and “the Swede” as binary opposites, which are linked to certain typical forms of speaking and being. By way of repetition, we argue, these recurring fictional experiences contribute to the formation of a grander narrative about language, belonging and social boundary-making in contemporary Sweden, and to the construction of Sweden as a society that is increasingly segregated and stratified.
-
Lived experiences of coloniality in third space
Author(s): Bernardino Tavares and Aleida Vieirapp.: 121–155 (35)More LessAbstractThis paper discusses the interactions of the so-called lusophone migrants in ‘third space’ (Bhabha, 1994) i.e., outside the Portuguese geographical colonial matrix. Part of a larger project interested in studying whether new solidarities or old hierarchies replay when all lusophones meet and struggle in a new context, the paper examines traces of what Mignolo (2005) has termed of ‘coloniality of being’ i.e., everyday remnants of colonial modes and hierarchies. It draws from postcolonial theory and sociolinguistic ethnography to examine how coloniality perdures in intersubjective relations among lusophones, by exploring the narrative of two Cape Verdean retirees who (re)migrated to Luxembourg in 1971 and 1981. The paper uses narrative analysis to examine how they report coloniality in lusophone interactions being challenged or perpetuated at workplaces and social encounters, via stereotyping jokes, naming, and language use. It fosters a critical understanding of lusophone subjects’ interactions, marked by language and their colonial history, beyond Portuguese-speaking states.
Most Read This Month

-
-
Ch’ixinakax utxiwa
Author(s): Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui
-
-
-
Debating translanguaging
Author(s): Juan Eduardo Bonnin and Virginia Unamuno
-
-
-
No-go zones in Sweden
Author(s): Tommaso M. Milani
-
-
-
Language and (in)hospitality
Author(s): Cécile B. Vigouroux
-
- More Less