Welcome to the seminar Language, Space and Time co-organized by the multidisciplinary research centre Plural and Langnet Spoken Language Studies group.
The 2-day seminar takes place on 27.-28.9.2018 in PinniA / PinniB & Main building (for details, please see the program below).
We are pleased to introduce professor emerita Barbara Johnstone from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, as the keynote of the seminar (on Thursday 12-14, room PinniA, Paavo Koli).
This lecture will also be livestreamed at the following address: https://moniviestin.uta.fi/videot/viestintatieteiden-tiedekunta-coms/kieli-kaannos-ja-kirjallisuustiede/tapahtumat/vierailuluento-barbara-johnstone/27-9.2018
The abstract of the talk is attached in the end of this message.
The seminar is free of charge and open for all. The seminar language is English but multi/flexilingualism allowed.
Please register no later than September 17th, here: https://elomake3.uta.fi/lomakkeet/21953/lomake.html
Mikäli aiot osallistua ainoastaan Johnstonen luennolle, seminaariin ei tarvitse ilmoittautua. Lisämateriaalia kuitenkin tulossa ilmoittautuneille seminaaria edeltävällä viikolla.
Please note, that if you will only attend the keynote, you do not need to register for the seminar. However, there is some further material forthcoming for the registered participants before the event.
Ohjelma/ Programme:
Torstai / Thursday 27.9.2018
Sali / Room: PinniA, Paavo Koli
12.15-13.45 Seminaarin avaus / Opening of the seminar
Keynote: Barbara Johnstone: Chronotopes of Dialect Style
Sali / Room: PinniB 4113
13.45-14.30 Kahvi /Coffee
Alustukset ja keskustelut / Papers and discussion sessions:
14.30-15.15 Jani Vuolteenaho (University of Turku), Hanna Lappalainen and Terhi Ainiala (University of Helsinki):
“How can you move to that terrible slum?” Dialogic entanglements of ideological-discursive spatialisations and unofficial toponyms in (re-)voicing place-bound urban identities
15.15-16.00 Minna Nevala (Plural, University of Tampere): Social representation of criminals in public discourse: A diachronic view
16.00-16.45 Mia Halonen (University of Jyväskylä) & Johanna Vaattovaara (Plural, University of Tampere): Helsinki /s/ – real and imagined
16.45-17.00 Loppukeskustelu / Concluding discussion
Langnetin aineisto- ja tekstiseminaari / The Langnet data & text workshop
Sali / Room A08 (Main building)
9.30-10.30 Zsuzsa Mathe (University of Oulu): Language and Time Within the Cognitive Metaphor Theory
10.30-11.30 Mikko Mäntyniemi (University of Tampere): Time and Time Again: Folded Temporalities in Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Narratives
11.30-12.30 Lounas / lunch
12.30-13.30 Heidi Niemelä (University of Oulu): Language ideologies in the drawings of ‘Finnish language’
13.30-14.30 Valtteri Skantsi (University of Oulu): The regional division of modern spoken Finnish on the grounds of a dialect map application
14.30-15 Kahvi ja loppukeskustelu / Coffee & closing discussion
*****
Abstract
Barbara Johnstone: Chronotopes of Dialect Style
To the extent that they are heard as regional at all, regional ways of speaking index places. But they rarely index place alone. Using or stylizing a regional way of speaking may call up what literary theorist Mikhael Bakhtin called a “chronotope.” Davidson (2007), quoting Bakhtin, defines a chronotope as “an ‘intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships’ that is ‘always colored by emotions and values’ (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 83 and p. 243).” This is to say that a language or dialect can index a conceptual world located in time as well as in space, with associated sets of characters related to each other in particular ways. For example, when Americans hear a posh British accent, we may think not just of England, but of the England of of the BBC television program “Downton Abbey,” the England of the late 19th and early 20th centuries when people who spoke that way lived in manor houses in the countryside and had armies of servants.
In this paper, I describe how Pittsburghese, the regional dialect of southewestern Pennsylvania as it is imagined by local people, has been associated over time with four different chronotopes: the “golden age” (working-class Pittsburgh in the 1950s and 60s), the “timeless local” (“authentic” Pittsburgh, temporally located in the present but with the values and habits of the past), and the “contemporary other” (the post-industrial working class, located at the margins of the “real” Pittsburgh of today), and the “new Yinzer” (the world of contemporary hipsters, not necessarily native to Pittsburgh, who live in gentrified neighborhoods and consume Pittsburghese as a display of insiderness). I show how these complexes of time, place, characterological figure, and value have shaped how Pittsburghese is represented in a variety of media. More generally, I suggest that the idea of the chronotope may be useful to people interested in the relationships between language, time, and place elsewhere.