Search results for "Indexicality"

Odysseus the traveler: Appropriation of a chronotope in a community of practice

2020

Abstract In this article we analyze the role of chronotopes in the formation and negotiation of identities. In particular, we consider the case of a superdiverse community of practice formed by minors asylum seekers and teachers in a school of Italian in Sicily, Italy. In our analysis we stress the role of reciprocity on the ways in which the chronotopic figure of Odysseus is reinterpreted and appropriated by members of this community. We look at how through a process of mutual engagement the indexical values associated with the figure of Odysseus are recontextualized by both teachers and students in light of their present experiences. Data for the article come from interviews, narratives a…

Playing with accents

2020

While certain ways of speaking or varieties of English – such as American English or British English – evoke associations of modernity, higher education and urbanity in Uganda, others – such as Ugandan English with strong northern or western accents – stand for backwardness, social strata remote from education and ‘village identities’. Yet concepts of backwardness or modernity are not only based on linguistic criteria but also associated with a specific worldview, contributing to complex signs of higher-order indexicality. In contrast, speakers’ practices of enregisterment reveal how fluid and contextual these indices of urbanity and rurality actually are. Considering diverse repertoires of…

Towards understanding nonmanuality : A semiotic treatment of signers’ head movements

2019

This article discusses a certain type of nonmanual action, signers’ head movements, from a semiotic perspective. It presents a typology of head movements and their iconic, indexical and symbolic features based on Peircean and post-Peircean semiotics. The paper argues for the view that (i) indexical strategies are very prominent in head movements, (ii) iconic features are most evident in enacting, while non-enacting description is less common, (iii) symbolic types for tokens are infrequent, although some movements—such as nodding and shaking the head—may become more conventional or schematized, and (iv) different types of head movements involve different proportions of iconicity, indexicalit…

Tracing the indexicalization of the notion "Helsinki s"

2017

AbstractEarlier research has concluded that there is a strong symbolic relationship between Helsinki as a place and non-standard /s/ pronunciation. This phenomenon is likewise in continuous evidence in the Finnish media and social media. The notion of “Helsinki s” has become a folk linguistic fact although it lacks a clear linguistic correlate or even status as a linguistic fact. The only sibilant of the Finnish language is officially a voiceless alveolar, while the “Helsinki s” is most often discussed as “hissing”, “sharp” or “fronted”. However, according to recent research based on listening tasks, any /s/ may be designated and discussed as a “Helsinki s” if the speaker is regarded as a H…

"Isn't it enough to be a Chinese speaker" : language ideology and migrant identity construction in a public primary school in Beijing

2007

Models and Phenomena: Bas van Fraassen’s Empiricist Structuralism

2013

Bas van Fraassen’s recent endorsement of empiricist structuralism is based on a particular approach to representation. He sharply distinguishes between what makes a scientific model M a successful representation of its target T from what makes M a representation of T and not of some other different target T’. van Fraassen maintains that embedment (i.e.: a particular sort of isomorphism which relates structures) gives the answer to the first question while the user’s decision to employ model M to represent T accounts for the representational link. After discussing the rationale for this approach, I defend that indexical constraints like those favoured by van Fraassen cannot be the last word …

Dog blogs as ventriloquism: Authentication of the human voice

2015

This paper looks at personal blogging by dog owners in an international, English language blogsite in which dog owners from around the world report and reflect upon their dogs and their lives with dogs, and do so by using the dog׳s voice. It approaches dog blogs as an example of the strategic use of pervasive but contentious anthropomorphic western discourses about animals and discusses how dog bloggers use anthropomorphism as a discursive means for crafting and collectively ratifying authenticity in a translocal, interest-driven and informal social media context in which traditional territorial and demographic parameters of authenticity are not easily available or relevant. More specifical…

Presenting “pissis girls”: Categorisation in a social media video

2015

In Finland, a social category called “pissis girls” has evolved into a cultural concept, used widely in various discourses concerning young women. In the paper, the empirical focus is on how, in the context of a viral video disseminated in social media, a group of young girls are presented as representatives of this category. The video, called ÄM IRK, is a short edited clip of an emergent interaction between young men and girls meeting by chance in a park. Drawing on the notions of membership categorisation, cluster of indexes and indexical field, “enoughness” and authentication, the paper investigates how the edited video, through the means of de- and recontextualisation of the emergent in…

The shared image guiding the treatment process. A precondition for integration of the treatment of schizophrenia.

1994

The aim of the study reported here was to develop psychotherapeutic in-patient treatment for acute schizophrenia, following the principles of a need-adapted approach. To improve the integration of experiences which hospital staff have with acutely psychotic patients and their families, systematic supervision sessions were organised. In these sessions, it was possible to achieve shared psychological images through which the whole staff could integrate patients' behaviour and symptoms, both symbolic and non-symbolic. Such an image was called ‘the shared image guiding the treatment process’ (SIGTP). The process of achieving the SIGTP was interpreted through Peircean semiotics, especially the c…

A market of accents

2009

This paper describes the cultural semantics of internet courses in American accent. Such courses are offered by corporate providers to specific groups of customers: people in search of success in the globalized business environment. The core of such courses is an order of indexicality which stresses uniformity and homogeneity, producing an invisible accent that replaces existing ‘foreign’ (i.e. authentic, biographic) accents. It is a new form of commodified dialectology, which differs quite substantially from common state and academic attitudes towards dialects and accents. The procedures used by such private providers are instances of language policing aimed at the infinitely small stuff o…