Search results for "Linguistic anthropology"

The Role of Ethnographers in the Invention of Socialist Traditions in the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic

2019

Abstract This study, based on archive document research and analysis of publications by Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (LSSR) ethnographers, discusses the process of invention and implementation of Socialist traditions and the role of scientists in this. The introduction of Soviet traditions in Latvia did not begin immediately after the Second World War when the communist occupation regime was restored. The occupation regime in the framework of an anti-religious campaign turned to the transformation of traditions that affect individual’s private sphere and relate to church rituals – baptism, confirmation, weddings, funerals, Latvian cemetery festivities – in the second half of 1950s, alo…

Entextualization and resemiotization as resources for identification in social media

2014

Drawing on insights provided by linguistic anthropology, the study of multisemioticity and research in computer-mediated discourse (CMD), this chapter discusses how entextualization (Bauman & Briggs, 1990; Silverstein & Urban, 1996; Blommaert, 2005, pp. 46–8) and resemiotization (Iedema, 2003; Scollon & Scollon, 2004, pp. 101–3; Scollon, 2008) are key resources for identity work in social media. Three key arguments inspire and give direction to our discussion, each of them laying down touchstones for language scholars who wish to investigate identity in social media. First, for many individuals and social or cultural groups, social media are increasingly significant grassroots arenas for in…

Report on adult educators’ competence training for the development of immigrant and asylum seeker digital entrepreneurship (EDUAIM)

2020

A Folklorist in the Soviet Spotlight

2019

Abstract The article seeks to illuminate the ideologically motivated circumstances of Latvian folklore studies during the period of unconditional Soviet totalitarianism. With the strengthening of the Soviet occupation regime in Latvia in the late 1940s, many interwar folklorists became victims of ideologically motivated disdain and subsequent career limitation. ‘Bourgeois’ scholarship and the methods applied in folklore studies during the interwar period were denounced and recognised as harmful to the new Soviet order. The central part of the article presents a case study of one individual folklorist of the time, Anna Bērzkalne (1891–1956). Both increasing criticism of Bērzkalne’s folklore …

Ethnographic Research in Soviet Latvia – The Source of a Stronger National Identity

2019

Abstract This article* provides an insight into ethnographic research during the Soviet occupation of Latvia, viewed in the context of national self-consciousness. Ethnographic research in Soviet Latvia was conducted by the ethnographic sector at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (LSSR). By successfully using phrases appropriate to the political situation as well as the right quotations from Soviet ideological works, it was possible to maintain ideas and attitudes developed in interwar independent Latvia, for example, regarding Latvian national costume – in the works of Mirdza Slava. In turn, Aina Alsupe managed to carry out substan…

Languagised Repertoires : How Fictional Languages Have Real Effects

2019

It is now widely acknowledged in a range of linguistic disciplines that ‘languages’ are sociohistorical constructs rather than ontologically real entities. While this insight has contributed in important ways to challenging the monolingual bias in linguistics, a simplistic dismissal of the notion of ‘languages’ is unhelpful when trying to explain its status and function as a sociocultural, metalinguistic construct. This chapter draws on insights from linguistic anthropology as well as usage-based perspectives on language learning to argue that language use always involves an evaluative dimension linked with sociocultural conventions, and that it is such language use that forms the basis of …