Tuesday, January 22, 2019 – Organizational meeting
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Discussion Leader: Gyula Zsombok (French and Italian)
Zhang, L., Zhao, J., and Xu, Ke. 2014. Who creates Trends in Online Social Media: The Crowd or Opinion Leaders? Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 21(1), 1-16.
Internet slang words can very quickly become ubiquitous because of social memes and viral online content. Weibo, a Twitter-like service in China, demonstrates that the adoption of popular Internet slang undergoes 2 distinct peaks in its temporal evolution, in which the former is relatively much lower than the latter. An in-depth comparison of the diffusion of these different peaks suggests that popular attention in the early stage of propagation results in large-scale coverage, while the participation of opinion leaders at the early stage only leads to minor popularity. Our empirical results question the conventional influentials hypothesis and provide some insights for marketing practice and influence maximization in social networks.
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Discussion Leader: Robin Turner (French and Italian)
Ruch, Hanna. 2018. Perception of speaker age and speaker origin in a sound change in progress: The case of /s/ -aspiration in Andalusian Spanish. Journal of Linguistic Geography6, 40-55.
ABSTRACT: This paper addresses the question whether listeners possess sociolinguistic knowledge of regional variation in a sound change affecting /s/ + voiceless stop sequences in Andalusian Spanish. We tested whether speakers from Seville and Granada were perceived as more Sevillian-sounding and as younger when a stimulus contained the novel phonetic variant, a post-aspirated stop. Word-medial syllable-final /s/ was manipulated in such a way that two stimuli of the same speaker differed only in whether they contained pre-aspiration ([eh.ˈtaŋ.ko]) or post-aspiration ([e.ˈthaŋ.ko]). Andalusian listeners rated the same speaker as younger and as more Sevillian-sounding when the stimulus contained a post-aspirated stop. The recognition of a speaker’s actual dialect was particularly high when the innovative variant was embedded in a Seville speaker’s speech, confirming earlier work that indexicality is context-specific. The results suggest that Andalusian listeners possess knowledge of the regional variation and the sound change and use this variation in social perception.
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Discussion Leader: Charlotte Prieu (French and Italian)
Wernicke, M. 2016. Hierarchies of Authenticity in Study Abroad: French From Canada Versus French From France? The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics 19(2), 1-21.
For many decades, Francophone regions in Canada have provided language study exchanges for French as a second language (FSL) learners within their own country. At the same time, FSL students and teachers in Canada continue to orient to a native speaker standard associated with European French. This Eurocentric orientation manifested itself in a recent study examining conceptions of authentic language among Canadian FSL teachers on professional study abroad in France. Taking an interactional perspective (De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2012), this article examines how the teachers negotiated discourses of language subordination (Lippi-Green, 1997) that construct Canadian French as less authentic than French from France. Findings show some teachers drawing on this hierarchization of French to “authenticate” (Coupland, 2010) an identity as French language expert, either by contrasting European and Canadian varieties of French or by projecting France as the locus of French language and culture as exclusively representative of authentic “Frenchness.”
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Workshop by Marissa Barlaz, Linguistic Data Analytics Manager (SLCL)
For this workshop, we will go through the basic ideas of statistical practices currently used in linguistic research. We will discuss the different practices, what types of data are needed, and how to implement them in R.
To make an appointment with Dr. Barlaz for statistical consultation, visit: https://calendly.com/marissabarlaz
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Discussion Leader: Zsuzsanna Fagyal (French and Italian)
Cheshire, J. and Secova, M. 2018. The origins of new quotative expressions: the case of Paris French. Journal of French Language Studies 28(2), 209-234.
We analyse genre in the speech of young people with multi-ethnic friendship groups in Paris in order to address the as yet unresolved question of whether new quotatives equivalent in meaning to English BE LIKE result from simultaneous independent parallel developments in languages other than English or from a process of calquing. We conclude that French quotative genre results from independent internal developments, but that it enters the French quotative system in the same way that BE LIKE entered the English system, driven by the meanings of ‘similarity’ or ‘approximation’ that are shared by the lexical itemgenre in a range of syntactic categories. We propose that in order for a new similarity quotative to emerge, a lexical item with a meaning of ‘similarity’ or ‘approximation’ must become syntactically multifunctional, and that the use of that lexical item must reach a critical frequency threshold. In the case of genre we suggest that the necessary increase in frequency results from the development of the lexical item into a discourse marker. We also analyse another new French quotative, ETRE LA, a sequence that we find is used to highlight activity of many kinds (including, but not confined to, spoken behaviour). The trajectory followed by each of the new quotative expressions conforms to De Smet’s proposals about how linguistic innovations spread through the grammar.
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Discussion Leader: Alicia Brown (Spanish and Portuguese)
Dalola, A. and Bullock, B. 2017. On sociophonetic competence: phrase-final vowel devoicing in native and advanced L2 speakers of French, Studies in Second Language Acquisition 39(4), 769-799.
The data from this study investigate phrase-final vowel devoicing in Metropolitan French among L1 and L2 speakers, in terms of number of times a speaker devoices a phrase-final high vowel and per- centage of the vowel that is devoiced. The goal is to assess whether experienced L2 speakers use style-based variation in response to the same factors as native speakers. Results from a set of role play- ing and word list tasks revealed that L2 devoicing rates matched those of the natives, but were conditioned by different factors in each group. The duration of L2 speaker devoicing, however, was found not to match native levels. Notable differences emerged in response to shifts in style: L1 speakers showed higher rates and enhanced degrees of devoicing in pragmatic contexts that favored either slower or more formal speech, while L2 speakers responded very little to pragmatic shifts within role plays, instead responding more pro- nouncedly to different tasks.
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
Discussion with guest speaker Xavier Escandell (Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Iowa) in the Reading Group
Xavier Escandell & Alin M. Ceobanu (2010) Nationalisms and Anti- immigrant Sentiment in Spain, South European Society and Politics, 15:2, 157-179
This article explores links between nationalism and immigrant exclusionism in Spain’s 17 Comunidades Autónomas. Drawing from social identity and marginality theories and using Análisis Sociológicos, Económicos y Poĺıticos (ASEP), 1991–2000 data results show that strong national–regional identification is a predictor of anti-immigrant sentiment among Basques, Catalans and Galicians, but not in the remaining Comunidades Autónomas. Basques, Catalans and Galicians who strongly identify with region of residence are more likely to express immigrant exclusionism than those identifying ‘as regional as Spanish’. Simultaneously, ‘Spanish only’ respondents did not yield statistically significant results in favouring exclusionism as compared with those with dual identification across all regions.
Talk: Tuesday, March 12, 4-5 pm, Lucy Ellis Lounge
Xavier Escandell: “Are the Foreign Born ‘on Board’?: Secessionism and migration in Catalonia in times of institutional rupture”
The increase in the foreign-born population in Catalonia during the 1990s and the first two decades of the 21st century have been paralleled by increasing support for political parties and platforms advocating for the secession of the region of Catalonia from Spain. While the latter process is independent of the former, the Catalan nationalists have presented themselves to be an inclusive and diverse political movement. Nonetheless, more research is needed to assess whether migrants are “buying into” this project. This article explores the question of whether pro-European union attitudes or other explanations help elucidate migrants’ reluctance or support for this political movement. Using longitudinal data from the Centre d’Estudis d’Opinió, I explore the role that different migrants play in the secessionist movement. In particular, the article compares attitudes towards secessionism among foreign born (“new minorities”) and internal migrants from other regions of Spain vis-a-vis native born Catalonians without migrant descent (“old minorities”). The findings are contextualized using external political efficacy, socialization and mobilization theories as well as recent theoretical discussions on sovereignty and citizenship.
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Discussion Leader: Anna María Escobar (Spanish and Portuguese)
Chela-Flores Godsuno. 2017. Language ideologies, intervarietal conflict and their repercussions on language and society: The case of the Hispanic dialect complex. Journal of Dialectology and Geolinguistics: DiG 25, 123=150.
ABSTRACT: In this paper, a phase of language divinisationis posited as the deeply-rooted origin of the standard language/variety ideology, which devalues the nonstandard dialects thus causing a permanent sociolinguistic conflict. Present linguistic standardization is seen as the form divinisation has taken in the course of the history of humankind and it is justified by the search of stability and functionality for organised speech communities, which is not objectionable as such for some aspects of social life. The sociolinguistic conflict emerges because the first stage of the process requires the selection of usually one variety (or more than one in some cases) out of the dialectal complex of any natural language, generally responding to class-related interests allied to power and prestige. It is evidently, an ideological issue. Our approach to this problem is based on data from the Spanish-speaking world, analysed mainly on a minimal unitary phonetological approach (MUPA) in search of different dialectal dimensions and parameters. MUPA is justified and possible because of the great cohesiveness of Spanish varieties. When attention is paid to this extensive linguistic dominion, one finds that the notion of the inevitability of the weakening of regional varieties has to be revised.
Monday, April 1, 2019, 4:00pm – 5:30pm in 1128 FLB
Workshop by Guest Speaker Joseph Roy
Understanding Faculty Compensation for Graduate Students and Early Career Scholars
It is often not clear to new scholars in negotiating faculty job offers how to evaluate or plan for different compensation packages in higher education. This workshop breaks out different components of compensation and shows participants national trends across different institution types. The difference between tenure-track and non-tenure track compensation is also presented. Several online resources for understanding compensation, estimating take home pay for different locations and examining cost of living will be discussed.
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Discussion Leader: Gyula Zsombok
Bybee, Joan. 2017. Grammatical and lexical factors in sound change: A usage-based approach. Language Variation and Change 29, 273-300.
ABSTRACT: The question of whether or not grammatical factors can condition or block soundchange has been discussed from many perspectives for more than a centurywithout resolution (Melchert, 1975). Here we consider studies of sound change inprogress which show that words or phrases that are used frequently in the phoneticenvironment for change undergo the change before those whose use is lessfrequent in these contexts. Because words of different categories and with differentstructures also have different distributions, they may occur preferentially in certainphonetic environments. Thus, some apparent cases of influence by grammaticaland lexical factors can be explained by phonetic factors if we expand our notion ofphonetic environment to include frequency within the environment for change,which includes the segmental environment as well as factors that affect the degreeof prominence a word receives in context.
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Conference Talk Rehearsal by Charlotte Prieu and Zsuzsanna Fagyal (French and Italian)
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Workshop by Gyula Zsombok (French and Italian)
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Discussion Leader: Zsuzsanna Fagyal (French and Italian)
Berns, J. 2015. Merging low vowels in metropolitan French. Journal of French Language Studies 25(3), 317-338.
Prescriptive pronunciation manuals of French generally present a vocalic inventory with two low vowels: front [a] and back [ɑ]. At the same time, descriptive overviews of modern French note the tendency of the posterior vowel to merge with the anterior token, especially in unstressed position. The actual spread and conditioning factors of this alleged merger are nevertheless unknown: we are ignorant about the degree of neutralization, and it is not clear whether it is a change affecting all regions and generations in France. This article studies the French low vowels from a sociolinguistic perspective, by analyzing metropolitan French corpus data.