The role of backgrounded information in the construction of place and identity
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Lecture and oral contribution
Henrik Hovmark - Lecturer
In this presentation I explore the way in which place is constructed in discourse by Danish dialect-speaking informants. I focus on the construction of place as part of the backgrounded setting, the “background orientation” in narratives (Chafe 1980, Johnstone 1990), and I discuss the role of backgrounded information in the construction of place and identity. I argue that the informants’ use of seemingly inconspicuous, backgrounded markers of spatial language (in this case directional adverbs) play a significant role in the informants’ continuous construction of identity, conceptualizing their local home-base as either ‘center’ or ‘periphery’ (Hovmark 2012). Data stem from interviews with dialect-speaking informants in a small Danish, rural community; both quantitative and qualitative methods were applied.
23 Aug 2012
Event (Conference)
Title | Sociolinguistics Symposium 19 |
---|---|
Date | 21/08/2012 → 24/08/2012 |
Location | Freie Universität Berlin |
City | Berlin |
Country/Territory | Germany |
Related Research outputs (2)
- Published
Backgrounded but not peripheral: On the use of Danish directional adverbs as contextualization cues
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review
- Published
Centre and/or periphery? On the cognitive and social construal of identity in a local community
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Article in proceedings › Research › peer-review
ID: 49791377