Cover not available
Part of
The Sociolinguistics of Place and Belonging: Perspectives from the margins
Edited by Leonie Cornips and Vincent A. de Rooij
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 45] 2018
► pp. 115–124

Chapter 6
Playing against peripheralization

A commentary

| University of California, San Diego

The three chapters in this section make a mutually informing set that is as intellectually rewarding as it is fun to read. They share a center-periphery analytic frame with other contributions in the volume, but they are distinguished as a set by their shared focus on what Sari Pietikäinen (2016) calls carnivalesque critique, quite literally in the Limburgian event that Lotte Thissen examines. In all of these cases, minoritized speakers use humor, parody, and/or ritualized spectacle to disrupt the center-periphery framework and to subvert peripheralization. In turn, the three cases differ from and complement each other by revealing varying techniques that actors in specific marginalized communities use to carry out such disruption. In the following sections of this commentary I will first examine some facets of the center-periphery theoretical framework that seem especially relevant to sociolinguistic work. I will then consider both the shared and the different techniques of humorous contestation that these papers illuminate.

Article outline
  • Center-periphery as an organizing trope
  • Techniques of contestation through play and humor
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 7 March 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.45.06woo
References
Aracil, L. V.
1983 Dir la realitat. Barcelona: Edicions dels Països Catalans.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, M. M.
1981 Forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel. In The Dialogic Imagination, M. Holquist (ed.), 84–258. Austin TX: University of Texas.Google Scholar
Bassas, A.
2015 González i la falta d’arguments. ARA.cat. [URL]
Basso, K.
1979 Portraits of “the Whiteman”: Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols among the Western Apache. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Castells, M.
2004 The Power of Identity, 2nd ed. Malden MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Coupland, N.
2001 Dialect stylization in radio talk. Language in Society 30: 345–375.Google Scholar
Debord, G.
1994 The Society of the Spectacle. New York NY: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F.
1987 A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Frank, A. G.
1969 Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Galtung, J.
1971 A structural theory of imperialism. Journal of Peace Research 8(2): 81–117. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hardt, M. & Negri, A.
2000 Empire. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hill, J. H.
2008 The Everyday Language of White Racism. Malden MA: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Irvine, J. T. & Gal, S.
2000 Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Regimes of Language, P. V. Kroskrity (ed.), 35–84. Santa Fe NM: School of American Research.Google Scholar
Jaffe, A.
2007 Corsican on the airwaves: Media discourse in a context of minority language shift. In Language in the Media. Representations, Identities, Ideologies, S. Johnson & A. Ensslin eds. 149–172. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
McKenzie, N.
1977 Center and periphery: The marriage of two minds. Acta Sociologica 20(1): 55–74. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pietikäinen, S.
2016 Critical debates: Discourse, boundaries and social change. In Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates, N. Coupland (ed.), 263–281. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wallerstein, I.
1974 The Modern World-System, Vol. I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Woolard, K. A.
2008 Language and identity choice in Catalonia: The interplay of contrasting ideologies of linguistic authority. In Lengua, nación e identidad. La regulación del plurilingüismo en España y América Latina, K. Süselbeck, U. Mühlschlegel & P. Masson eds., 303–323. Frankfurt & Madrid: Vervuert & Iberoamericana.Google Scholar
2016 Singular and Plural: Ideologies of Linguistic Authority in 21st Century Catalonia. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 5 other publications

Al-Alawi, Wafa
2023. English at the center of the periphery: ‘Chicken nuggets’, chronotopes, and scaling English in Bahraini youth. Language in Society 52:4 ► pp. 645 ff. DOI logo
Cornips, Leonie
2020. Dialect acquisition by ‘new speakers’ of Dutch and their linguistic othering. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Cornips, Leonie & Louis van den Hengel
2021. Renewing the coal mining past. International Journal of Language and Culture 8:2 ► pp. 267 ff. DOI logo
Schluter, Anne Ambler
2023. Investment and the inaudible mother tongue: Carving out a space for Kurdish in the soundscape of an Istanbul kebab restaurant. Language in Society ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
van de Weerd, Pomme
2019. “Those foreigners ruin everything here”: Interactional functions of ethnic labelling among pupils in the Netherlands. Journal of Sociolinguistics 23:3 ► pp. 244 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.