scholarly journals Normalizing a new language hierarchy: Event names in post-Soviet urban space

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 1004-1023
Author(s):  
Juldyz Smagulova ◽  
Dinara Madiyeva

Naming practices not only reveal ideological contestation in a particular community, but also contribute to the discursive construction of a new social reality. However, the transformative role of naming practices as a semiotic resource for reimagining language hierarchy has been overlooked. This socio-onomastics study aims to explore shifting ideological premises and semiotic mechanisms of normalizing a new language hierarchy in post-Soviet urban space. In doing so, the study diachronically examines naming practices of choosing and using event names, which are more fluid and often short-lived in comparison to other names such as toponyms, anthroponyms or brand names. The study analyses 1246 unique event names mentioned in a local Russian-language newspaper Вечерний Алматы (Vechernii Almaty) over the period of time from 1989 to 2019. The results show a decrease in the use of Russian for name production. Further examination reveals a steady increase in non-integrated event names in Kazakh and English in Russian-language newspaper texts; there are few examples of translation and transliteration, no examples of transcription or loanwords in more recent texts. Our comparison shows that in the context of the multilingual Almaty transgressing the purist norms of standard Russian has become a new norm. We argue that these new local strategies of naming and using names are a semiotic mechanism of domination; they work to normalize a new language hierarchy where the Russian language is no longer the only dominant code of the public and official domain. Our account adds to the discussion of the discursive power of naming in challenging dominant language practices.

2021 ◽  
pp. 235-264
Author(s):  
Anne Ring Petersen

This chapter explores how art in public spaces shapes, and is shaped by, disagreements and conflicts resulting from the need to tackle »togetherness in difference« (Ien Ang), and how contemporary artistic practices play out in postmigrant public spaces, understood as plural domains of human encounter impacted by former and ongoing migration, and by new forms of nationalism. The chapter focuses on two art projects in Copenhagen, Denmark. The first one is The Red Square, a part of the public park Superkilen in the multicultural Nørrebro district. Designed by the artist group Superflex (in collaboration with architects from Bjarke Ingels Group and Topotek1), Superkilen opened in 2012. The second project is Jeannette Ehlers and La Vaughn Belle's collaboration on the sculpture I Am Queen Mary. Installed outside an old colonial Warehouse in Copenhagen harbour in 2018, it is the first monument in the country to commemorate Danish colonialism and complicity in the transatlantic slave trade. Borrowing a term from Chantal Mouffe, these projects could be characterized as »agonistic« interventions into public urban space. The chapter argues that they may provide us with some much-needed answers to the important question of the much debated yet crucial role of public art in democratic societies, particularly how works of art may form a possible loophole of escape from dominant discourses by openly contesting, or subtly circumventing, monocultural understandings of national heritage and identity, thereby helping us to imagine national and urban community otherwise, i.e. as postmigrant communities. The chapter examines what the re-configurative power of art might accomplish in postmigrant public spaces by considering the following questions: How can public art open up a social and national imagination pervaded by anxieties about (post)migration to other ways of thinking about diversity and collective identity? Furthermore, is it possible to identify a common pattern - i.e. a particular postmigrant strategy - that underpins and interconnects various types of artistic interventions into public spaces and debates, which, on the surface, present themselves as radically different kinds of projects?


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Ali Cheshmehzangi ◽  
Tim Heath

This research focuses upon the socio-environmental dimensions and urban identity of urban environments by evaluating human behaviours and space-to-human relations. In addition, approaches to urban re-branding will be analysed to evaluate the role of engineered identities in enhancing social integration. This particular study will focus upon the installation of temporary activities into the public realm and the impact that these can have upon perception, identity and activity within public spaces. A case study of temporary markets taking place in Nottingham’s Old Market Square in the UK will be evaluated to explore possibilities of maximising the potential of urban space. Keywords: human behaviour, urban identity, spatial inter-relation, socio-environmental © 2017. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.


Author(s):  
Amy Cabrera Rasmussen

Examining how issues are framed in policy discourse illuminates the structure of ethical arguments and the social and political context within which these arguments are made. In the United States, reproductive discourse and policymaking display four contours. First, deemed a legitimate topic for government intervention, reproduction policy has most often been gendered and group-specific. Second, the issue category into which reproduction is placed is a critical factor in policy intervention: Is reproduction a matter of health, gender equality, or religious liberty? Third, in reproductive policymaking, abortion has taken on the role of master subissue, shaping approaches to reproductive issues and in some cases standing in for the larger range of reproductive matters. Finally, lack of understanding of the medical and technological factors related to reproduction among policymakers and the public makes policymaking difficult and augments abortion’s discursive power.


Author(s):  
Mareike Riedel

Abstract This paper considers a planning dispute that surrounded the construction of a Jewish religious installation (called an eruv) in the public urban space of an Australian suburb. The aim of this case-study is to examine the role of law in regulating Jewish difference – a topic that has to date received little attention in the socio-legal literature concerned with the governance of religious diversity. In analysing residents’ objections to the eruv, the paper explores long-standing anxieties about Jewish particularity in Australia and beyond as they surfaced in opposition to the eruv. It shows how the law continues to exclude certain forms of Jewish difference that are perceived as transgressing dominant religious and racial norms. Moreover, the paper highlights the particular ways in which planning law assigned value to these anxieties and legitimised the marginalisation of Orthodox Jews, emphasising the significance of local law as a site for exclusion and inequality.


Author(s):  
Sanja Janković ◽  
Danica Stanković

Most certainly, architectural objectives are the basis of the physical structure of a city, yet they are distinct morphological and typological units, they are free spaces with exceptional values and characteristics. Buildings that form the spaces of cities often change, build and disintegrate, but the permanent motive of the city space remains - an empty, unfinished part, as a constant sign of history. On the hierarchical scale of the urban environment, important elements are ephemeral structures, permanent or temporary. A possibility for empty space to be revived is the installation of artistic or ephemeral utilitarian structures. This paper presents the role of such micro-urban interventions that enrich the public space and contribute to its revitalization. Ephemeral architecture is especially suitable as a space for the presentation of artistic ideas and for incorporating new technological contents. The aim of the paper is to highlight a view about the importance of ephemeral structures by analyzing and studying the case studies. Special emphasis is placed on examples of completed projects of the pavilions of unique forms and the use of ship containers as a space for introducing artistic ideas. The main contribution of this paper should be a proposal of using ephemeral structures in urban space revival by promoting art and establishing a social contact.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Maggie McCormick

‘Skypeography: investigating and mapping the public mind space of urbaness’ is an overview of the public space of Skype. This article discusses how mediation by screens is creating new urban concepts across an emerging new spatial geography and its new sociologies and cartographies. It begins by tracing an overview from perceptions of ‘city’ to experiences of ‘urbaness’ and explores the role of screens in creating a mobile state of being and a conceptualization of urban public space as transient and paradoxical mind space. The paper argues that an appropriate urban lexicon or cartographic recording is yet to be developed in relation to the public space of screens. In an increasingly visualized world, art practice has a significant role to play in exploring and mapping urban transience, movement, rhythm and paradox that forms a state of ‘urbaness’. This article explores the concept of ‘Skypeography’ through the methods and aesthetics of artistic screen research practice undertaken in the fluid space of the SkypeLab research project. Key to the research is the project to identify 100 Questions emerging out of the practice of SkypeLab. Through its experimental approach in digital space, SkypeLab poses and exposes questions arising out of the practice, about urban space itself. Through both answers and questions, SkypeLab and its ‘Skypeography’ method contribute valuable knowledge towards an understanding of new conceptual territory within a profoundly changing urbanscape.


2012 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 38
Author(s):  
Michael A. Shepherd ◽  
Julia Wang

Despite considerable sociolinguistic research on correlates of social identity in secondary schools, the initial discursive construction of social categories remains underexplored. A discourse analysis of third-grade lessons suggests teachers discursively position some students as weaker than others by framing their participation as tentative or reluctant, and are less likely to acknowledge such students' summonses and called-out contributions. Ultimately, we argue, students whose academic identity development is thus not nurtured and who are denied access to the discursive power to advance ideas may instead seek empowerment through resistance, developing oppositional relationships toward school and forming another generation of 'burnouts.'


2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 133
Author(s):  
Nadia Somekh ◽  
Ricardo Carlos Gaspar

O presente artigo desenvolve algumas reflexões sobre a relação entre os grandes projetos urbanos, a absorção dos excedentes de capital e as crises econômicas da atualidade. Ele principia pela conceitualização dos grandes projetos urbanos à luz do novo papel das cidades na economia mundial contemporânea, prossegue com considerações sobre a dinâmica imobiliária e a disputa em torno da terra e da renda do solo urbano, e finaliza com a defesa do papel do Estado – em todas as escalas geográficas, mas, sobretudo, do Estado nacional – no ordenamento do território, na fixação de princípios integrados de política regional e na regulação pública do espaço urbano. Palavras-chave: grandes projetos urbanos; excedentes de capital; política urbana; Estado nacional; solo urbano. Abstract: This article offers some reflections on the relationship among large urban projects, the absorption of capital surpluses and the ongoing economic crisis. It starts with the conceptualization of large urban projects in the light of the new role of cities in the contemporary world economy. Then it turns to considerations about the real estate dynamics and the conflicts involving urban land use and urban rent, and finally, it highlights the essential role of the State – in all geographic scales but, mainly, at the national level – at fixing parameters for territorial arrangement, principles of integrated regional policy, and enforcing the public regulation of urban space. Keywords: large urban projects; capital surpluses; urban policy; National State; urban land.


2019 ◽  
pp. 91-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rostislav I. Kapeliushnikov

Using published estimates of inequality for two countries (Russia and USA) the paper demonstrates that inequality measuring still remains in the state of “statistical cacophony”. Under this condition, it seems at least untimely to pass categorical normative judgments and offer radical political advice for governments. Moreover, the mere practice to draw normative conclusions from quantitative data is ethically invalid since ordinary people (non-intellectuals) tend to evaluate wealth and incomes as admissible or inadmissible not on the basis of their size but basing on whether they were obtained under observance or violations of the rules of “fair play”. The paper concludes that a current large-scale ideological campaign of “struggle against inequality” has been unleashed by left-wing intellectuals in order to strengthen even more their discursive power over the public.


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