GENDER DIFFERENCE IN LANGUAGE USE AND LANGUAGE ATTITUDES IN ONLINE FACEBOOK POSTS OF UKRAINIAN MIGRANTS IN GERMANY

This article studies the gender difference in language use and language attitudes of Ukrainian communities in Germany in online social media. Since 2014, the conflict in the East of Ukraine has led to a remarkably intense flow of Ukrainian migrants to Western Europe giving rise to longstanding issues of identity formation, language use, and attitudes both within Ukraine and inside Ukrainian diaspora communities. This article will examine the Ukrainian diaspora in Germany on the subject of language ideologies, language use, and attitudes by analyzing its linguistic online activity. To do so, our analysis will draw on a range of interdisciplinary methodologies, including studies of linguistic identity positioning, gender in migration, imagined migrant communities, and studies of discursive constructions of nationhood, which explore language indexing in relation to national identity.

Affective–Sexual Relationships for Money beyond Prostitution: An Analysis of the Discourse of Women Sex Workers in Chile’s Great North

A critical analysis of the discourse of female sex workers residing in the Antofagasta region in northern Chile is presented. It highlights the discursive constructions of female sex workers on the commercial, affective, and sexual bond with male mineworkers. From this discursive production emerges the image of a whore–mother, of a woman who, encouraged by a monetary transaction, knows how to embody what her client–miner needs beyond sex: to reinforce his manhood while welcoming him and recognizing him as an affectively deprived subject. Such a role fulfills a function of repairing the virile force of work, sustaining a balance that affects the miner’s functioning and performance in the mine.

The Multilocality of Satoyama Landscape, Cultural Heritage and Environmental Sustainability in Japan

Using the versatile concept of multilocality, the paper analyses the close interrelation between Japanese landscape, cultural heritage and social construction of spatial meaning in the context of satoyama (mountain village). Originally intended as a peripheral space of subsistence within the rural economy, satoyama is considered today one of the main expressions of the Japanese local culture guided by identity mechanisms and based on complex discursive constructions of native place-based and environmental rhetoric. At the same time, the satoyama landscape has also become a transnational symbol promoted by the Japanese government which is used in national and international research programmes for environmental sustainability. The sense of multilocality of the satoyama landscape is here interpreted in its double identity value that can be put to a wide variety of political and cultural constructions of place.

Second half part of the apple

This article investigates the use of friendship metaphors in texts by adult second language writers, in relation to the occurrence and function of metaphor and the writers’ discursive constructions of identity. The texts come from the final assessment in Swedish for Immigrants (SFI), a language program in basic Swedish. The analysis confirmed the initial assumption that the emotional and existentially loaded theme of friendship allows for the use of metaphor. The results also showed that the experience of writers as newcomers in Sweden played out in the metaphors that were used and their contexts. In order to categorize the found metaphors, a model was developed to show how systematic metaphors reflect functions and values related to three thematic categories: guidance and help, belonging and inclusion, and sharing and solidarity. For several metaphors, the metaphoricity was created through novel and unidiomatic wording, i.e. a kind of neologism that can be considered a communication strategy. The importance of using universal and abstract themes in language testing is emphasized, to enable second language writers to express different facets of experience and knowledge through existential thoughts and attitudes – not only as language learners and newcomers, but also as social agents who create and keep transnational relations through friends.

The Language of Risk and Vulnerability in Covering the COVID-19 Pandemic in Swedish Mass Media in 2020: Implications for the Sustainable Management of Elderly Care

The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic—in terms of climate, economy and social aspects—cannot yet be fully assessed, but we can already see how the pandemic is intensifying already existing socio-economic inequalities. This applies to different population groups, particularly the elderly. In this article, our goal is to identify the linguistic constructions of elderly citizens in Swedish mass media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 from a sociological and corpus linguistics perspective. More specifically, our aim is to explore the discursive formations of the elderly in Swedish media during the pandemic and how these formations relate to risk as well as the discursive constructions of in- and out-groups. Drawing on corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS), inspired by discourse–historical analysis (DHA), we examine the media coverage of COVID-19 by three Swedish newspapers published during 2020: Aftonbladet, a national tabloid; Svenska Dagbladet, a national morning newspaper; and Dalademokraten, a regional morning newspaper. In this article, the news articles and their messages are considered performative to the extent that—for example, at the same time as a story is expressed—the elderly are at risk of becoming seriously ill due to COVID-19; moreover, a position of vulnerability for the elderly is simultaneously created. The result reveals that the elderly were constructed as an at-risk group, while visitors, personnel and nursing homes were constructed as being risky or a threat to the elderly.

The Black Atlantic Metaphysics of Azealia Banks: Brujx Womanism at the Kongo Crossroads

Controversial Harlem-born rapper/singer, songwriter, and provocateuse Azealia Banks is the most (in)famous, vocal, and visible proponent of Black Atlantic traditions in recent times—making a critical reckoning well overdue. I begin here by tracing Banks's engagement with Afro-Diasporic religions (including Caribbean Espiritismo, Afro-Cuban Lucumí, and Dominican “21 Divisions”) as a trajectory from vamp to bruja [witch]/santera to mayombera. A review of Banks's public statements reveals her growing commitment to championing “so-called voodoo” and urging other African Americans to do so as well. I argue that the release of Beyoncé's Lemonade in 2016 catalyzed Banks's advocacy for Kongo-inspired Palo Mayombe, long overshadowed by Yorùbá-based orisha worship. I further demonstrate that Banks's espousal of Palo Mayombe has been bound up with her identity as a Womanist and dark-skinned, cisgender femme fatale. More than a political program, however, Banks's discursive constructions amount to a Black Atlantic metaphysics. Drawing on Irene Lara's formulation of “bruja positionalities,” I propose that the theoretical scaffolding for her metaphysics should be designated Brujx Womanism. Missteps notwithstanding, Banks emerges as a metaphysician, aspiring to repair Black bodies by re-membering Kongo traditions. In closing, I suggest that Banks's Brujx Womanism may contribute to the conceptualization of Conjure Feminism in four crucial respects.

THE LEGITIMATIZATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE’S DIGITAL MEDIA PRACTICES WITHIN NEOLIBERAL CONTEXTS AND ECOLOGIES

This panel focuses on different ways that practices of children, youth, and families are legitimatized (and deligitimatized) in schools, homes, and market places. With a focus on media consumption, the four papers examine the lived realities of families in the late 2010’s, a time period dominated by Trump-era politics, neoliberal ideologies, digital capitalisms and dilemmas of trust. In this moment, children and youth are positioned variously as in need of media literacy, parental regulations, and social controls. Simultaneously, children and youth are looked to as the future generation of political activists, savvy consumers, and promotional actors. In these polarized and sometimes conflicting positions, particular practices are recognized and condoned, while others are subject to intense scrutiny. We ask a number of questions: what discursive constructions are available for children and youth engaging with digital media? What options do parents have in terms of positioning themselves and their parenting in relation to children and media? In what ways are hierarchies of value enacted and replicated in relation to media and education? These questions are all framed by larger questions from the field of child studies and how the child is framed in various discourses - civic, parental, promotional and educational.