Kaugõppe kujutamine COVID-19 pandeemia esimese laine meemides: huumor kui toimetulekuviis ja enesekaitsestrateegia

Restrictions and special measures were imposed around the world to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, one of the most important of which was certainly the reorganization of learning and work as a home-based activity. During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools in Estonia remained closed from 16 March 2020 until the end of the schoolyear; further periods of countrywide distance learning were imposed also throughout the 2020/2021 schoolyear. The new way of life that accompanied the special situation was also reflected in widespread folklore, including internet memes. Defining memes as “(post)modern folklore” that expresses and shapes shared norms and values within communities, my article analyses the depiction of distance learning in Estonian memes, highlighting different points of view: the position of the students, the teachers, and the parents. The source data comes from the meme collection of the research archive of the Department of Folkloristics of the Estonian Literary Museum, which consists of more than 2,000 meme units collected during the crisis period. Some data were collected separately, for example, Tartu Variku School organized a meme competition “My distance learning” for the students of Tartu schools in April 2020 (541 memes). The comparative global collection (12,000 units) comes from the international project of corona folklore and -humour research “Humour during the global corona crisis” led by Giselinde Kuipers (Leuven Catholic University) and Mark Boukes (Amsterdam University); the project involves researchers from more than 30 countries. The study addresses the following questions: What local features emerge in distance learning memes that spread during the pandemic? How have students used other cultural resources in these memes (e.g. pop culture elements known from literature, cinema, music and other important cultural texts)? Whether and how these memes express, for example, family relationships (between children/youngsters and parents), school relationships (between students and teachers), what patterns of distance working are prevalent, etc. The meme material which has been inspired by distance learning is a fascinating contemporary subject that combines the challenging COVID-19 pandemic and distance learning as a characteristic feature of this period. Students who are the main creators of the memes regard the humorous memes about distance learning as a form of communication which offers an alternative and multifaceted perspective on this important method of learning during lockdown. The Estonian material is largely based on internationally known universal meme templates that have been adapted to the local language and cultural space. When investigating the social networks and universal motifs reflected in the memes, it is important to rely on the qualitative content analysis. It is worth noting that the subject of COVID-19 and the pandemic period are rarely explicitly mentioned in the memes. The egocentric or student-centred perspective that is characteristic of this specific material highlights the general attitudes and shared patterns that are based on opposition, which is typical of youth culture. The common pairs of opposition are me/classmates, student/teacher, and student/parent. The stereotypical roles reflected in the memes can be analysed figuratively via the ambivalent trickster figure, known from earlier folklore studies. Students are shown as cunning go-getters who use memes to discuss uncomfortable issues, mishaps, and problems. Stereotypically, the image of a teacher, but also that of a parent, is that of an authoritarian supervisor, a grade giver from the students’ perspective. This makes memes a highly important channel for schoolchildren to make their voice heard, either consciously or subconsciously. In the future, the material could be investigated in even greater detail from the aspect of youth language use and emotions, the interdisciplinary aspect, etc.

Monitoring 21st-Century Real-Time Language Change in Spanish Youth Speech

In recent decades, youth language has become one of the preferred research areas in sociolinguistics, not only because of its non-normative nature but mostly because it is recognized as a catalyst for language change. Since adolescents aspire to create and safeguard an in-group identity, they constantly generate innovative linguistic forms. However, few studies have empirically monitored the speed at which linguistic innovations are introduced into youth language. This study explores the speed and nature of recent language change within Spanish youth language by conducting a corpus analysis in real time. Data of the contemporary CORMA corpus (Corpus Oral de Madrid, compiled between 2016 and 2019) are contrasted with the highly comparable data of the COLAm corpus (Corpus Oral de Lenguaje Adolescente de Madrid, compiled between 2003 and 2007). The study scrutinizes two typical phenomena of youth language, namely the use of intensifiers (e.g., super-, mazo) and vocatives (e.g., tío/tía, chaval/chavala). It is shown that changes occur at a more moderate speed than previously assumed and that the speed of change depends on the linguistic phenomenon under study. Additionally, the data suggest that more neutral forms remain quite stable over time, while the use of more expressive items shrinks or increases faster.

The slang of young Russians and French: reinventing scientific linguistic collaboration in the age of coronavirus and containment

From the beginning, remote work was considered in connection with social and environmental problems. The pandemic and coronavirus have left many teachers and researchers unable to experiment with online work. This new way of organizing work is at the heart of exciting research in various fields: remote collaborative science, imaging, training, and distance learning are an opportunity to demonstrate relevance and find new ways of working and interacting. This article is in the framework of a scientific project carried out over a year at a distance. He deals with the problem of learning the youth language (youth slang, the term is used in Russian linguistics) and aims to present the results of a comparative study of the structural and semantic features of shale of Russian and French youth. Language experiments are based on data from students of Yaroslavl State University and the University of Poitiers. The first part deals with the description of the procedure for collecting, verifying, and processing language data, as well as the methodology for collecting; it is based on psycholinguistic experiments, field studies, and sociological studies conducted in the student environment of the two countries. The second part of the article presents the results of the semantic and structural analysis of lexical units, morphological and semantic families representing argotisms (slanguismes, in Russian) of young people recorded during the survey. The derivational mechanisms used in French and Russian youth slang are studied and interpreted. This allowed the authors to discover language universals common to young Russian and French speakers, as well as to identify culturally relevant linguistic units capable of modelling and presenting the collective identity of Russian and French students, their language image of the world, and their language personality.

A Lexical-Pragmatic Approach to Japanese Wakamono Kotoba ‘Youth Language’ yabai

This study uncovers the morphosyntactic properties of yabai and its clipped forms. It aims to arrive at an understanding of how the forms and the meanings might be associated. A lexical-pragmatic-based analysis was carried out using Twitter and speech corpus data. The findings reveal the following picture of the lexeme: (a) when yabai undertakes an adjective role, modifying a noun, it is likely that a negative evaluation is invited. In this regard, yabai fulfils a lexical function. (b) The adverb use of yabai presents two variations: modifying a verb or modifying an i-adjective. At any rate, the adverb use describes the degree of an event or an object, leading to the assumption that yabai fulfils a grammatical function.(c) The predicate function presents the following diversities: the negative-denotation yabai and yabee are lexical items; the positive/neutral-denotation yabai, yabee and yaba are grammatical items. The clipped forms, i.e. yaba; yabee and yabe are limited to interjection use and adverb use, which are signs of complete grammaticalisation. A quantitative analysis via KH Coder suggests that yabai’s adverb function appears to be limited to women friendships, with parent-child relationship and vertical relationship being ruled out.

A Language Fair, a Community and a Museum

Founded in 2003 the Oklahoma Native American Youth Language Fair (ONAYLF) has become one of the largest gatherings of Native American language learners in the United States. The Fair is unquestionably the most significant and sustained interaction with Native American communities in the history of the Sam Noble Museum, quickly becoming a signature event that contributes to the museum’s reputation and stature. As the Fair gained increased prominence and importance in the Native American communities of Oklahoma and the surrounding regions it was consistently marginalized within the institutional culture of the museum. Over the course of our respective leadership of the ONAYLF we encountered the continued need for anthropological intervention to “re-institutionalize” a very successful program. In this report we focus on specific impacts of this failed ownership and the anthropological methods employed to address them. We conclude with an assessment of the ONAYLF in terms of on-going efforts to decolonize museum practice.