The role of backgrounded information in the construction of place and identity

Description

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.

Period	23 Aug 2012
Event title	Sociolinguistics Symposium 19
Event type	Conference
Location	Berlin, GermanyShow on map