Race, belonging and linguistic identity in the 'offshore' anglophone world

“离岸”英语世界中的种族、归属感和语言认同

• 批准号: ES/T006943/1
• 负责人: Rosemary Hall
• 金额: $ 11.57万
• 依托单位: Queen Mary University of London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FT006943%2F1
• 关键词: Race; belonging; linguistic; identity; offshore

My research centres on Bermuda, a British Overseas Territory in the North Atlantic. Bermuda is an under-studied, often misunderstood context, home to a unique dialect of English under-represented in the literature on varieties of English around the world. It is also an unusual, not-quite-post-colonial, 'offshore' setting with an unusual immigration pattern to match, which sets the scene for intense debates about the meaning of national identity and 'authentic' Bermudian-ness. These debates are, inevitably, related to and reflected in language.My doctoral thesis introduced Bermuda as a sociolinguistic setting and gave an overview of the sounds of Bermudian English, providing an essential basis for further analyses of the variety. My thesis also investigated the relationship between social conditions and linguistic practice in Bermuda. Through qualitative and quantitative analyses, I studied a particular genre of parodic dialect performance, common among white speakers in Bermuda, and showed it to be a type of racialized mock language. My data, collected during fieldwork visits between 2011 and 2016, reveal double standards in Bermudian language attitudes, and show that marked, theatrical linguistic performances by white Bermudians reflect and reproduce language and race hierarchies in Bermudian society.My proposed Fellowship programme will support me in disseminating my work and readying myself for an academic career. Primarily this will be through preparing my existing work for publication. A major objective for my Fellowship is to complete the first draft of a monograph based on my thesis, and I will also produce two articles for leading journals in my field.I will be supported in these goals at Queen Mary, which is recognised internationally as a centre for excellence in sociolinguistics. There I will receive expert academic and career development support as I prepare applications for postdoctoral positions and permanent jobs with the guidance of my proposed mentor Erez Levon. I also aim to improve my academic networks, engaging with senior scholars and immersing myself in London's vibrant wider sociolinguistic research community. During the Fellowship I will undergo training in softwares used by sociolinguists for advanced statistical analysis.As an early career researcher, I plan over the next five years to draw on my work in Bermuda by exploring language practice and ideologies in other 'offshore' settings, since contexts in which nationality and belonging are socially contested and politically sensitive are fertile ground for examining place-making and identity construction through language. In order to lay the foundations for this research programme, I will spend 10-15% of my Fellowship time investigating the context of the Cayman Islands, including a short period of library research and a preliminary visit to Grand Cayman. Towards the end of the Fellowship, I will attend Sociolinguistics Symposium, the leading international conference in my field, in order to present early observations and expand my international networks.Finally, I aim to to implement a social impact strategy in Bermuda during the Fellowship, in order to give back to the community I have been researching for nearly 10 years. I am working to create a Bermudian oral history archive, made up of my own recordings and other audio material that has not previously been catalogued. On an outreach visit to Bermuda I will finalise and launch the archive, creating an important corpus of Bermudian speech available to Bermudians and future researchers of local language and history. I also plan to hold an awareness-raising public event discussing racialized dialect parody in Bermuda. This is vital in exposing linguistic prejudice as a proxy for racism and a means through which oppression is upheld, and has potential for influencing policy makers and educators.

我的研究集中在北大西洋的英国海外领土百慕大。百慕大是一个研究不足，经常被误解的背景下，家庭对英语的独特方言在世界各地的英语品种的文献中代表不足。这也是一个不寻常的，不太后殖民，“离岸”设置与一个不寻常的移民模式相匹配，这为激烈的辩论设置了关于民族认同和“真实”的马达加斯加的意义。这些争论不可避免地与语言有关并反映在语言中，我的博士论文介绍了百慕大作为一个社会语言学环境，并概述了百慕大英语的语音，为进一步分析这一变体提供了必要的基础。我的论文还调查了百慕大社会条件和语言实践之间的关系。通过定性和定量分析，我研究了百慕大群岛白色人中常见的一种特殊的方言戏仿表演，并表明它是一种种族化的模仿语言。我在2011年至2016年的实地考察中收集的数据揭示了埃塞俄比亚语言态度的双重标准，并表明白色埃塞俄比亚人的戏剧性语言表演反映和再现了埃塞俄比亚社会的语言和种族等级制度。我提议的奖学金计划将支持我传播我的工作，并为学术生涯做好准备。首先，这将是通过准备我现有的工作出版。我的奖学金的一个主要目标是完成基于我的论文的专著的初稿，我还将在我的领域的领先期刊上发表两篇文章。我将在玛丽女王学院获得这些目标的支持，该学院是国际公认的社会语言学卓越中心。在那里，我将在我的导师Erez Levon的指导下准备博士后职位和永久工作的申请时，获得专业的学术和职业发展支持。我还打算改善我的学术网络，与资深学者接触，并沉浸在伦敦充满活力的更广泛的社会语言学研究社区。在奖学金期间，我将接受社会语言学家用于高级统计分析的软件培训。作为一名早期职业研究员，我计划在未来五年内利用我在百慕大的工作，探索其他“离岸”环境中的语言实践和意识形态，由于国籍和归属具有社会争议和政治敏感性，通过语言进行身份建构。为了奠定这项研究计划的基础，我将花10 - 15%的奖学金时间调查开曼群岛的背景，包括短期的图书馆研究和对大开曼岛的初步访问。在奖学金结束时，我将参加社会语言学研讨会，这是我所在领域的主要国际会议，以便提出早期观察和扩大我的国际网络。最后，我的目标是在奖学金期间在百慕大实施社会影响战略，以回馈我研究了近10年的社区。我正在努力创建一个埃塞俄比亚口述历史档案，由我自己的录音和其他以前没有被编目的音频材料组成。在对百慕大的一次外联访问中，我将完成并启动档案库，为百慕大人和未来的当地语言和历史研究者创建一个重要的百慕大语语料库。我还计划举办一次提高认识的公共活动，讨论百慕大的种族化方言模仿。这对于揭露语言偏见是种族主义的代名词和维持压迫的手段至关重要，并有可能影响决策者和教育工作者。