Following on from yeterday’s post I have just read an interesting paper by Jan Blommaert, James Collins and Stef Slembrouck. (It came from here but is no longer available as has been published in Language and Communication.) It looks at
One of the sentences that popped out at me, was where they say:
‘….space in itself demands closer investigation if we intend to analyze the way in which multilingualism operates in and across societies nowadays. Every communicative event develops in a particular space, and this space may influence the event in non-arbitrary ways’.
Although this paper is about different languages being used in different ways in a world where travel and cultural exchange is more frequent, the way they talk about language as ‘an ideologoical object’ is relevant to me in looking at ways in which language is used in online spaces. It is about the idea of language being invested with social and cultural interests, not just a vehice for denotational, neutral meaning. I want to look at the way in which language is used in specific ways in online spaces, so that in a particular online space, meaning becomes imbued with specific cultural and social messages in that space. In this way the words beging to work differently in the space and help to define that space - so that words are both constitutive and agentive.
Spaces of multilingualism: Blommaert, J., Collins, J., Slembrouck, S. (2005)Language & Communication 25: 197-216
But if you think this is all a bit OTT this may be more up your street - about reading shop windows.
This is a nice illustration I found:
