Rural Voices

Language, Identity, and Social Change across Place

Contributions by Becky Childs, Elizabeth Falconi, Gregory Fulkerson, Rania Habib, Kirk Hazen, Sarah Kristian, Lu Li, Christine Mallinson, Nico Nassenstein University of Mainz, Germ, Elizabeth Seale, James N. Stanford, Thea Strand, Alexander Thomas, Jennifer Thorburn, Gerard Van Herk, Aimee Vieira Norwich University, Wei Shuqi Edited by Elizabeth Seale, Christine Mallinson

Publication date:

15 September 2018

Length of book:

226 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

228x161mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781498560719

In this interdisciplinary volume, sociolinguists and sociologists explore the intersections of language, culture, and identity for rural populations around the world. Challenging stereotypical views of rural backwardness and urban progress, the contributors reveal how language is a key mechanism for constructing the meaning of places and the people who identify with them. With research that spans numerous countries and several continents, the chapters in this volume add broadly to knowledge about status and prestige, authenticity and belonging, rural-urban relations, and innovation and change among rural peoples and in rural communities across the globe.

Foreword
Gregory Fulkerson and Alexander Thomas
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Elizabeth Seale and Christine Mallinson

Part I: Revalorizing the Rural: Negotiating Tradition, Resistance, and Change

1. Multivocal and Critical Performance of Urban Language in Rural Norway
Thea Strand
2. “Losing Our Inuttitut”: The Intersection of Language Shift and Language Attitudes in Nain, Nunatsiavut
Jennifer Thorburn
3. Townie, Bayman, or Newfoundlander? Linguistic Constructions of Urban and Rural in Newfoundland
Becky Childs and Gerard Van Herk
4. The Social Mediatization of a Zapotec Transborder Community
Elizabeth Falconi

Part II: The Realities of Rural Diversity and Identity Construction

5. Rural Voices in Appalachia: The Shifting Sociolinguistic Reality of Rural Life
Kirk Hazen
6. Ecologies of Sui Sociolinguistics: A Language Permeated with Rural Social Structure
James N. Stanford, Wei Shuqi, and Lu Li
7. Rural Youth Language Practices: Linguistic Creativity and the Globalized African Village
Nico Nassenstein

Part III: Social Hierarchy: Aspirations and Differentiation

8. Use of Standard Arabic [q] Lexical Borrowings in Syrian Rural Migrant Speech
Rania Habib
9. Social Aspiration and Traditional Speech Features among Rural Newfoundland Youth
Sarah Kristian
10. “It’s Complicated” for Quebec’s Anglophones: Language and Stratification in Changing Rural Places
Aimee Vieira

Conclusion
Elizabeth Seale and Christine Mallinson

Rural Voices is an important and timely volume in an era where relationships between rural and urban populations appear especially contested. It fills a gap in rural scholarship by addressing the sociolinguistic roots and forms of place-based differences that revolve around identity construction, class distinctions, and cultural practices. By addressing the role of language, the contributors make new breakthroughs in the understanding of rural populations. The book is remarkable for its interdisciplinary and international reach. The editors bring together a team of scholars from linguistics, anthropology, and sociology with chapters spanning nations in North America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. The volume will interest students and researchers new to rural scholarship and open up a provocative lens on a virtually unexplored subject for those who have long-studied rural populations.