Cover not available
Part of
Dialogue in Multilingual and Multimodal Communities
Edited by Dale Koike and Carl S. Blyth
[Dialogue Studies 27] 2015
► pp. 167–192

Multilingual Eurovision meets plurilingual YouTube

Linguascaping discursive ontologies

 | Portland State University and University of Groningen
 | York University
This research examines ‘virtual linguistic landscapes’ (Ivković and Lotherington 2009) visible in user-generated YouTube.com comment fields associated with video clips of the Eurovision Song Contest. We begin by discussing contemporary sociolinguistic approaches and terminology (e.g. multi-, pluri-, polylingualism) attuned to complex phenomena in social media language contact zones. Following an application of these approaches to data, we argue that the emergence of a user-generated virtual linguistic landscape is usefully understood as a process of ‘linguascaping’ (Jaworski et al. 2003; Ivković 2012); i.e. linguistic engagements that propagate opinions, beliefs and ideological positions. As applied to YouTube comment fields, linguascaping suggests an agentive process of constructing and contesting possible ethno-linguistic identifications and power relations through semiotic resources.
Published online: 10 July 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.27.06tho
References (67)
References
Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso Books.Google Scholar
Androutsopoulos, Jannis. 2015. “Networked Multilingualism: Some Language Practices on Facebook and Their Implications.” International Journal of Bilingualism 19(2): 185–205. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Auer, Peter. 1999. “From Codeswitching Via Language Mixing to Fused Lects: Toward a Dynamic Typology of Bilingual Speech.” International Journal of Bilingualism 3(4): 309–332. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Catherine. 2008. “Wild Dances and Dying Wolves: Simulation, Essentialization, and National Identity at the Eurovision Song Contest.” Popular Communication 6(3): 173–189. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baron, Naomi. 2008. Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World. Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barton, David, and Carmen Lee. 2013. Language Online: Investigating Digital Texts and Practices. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ben-Rafael, Eliezer. 2009. “A Sociological Approach to the Study of Linguistic Landscapes.” Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, ed. by Elana Shohamy and Durk Gorter, 40–54. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Blackledge, Adrian, and Angela Creese. 2010. Multilingualism: A Critical Perspective. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan, and Ben Rampton. 2011. “Language and Superdiversity: A Position Paper.” Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies Paper 63, 2–22. Available at: [URL]Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah. 1995. Verbal Hygiene. London: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
Cenoz, Jasone, and Durk Gorter. 2006. “Linguistic Landscape and Minority Languages.” International Journal of Multilingualism 3(1): 67–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Danet, Brenda, and Susan C. Herring (eds.). 2007. The Multilingual Internet: Language, Culture, and Communication Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Engeström, Yrjö. 2006. “Development, Movement and Agency: Breaking Away into Mycorrhizae Activities.” Building Activity Theory in Practice: Toward the Next Generation 1: 1–43.Google Scholar
García, Ofelia. 2009. Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective. Malden, MA: Basil/Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gray, Jonathan, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington. 2007. Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Harris, Roy. 1998. Introduction to Integrational Linguistics. Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Harissi, Maria, Emi Otsuji, and Alastair Pennycook, 2012. “The Performative Fixing and Unfixing of Subjectivities.” Applied Linguistics 33(5): 524–543. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heller, Monica. 1988. “Strategic Ambiguity: Codeswitching in the Management of Conflict.” In Codeswitching: Anthropological and Sociolinguistic Perspectives, ed. by Monica Heller, 77–96. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ivković, Dejan. 2012. Virtual Linguistic Landscape: A Perspective on Multilingualism in Cyberspace. York University, Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation.Google Scholar
. 2013. “The Eurovision Song Contest on YouTube: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Language Attitudes.” Language@Internet 10.Google Scholar
. forthcoming. “Towards a Semiotics of Mültilingüälism.” Semiotica.
Ivkovic, Dejan, and Heather Lotherington. 2009. “Multilingualism in Cyberspace: Conceptualizing the Virtual Linguistic Landscape.” International Journal of Multilingualism 6(1): 17–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jaworski, Adam, Crispin Thurlow, Sarah Lawson, and Virpi Ylänne-McEwen. 2003. “The Uses and Representations of Local Languages in Tourist Destinations: A View from British TV Holiday Programs.” Language Awareness 12(1): 5–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Rodney, and Christoph Hafner. 2012. Understanding Digital Literacies: A Practical Introduction. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jørgensen, J. Normann. 2008. “Polylingual Languaging Around and Among Children and Adolescents.” International Journal of Multilingualism 5(3): 161–176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jørgensen, J. Normann, Rosita Rindler-Schjerve, and Eva Vetter. 2012. “Polylingualism, Multilingualism, Plurilingualism. A Toolkit for Transnational Communication in Europe.” [last accessed 15/07/2013].
Kackman, Michael, Marnie Binfield, Matthew Thomas Payne, Allison Perlman, and Bryan 
Sebok (eds). 2010. Flow TV: Television in the Age of Media Convergence. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kravchenko, Alexander V. 2007. “Essential Properties of Language, or, Why Language is not a Code.” Language Sciences 29(5): 650–671. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Landry, Rodrigue, and Richard Y. Bourhis. 1997. “Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality: An Empirical Study.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 16(1): 23–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. 
Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lankshear, Colin, and Michele Knobel (eds). 2008. Digital Literacies: Concepts, Policies and Practices. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Leppänen, Sirpa, Anne Pitkänen-Huhta, Arja Piirainen-Marsch, Tarja Nikula, and Saija 
Peuronen. 2009. “Young People’s Translocal New Media Uses: A Multiperspective Analysis of Language Choice and Hetero-glossia.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 14: 1080-1107. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Linell, Per. 2009. Rethinking Language, Mind, and World Dialogically: Interactional and Contextual Theories of Human Sense-making. Charlotte, NC: Information Age.Google Scholar
Makoni, Sinfree, and Alastair Pennycook (eds). 2007. Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Marcoccia, Michel. 2004. “On-line Polylogues: Conversation Structure and Participation Framework in Internet Newsgroups.” Journal of Pragmatics 36(1): 115–145. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moriarty, Máiréad. 2012. “Language Ideological Debates in the Linguistic Landscape of an Irish Tourist Town.” In Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape, ed. by Durk Gorter, Heiko Marten, Luk van Mensel, and Gabrielle Hogan-Brun, 74–88. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Otsuji, Emi, and Alastair Pennycook. 2010. “Metrolingualism: Fixity, Fluidity and Language in Flux.” International Journal of Multilingualism 7(3): 240–254. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pajala, Mari. 2007. “Finland, Zero Points. Nationality, Failure and Shame in the Finnish Media.” In A Song for Europe: Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest, ed. by Ivan Raykoff, and Robert Tobin, 71–82. Surrey, UK: Ashgate.Google Scholar
. 2011. “Making Television Historical: Cultural Memory of the Eurovision Song Contest in the Finnish Media 1961–2005.” Media History 17(4): 405–418. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paolillo, John C. 2007. “How Much Multilingualism? Language Diversity on the Internet.” In The Multilingual Internet. Languages, Cultures and Communication Online, ed. by Brenda Danet, and Susan Herring, 408–430. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pennycook, Alastair. 2010. Language as a Local Practice. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rampton, Ben. 1998. “Speech Community.” In Jef Verschueren, Jan-Ola Östman, Jan 
Blommaert, and Chris Bulcaen (eds), Handbook of Pragmatics, 1–34. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Raykoff, Ivan. 2009. “Interview about the Eurovision Song Contest with Host Anna Maria Tremonti.” The Current, CBC Radio, March 12, 2009 [audio recording]. Retrieved from [URL]Google Scholar
Schecter, Sandra R., and Jacqueline Lynch. 2010. “Health Learning and Adult Education: In Search of a Theory of Practice.” Adult Education Quarterly: 207–224.Google Scholar
Shohamy, Elana. 2006. Language Policy: Hidden Agendas and New Approaches. New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shohamy, Elana, and Durk Gorter (eds). 2008. Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Thibault, Paul J. 2005. “Brains, Bodies, Contextualizing Activity and Language: Do Humans (and Bonobos) have a Language Faculty, and Can They Do Without One?“ Linguistics and the Human Sciences 1: 99–125.Google Scholar
. 2011. “First-order Languaging Dynamics and Second-order Language: The Distributed Language View.” Ecological Psychology 23(3): 210–245. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thorne, Steven L. 2003. “Artifacts and Cultures-of-Use in Intercultural Communication.” Language Learning and Technology 7(2): 38–67.Google Scholar
. 2011. “Community Formation and the World as Its Own Model.” The Modern Language Journal 95(2): 304–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. “Gaming Writing: Supervernaculars, Stylization, and Semiotic Remediation.” Technology Across Writing Contexts and Tasks. CALICO Monograph: 297–316.Google Scholar
Thorne, Steven L., and Rebecca W. Black. 2007. “Language and Literaccy Development in Computer-mediated Contexts and Communities.” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 27: 133–160. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thorne, Steven L, and Ingrid Fischer. 2012. “Online Gaming as Sociable Media.” URL: [URL]. DOI logo
Thorne, Steven L., and James P. Lantolf. 2007. “A Linguistics of Communicative Activity.” In Sinfree Makoni, and Alastair Pennycook (eds), Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages, 170–195. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Troyer, Robert A. 2012. “English in the Thai Linguistic Netscape.” World Englishes 31(1): 93–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Verschik, Anna, and Jim Hlavac. 2009. “Eto Leto Svet: Estonia’s 2008 Eurovision Song as a Source of Folk-linguistic Controversy.“ Monash University Linguistics Papers 6(2): 47.Google Scholar
Vertovec, Steven. 2007 “Super-diversity and its Implications.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30(6): 1024–1054. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Voloshinov, Valentin Nikólaievich. 1986. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Vossen, Gottfried, and Stephan Hagemann. 2010. Unleashing Web 2.0: From Concepts to Creativity. Melbourne: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Vuletić, Dean. 2007. “The Socialist Star: Yugoslavia, Cold War Politics and the Eurovision Song Contest.” In A Song for Europe: Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest, ed. by Ivan Raykoff, and Robert Deam Tobin, 83–97. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond. 1976. Key Words. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Willis, Paul E., Simon Jones, Joyce Canaan, and Geoff Hurd. 1990. Common Culture: Symbolic Work at Play in the Everyday Cultures of the Young. San Francisco: Westview.Google Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn A. 1998. “Simultaneity and Bivalency as Strategies in Bilingualism.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8(1): 3–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yair, Gad. 1995. “‘Unite Unite Europe’. The Political and Cultural Structures of Europe as Reflected in the Eurovision Song Contest.” Social Networks 17(2): 147–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (10)

Cited by ten other publications

Adrienn Károly, Lotta Kokkonen, Maija Gerlander & Peppi Taalas
2024. Driving and Embracing Change: Learning and Teaching Languages and Communication in Higher Education. JYU Studies ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Shafirova, Liudmila & Maria Helena Araújo e Sá
2024. Multilingual encounters in online video practices: the case of Portuguese university students. International Journal of Multilingualism 21:3 ► pp. 1680 ff. DOI logo
Li, Songqing & Hongli Yang
2023. ‘Open’, ‘connected’, ‘distinctive’, ‘pioneering’, and ‘committed’: semioscaping Shanghai as a global city. International Journal of Multilingualism 20:2 ► pp. 250 ff. DOI logo
Cabras, Giulia
2022. Technology-Mediated Communication and Representations of Islam in Northwest China: Insights from Visual Postings on Weixin. International Journal of Islam in Asia 2:1 ► pp. 70 ff. DOI logo
Ivković, Dejan
2020. Multilingualism, collaboration and experiential learning with multiple modalities: the case of Mondovision. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 14:4 ► pp. 307 ff. DOI logo
Berezkina, Maimu
2018. ‘Language is a costly and complicating factor’: a diachronic study of language policy in the virtual public sector. Language Policy 17:1 ► pp. 55 ff. DOI logo
Leppänen, Sirpa, Samu Kytölä & Elina Westinen
2017. Multilingualism and Multimodality in Language Use and Literacies in Digital Environments. In Language, Education and Technology, ► pp. 119 ff. DOI logo
Sykes, Julie M.
2017. Technologies for Teaching and Learning Intercultural Competence and Interlanguage Pragmatics. In The Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning, ► pp. 118 ff. DOI logo
Blyth, Carl & Amanda Dalola
2016. Translingualism as an Open Educational Language Practice: Raising Critical Language Awareness on Facebook. Alsic Vol. 19, n° 1 DOI logo
Motschenbacher, Heiko
2016. Introduction. In Language, Normativity and Europeanisation, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 november 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.