Geography and linguistics: Histories, entanglements and departures

Jagessar, Philip

doi:10.1111/gec3.12540

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…The convergence of geography and linguistics as modern academic disciplines dates back to their joint role in imperial expansion and nation-building in the late 19th century. The naturalisation of a connection between a standardised mother tongue and a territorially demarcated motherland was a key instrument of colonial statecraft, with the use of language mapping in (re)inscribing territorial boundaries being well documented and discussed by human geographers and sociolinguists alike (Dunlop, 2013; Jagessar, 2020; Jones and Lewis, 2019; Phillipson, 2010; Schwarz, 1997). ‘Linguistic landscapes’, the presence or absence of written languages in the material landscape have similarly been analysed by both geographers and sociolinguists as a means of claiming, maintaining and contesting colonial territorial control (Azaryahu and Kook, 2002; Nash, 1999; Zelinsky and Williams, 1988).…”

Section: Decolonising Geographies Of Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Revocalising human geography: Decolonial language geographies beyond the nation-state

Chapman

2022

Progress in Human Geography

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This paper emphasises the decolonial importance of geographical engagement with the materiality of language as an embodied and embedded relation. It shows how abstractions of language(s) as discrete, codified and possessable objects participate in a ‘coloniality of language’ that risks obscuring alternative geographies of language within, against and beyond the territorialised monolingualism of the colonial nation-state. Through considering Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero’s analysis of Western modernity’s systematic ‘devocalisation of logos’ from a modernity/coloniality perspective, I argue that geographical consideration of language as a ‘revocalised’ relation could contribute to moving beyond colonial and (ethno)nationalist geographies of language.

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Section: Decolonising Geographies Of Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Revocalising human geography: Decolonial language geographies beyond the nation-state

Chapman

2022

Progress in Human Geography

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“…52 Following the convergence of linguistics and geography, which came about as a result of the upsurgence of ethnically and linguistically-based European nationalisms by the end of the nineteenth century, Philip Jagessar has commented that 'language was increasingly viewed as a mappable phenomenon that could provide a new, stable, variable for demarcating and organising space'. 53 Linguistic geography, which spread as a branch of dialectology from the end of the nineteenth century, dealt with the analysis of linguistic phenomena from the perspective of their geographical distribution, taking into account historical, social and geographical factors. The publication of the Atlas Linguistique de France (1902)(1903)(1904)(1905)(1906)(1907)(1908)(1909)(1910) by the Swiss linguists Jules Gilliéron and Edmond Edmont, consecrated linguistic geography as an autonomous discipline.…”

Section: Nation Language Race: a Tricky Relationshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scholars and the reframing of Europe: the complex relationship between language, race and nation during the Great War

Zantedeschi¹

2022

Studies on National Movements

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Delegates attending the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 were given the arduous task of establishing the terms of the peace after WW1, including the criteria by which to determine the boundaries of new states emerging from the collapse of the old multinational empires. Given that U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had laid so much emphasis on the principle of ‘self determination’, language was considered by many as the best element to establish nationality in ethnically mixed territories. A legacy of the nineteenth century, the apparently straightforward identification between language and nation was nevertheless complicated by pervasive ideas about race, as the taxonomies of language and race became increasingly entangled. By presenting selected works by two scholars – Leon Dominian, a geographer, and Antoine Meillet, a linguist –, this paper analyses the main and most widespread arguments propounded in support of the identification between language and nation during the Great War. It also explains why this principle turned out to be exceedingly problematic at the time of the redrawing the political map of Europe, and how the ambiguous relationship between language and race persisted during the early years of twentieth century.

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“…Considering the insights from discourse analysis – for example as employed in the study of Critical Geopolitics (Dodds, 2001) – and attention to the linguistic (Jagessar, 2020), I have argued elsewhere that geopolitical meaning is co‐constructed in moments of relating (Medby, 2022b). One thing discursive analyses have in common is an interest in meanings and meaning‐making beyond the surface level of communication, paying attention to the structures and norms that shape people's practices and worldviews.…”

Section: Saying What and How Speaking Togethermentioning

confidence: 99%

Words beyond ‘data’: Managing small talk and positionality in North Norway

Medby

2022

Area

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The interviewee reads slowly through the consent form I have just handed him. I try to look confident, attempting to find a position in the chair that neither makes the audio-recorder too obvious nor obscures its sound. I worry about background noise, and the sound my coffee cup makes when it hits the table. I am conscious of my own awkward position in the low chair, conscious of the many pieces of paper I am clutching, conscious of people passing us as they hurry to and from their own tasks in the busy office environment. He looks up, and says in the slowly articulated manner characteristic of the North: 'Ja ja, ae har en mistanke om at du e herfra …?' [Well well, I suspect you're from around here…?] 'Ja, du kjenn' igjen etternavnet, eller …? Eller far'n min … Ja, ae e født her i Kirkenes. Far'n min e xxx' [Yeah, you recognise the surname, or …? Or my father … Yeah, I was born here in Kirkenes … My dad is xxx].The sentences are not verbatim, and the translated transcript does not capture the nuances of our North Norwegian dialects that likely prompted his comment; this was before I turned the recorder on, and before the interview formally started. We spent a couple of minutes figuring out how the interviewee knew my father -they had met at social gatherings and at work in the small town in the late 1980s -and about my personal background and interest in the region. It was only after this that I switched on the recorder, and the interviewee started elaborating on his experience of the political initiative that I was researching.In what follows, the moment sketched above serves as an entry-point to consider working with spoken words in a familiar (or even familial) context, and the blurriness of multifaceted positionalities 1 (Dowling, 2005). I briefly outline

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Geography and linguistics: Histories, entanglements and departures

Cited by 6 publications

References 62 publications

Revocalising human geography: Decolonial language geographies beyond the nation-state

Revocalising human geography: Decolonial language geographies beyond the nation-state

Scholars and the reframing of Europe: the complex relationship between language, race and nation during the Great War

Words beyond ‘data’: Managing small talk and positionality in North Norway

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