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A slightly slummier area? Negotiations of place‐bound identities through social spatializations and unofficial toponyms[Note 1. We are grateful to the editors of the Journal ...]
Author(s) -
Vuolteenaho Jani,
Lappalainen Hanna,
Ainiala Terhi
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of sociolinguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1467-9841
pISSN - 1360-6441
DOI - 10.1111/josl.12340
Subject(s) - toponymy , sociology , negotiation , sociolinguistics , meaning (existential) , identity (music) , bridging (networking) , linguistics , voice , focus (optics) , media studies , aesthetics , epistemology , social science , art , philosophy , computer science , physics , optics , computer network
In the article, spatializations (discourses of ideal or stereotyped spaces) are conceptualized as powerful discourses of the surrounding society, providing resources for place‐bound identity construction in interaction. We combine a sociolinguistic analysis with Bakhtinian dialogism to understand how such “third” voices in dialogue empower and pluralize self‐ and other‐positionings embedded in the evocations of unofficial place names. Empirically, the focus is on toponyms that divide the socially mixed Vuosaari suburb in Helsinki into “older” and “newer” territories. The results show that when the stereotypes of “good” and “bad” neighbourhoods or other spatializations interpenetrate the uses of “Old” and “New Vuosaari,” they open room for the (re‐)voicing of the meanings of these toponyms for highly differentiated social ends. With the Bakhtinian framework bridging between socio‐spatial theory and sociolinguistics, the article develops a spatially sensitized approach to analyse the entanglements of the micro‐level contexts of interaction with the macro‐level discourses of meaning‐giving.