Project description (short version)
Developmental processes in urban linguistic environments –
convergence and divergence (UPUS)
1. Primary goal
An ever increasing share of Norway's population lives in cities or urban regions, and
at the same time, restructuring of the urban space is continually taking place;
demographically, ethnically and socioculturally. The project’s overarching goal is to
develop new knowledge of linguistic practices being used in this diverse urban
landscape. What are the characteristics of the city’s linguistic repertoire today, as they
have developed through a continual chain of converging and diverging processes – in
the junction between urban and rural, between different social strata, and between
different ethnic groups? Key notions are linguistic differentiation and
homogenisation,
linguistic
structural
simplification,
hybridisation
and
conventionalisation.
2. The field’s historical background
Taking a bird’s eye view of the study of Norwegian speech, it is clear that the rural
varieties have been the focus of research interest – from the early beginnings of
dialectology in the 19th century and for the most part up until today. Within the
dialectological tradition this non-urban focus was almost paradigmatic and virtually
linked to a superior national project, while the urban varieties, on the other hand,
tended to be ascribed “inauthentic” and “un-national” traits, and were as such
considered less suitable for research. In the first half of the 20th century, however,
some urban varieties were still examined, with A.B. Larsen’s studies in Christiania
(1907), Bergen (1911-1912), and Stavanger (1925) as the most prominent1. All the
same, the study of speech in Norwegian cities was a marginal activity within the
classic dialectology, and it was only with the Labovian sociolinguistics of the 1970s,
that the pendulum swung the other way, and the city gained the position of being the
primary location for speech studies. In Norway, this skewing of research interest led
to studies being conducted in cities like Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and Stavanger2
within the space of a few years – before the sociolinguistic wave partly ebbed out, and
partly turned to Norwegian towns and villages.3 In practice, such a semi-urban, or
even rural, focus has characterised Norwegian sociolinguistics in its entire 30-year
history, with the exception of the first intense years when one more or less tried to
directly adopt the Labovian big city orientation. The TEIN project4 from the late
1
See Handagaard 1901, Hoel 1915, Voss 1940, Johnsen 1942.
See Hanssen et al. 1978, Talemål i Bergen 1983-1988, Fintoft and Mjaavatn 1980, Gabrielsen 1984,
respectively. Almost a generation has passed since these studies were conducted in the real childhood
of sociolinguistics. Not only have the methodological and theoretical approaches within the field
changed and developed since that time, but most Norwegian cities have also gone through quite
significant demographic changes in the last couple of decades.
3
For a more extensive review of the development in the research tradition, see for example Mæhlum
1996.
4
TEIN is the acronym for ”Talemålsendring i Norge”, or Speech Change in Norway, a research project
supported by the Research Council of Norway, and run by a national network of sociolinguists from
Norway's four universities, as well as Agder University College. The sociolinguistic network SONE,
which is behind the current application, in practice concurs with the TEIN group, but is expanded with
representatives from several other university colleges.
2
1990s, and the new growth in Norwegian sociolinguistics this entailed, in reality did
not change this image: With TEIN’s emphasis on regionalisation and regionalisation
processes, the focus for the most part remained in the districts; or put differently – the
focus was certainly not moved to the larger urban centres.
Today, that means that one is faced with the paradoxical situation that one has
a relatively good insight into the characteristics of speech development in various
regions around the country, while at the same time, there is a minimal degree of
knowledge of the linguistic situation in the urban areas thought to function as centres
of innovation and bodies of influence to these respective regions. In other words, one
has mapped the consequences and results of some prerequisites that are virtually
unknown – that is linguistic forms of practice and developmental tendencies in
Norwegian cities.
3. The city – meeting place and force field
“On ne peut pas ne pas être dans la ville”5
(L.-F. Céline, from Larsen 1990:10)
As an increasingly larger share of the world’s population is living in cities6, the urban
centres have also gained increased significance as purveyors of premises and
producers of symbols – politically and economically, socially and culturally. During
the last couple of decades, many of the cities in the industrialised world have
undergone substantial industrial restructuring, and have emerged more like postindustrial centres for an increasingly global capitalism (see for example Lash and
Urry 1994:17). The city is considered to be the cradle of modernity, and it is also
often presented as the incarnation of vitality and innovation. “Cities – large and small,
global and local, north and south – have become (for better or for worse) the principal
material expressions of contemporary human civilization” is Michael Dear’s (2000:7)
summarising characterisation of this developmental trend.
But what else, specifically, characterises the city? What urban qualities would
be especially important to emphasise as starting points for a study of linguistic
developmental processes and forms of practice? Within different fields in art and
social sciences, nationally as well as internationally, there has been a long-standing
tradition for labelling the city and the urban as the virtual antithesis to the countryside
and the rural. With such a contrasting perspective, one has been able to express this
difference through the help of a series of dichotomies and stereotypes, where some of
the “classics” are (from Thuen 2001):
Urbanity
Gesellschaft
Pluralism
Innovation
Centre of power
Cultural hegemony
5
Rurality
Gemeinschaft7
Homogeneity
Tradition
Marginality
“Provincialism”
Which means ”One cannot not be in the city”.
At the turn of the millenium, for the first time ever more than half of the world’s population lived in
cities, see Paddison 2001a:ix. In Norway, approximately two thirds lived in cities and towns in 2003
(See for example Frønes and Brusdal 2001:95).
7
The terms ”Gemeinschaft” vs ”Gesellschaft” have in this country been used more or less analogue
with ”local community” vs bureaucracy and modern city and industrial communities (see for example
discussion in Pløger 1997:168ff.).
6
Global
Culture
National
Nature
Some of the prototypical urban characteristics have, within this tradition, been
ascribed entirely negative qualities, and the city, thus, has tended to emerge as a
symbol of the, socially speaking, dystopic society: “[…] In short, living in the city
was disorganizing, depersonalizing, alienating, and competitive” (Paddison
2001b:196). A contrasting image of this view of the city as a place characterised by a
“lack of identity” and “rootlessness,” can be found through, among other things, the
many studies of city sections conducted in various big cities around the world. These
studies demonstrate how the city in reality is comprised of a number of “local
communities”, where exactly the significance of local environment, neighbourhood,
and community are some of the key characteristics (see for example Paddison 2001b
and Pløger 1997, with references). This establishment of geographically dependent
social and discursive communities is still only one of the many opportunities usually
presented by the city when it comes to developing sub-cultural relationships. Part of
what characterises the city as a sociocultural space, is precisely its potential for
opening up a series of different forms of social attachment and communities. The
social heterogeneity of the city is generally characterised by the individual’s
opportunity to “detach” himself from the geographic/territorial local community and
instead orient himself socially along other axes. In this context we will use general
and overarching labels, and refer to the primary of these axes as social and ethnic,
respectively.
Social differentiation is a classic topos in urban studies, but in the postindustrial, multicultural society there is much evidence for how the differentiation to
an increasing degree can be perceived as social segregation and polarisation (see for
example Hamnett 2001). These processes of segregation often involve all three of the
axes mentioned above, in such a way that different “enclaves”, that can be both
territorially, as well as socially and ethnically defined, are established in the urban
space. This way, the individual city constitutes a multidimensional space, where
different micro-social communities crystallise partly within, and partly across the
macro-social structures, in the form of specific arenas for social interaction. One
characteristic of urban life is how each individual continually moves between several
such communities, and such activates different aspects of his sociocultural repertoire.
And it is mainly here, in these arenas of interaction, that the different linguistic forms
of practice crystallise – through a series of homogenising, differentiating, and finally,
conventionalising processes.
4. Project structure and organisation
Initially, the primary responsibility for the project rested with the SONE’s project
team, but will now be transferred to a newly established UPUS board, with Professor
Brit Mæhlum from Trondheim as project manager. The sociolinguistic network,
SONE, currently consists of representatives from the professional environments for
Nordic languages at the four universities, as well as the university colleges in Agder,
Oslo and Hedmark. The goal behind the UPUS project is to initiate linguistic studies
in a large number of Norwegian cities. Experiences from the TEIN project, which was
backed by the Research Council, have shown that such overarching initiatives often
generate activity.8 Now, the academic administrative conditions are thus especially
well adapted to ensure that the sociolinguistic activity actually will be centred around
the urban field in the time to come, through the academic community represented by
SONE at a significant number of the country’s institutions of higher education. The
longterm goal of SONE’s project team is therefore to initiate studies in many
Norwegian cities, in various parts of the country in the years to come – in the form of
master’s theses, Ph.D. dissertations, post doctoral projects, as well as other forms of
research work.
The goal is that one through these different “case studies” also will be able to
conduct a good deal of direct comparative analyses of the linguistic development in
Norwegian cities, both at an overarching national level, and at different regional
levels (for example when it comes to the establishment of any multiethnic varieties;
the development of linguistic features like the present and participle tense conjugation
of irregular verbs; the much noted merging of skje-/kje-; negative adverbs). It is
obvious, however, that it will not be advisable to maintain one defined, homogenous
approach to every study unit. The structural distance between for example Oslo on the
one hand, and Grimstad or Bodø or the other, is so significant that it will be necessary
to develop individualised research strategies for the different cities, both thematical
and methodological.
Through the UPUS project, SONE’s group of researchers would like to see the
construction of a database that includes the empirical material from every included
project. This work will be carried out in cooperation with Aksis, the Department of
Culture, Language and Information Technology at the University of Bergen. The
collected material will be transcribed using conventional orthography, and these
transcriptions will then be linked to the digital sound files (with the help of the sound
editing programme PRAAT), and be made available for further processing and coding
through a search engine. This way, the material is adapted for many different types of
linguistic and sociopragmatic analyses. Such a wide adaptation of the material, with
multipurpose utilisation in mind, requires means for research assistance.
With the grant awarded by the Research Council, the UPUS project can now
initiate 2 three-year post doctoral scholarships, 2 three-year Ph.D. scholarships, and 3
two-year salary release scholarships for established researchers in the university and
university college sector.
5. Dissemination of research results
The results from the different projects linked to UPUS as the project gets underway,
will be published through doctoral theses and any other monographies, as well as
through academic articles both published both nationally and internationally (among
other things, through Målbryting, SONE’s own series of pamphlets, established under
TEIN, and currently published in 7 issues). In addition, UPUS researchers will of
course disseminate their results on different national and international conferences. If
this project sees similar recruitment to that of the TEIN initiative, it will mean a
significant potential for academic dissemination – within the academic environments
as well as outside them in popular science contexts.
8
8 doctoral theses in all, some completed and some still in progress, plus more than 40 master’s theses
were covered by the TEIN umbrella.
Literature:
Berntsen, M. & A.B. Larsen (1925): Stavanger Bymål. Oslo.
Dear, M.J. (2000): The Postmodern Urban Condition. Oxford: Blackwell.
Fintoft, K. & P.E. Mjaavatn (1980): Språksosiologiske forhold i Trondheim bymål.
Trondheim: Tapir.
Frønes, I. & R. Brusdal (2001): På sporet av den nye tid. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget.
Gabrielsen, F. (1984): Eg eller je? Ei sosiolingvistisk gransking av yngre mål i
Stavanger. Oslo: Novus forlag.
Hamnett, C. (2001): ”Social Segregation and Social Polarization”. I Paddison (red.),
162-176.
Handagaard, I. (1901): ”Er folkemaale i byane gode norske maalføre? Fosna-maale.
Eit norskt bymaal”. I Syn og Segn, 97-110.
Hanssen, E. et al. (1978): Oslomål. Prosjektbeskrivelse og syntaktisk analyse av
oslomål med henblikk på sosiale skilnader. Talemålsundersøkelsen i Oslo
(TAUS). Skrift nr. 6. Hovedrapport. Oslo: Novus forlag.
Hoel, I. (1915: ”Kristiansundsmaalet”. I Maal og Minne, 1-63.
Iversen, R. 1918: Syntaksen i Tromsø bymål. En kort oversigt. Kristiania:
Bymaalslagets forlag.
Johnsen, A. (1942: Kristiansands bymål. Oslo: H. Aschehoug & Co.
Larsen, A.B. (1907): Kristiania bymål. Vulgærsproget med henblik på den utvungne
dagligtale. Kristiania. Bymålslaget.
Larsen, A.B. & G. Stolz (1912): Bergens bymål. Kristiania.
Larsen, S.E. (1990): ”Bykultur som humanistisk studieobjekt”. I K.L. Berge & U.-B.
Kotsinas (red.) Storstadsspråk og storstadskultur i Norden. MINS 34.
Stockholm, 10-22.
Lash, S. & J. Urry (1994): The Economies of Signs and Space. London: Sage
Publications.
Mæhlum, B. (1996): ”Norsk og nordisk sosiolingvistikk. En historisk oversikt”. I C.
Henriksen et al (red.) Studies in the development of linguistics in Denmark,
Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Oslo: Novus forlag, 175-224.
Paddison, R. (2001a): ”Preface”. I Paddison (red.), ix-xii.
Paddison, R. (2001b): ”Communities in the City”. I Paddison (red.), 194-205.
Paddison, R. (red.) (2001): Handbook of Urban Studies. London: Sage Publications.
Pløger, J. (1997): Byliv og modernitet. Mellom nærmiljø og urbanitet. NIBR.
Thuen, T. (2001): ”Sted og identitet”. I Nordlit nr. 10. Universitetet i Tromsø, 79-93.
Voss, F. (1940): ”Arendals bymål. Lydlære og formlære”. I Maal og Minne, 49-101.