Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T10:04:11.217Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Music video covers, minoritised languages, and affective investments in the space of YouTube

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 August 2017

Kati Dlaske*
Affiliation:
University of Jyväskylä, Finland
*
Address for correspondence: Kati Dlaske, University of Jyväskylä, Department of Languages, P.O. Box 35, FI-40014 University of Jyväskylä, Finland, [email protected]

Abstract

While interest in affective processes has led to an affective turn in cultural studies, in sociolinguistics this perspective has been given less attention. This study takes up the ‘lens of affect’ and directs it on two cases exemplifying the circulation of minoritised languages in new media spaces: music video covers from two minority-language contexts, Irish and Sámi, uploaded on YouTube. Combining recent theorising on affect with insights from sociolinguistic research, the study investigates how the YouTube users’ affective investments contribute to a (re)evaluation of the two minoritised languages, their speakers, and the related ethnic/national belongings, and how these investments are expressions of more or less banal nationalism, connected to the colonial histories of Ireland and Finland. The study illustrates how the social media operate as a catalyst of affective investments involved in an ethnolinguistic (re)ordering of languages and their speakers, at the intersection of ‘banal globalisation’ and ‘everyday nationalism’. (Minority languages, affect, discourse, social media, nationalism)*

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I would like to extend a big thank you to members of Jyväskylä Discourse Hub and especially to the two anonymous reviewers, whose insightful and constructive comments substantially contributed to the improvement of earlier versions of this article. All remaining shortcomings are, of course, my own.

References

REFERENCES

Ahmed, Sara (2004). The cultural politics of emotion. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ahmed, Sara (2010). Happy objects. In Gregg, Melissa & Seigworth, Gregory J. (eds.), The affect theory reader, 2951. Durham, NC: Duke University.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Billig, Michael (1995). Banal nationalism. London: SAGE.Google Scholar
Bird, S. Elisabeth (1999). Gendered construction of the American Indian in the popular media. Journal of Communication (49)3:6183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan (2005) Discourse: A critical introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan (2010). The sociolinguistics of globalisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brennan, Sara C., & Wilson, James Costa (2016) The indexical reordering of language in times of crises: Nation, region, and the rebranding of place in Shetland and Western Ireland. Signs and Society 4(1):106–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brennan, Teresa (2004). Transmission of affect. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith (1997). Excitable speech: A politics of the performative. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Chiluwa, Innocent, & Ifukor, Presley (2015). ‘War against our children’: Stance and evaluation in #BringBackOurGirls campaign discourse on Twitter and Facebook. Discourse & Society 26(3):267–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
da Silva, Emanuel (2015). Humor (re)positioning ethnolinguistic ideologies: “You tink is funny?” Language in Society 44(2):187212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dlaske, Kati (2016). Way better than the original!! Music video covers and language revitalisation: A sociosemiotic view. APPLES - Journal of Applied Language Studies 10(2):83103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dlaske, Kati & Jäntti, Saara (2016). Girls strike back: Politics of parody in an indigenous TV comedy. Gender & Language 10(2):191215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Gill, Rosalind (2008). Empowerment/sexism: Figuring female sexual agency in contemporary advertising. Feminism & Psychology 18(1):3560.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie H., & Goodwin, Charles (2000). Emotion within situated activity. In Duranti, Alessandro (ed.), Linguistic anthropology: A reader, 239–57. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gregg, Melissa, & Seigworth, Gregory J. (2010). The affect theory reader. Durham, NC: Duke University.Google Scholar
Heller, Monica (2011). Paths to post-nationalism: A critical ethnography of language and identity. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Honeycutt, Courtenay, & Cunliffe, Daniel (2010). The use of the Welsh language on Facebook. Information, Communication & Society 13(2):226–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hult, Francis M., & Pietikäinen, Sari (2014). Shaping discourses of multilingualism through a language ideological debate: The case of Swedish in Finland. Journal of Language and Politics 13(1):120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Elin. H. G., & Uribe-Jongbloed, Enrique (eds.) (2013). Social media and minority languages: Convergence and the creative industries. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Rhys, & Merriman, Peter (2009). Hot, banal and everyday nationalism: Bilingual road signs in Wales. Political Geography 28:164–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karatzogianni, Athina, & Kuntsman, Adi (eds.) (2012). Digital cultures and the politics of emotion: Feelings, affect and technological change. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly-Holmes, Helen (2010). Rethinking the macro–micro relationship: Some insights from the marketing domain. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 202:2539.Google Scholar
Kelly-Holmes, Helen (2011). Sex, lies and thematising Irish: New media, old discourses? Journal of Language and Politics 10(4):511–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly-Holmes, Helen (2014). Commentary: Mediatized spaces for minoritized languages: Challenges and opportunities. In Androutsopoulos, Jannis (ed.), Mediatization and sociolinguistic change, 539–43. Berlin: DeGryuter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly-Holmes, Helen & Atkinson, David (2007). ‘When Hector met Tom Cruise’: Attitudes to Irish in a radio satire. In Johnson, Sally & Ensslin, Astrid (eds.), Language in the media: Representations, identities, ideologies, 173–87. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Knudsen, Britta T., & Stage, Carsten (2015). Introduction: Affective methodologies. In Knudsen, Britta T. & Stage, Carsten (eds.), Affective methodologies: Developing cultural research strategies for the study of affect, 122. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kølvraa, Christoffer (2015). Affect, provocation, and far right rhetoric. In Knudsen, Britta T. & Stage, Carsten (eds.), Affective methodologies: Developing cultural research strategies for the study of affect, 183200. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kuntsman, Adi (2009). Figurations of violence and belonging: Queerness, migranthood and nationalism in cyberspace and beyond. Berlin: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Kuntsman, Adi (2012). Introduction: Affective fabrics of digital cultures. In Karatzogianni & Kuntsman, 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lehtola, Jorma (2000). Lailasta Lailaan: Tarinoita elokuvien sitkeistä lappalaisista [From Laila to Laila: Stories of tenacious Lapps in the films]. Inari: Kustannus-Puntsi.Google Scholar
Lehtola, Veli-Pekka (1999). Aito Lappalainen ei syö haarukalla ja veitsellä [A real Lapp does not eat with knife and fork]. In Tuominen, Marja, Tuulentie, Seija, Lehtola, Veli-Pekka, & Autti, Mervi (eds.), Pohjoiset identiteetit ja mentaliteetit 1 [Northern identities and mentalities], 1532. Inari: Kustannus-Puntsi.Google Scholar
Malmquist, Karl (2015). Satire, racist humour and the power of (un)laughter: On the restrained nature of Swedish online racist discourse targeting EU-migrants begging for money. Discourse & Society 26(6):733–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massoumi, Brian (2009). Of microperception and micropolitics. Inflections 3:120.Google Scholar
McBean, Sam (2014). Remediating affect: ‘Luclyn’ and lesbian intimacy on YouTube. Journal of Lesbian Studies 18(3):282–97.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McElhinny, Bonnie (2010). The audacity of affect: Gender, race and history in linguistic accounts of legitimacy and belonging. Annual Review of Anthropology 39:309–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McEwan-Fujita, Emily (2010). Ideology, affect, and socialization in language shift and revitalization: The experiences of adults learning Gaelic in the Western Isles of Scotland. Language in Society 39(1):2764.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLaughlin, Mireille (2015). Linguistic minorities and the multilingual turn: Constructing language ownership through affect in cultural production. Multilingua 35(4):393414.Google Scholar
McRobbie, Angela (2009). The aftermath of feminism: Gender, culture and social change. London: SAGE.Google Scholar
Moriarty, Mairead (2014). Súil Eile: Media, sociolinguistic change and the Irish language. In Androutsopoulos, Jannis (ed.), Mediatization and sociolinguistic change, 463–86. Berlin: DeGryuter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moriarty, Mairead & Pietikäinen, Sari (2011). Micro-level language-planning and grass-roots initiatives: A case study of Irish language comedy and Inari Sámi rap. Current Issues in Language Planning 12 (3):363–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Näkkäläjärvi, Pirita (2016). Näkökulma: Närkästyneet saamelaiset otsikoissa [Perspective: Indignant Sámi in the headlines]. YLE. Online: http://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/sapmi/nakokulma_narkastyneet_saamelaiset_otsikoissa/8877876.Google Scholar
Ó Fátharta, Conall (2013). Irish cover version of hit becomes internet sensation. Irish Examiner. Online: http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/irish-cover-version-of-hit-becomes-internet-sensation-240104.html.Google Scholar
Ó Laoire, Muiris (2008). The language situation in Ireland: An update. In Kaplan, Robert & Baldauf, Richard (eds.), Language planning and policy in Europe, vol. 3: The Baltic states, Ireland and Italy, 193261. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pavlenko, Aneta (2002). Bilingualism and emotions. Multilingua 21(1):4578.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pietikäinen, Sari (2008). Sami in the media: Questions of language vitality and cultural hybridisation. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 3(1):2235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pietikäinen, Sari (2014). Circulation of indigenous Sámi resources across media spaces: A rhizomatic discourse approach. In Androutsopoulos, Jannis (ed.), Mediatization and sociolinguistic change, 515–38. Berlin: DeGryuter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pietikäinen, Sari & Dlaske, Kati (2013). Cutting across media spaces and boundaries: The case of a hybrid indigeneous Sámi comedy. Sociolinguistica 27:87100.Google Scholar
Pietikäinen, Sari & Kelly-Holmes, Helen (2013). Multilingualism and the periphery. In Pietikäinen, Sari & Kelly-Holmes, Helen (eds.), Multilingualism and the periphery, 116. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pietikäinen, Sari & Kelly-Holmes, Helen; Jaffe;, Alexandra & Coupland, Nikolas (2016). Sociolinguistics from the periphery: Small languages in new circumstances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reestorff, Camilla (2015). From artwork to net-work: Affective effects of political art. In Knudsen, Britta T. & Stage, Carsten (eds.), Affective methodologies: Developing cultural research strategies for the study of affect, 201221. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael (2003). Indexical order and the dialectics of social life. Language & Communication 23:193229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thurlow, Crispin, & Jaworski, Adam (2010). Tourism discourse: Language and global mobility. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Wetherell, Margaret (2012). Affect and discourse – What's the problem? From affect as excess to affective/discursive practice. Subjectivity 6(4):349–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar