Latest papers

A blurry picture from the controlroom of a television show.

The other side of the news story: An analysis of the position of Ongehoord Nederland in the Dutch Public Broadcasting Union

Paper

Hannah Kristalijn

14 minutes to read

07/10/2024

How valuable is the alternative story if it is a story based on opinions and interpretations, or questionable facts? This essay explores the position of ON!, and the place for alternative facts in the Dutch Public Broadcasting Union.

TPCS 10: Voicing as an Essential Problem of Communication: Language in education for Chinese immigrant children in globalization

Working paper

Jie Dong

Yan Dong

25/10/2024

This article uses an ethnographic approach to explore voicing processes of identity construction among migrant children in China and in the Dutch Chinese diaspora.

TPCS 9: Supervernaculars and their Dialects

Working paper

18/10/2024

Supervernaculars are sociolinguistic objects which, when developed empirically, can lead to quite radical reformulations of cultural processes and transformations in the age of globalization and superdiversity. They are a particular and new type of sociolinguistic object: semiotic forms that circulate in networks driven, largely, by new technologies such as the Internet and mobile communication devices.

TPCS 8: Placing Shibboleths at the Institutional Gate: LADO tests and the construction of asylum seekers’ identities

Working paper

Max Spotti

Joachim Detailleur

11/10/2024

Can a sociolinguistic analysis be used to address a migrant's language as a resource of origin? This working paper critically engages with the so-called 'LADO-test' to argue that the LADO analysis ought to be driven by an understanding of language as a spatio-temporal resource, linked to macro socio-political events that have characterized the life and the migration history of the applicant.

TPCS 7: On Learning a Language in Transformation: Two final year students’ experiences in Chinese complementary education

Working paper

Jinling Li

Kasper Juffermans

04/10/2024

How are Chinese-Dutch children experiencing Chinese language learning in the Netherlands? This working paper analyzes two accounts of final year students to find out how Chinese-Dutch children identify with Chinese language.

TPCS 6: Deprivation, Distance and Connectivity: The adaptation of mobile phone use to a life in Wesbank, a post-Apartheid township in South Africa

Working paper

f.velghe@uvt.nl

27/09/2024

Technological developments have created new hopes regarding the ways in which mobile phones might close the gap between the developed and the developing world.

TPCS 5: In beloved memory of: Facebook, death and subjectivity

Working paper

Piia Varis

Max Spotti

20/09/2024

New socio-technological tools certainly have an empowering dimension. However, they also shape our subjectivities by regulating them and limiting our agency. This working paper discusses these socio-technological developments through the case of Facebook, in order to demonstrate the implications social media like Facebook have for subjectivity and social practices.

TPCS 4: Which language? Which culture? Which pedagogy? A study of Mandarin Chinese teachers’ perceptions of their professional self in a British school context

Working paper

The Editors

13/09/2024

Inspired by a growing interest in Mandarin, this research looks into the ideological conceptualisation of Mandarin teaching in British schools through the eyes of teachers of Mandarin.

TPCS 3: Truly Moving Texts

Working paper

Sjaak Kroon

06/09/2024

As the world is continuously globalizing, we can no longer analyze language as a local, resident and stable complex of signs attached to an equally local, resident and stable community of speakers. This paper engages with an issue which is at the core of this paradigmatic shift: the question of meaning-making in a system which we see as intrinsically unstable and dynamic.

TPCS 2: Enough is enough: The heuristics of authenticity in superdiversity

Working paper

Jan Blommaert

Piia Varis

30/08/2024

This short paper intends to sketch an empirical theory of identity in a context of superdiversity. It adds to the development of new approaches to language and semiotics in superdiverse environments.

The Anti-China Discourse of Raimondo, and why US Technological Dominance is in Jeopardy

Paper

Zhiqing Yin

09/09/2024

26 minutes to read

This paper uses Critical Discourse Analysis to gain a more profound understanding of US Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo's anti-China technological stance, and to demonstrate how how the Chinese netizens subsequently expressed their nationalism.

What do we see in a viral landscape? Instagram vs Reality and the future of overtourism

Academic paper

Sean P. Smith

02/09/2024

17 minutes to read

As overtourism grips popular destinations, proposed solutions that do not factor in the influence of social media are unlikely to solve the problem.

Where is the Eco-anxiety in Children’s Literature?

Academic paper

Suzanne van der Beek

26/08/2024

26 minutes to read

This article proposes that Bould’s concept of the “Anthropocene unconscious” helps us to recognize the latent eco-anxiety in two popular works of fiction for young readers: Rowling's Harry Potter series and Schaap's Lampje.