Dialect and multi-ethnic youth style in a suburban social housing area – style variability and belonging
For the 2020 plenary lecture, Pia Quist presented the results of her empirical study into the youth language in Vollsmose, an ethnically and linguistically diverse neighbourhood in Denmark, characterised in Danish media as a ‘ghetto’. Using an analysis of linguistic properties of this multi-ethnic youth language, she showed that it is used in complex interactions that vary systematically with the social organisation of the youth. Additionally it was demonstrated that some of the youth are eminent style-shifters. Her conclusion argues for an inclusion of speakers’ embodied histories and attachments to places into the study of style-variability.
