Context, complexity, & coherence: A chronotopic-scalar perspective

Farzad Karimzad (Salisbury University), Organizer

The field of sociolinguistics has long been distinguished by its unwavering commitment to understanding the complex interplay between language, context, and society. Since its inception, scholars in sociolinguistics have recognized that context is not merely a backdrop but a dynamic and constitutive force in shaping linguistic practices and social interactions (Gumperz, 1992; Silverstein, 1992). It is within this rich tradition of investigating context that some of the most influential and groundbreaking research has emerged, reshaping the contours of sociolinguistic inquiry. In recent years in particular, scholars who have employed spatiotemporal metaphors such as the Bakhtinian (1981) chronotopes (Agha, 2007, Blommaert, 2015, Perrino, 2007) and scales (Blommaert 2007; Gal 2016, Carr & Lempert 2016) have contributed to nuanced understandings of context, leading to the reconceptualization of various sociolinguistic phenomena, including identity practices, language ideologies, and online semiosis (Blommaert & De Fina, 2017; Karimzad & Catedral, 2018; Sanei 2021; Al-Alawi 2022). While the conceptualizations of these notions may vary among scholars, contingent on their empirical and theoretical orientations, in our work, we have argued that a synthesis of chronotopes and scales, incorporating their differing conceptualizations, provides a broader theory of context and semiosis with extensive applicability (Karimzad & Catedral, 2018, 2021, 2022). In this panel, we aim to showcase the transformative potential of chronotopic-scalar approaches in sociolinguistic scholarship.

The panelists draw on data from various ethnographic (online and offline) contexts and domains to demonstrate how a chronotopic-scalar perspective allows not only for nuancing long-standing and contemporary sociolinguistic issues related to textuality and translation (FAN), world Englishes (AL-ALAWI), linguistic repertoires (YIP), and online memes (SANEI), but also for exploring new avenues in sociolinguistic research, including the evolving dynamics of AI and AI-generated meaning (KARIMZAD & CATEDRAL). More specifically, Sanei's paper explores the dynamics of online communication by focusing on Internet memes used by (non-)migrant Iranian social media users. She illustrates that the capacity to decipher the intricate layers of meaning within memes relies on users' access to the chronotopic contexts that are indexed by the combination of linguistic and non-linguistic symbols. Yip's paper similarly highlights the significance of access to chronotopic contexts in understanding complex semiosis in online communication through her focus on Hong Kong Cantonese speakers’ creative linguistic practices on social media. She introduces the concept of "chronotopic consciousness" to foreground the spatiotemporal nature of repertoires and account for their individualized or collective aspects, i.e. the scales at which semiotic/linguistic resources in one’s repertoire are shared or unshared with others. Al-Alawi, on the other hand, employs a chronotopic-scalar framework to explore the complexities of English language ideologies among Bahraini youth. Focusing on locally-accented English produced by English-dominant Bahraini men, she demonstrates how the interaction between various higher-scaled and lower-scaled chronotopic centers leads to differing participant perceptions of these linguistic practices, challenging traditional distinctions between accent and style. Fan’s paper conducts a chronotopic analysis of two Chinese versions of an English medical textbook translated by a government-sponsored institution with a twelve-year gap during China’s Self-strengthening Movement. By delving into the chronotopic circumstances surrounding these translations, the paper unpacks distinct imaginaries and ideals that influenced the two versions. Finally, Karimzad and Catedral apply the chronotopic-scalar system to Artificial Intelligence (AI) to account for the differences between human and AI communication, conceptualize the utility of ChatGPT in navigating a fractally organized system of knowledge production, and advocate for sociolinguists to play a central role in the discussion and rethinking of these technological advancements. Collectively, these papers exemplify the value of adopting a chronotopic-scalar perspective, which not only enriches the analysis of diverse semiotic practices across various contexts and domains but also fosters a unified comprehension of these seemingly disparate phenomena.

1. Taraneh Sanei (Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University)

Towards a Theorized Understanding of Online Meaning-making: A Chronotopic-scalar Analysis of Memetic Identity Work

The unique characteristics of online communication, i.e. the complexity, multisemioticity, polycentricity, trans-locality/-nationality, and multiplicity of social actors, have brought challenges upon scholars as they seek an analytical-theoretical framework that can account for the sociolinguistic phenomena happening in online space. In this paper, I demonstrate and argue for the utility of a chronotopic-scalar approach (Karimzad, 2021; see also Karimzad & Catedral 2021, 2022) for a theorized understanding of online communication; one that provides theoretically-grounded insight into how online (inter)action works, how it is guided by (perceptions of) normativities, and how it is in dialogue with the ‘offline’. Specifically, I focus on Internet memes, an example par excellence of online meaning-making’s unique features, adapted/adopted and circulated by (non-)migrant Iranian social media users, to investigate how social actors employ these devices and their affordances in their identity work online and illustrate how their understandings of online and offline normativities, of texts and of contexts, come to play in these processes. Examining the semiosis of the memes, I investigate the ways in which the constellations of signs used in each meme simultaneously invoke certain time-space configurations (i.e. chronotopes) operating at various scale levels and illustrate how through these invocations normativities of texts, at various levels of semiosis including orthography, phonology, language choice, etc., become indexically linked to normativities of contexts, and personhoods situated within these contexts. Additionally, I highlight that an essential part of analyzing the dynamics of online communication is to examine why a message gets (mis-)interpreted by different users in different ways and how/why users adopt different discursive strategies to create such messages. Looking into the users’ uptake of the memes, I demonstrate that, within the chronotopic-scalar framework, the concepts of chronotopization and chronotopic resolution can help account for different interpretations of memes by different social media users and their unequal access to the meanings of memes. The study has theoretical and empirical implications for the scholarship on online communication and sociolinguistics of normativity and mobility.

2. Vivian Yip (City University of Hong Kong) 

Unveiling the Humour: Exploring Hong Kong Cantonese Jokes through “Chronotopic Consciousness”

Gumperz and Hymes (1972/1986) have proposed the concept of “linguistic repertoire” to refer to “the totality of linguistic resources” available to stable speech communities, of which the sharedness can guarantee smooth communications among their members. In the context of superdiversity (Vertovec, 2007), language use is characterised by complex forms of hybridity due to transnational mobility and digital advancement. By highlighting the biographical dimension of language learning processes, Blommaert and Backus (2013) maintain that “linguistic repertoire” is indeed highly individualised and complex. While linguistic repertoire in both collective and individual sense are justified, I use a chronotopic-scalar approach (Karimzad, 2021) to reconcile the two which is more apt in capturing both the shared and unshared repertoires of individuals in the online affordance where access to information can be transnational and cross-cultural. 

In this paper, I use a scene of a viral Hong Kong advertisement on social media to illustrate that a shared repertoire is not limited to normative language use but can also be the resources for linguistic creativity when combined with the use of highly heteroglossic semiotic/linguistic repertoire. Specifically, the scene involves not only normative Cantonese but also a local mock variety and Japanese linguistic elements which are deeply contextualised linguistic choices. By using a chronotopic-scalar approach as the analytical tool (Karimzad, 2021; see also Karimzad & Catedral 2021, 2022), I add to the notion of linguistic repertoire by taking into account the “chronotopic consciousness” which can bridge the overlap between the individualised and shared repertoire among Hong Kong netizens, while also accounting for the varying degrees of understanding the heteroglossic jokes across participants at different scales. 

3. Wafa Al-Alawi (Utrecht University)

Towards a spatiotemporal world Englishes: Gendered perceptions of local English productions in Bahraini youth

The Kachruvian world Englishes (Kachru, 1986, 1992) model’s ability to cope with an increasingly globalized world has been faced with scrutiny (Bruthiaux, 2003; Pennycook, 2003; Seidlhofer, 2001). The overarching aim of this study is to demonstrate how the complex workings of spatiotemporal tools can benefit a contemporary approach to world Englishes, particularly through an investigation of a phenomenon of a locally-accented English produced by English-dominant Bahraini men. Whereas both are recognized as distinct ways of speaking, an accent is generally understood as unintentional whereas style is understood as performative (Coupland, 2001), this study argues that ‘accent’ can be reconceptualized as closely intersected with ‘style’ in expanding-circle contexts.

The twenty hours of metacommentaries from English-dominant Bahraini youth show that the interaction of English with local (gendered) ideologies leads to the perception of global-standard (inner-circle) accents as ‘emasculating’ and the prevalence of locally-accented English ideals in Bahraini men. Applying a scalar-chronotopic framework (Agha, 2007; Bakhtin, 1981; Karimzad & Catedral, 2021) and a discourse-theoretic analysis (Wortham & Reyes, 2020), I show how participants may incoherently judge such emergent English types in globalized contexts as both ‘faked’ based on imagined ideals of correct pronunciation, or as legitimate registers born from lived local experience.

The results highlight the need for spatiotemporal approaches to English in a contemporary world Englishes model where various endogenous and exogenous norms of behavior are invoked, contrasted, and mobilized. Namely, examining both the horizontal (in terms of spread) and vertical (in terms of power) aspects of world Englishes can yield better interpretations of a model that was deemed too ‘flat’ within a sociolinguistics of mobility (cf. Saxena & Omoniyi, 2010). The analysis further shows how expanding-circle contexts are not entirely norm-dependent on inner-circle contexts as commonly understood in the literature, and has further implications for our understandings of prestige, language, and gender. 

4. Rui Fan (City University of Hong Kong)

Chronotopizing cultural fusion for modernization: Changing images of China and the West and their impact on medical translation 

Unlike literary translation, medical and scientific translations tend to have little variation, commonly attributed to the limited potential meanings that can be influenced by translators’ knowledge, attitude, and ideologies in these fields (Hatim and Mason, 2014). The Chinese translation of Physicia’s Vade Mecum, a medical textbook, is noteworthy for showcasing two drastically different translations related to changing ideologies during China’s Self-Strengthening Movement (1860s-1890s). As Lung (2016) highlighted that translation activities act as microcosms of historical social transformations, this study employs the notion of chronotope to understand textual changes across versions with respect to social transformation.

China’s Self-Strengthening Movement melded traditional values with Western technologies, modernizing the nation while preserving its identity, exemplifying the interplay between Confucianism and modernity, with government-sponsored translations playing a pivotal role. This research compares two Chinese versions of the same English medical textbook, translated by the same translators with a twelve-year gap: one in 1877, during the movement, and the other in 1889, near its end. Supplemented by historical memoirs and correspondences, this study analyzes these texts in relationship to these two moments and conceptualizes these moments as chronotopes. That is, rather than simply defining them as “two different times”, this study takes a spatiotemporal approach, emphasizing not only time, but also space, as well as the norms and ideologies associated with this particular space-time (Agha 2007; Blommaert 2018).

A chronotopic analyses of these texts finds that 1877 Version prioritized detailed explanations using Chinese terms to interpret Western concepts, preserving indigenous culture in the “preserve tradition” chronotope. However, 1889 Version introduced new concepts highlighting Western influences, marking a shift towards a more contemporary perspective in the “break tradition” chronotope.

5. Farzad Karimzad (Salisbury University), Lydia Catedral (City University of Hong Kong)

Resonating Realms: Artificial Intelligence in the Bakhtinian Chronotope

The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT, has triggered responses that oscillate between excitement and apprehension. Scholars, policymakers, and industry experts have delved into discussions surrounding the challenges and opportunities AI presents for society, language, and beyond (see e.g. Chomsky et al. 2023). In this paper, we will argue that sociolinguistic tools which build on the Bakhtinian (1981) notion of chronotope are well suited to developing a perspective on AI-powered conversational agents such as ChatGPT. Through the use of such tools, we can understand not only how chatbots operate and unpack the discourses surrounding them, but also the way in which human interaction with AI language models fits into a broader system of semiosis and action.

Our approach sees the chronotope as fundamental in human learning and meaning-making, as it foregrounds engagement with differently scaled space-times – and the objects, resources, and discourses therein– as the way in which humans (re)construct (or rechronotopize) their understandings of the world and their social competencies, including language use (Karimzad, 2021; Karimzad & Catedral, 2021, 2022). Further, we understand this meaning-making process as encompassing human engagement with the material and embodied dimensions of spatiotemporal contexts alongside their textual and imagined aspects. It is these characteristics of learning that allow us to explore the ways in which chatbots are both similar to and different from humans in terms of how they interact with and within spatiotemporal contexts to produce meaning. More specifically, we utilize this viewpoint to (1) elucidate how the material dimensions of (re)chronotopization processes clarify differences between human and AI communication, (2) conceptualize AI as a rich textual-denotational resource and discuss its utility in navigating a fractally organized knowledge production system (3) advocate for the pivotal role of sociolinguistics in reshaping the discourses and understandings of these technological advancements. The paper has implications for understanding the possibilities and perils of AI in specific ways, while also recognizing these as resonances of the liberatory and oppressive contexts that are being produced in the material and social world at large.

6. Rakesh Bhatt (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign), Discussant