“there is no there there”: Space deictics, verb tense, and nostalgia at a family literacy class

Publication date: April 2020Source: Linguistics and Education, Volume 56Author(s): Jenny Zhang, Laura SterponiAbstractDrawing from a yearlong ethnographic study, this paper examines spatial deictics and verb tense use in conversation and instructional activities in a family literacy class at a Bay Area Public Library. More specifically, we employ discourse analytic tools to document how spatiotemporal coordinates are never solely product of cognitive calculation but always also entangled with emotions. In addition to enacting their referentiality with respect to places and moments in time, spatial and temporal indexical terms served to position participants within a discursive paradigm of migration, a chronotope imbued by nostalgia. We discuss how such discursive positioning constructs students’ identities as diasporic, their being in the here-and-now predicated on their being from elsewhere, and their being here-and-there simultaneous and coextensive.

Source: Linguistics and Education - February 20, 2020 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research