Plenary Lecture 1: Wednesday, 5th February, Room G2.13, 12 p.m.
Jannis Androutsopoulos
Professor of Linguistics of German and Media Linguistics
University of Hamburg
Heterographic spellings in digital discourse: things people do with algospeak and alternating caps
The research presented in this paper aims to bridge a gap between micro-level linguistic features and broader processes of participatory digital discourse. The focus lies on unconventional spelling in digital writing, a practice as old as computer-mediated communication (CMC) itself. Early scholarship focused on spellings that index spoken language features (e.g. contractions, expressive lengthening) or simplify the linguistic form (abbreviations, consonantal writing), and early theories of ‘netspeak’ (Crystal 2001) explain respellings of this kind (which I term ‘phonographic’) by the situational conditions of near-synchronous CMC as a fast, spontaneous mode of communication that aims to simulate face-to-face interaction. Less attention received respellings that distort the conventional shape of written language without indexing spoken delivery and have a more limited social circulation, such as ‘leet speak’ (or L337), a graphic register associated with hacking and gaming practices since the late 1990s. These ‘heterographic’ respellings stayed well below the radar in early 21st century, as the interest turned to emojis and digital punctuation, but recently regain currency. Drawing on empirical research with German data, this paper examines two types of heterographic spellings, which circulate globally in the digital publics constituted on social media platforms. The first is alternating caps, an alternation of upper and lower case within a word or phrase (e.g. cLIMAtE chANge Is a hOAX) that came up in 2017 and is generally understood as mocking the propositional content and authorship of the respective segment. The second is algospeak, an early-2020s practice that aims to trick out the algorithmic detection of ‘sensitive’ words (e.g. sex respelled as $€X or S*x). Based on mixed methods analyses that integrate computational, formal and interactional techniques, I examine how these heterographic spellings are constituted through graphemic substitutions and alternations; their typical patterns of usage in postings and comment sections; and indicators of metapragmatic awareness and interactional alignment to these spellings. On this basis, I show how heterographic spellings become enregistered (Agha 2005), i.e. associated by ‘light communities’ of online users with specific sociocultural and affective positionalities.
Plenary Lecture 2: Thursday, 6th February, Room B2.13, 3:30 p.m.
Elaine Hobby
Professor Emerita of 17th-Century Studies
University of Loughborough
Gaps in the Syllabi: the Case of Aphra Behn, her Friends (and Enemies), and Teaching Early-Modern Literature
Fundamental to our world-view in the Humanities is the conviction that our investigations are relevant to human good. The proliferation of theoretical approaches and of questions raised in our work in recent decades has, indeed, often been inspired by a desire to demonstrate that connection. In this talk, I will put the case that an original part of that proliferation is still an essential part of maintaining our shared missions. That suggestion is the feminist assertion that our object of study – the literary canon, as represented in university syllabi – needs to change, as well as our methods of approach. The talk with then offer, as a case-study, some reasons to incorporate the works of Aphra Behn (1640-1689) into university teaching of early-modern literature.
In 1650s England – the world of revolutionary possibilities that followed the civil wars – women engaging in religio-political activities might be penalised for failing to address what were supposed to be their key reponsibilities – sweeping the floor and washing the dishes. In at least one case, punishment even included the use of a scold’s bridle to silence and ridicule a woman arrested for speaking out. Writings about this dimension of the past are usually left out of the syllabus, not ‘literary’ enough to qualify for admission. In the English Literature syllabus, though, an early-modern woman has found a place: Aphra Behn (1640-1689), commercially successful playwright, talented poet, early novelist, and translator from French, is recognised as the first professional woman writer in English, and some of her works are widely taught across the world. This talk will offer some suggestions of how she might be further deployed to fill gaps in the syllabi. These range from her engagement with colonialism in The Widow Ranter, the first English-language play set in the ‘New World’ of Virginia, to her writing from a female perspective on sexual libertinism, to the corpus linguistics models that are being used to investigate whether all the works that were attributed to her posthumously are really from her pen.