Linguistic and Cultural Borders: Transparent or Not

"Linguistic and Cultural Borders: Transparent or Not” seeks to examine what linguistic and cultural choices can be observed in humorous performances, such a cabaret and carnival, popular in the bordering post-industrial mining communities of Dutch Limburg and the Ruhr area of Germany. The project seeks to articulate what gender ideologies are embedded in these humorous performative practices, constructed as they are through ever shifting individual and collective memories of the areas’ industrial pasts. The research will take a critical sociolinguistic ethnographic approach and include a study of the written social histories of Dutch Limburg and neighboring Ruhr area with focus on gender as well as make use of the regions’ material cultural heritage. Studying contemporary performative practices alongside of the evolving bordering process from a gender perspective will reveal the manifold and constructed nature of their histories, memorialization and their relationship to the present. ​

Researcher: Sara Atwater (see profile)

Supervisors: Leonie Cornips, Louis van den Hengel, Evelyn Ziegler (see profiles)