Alexandra Jaffe

Biographic Data

ID3591289
NAMEAlexandra Jaffe
GIVEN NAMESAlexandra
FAMILY NAMEJaffe
SIGNATUREJAFFE A
AFFILIATIONSCalifornia State University, Long Beach
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS68
TOTAL CITATIONS302
AUTHOR COUNT68
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1984
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2022
H-INDEX11

  • Misrecognition unmasked? ‘Polynomic’ language, expert statuses and orthographic practices in Corsican schools

    Open AccessAlexandra JaffeARTICLEPragmatics Quarterly Publication…2022

    Over the last twenty years, “expert” discourses about the sociolinguistic character of Corsica have shifted from a focus on “diglossia” to an assertion that Corsican is a “polynomic” language. In the context of language shift and efforts at minority language revitalization, these two discourses make different claims about the relationship of language and identity, posit different kinds of power relationships between Corsicans and their two langua…

  • Comic performance and the articulation of hybrid identity

    Open AccessAlexandra JaffeARTICLEPragmatics Quarterly Publication…2022

    This article describes how comedians and radio professionals in Corsica draw on a bilingual linguistic and metalinguistic cultural repertoire. In the context of Corsica’s history of language domination, language shift, and linguistic revitalization efforts, many of the products of language contact - mixed codes and compentences - are socially stigmatized. In the logic of dominant language ideologies, these mixed codes do not ‘count as’ language a…

  • Narrating the "I" versus Narrating the "Isle": Life Histories and the Problem of Representation on Corsica

    Alexandra JaffeCHAPTERAuto/ethnography2021

    This chapter explores the social context of first-person narrative on the French island of Corsica. It focuses on the politics of self-representation in Corsican texts. While some may have set out to write an "ethnic autobiography," for others, the ethnic dimension may have been subordinate to the urge to recount a particular life or to give artistic voice to the universal, rather than the particular. The attachment to the island is also intensif…

  • Language ideologies and linguistic representations: Two lenses for a critical analysis of polynomie in Corsica

    Alexandra JaffeARTICLEInternational Journal of the…2020Cited by: 2References: 20

    In this article, we question one of the important notions of the Corsican normative conceptual apparatus: the polynomie. This concept is particularly interesting as a language ideological position that calls into question dominant ideological perspectives on standardization and normalization. This article puts the polynomie in an ideological process that calls for a critical sociolinguistic analysis that first accounts for the interaction between…

  • Poeticizing the economy: The Corsican language in a nexus of pride and profit

    Alexandra JaffeARTICLEMultilingua2019Cited by: 3References: 11

    This article explores the carefully managed semiotic complex found in the Corsican village of Pigna with respect to the themes of pride and profit in the valuation of minority languages. This complex includes the careful coordination of color, graphics, the use of the Corsican language, as well as high-tech soundscaping of place through QR codes that tie specific locales to Corsican music and multilingual texts. This display, labeled the “poetici…

  • Standardization(s) and regimentation: Polynomic orthodoxies and potentials

    Open AccessAlexandra JaffeARTICLELanguage & Communication2019Cited by: 1References: 4

  • Reflections on Kit Woolard's Singular and Plural

    Open AccessAlexandra JaffeARTICLEAnthropology News2018

  • Differentiated eliteness: Socialization for academic leadership

    Alexandra JaffeARTICLESocial Semiotics2017Cited by: 1References: 8

    This article examines how different forms of eliteness are reflected and produced in discursive practices in texts and participant testimonials published on two websites describing American university leadership development programs. It emphasizes the way that these practices operate to thematize and differentiate forms of eliteness (academic vs. administrative) that have a long tradition of being represented as antithetical forms of knowledge, e…

  • Sociolinguistics from the Periphery: Small Languages in New Circumstances

    Open AccessSari Pietikäinen, Alexandra Jaffe et al.BOOKSociolinguistics from the Periphery2016

    This leading team of scholars presents a fascinating book about change: shifting political, economic and cultural conditions; ephemeral, sometimes even seasonal, multilingualism; and altered imaginaries for minority and indigenous languages and their users. The authors refer to this network of interlinked changes as the new conditions surrounding small languages (Sámi, Corsican, Irish and Welsh) in peripheral sites. Starting from the conviction t…

  • What kinds of diversity are super? Hidden diversities and mobilities on a Mediterranean island

    Open AccessAlexandra JaffeARTICLELanguage & Communication2016Cited by: 2References: 4

  • Multiplicity, Complexity, Circulation and Mediatization

    Open AccessAlexandra JaffeARTICLERevista da Anpoll2016

    The aim of this text is to reflect upon the concepts of language, multiplicity, language ideology, metapragmatic regime and scale, among others that should be problematized in contemporary research which were, in one way or another, objects of discussion during the "School of Advanced Studies in Language and Society - Mobility at large" held in August, 2015, and organized by UNICAMP/UNIRIO in collaboration with other Brazilian universities. Ethno…

  • Defining the new speaker: Theoretical Perspectives and Learner Trajectories

    Open AccessAlexandra JaffeARTICLEInternational Journal of the…2015Cited by: 22

    This article addresses the concept of the new speaker from both a theoretical/definitional perspective and from the standpoint of a situated, ethnographic analysis. The more general and theoretical focus addresses some of the presuppositions and entailments of the new speaker concept, both as an "on-the-ground" concept that gets operationalized by social actors and as an analytical category used by researchers. In particular, it considers how the…

  • Staging language on Corsica: Stance, improvisation, play, and heteroglossia

    Open AccessAlexandra JaffeARTICLELanguage in Society2015Cited by: 11References: 24

    This article uses the concept of stance to examine a series of activities and plurilingual heteroglossic performances and improvisations in a Corsican language-planning event. It focuses on how stances taken by performers attribute stances to the audience, as well as how stance objects (language, community, heritage) are construed in performance. This analysis is used to examine how these language-planning events mediate ideological tensions in C…

  • Introduction: Heteroglossia, performance, power, and participation

    Open AccessAlexandra Jaffe, M Koven et al.ARTICLELanguage in Society2015Cited by: 10References: 17

    In this special issue, we build on Bauman's seminal observation about performance, that 'the act of expression is put on display, objectified, marked out to a degree from its discursive surrounding and opened up to interpretive scrutiny and evaluation by an audience' (2000:1). More recently, scholars have moved to examining the performative role of heteroglossia, that is, the use of multiply sourced, semiotic (verbal and nonverbal) forms. In part…

  • What Words Bring to the Table: The Linguistic Anthropological Toolkit as Applied to the Study of Food

    Open AccessJillian R Cavanaugh, Kathleen C Riley et al.ARTICLEJournal of Linguistic Anthropology2014Cited by: 15References: 26

    This article offers an introduction to the methods being developed by scholars interested in studying food and language as interrelated phenomena. First, we explore a few of the intriguing parallels that have inspired a number of researchers to study food and language simultaneously. Then, we look at how the study of language led each of us to the study of food and consider if and how the methods we have used for this new enterprise differ from l…

  • En Corse. Une société en mosaïqueby Lenclud, Gérard: Reviews

    Open AccessAlexandra JaffeARTICLESocial Anthropology2014

  • Minority language learning and communicative competence: Models of identity and participation in Corsican adult language courses

    Alexandra JaffeARTICLELanguage & Communication2013Cited by: 10References: 11

  • Candea, Matei: Corsican Fragments. Difference, Knowledge, and Fieldwork

    Alexandra JaffeARTICLEAnthropos2012

    Anthropos , Seite 601 - 603

  • A Note from the Editors

    Open AccessAlexandra Jaffe, Paul B Garrett et al.ARTICLEJournal of Linguistic Anthropology2011

  • Sociolinguistic diversity in mainstream media: Authenticity, authority and processes of mediation and mediatization

    Alexandra JaffeARTICLEJournal of Language and Politics2011Cited by: 25References: 24

    This article explores the attribution of authority and authenticity to speakers of “accented” or dialectal speech portrayed in the American documentary on dialectal diversity, “Do You Speak American?”. The focus is on the role of mediation and mediatization in this fundamentally political and ideological process: that is, the extent to which particular sequences of the documentary foreground the work of representation being done by media producer…

  • Stancetaking in Discourse edited by Robert Englebreston

    Open AccessAlexandra JaffeARTICLEJournal of Sociolinguistics2010

  • Indeterminacy and Regularization: A process-based approach to the study of sociolinguistic variation and language ideologies

    Alexandra M Jaffe, Alexandra JaffeARTICLESociolinguistic Studies2010Cited by: 16References: 22

    This article explores the concept of indeterminacy as a fundamental property of social life (Falk-Moore 1978) as it relates to key issues in sociolinguistic theory: the relationship between structure and agency and the way that linguistic signs are invested with social meanings. Indeterminacy emerges as a fundamental principle of sociolinguistic variables, context, speaker identity and participation structures, as a resource for speakers and as a…

  • The Production and Reproduction of Language Ideologies in Practice

    Open AccessAlexandra JaffeCHAPTERThe New Sociolinguistics Reader2009

  • Stance

    Alexandra JaffeBOOKSociolinguistic perspectives on…2009

  • Entextualization, mediatization and authentication: Orthographic choice in media transcripts

    Alexandra JaffeARTICLEText and Talk2009

    This article examines the way that sociolinguistic authority and authenticity are constituted in media-based entextualization practices, focusing specifically on patterns of orthographic choice made in transcriptions on the companion websites of two large-scale, professional media productions about linguistic variation: the BBC Voices project in the U.K. and the American PBS series 'Do You Speak American?' Building on previous research that shows…