M Koven
Biographic Data
| ID | 5170 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Koven |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Koven |
| SIGNATURE | KOVEN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7060-7874 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 223 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
C Sa Ksé Bon: Discursive circulation of a mock language slogan in the heteroglossic construction of Franco-Portuguese “community”
We examine the emergence and viral circulation of a mock language slogan, “ C sa ksé bon / That’s what’s good,” among young people of Portuguese origin living in France. The slogan reprises in stylized fashion the imagined, stigmatized French speech of first-generation Portuguese immigrant figures, which is heteroglossically represented in youthful French texting language. We trace the slogan’s de- and recontextualizations in the early 2010s acro…
(Re)making Scales: Communicative en franchisement in Women’s Narrative Discourses About Health Dismissal
Dismissal of women’s health concerns is a discursive phenomenon with social and material consequences. A burgeoning literature documents how women experience dismissal through various forms of disenfranchising talk. Yet, women are not only subjected to disenfranchising talk; they are called to respond to it. Meaning, analyses of disenfranchisement should also examine efforts toward enfranchisement. One process by which scholars can study communic…
Introduction to “Scaling stories: Narratives and the dialogic regimentation of scales
My family wouldn’t have survived, and I would not be here: Juxtaposing counterfactual and actual pasts and presents in narratives of rescue by Aristides de Sousa Mendes
This paper examines the alignment of multiple chronotopes in narrative discourse about Holocaust rescue. Participants talked about actual alongside hypothetical or counterfactual events surrounding their families’ rescue from Nazi-occupied Europe in the summer of 1940, thanks to then-illegal visas from ‘righteous gentile’ Aristides de Sousa Mendes. Specifically, participants recounted how their families were actually rescued, and what would have …
Affect in cross-chronotope alignments in narrations about Aristides de Sousa Mendes and their subsequent circulations
This article analyzes the role of emotion in narrations about the past, understandable as familial, intergenerational, or national. I examine how participants report and display affect in narratives about Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese consul of Bordeaux who issued thousands of lifesaving visas in June of 1940. Three sets of participants (descendants of visa recipients, Sousa Mendes' descendants, and Portuguese institutional representa…
Multiaddressivity and Collective Addressivity in Vlog-based Interactions between Diasporic and Nonmigrant Portuguese
We use the notion of addressivity to analyze interactions between diasporic Portuguese in France and nonmigrant Portuguese in Portugal, in a vlog by Jonathan Da Silva. Through sets of interlocutor-oriented strategies, participants address one another not only as specific individuals but also as collective social types, as if addressing all diasporic and nonmigrant Portuguese. We thus consider how participants use collective addressivity to hail o…
Narrating Desire for Place: Chronotopes of Desire for the Portuguese Homeland Before and After “Return”
This chapter examines how Ana, the daughter of Portuguese migrants raised in France, discursively constructs her desire to be in and of Portugal. Specifically, I examine how Ana uses language to display her desire for Portugal and to be Portuguese before and after her move to that country, the realisation of her lifelong dream. This chapter adopts a Bakhtinian framework to not only examine constructions of place but also desires for place. In par…
We are going to our Portuguese homeland: French Luso-descendants’ diasporic Facebook conarrations of vacation return trips to Portugal
This article combines the study of online narratives as social practices and the linguistic anthropological study of imagined communities, to examine a set of non-canonical narrative practices in a Facebook group for the Portuguese diaspora in France. Instead of reports of individual members' past experiences, these narratives function as invitations to other group members to co-tell typical , shared experiences. Specifically, we investigate how …
Essentialization strategies in the storytellings of young Luso-descendant women in France: Narrative calibration, voicing, and scale
Performing and evaluating (non)modernities of Portuguese migrant figures on YouTube: The case of Antonio de Carglouch
We analyze how France-based YouTube comedic performers Ro et Cut enact the stylized figure of a Portuguese migrant in France, Antonio, in their most popular video,Carglouch. We then examine how commenters respond to the enactment. Specifically, we apply Irvine and Gal's notion of semiotic differentiation to study how participants use language to construct and apply polycentric notions of modernity/nonmodernity. This allows us to analyze how YouTu…
Introduction: Heteroglossia, performance, power, and participation
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…
Interviewing: Practice, Ideology, Genre, and Intertextuality
This review applies a critical linguistic anthropological perspective to classic and current scholarly literature on interviewing, understood as a cluster of communicative practices used to produce and circulate various types of authoritative and consequential knowledge about groups and individuals. I begin by treating interviews as multifunctional, ideologically mediated communicative events. I then discuss the multiplicity, indeterminacy, and i…
Antiracist, modern selves and racist, unmodern others: Chronotopes of modernity in Luso-descendants' race talk
Speaking French in Portugal: An analysis of contested models of emigrant personhood in narratives about return migration and language use
I address how the offspring of Portuguese emigrants in France, Luso-descendants (LDs), interpret their language practices and identities relative to models of language and personhood from their 'sending' society. Specifically, I examine howLDs tell each other narratives about having been identified as an emigrant in Portugal, based on French-influenced speech. In telling each other these stories,LDs position themselves relative to two models of l…
Comparing stories told in sociolinguistic interviews and spontaneous conversation
In this article I challenge the notion that interviews are artificial speech events, by comparing how one participant told stories in a sociolinguistic interview and again in a subsequent spontaneous conversation. As shown by qualitative and quantitative comparison of speaker-role inhabitance (Koven 2002, 2007), I show that the interview stories are no less involved (Tannen 1989), and are actually more interlocutory than the conversational storie…
Managing relationships and identities through forms of address: What French-Portuguese bilinguals call their parents in each language
Transnational perspectives on sociolinguistic capital among Luso-Descendants in France and Portugal
I argue in this article that language practices and ideologies are central to French-Portuguese transmigrants' efforts to obtain recognition of legitimate identities in both French and Portuguese national contexts. Drawing on ethnographic work, I describe the encounters of Luso-Descendants, the adult children of Portuguese migrants, with French and Portuguese monolingual language ideologies. Although these actors' lives are led transnationally, t…
An analysis of speaker role inhabitance in narratives of personal experience
Comparing bilinguals' quoted performances of self and others in tellings of the same experience in two languages
This article lends empirical support to the notion that quoted speech is "constructed dialogue" by exploring empirically how narratives of personal experience involve creative performance of locally imaginable personas, rather than accurate or faithful representation of actual people and their words. This work examines quotation in narratives of personal experience as a site where speakers use language pragmatically to enact socio-culturally loca…
Two Languages in the Self/The Self in Two Languages: French-Portuguese Bilinguals' Verbal Enactments and Experiences of Self in Narrative Discourse
Discussions of the cultural and linguistic construction of self often assume monoculturalism and monolingualism to be the norm. This article explores how the complex sociolinguistic repertoires of French-Portuguese bilinguals allow speakers to perform different kinds of "selves" in each language. Narratives of personal experience in each language are analyzed in terms of the effect of narrative forms on speakers' reported experience of dual selfh…
Antiracist, modern selves and racist, unmodern others: Chronotopes of modernity in Luso-descendants' race talk
An analysis of speaker role inhabitance in narratives of personal experience
Essentialization strategies in the storytellings of young Luso-descendant women in France: Narrative calibration, voicing, and scale
Speaking French in Portugal: An analysis of contested models of emigrant personhood in narratives about return migration and language use
I address how the offspring of Portuguese emigrants in France, Luso-descendants (LDs), interpret their language practices and identities relative to models of language and personhood from their 'sending' society. Specifically, I examine howLDs tell each other narratives about having been identified as an emigrant in Portugal, based on French-influenced speech. In telling each other these stories,LDs position themselves relative to two models of l…
Transnational perspectives on sociolinguistic capital among Luso-Descendants in France and Portugal
I argue in this article that language practices and ideologies are central to French-Portuguese transmigrants' efforts to obtain recognition of legitimate identities in both French and Portuguese national contexts. Drawing on ethnographic work, I describe the encounters of Luso-Descendants, the adult children of Portuguese migrants, with French and Portuguese monolingual language ideologies. Although these actors' lives are led transnationally, t…
Performing and evaluating (non)modernities of Portuguese migrant figures on YouTube: The case of Antonio de Carglouch
We analyze how France-based YouTube comedic performers Ro et Cut enact the stylized figure of a Portuguese migrant in France, Antonio, in their most popular video,Carglouch. We then examine how commenters respond to the enactment. Specifically, we apply Irvine and Gal's notion of semiotic differentiation to study how participants use language to construct and apply polycentric notions of modernity/nonmodernity. This allows us to analyze how YouTu…
Comparing bilinguals' quoted performances of self and others in tellings of the same experience in two languages
This article lends empirical support to the notion that quoted speech is "constructed dialogue" by exploring empirically how narratives of personal experience involve creative performance of locally imaginable personas, rather than accurate or faithful representation of actual people and their words. This work examines quotation in narratives of personal experience as a site where speakers use language pragmatically to enact socio-culturally loca…
Two Languages in the Self/The Self in Two Languages: French-Portuguese Bilinguals' Verbal Enactments and Experiences of Self in Narrative Discourse
Discussions of the cultural and linguistic construction of self often assume monoculturalism and monolingualism to be the norm. This article explores how the complex sociolinguistic repertoires of French-Portuguese bilinguals allow speakers to perform different kinds of "selves" in each language. Narratives of personal experience in each language are analyzed in terms of the effect of narrative forms on speakers' reported experience of dual selfh…
We are going to our Portuguese homeland: French Luso-descendants’ diasporic Facebook conarrations of vacation return trips to Portugal
This article combines the study of online narratives as social practices and the linguistic anthropological study of imagined communities, to examine a set of non-canonical narrative practices in a Facebook group for the Portuguese diaspora in France. Instead of reports of individual members' past experiences, these narratives function as invitations to other group members to co-tell typical , shared experiences. Specifically, we investigate how …
Introduction: Heteroglossia, performance, power, and participation
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…
Affect in cross-chronotope alignments in narrations about Aristides de Sousa Mendes and their subsequent circulations
This article analyzes the role of emotion in narrations about the past, understandable as familial, intergenerational, or national. I examine how participants report and display affect in narratives about Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese consul of Bordeaux who issued thousands of lifesaving visas in June of 1940. Three sets of participants (descendants of visa recipients, Sousa Mendes' descendants, and Portuguese institutional representa…
Comparing stories told in sociolinguistic interviews and spontaneous conversation
In this article I challenge the notion that interviews are artificial speech events, by comparing how one participant told stories in a sociolinguistic interview and again in a subsequent spontaneous conversation. As shown by qualitative and quantitative comparison of speaker-role inhabitance (Koven 2002, 2007), I show that the interview stories are no less involved (Tannen 1989), and are actually more interlocutory than the conversational storie…
Multiaddressivity and Collective Addressivity in Vlog-based Interactions between Diasporic and Nonmigrant Portuguese
We use the notion of addressivity to analyze interactions between diasporic Portuguese in France and nonmigrant Portuguese in Portugal, in a vlog by Jonathan Da Silva. Through sets of interlocutor-oriented strategies, participants address one another not only as specific individuals but also as collective social types, as if addressing all diasporic and nonmigrant Portuguese. We thus consider how participants use collective addressivity to hail o…
Managing relationships and identities through forms of address: What French-Portuguese bilinguals call their parents in each language
Two Languages in the Self/The Self in Two Languages: French-Portuguese Bilinguals' Verbal Enactments and Experiences of Self in Narrative Discourse
Discussions of the cultural and linguistic construction of self often assume monoculturalism and monolingualism to be the norm. This article explores how the complex sociolinguistic repertoires of French-Portuguese bilinguals allow speakers to perform different kinds of "selves" in each language. Narratives of personal experience in each language are analyzed in terms of the effect of narrative forms on speakers' reported experience of dual selfh…
Comparing bilinguals' quoted performances of self and others in tellings of the same experience in two languages
This article lends empirical support to the notion that quoted speech is "constructed dialogue" by exploring empirically how narratives of personal experience involve creative performance of locally imaginable personas, rather than accurate or faithful representation of actual people and their words. This work examines quotation in narratives of personal experience as a site where speakers use language pragmatically to enact socio-culturally loca…
An analysis of speaker role inhabitance in narratives of personal experience
Transnational perspectives on sociolinguistic capital among Luso-Descendants in France and Portugal
I argue in this article that language practices and ideologies are central to French-Portuguese transmigrants' efforts to obtain recognition of legitimate identities in both French and Portuguese national contexts. Drawing on ethnographic work, I describe the encounters of Luso-Descendants, the adult children of Portuguese migrants, with French and Portuguese monolingual language ideologies. Although these actors' lives are led transnationally, t…
Managing relationships and identities through forms of address: What French-Portuguese bilinguals call their parents in each language
Comparing stories told in sociolinguistic interviews and spontaneous conversation
In this article I challenge the notion that interviews are artificial speech events, by comparing how one participant told stories in a sociolinguistic interview and again in a subsequent spontaneous conversation. As shown by qualitative and quantitative comparison of speaker-role inhabitance (Koven 2002, 2007), I show that the interview stories are no less involved (Tannen 1989), and are actually more interlocutory than the conversational storie…
Antiracist, modern selves and racist, unmodern others: Chronotopes of modernity in Luso-descendants' race talk
Speaking French in Portugal: An analysis of contested models of emigrant personhood in narratives about return migration and language use
I address how the offspring of Portuguese emigrants in France, Luso-descendants (LDs), interpret their language practices and identities relative to models of language and personhood from their 'sending' society. Specifically, I examine howLDs tell each other narratives about having been identified as an emigrant in Portugal, based on French-influenced speech. In telling each other these stories,LDs position themselves relative to two models of l…
Interviewing: Practice, Ideology, Genre, and Intertextuality
This review applies a critical linguistic anthropological perspective to classic and current scholarly literature on interviewing, understood as a cluster of communicative practices used to produce and circulate various types of authoritative and consequential knowledge about groups and individuals. I begin by treating interviews as multifunctional, ideologically mediated communicative events. I then discuss the multiplicity, indeterminacy, and i…
Performing and evaluating (non)modernities of Portuguese migrant figures on YouTube: The case of Antonio de Carglouch
We analyze how France-based YouTube comedic performers Ro et Cut enact the stylized figure of a Portuguese migrant in France, Antonio, in their most popular video,Carglouch. We then examine how commenters respond to the enactment. Specifically, we apply Irvine and Gal's notion of semiotic differentiation to study how participants use language to construct and apply polycentric notions of modernity/nonmodernity. This allows us to analyze how YouTu…
Introduction: Heteroglossia, performance, power, and participation
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…
Essentialization strategies in the storytellings of young Luso-descendant women in France: Narrative calibration, voicing, and scale
We are going to our Portuguese homeland: French Luso-descendants’ diasporic Facebook conarrations of vacation return trips to Portugal
This article combines the study of online narratives as social practices and the linguistic anthropological study of imagined communities, to examine a set of non-canonical narrative practices in a Facebook group for the Portuguese diaspora in France. Instead of reports of individual members' past experiences, these narratives function as invitations to other group members to co-tell typical , shared experiences. Specifically, we investigate how …
Narrating Desire for Place: Chronotopes of Desire for the Portuguese Homeland Before and After “Return”
This chapter examines how Ana, the daughter of Portuguese migrants raised in France, discursively constructs her desire to be in and of Portugal. Specifically, I examine how Ana uses language to display her desire for Portugal and to be Portuguese before and after her move to that country, the realisation of her lifelong dream. This chapter adopts a Bakhtinian framework to not only examine constructions of place but also desires for place. In par…
Multiaddressivity and Collective Addressivity in Vlog-based Interactions between Diasporic and Nonmigrant Portuguese
We use the notion of addressivity to analyze interactions between diasporic Portuguese in France and nonmigrant Portuguese in Portugal, in a vlog by Jonathan Da Silva. Through sets of interlocutor-oriented strategies, participants address one another not only as specific individuals but also as collective social types, as if addressing all diasporic and nonmigrant Portuguese. We thus consider how participants use collective addressivity to hail o…
Affect in cross-chronotope alignments in narrations about Aristides de Sousa Mendes and their subsequent circulations
This article analyzes the role of emotion in narrations about the past, understandable as familial, intergenerational, or national. I examine how participants report and display affect in narratives about Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese consul of Bordeaux who issued thousands of lifesaving visas in June of 1940. Three sets of participants (descendants of visa recipients, Sousa Mendes' descendants, and Portuguese institutional representa…
(Re)making Scales: Communicative en franchisement in Women’s Narrative Discourses About Health Dismissal
Dismissal of women’s health concerns is a discursive phenomenon with social and material consequences. A burgeoning literature documents how women experience dismissal through various forms of disenfranchising talk. Yet, women are not only subjected to disenfranchising talk; they are called to respond to it. Meaning, analyses of disenfranchisement should also examine efforts toward enfranchisement. One process by which scholars can study communic…
Introduction to “Scaling stories: Narratives and the dialogic regimentation of scales
My family wouldn’t have survived, and I would not be here: Juxtaposing counterfactual and actual pasts and presents in narratives of rescue by Aristides de Sousa Mendes
This paper examines the alignment of multiple chronotopes in narrative discourse about Holocaust rescue. Participants talked about actual alongside hypothetical or counterfactual events surrounding their families’ rescue from Nazi-occupied Europe in the summer of 1940, thanks to then-illegal visas from ‘righteous gentile’ Aristides de Sousa Mendes. Specifically, participants recounted how their families were actually rescued, and what would have …
C Sa Ksé Bon: Discursive circulation of a mock language slogan in the heteroglossic construction of Franco-Portuguese “community”
We examine the emergence and viral circulation of a mock language slogan, “ C sa ksé bon / That’s what’s good,” among young people of Portuguese origin living in France. The slogan reprises in stylized fashion the imagined, stigmatized French speech of first-generation Portuguese immigrant figures, which is heteroglossically represented in youthful French texting language. We trace the slogan’s de- and recontextualizations in the early 2010s acro…
Sociology (17 works) · Linguistics (16 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (12 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Political science (11 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (10 works) · Narrative (10 works) · Portuguese (10 works) · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis (9 works)