Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-rkzlw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-17T06:04:37.423Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The discursive construction of mobile chronotopes in mobile-phone messaging

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2019

Agnieszka Lyons  and
Caroline Tagg
Agnieszka Lyons*
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London, UK
Caroline Tagg
Affiliation:
Open University, UK
*
Address for correspondence: Agnieszka Lyons, Department of Linguistics, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, United Kingdoma.lyons@qmul.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article draws on data from an ethnographic project to explore the ways in which migrant micro-entrepreneurs exploit mobile messaging apps to co-construct mobile chronotopes: dynamic configurations of time and space negotiated by geographically separated participants, who draw on different contexts and frames of understanding. Analysis of mobile messages by two couples—Chinese butchers in Birmingham and Polish shop-owners in London—informed by interview and interactional data collected at work and home, suggests they discursively negotiate and exploit multiple chronotopic layers, creating complex intersections between virtual and physical spaces in everyday interactions. We focus on the role that multilingual and multimodal semiotic resources play in co-constructing mobile chronotopes. In particular, we explore critical junctures at which communicative expectations are challenged, rendering mobile chronotope negotiation visible. Our concept of the mobile chronotope has implications for both the theorisation of mobile phone communication and understanding how chronotopes function in contemporary transnational migrant discourse. (Chronotope, migrant entrepreneur, mobile messaging, transnational migration)*

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 48 , Issue 5 , November 2019 , pp. 657 - 683
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, who provided extremely helpful comments on this article.

References

REFERENCES

Agha, Asif (2007). Recombinant selves in mass-mediated spacetime. Language & Communication 27:320–35.Google Scholar
Androutsopoulos, Jannis (2008). Potentials and limitations of discourse-centred online ethnography. 9. Online: http://www.languageatinternet.org/articles/2008/1610.Google Scholar
Arminen, Ilkka (2009). New reasons for mobile communication: intensification of time-space geography in the mobile era. In Ling, Richard S. & Campbell, Scott W. (eds.), The reconstruction of space and time: Mobile communication practices, 89–107. New Brunswick: Transaction.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Beaton, Roderick (2010). Historical poetics: Chronotopes in Leucippe and Clitophon and Tom Jones. In Bemong, Nele, Borghart, Pieter, Dobbeleer, Michel De, Demoen, Kristoffel, Temmerman, Koen De, & Keunen, Bart (eds.), Bakhtin's theory of the literary chronotope: Reflections, applications, perspectives, 59–76. Gent: Academia Press.Google Scholar
Blackledge, Adrian; Creese, Angela; & Hu, Rachel (2015). Voice and social relations in a city market. Working Papers in Translanguaging and Translation., Paper 2. Online: https://tlang754703143.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/voice-and-social-relations-in-a-city-market.pdf.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan (2015). Chronotopic identities. Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies, Paper 170. Online: https://www.academia.edu/15494602/WP170_Blommaert_2015._Chronotopic_identities.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan (2017). Commentary: Mobility, contexts, and the chronotope. Language in Society 46:95–99.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan (2018). Are chronotopes helpful? Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies, Paper 243. Online: https://www.academia.edu/36905272/WP243_Blommaert_2018._Are_chronotopes_helpful.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan, & De Fina, Anna (2017). Chronotopic identities: On the timespace organization of who we are. In Fina, Anna De, Ikizoglu, Didem, & Wegner, Jeremy (eds.), Diversity and super-diversity: Sociocultural linguistic perspectives, 1–14. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan; Westinen, Elina; & Leppänen, Sirpa (2015). Further notes on sociolinguistic scales. Intercultural Pragmatics 12(1):119–27.Google Scholar
Çağlar, Ayse (2016). Still ‘migrants’ after all those years: Foundational mobilities, temporal frames and emplacement of migrants. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42(6):952–69.Google Scholar
Carr, E. Summerson, & Lempert, Michael (eds.) (2016). Scale: Discourse and dimensions of social life. Oakland: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Catedral, Lydia (2018). Discursive scaling: Moral stability and neoliberal dominance in the narratives of transnational migrant women. Discourse & Society 29(1):23–42.Google Scholar
Christensen, Toke H. (2009). ‘Connected presence’ in distributed family life. New Media & Society 11(3):433–51.Google Scholar
Chun, Elaine W. (2017). How to drop a name: Hybridity, purity, and the K-pop fan. Language in Society 46:57–76.Google Scholar
Cohen, Leor (2015). World attending in interaction: Multitasking, spatializing, narrativizing with mobile devices and Tinder. Discourse, Context and Media 9:46–54.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nicholas (2009). Dialects, standards and social change. In Maegaard, Marie, Gregersen, Frans, Quist, Pia, & Jørgensen, J. Normann (eds.), Language attitudes, standardization and language change, 27–50. Oslo: Novus.Google Scholar
Cui, Di (2016). Beyond ‘connected presence’: Multimedia mobile instant messaging in close relationship management. Mobile Media & Communication 4(1):19–36.Google Scholar
Darics, Erika (2016). Digital media in workplace interactions. In Georgakopoulou, Alexandra & Spilioti, Tereza (eds.), The Routledge handbook of language and digital communication, 197–211. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dick, Hilary P. (2010). Imagined lives and modernist chronotopes in Mexican nonmigrant discourse. American Ethnologist 37(2):275–90.Google Scholar
Fakhruroji, Moch (2015). Mediatization of religion in ‘texting culture’: Self-help religion and the shifting of religious authority. Indonesian Journal of Islam and Muslim Societies 5(2):231–54.Google Scholar
Frith, Jordan (2015). Smartphones as locative media. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Gal, Susan (2016). Scale-making: Comparison and perspective as ideological projects. In Carr & Lempert, 91–111.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hirschman, Charles (2004). The role of religion in the origins and adaptation of immigrant groups in the United States. IMR 38(3):1206–33.Google Scholar
Holquist, Michael (1990/2002). Dialogism: Bakhtin and his world. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ignaciuk-Pakmur, Natalia (2012). „Szczęść Boże panie księdzu…”: O zwrotach grzecznościowych kierowanych do księży przez dzieci i młodzież. Język – szkoła – religia 7(1):40–48.Google Scholar
Ito, Mizuko, & Okabe, Daisuke (2005). Technosocial situations: Emergent structurings of mobile email use. In Ito, Mizuko, Okabe, Daisuke, & Matsuda, Misa (eds.), Personal, portable, intimate: Mobile phones in Japanese life, 257–76. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Rodney H. (2004). The problem of context in computer-mediated communication. In Levine, Philip & Scollon, Ron (eds.), Discourse & technology: Multimodal discourse analysis, 20–33. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Rodney H. (2009a). ‘Inter-activity’: How new media can help us understand old media. In Lowe, Charlie & Wyss, Eva L. (eds.), Language and new media: Linguistic, cultural, and technological evolutions, 13–31. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Rodney H. (2009b). Dancing, skating and sex: Action and text in the digital age. Journal of Applied Linguistics 6(3):283–302.Google Scholar
Karimzad, Farzad (2016). Life here beyond now: Chronotopes of the ideal life among Iranian transnationals. Journal of Sociolinguistics 20(5):607–30.Google Scholar
Karimzad, Farzad (2018). Metapragmatics of normalcy: Mobility, context, and language. Paper presented at 2018 American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Conference, Chicago, Illinois.Google Scholar
Karimzad, Farzad, & Catedral, Lydia (2018). ‘No, we don't mix languages’: Ideological power and the chronotopic organization of ethnolinguistic identities. Language in Society 47(1):89–113.Google Scholar
Koven, Michelle (2013). Antiracist, modern selves and racist, unmodern others: Chronotopes of modernity in Luso-descendants’ race talk. Language & Communication 33:544–58.Google Scholar
Koven, Michelle (2015). Narrative and cultural identities: Performing and aligning with figures of personhood. In Fina, Anna De & Georgakopoulou, Alexandra (eds.), The handbook of narrative analysis, 388–407. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Kytölä, Samu (2016). Translocality. In Georgakopoulou, Alexandra & Spilioti, Tereza (eds.), The Routledge handbook of language and digital communication, 371–88. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Laursen, Ditte, & Szymanski, Margaret H. (2013). Where are you? Location talk in mobile phone conversations. Mobile Media & Communication 1(3):314–34.Google Scholar
Lemke, Jay L. (2000). Across the scales of time. Mind, Culture, and Activity 7:273–90.Google Scholar
Lexander, Kristin V. (2011). Texting and African language literacy. New Media & Society 13:427–43.Google Scholar
Licoppe, Christian (2004). ‘Connected presence’: The emergence of a new repertoire for managing social relationships in a changing communication technoscape. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 22(1):135–56.Google Scholar
Lyons, Agnieszka (2014). Self-presentation and self-positioning in text-messages: Embedded multimodality, deixis, and reference frame. London: School of Languages, Linguistics & Film, Queen Mary University of London PhD thesis.Google Scholar
Lyons, Agnieszka (2015). Storyworld in text-messages: Sequentiality and spatialisation. In Hatavara, Mari, Hyvärinen, Matti, Mäkelä, Maria, & Mäyrä, Frans (eds.), Narrative theory, literature, and new media: Narrative minds and virtual worlds, 122–43. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Madianou, Mirca, & Miller, Daniel (2012). Migration and new media: Transnational families and polymedia. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Maier, Craig T., & Deluliis, David (2015). Recovering the human in the network: Exploring communicology in digital business discourse. In Darics, Erika (ed.), Digital business discourse, 208–25. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Meyrowitz, Joshua (1985). No sense of place: The impact of electronic media on social behavior. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Moores, Shaun (2004). The doubling of place: Electronic media, time-space arrangements and social relationships. In Couldry, Nick & McCarthy, Anna (eds.), MediaSpace: Place, scale and culture in a media age, 21–36. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Morson, Gary Saul, & Emerson, Caryl (1990). Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a prosaics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Mullany, Louise (2004). Gender, politeness and institutional power roles: Humour as tactic to gain compliance in workplace business meetings. Multilingua 23:13–37.Google Scholar
O'Leary, Michael B.; Wilson;, Jeanne M. & Metiu, Anca (2014). Beyond being there: The symbolic role of communication and identification in perceptions of proximity to geographically dispersed colleagues. MIS Quarterly 38(4):1219–43.Google Scholar
Petre, Jonathan, & Southam, Hazel (2006). Priests struggle to cope with new Polish flock. The Telegraph, 21 August 2006. Online: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1526850/Priests-struggle-to-cope-with-new-Polish-flock.html; accessed 20 August 2018.Google Scholar
Porter-Szűcs, Brian (2011). Faith and fatherland: Catholicism, modernity, and Poland. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rainie, Lee, & Wellman, Barry (2012). Networked: The new social operating system. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Reinsch, Lamar N.; Turner;, Jeanine W. & Tinsley, Catherine H. (2008). Multicommunicating: A practice whose time has come? The Academy of Management Review 33(2):391–403.Google Scholar
Rosa, Jonathan (2016). Racialising language, regimenting Latinas/os: Chronotope, social tense, and American raciolinguistic futures. Language & Communication 46:106–17.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A., & Sacks, Harvey (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica 8(4):289–327.Google Scholar
Steinby, Liisa (2013). Bakhtin's concept of the chronotope: The viewpoint of the acting subject. In Steinby, Liisa & Tintti, Tintti (eds.), Bakhtin and his others: (Inter)subjectivity, chronotope, dialogism, 105–26. London: Anthem Press.Google Scholar
Szabla, Malgorzata, & Blommaert, Jan (2018). Does context really collapse in social media interaction? Applied Linguistics Review doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2017-0119.Google Scholar
Tagg, Caroline (2012). The discourse of text messaging: Analysis of SMS communication. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Wei, Ran, & Lo, Ven-Hwei (2006). Staying connected while on the move: Cell phone use and social connectedness. New Media & Society 8(1):53–72.Google Scholar
Yu, Quian; Huang, Peiyang; & Liu, Liming (2017). From ‘connected presence’ to ‘panoptic presence’: Reframing the parent-child relationship on mobile instant messaging uses in the Chinese translocal context. Mobile Media & Communication 5(2):123–38.Google Scholar
Hua, Zhu; Wei;, Li & Lyons, Agnieszka (2015). Language, business and superdiversity in London: Translanguaging business. Working Papers in Translanguaging and Translation, Paper 5. Online: https://tlang754703143.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/translanguaging-business2.pdf.Google Scholar
Zontini, Elisabetta (2004). Immigrant women in Barcelona: Coping with the consequences of transnational lives. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30(6):1113–44.Google Scholar