by Line Sandst
My socio-onomastic research focuses on urban toponomy
and meaning-making. I am particularly interested in the modalities and socially
constructed geosemiotic conventions that enable language users to distinguish
between different grammatical categories (e.g. between proper names and
appellatives) – and therefore different kinds of meanings – in the linguistic
landscapes.
As
assistant professor of Danish Linguistics at Aalborg University, I teach a
diverse group of subjects from Danish phonetics, to rhetoric and theories of
argumentation to language history. However, I have also experimented with a
more direct kind of research-based teaching in socio-onomastics for MA students,
as I outline below. I share my thoughts on my teaching practice in the hope
that others might benefit from my experiences. Please do feel free to share
your viewpoints, experiences and give feedback so we may all benefit from an
exchange of ideas.
Teaching objectives
When
teaching socio-onomastics from an urban toponymy point of view, I find it
important that the students gain experience from actual field studies. I put
together a curriculum of texts that can be divided into four overall topics: an
introduction to onomastics, methodology, current socio-onomastic studies, and
theories of names and naming and other theoretical problems depending on
interest, such as multimodality, geosemiotics, language policy etc. During the course,
we discuss the texts on the curriculum, but I also spend time helping the
students to come up with a relevant research question/problem, and prepare them
for conducting fieldwork.
Finding
a research question is usually the hardest part for my students. The
socio-onomastic scholarship on the curriculum serves as a framework and inspiration
for them to come up with their own research questions and designs. I encourage
them to find a problem that sparks their academic curiosity as I find that a
personal interest is the best motivation for academic work. However, for those
students who find it hard to come up with a question, I present three examples
of possible studies for inspiration:
- Investigation of commercial names in
the linguistic landscape: Pick a street or an area of town and take photos of the
commercial names in the study area. What do you find? (Possible angles depending
on the data could be (one or a combination of) e.g. multimodal names, names that
do not conform to expectations, names coined in other languages than Danish. Do
you find any patterns or tendencies? Are you able to say something about the
identity of the study area based on the commercial names?)
- Investigation of recent street
names: Pick an area where there is a construction project under way. Take a
walk in the area and take photos. What kind of identity is being created? Do
the new names fit the area? How come/ why not? You may even compare your
findings to relevant architectural drawings and building
contractors’ documents containing ‘visions/narratives’ about the area’s future
identity.
- Investigation of the relation between commercial names
and street names: Pick an area with theme based street names and take photos of
the commercial names and street names in the area. How many – if any – of the
commercial names have a name that fits the theme of the group named area? Are you able to say something about the identity of the area based on
the relation between the two name categories?
I encourage
my students to work in groups or pairs because it enables them to discuss and
solve the problems that might occur during the data collection and later in the
analysis process. I find that when students are held responsible to each other,
they are less inclined to give up if they are confronted with unforeseen
obstacles, or if they find the task at hand hard to complete.
In
class, I spend time discussing research questions and research designs with
each group and make sure they have a clear idea of how to conduct the actual fieldwork.
When interpreting proper names in the linguistic landscape, the researcher always
needs to consider the context thoroughly. This is why I encourage my students
to take pictures of the proper names as well as other objects they might find
interesting in the field, and I instruct them to take field notes during the
field study. This makes the subsequent analysis and interpretation much easier.
Presenting the data and results
In
the last session, each group has to present their study for the class and I instruct
them to present:
- Research question
- Presentation of data
- Possible sources of errors /
limitations
- Analysis and results.
All
listeners have to give constructive critique to their fellow students on their
fieldwork and studies. Since all students will have fieldwork experience
themselves, I find that they are very capable of asking relevant and
constructive questions to the studies conducted by their fellow students. Asking
the students to offer criticism to one another gives them a unique possibility
to reflect upon others’ as well as their own role as researchers. If necessary,
I direct the discussions and ask them to relate practice to theory. I sometimes
ask how they would have conducted their study, if they had to do it all over, in
light of what they have learned through our discussions. My students tend to have
already considered the methodological implications of their own practices, and
asking this question allows them to reflect further on their study as the first
step towards an improved or perhaps different empirical study based on
fieldwork – hopefully one with a socio-onomastic point of departure.
