New Book - Greek in Minoritized Contexts! - October 2024
After several years of hard work, a volume I have co-edited for Routledge's Critical Studies in Multilingualism Series is currently in production and will be released December 5, 2024!. What originally started as collaborative discussions between my friend and colleague Petros Karatsareas led us to organizing a workshop with Elena Ioannidou on various sociolinguistic outcomes of minoritized Greek speakers. The workshop took place in January 2021 and a subset of the presenters were asked to contribute to our volume on Greek in Minoritized Contexts: Identities, Authenticities and Institutions. Our introduction discusses how we came to focus on these three concepts, primarily motivated by overarching themes in the individual chapters. We have some amazing contributors and are very excited for this book's upcoming release.
ICLAVE 12 in Vienna! - July 2024
I presented some of my research on a verbal guise experiment at the International Conference of Language Variation in Europe. The talk centered on the experiment, which included a rating task as well as an open field for respondents to comment on eight Greek voices. The participants didn't know that half of the recordings were of Athenians and the other half were of Istanbul Greeks. The results showed that IG raters were more accurate in correctly placing the speakers, and also more positively evaluated them, whereas other raters attributed different values based on perceptions of other stigmatized speech. Conferences are always a great way to keep updated with new developments in the field and I definitely left feeling excited about working on concepts such as language and place.
New Position in Salzburg! - October 2023
As of October first, I started a new position as a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg! Working as a sociolinguist in the Department of English and American Studies, I will be teaching two courses a semester while conducting research. Although I am in an English department, I will be continuing ongoing work I have done with Istanbul Greek, while also branching out to social meaning of variation in other contexts, too. Stay tuned for more updates regarding additional research projects. Very excited for this new opportunity!
Visiting Researcher in London - May 2023
From April 26 - May 26, I will be a visiting researcher at the University of Westminster. Very grateful to Dr. Petros Karatsareas for the invitation to collaborate. While there, I will be meeting with graduate linguistics students interested in multilingualism, multiculturalism and consequent social outcomes to learn about and advise them with their work. I will also give a talk on the importance of social considerations when carrying out sociophonetic research at the University of Oxford's Phonetics Laboratory on May 3. Part of my visiting researcher responsibilities will be to give a seminar as part of the Westminster Forum for Language and Linguistics which will take place on May 10th. Stay tuned/check my twitter for more details closer to the date. On the 15th, I will present some of my research at the University of Edinburgh's Language variation and change seminars. And on the 16th I will give a more general talk on Istanbul Greek in collaboration with the Association of Constantinopolitan Greeks in the United Kingdom (ACGUK) held at the Hellenic Centre. This free event is open to the public and you can register for it here. Hope to see you if you're in the area then!
More Fieldwork in Istanbul - February-April 2023
I arrived in my ancestral homeland for another round of fieldwork. Unfortunately I had a delayed start due to the catastrophic earthquakes that have taken so many lives in Turkey. Nevertheless, I've been able to reconnect with some of my friends, family and precious informants. Whereas in the past I had been focused on researching the elderly and other adults, this year I am supplementing my research demographics by focusing on high school students, thanks in large part to the auspices of Principal Yannis Demircoglu. Learn more about the historic Zografeion Lykeion here,. where I am spending a few weeks to observe students and instructors before conducting interviews with those interested.
New Article in the Journal of Sociolinguistics -January 2023
On January 12, 2023, my first major publication on Istanbul Greek was officially published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics online. The hard copy version should be released shortly. This was a long time in the making and I'm so happy that my article is available to be read online. Below is an abstract for the paper and here is a link to download the article from the JSLX website itself. Language users discursively circulate ideologies of identity, especially in stances taken while assigning social characteristics to enregistered personae. Previous research has demonstrated that with the Istanbul Greek (IG) diaspora, speakers use the emic terms of Ellines and Romioi to orient to or away from Mainland Greeks, respectively. In this paper, I discuss how IGs in Turkey relate such ethnonyms to linguistic features and how they rely on enregistered dialectal features to construct their ethnicity Romioi in opposition to Ellines. These ethnonyms result in personae that are used stylistically, but in turn fractally (re)create differentiation into separate ethnic categories. Such sociolinguistic processes demonstrate how linguistic variation is socially embedded in a minoritized indigenous speech community. Studying variation in concert with ethnonym use shows how speakers add nuanced meaning to established identity categories and create new ones based on their lived experiences.
Invited Talk to LESoL -November 2022
The University of the Aegean's LABORATORY FOR ETHNOGRAPHIC APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE (LESoL) invited me to give a talk based on my fieldwork and years of working with Istanbul Greeks. The talk on Tuesday 11/29 was mostly focused on ethnographic considerations when working with smaller, especially minoritized indigenous communities. I spent less time than I normally have on specific linguistic features of Istanbul Greek in favor of delving deeper into my personal relationships with members of the community and methodological considerations in conducting such fieldwork. For those of you who missed the talk, a recording is available on YouTube and a PDF of the powerpoint is available on the University's website. Feel free to reach out with any questions you may have! I warmly thank Professor Costas Canakis and his team for the kind invitation and collaboration.
NWAV 50 Presentation -October 2022
I presented some of my research regarding the enregisterment of Istanbul Greek at this year's NWAV conference held by Stanford University. The talk concerns how linguistic and broader sociocultural features and practices are enregistered by Istanbul Greeks as distinct varieties spoken by distinct types of Greek people. Primarily, Istanbul Greeks view themselves as more cosmopolitan and sophisticated than other Greeks, including Standard Modern Greek speaking Mainland Greeks. I combined ethnographic and experimental methods (verbal guise) to explore how this type of enregisterment is localized to this specific minoritized group, and how different individuals' experiences with different types of Greek speakers (whether Standard or otherwise), yields different perceptions and associations. As a result, we see scalar notions of social meaning as opposed to more global phenomena, wherein speakers' awareness is partially based on the salience of linguistic forms and their lived experience with them. Click here to see an asynchronous recording of the presentation.
At the NWAV 50 reception with final plenary speaker, Emma Moore, who does phenomenal work on the linguistic variation of English high school students among others! A lovely end to a very productive conference.
ICGL 15 Conference Presentation -September 2022
I presented some of my research regarding language ideologies at the International Conference on Greek Linguistics 15 held (remotely) at the University of Belgrade in Serbia. This talk concerns how Istanbul Greeks take stances in metapragmatic discourse where they either align with standardized language ideologies of linguistic purity or with ideologies of linguistic syncretism. We see how some linguistically insecure speakers follow notions of linguistic purity in favor of standardized Greek, others following notions of linguistic syncretism favoring Istanbul Greek, and others still who either appeal to specific linguistic features of Istanbul Greek as being more pure or questioning Standard Modern Greek's normative status. Click here to see the powerpoint.
Sociolinguistics Symposium Presentation -July 2022
I gave a talk at the Sociolinguistics Symposium 24 held at the University of Ghent in Belgium. This presentation focused on chronotopes that Istanbul Greeks, especially those living in diaspora, engage with online. A multimodal discourse analysis of how photographs, dialectal features and performative narratives come together to achieve an Istanbul Greek place in an online space.
Book Under Contract! -October 2021
Matthew is very excited to announce that he along with colleagues Elena Ioannidou at the University of Cyprus and Petros Karatsareas at the University of Westminster have a book under contract with Routledge. As part of their Critical Multilingualism Series, the co-edited book will have chapters from a range of scholars exploring multilingualism in minoritized Greek populations. Contributors tackle topics ranging from Greek migrants in Europe, Canada, and Australia, as well as minoritized Greek varieties in homelands of Greece, Cyprus, and Istanbul. More details to follow!
NWAV Presentation -October 2021
I presented virtually at the NWAV 49 conference (hosted by the University of Texas Austin) discussing different patterns of variation for two dialectal features of Istanbul Greek. Due to the ongoing pandemic, all talks were prerecorded and presenters participated in discussion on our Zoom session. Click the link below to watch the talk I gave for the conference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd__ZeztL1s&ab_channel=MatthewJohnHadodo
Article Published in JLS -September 2020
Together with Professor Matt Kanwit, I published an article on the use of Spanish diminutives in Madrid in the Journal of Language and Sexuality. This was my first peer-reviewed publication! Although numerous studies have showed a link between sociophonetic variables and perceptions regarding sexuality, our study demonstrates that speakers make similar links based on morphosyntactic variables (i.e., the morphological variable of diminutive use). In this case, ideologies related to age interact with ideologies related to gender, all of which influence the perception of sexuality with diminutives in Madrid Spanish. Read more here!