Where have you been and where will you go? Quantifying the past, present and future in sociolinguistic analysis.

Abstract –
In this presentation, we link three studies focusing on individual speakers’ real and imagined mobility patterns and their linguistic variation. In recent years, sociolinguistic studies (e.g. Carmichael 2017, Sharma 2018) have pointed out that speakers’ individual history of mobility play a significant role in linguistic practices. Studies have shown that speakers' individual history of mobility, including where they have lived throughout their lifespan and where they envision themselves living in the future, significantly influences their linguistic practices. In a study of multilingual youth in an ethnically diverse suburb, Quist (2019) found that style shifting correlated with mobility histories. Speakers who had lived in other places prior to their current place of residence had a greater tendency to switch between multi-ethnic youth style and standard Danish across contexts. In a similar vein, a real-time panel study of mobile and non-mobile people from three Danish dialect areas showed that speakers who became geographically and socially mobile later in life, that is, after leaving the area in which they were originally located, used fewer dialect features compared to speakers who remained in the area (Monka 2020).
To further understand the interconnections between mobility and language use, Monka, Quist and Skovse (2020) developed an ‘index of attachment’ by comparing linguistic variation, the use of dialect and standard features, in two different locations - a rural village and an urban social housing project. The index was calculated on insights from ethnographic fieldwork and interviews and included information about speakers’ individual mobility histories, local practices and future orientations in relation to language use and place. Among other things, the index demonstrated differences between the two geographic places, as well as between individuals, which can be explained by differences in place affordances, life histories and future orientation.
In this presentation, we present theoretical and methodological considerations that link these studies, i.e. why and how to operationalize the interrelationship between speakers' mobility histories, their attachment to the local community, their mental orientations towards the future and quantitative studies of linguistic variation. The discussion will include reflections on the conceptualizations of ‘place’, ‘mobility’ and ‘belonging’.