Article by Lian Malai Madsen receives the Ton Vallen Award

Lian receives the award for the article “’High’ and ‘low’ in urban Danish speech styles”, published in Language in Society 42: 115-138 (2013).

The prize was awarded on the following grounds: The jury was firmly impressed by the scope, depth and relevance of the study. By means of a sophisticated and delicate ethnographic study of school-going youth, and drawing on the support of longitudinal research in the area and among that age group in Copenhagen, Lian Malai Madsen shows how speech diacritics signaling “foreignness” now also indexically extend into a “high-low” distinction in speech styles. This extension of ethnic stratification into social stratification is an exceptionally important finding of great relevance for understanding the sociolinguistic dynamics in contemporary superdiverse societies.

This is the second consecutive year that the award is given to a researcher from this Department: last year Martha Sif Karrebæk received the Ton Vallen Award 2013.