A new role for Low German? Language insertion as bilingual practice in the process of language shift

This article analyses language insertion as a bilingual communicative practice, applying a functional, speaker-focused approach to the study of sociolinguistics and language contact. The article is based on a study of contact phenomena in a formerly diglossic region in Northern Germany, where the previously spoken language – Low German – is in the process of being replaced by the dominant standard variety, German. It examines regional publications in order to establish the linguistic techniques by which Low German elements are incorporated into the Standard German texts and the communicative purposes that they serve. The paper concludes that in the process of language shift an emblematic repertoire from Low German is created which can be applied into the dominant contact language, German, for specific communicative purposes.

Jiddisch - niederdeutsche Sprachbeziehungen in Ostfriesland:Low German language relations in East Frisia

Recently discovered sources indicate that the Jewish population of East Frisia in Northwest Germany used a variety based on Western Yiddish as an in-group vernacular well into the 20th century. The East Frisian Jewish variety shows contact-induced traces of Low German, mainly in the lexicon but also in a number of morphological structures. This study does not only analyzes the influence of Low German on the East Frisian Jewish variety but also asks the question, whether three hundred years of language contact have led to traces of the Jewish variety in east Frisian Low German.

Reconstructing the past? Low German and the creating of regional identity in public language display

This article deals with language contact between a dominant standard language -German - and a lesser-used variety - Low German - in a situation in which the minoritised language is threatened by language shift and language loss. It analyses the application of Low German in forms of public language display and the selfpresentation of the community in tourism brochures, focusing on bilingual linguistic practices on the one hand and on underlying discourses on the other. It reveals that top-down and bottom-up approaches to implementing Low German in public language display show a remarkable homogeneity, thus creating a regional 'brand'. The article asks whether a raised level of visibility will in itself guarantee better chances for linguistic maintenance and survival of the threatened language. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

Post-vernacular language use in a Low German linguistic community

In a time of rapid shift and loss of smaller, regional and minority languages it becomes apparent that many of them continue to play a role as post-vernacular varieties. As Shandler (2006) points out for Yiddish in the United States, some languages serve the purpose of identity-building within a community even after they have ceased to be used as a vernacular for daily communication. This occurs according to Shandler through a number of cultural practices, such as amateur theatre, music and folklore, translation, attempts to learn the language in evening classes, etc. This paper will demonstrate that the paradigm developed by Shandler for Yiddish can be applied to other linguistic communities, by comparing the post-vernacular use of Yiddish with Low German in Northern Germany. It will focus on the linguistic strategies that individuals or groups of speakers apply in order to participate in a post-vernacular language community.

Autochthonous heritage languages and social media:writing and bilingual practices in Low German on Facebook

This article analyses how speakers of an autochthonous heritage language (AHL) make use of digital media, through the example of Low German, a regional language used by a decreasing number of speakers mainly in northern Germany. The focus of the analysis is on Web 2.0 and its interactive potential for individual speakers. The study therefore examines linguistic practices on the social network site Facebook, with special emphasis on language choice, bilingual practices and writing in the autochthonous heritage language. The findings suggest that social network sites such as Facebook have the potential to provide new mediatized spaces for speakers of an AHL that can instigate sociolinguistic change.

Solidarity and power in German : language as political action : a contribution to the socio-cultural history of the German language

Germany's latest attempt at unification raises again the question of German nationhood and nationality. The present study examines the links between the development of the German language and the political history of Germany, principally in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By examining the role of language in the establishment and exercise of political power and in the creation of national and group solidarity in Germany, the study both provides insights into the nature of language as political action and contributes to the socio-cultural history of the German language. The language-theoretical hypothesis on which the study is based sees language as a central factor in political action, and opposes the notion that language is a reflection of underlying political 'realities' which exist independently of language. Language is viewed as language-in-text which performs identifiable functions. Following Leech, five functions are distinguished, two of which (the regulative and the phatic) are regarded as central to political processes. The phatic function is tested against the role of the German language as a creator and symbol of national identity, with particular attention being paid to concepts of the 'purity' of the language. The regulative function (under which a persuasive function is also subsumed) is illustrated using the examples of German fascist discourse and selected cases from German history post-1945. In addition, the interactions are examined between language change and socio-economic change by postulating that language change is both a condition and consequence of socio-economic change, in that socio-economic change both requires and conditions changes in the communicative environment. Finally, three politocolinguistic case studies from the eight and ninth decades of the twentieth century are introduced in order to demonstrate specific ways in which language has been deployed in an attempt to create political realities, thus verifying the initial hypothesis of the centrality of language to the political process.

Teaching and learning German language and culture in higher education in Britain:problems, challenges and didactical implications. A case study

The aim of this thesis is to explore key aspects and problems of the institutionalised teaching and learning of German language and culture in the context of German Studies in British Higher Education (HE). This investigation focuses on teaching and learning experiences in one department of German Studies in the UK, which is the micro-context of the present study, in order to provide an in-depth insight into real-life problems, strengths and weaknesses as they occur in the practice of teaching and learning German. Following Lamb (2004) and Holliday (1994), the present study acts on the assumption that each micro-context does not exist in vacuo but is always embedded in a wider socio-political and education environment, namely the macro-context, which largely determines how and what is taught. The macro-analysis of the present study surveys the socio-political developments that have recently affected the sector of modern languages and specifically the discipline of German Studies in the UK. It demonstrates the impact they have had on teaching and learning German at the undergraduate level in Britain. This context is interesting inasmuch as the situation in Britain is to a large extent a paradigmatic example of the developments in German Studies in English-speaking countries. Subsequently, the present study explores learning experiences of a group of thirty-five first year students. It focuses on their previous experiences in learning German, exposure to the target language, motivation, learning strategies and difficulties encountered, when learning German at the tertiary level. Then, on the basis of interviews with five lecturers of German, teaching experience in the context under study is explored, problems and successful teaching strategies discussed.

Token codeswitching and language alternation in narrative discourse: a functional-pragmatic approach

This study is concerned with two phenomena of language alternation in biographic narrations in Yiddish and Low German, based on spoken language data recorded between 1988 and 1995. In both phenomena language alternation serves as an additional communicative tool which can be applied by bilingual speakers to enlarge their set of interactional devices in order to ensure a smoother or more pointed processing of communicative aims. The first phenomenon is a narrative strategy I call Token Cod-eswitching: In a bilingual narrative culminating in a line of reported speech, a single element of L2 indicates the original language of the reconstructed dialogue – a token for a quote. The second phenomenon has to do with directing procedures, carried out by the speaker and aimed at guiding the hearer's attention, which are frequently carried out in L2, supporting the hearer's attention at crucial points in the interaction. Both phenomena are analyzed following a model of narrative discourse as proposed in the framework of Functional Pragmatics. The model allows the adoption of an integral approach to previous findings in code-switching research.

Die Sprache der Auricher Juden. Zur Rekonstruktion westjiddischer Sprachreste in Ostfriesland:to reconstruct westjiddischer language residues in Ostfriesland

Western Yiddish, the spoken language of the traditional Jewish society in the German- and Dutch-speaking countries, was abandoned by its speakers at the end of the 18th in favour of the emerging standard varieties: Dutch and German, respectively. Remnants of Western Yiddish varieties, however, remained a medium of discourse in remote provinces and could be found well into the 19th and sometimes the 20th century in some South-western areas of Germany and Switzerland, the Alsace, some areas of the Netherlands and in parts of the German province of Westphalia. It appears that rural Jewish communities sometimes preserved in-group vernaculars, which were based on Western Yiddish. Sources discovered in 2004 in the town of Aurich prove that Jews living in East Frisia, a Low-German speaking peninsula in the North-west of Germany, used a variety based on Western Yiddish until the Second World War. It appears that until the Holocaust a number of small, close-knit Jewish communities East Frisia, which depended economically mainly on cattle-trading and butchery, kept certain specific cultural features, among them the vernacular which they spoke alongside Low German and Standard German. The sources consist of two amateur theatre plays, a memoir and two word lists written in 1902, 1928 and the 1980s, respectively. In the monograph these sources are documented and annotated as well as analyzed linguistically against the background of rural Jewish life in Northern Germany. The study focuses on traces of language contact with Low German, processes of language change and on the question of the function of the variety in day-to-day life in a rural Jewish community.

Niederdeutsch im Internet. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen computervermittelter Kommunikation für den Spracherhalt:possibilities and limitations of computer-mediated communication for language preservation

Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht die Frage, in welchem Maße sich Institutionen, die niederdeutsche Kulturszene und individuelle Sprecher des Niederdeutschen moderne Kommunikationstechnologien wie das Internet zunutze machen und ob computervermittelte Kommunikation helfen kann, dem Rückgang des Niederdeutschen Einhalt zu gebieten. Die grundsätzliche Herangehensweise ist eine soziolinguistische, die das Internet als sozialen Handlungsraum versteht, in dem Individuen und Institutionen kommunizieren. Für eine derartige Perspektive stehen weniger das Medium oder das Genre im Mittelpunkt des Interesses als vielmehr das kommunizierende Individuum und die Sprachgemeinschaft, in diesem Fall die virtuelle Sprachgemeinschaft. Based on studies that analyse the potential of computer-mediated communication (cmc) to help fight language shift in lesser-used languages, this paper discusses the situation of Low German in Northern Germany. Over the last three decades, Low German has lost more than half of its active speakers. The article raises the question of whether and, if so, how Low German speakers make use of cmc to stem this tide. Following a sociolinguistic approach focussed on the individual speakers who use the Internet as a space for social interaction, it gives an overview of the discursive field of Low German on the internet and analyses in detail the most popular Low German discussion board. It shows that one of the main obstacles to a more successful use of cmc can be found in speakers' complex attitude toward written Low German. © Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart.

Niederdeutsch in Ostfriesland:Zwischen Sprachkontakt, Sprachveränderung und Sprachwechsel

Low German is a West-germanic language, which is used mainly as a spoken language in the coastal areas of Northwest Germany, North-eastern parts of the Netherlands and along the German coasts of the Baltic Sea. Although still a variety used by millions of speakers, Low German must be counted among the languages threatened by decline if not extinction within the next twenty years because it is no longer used by the younger generations. Apart from the question of whether Low German will survive altogether, the variety is in a process of linguistic change due to the contact situation with the dominant language of the media and almost all written official communications, Standard German. Low German, therefore, is a field for research in all areas of language contact, e.g. codeswitching, language shift, mixed languages or language death. Within Low German, the variety spoken in East Frisia has a distinct history of language contact and language change over the last six hundred years. It is based on a Frisian substratum and has been in close linguistic contact with Dutch since the 16th century.

Die Poetik des Extremen. Ausschreitungen einer Sprache des Radikalen:excesses of a language of radical

Gibt es eine Traditionslinie extremistischer Poetiken in der deutschsprachigen Literatur? Uwe Schütte untersucht anhand literarischer Texte ab dem späten 18. Jahrhundert den Konnex zwischen historischen Phänomenen wie Revolution, Krieg oder Terrorismus und extremen biografischen Umständen wie Schizophrenie für die Herausbildung radikaler Schreibweisen. Die Spannbreite der behandelten Autoren reicht dabei von der Klassikertrias Kleist, Hölderlin und Büchner über Schriftsteller des 20. Jahrhunderts wie Ernst Jünger oder Hans Henny Jahnn bis zu den Gegenwartsautoren Ernst Herbeck und Rainald Goetz. The study investigates aesthetic representations of extremism in German-language literature from around 1800 to the present. Its aim is to examine the interplay between three different areas: historical circumstances, (auto)biographical issues, and literary texts. Discussed are texts by both major and marginal writers from various genres, ranging from classics such as Heinrich von Kleist or Friedrich Hölderlin to the marginalised poet Ernst Herbeck or the contemporary writer Rainald Goetz. Subjects and factors considered include extremist phenomena in modern history (such as revolutions, wars, terrorism) and extreme individual experiences (such as suicide or schizophrenia) on the aesthetic domain(s) with regard to the production of literary discourses that could be considered as extremist. These manifest themselves in the development of what can be viewed as ‘radical poetics’, decidedly innovative styles of writing and moral or political transgression in fiction. Being the first critical attempt to trace the history of radical discourses in German literature, the study explores the validity of creating an aesthetic category of 'literary extremism'.

Bilingualismus oder Sprachverlust? Zur Lage und zur aktiven Verwendung des Niederdeutschen in Ostfriesland am Beispiel einer Dorfgemeinschaft

Based on data from a language survey conducted in a village in northwest Germany the study analyzes the relationship between language shift and language attitudes. After centuries of stigmatization, the overall attitude towards Low German is now overwhelmingly positive. However, this does not lead to parents raising their children with Low German. Low German seems to loose its traditional domains as in-group variety in families and in informal settings while gaining popularity as language used for entertainment purposes.

An action research study with low proficiency learners in Japan to promote the learning of vocabulary through collocations.

This action research (AR) study explores an alternative approach to vocabulary instruction for low-proficiency university students: a change from targeting individual words from the general service list (West, 1953) to targeting frequent verb + noun collocations. A review of the literature indicated a focus on collocations instead of individual words could potentially address the students’ productive challenges with targeted vocabulary. Over the course of four reflective cycles, this thesis addresses three main aspects of collocation instruction. First, it examines if the students believe studying collocations is more useful than studying individual lexical items. Second, the thesis investigates whether a focus on collocations will lead to improvements in spoken fluency. This is tested through a comparison of a pre-intervention spoken assessment task with the findings from the same task completed 15 weeks later, after the intervention. Third, the thesis explores different procedures for the instructing of collocations under the classroom constraints of a university teaching context. In the first of the four reflective cycles, data is collected which indicates that the students believe a focus on collocations is superior to only teaching individual lexical items, that in the students’ opinion their productive abilities with the targeted structures has improved, and that delexicalized verb collocations are problematic for low-proficiency students. Reflective cycle two produces evidence indicating that productive tasks are superior to receptive tasks for fluency development. In reflective cycle three, productively challenging classroom tasks are investigated further and the findings indicate that tasks with higher productive demands result in greater improvements in spoken fluency. The fourth reflective cycle uses a different type of collocation list: frequent adjective + noun collocations. Despite this change, the findings remain consistent in that certain types of collocations are problematic for low-proficiency language learners and that the evidence shows productive tasks are necessary to improve the students’ spoken ability.