Doris Schüpbach

Language Transmission Revisited: Family Type, Linguistic Environment and Language Attitudes.

Abstract This article revisits factors in intergenerational language maintenance and shift within the family. It does so through an in-depth analysis of what 14 migrants to Australia from German-speaking Switzerland reported in written life stories and subsequent life story interviews. The participants represent four family types and a wide age range, and they migrated over several decades. Whether they transmitted Swiss German to the children and if so, to what extent, cannot be unequivocally correlated with either the family type or the time of migration. However, participants who migrated and raised their children during a more assimilationist period in Australia tended to transmit their language to a limited degree only or not at all. The analysis of the personal narratives also considers the specific language variety in question (Swiss German) as well as the role of the parents’ attitudes and their beliefs about language, bilingualism and language learning. The paper argues that a life story approach is a valuable complement and extension of macro-level research into language transmission, highlighting the diverse experiences and the complexity of the variables involved.

Testing Language, Testing Ethnicity? Policies and Practices Surrounding the Ethnic German Aussiedler

Aussiedler are ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries who are granted the right to resettle in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) if they can provide evidence of German ancestry, attachment to the German language and culture, and ongoing assertion of German ethnicity. This article outlines the policies, legislation, and practices the German authorities have adopted to deal with these people. In particular, it describes and analyses the role assigned to the German language and the language testing practices involved in the recognition process. It summarizes the criticisms that this “language test” has attracted and discusses how it reflects or contradicts ideologies of language, ethnicity, and national identity.

“It's something that's just faded away”: how a Melbourne family of Swiss-German background makes sense of language shift

Abstract This article is based on a case study of a family with three children who migrated to Australia from German-speaking Switzerland in 1984. It was found that within less than ten years, Swiss-German was substituted by English as the language in the home and today the younger generation use Swiss-German exclusively for communication with their relatives in Switzerland. The article retraces this change in language use and examines how the members of the family recall the language shift and make sense of it. The findings are discussed in terms of the roles played by the family members (in particular by the mother) and in terms of the familys language background.

Communities of Addressing Practice? Address in Internet Forums Based in German-Speaking Countries

This case study on address in computer-mediated communication (CMC) analyzes the forms of address in a corpus of readers’ forums in online editions of German, Austrian and German-Swiss newspapers. More formal Sie (V) pronominal and nominal address forms are the dominant and sometimes only address forms found in the forums, contrary to frequent assumptions. Addressing behaviour in the forums shows significant differences between the three countries, but above all each individual forum displays characteristic patterns of address, supporting the view that forum participants form communities of linguistic practice.

Connecting Younger Second-Language Learners and Older Bilinguals: Interconnectedness and Social Inclusion.

This article reports on an inter-generational inter-cultural pilot project carried out in suburban Melbourne which supports the second-language acquisition of younger people and enhances the social inclusion of older people of migrant background. The article begins with an outline of the multilingual context in which the project is based. The project is then described, and qualitative data indicating its success are presented. This is collected from a student focus group, phone interviews with older participants and conversations between students and older participants.

Book Review: Russlanddeutsche Sprachbiographien. Untersuchungen zur sprachlichen Integration von Aussiedlerfamilien {Russian-German language biographies. Analyses of the linguistic integration of families of ethnic German resettlers} Katharina Meng (2001): Tübingen: Narr (Studien zur deutschen Sprache, Band 21) ISBN 3-8233-5151-6 (pbk); pp.549

Katharina Meng’s book reports on a study of Aussiedler (resettlers), that is, ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union who have been affected directly or indirectly by World War II because of their German ethnicity and are therefore granted the right to resettle in Germany. The study was initiated by the Institut für Deutsche Sprache in 1992 following a sharp increase in immigration of ethnic Germans. Other studies in this context include N ina Berend’s (1998) examination of the change in the German dialects of the Aussiedler and U lrich Reitemeier’s (forthcoming) analysis of interaction between resettlers and local Germans in Germany.