Gertrud K Reershemius

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.

“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 that I call Token Codeswitching: 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 hearers attention, which are frequently carried out in L2, supporting the hearers 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 codeswitching research.

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

Abstract 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 self-presentation 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.

In the Demon's Bedroom: Yiddish literature and the early modern

is a missed opportunity (Götz Aly, Unser Kampf: 1968 – ein irritierter Blick zurück, Berlin, 2008). There is, then, a rather grotesque irony in the hardy myth still prevalent among the Achtundsechziger and their admirers that 1968, rather than 1945, was the Stunde Null (“Zero hour”) for German democracy and reconciliation with the Nazi past. For most 68ers the Nazi past functioned far less as a topic of analysis than as a rhetorical resource, used in an algebraic, rather than reflective, sense. An inflationary, devaluing use of the word “Auschwitz” took hold, as German students began to discern incipient “Auschwitzes” wherever they looked: in Israel, in Vietnam, even in Berlin department stores and the media. The Israeli historian Dan Diner has aptly described this relativizing application of the Holocaust to unrelated phenomena as “exonerating projection,” one which achieved particularly facile and mindless expression in the ubiquitous Achtundsechziger placard “USA-SA-SS” (Dan Diner, America in the Eyes of the Germans: An Essay on Anti-Americanism, Princeton, 1996, p. 128). It is certainly difficult to see how this might be construed as a product of pioneering intellectual engagement with the National Socialist past. Moreover, from the very start, elements of the German student movement were afflicted by a troublingly unchallenged anti-Semitism. Here a gruesome Sonderweg led from the planting of a bomb in the Jewish community centre on Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm in 1969 through Fatah terrorist camps to Entebbe airport in 1976, where two German terrorists were among those who “selected” Jewish passengers from a hijacked Air France plane as hostages in a chilling echo of National Socialist practices. This is a troubling tale, told well by Kundnani. For English-language readers seeking a deeper understanding of these complex and important issues, Kundnani’s Utopia or Auschwitz is essential reading but for specialists, too, it represents a cogent and informed addition to the literature.

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

ABSTRACT 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 Low German. The findings suggest that social network sites such as Facebook have the potential to provide new mediatised spaces for speakers of an AHL that can instigate sociolinguistic change.

Lamppost networks*: stickers as a genre in urban semiotic landscapes

ABSTRACT This paper examines the pragmatics of stickers as a genre prominent in communication in urban public space. Although normally small in size, stickers may quantitatively dominate signage in certain areas of cities. Stickers are examined here as localized communicative events that mediatize social practices through a range of complex multimodal and linguistic processes, based on data from the Digbeth area in central Birmingham, UK. An analysis of the distribution of stickers, their agency, audience, and the multimodal practices involved in their creation reveals that they bring together transgressive, artistic and commercial discourses and form a specific layer of urban communication, especially in areas of pedestrian transit within a city. A large number of stickers also initiate communications that can potentially be continued online.

Quantitative research methods for linguists: a questions and answers approach for students

Quantitative Research Methods for Linguistics provides an accessible introduction to research methods for undergraduates undertaking research for the first time. Employing a task-based approach, the authors demonstrate key methods through a series of worked examples, allowing students to take a learn-by-doing approach and making quantitative methods less daunting for the novice researcher. Key features include: Chapters framed around real research questions, walking the student step-by-step through the various methods; Guidance on how to design your own research project; Basic questions and answers that every new researcher needs to know; A comprehensive glossary that makes the most technical of terms clear to readers; Coverage of different statistical packages including R and SPSS. Quantitative Research Methods for Linguistics is essential reading for all students undertaking degrees in linguistics and English language studies.

Word order in Yiddish narrative discourse

Based on data from spoken narrative discourse in Yiddish, this paper analyses two structures common in Yiddish narrations: The placement of the finite verb in the first position of a declarative sentence, and topicalization.Like German, Yiddish word order is generally centered around a verb-second rule. However, both Yiddish and spoken German show configurations of word order that go against the rule, where the finite verb occupies the first position of the utterance. From a functional-pragmatic point of view, these structures can be said to serve special purposes in the interaction between speaker and listener, sometimes in particular discourse types.Differences and similarities in word order between Yiddish and German enable us to comment on the relationship between these two closely related languages.

Kommunikation und Grammatik

Zustand (vgl. Altmayer 1997), und die Grabenkämpfe zwischen einem handlungsund produktionsorientierten und einem analytisch-verstehenden Zugang zu literarischen Texten im DaF-Unterricht finden auch im Fach Deutsch als Fremdsprache ihre Entsprechung, wie etwa die Diskussion zwischen Bernd Kast und Swantje Ehlers im Themenheft Literatur im Anfangsunterricht der Zeitschrift Fremdsprache Deutsch zeigt (vgl. Kast 1994; Ehlers 1994). Auch in der literaturwissenschaftlichen Abteilung des Faches Deutsch als Fremdsprache besteht ein erheblicher Bedarf an einer theoretischen Grundlegung und einer praktischen Umsetzung der von Belgrad als »mimetische Ebene« bezeichneten Text-Leser-Beziehung. Dazu gibt der vorliegende Sammelband wichtige und auf die spezifischen Bedingungen eines fremdsprachlichen Literaturunterrichts durchaus übertragbare Anregungen.