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Voices of linguistic outrage – Standard language constructs and the discourse on new urban dialects

January 2014

Authors:

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

This papers investigates the discursive processes at work in public debates on a type of new urban dialect that has been under intense, often heated public discussion in recent years: variants of majority languages that emerged in multiethnic and multilin-gual neighbourhoods in urban Europe. Against the background of findings from a range of European countries, I present a case study from Germany based on a corpus of emails and online readers' comments posted in the context of a media storm on such a new dialect. I analyse key topoi in the debate, the thematic strands linked to them, and some underlying ideologies supporting them, and argue that a particular construction of Standard German as a "Hochsprache" 'High language' establishes a powerful case of standard language ideology that reinforces a social and ethnic 'us'/'them'-dichotomy to provide a potent conceptual frame for the devaluation of such urban dialects and their speakers.

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Voices of linguistic outrage –

Standard language constructs and the discourse on new urban dialects

Heike Wiese, University of Potsdam

Abstract:

This papers investigates the discursive processes at work in public debates on a type

of new urban dialect that has been under intense, often heated public discussion in

recent years: variants of majority languages that emerged in multiethnic and multilin-

gual neighbourhoods in urban Europe. Against the background of findings from a

range of European countries, I present a case study from Germany based on a corpus

of emails and online readers’ comments posted in the context of a media storm on

such a new dialect. I analyse key topoi in the debate, the thematic strands linked to

them, and some underlying ideologies supporting them, and argue that a particular

construction of Standard German as a “Hochsprache” ‘High language’ establishes a

powerful case of standard language ideology that reinforces a social and ethnic

‘us’/‘them’-dichotomy to provide a potent conceptual frame for the devaluation of

such urban dialects and their speakers.

Key words: standard language ideology, public discourse, multiethnolects, Standard

German, Othering, racism by proxy

1. Introduction

A linguistic phenomenon that has received a lot of public attention over the

last decades in a number of European countries, is the emergence of new ways

of speaking in urban neighbourhoods, in particular among the especially dy-

namic group of adolescent speakers. In present-day urban Europe, multiethnic

and multilingual urban neighbourhoods support new and diverse linguistic

repertoires, a wealth of multilingual competences, and new variants of the ma-

jority language. Such variants have been characterised, among others, as mul-

tiethnolects (Quist 2008), new dialects (Cheshire et al. 2011), or new urban

vernaculars (Rampton 2013).

In sociolinguistics, the status of these new ways of speaking as systemat-

ic varieties or styles, or as clusters of linguistic resources in communicative

practices, has been the subject of some controversy,1 but there is general

agreement that what we find here is a creative use of language that reflects

speakers’ choices in particular communicative and social contexts,2 rather than

a sign of linguistic poverty or some form of language decay. By contrast, the

picture drawn in public debates is mostly negative, and discussions of such

linguistic practices are dominated by disapproval and concern.

In what follows, I am going to investigate the discursive patterns in such

debates in more detail. I will start with an overview of what we know so far

about the public discourse on these new urban dialects from different Europe-

an countries. Against this background, I will present a case study from Germa-

ny, drawing on evidence from a recent media storm that generated a wealth of

data on ideologies and attitudes towards such a new vernacular, ‘Kiezdeutsch’

(lit. ‘(neighbour-)hood German’), its speakers, and the construction of standard

vs. non-standard variants. Looking at key topoi in the public debate and the

thematic strands linked to them, I will show that a particular construction of

standard German as “Hochdeutsch” ‘High German’ plays a central role in the

devaluation of Kiezdeutsch.

In Germany, the term “Hochdeutsch” is commonly used for an idealised

standard variant which, like standard languages in other countries, is regarded

as the basis for “proper usage” and is associated with middle and upper class

language use. The “Hoch” in “Hochdeutsch” initially refers to its status as a

High rather than Low German variety, where “high” and “low” relate to geo-

graphical altitude, namely the more mountainous character of the High Ger-

man dialect region, which is towards the South, and the flatter, lower land-

scape in the North, which is home to the Low German dialects (or rather, in a

1 Cf., e.g., Jaspers (2008), Blommaert and Rampton (2011), Freywald et al. (2011). Cf. Quist (2008),

Wiese (2013) for a consolidation of different perspectives.

2 Cf., e.g., Kotsinas (1992), Nortier (2001), Kallmeyer and Keim (2003), Wiese (2009), Kerswill (2010),

Cheshire et al. (2011); contributions in Quist and Svendsen (eds.) (2010), Källström and Lindberg

(eds.) (2011), Kern and Selting (eds.) (2011). In some descriptions of (multi-)ethnolectal features, they

seem to be regarded as errors (e.g., Androutsopoulos 2001:6 speaks of ‘errors in grammatical gender’;

Jaspers 2008:94 talks about ‘incorrect flection’). I do not think this indicates a “faulty” view of such

linguistic practices, though, but might rather stem from a perspective that looks at individual features,

rather than their systematic grammatical status within a particular linguistic variant.

lot of cases, used to be home to them, since Low German variants have mostly

been displaced by High German ones, due to the strong influence of standard

German). Outside linguistics, the term has, however, undergone a reinterpreta-

tion from a geographic characterisation to a qualitative ranking: in general

usage, “Hochdeutsch” is usually understood to refer to a “higher” form of lan-

guage, a culturally elevated “Hochsprache” ‘High language” superior to other

variants of German. This reinterpretation establishes a particularly powerful

case of standard language ideology and, as I will show below, supports a nar-

rative on standard language that provides an important conceptual frame in the

discourse on new urban dialects.

2. The Public Discourse on New Urban Dialects in Europe

The phenomenon of new urban vernaculars is comparatively novel, and while

it has received considerable attention in the sociolinguistic discussion over the

last decades, there have only been a few studies focussing on the public debate

so far, in addition to those that touch on this topic while primarily targeting

other aspects, such as language use or media stylisations (e.g., in comedy).

However, coming from a range of European countries where research on new

urban vernaculars has been strong, such as Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, The

Netherlands, Norway, the UK, France, and Germany, the data we have so far

provides an emerging general picture of language ideologies and attitudes ap-

parent in the public debate.

Common findings point to a view of new urban vernaculars as inferior

variants of the national language that indicate a lack of linguistic competence,

and a fear that they pose a threat to the national language, to the education sys-

tem, or to majority culture and society. An additional aspect found in a number

of studies is an “Othering” of speakers who are associated with aggression and

sometimes an opposition to liberal values. Evidence for some of these negative

evaluations comes also from studies investigating speakers’ attitudes and per-

ceptions, most notably Bijvoet’s (2003) and Bijvoet and Fraurud’s (2010) pio-

neering work with Swedish adolescents. Results from their studies point to a

devaluation of multiethnic varieties as ‘bad’ or ‘broken’ Swedish both inside

and outside the speech communities, and as an indication for a lack of compe-

tence in Standard Swedish. In listener experiments, speakers were also rated

higher for ‘toughness’, a finding that accords with data showing an association

with aggression in public debates (note, though, that speakers were also rated

higher for ‘humour’, as a positive trait).

In the public debate in Sweden, Stroud (2004) analyses an ideologisation

of ‘Rinkeby-Svenska’ (after a multiethnic suburb of Stockholm) as incorrect

and ‘inauthentic’ and even ‘contagious’, and cites a far-right website with the

claim that ‘to help immigrants along, language requirements have been low-

ered’. As Haglund (2005:51) points out, purported linguistic deficiencies of

immigrants are also related to “integration failures”. Milani (2010) reports on a

public debate in 2006 where multiethnic ‘slang’ is associated with sexism and

violence and seen as a cause for failure in the labour market.

While there is a strong research focus on multiethnolectal speech in

Denmark from ethnographic and dialect perspectives, to my knowledge no

studies have been conducted so far on the ongoing public debate. Targeting a

somewhat related domain, Quist and Jørgensen (2007) report on stereotyped

representations of young migrant-background males in a popular internet

game. The central character, ‘Mujaffa’, is presented as criminal and aggres-

sive, using a speech style that they describe as ‘mock immigrant Danish’, simi-

lar to Hill’s (1995) description of ‘Mock Spanish’ as used by Anglo-

Americans. They surmise that ‘A close look at the public debate about the Mu-

jaffa web-page […] is likely to reveal a [elite racist] discourse parallel to the

one Hill analysizes for Mock Spanish.’

For Belgium, Blommaert and Verschuren (1998) provide an in-depth

analysis of public debates on the broader topic of cultural diversity that also

throws a light on language-related issues. They show an Othering of immi-

grants and their children as ‘linguistically other’ speakers who are expected to

integrate by learning ‘proper Dutch’. As Cornips et al. (to appear) report, vari-

ants of Dutch spoken by adolescents in multiethnic neighbourhoods in Bel-

gium and the Netherlands, initially labelled ‘smurf lingo’, were associated

with a restricted lexicon, grammatical errors, and ‘an eroded sense of “proper”,

polite communication’.

For Norway, Svendsen and Røyneland (2008) discuss the following let-

ter by a teacher, published 2006 in Aftenposten, a major daily newspaper from

Oslo:3

1. ‘I actually think many Norwegians would benefit from being instructed in

Norwegian as a second language. Especially those who have grown up in

areas with 90% migrants. Once, I had an ethnic Norwegian pupil at sec-

ondary school who spoke “broken” Norwegian. Frightening.’.

This illustrates a similar view, of an incorrect variant that is not a proper part

of the national language and might prove contagious to other, monolingual

speakers.4 This is particular interesting in the case of Norway given its tradi-

tion of embracing linguistic diversity, where dialects enjoy a comparatively

high prestige and are less confined to the private and informal sphere than in

other European countries. Despite this higher acceptance of dialectal variation

in general, we find similar negative attitudes towards new urban vernaculars as

in other European countries. Svendsen and Røyneland (2008:80), relating to

this contrast, point out

‘The multiethnolectal speech style contributes to a further increase of dia-

lect diversity in Norway. However, this speech style has not, as yet,

achieved a status equal to that of the traditional dialects. It is often taken as

a manifestation of lack of competence rather than as a new Norwegian dia-

lect’

For the case of the UK, Kerswill (2013) provides a detailed diachronic analysis

that indicates a progression of public discourses on “Jafaican” in British print

media over the last 4 to 5 years. Initially, “Jafaican” was regarded as exotic

and interesting, but soon as a threat to traditional dialects (with pictures such

as ‘ethnic cleansing’ in far-right political statements, cf. Kerswill 2013:23). At

several stages, “Jafaican” was negatively characterised as being an educational

problem, a threat to liberal values, social cohesion, and nationhood, and asso-

3 Aftenposten from June 8, 2006, quoted after Svendsen and Røyneland (2008:63).

4 Cf. also Aarsæther (2010) on the association with “bad Norwegian” in the media.

ciated with bad behaviour. However, in the UK the development also involved

more positive perceptions, such as that of a ‘normal variety’ and, lately, as

‘cool’ and appropriated as fashionable.

For France, Pooley (2008) finds a strong dominance of negative attitudes

towards urban youth vernaculars, which are seen as a ‘linguistic confinement’,

associated with violence and sometimes regarded as a threat, or even an ‘at-

tack’ on Standard French or French society. Again, this ‘slang’ is portrayed as

an inferior form of language indicating a lack of competence and causing edu-

cational failure. He reports that this latter view is also supported by a promi-

nent linguist in the media, who purportedly diagnoses ‘an extreme paucity of

(Standard French) lexis that prevents users from being able to function in

mainstream society’ (Pooley 2008: 322).

For Germany, Androutsopoulos (2001, 2007, 2011) analyses medial styl-

isations of multiethnolectal speech, “Türkendeutsch” (‘Turks’ German’), that

realise negative stereotypes of nonstandard, foreign language use, and ‘broken

German’, following a widespread standard language ideology in media.5 In

interviews with young people in Heidelberg, he reports associations of “Tü-

rkendeutsch” with youth gangs and connotations as aggressive, anti-social

behaviour. As Androutsopoulos (2011) shows, media representations, includ-

ing those that involve linguist “experts”, construct a heteroethnic relation of

speakers to an imagined homogenised majority society and its language. In

Wiese (2011), I show how negative attitudes towards language variation, so-

cial stratification and the associated linguistic capital, and exotisation contrib-

uted to a strong devaluation of what was called “Kanak Sprak” (‘wog speak’)

in the public debate at the end of the 1990s and beginning of 2000s, leading to

a cross-fertilisation of two linguistic myths: that of vernacular features as ‘bro-

ken German’ and that of a ‘double semilingualism’ by multilingual adoles-

cents.

Such phenomena are not restricted to Europe, of course. A well-known

example outside Europe is the discourse on English variants spoken by Lati-

nas/os in the US sometimes discussed as ‘Spanglish’. Zentella (2007), e.g.,

5 Cf. also Kotthoff (2010) who describes this for the stylisation in comedy shows.

notes that, similar as in the European cases summarised here, this is regarded

as incorrect English in the public debate, associated with school failure and

often with criminality, and seen as an indication for a ‘lack of discipline’ and

an ‘unwillingness to assimilate’. As she points out, linguistic stereotyping and

devaluation can play a proxy for racism in this context:

‘In the US, where race has been remapped from biology onto language be-

cause public racist remarks are censored, comments about the inferiority

and/or unintelligibility of regional, class, and racial dialects of Spanish and

English substitute for abusive remarks about color, hair, lips, noses, and

body parts, with the same effect. “Incorrect” aspects of grammar or pronun-

ciation label their speakers as inferior’ (Zentella 2007:26)

As the general ideological underpinning for the converging negative view of

new urban vernaculars that emerges here, we can identify four main, overlap-

ping factors. First, standard language ideology, that is, a belief in a homogene-

ous, discrete, and superior “standard variety” that leads to the devaluation of

other variants as inferior and deficient, and accordingly of their speakers as

less competent.6 Second, a devaluation of linguistic variants that are interpret-

ed as indexical for speakers perceived as socially lower.7 Both of these atti-

tudes support a negative view of new urban vernaculars: as informal, new

variants of the respective majority languages, they fall outside the perceived

“standard”, and the multilingual speech communities supporting them are

dominantly found in underprivileged inner-city or suburban neighbourhoods.

A well-known example from a domain not related to recent immigration that

reflects a similar interaction of those two factors, is the perception of African

American vernacular English as an inferior variety indicating verbal depriva-

tion, as originally discussed in Labov (1969).

6 Milroy and Milroy (1999). Cf. Vogl (2012) for an historical overview of standard language ideologies

in Europe; Mattheier (1991), Davies (2012) for a detailed discussion of Germany.

7 Labov (1969:156) states, in a discussion of Bernstein’s views of linguistic codes, ‘a strong bias against

all forms of working-class behaviour, so that middle-class behaviour is seen as superior in every re-

spect’.

A third contributing factor is a widespread monolingual bias8 that re-

gards monolingualism as the norm, leading to negative attitudes towards

speech communities with a large proportion of multilingual speakers – and, as

I will show in more detail for the German case below, it is predominantly the

multilingual speakers that are visible in the public perception of these speech

communities, while the participation of monolingual speakers of the majority

language in such linguistic practices is neglected, or dismissed as secondary.

Finally, a fourth factor, related to this, can be xenophobia, given that the

diverse linguistic set-up of these speech communities has its roots in immigra-

tion, with a lot of speakers coming from families where grandparents, parents,

or, to a lesser degree, the adolescent speakers themselves immigrated into the

country. Devaluation, and, as we will see below (Sections 3 and 4), sometimes

strong resentment, even open hatred, of linguistic practices that are perceived

as characteristic of immigrants or their descendants can then serve as a proxy

for xenophobic antagonism and racism, as mentioned above for “Spanglish”.

As Stroud (2004:197) put it:

‘in modern states, where explicit racist discourse is not officially acceptable,

discourses on language, more specifically issues relating to a mother-tongue

or standard language ideology, are often used to create immigrant out-

groups.’

In public debates of these urban vernaculars, these four different factors come

together in a specific pattern of linguistic – or language-proxy – devaluation,

making this a particularly interesting object for sociolinguistic studies. In what

follows, I am going to investigate such discursive patterns in more detail for a

case study on the current debate in Germany. I will first briefly describe the

public discourse on multiethnic urban German in general (Section 3). Against

this background, I will analyse the current debate on Kiezdeutsch, investigat-

ing key topoi and additional ideological underpinnings such as a far-reaching

8 Cf. Kachru (1994); Gogolin (1994); Cook (1997). Along the same lines, Bommes and Maas (2005:182)

point out a ‘counter-factual ideological construction’ of ‘one country, one people, one language’ in

many European countries.

‘us’/‘them’-dichotomy. Based on this, I will identify a standard language con-

struct of “Hochdeutsch” that organises the different thematic strands in the

devaluation of this new urban dialect within a common narrative (Section 4).

The final section (Section 5) will summarise our findings.

3. The Public Debate on New Urban German

Modern Germany is a multilingual country, and this is particularly true for

urban areas. While language use in families is not documented in census sur-

veys for Germany, the Federal Statistical Office includes data on ‘migrant

background’: according to the definition employed, someone is of ‘migrant

background’ if s/he her/himself or at least one parent immigrated to Germany

after 1949 or does not have the German citizenship. Data on migrant back-

ground can hence give an indication on potentially multilingual families. Ac-

cording to the German census,9 about 1/5 of the population as a whole has a

migrant background, and approximately 31% of unmarried minors in Germany

live in a family with migrant background, with a higher proportion in urban

areas: in cities over 500,000 inhabitants, nearly every second child (46%)

grows up in a family with migrant background.

This indicates that experiences with multilingualism are a widespread

phenomenon in the linguistic reality of young speakers in Germany today, and

the new ways of speaking that multilingual urban speech communities support

form an important and central, rather than peripheral part of modern German.

In contrast to this, the public debate has long been characterised by marginali-

sation and, initially, exotisation.

At the beginning of the debate, in the late 1990s / early 2000s, a domi-

nant label for the new German vernacular used in multiethnic neighbourhoods

was “Kanak Sprak”, which, as briefly mentioned above, can be translated as

something like ‘wog speak’: “Kanak” is a pejorative, xenophobe epithet in

German, and “Sprak” is a truncation of “Sprache” ‘language’. The term was

initially introduced by Feridun Zaimoğlu, who used it in political novels and

interview collections as an attempt to reclaim the pejorative expression ‘Ka-

nake’ within political movements of Germans with migrant, mostly Turkish,

9 Data from 2009 and 2010, released by the German Federal Statistical Office.

background.10 However, the term did not lose its xenophobic associations.11

Furthermore, based on its lexical semantics alone, even independently of its

pejorative register, it supports a marginalisation through Othering at two lev-

els: (a) of the speakers themselves as foreign (‘Kanak’) and (b) of their way of

speaking as a different language (‘Sprak’). Taken together, this seems to have

made it particularly suitable for usage in public discourse, where it was quick-

ly appropriated and broadly used (in some cases also in academic writings),

making the expression ‘Kanak’, which outside this compound would be con-

demned as a xenophobe slur, acceptable here.

Apart from the framing of Otherness, common attitudes expressed in

media reports on this phenomenon indicate a stigmatisation as wrong, incor-

rect German, often associated with aggression. (2.) gives an example from a

1999 article in Berliner Zeitung, a major daily newspaper from Berlin [Ger-

man originals of all examples quoted in this article are listed in the appendix]:

2. ‘“Kanak Sprak” ignores the Duden [grammatical reference book for Ger-

man], and it does not mind raping the grammar.’

(Berliner Zeitung, May 28, 1999, ‘Do you need hard? Give you correct.’)

Since then, “Kanak Sprak” has gradually been replaced by “Kiezdeutsch”, a

label introduced in Wiese (2006) as an alternative to “Kanak Sprak”. As men-

tioned above, “Kiezdeutsch” literally means “(neighbour-)hood German”, in-

cluding with “Kiez” [ki:5ts] an informal, positively associated Berlin dialect

term for a neighbourhood. While labelling linguistic practices can carry risks

of homogenising something in a way that might support deliminating and even

segregation,12 I believe that the replacement of “Kanak Sprak” by

“Kiezdeutsch” can in fact counteract exclusion. This is not only because it is a

term adopted from the community that can contribute to empowering speak-

ers.13 Its semantics also places this way of speaking and their speakers within

10 E.g., Kanak Sprak. 24 Mißtöne vom Rande der Gesellschaft. Berlin: Rotbuch, 1995.

11 Cf. Androutsopoulos (2007) on language ideology aspects of this.

12 Cf. Jaspers (2008), Androutsopoulos (2011), Cornips et al. (to appear). Cf. Wiese (2013) on a more

detailed argumentation for using “Kiezdeutsch” to identify a variety.

13 Cf. Wiese (2006; 2013). Cf. also Kallmeyer and Keim (2003), who report that adolescents in Mann-

heim, Germany, use the name ‘Stadtteilsprache’ “district / ward language”.

the majority in-group: it positions it within general everyday communication

in an informal neighbourhood setting (“Kiez-”), and it explicitly references it

as a part of German (“-deutsch”).

This said, naming linguistic practices will always have at least some

essentialising effects. However in this case, naming identified, rather than rei-

fied, an already existing phenomenon, a systematic variant of German (see

Wiese 2013 for a detailed discussion), and at the time “Kiezdeutsch” was in-

troduced, the act of labelling – and the essentialising this might bring with it –

had already happened, with “Kanak Sprak” firmly entrenched in the public

discussion. “Kiezdeutsch” was introduced to replace this existing label, rather

than creating one ex nihilo, thus counteracting the strong negative associations

of the initial label.

An indication of the destigmatisation and inclusion that the new term

“Kiezdeutsch” promotes in contrast to the previous one, is the strong opposi-

tion it gets from self-appointed ‘language guardians’ such as the right-wing

German ‘Verein für Sprachpflege’, who follows a purist, monoethnically and

monolingually oriented agenda. The following quote from its publication

Deutsche Sprachwelt (2009, issue 36, front page) illustrates this. Under the

headline ‘Stammer-German as an Accomplishment? Linguists Admire an Ab-

erration of Our Language’, Thomas Paulwitz, the association’s president,

complains about the use of “Kiezdeutsch” instead of “Kanak Sprak”:

3. ‘[H. Wiese] uses the word “Kiez” (neighbourhood), which by now is posi-

tively associated, and thus creates a pleasant ambience, which is hardly

possible with the word “Kanaksprak”.’

A further illustration of the positve revaluation associated with ‘Kiezdeutsch”

comes from the following quote, taken from a report on public radio that sets

the term in contrast to ‘Türkensprache’, ‘Turks’ language’, and links up the

ethnic separation implied by the latter with an additional devaluation along

social class divisions (‘middle class children’ vs. ‘Kiezdeutsch speakers’)

(WDR radio, September 23rd, 2012):

4. ‘[its speakers] call it ‘Kiezdeutsch’ and talk about a dialect. But wouldn’t

middle class children call that “Turks’ language”?’

This second quote comes from a public debate that peaked in 2012, which will

be the focus of the remainder of this article. The debate initially centred on a

linguistic description of Kiezdeutsch as a new German dialect (“Dialekt”), a

characterisation that emphasises its status as a systematic and integral part of

German and as part of a broader repertoire in its speakers, and its structural

and sociolinguistic parallels to traditional German dialects.14 In accordance

with Rampton’s (2013) argument for a ‘reclaim’ of the English term “vernacu-

lar”, German “Dialekt” also contributes to

‘normalise the kind of urban speech we are examining, moving it out of the

“marked” margins, not just in sociolinguistic study but maybe also in norma-

tive public discourse.’ (Rampton 2013:78)

When in February 2012, a monograph (Wiese 2012) was published that sum-

marised research results on Kiezdeutsch as a dialect in an accessible manner

comprehensible for non-specialist readers, this was quickly picked up in the

public debate in Germany. The discussion was accompanied (and cross-

fertilised) by a media firestorm that involved several press agencies, major

national newspapers and weekly magazines, public TV and radio news, as well

as tabloids and entertainment-oriented sections of popular media, and was also

taken up by media in some other European countries, namely Austria (Wiener

Zeitung, Der Standard), the UK (The Economist), and Turkey (Milliyet,

Radikal). The ensuing public debate yielded a wealth of data on attitudes to-

wards linguistic variation, multilingual speech communities, and the question

of who is a legitimate speaker of a German dialect.

In Germany, the label “Dialekt” ‘dialect’ has traditionally been pri-

marily associated, in both public discourse and academic writings, with the

regional varieties that historically formed the background for the emergence of

“standard” German.15 This has led to a popular view of dialects as something

associated with German tradition and a long history in German culture. Ac-

14 Cf. Wiese (2009), Freywald et al. (2011), Wiese (2012;2013).

15 Cf., e.g., Auer (2011:487), who in a European overview of dialect vs. standard scenarios proposes ‘to

reserve the term “(traditional) dialects” for the varieties under the roof […] of a standard variety which

preceded the standard languages and provided the linguistic material out of which the endoglossic

standard varieties developed’.

cordingly, it is, e.g., a popular narrative to recall one’s surprise when someone

perceived as a member of a non-German out-group (e.g., because of physical

attributes such as skin colour, or dark hair) speaks a traditional regional dialect

of German, which is considered very funny, indicating a strong cognitive dis-

sonance. In the case of Kiezdeutsch, a similar dissonance became evident in

some of the rejections of this vernacular as a dialect, and accordingly of its

speakers as German dialect speakers.

The ‘Dialekt’ framing of the public debate on Kiezdeutsch in 2012

hence makes this a particularly interesting domain of research. It connects the

discussion of linguistic diversity with a concept of nonstandard varieties, ‘Di-

alekt’, that is positively connotated as traditionally German and thus potential-

ly collides with “standard language” ideologies. This has led to a sharpening of

the discussion of what counts as ‘proper’ German and who owns it, bringing

into focus the way linguistic value systems interact with social inclusion vs.

exclusion, shaping power relations, and ultimately helping to support and reas-

sert positive self-images of privileged groups.

Similarly to what Pooley (2008) reported from France (cf. Section 2

above), there were also a few linguists who entered the public debate with

negative depictions of this new urban vernacular and its speakers. One of them

is illustrated by the following quote, taken from a guest article in Frankfurter

Allgemeine Zeitung (a large national newspaper) by a professor for linguistics

and German as a foreign language:16

5. ‘Ms Wiese swipes the term “dialect” for an adolescent way of speaking

where swaggering plays a large role. Why? She wants to cadge its pres-

tige, since dialects enjoy esteem. […] “Kiezdeutsch”, however, is neither a

dialect nor a sociolect, but rather a transitorial specialised language that is

based on influences of other languages, and errors in German. […] It is not

a case for dialectology, but instead for language psychology and error

analysis.’

16 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 4th, 2012. Cf. Wiese (2013) for a discussion of putative inter-

ference-based errors in Kiezdeutsch.

What is striking in this statement is the close link between negative structural

statements and social devaluation. The description of linguistic characteristics

as ‘errors’ and their association with ‘other languages’ is not backed by lin-

guistic examples or references to research results. It is, however, introduced by

a postulation that ‘swaggering plays a large role’ in this way of speaking, and a

refutation of granting it the ‘prestige’ or ‘esteem’ that dialects are seen to en-

joy. The fact that the characterisation of Kiezdeutsch as a German dialect

prompts such heated rejections, and in this case one from a linguist (although

this largely remained an exception), gives a first indication of how strongly

such a characterisation conflicted with some widespread and deep-rooted as-

sumptions on ‘proper’ German and its delineation. This guest article found a

wide circulation as an expert rejection of Kiezdeutsch as a dialect, in particular

by ‘language guardian’ associations articipating in a ‘complaint tradition’ in

the sense of Milroy and Milroy (1999), where it fitted well into purist and ex-

clusionary attitudes towards German. In contrast to this, a press release by the

German Linguistics Association, DGfS, around the same time,17 which empha-

sised that linguistic variants such as Kiezdeutsch follow systematic rules, are

part of a larger repertoire, and do not represent “wrong” German, was largely

ignored in the public debate.

4. Key Topoi in the Public Debate on Kiezdeutsch: A Corpus

Analysis

In the present section, I examine the picture that manifests itself in Germany’s

public debate on Kiezdeutsch in more detail by investigating key topoi re-

vealed in comments on media websites and in emails. I am going to identify a

key narrative on what it means to “speak German” that targets concepts of

standard language, dialect, and their speakers and sheds light on the complex

relationship of language and identity. Relating to the picture that emerged

from our cross-national overview, I will identify four central topoi in the dis-

cussion of Kiezdeutsch and show how they are backed by this narrative.

17 URL: https://dgfs.de/de/aktuelles/2012/erklaerung-der-dgfs-zu-sprachlichen-varianten.html

4.1 The data

The empirical basis for the investigation is provided by a corpus assembling

two kinds of reactions to media reports on Kiezdeutsch: (1) emails that were

sent to me after such reports, and (2) postings on the respective media web-

sites.18

The emails cover data since May 2009 that clustered in two main

waves: in May/June 2009, I received a surge of emails which would mostly

qualify as “hate mail”, with strong aggressive undertones, including insults

and some personal threats. A large part of these were, as far as I can see, trig-

gered by a report on a German website coming from the extreme right, “pi-

news” (‘politically incorrect news’),19 after a talk on Kiezdeutsch I gave at the

“Akademientag”, an annual public presentation of the German Academies of

Sciences. The second main wave of emails was received in 2012, after the

publication of a book on Kiezdeutsch as a German dialect, Wiese (2012) (see

above), and subsequent media reports on the topic. These emails cover a

broader spectrum, with about a quarter of them (12 out of 51) including posi-

tive evaluations, supportive episodic data from the senders’ own experiences

in working with adolescents in urban neighbourhoods, or questions about dia-

lects and language variation. Taken together, the two waves yielded 76 emails,

with 25 in the first and 51 in the second one.

The internet comments were obtained from the article on “pi-news”

from May 2009, and from media websites during the period of January to

April 2012, when the most recent discussion on Kiezdeutsch peaked in the

media (triggering the second waves of emails). Data was collected for this pe-

riod from websites that could be found by searching for “Kiezdeutsch” and

contained reports plus individual comment postings (hence, an internet format

similar to traditional “letters to the editor”). Together, this yielded postings to

18 The corpus is currently anonymised, further edited, implemented into a searchable corpus format, and

prepared for general access, as a supplement KiDKo/E to the “KiezDeutsch-Korpus” (KiDKo) that as-

sembles linguistically annotated, transcribed recordings of spontaneous conversations among adoles-

cents in urban neighbourhoods (http://www.kiezdeutschkorpus.de/index_en.html).

19 URL: http://www.pi-news.net/2009/05/kanak-sprak-eine-spannende-bereicherung/#more-62348 (last

accessed May 3rd, 2013). Some emails reference this website, and the authors of the report included a

link with my email address.

a cross-section of media, covering 14 websites of print media (newspapers and

magazines), 4 internet-based news sites (including pi-news from 2009 and

2012), and 1 website for a public TV news programme (Tagesschau). In addi-

tion to those from German websites, the corpus includes postings to an Eng-

lish-language article in The Economist. Most of the German media sources

target a general audience, among them 5 national news media, 4 daily regional

papers, and 4 tabloids. In addition, the corpus also includes comments to some

media with a more specific readership: one that targets university students

(UniSPIEGEL), one that, according to its editorial statement, is targeted at the

‘young, German-Turkish 2nd and 3rd generation’ (Deutsch-türkische Na-

chrichten), two news forums from the extreme right (pi-news, Deutschland-

Echo), and a third, with a partly overlapping readership, from the above-

mentioned Deutsche Sprachwelt. Altogether, the corpus contains 1,362 com-

ments, with a distribution as summarised in Table 1 (with percentages given

for each category, and absolute numbers in brackets).

number of sources number of comments

general audience (Germany) 65% (13) 34% (469)

national news media 25% (5) 8% (112)

tabloids 20% (4) 18% (250)

regional dailies 20% (4) 8% (107)

general audience (UK) 5% (1) 7% (97)

student-targeted 5% (1) 21% (287)

Turkish-German 5% (1) 3% (41)

right-fringe 15% (3) 23% (309)

“language guardians” 5% (1) 12% (164)

Table 1: Distribution of media sources for comments over the corpus

A comparison of the two columns for sources and comments shows that right-

fringe and “language guardian” comments are disproportionally represented in

relation to the number of media sources that were included, with a proportion

of comments that is about 1 ½ times (right-fringe) or more than twice (“lan-

guage guardians”) as high as the proportion of sources. In contrast to this, me-

dia reports targeting a general audience in Germany generated only about half

as high a proportion of comments as would be expected from their share in

media sources. This indicates a higher output of right-fringe and “language

guardian” posters in this kind of topic that might also have led to an overrepre-

sentation of this population in emails.

By the same token, this might also hold for comments to student-

targeted media reports, and even to a higher degree: here, we find four times as

many postings as would be expected from their proportion of media sources.

However, this might be related to a general higher “verbosity” (in the sense of

Labov 1969) of this population, rather than a heightened involvement in dis-

cussions of this topic: there are not only more postings, but also considerably

longer ones, with an average of 127.97 words per posting compared to 65.14

in all other comment types. The same does not hold for postings from right-

fringe and “language guardian” sites, where we find a slight tendency in the

opposite direction, with only 62.64 words per posting on average.

In general we have to keep in mind with this kind of data that the ad-

vantage we gain by obtaining spontaneous productions also means that the

“voices of outrage” we find here come from a self-selected group that might

not be representative of the discussion in general. This is something we should

in particular keep in mind when looking at data from the emails. In order to

reduce skewed effects, I will, when quantifying, distinguish in my analyses

between different relevant subsets of postings. While doing so, we have to

bear in mind, though, that the primary target group of a website or print medi-

um does not describe all of the users posting comments. So, in the case of pi-

news, for instance, there were several comments posted by people who were in

opposition to the website and criticised its right-wing and often racist agenda.

In a different venue, the discussion of the Economist article was not exclusive-

ly British, but also involved writers who identified themselves as being from

Germany.

In comparison to data from media reports proper, which so far have

been in the focus of related studies (and where, of course, we cannot avoid a

risk of skewed productions either), the data that the present corpus provides is

more informal and less controlled. It offers expressions of opinions that did not

undergo external editing except, in the case of comments (in contrast to

emails), for that imposed by the site owners: some of the postings where

blocked by moderators, presumably because of too drastic xenophobe con-

tents, as some of the postings complaining about such blockings suggest. In

addition to a much lesser degree of external editing, we can also expect less

self-editing by the writers: comments are usually posted anonymously (with

writers using only nicknames), and the same was true for most of the emails,

so authors do not encounter the kind of social control they would have to ex-

pect in open communication, e.g., face-to-face, or in signed letters to the edi-

tor, and they need to monitor their communication much less than journalists

composing media articles. This comparative lack of (internal and external)

editing gives us a special means of access to opinions and sentiments elicited

in the discussion of language-related topics.

4.2 2x2 Topoi

The attitudes towards Kiezdeutsch and its speakers expressed in the emails and

comments that constitute the corpus are predominantly negative, with only a

few postings revealing neutral or positive attitudes (altogether, the proportion

of positive postings was 8.7%, with lower numbers in emails from the first

wave in 2009 (0%) and comments in the right-fringe (0.7%) and tabloid (3.2)

domains, and a higher share in comments to student-targeted media (20.2) and

emails from the second, 2012, wave (23.5)). The following quotes give exam-

ples:20

6. ‘Kiezdeutsch is totally unproblematic. Bavarians, South Germans, and

Swiss speak a dialect, too, and nevertheless write in correct German.’

pi-news, 5/26/2009

7. ‘There is nothing “one has to” do against language development, one can-

not do so anyway. One can only demand that in certain contexts (school,

job talk, exam, etc.) the high language [“Hochsprache”] is used. What

people speak in their free time is their business.’

20 In the case of comments, the media sources where the comments were posted are given, in addition to

the date (day/month/year) of posting. In the case of emails, I give the date they were sent (note, though,

that different emails might share the same date).

UniSPIEGEL, 3/3/2012

8. ‘During my school years in the 50s, people already talked “silly”. As long

as teachers and parents impart a reasonable German, it did not cause any

harm.’ Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitung, 27/3/2012

As these quotes illustrate, in such comments speakers often express a contrast

between ‘correct’, ‘high’, or ‘sensible’ German and other variants which are

downgraded in comparison, a difference in evaluation that they share with

negative comments. This provides a first indication of the construction of

standard German as a ‘higher’ form of language, which plays a central role in

the dominant discourse on Kiezdeutsch.

If we look at the negative postings, which make up the bulk of the data,

we can identify a number of themes that recur across emails and different cat-

egories of comments and centre around four main topoi:

(1) “Broken Language” – Kiezdeutsch is a deficient version of German.

(2) “Language Decay” – As a result, it threatens the integrity of German.

(3) “Opting Out” – Speakers refuse to integrate into the larger society.

(4) “Social Demolition” – As a result, they threaten national cohesion.

These topoi can be organised onto two levels, forming two parallel pairs. The

first pair, “Broken Language” and “Language Decay”, targets the linguistic

level itself and reflects a negative evaluation of Kiezdeutsch and its impact on

German, while the second pair, “Opting Out” and “Social Demolition”, targets

a more general social level, relating the negative evaluation of the speakers’

language use to issues of social and societal integration. The following quotes

from a comment and an email illustrate the combination of the different topoi:

9. ‘This is not a dialect, but simply the unwillingness to integrate or (even

worse) laziness to learn one’s own language properly.’ Bild, 17/2/2012

10. ‘To call this chavvy babble a language is an absolute disqualification as a

scientist. […] Through my job, I have a lot to do with (failed) adolescent

migrants and also with German-background adolescents, and I see every

day how the Germans adjust to this Arab-Turk-Kurd language. In some

cases, there are no “normal” dialogues possible anymore because the basic

lexicon is already deleted.’ Email, 29/2/2012

The contrast constructed in the email between ‘migrants’ and ‘German-

background’ adolescents, and the depiction of ‘Germans’ adjusting to an ‘Ar-

ab-Turk-Kurd language’ implies a conceptualisation of Kiezdeutsch speakers

as non-German, illustrating a powerful social and linguistic dichotomy that I

will treat in more detail further below (Section 4.3). In what follows, let us

first have a closer look at the data on these four main topoi. This will not only

contribute to our picture of the general thematic strands we found in the Euro-

pean overview at the beginning, but, as we will see for some examples further

below, it will also reveal some striking similarities to the much older debate on

African American vernacular English in the US.

“Broken Language” and “Language Decay”

The two related topoi of “Broken Language” and “Language Decay” identify a

key semiotic domain in the postings, appearing in nearly a quarter (22.5 %) of

the data. They are particularly common in the emails, appearing in nearly half

of them (44.1 %), and, to a slightly lesser degree, in comments to media re-

ports in tabloids (in 33.2 %). They appear less frequently in comments to stu-

dent-targeted media (in 16 %), to those targeting the Turkish-German commu-

nity (in 14.6 %), and to the English/UK website of ‘The Economist’ (6.2 %).

The devaluation implied in the topoi is realised both at the level of the

linguistic system and at that of the speakers. At both levels, Kiezdeutsch is put

in contrast to ‘High German’, which is constructed as a superior form of lan-

guage and thus as an indication of higher competence, and as a more desirable

part of speakers’ repertoires.

Kiezdeutsch characteristics are commonly judged as ‘errors’, an indi-

cation for ‘broken German’ that is perceived as ‘incomprehensible’ and, in 7

cases, characterised as a ‘restricted code’. This “broken” form of language is

then considered to hamper the expression of complex thoughts, and according-

ly logic, problem-solving and reasoning, reminiscent of earlier attitudes to-

wards AAVE reported in Labov (1969).

As the other side of the coin, speakers are deprecated as ‘stupid’, ‘igno-

rant’ and ‘uneducated’, and unable to speak ‘High German’, with no larger

linguistic repertoire apart from Kiezdeutsch (this last theme appeared in par-

ticular in comments to student-targeted media, with 36 of the overall 46 in-

stances for this). Accordingly, a common thread is that of language deficits

and the need of special language support, with frequent worries about educa-

tional failure caused by speakers’ limitations to Kiezdeutsch (again, similar to

something found for AAE in the 1960s/70s; cf., e.g., Baugh 1999). In this con-

text, several posters refer to ‘PISA’, the OECD student assessment that in

Germany has by now become emblematic for national educational undera-

chievement. In a next step, Kiezdeutsch speakers’ low proficiency is then re-

garded as a cause for the lowering of educational standards.

Apart from educational failure itself, Kiezdeutsch is also regarded as an

obstacle to social mobility, leading to unemployment for its speakers (since

their language use makes them unfit for the labour market), and subsequently

to a dependence on welfare and thus to costs for the society. A narrative relat-

ed to this domain is the accusation that by the promotion of Kiezdeutsch, the

middle class wants to keep the competition for their own children low by keep-

ing Kiezdeutsch speakers from learning proper ‘High German’. A similar nar-

rative has been reported from the Swedish debate by Milani (2010) as well as

for the debate on bilingual education in the US (Hill 2000) and, again, for the

earlier debate on AAE, with Labov (1982:178) reporting on accusations about

‘a conspiracy to teach imperfect English, and so impose a “relic of Slavery” on

black children’ (cf. also Labov 2012: Ch.5).

The topos of ‘Language Decay’ is associated with characterising

Kiezdeutsch as ‘reduced’ and ‘primitive’ and denying it the status of a proper

language. It is rejected as part of German, and characterising it as a German

dialect is sometimes considered as an attack on the German language as a

whole, or on ‘High German’ in particular. In order to refute such a ‘dialect’

characterisation, some posters relate to linguistic terminology for alternative

classifications such as ‘pidgin’, ‘sociolect’, ‘argot’, ‘slang’, ‘jargon’, ‘patois’,

which are considered more appropriate since they are taken to define more

primitive forms of language associated with lower social classes.21

21 Cf. also Bourdieu (1982:51) on the use of terms like “jargon” and “petit-nègre” (translated as “slang”

and “pidgin” in the 1992 English edition) in linguistic devaluation.

Besides lack of competence, the reasons posters allege for speaking

Kiezdeutsch is that speakers are ‘careless’, ‘slack’, or ‘lazy’, and do not want

to make the time and effort to speak ‘proper language’. A frequently made

connex that fits in with this is that between language and culture. In this con-

text, a number of posters devaluate Kiezdeutsch as a form of language that

belongs to earlier stages of human evolution, with references to ‘Stone Age’

and ‘Neanderthals’, in contrast to ‘High German’, which is characterised as a

‘Hochsprache’ indicative of high culture. The devaluation of Kiezdeutsch as

less cultured leads to concerns that it will negatively affect national culture in

Germany, which is, in this context, repeatedly described as the land of ‘Dichter

und Denker’ “poets and thinkers”, a popular motif that transports a positive

national self-image of Germany as a land of culture, including an appropriately

‘High Language’.

“Opting Out” and “Social Demolition”

The two connected topoi of “Opting Out” and “Social Demolition” that centre

around integration and social cohesion appear in over 10% of the postings,

with a marked increase in emails, in particular in those from the first, 2009,

wave, where they appear in 40% of the data, compared to 20% in the second,

2012, wave. This difference might be either due to the different points in time

for the two waves, or to a higher proportion of emails from the extreme right

in the first wave.

Among the comment postings, the two topoi appear particularly often

in those to the English/UK website of The Economist (21 %). A frequent term

here is ‘assimilation’, which appears in 8 out of the 97 English postings. Even

though the term exists in German, too, it is nearly absent in the German post-

ings, where the somewhat weaker term ‘Integration’ is prevalent, and only one

comment, which is to a right-fringe website, uses ‘Assimilation’, and here in

the combination ‘Integration / Assimilation’. In the postings to The Economist,

Kiezdeutsch is primarily associated with immigrants, giving rise to the demand

that immigrants must assimilate linguistically by speaking German ‘properly’.

Early on, the discussion moves from Kiezdeutsch to broader issues of linguis-

tic integration/assimilation, with a focus on bilingual schools, where several

posters strongly oppose the idea that heritage languages should be taught at

school.

In the German data, a recurrent assumption is that the use of

Kiezdeutsch is an indication for either speakers’ inability or their unwilling-

ness to integrate in the majority society. In the second case, Kiezdeutsch ap-

pears as a rejection of ‘High German’ and the value placed on it. This lack of

integration is regarded as a threat to the larger society, with several posters

voicing ‘Armes Deutschland’ “Poor Germany”, a popular motif lamenting

putative national declines. A narrative showing up repeatedly in this context is

that there might be a plan to teach Kiezdeutsch at schools (again, similar to

some media representations of the Ann Arbor case on AAE, cf. Labov

1982:194; Labov 2012: Ch.5), which one should battle in order to defend edu-

cational and linguistic standards.

The topos of “Social Demolition” gives, in some cases, rise to the pic-

ture of a hostile take-over of the German ‘High Language’, national values, or

Germany as a whole. This picture draws on a particular Othering of

Kiezdeutsch speakers that is also involved in the other topoi identified here, a

social exclusion based on a widespread ‘us’/‘them’-dichotomy.

4.3 Social exclusion: a widespread ‘us’/‘them’-dichotomy

Both topoi pairs, clustering around language and integration, respectively, are

supported by a dichotomy targeted at Kiezdeutsch speakers that operates at

two levels: (1) at a general level of social strata, where speakers are construct-

ed as socially inferior, belonging to a lower social class, and (2) at more spe-

cific levels of ‘ethnicity’, where speakers are constructed as belonging to an

alloethnic out-group. At both levels, Kiezdeutsch is pushed to a realm of Oth-

erness and indexically associated with speakers that are perceived as inferior.

This social exclusion is widespread in the corpus data, with overall 17.5 % of

the postings including explicit characterisations falling into this semiotic do-

main. The following quotes give examples from comments to national news,

student-targeted media, tabloids, and emails:

11. ‘What I associate “Kiezdeutsch” with: – uneducated, primitive male ado-

lescents – disposition towards violence; aggression, cursing – dark, fierce

mugs – machismo, contempt of women – swanking with outer appearanc-

es (gold chains, car …) – hatred of the educated and those that have

achieved a certain prosperity through their own work – hatred of Jews and

queers.’ Fokus Online, 12/2/2012

12. ‘One should simply take the “Kiez language” as given. I cannot imagine

that educated people seriously mind that one recognises uneducated ones

from their language. This way, one saves oneself superfluous contacts af-

ter all.’ UniSPIEGEL, 29/03/2012

13. ‘Oh, if they only knew how they mark themselves, through language,

body art, and clothing, as belonging to the lowest caste. A life style at the

level of minimal wage, Hartz IV [social benefits] is predetermined this

way.’ Bild 18/02/2012

14. ‘[…] an “underclass dialect” that is predominantly spoken by migrants of

Turkish-Arabic background’ Email, 27/02/2012

As these examples from different domains illustrate, the dichotomy that is

constructed here is evident across sub-corpora. Such explicit statements are

particularly frequent in emails, where they occur in over a third (36.8 %) of

the data, in comments to tabloids (24.8 %), and to right-fringe media (21.4

%). Interestingly, we also find reference to this dichotomy in positive post-

ings. The following quote from an email gives an example where this is iron-

ically broken:

15. ‘I find it almost sensational that it should be linguistics, of all disciplines,

that changes my view of these young people who always need to spit on

the street.’

Email, 03/03/2012

In general, the status deprecation of speakers is realised through themes such

as “underclass” (e.g., ‘mob’, ‘riffraff’, ‘low caste’, ‘ghetto’, ‘gutter lan-

guage’), “poverty” (e.g., ‘poor’, ‘Hartz IV’), “low education” (e.g., ‘unedu-

cated’, ‘education-adverse milieu’), “aggression and law-breaking” (e.g., ‘ag-

gressive’, ‘criminal’, ‘delinquent’), and “low culture” (e.g., ‘uncivilised’,

‘primitive’, ‘uncultivated’), the latter two often associated with an opposition

to liberal values, similarly as reported for the debates in the UK and Sweden.

In a number of cases, the social ousting of Kiezdeutsch speakers is reinforced

by posters expressing strong emotional and physical responses of social aver-

sion, describing Kiezdeutsch as ‘repugnant’, ‘ghastly’, ‘creepy’, ‘disgusting’,

and ‘vomit’-inducing.

The construction of Kiezdeutsch speakers as aggressive is frequently

supported by putative “language examples” made up by the posters, which are

dominated by curse words and threats. In particular in the emails, such

“Kiezdeutsch” usage allows the posters to break linguistic taboos and use vio-

lent threats, insults, and slurs (e.g., ‘bitch’, ‘pussy’, ‘old shit’, ‘I fuck you,

slut’, ‘Piss off, or I put you into hospital’) in direct communication.

At ‘ethnic’ levels, speech communities supporting Kiezdeutsch under-

go an alloethnic reinterpretation, with speakers constructed as ‘foreigners’,

‘migrants’, or as belonging to specific non-German ethnicities. The xenopho-

bic undertones that are prevalent in this domain are particularly visible in the

labels promoted by posters in rejection of “Kiezdeutsch”. The following com-

ments, to a regional newspaper, a right-fringe website, and to UniSPIEGEL

(targeting university students), respectively, give an illustration:

16. ‘Kietzdeutsch? Turk-prole dialect would be more correct’

rp-online, 22/04/2012

17. ‘What she calls “Kiezdeutsch”, is nothing but Kanak [wog] blathering’

Deutschland-Echo, 29/01/2012

18. ‘Kiezdeutsch – the term alone is a euphemism for erstwhile “Kanack” and

most definitely no dialect’ UniSPIEGEL 29/03/2012

The ethnic conceptualisation centres around Turkish, Arabic, and Kurdish

backgrounds – sometimes contrasted to Asians as ‘model minorities’ – and is

often associated religiously, with a negative view of Islam up to islamophobia.

This relates to a more general prejudice against Islam in Germany: according

to the most recent Religion Monitor survey of Bertelsmann Foundation,

‘many Germans regard Islam […] as something foreign, alien, and threaten-

ing’ (Pollack and Müller 2013: 60), with around half of the respondents per-

ceiving it as a threat, rather than an enrichment.

Further ideological underpinnings for the dichotomy observed here is

the linguistic exclusion of multilingual speakers from a “German” in-group, in

particular of those with heritage languages that are assigned a low market val-

ue. For one, a “migrant background” is seen as a basic obstacle to German

competence, with assumptions of “double semilingualism” pervasive in the

public debate and even in logopedics,22 and a strong ideological association of

“migrant background” and “in need of special language support”.23 This can go

so far that, e.g., the Berlin city administration counts the proportion of children

and adolescents with a migrant background as a negative factor for the devel-

opmental index of a neighbourhood, arguing (in response to a question I sent

them on this) that it is an indication for ‘problem agglomerations’ that require

interventions in education and quartier management.

Second, naming practices tend to deny genuine “Germanness” for some

immigrants and their descendants. While immigrants from Russia who can

claim a pre-war German ancestry are known as “Russia Germans”

(‘Russlanddeutsche’), residents of Turkish descent are commonly called

“German Turks” (‘Deutschtürken’) even if they belong to the second or third

generation living in Germany, a compound that marks them as a kind of Turks,

rather than a kind of Germans, given that nominal compounds in German are

right-headed.24 This seems to be restricted to immigrants to Germany, and in

particular to those of Turkish background, while, e.g., the term “German

Americans” (‘Deutschamerikaner’) is used to identify German immigrants to

the US. This apparent inability to name someone of Turkish descent as Ger-

man can lead to startling phrases, e.g., when an article in Tagesspiegel, a major

Berlin newspaper, described two alleged terrorists who had been arrested in

22 E.g., a German hospital run by the Catholic Caritas association offers logopedic support for multilin-

gual patients, listing as indicators for a logopedic examination, besides symptoms such as stuttering or

language loss after laryngal operations and stroke, also ‘mixing of two languages’ in children, suggest-

ing a pathological view of phenomena like code switching.

23 Cf. Scarvaglieri and Zech (2013) for a functional-semantic analysis of ‘Migrationshintergrund’ (“mi-

grant background”) in German, and for corpus data on co-occurrences with, among others, ‘support’

and ‘language support’.

24 This is reminiscent of the ius saguinis that was to some degree reflected in German citizenship laws

before their reformation in 1999. Note, however, that even then, citizenship was not exclusively based

on descent, and it was, of course, possible for, e.g., Turkish immigrants to obtain German citizenship.

Yet, this legal possibility, which has since been significantly expanded, does not seem to influence the

general perception of who is ‘German’.

Vienna and Berlin, as ‘an Afghan-background Austrian and a German Turk’

(April 17th, 2013), making a palpable effort to avoid the more natural parallel-

ism ‘… and a Turkish-background German’.

Taken together, this kind of exclusion provides an ideological rein-

forcement for the topoi on language and integration observed in the corpus,

feeding into a narrative that we can now identify as a central theme evident in

the devaluation of Kiezdeutsch: what counts as German, who is a legitimate

speaker of German and, crucially, of ‘High German’, and what is, accordingly,

a German dialect and who owns it?

4.4 ‘Hochdeutsch’: a narrative on standard language

The construction of standard German as ‘Hochdeutsch’ “High German”, and

an elevated ‘Hochsprache’ “high/exalted language”, links up social and lin-

guistic dichotomies and provides a key narrative feeding into the debate on

Kiezdeutsch. In the corpus, we find frequent references to ‘Hochdeutsch’

where it is contrasted with Kiezdeutsch and serves as a characterisation of

what Kiezdeutsch is not, both at the level of language variants and of speakers’

repertoires. Together with a view of traditional dialects as a historical basis for

this ‘high language’, this perspective ousts Kiezdeutsch – and its speakers –

from the realm of ‘German’.

A key to this view is the notion of ‘Hochdeutsch’ as a higher, exalted

language that is closely associated with a positive notion of ‘culture’ in two

senses. First, ‘Hochdeutsch’ is constructed as a buttress for a shared culture

and for national unity, a vehicle to overcome fragmentation that supports

communication and understanding across German regions.25 This association

of ‘Hochdeutsch’ with ‘culture’ links up with the topoi set of ‘Opting Out’ and

‘Social Demolition’: against this background, speaking Kiezdeutsch is seen as

a refusal to partake in such a shared culture and thus as a threat to social cohe-

sion, an unwillingness to integrate that suggests conflict and aggression. This

25 This is in line with a view of standard variants as ‘modes of optimal denotation’, as analysed by Sil-

verstein (1996: 287). Note that the image of “Hochdeutsch” we find here, disregards not only different

variants considered part of standard German within Germany, but also those in German-speaking coun-

tries other than Germany.

accounts for themes such as ‘aggression’ and ‘violence’, and relates to the mo-

tif of ‘Poor Germany’.

Second, ‘Hochdeutsch’ is constructed as a sign for a high culture, for

cultural elevation, refinement, and complexity, with posters talking about ‘cul-

tivated high language’, and ‘polished’ or ‘immaculate High German’. This

notion of standard German relates to the motif of ‘Poets and Thinkers’. It pre-

sents ‘Hochdeutsch’ as something that does not come naturally, but requires

effort and care, and provides a valuable cultural capital for those who master

it.26 Accordingly, linguistic change is regarded as a threat to those who own

this capital, as is grouping ‘Hochdeutsch’ with other variants of German,

which would challenge its superior status.

The contrast of this elevated language form to nonstandard variants

links up with the topoi set of ‘Broken German’ and ‘Language Decay’, and

subsequent themes of educational failure, unemployment, and welfare costs,

and with characterisations of Kiezdeutsch as reduced and primitive. The cul-

tural refinement associated with ‘Hochdeutsch’ expands to the cognitive do-

main, where this more complex and refined form of language is regarded as

supporting correspondingly refined thoughts and complex reasoning. Again,

this is then by way of contrast negated for Kiezdeutsch, leading to the view of

Kiezdeutsch as a cognitive obstacle.

A potential difficulty for the devaluation of Kiezdeutsch based on its

contrast to ‘Hochdeutsch’ is its characterisation as a dialect, which brings in a

notion of linguistic variants that are regarded as distinct from ‘Hochdeutsch’,

but nevertheless positively associated: a ‘Dialekt’ is commonly associated with

positive regional traditions, rather than decay or demolition.27 In the data pro-

vided by our corpus, this is solved by posters restricting the label ‘Dialekt’ to

those variants that formed the historical basis for ‘standard’ German. A ‘Di-

alekt’ in this view is something that has a long history in German, is part of

26 This is in accordance with a general phenomenon mentioned in Bourdieu (1982: 51), who points out

that the ranking of languages seems to be guided by the amount of “control” involved in speaking.

27 This positive association holds for a widespread view of ‘Dialekt’ in an abstract sense. In actual prac-

tice, dialect use will nevertheless often be regarded as indexical for low social class (in accordance

with general findings on dialect perceptions including both associations of positive local identity and of

low social class).

German folk culture, serves as a foundation for ‘Hochdeutsch’, and is used

alongside ‘Hochdeutsch’ by its speakers. In contrast to this, Kiezdeutsch is

then constructed as outside of such a culture: it is not part of German since it

does not look back at a long history, has not contributed to the rise of ‘Hoch-

deutsch’, is old only in the sense of reflecting a more primitive stage of lan-

guage (the ‘Stone Age’ theme), and will thus not be part of a repertoire that

encompasses ‘Hochdeutsch’, but instead causes ‘semilingualism’.

The following quotes, taken from a comment to a regional newspaper

article and from an email, illustrate this line of reasoning and demonstrate the

ethnicisation and ousting of Kiezdeutsch that is associated with this:

19. ‘Hochdeutsch “lords” over all dialects as a unifying, common language.

[…] In the case of “Kanak-Sprak” there is no superordinate Hochdeutsch,

but “migrantics”. While a Saxonian or Bavarian or … can talk to you in

Hochdeutsch with a respective accent, the “Kanak-Sprak” artists cannot.’

Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitung, 27/03/2012

20. ‘Your claim that “Bavarian is not seen as a failed attempt to speak

Hochdeutsch either”, is a brazen attempt to mix up a piece of German

culture with your oh so beloved “Kiezdeutsch”. The Bavarian, Hessian, or

Swabian dialect evolved on German ground and was fostered by people of

one culture. The so-called “Kiezdeutsch” is brought into Germany, and

spread here, by foreigners such as Turks and other people from the

Arabic/Near Eastern cultural area. We Germans do not want to support

your cosying up to Turks and other muslims in Berlin, and I ask you to

stop promoting as a German linguistic commodity this cultural good with

the name “Kiezdeutsch” that you value so highly.’

Email, 19/02/2012

Taken together, this construction of German dialects and of standard German

as ‘Hochdeutsch’ that associates it with two perspectives on ‘culture’ links up

the four central topoi and the ‘us’/‘them’-dichotomy we identified for the pub-

lic debate on Kiezdeutsch, bringing together different thematic strands in an

overarching narrative, summarised in Figure 1.

Dialects as a foundation

Figure 1: A standard language narrative on ‘Hochdeutsch’ vs. Kiezdeutsch

5. Conclusions

The study presented here suggests that attitudes and ideologies on such new

urban dialects as Kiezdeutsch provide us with something like a mirror image

to those on standard language: Kiezdeutsch is constructed as everything that

‘Hochdeutsch’ and its dialects are not. Based on a social dichotomy that can be

further boosted by xenophobic insecurities, we find a marginalisation of

Kiezdeutsch as a negative counterpart to a standard variant that is perceived as

a superior form of language, closely associated with positive values of cultural

elevation and cultural unity and linked to traditional dialects as its historical

and ‘folk cultural’ foundation.

Kiezdeutsch and ‘Hochdeutsch’ thus present themselves as two sides of

a coin. They are linked in an argumentative structure that crucially builds on a

contrast of linguistic and social identity, a contrast that helps speakers who

conceive of themselves as German majority speakers, to reaffirm a prestige

that they perceive as threatened by multiethnic urban communities. To reject

Standard German as a ‘Hochsprache’

→ CULTURE

part of German history

folk culture

speakers’ repertoires include Hochdeutsch

Kiezdeutsch as an outsider

not part of German

culturally alien

speakers do not master Hochdeutsch

Kiezdeutsch as part of German can thus reflect a proxy racism we have also

seen for other cases: a projection of ethnic and xenophobic demarcations and

exclusions onto the linguistic plane.

Taken together, our results suggest that debates on new urban dialects

can cast a particularly interesting spotlight on ideological constructions of

‘standard’ language and its speakers, on demarcations of what it means to

speak ‘proper language’ and who owns it, making this domain a special source

for investigations into language and identity.

Acknowledgements

The research presented in this paper was supported by funding from the Ger-

man Research Foundation (DFG) for the Special Research Area SFB 631 “In-

formation Structure” of University of Potsdam, Humboldt-University Berlin,

and Free University Berlin; projects B6 “Kiezdeutsch” and T1 “Teachers’ Ed-

ucation on Urban Language Variation” (PI: H. Wiese). For helpful comments

on a previous version of this article, I thank Pia Quist, Ben Rampton, Jannis

Androutsopoulos, Paul Kerswill, Ray Jackendoff, Claudia Zech, Rebecca

Wheeler, Elizabeth Beloe, and audiences at the Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

(Berlin 2012), ICLaVE 7 (Trondheim 2013), the conference on Linguistic

Constructions of Ethnic Borders (Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder 2013), and invited

talks at the universities of Freiburg, Stuttgart, HU Berlin, UT Austin, UC

Berkeley, Stockholm, Kiel, and Bielefeld.

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Appendix:

German originals of the examples quoted in the article

2. ,Kanak Sprak’ ignoriert den Duden, und auf eine Notzucht mehr oder weni-

ger an der Grammatik kommt es ihr ebenfalls nicht an

(Berliner Zeitung, May 28, 1999 “Brauchst du hart? Geb ich dir korrekt”)

3. […] bedient sie sich des mittlerweile positiv besetzten Wortes „Kiez“

(Stadtteil) und schafft damit eine angenehme Grundstimmung, die mit dem

Wort „Kanaksprak“ kaum möglich ist.

(Deutsche Sprachwelt 2009, issue 36, front page, “Stammeldeutsch als

Errungenschaft? Sprachwissenschaftler bewundern eine Fehlentwicklung un-

serer Sprache”)

4. Sie nennen es „Kiezdeutsch“ und sprechen von einem Dialekt. Aber würden

Mittelschichtskinder das nicht als „Türkensprache“ bezeichnen?

(WDR radio, September 23rd, 2012)

5. Frau Wiese kapert den Terminus “Dialekt” für eine jugendliche

Sprechweise, in der Angeberei eine große Rolle spielt. Warum? Sie möchte an

seinem Prestige schnorren, denn Dialekte genießen Ansehen. […]

“Kiezdeutsch” aber ist weder ein Dialekt noch ein Soziolekt, sondern eine

transitorische Sondersprache, die auf Einflüssen anderer Sprachen und auf

Fehlern im Deutschen beruht. […] Es ist kein Fall für die Dialektologie,

sondern für die Sprachpsychologie und die Fehleranalyse.

(Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 4th, 2012, “Sachtemang mit dit

Kiezdeutsche. Heike Wiese Thesen über Jugendsprache gründen sich auf

Sozialarbeit, aber haben keinen Halt in der Linguistik” [‘Keep yer horses with

dat Kiezdeutsch. Heike Wiese’s theses about youth language are grounded on

social work, but do not have a basis in linguistics’])

6. Kiezdeutsch ist völlig unproblematisch. Bayern, Süddeutsche, und

Schweizer reden auch Dialekt und schreiben dennoch richtiges Deutsch.

(pi-news, May 26th, 2009)

7. Gegen die Entwicklung von Sprache "muss man" nichts tun, man kann es

auch gar nicht. Man kann nur verlangen, dass in gewissen Kontexten (Schule,

Vorstellungsgespräch, Prüfung etc.) die Hochsprache verwendet wird. Was die

Leute in der Freizeit reden, ist ihre Sache.

(UniSPIEGEL, March 3rd, 2012)

8. auch zu meiner Schulzeit in den 50ern wurde auf dem Schulhof schon "ap-

peldwatsch" geschnackt. Solange die Lehrer und das Elternhaus ein

vernünftiges Deutsch vermitteln, hat es nicht geschadet.

(Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitung, March 27th, 2012)

9. Das ist kein Dialekt, sondern lediglich die Unlust sich zu integrieren oder

(noch schlimmer) die Faulheit die eigene Sprache richtig zu lernen.

(Bild, February 17th, 2012)

10. Dieses Assigestammel als Sprache zu bezeichnen ist eine absolute Disqual-

ifikation als Wissenschaftler […]. Ich habe beruflich sehr viel mit

(gestrauchelten) jugendlichen Migranten und auch deutschstämmigen Jugend-

lichen zu tun und sehe jeden Tag, wie sich die Deutschen an die Arab-Türk-

Kurdensprache anpassen. Teilweise sind gar keine “normalen” Dialoge mehr

möglich, weil der grundlegende Sprachschatz schon gelöscht ist.

(Email, February 29th, 2012)

11. Womit ich „Kiezdeutsch“ assoziiere: – Ungebildete, primitive männliche

Jugendliche – Gewaltbereitschaft, Aggressivität, Pöbelei – düstere, grimmige

Visagen – Machotum, Frauenverachtung – Protzerei mit Äußerlichkeiten

(Goldkettchen, Auto...) – Hass auf die Gebildeten und auf diejenigen, die sich

durch eigene Arbeit einen gewissen Wohlstand geschaffen haben – Hass auf

Juden und Homos.

(Fokus Online, February 12th, 2012)

12. Man sollte die "Kiezsprache" einfach als gegeben hinnehmen. Ich kann mir

nicht vorstellen, dass Gebildete es ernsthaft ablehnen, dass man Ungebildete

an der Sprache erkennt. So erspart man sich doch überflüssige Kontakte.

(UniSpiegel, March 29th, 2012)

13. Ach, wenn sie doch nur wüssten, wie sie sich durch Sprache, Körperkunst

und Kleidung zur untersten Kaste gehörend kennzeichnen. Eine

Lebensführung auf Niveau Mindestlohn, HartzIV wird so vorprogrammiert

(Bild, February 18th, 2012)

14. Dass ausgerechnet Sprachwissenschaft meine Sicht auf die jungen Leute,

die immer ausspucken müssen, verändert, finde ich beinahe sensationell.

(Email, March 3rd, 2012)

15. "Unterschichtendialekt" […], der überwiegend von Migranten mit tü-

rkisch-arabischem Hintergrund gesprochen […] wird

(Email, February 27th, 2012)

16. Kietzdeutsch? Türkenproll-Dialekt wäre wohl richtiger

(rp-online, April 22nd, 2012)

17. Was die als "Kiezdeutsch" bezeichnet, ist nichts anderes als ka-

nakengequassel.

(Deutschland-Echo, January 29th, 2012)

18. Kiezdeutsch Schon dieser Terminus ist ein Euphemismus für ehemals

"Kanack" und ohne wenn und aber kein Dialekt

(UniSPIEGEL, March 29th, 2012)

19. Über allen Dialekten “thront” hochdeutsch als verbindende, gemeinsame

Sprache. In den Schulen wird hochdeutsch gelehrt, evtl. mit einem örtlich

unterschiedlichen Akzent. Bei "Kanak-Sprak" gibt es kein übergeordnetes

hochdeutsch sondern “migrantisch". Während ein Sachse oder Bayer oder...

sich mit Ihnen auf hochdeutsch mit dem entsprechenden Akzent unterhalten

kann, können dies die "Kanak-Sprak"-Artisten nicht

(Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitung, March 27th, 2012)

20. Ihre Feststellung "Bayerisch wird auch nicht als der gescheiterte Versuch

angesehen, Hochdeutsch zu sprechen“, ist ein dreister Versuch, ein Stück

deutscher Kultur mit Ihrem so heiß geliebten "Kiezdeutsch" zu vermischen.

Der Bayrische, Hessische oder Schwäbische Dialekt entwickelte sich auf

deutschem Boden und wurde von Menschen eines Kulturkreises gepflegt. Das

so genannte "Kiezdeutsch" wird von Ausländern wie Türken und anderen

Menschen aus dem arabischen-vorderasiatischen Kulturraum nach

Deutschland hereingetragen und hier verbreitet. Ihre Anbiederei bei Türken

und sonstigen Moslems in Berlin wollen wir Deutsche nicht mittragen und ich

bitte Sie, dieses von Ihnen so hoch geschätzte Kulturgut mit dem Namen

"Kiezdeutsch" nicht weiterhin als deutsches Sprachgut zu verbreiten.

(Email, February 19th, 2012)

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Gender, Race and Inclusive Citizenship. Dialoge zwischen Aktivismus und Wissenschaft

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This bilingual volume explores struggles and regimes of belonging and discusses "inclusive citizenship" as a concept that connects academic analysis with political struggles for belonging. Original contributions and conversations by international researchers and activists focus on the tensions between acts and regimes of citizenship. Highly political questions of agency arise in relation to freedom of movement, digital rights, belonging, care, and language. We discuss these with reference to local, regional, digital or (trans-)national spaces. The contributions deal with current migration movements to and in Europe, critical racism and (queer) feminist activism as well as institutional and everyday discrimination in unequal societies.

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Sep 2022

In this introduction to the edited volume, we argue that citizenship is a “momentum concept” (Hoffman 2004, Citizenship Beyond the State, Sage, Thousand Oaks) which encompasses the potential to build up spaces for equality and inclusion. We aim to further develop the concept of inclusive citizenship, which is a common working base at the Leibniz Research Center for Inclusive Citizenship (CINC) at Leibniz University Hannover. Gender and race are two pivotal dimensions of inequality which have received public attention in recent years, for example, within debates on racist police violence in the USA and Europe, and in the care crisis, not only during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this introduction, we elaborate on our understanding of acts of inclusive citizenship, linking debates on migration and racism in Germany with concepts from citizenship studies, explain the focus on gender and race of this collaborative publication project and embed it in the field of intersectionality research. We also present the four fields of discussion of inclusive citizenship in this volume: care, institutional racism, language and the digital sphere.KeywordsCritical citizenship studiesInclusive citizenshipGenderRaceInequalityIntersectionality

Celebrity migrants and the racialized logic of integration in Germany

Article

Jul 2021

Kate Zambon

Since the turn of the millennium, “integration” has become a predominant floating signifier in discourse and policy regulating the place of immigrants and minorities in European societies. This study analyzes a self-described “integration campaign” that used celebrity exemplars to promote the German language to immigrants and their descendants. This case demonstrates the interrelationship between celebrations of new German diversity and discourses that frame immigrants-and especially Muslims-as a potential threat to national life. This campaign combines two potent sites of symbolic cultural politics: language and the body. It uses racialized celebrity exemplars to articulate normative whiteness symbolized by standardized German. The campaign targets the imagined figure of the perpetual migrant who is beyond the reach of the German language and, thus, outside the regulatory and disciplinary control of majority society. While it is self-styled as a playful invitation to learn German, the content of the campaign, its theme song, and the press discourse about it use racialized celebrity bodies to affirm colorblind meritocracy while devaluing the lives of racialized “migrants”who are unable or unwilling to conform.

URBAN SPEECH AS AN OBJECT OF LINGUISTIC RESEARCH: WRITTEN AND SPOKEN VARIETIES

Article

Jan 2023

The article focuses on methodological tendences in urban language research. Authors, meanwhile, substantiate rationality of its spoken and written varieties as separate fields of study. These studies are marked with a high rate of activity and they highlight a new concept of the «regiolect» — a regional variety of the national language. The analysis of the scientific results of linguo-urbanistics reveals the dominance of the onomastic vector and obvious lack of research into urban speech. The authors specify discrepancies in the function of written and spoken language in linguistic, semiotic and psychological aspects. They also state destructive results of simple mechanical transfer of oral speech techniques to urban epigraphy, the differences between word-formation processes in written and oral speech are described. The visuality of a written sign, the possibility of hybrid word formation with the help of other symbolic and graphic systems, as well as the activity of language norms are listed as features of written communication. A distinctive feature of the oral form is the possibility of meaning explication through non-verbal signs. According to the authors, greater reliability of scientific results in the field of modern urban studies can be achieved through compliance with the principle of unmixed study of living speech and urban writing.

Monolingual Citizenship? Unequal Multilingualisms and Ambiguous Acts

Chapter

Sep 2022

Aoileann Ní Mhurchú and Radhika Natarajan discuss vibrant issues of mono- and multilingualisms in terms of how certain language regimes are linked to a system of belonging in nation states. These regimes are challenged by the practice of migrant or alleged migrant communities. Focusing on the fields of education and cultural practice, both provide deep insights into the contexts of—among others—relationships with indigenous language in Ireland, the German education system in school and adult education, language mixing in Germany and Tamil-speaking women in Germany. Despite the range of contexts analysed, both agree and complement each other, theorising language as highly political and connected to questions of power, belonging and acts. The latter is analysed in its multi-faceted forms, avoiding simplistic binaries, and instead taking into account language practice and policies in their ambiguities and contradictions.KeywordsMultilingualismAmbiguityBelongingPost-colonial thinkingLanguage

Language Change in Real- and Apparent-Time: Coherence in the Individual and the Community

Book

Feb 2024

Karen V Beaman

Understanding Language Contact

Book

Jun 2023

Unfamiliar Acts of Citizenship: Cultural Practices, Sensory Engagement, and Ambiguity

Chapter

Sep 2022

Aoileann Ni Mhurchu

This chapter explores unfamiliar acts of citizenship located in cultural enactment(s). It unpacks what is unfamiliar here and the implications of focusing on cultural practices for how we can better understand citizenship as a challenge and re-enactment. It points to the indirect nature of cultural acts which are engaged in through embodied and affective meaning rather than as direct statements/declarations of discontent. I look at how these are mobilised within, and start from, an indeterminate and ambiguous space of inclusion and exclusion, rather than from a starting point of familiar political struggle which end up at questions of ambiguity and indeterminacy. Drawing on decolonial theory, I argue that they therefore force us to think about the unfamiliar (not yet recognised) ways we have yet to imagine and understand that citizenship struggles may take place. It uses the example of vernacular language as a cultural act to consider this in detail.KeywordsActs of citizenship (AoC)AmbiguityCultural practicesDecolonial theorySensory processesUnfamiliar citizenshipVernacular language

Introduction: in the shadow of the standard. Standard language ideology and attitudes towards ‘non-standard’ varieties and usages

Article

Oct 2021

Olivia Walsh

This special issue provides new perspectives on how standard language ideology (SLI) informs and influences attitudes towards ‘non-standard’ language varieties. Standard languages are commonly viewed as uniform, minimally varying (homogeneous) forms of language [Haugen, E. 1966. “Dialect, Language, Nation.” American Anthropologist 68: 922–935.], and existing research in the area of language standardisation has largely focussed on standard languages in (perceived) monolingual nations, mainly restricted to those in Western Europe. The theoretical frameworks used to discuss language standardisation have often assumed that speakers of standard languages are monolingual (even if tacitly acknowledging varieties related to the standard, which can differ in terms of their ‘distance’ from that standard). Yet standard languages always exist alongside other languages and language varieties (including ‘non-standard’ varieties of the standard itself), and many speakers use the standard as an acquired variety alongside at least one other variety or language. This special issue challenges the assumption of monolingual standard languages, by presenting evidence of the impact – linguistic, social and cultural – of standard language ideologies on ‘non-standard’ language varieties that exist alongside standard languages in various political and cultural contexts within and outside Europe.

'Il parle normal, il parle comme nous': Self-reported usage and attitudes in a banlieue

Article

Jul 2018

We report on a survey of language attitudes carried out as part of a project comparing youth language in Paris and London. ¹ As in similar studies carried out in London (Cheshire et al., 2008), Berlin (Wiese, 2009) and elsewhere (Boyd et al., 2015), the focus was on features considered typical of ‘contemporary urban vernaculars’ (Rampton, 2015). The respondents were pupils aged 15–18 in two secondary schools in a working-class northern suburb of Paris. The survey included (1) a written questionnaire containing examples of features potentially undergoing change in contemporary French; (2) an analysis of reactions to extracts from the project data: participants were asked to comment on the speakers and the features identified. Quantitative analysis had shown that some of these features are more widespread than others and are used by certain categories of speaker more than others (Gardner-Chloros and Secova, this volume). This study provides a qualitative dimension, showing that different features have different degrees of perceptual salience and acceptability. It demonstrates that youth varieties do not involve characteristic features being used as a ‘package’, and that such changes interact in a complex manner with attitudinal factors. The study also provides material for reflection on the role of attitude studies within sociolinguistic surveys.

Debating Diversity: Analysing the Discourse of Tolerance

Book

Full-text available

May 2020

In the context of migration policies in Belgium in the 1990's, this book analyses the discourse of the 'tolerant' majority, as found in news reporting, policy statements, social-scientific research reports, anti-racism campaigns and training programs. The analysis reveals what the authors call a 'homogeneistic' ideology, fundamental non-acceptance of diversity.

Die Erfindung ›des‹ Ethnolekts

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2011

Jannis Androutsopoulos

The paper takes a critical look at the discourse processes that lead to the language-ideological formation of ›the ethnolect‹ as a distinct variety of German. Theoretically situated at the interface between language-ideology research and critical discourse studies, it offers qualitative analyses of selected discourse data from 1995 to 2010. The paper discusses the following suggestions: Perceptions of a distinct variety among immigrantbackground young people emerge in a circulation process among a range of institutional discourses, including academia, popular culture, journalism, and language teaching; these share a number of discursive procedures and language-ideological assumptions regarding ›the ethnolect‹, which are recontextualised according to the formation rules of each discourse. Linguists played a pivotal role in that process, both in academic publications and as ›language experts‹ quoted in the media. In particular, they introduce a number of descriptive procedures on which the production of knowledge on ethnolects is based: labelling, classification, normative comparison, feature selection, and interpretive binarisms; these also occur across media and language teaching discourse in recontextualised ways. Homogenism and standardism serve as language-ideological pillars on which ›the‹ ethnolect can be imagined as a ›deviation‹ from standard language. Its use in the iconisation of ›problem‹ immigrant youth and its metaphorical conceptualisation in terms of military aggression are particular to media discourse. Finally, the label ethnolect is indifferent to the ethnicity of its purported speakers, but primarily indexes their difference, i. e. heteroethnic relation to the imagined majority group.

Ethno-Comedy und riskanter Humor in der Clique: Rassistisch, einfach spaßig oder besonders cool?

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2011

Helga Kotthoff

In diesem sozio- und gesprächsanalytisch inspirierten Artikel geht es um massenmediale Humorgenres, die mit Ethnizität und stilisiert ethnolektalen Sprachvarietäten spielen. Komiker(innen) mit auswärtigen oder einheimischen familiären Hintergründen inszenieren in der sogenannten „Ethno-Comedy“ ethnisch assoziierte Zugehörigkeiten und Abgrenzungen, Szenen aus Migrantenmileus und Großstadttypen.

26 Dialect vs. standard: a typology of scenarios in Europe

Book

Jan 2011

Peter Auer

Monoglot “Standard” in America: Standardization and Metaphors of Linguistic Hegemony

Chapter

Feb 2018

Michael Silverstein

Standardsprache als Sozialsymbol. Über kommunikative Folgen gesellschaftlichen Wandels: Sprachgeschichtliche Wurzeln des heutigen Deutsch

Chapter

Dec 1991

Klaus J. Mattheier

‘Rinkeby Swedish’ in the mind of the beholder. Studying listener perceptions of language variation in multilingual stockholm

Chapter

Dec 2010

Multilingual urban scandinavia: New linguistic practices

Book

Jan 2010

This book presents, for the first time, an overarching, trans-Scandinavian, comprehensive and comparable account of linguistic developments and practices in late modern urban contact zones. The book aims to capture the multilingual realities of all young people in urban contexts, whether they are of migrant descent or not. Taking a multi-layered approach to linguistic practices, chapters in the book include structural and phonological analyses of new linguistic practices, examine how these practices and their practitioners are perceived, and discuss the sociolinguistic potentials of speakers when constructing, challenging and negotiating identities. The book also contains three short overview articles describing studies of multilingual practices in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The editors have aimed to make Scandinavian research on urban multilingualism accessible to scholars and students who don’t speak Scandinavian languages, and also to make a valuable contribution to the global study of multilingualism. © 2010 Pia Quist, Bente A. Svendsen and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved.

The use of multiethnic youth language in Oslo

Chapter

Jan 2010

Finn Aarsæther

Kiezdeutsch : ein neuer Dialekt

Article

Jan 2010

Heike Wiese

Voices of linguistic outrage – Standard language constructs and the discourse on new urban dialects

Abstract

File (1)

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