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“This migrants’ babble is not a German dialect!” –
The interaction of standard language ideology and ‘us’/‘them’-
dichotomies in the public discourse on a multiethnolect
Heike Wiese
Abstract:
This paper investigates a public debate in Germany that put a special spotlight
on the interaction of standard language ideologies with social dichotomies,
centering on the question of whether “Kiezdeutsch”, a new way of speaking
from multilingual urban neighbourhoods, is a legitimate German dialect.
Based on a corpus of emails and postings to media websites, I analyse central
topoi in this debate and an underlying narrative on language and identity. Cen-
tral elements of this narrative are claims of cultural elevation and cultural unity
for an idealised standard language “High German”, a view of German dialects
as part of a national folk culture, and the construction of an exclusive in-group
of “German” speakers who own this language and its dialects. The narrative
provides a potent conceptual frame for the Othering of Kiezdeutsch and its
speakers, and for the projection of social and sometimes racist deliminations
onto the linguistic plane.
Key words: standard language ideology, Kiezdeutsch, dialect, public dis-
course, Othering, racism by proxy
1. Introduction
The title’s quote illustrates, in a drastic but often encountered manner, recur-
ring sentiments expressed in the public discourse on a new variety/style of
German, which I will call “Kiezdeutsch” ‘(neighbour-)hood German’ here, a
term that is used in public debate as well. In the above quote, Kiezdeutsch is
Preliminary version, author’s manuscript;
final version to appear in:
Language in Society
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denied the status of German dialect and characterised as the broken speech,
“babble”, of a migrant out-group. In this paper, I am going to show that the
debate from which such statements come provides us with an interesting
means of access into the dynamics of linguistic and social boundaries, patterns
of inclusion and exclusion, and their interaction with standard language ideo-
logies.
Kiezdeutsch emerged in urban Germany, in particular among the espe-
cially dynamic group of adolescent speakers, and is characterised by a linguis-
tically diverse speech community, encompassing multilingual speakers with a
range of different heritage languages (alongside the majority language Ger-
man) besides monolingually German speakers. Modern Germany in general is
a multilingual country, and this is particularly true for urban areas. While lan-
guage use in families is not documented in census surveys 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 German citizenship. Data on migrant background can hence indicate
potentially multilingual families. According to the German census, about 1/5
of the population as a whole has a migrant background, and approximately
31% of 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 (data
from 2009 and 2010, released by the German Federal Statistical Office).
Hence, experiences with multilingualism are a widespread phenome-
non in the linguistic reality of young speakers in Germany today, and the new
3
ways of speaking that multilingual urban speech communities support form an
important and central, rather than peripheral part of contemporary German. In
contrast, the public debate has long been characterised by marginalisation and,
initially, exotisation.
The focus of this article will be a public debate on Kiezdeutsch that
peaked in 2012 and centres, as illustrated by the quote in the title, around the
notion of Kiezdeutsch as a “Dialekt” ‘dialect’. This framing makes the debate
a particularly interesting domain of research since it connects the discussion of
linguistic diversity with questions of linguistic ownership: who will and who
will not be accepted as a legitimate speaker of a German dialect? This discus-
sion hence offers a vantage point on the way linguistic value systems interact
with social inclusion vs. exclusion, shaping power relations and ultimately
helping to support and reassert positive self-images of privileged groups.
While the particular interaction we can observe here might be specific
to Germany, public debates that became heated and condemnatory can be
found elsewhere, with new linguistic developments in multilingual urban
neighbourhoods receiving much public attention in the last decades. In socio-
linguistics, such developments have been characterised, among others, as mul-
tiethnolects (Quist 2008), new dialects (Cheshire et al. 2011), ethnic dialects
(Du Bois 2013), or new urban vernaculars (Rampton 2013). While their status
as systematic varieties, styles, or clusters of linguistic resources in communi-
cative practices has been the subject of some controversy,1 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
4
picture drawn in public debates is mostly negative, and discussions of such
linguistic practices are dominated by disapproval and concern.
The phenomenon of these urban vernaculars is comparatively novel,
and while it has received considerable attention in the sociolinguistic discus-
sion over the last decades, only a few studies so far have focussed on the pub-
lic debate, besides those that touch on this topic while primarily targeting other
aspects, such as language use or media stylisations (e.g., in comedy).3
For Germany, Androutsopoulos (2011) shows that media representa-
tions, including those that involve linguist ‘experts’, construct a heteroethnic
contrast to an imagined homogenised majority society and its language. His
analyses of medial stylisations of multiethnolectal speech, “Türkendeutsch”
‘Turks’ German’ (Androutsopoulos 2001, 2007, 2011), indicate that they fol-
low a widespread standard language ideology in media and realise negative
stereotypes of nonstandard, foreign language use and ‘broken German’.
Kotthoff (2010) describes similar patterns for the stylisation in German come-
dy shows.
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 pro-
vide some background on relevant terms in the public discourse on
Kiezdeutsch (Section 2), and then describe the data and methodology I am
going to use for my investigation (Section 3). On this basis, I will identify four
key topoi in the debate (Section 4) and then show how they come together in
an underlying narrative on who is a legitimate speaker of a German “Dialekt”
(Section 5), involving ‘us’/‘them’-dichotomies at social and ‘ethnic’ levels and
5
a particular construction of standard German as “Hochdeutsch” ‘High Ger-
man’. The final section (Section 6) will summarise our findings.
2. The German debate on Kiezdeutsch as a dialect: some back-
ground
The current section provides some background on two pairs of terms that helps
to understand the context of the debate on Kiezdeutsch, illuminating what Gar-
rett (2010:103) calls the distinctive “linguistic climate” for language attitudes.
2.1 “Kanak language” vs. “(neighbour-)hood German”
At the beginning of the debate, in the late 1990s / early 2000s, a dominant la-
bel for the new German vernacular used in multiethnic neighbourhoods was
“Kanak Sprak”, which combines a pejorative expression for foreigners, “Ka-
nak”, with “Sprak”, a truncation of “Sprache” ‘language’. The term “Kanak”
originally refers to indigenous inhabitants of New Caledonia. In German, it has
developed into a xenophobe epithet whose usage would normally be socially
sanctioned. In the 1990s, the term was introduced into mainstream political
discussion by Feridun Zaimoğlu, who used it in political novels and interview
collections as an attempt to reclaim the pejorative expression ‘Kanake’ within
political movements of Germans with migrant, mostly Turkish, background.4
However, the term did not lose its xenophobic associations (cf. Androutsopou-
los 2007 on language ideology aspects). Furthermore, based on its lexical se-
mantics alone, even independently of the pejoration involved, it supports a
marginalisation through Othering at two levels: (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
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usage in public discourse, where it was quickly appropriated and broadly used
(in some cases also in academic writings), making the expression ‘Kanak’,
which outside this compound would be taboo as a xenophobe slur, acceptable
here.
Over the last years, “Kanak Sprak” has gradually been replaced by
“Kiezdeutsch”, a label introduced in Wiese (2006) as an alternative to “Kanak
Sprak”. As mentioned above, “Kiezdeutsch” literally means “(neighbour-
)hood German”, including with “Kiez” [ki:5ts] an informal, positively associ-
ated Berlin dialect term for a neighbourhood. While labelling linguistic prac-
tices can carry risks of homogenising something in a way that might support
delimination and even segregation (cf. Jaspers 2008, Androutsopoulos 2011,
Cornips et al to appear), I believe that the replacement of “Kanak Sprak” by
“Kiezdeutsch” can in fact counteract exclusion (cf. Muyskens & Rott 2013).
This is not only because it is a term adopted from the community that can con-
tribute to empowering speakers (cf. Wiese 2006; 2013). Its semantics also
places this way of speaking and their speakers within the majority in-group: it
positions it within general everyday communication in an informal neighbour-
hood 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 a particular phenomenon, a systematic, new addition to the range of Ger-
man (Wiese 2013 provides a detailed discussion), and at the time
“Kiezdeutsch” was introduced, the act of labelling – and the essentialising this
might bring with it – had already happened, with “Kanak Sprak” firmly en-
7
trenched in the public discussion. “Kiezdeutsch” was introduced to replace this
existing label, rather than create 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’:5
(1) “[H. Wiese] uses the word ‘Kiez’ (neighbourhood), which by now is
positively associated, and thus creates a pleasant ambience, which is
hardly possible with the word ‘Kanaksprak’.”
A further illustration of the positive 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’), a
pattern that we will investigate in some more detail further below (WDR radio,
September 23rd, 2012):
(2) “[its speakers] call it ‘Kiezdeutsch’ and talk about a dialect. But
wouldn’t middle-class children call that ‘Turks’ language’?”
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An additional interesting aspect of this statement is the contrast it makes be-
tween the linguistic classifications believed to be used by the speakers them-
selves and the “middle-class children”: according to this statement, the former
see Kiezdeutsch as a dialect, while the latter regard it as a different (‘Turks’)
language. This adds a third contrast in addition to the ethnic and social dichot-
omies observed here. The refutation that is put in the putative “middle-class
children’s” mouth here points to a conflict between their view of what consti-
tutes a German dialect and what constitutes Kiezdeutsch – a clash that I be-
lieve provides an important blueprint for the dichotomies that became evident
in the debate. In the following section, I briefly describe some background on
the specific use of such terms as “Dialekt” ‘dialect’ and “Hochdeutsch” ‘High
German’, as a term for standard German, in Germany. This will provide a ba-
sis for the investigation into the ‘dialect’ discourse on Kiezdeutsch, which will
reveal an underlying narrative associating the two in a manner that excludes
Kiezdeutsch and its speakers along social and ‘ethnic’ deliminations.
2.2 “Hochdeutsch” and German dialects
In Germany, the label “Hochdeutsch” ‘High German’ is commonly used for an
idealised standard variety 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 (Milroy & Milroy 1999; cf. Vogl 2012 for an histori-
cal overview of standard language ideologies in Europe; Mattheier 1991, Da-
vies 2012 for a detailed discussion of Germany). Standard language ideology
seems to be particularly powerful in Germany, with strongly restrictive and
puristic tendencies (cf. Polenz 1988, Durrell 1999, Davies 2012).
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The “Hoch-” in “Hochdeutsch” initially refers to its status as a High ra-
ther than Low German variety, where “high” and “low” relate to geographical
altitude, namely the more mountainous character of the High German dialect
region, which is towards the South, and the flatter, lower landscape in the
North, which is home to the Low German dialects (or rather, in a lot of cases,
used to be home to them, since Low German dialects have mostly been dis-
placed by High German ones, due to the strong influence of standard German).
Outside linguistics, the term has, however, undergone a reinterpretation from a
geographic characterisation to a qualitative ranking: in general usage, “Hoch-
deutsch” is commonly understood to refer to a “higher” form of language, a
culturally elevated “Hochsprache” ‘High language’ superior to other forms of
German. This reinterpretation establishes a particularly powerful case of
standard language ideology and, as I will show below, supports a narrative on
standard language that provides an important conceptual frame in the dis-
course on multiethnolects.
The term “Dialekt” ‘dialect’ in Germany has traditionally been primari-
ly associated, in both public discourse and academic writings, with the region-
al varieties that historically formed the background for the emergence of
standard German. Accordingly, Auer (2011), for instance, in a European over-
view 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 pro-
vided the linguistic material out of which the endoglossic standard varieties
developed”. (Auer 2011:487)
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To some degree, however, this contradicts the actual usage of this term even in
traditional German dialectology, namely where German “language island”
varieties are concerned, that is, varieties that emerged outside Germany as a
result of colonialisation and emigration. Such varieties did not necessarily pre-
cede the standard language but have often developed later, with a basis that
could then involve the standard variety as well as different traditional dialects,
as spoken in the German-speaking emigré communities in question. So, if a
precedence and source relation to the standard variety were necessary for a
dialect, these should then not qualify. Nevertheless, they are usually included
in German dialectology, e.g., as “deutsche Dialekte[n] im Ausland” ‘German
dialects abroad’ in a standard handbook on Dialektologie (Besch et al., Eds.,
1982).
Similarly, in public discourse, there seems to be no obstacle to accept-
ing such varieties as dialects of German. When an article on Texas German
appeared in the popular German news magazine Spiegel Online / UniSPIEGEL
that portrayed it as a relatively young German “Dialekt” with some new
grammatical and lexical characteristics and some language mixing involved,
this did not cause any kind of public antagonism. As Hans Boas, the linguist
on whose work the article was based (cf. Boas 2009), describes the reactions to
the article, “there was no outrage, just positive comments throughout” (Boas,
p.c.).
This contrasts sharply with the strong and overwhelmingly negative re-
actions an article in the same magazine received that suggested Kiezdeutsch
might be a dialect of German – again, with some new grammatical and lexical
characteristics and some language mixing involved. In fact, the Spiegel article
11
on Texas German was even quoted, in full, in the internet forum of the ‘lan-
guage guardian’ association Verein Deutsche Sprache, and discussed there as
an interesting case of German abroad.6 This contrast is even more striking in
view of the strong ties that Kiezdeutsch has to ongoing German language use,
compared to Texas German, which is largely cut-off from mainstream devel-
opment in Germany.
This suggests that in public discourse in Germany, it is not so much the
actual historical relation of precedence and linguistic source for standard Ger-
man that is essential to the concept of “Dialekt”, but rather a cultural associa-
tion with German tradition that seems to involve some sort of ius sanguinis, a
kinship relation based on a perceived ethnic commonality with its speakers.
Accordingly, it is, e.g., a popular narrative to recall one’s surprise when
someone regarded 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 re-
gional dialect of German: this is considered highly comical, indicating a strong
cognitive dissonance. In the case of Kiezdeutsch, a similar dissonance became
evident in a lot of the rejections of this vernacular as a dialect, and accordingly
of its speakers as German dialect speakers.
The debate initially centred on a linguistic description of Kiezdeutsch
as a dialect that was suggested in order to capture its status as a systematic and
integral part of German and part of a broader repertoire in its speakers, and its
structural and sociolinguistic parallels to traditional German dialects (cf.
Wiese 2009, Freywald et al. 2011, Wiese 2012; 2013). In accordance with
Rampton’s (2013) argument for a ‘reclaim’ of the English term “vernacular”,
German “Dialekt” also contributes to
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‘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 nor-
mative 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, such as Austria (Wiener
Zeitung, Der Standard), the UK (The Economist), and Turkey (Hürriyet, Milli-
yet, Radikal).
Similarly to what Pooley (2008) reports for France, 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 fol-
lowing quote, taken from a guest article in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (a
large national newspaper) by a professor for linguistics and German as a for-
eign language:
(3) “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
13
error analysis.” (H. Glück, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 4th,
2012)
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
enjoy. 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 ‘genuine’ 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 participating in a “complaint tradition” in
the sense of Milroy & Milroy (1999), where it fitted well into purist and exclu-
sionary attitudes towards German. It also entered educational domains: among
others, it was quoted in full in a widely used school book for upper schools (~
A levels), as a linguistic discussion of Kiezdeutsch.7 In contrast to this, a press
release by the German Linguistics Association, DGfS, around the same time,8
which emphasised that linguistic varieties/styles 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.
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3. Voices of outrage: corpus data from the public debate on
Kiezdeutsch
For my investigation into this debate, I will use as an empirical basis
KiDKo/E, a corpus that is accessible as a supplement to the “KiezDeutsch-
Korpus” (KiDKo) which assembles linguistically annotated, transcribed re-
cordings of spontaneous peer-group conversations among adolescents in urban
neighbourhoods. While KiDKo itself thus captures natural speech data,
KiDKo/E provides data on linguistic attitudes. In the present section, I intro-
duce this corpus and then briefly describe the methodology used for analysing
the corpus data.
3.1 KiDKo/E
KiDKo/E assembles two kinds of reactions to media reports on Kiezdeutsch:
(1) 76 emails that were sent to me after such reports, and (2) 1,367 postings on
the respective media websites. The data has been anonymised, edited, and im-
plemented into a searchable corpus format, and is generally accessible for re-
search purposes via the corpus website (http://www.kiezdeutschkorpus.de).
The emails cover data since May 2009 that clustered in two main
waves. The first wave, with 25 emails, in May/June 2009 was probably trig-
gered by a report on a German website coming from the extreme right, “pi-
news” (‘politically incorrect news’),9 after a talk I gave on Kiezdeutsch at the
“Akademientag”, an annual public presentation of the German Academies of
Sciences. The second main wave, with 51 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.
15
The internet comments in the corpus were obtained from the article on
“pi-news” from May 2009, and from media websites during the period of Jan-
uary 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
period 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
a cross-section of media, as listed in Table 1.
Target audience Format Sources # of Comments
general audience /
national news
print FAZ, Focus, Süddeutsche Zeitung,
The Economist
175
internet-based SPIEGEL online 18
TV Tagesschau 44
general audience /
regional dailies
print Der Westen, Mitteldeutsche Zeitung,
Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitung
46
internet-based Rheinische Post/rp-online 33
general audience /
tabloids
print Die Welt, Berliner Kurier, BILD 191
internet-based shortnews 59
university students internet-based UniSPIEGEL 287
Turkish-German
community
print Deutsch-türkische Nachrichten 41
“language guardians” print Deutsche Sprachwelt 164
right-fringe groups print Deutschland-Echo 21
internet-based pi-news 288
Table 1: Characteristics of media sources in KiKDo/E
In comparison to data from media reports proper, which are frequently a focus
in discourse studies, the data that this corpus provides is more informal and
less controlled. It offers expressions of opinions that did not undergo external
16
editing except, in the case of comments (in contrast to emails), for that im-
posed by the site owners: some of the postings where blocked by moderators,
presumably because of too-drastically xenophobe contents, as some of the
postings complaining about such blockings suggest.
In addition to a much lesser degree of external editing, we can also ex-
pect less self-editing by the writers. Most of the emails were sent anonymous-
ly, and comments are usually posted under nicknames, which can be used ex-
pressively to support certain social roles (cf. Lindholm 2009), but typically do
not reveal the poster’s identity. As a result, authors of emails and readers’
comments 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. And while news reports usually adopt a neutral hab-
itus, with evaluations tending to be more oblique, emails and readers’ com-
ments are typically overtly evaluative; they express opinions and pass judg-
ments related to a report on a particular event.
Particularly in the case of readers’ comments, this can lead to interac-
tive communications, with posters responding to each other’s comments. This
makes readers’ comments somewhat similar to focus group discussions that
are often used to investigate linguistic attitudes: like them, they are fairly in-
formal, without an assigned leader, are centred around a certain theme, and can
go in different directions as the discussion proceeds. And like focus group dis-
cussions, they have an additional audience outside the group. However, in the
case of readers’ comments, the latter plays a much stronger role: all postings
are open to the general public, hence although posters might react to somebody
17
else’s comment, that person will not be their sole addressee. Accordingly,
posters will also be much more likely to ignore previous comments and/or start
a new thread, something reinforced by the fact that, unlike in focus groups,
speakers are anonymous and usually not known to each other.
Email communication can be interactive as well, and in general it tends
to be so, but in the case of unsolicited hate mail, emails often remain one-
sided, and this is also true for such instances in the corpus data: those emails
(unlike signed, non-aggressive ones) were not answered, but merely saved and
added to the corpus.
Table 2 gives an overview of the parallels and differences between
news reports in the media and the two kinds of data used here: readers’ com-
ments and direct ad personam emails.
news reports online comments direct emails
visibility / realm public public private
audience public public + other posters individual recipient
author’s identity open nickname anonymous or signed
external editing systematic minimal none
stance neutral habitus overtly evaluative overtly evaluative
participation unilateral often interactive can be interactive
Table 2: Comparison of news reports and KiKDo/E data types
As this overview indicates, we can expect less social control, less editing, and
thus a more direct expression of attitudes when we go from left to right in the
table. This comparative directness in readers’ comments and, even more pro-
nounced, in emails gives us a special means of access to opinions and senti-
ments elicited in the discussion of language-related topics.
18
However, an important aspect we have to keep in mind with this kind
of data is that the advantage 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 – which, of
course, is true for media reports as well. 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 medium does not describe all of the
users posting comments there. So, in the case of pi-news, for instance, there
were several comments posted by people who were in opposition to the web-
site and criticised its right-wing and often racist agenda. In a different venue,
the discussion of the Economist article was not exclusively British, but also
involved writers who identified themselves as being from Germany.
3.2 Some notes on methodology
In order to analyse the discourse patterns that emerge from the KiDKo/E data,
I will first identify key topoi in the debate and then analyse narrative structures
in the debate that provide the integration for these topoi.
In this enterprise, I take a broad view of ‘discourse’ which encom-
passes practices in social and linguistic interaction that are driven by negotiat-
ing an overarching topic that is under (usually controversial) discussion. This
view accords, for instance, with Reisigl & Wodak (2009:89) who define ‘dis-
course’ as “a cluster of context-dependent semiotic practices that are situated
within specific fields of social action”, that are “related to a macro topic” and
“linked to the argumentation about validity claims”. As such, discourse re-
flects, involves, and (re-)constructs interpretations and evaluations of social
19
and cultural reality (cf. Jäger 2004). As part of a discourse, different discourse
strands centre on specific themes under the umbrella of the macro topic. These
strands can be overlapping and are often interlinked with each other.
“Topoi” in the sense I am going to use here, are related to the main dis-
course topic and subsumed under it. They are argumentative motifs that repre-
sent recurring, often dominant claims in a discourse. Typically, they have a
conditional or causal structure, which will not necessarily be explicit, but can
show in rephrasing (e.g., in the form “If someone speaks like this, s/he …”)
(cf. Reisigl & Wodak 2009).
In order to identify such topics and narrative structures, I followed a
procedure similar to thematic analysis (e.g., Agar 1983, Woolard 1989). Start-
ing with a careful reading of the corpus material as a whole, I did a content
analysis to identify recurring themes. In the next step, these themes were man-
ually coded for all corpus entries. On this basis, I identified the key topoi for
this discourse as those that occurred most frequently over the different post-
ings and emails.
4 Four central topoi
In the present section, I present the general picture manifested in Germany’s
public debate on Kiezdeutsch and then examine key topoi revealed in com-
ments on media websites and in emails.
4.1 Negative vs. positive postings
In order to pick up the general atmosphere of the debate, I coded, in addition to
the coding of recurring themes, all individual corpus entries as negative versus
neutral or positive. A posting was coded as “negative” if it contained an ex-
plicit or implicit devaluation of the way of speaking under discussion – be it
20
referred to as “Kiezdeutsch”, by other labels, or via language examples –
and/or its speakers. It was coded as “neutral/positive” if the poster did not con-
tain such a devaluation or even took an explicit stand against it. Although such
data can give us only an indirect route to negative language attitudes (cf. Gar-
rett et al. 2003, Garrett 2010), it indicates the general tendency of the debate.
This tendency was predominantly negative: altogether, the proportion of posi-
tive postings was only 8.7%, with none in the emails of the first wave: these
emails would mostly qualify as “hate mail”, with strong aggressive under-
tones, including insults and some personal threats, while the ones from the
second wave cover a broader spectrum, with about a quarter of them (12 out of
51) including positive evaluations, supportive episodic data from the senders’
own experiences in working with adolescents in urban neighbourhoods, or
questions about dialects and language variation.
The following quotes give examples for neutral or positive comments
[here and in what follows, in the case of comments I give the media sources
where the comments were posted, 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)]:
(4) “Kiezdeutsch is totally unproblematic. Bavarians, South Germans, and
Swiss speak a dialect, too, and nevertheless write in correct German.”
pi-news, 05/26/2009
(5) “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, 27/03/2012
21
As these quotes illustrate, in such comments speakers often express a contrast
between ‘correct’ or ‘sensible’ German and other ways of speaking which are
downgraded in comparison, a difference in evaluation that they share with
negative comments.
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 that relate to the cross-
national picture sketched in the introduction:
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.
In addition to these four main topoi, there were a number of other topoi that
did not appear with a high frequency and have not been taken into account in
the current study, but might be interesting for further investigations. Table 3
lists some examples.
Topos # of instances
complaints about nonstandard language use in other areas 21
complaints about the use of English loan words into German 10
complaints about changes in the spelling system 4
“leftist indoctrination”: claims that regarding Kiezdeutsch as
a part of the German dialect landscape …
… is characteristic for “Gutmenschen”
(lit. ‘good-people’, a pejorative term implying mis-
guidedness and naïvety)9
18
… amounts to leftist propaganda 14
… amounts to Orwellian thought control 3
Table 3: Some minor topoi in KiKDo/E
22
In some cases, additional topoi appeared as the discussion in a particular venue
developed in further directions, for instance on the website of The Economist,
the discussion at one point moved to general cultural ‘assimilation’ (including
choice of TV programs), and to heritage language programs at schools and
bilingual education.
T four key topoi identified from the corpus data 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 so-
cial and societal integration.
The following quotes illustrate the combination of the four different
topoi identified here:
(6) “This is not a dialect, but simply the unwillingness to integrate or (even
worse) laziness to learn one’s own language properly.” Bild, 17/02/2012
(7) “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) adoles-
cent 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, 29/02/2012
The contrast constructed in the email between “migrants” and “German-
background” adolescents, and the depiction of “Germans adjusting to an Arab-
23
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 5.2). The alloethnic construction of
Kiezdeutsch speakers as ‘foreigners’ or ‘migrants’ can also account for some
parallels with the public debate on immigration in Germany: Wengeler (2003),
for instance, identifies a central topos of assimilation / conformation (“Anpas-
sungstopos”) for that debate, Geisen (2010) analyses integration as a political
‘leitmotif’, providing a close fit for the second topoi pair in the Kiezdeutsch
debate. In what follows, let us now have a closer look at the data on the four
main topoi.
4.2 ‘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 emails, where they make up 44.1%
of the messages, and in tabloids (33.2% of tabloid postings).
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 set
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.
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. (8)) gives an illustration:
24
(8) “to call these gutter sentences a new dialect is an insult to the German
language without parallel.” shortnews, 09/02/2012
In order to refute such a ‘dialect’ characterisation, some posters relate to lin-
guistic 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 (cf. Bourdieu 1982:51 on the use of terms like “jargon”
and “petit-nègre” in linguistic devaluation – translated as “slang” and “pidgin”
in the 1992 English edition).
Besides lack of competence, the reasons posters allege for the use of
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’, with its “Hochsprache”
‘high/exalted language’ association. 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 ap-
propriately ‘High Language’.
4.3 ‘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,
25
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.
A recurrent assumption is that the use of Kiezdeutsch is an indication
for either speakers’ inability or their unwillingness to integrate in the majority
society. In the second case, Kiezdeutsch appears as a rejection of ‘High Ger-
man’ 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.
(9) gives an illustration with a posting to The Economist (the poster is
probably of US background) that links this putative unwillingness to integrate
with ethnic and religious devaluations:
(9) “I guess that this ‘Turkish phenomenon’ in Germany has something to
do with either a fanatic Turkish nationalism or with their self-detaching
Islam religion, which often forbids that their children visit and play with
‘infidels’ (non-Muslim children) after school. However, either explana-
tion is dangerous for the cohesion and solidarity needed in any nation-
state.” The Economist, 12/02/2012
A narrative showing up repeatedly in this context is that there might be a plan
to teach Kiezdeutsch at schools (similar to some media representations of the
Ann Arbor case on AAVE, cf. Labov 1982:194), which one should battle in
order to defend educational and linguistic standards.
26
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 widespread ‘us’/‘them’-dichotomies. These dichot-
omies feed into an underlying narrative that brings together the four topoi
identified here.
5 Who owns a “Dialekt”?
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the debate investigated here is the way
in which it reveals a key narrative on what it means to ‘speak German’ and to
own a German “Dialekt” – a narrative that targets concepts of standard lan-
guage, dialect, and their speakers, and sheds a special light on the complex
relationship between language and identity and on the projection of social de-
liminations onto the linguistic plane.
5.1 ‘High German’ and its dialects
The construction of standard German as “Hochdeutsch” ‘High German’, and
an elevated “Hochsprache” ‘high/elevated language’ that I mentioned in the
background section above (Section 2.2) feeds into the debate on Kiezdeutsch
by providing a marked contrast for it, and by doing so, links up social and lin-
guistic dichotomies. In the corpus, we find frequent references to “Hoch-
deutsch” where it serves as a characterisation of what Kiezdeutsch is not, both
at the level of language varieties 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 ‘Ger-
man’.
27
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. 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
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.11 Accordingly, linguistic change is regarded as a threat to those who own
this capital, as is grouping “Hochdeutsch” with other varieties of German,
which would challenge its superior status.
The contrast of this elevated language form to nonstandard forms links
up with the topoi set of ‘Broken German’ and ‘Language Decay’, and subse-
quent themes of educational failure, unemployment, and welfare costs, and
with characterisations of Kiezdeutsch as reduced and primitive. The following
post to a tabloid relates the rejection of Kiezdeutsch to putative indignations
28
by Goethe and Schiller, two classical authors popularly regarded as something
like high guardians of German culture and ‘proper’ language:
(10) “That is not a dialect, but rather the dissolution of our German language.
Goethe and Schiller would turn in their graves.” Die Welt, 13/02/2012
The cultural refinement associated with “Hochdeutsch” expands to the cogni-
tive domain, where this more complex and refined form of language is regard-
ed 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.
The concept of “Dialekt” described in the background section allows
posters to associate this view of “Hochdeutsch” with German dialects without
including Kiezdeutsch here: a “Dialekt” is described as something that serves
as a foundation for “Hochdeutsch”, is used alongside “Hochdeutsch” by its
speakers, has a long history in German, and is part of German folk culture. In
contrast to this, Kiezdeutsch is then constructed as being outside such a cul-
ture: it is not part of German since it does not look back at a long history, has
not contributed to the rise of “Hochdeutsch”, and is old only in the sense of
reflecting a more primitive stage of language (the ‘Stone Age’ theme), and will
thus not be part of a repertoire that encompasses “Hochdeutsch”, but instead
causes ‘semilingualism’.
This contrasts sharply with the opposite judgment of such varieties as
Texas German (mentioned in the background section), which developed out-
side Germany and did not provide a basis for “Hochdeutsch” either. Hence,
while posters frequently require a “Dialekt” to be part of the historical founda-
tion for “Hochdeutsch” when denying Kiezdeutsch this status, this does not
29
seem to be at the core of the rejection. Rather, the key element seems to be a
perceived belonging to a German in-group involving, as mentioned above, a
ius sanguinis perspective that includes speakers of, e.g., Texas German, but
excludes Kiezdeutsch speakers.
The following quotes illustrate this line of reasoning and demonstrate
the ethnicisation and ousting of Kiezdeutsch that is associated with this:
(11) “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
(12) “I thought I did not hear properly how you paid homage to this gobble-
dygook, ennobled this babble and actually acknowledged it as kin to the
German language. One can certainly fetch goats from the mountains in
Anatolia with it or park camels in Arabia. But calling this a German dia-
lect I find totally absurd!” Email, 21/02/2012
The construction of German dialects and of standard German as “Hoch-
deutsch” we find in the debate hence interacts closely with ‘us’/‘them’-
dichotomies deliminating members of a perceived in-group from speakers of
Kiezdeutsch.
5.2 ‘us’/‘them’-dichotomies
The relevant dichotomies operate at two levels: (1) at a general level of social
strata, where Kiezdeutsch speakers are constructed as socially inferior, belong-
ing to a lower social class, and (2) at more specific levels of ‘ethnicity’, where
they are constructed as belonging to an alloethnic out-group. At both levels,
30
Kiezdeutsch is pushed to a realm of Otherness and indexically associated with
speakers that are perceived as inferior. This social exclusion is widespread in
the corpus data, with 17.5% of the postings overall including explicit charac-
terisations falling into this semiotic domain. The following quotes give exam-
ples from comments to German and UK national news and a tabloid:
(13) “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 ap-
pearances (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, 12/02/2012
(14) “If a language gets corrupted by incorporating a host of foreign words it
can hardly be called ‘dialect’. Fact is that this ‘Kiez’patois is predomi-
nantly used in a low class environment, and if mainstream teenagers find
it fashionable they will latest wake up at their first job interview.”
The Economist, 13/02/2012
(15) “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
As these examples from different domains illustrate, the dichotomy that is
constructed here is evident across sub-corpora, with particularly high num-
bers in emails (in 36.8% of the messages), comments to tabloids (24.8% of
tabloid postings), and comments to right-fringe media (21.4%). Interestingly,
31
we also find reference to this dichotomy in positive postings. The following
quote from an email gives an example where this is ironically broken:
(16) “I find it almost sensational that it should be linguistics, of all disci-
plines, 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 debates in France, Sweden, and the
UK (cf. Pooley 2008, Milani 2010, Kerswill 2014, respectively).
In a number of cases, the social ousting of Kiezdeutsch speakers is re-
inforced by posters expressing strong emotional and physical responses of
social aversion, 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, but also in
some of the postings to media sites, such “Kiezdeutsch” usage allows the post-
ers to break linguistic taboos and use violent threats, insults, and slurs (e.g.,
‘bitch’, ‘pussy’, ‘old shit’, ‘I fuck you, slut’, ‘Piss off, or I put you into hospi-
tal’). (17) and (18) give illustrations from an email and a posting to a regional
newspaper:
32
(17) “Ey, are ya fucking handicapped? Kanaksprak is so not cool, cos get you
no real job, ya know? Ey, know-whadda-mean? Only real gay professor
title for social-fuck-thing like you! But what the shit, tax potato
[“Kartoffel” ‘potato’ ~ derogatory term for Germans] will pay for it! Ey,
fuckya and kind greetings, [name]” Email, 29/02/2012
(18) “Ya know, that bitch Heike understands concretely … :-)”
Der Westen, 29/01/2012
These appropriations of “Kiezdeutsch” constitute a special case of “crossing”
(cf. Rampton 1995): in this case, posters use the voice of a fabricated ‘Other’
in order to behave in a way that would usually be taboo, thus emphasising the
construction of this ‘Other’ as outside the boundaries of their social group.
In line with this social demarcation of Kiezdeutsch speakers, the re-
gional association of traditional German dialects is often contrasted with a
locus for Kiezdeutsch that is identified not as a particular geographical region,
but rather as generally areas with a low social status. In the following quote,
this is combined with an alloethnic characterisation of Kiezdeutsch as “Turks’
German”:
(19) “Dialects are characterised by the fact that they are spoken in particular
regions. Turks’ German, euphemised as ‘Kiezdeutsch’, however, is spo-
ken in run-down areas where education and the ability to integrate are
slight.” UniSPIEGEL, 29/03/2012
The ethnic dichothomy that is also involved here, is a recurring theme in the
data. Speech communities supporting Kiezdeutsch undergo an alloethnic rein-
terpretation, with speakers constructed as ‘foreigners’, ‘migrants’, or as be-
longing to specific non-German ethnicities. The construction of such ‘ethnic’
33
boundaries presumably further reinforces the themes of ‘aggression’ and ‘law-
breaking’ mentioned in connection with social dichotomies above: as, e.g.,
Jäger (2004) describes, in public discourse in Germany there is a strong asso-
ciation of ‘foreigners’ and immigration with criminality, with “Ausländerkrim-
inalität” ‘foreigner-delinquency’ a frequent buzzword.
In the corpus data, the alloethnic demarcation is used as a particularly
strong rejection of Kiezdeutsch as a dialect, overruling social demarcations, as
illustrated in the following posting to a regional newspaper:
(20) “Kiezdeutsch is not a dialect, it is not even proletarians’ German!
Something like that can at best be called Tarzan German.”
rp-online, 22/04/2012
The xenophobic undertones that are prevalent in this domain are particularly
visible in the labels promoted by posters in rejection of “Kiezdeutsch”, often
also involving ‘us’/‘them’-dichotomies targeting social class, such as “Turk-
prole dialect” (rp-online, 22/04/2012), “ghetto-style-migrant-German” (Bild,
17/02/2012), or “Kanak blathering” (Deutschland-Echo, 29/01/2012). The
following quote makes a causal connection between dialect ownership and the
affiliation to German ‘tribes/peoples’ (“Volksstämme”), from which
Kiezdeutsch speakers are excluded as Turks:
(21) “Bavarians and Swabians are German tribes and therefore have their
own dialect. Kiezdeutsch, better Turks’ German, stands for a lack of
willingness to integrate.” UniSPIEGEL, 29/03/2012
The (allo-)ethnic conceptualisation generally centres around Turkish, Arabic,
and Kurdish backgrounds – sometimes contrasted to Asians as ‘model minori-
ties’ – and is often associated religiously, with a negative view of Islam up to
34
islamophobia. The latter relates to a more general prejudice against Islam in
Germany: according to the most recent Religion Monitor survey of Bertels-
mann Foundation, ‘many Germans regard Islam […] as something foreign,
alien, and threatening’ (Pollack & Müller 2013: 60), with around half of the
respondents perceiving it as a threat, rather than an enrichment. (22) gives an
example for a statement that combines the rejection of Kiezdeutsch as a dialect
with a devaluation of Muslims:
(22) “This is quite simply not a dialect, but solely due to the inability of mus-
lims to learn the German language.” pi-news, 26/05/2009
A further ideological underpinning for the dichotomy observed here is the lin-
guistic exclusion of multilingual speakers from a “German” in-group, in par-
ticular of those with heritage languages that are assigned a low market value.
First, a ‘migrant background’ is seen as a basic obstacle to German compe-
tence, with assumptions of ‘double semilingualism’ pervasive in the public
debate, in education, and even in the medical sector,12 and a strong ideological
association of ‘migrant background’ with ‘in need of special language support’
(cf. Scarvaglieri & Zech 2013 for a functional-semantic analysis of “Migra-
tionshintergrund” ‘migrant background’ in German, and for corpus data on co-
occurrences with, among others, ‘support’ and ‘language support’).
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 term that marks them as a kind of Turks, ra-
35
ther than a kind of Germans, given that nominal compounds in German are
right-headed.13 This seems to be restricted to immigrants to Germany, and in
particular to those of Middle Eastern background, while, e.g., the term ‘Ger-
man Americans’ (“Deutschamerikaner”) is used to identify German immi-
grants to the US.
Taken together, the kind of exclusion evident in such patterns provides
an ideological reinforcement for the topoi on language and integration ob-
served in the corpus, feeding into a narrative that we can now identify as a
central theme in the devaluation of Kiezdeutsch: what counts as German, who
is a legitimate speaker of German and, crucially, of ‘High German’, what is,
accordingly, a German dialect and who owns it?
6. Conclusions
This study of a recent German debate indicates that the public discourse on
such new urban dialects as Kiezdeutsch provides us with a special window
into the way standard language ideologies interact with social dichotomies: the
overwhelmingly negative attitudes and ideologies evident in such discourse
link up constructions of standard and nonstandard language with particluar
deliminations of social in- and out-groups. In the case of Germany, the “Di-
alekt” framing of the debate on Kiezdeutsch that this paper focused on puts a
special spotlight on the dichotomies at work here.
As our investigation showed, demarcations involving social class, ‘eth-
nicity’, and religion feed into the construction of Kiezdeutsch speakers as
members of an alien out-group, and this exclusion closely interacts with a per-
spective on dialects that relates “Dialekt” ownership to perceived ethnic kin-
ship relations and claims them as the cultural and linguistic property of the
36
Dialects as a foundation
“German” in-group. Kiezdeutsch is marginalised as a negative counterpart to
such dialects, which are linked, as a historical and ‘folk cultural’ foundation, to
a standard variety that is perceived as a superior form of language, closely as-
sociated with positive values of cultural elevation and cultural unity.
Figure 1 summarises the overall picture that emerges here.
Figure 1: A standard language narrative on ‘Hochdeutsch’ vs. Kiezdeutsch
Kiezdeutsch on the one hand and “Hochdeutsch” and its dialects on the other
thus present themselves as two sides of a coin. They are linked in an argumen-
tative structure that crucially builds on a contrast of linguistic and social iden-
tity, a contrast that helps speakers who conceive of themselves as German ma-
jority speakers, to reaffirm a prestige that they might perceive as threatened by
multiethnic urban communities. To reject Kiezdeutsch as part of German can
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
37
then reflect a proxy racism: a projection of ‘ethnic’ and xenophobic demarca-
tions and exclusions onto the linguistic plane.
The “Dialekt” framing of the Kiezdeutsch debate in Germany put a
special spotlight onto this kind of proxy racism, but as the studies, e.g., on
“Rinkeby Swedish” and “Spanglish” discourse in Sweden and the US, respec-
tively, indicate, the German debate does not constitute a singular case (Stroud
2004, Zentella 2007). Language seems to be one of the final hide-outs where
openly racist remarks are still socially acceptable in modern society, and as
such, it is a very powerful domain for the construction of social out-groups.
Taking a professional responsibility of involvement as, e.g., suggested by
Labov (1982), seriously,14 as linguists we should contribute to exposing such
projections, not only in academic writing, but if possible also in public dis-
course and in such key domains as education and public policy.
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 previous versions of this article I thank Pia Quist, Ben Rampton, Jannis
Androutsopoulos, Paul Kerswill, Ray Jackendoff, Claudia Zech, Rebecca
Wheeler, Elizabeth Beloe, Jenny Cheshire, and two anonymous reviewers of
Language in Society. For input on different aspects of the topics presented here
I am grateful to audiences at the Sociolinguistics Symposium 19 (Berlin 2012),
38
ICLaVE 7 (Trondheim 2013), FGLS 11 (Cambridge, UK, 2014), GAL 2014
(Marburg), the conferences on Linguistic Constructions of Ethnic Borders (Vi-
adrina Frankfurt/Oder 2013) and Correctly Political (Hamburg 2014), and
invited talks at the universities of Freiburg, Stuttgart, HU Berlin, UT Austin,
UC Berkeley, Stockholm, Kiel, and Bielefeld.
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Notes
1 Cf. Jaspers (2008), Blommaert & Rampton (2011), Freywald et al. (2011). Cf. Quist (2008),
Wiese (2013) for a consolidation of different perspectives.
2 Cf. contributions in Quist & Svendsen (eds.) (2010), Källström & Lindberg (eds.) (2011),
Kern & Selting (eds.) (2011), Nortier & Sevendsen (eds.) (to appear).
3 For an overview of findings from different European countries, see Wiese (2014) and refer-
ences therein.
4 E.g., Kanak Sprak. 24 Mißtöne vom Rande der Gesellschaft. Berlin: Rotbuch, 1995.
5 Here and in what follows, examples from the German debate are translated by me into Eng-
lish, with the German originals provided in the appendix.
6 See: http://forum.vds-ev.de/viewtopic.php?TopicID=3510 (last accessed April 1st, 2014).
7 Themenheft “Sprache, Medien, Literatur”, Klett-Verlag 2013.
8 URL: https://dgfs.de/de/aktuelles/2012/erklaerung-der-dgfs-zu-sprachlichen-varianten.html
(last accessed April 4th, 2014)
9 URL: http://www.pi-news.net/2009/05/kanak-sprak-eine-spannende-bereicherung/#more-
62348 (last accessed March 28th, 2014). Some emails reference this website, and the authors of
the report included a link with my email address.
10 Cf. Reisigl & Wodak (2001) on the use of this term in right-wing political discourse.
11 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” in-
volved in speaking.
12 Cf. Wiese (2011), Wiese & Krämer (2013). E.g., a German hospital run by the Catholic
Caritas association offers logopedic support for multilingual 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, suggesting a pathological
view of phenomena like code switching.
13 This is reminiscent of the ius saguinis that was to some degree reflected in German citizen-
ship 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
46
obtain German citizenship. Yet, this legal possibility, which has since been significantly ex-
panded, does not seem to influence the general perception of who is ‘German’.
14 See also Wolfram (2008); cf. Maitz & Elspass (2011) for the case of Germany.
47
Appendix: German originals of the examples quoted in the text
(1) […] bedient sie sich des mittlerweile positiv besetzten Wortes „Kiez“
(Stadtteil) und schafft damit eine angenehme Grundstimmung, die mit dem
Wort „Kanaksprak“ kaum möglich ist.
(“Stammeldeutsch als Errungenschaft? Sprachwissenschaftler bewundern eine
Fehlentwicklung unserer Sprache”)
(2) Sie nennen es „Kiezdeutsch“ und sprechen von einem Dialekt. Aber wür-
den Mittelschichtskinder das nicht als „Türkensprache“ bezeichnen?
(3) Frau Wiese kapert den Terminus “Dialekt” für eine jugendliche Sprech-
weise, in der Angeberei eine große Rolle spielt. Warum? Sie möchte an sei-
nem Prestige schnorren, denn Dialekte genießen Ansehen. […] “Kiezdeutsch”
aber ist weder ein Dialekt noch ein Soziolekt, sondern eine transitorische Son-
dersprache, die auf Einflüssen anderer Sprachen und auf Fehlern im Deutschen
beruht. […] Es ist kein Fall für die Dialektologie, sondern für die Sprachpsy-
chologie und die Fehleranalyse.
(“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’])
(4) Kiezdeutsch ist völlig unproblematisch. Bayern, Süddeutsche, und Schwei-
zer reden auch Dialekt und schreiben dennoch richtiges Deutsch.
48
(5) auch zu meiner Schulzeit in den 50ern wurde auf dem Schulhof schon "ap-
peldwatsch" geschnackt. Solange die Lehrer und das Elternhaus ein vernünfti-
ges Deutsch vermitteln, hat es nicht geschadet.
(6) Das ist kein Dialekt, sondern lediglich die Unlust sich zu integrieren oder
(noch schlimmer) die Faulheit die eigene Sprache richtig zu lernen.
(7) Dieses Assigestammel als Sprache zu bezeichnen ist eine absolute Disqua-
lifikation als Wissenschaftler […]. Ich habe beruflich sehr viel mit (gestrau-
chelten) jugendlichen Migranten und auch deutschstämmigen Jugendlichen 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.
(8) diese Gossensätze als neuen Dialekt zu bezeichnen ist eine Beleidigung der
deutschen Sprache ohne gleichen
(10) Das ist kein Dialekt sondern der Zerfall unsere Deutschen Sprache.
Goethe und Schiller würden sich im Grabe umdrehen.
(11) 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...
49
sich mit Ihnen auf hochdeutsch mit dem entsprechenden Akzent unterhalten
kann, können dies die "Kanak-Sprak"-Artisten nicht
(12) Ich dachte ich höre nicht richtig, wie Sie diesem Kauderwelsch huldigten,
dieses Gebrabbel adelten und es tatsächlich der deutschen Sprache anverwandt
anerkannten. Sicher kann man damit in Anatolien Ziegen vom Berg holen oder
in Arabien Kamele einparken. Dieses aber einen deutschen Dialekt zu nennen
halte ich für völlig abwegig!
(13) 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.
(15) 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
(16) Dass ausgerechnet Sprachwissenschaft meine Sicht auf die jungen Leute,
die immer ausspucken müssen, verändert, finde ich beinahe sensationell.
(17) Ey, bissu voll krass behindert? Kanaksprak is voll nich cool, weil kriegst
du keine richtige Job, weisdu? Ey, weis-wie-isch-mein? Höchstens voll schwu-
50
le Professorentitel für Sozialfickdings, wie Du! Aber scheißegal, zahlt ja Steu-
erkartoffel! Ey figgdisch und schöne Grüße,
(18) Weischt du, das Bitch Heike versteht konkret... :-)
(19) Dialekte zeichnen sich dadurch aus, dass sie in bestimmten Regionen ge-
sprochen werden. Das als "Kiezdeutsch" verharmloste Türkendeutsch wird
dagegen in heruntergekommen Gegenden gesprochen, wo die Bildung und die
Integrationsfähigkeit gering sind.
(20) Kiezdeutsch ist kein Dialekt,es ist noch nicht mal Proletendeutsch! Sowas
nennt man höchstens Tarzandeutsch.
(21) Die Schwaben und Bayern sind deutsche Volksstämme und haben des-
halb ihren eigenen Dialekt. Kiezdeutsch, besser wäre Türkendeutsch, steht für
mangelnde Integrationsbereitschaft
(22) Das ist schlicht und ergreifend kein Dialekt sondern einzig und allein der
unfähig der Muslime geschuldet die deutsche Sprache zu erlernen.
