Social meaning of lexical and grammatical features in Namibian German: An addressee identification study

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BACKGROUND
Social meaning
•Lexical & phonetic features highly salient in perception &
social meaning (Trudgill, 1986; Labov, 2001; Smith & Durham 2019)
•Grammatical features usually less salient (King et al. 2004;
Meyerhoff & Walker, 2013, but see Levon & Buchstaller, 2015; Moore, 2021)
German in Namibia
•App. 20,000 speakers of minority German
•Vital speech community: language use in formal & informal
communicative situations
•Speakers show register differentiation & awareness (Wiese &
Bracke, 2021; Sauermann et al., 2023)
METHODS
Stimuli
•Three audio stimuli with descriptions of accident (same
speaker):
•DE-Standard :Canonical standard German from Germany
•NAM-lex: 4 Namibia-specific lexical items (Trolley,
Phone, paniken, oreit)
•NAM-gram: 4 Namibia-specific grammatical patterns
(spät sein, weh kriegen, Matrix clause with verb-second
after negation, and verb-third)
•Male & female German speaker from Namibia
Participants and procedure
•32 adult speakers of Namibian German using IbexFarm
•Listened to WhatsApp messages (3 * 2 times):
•Rating task (identify addressee) on a scale from 1
(friend) to 9 (teacher) -> quantitative results
•Explanation of decision -> qualitative results
STATISTICS
Cumulative Link Mixed Model
•Sliding contrast with DE-Standard vs. NAM-gram & NAM-gram vs.
NAM-lex; sum contrast for female vs. male speaker
•Formula: rating ~ condition *speaker_gender + (1|participant)
•Coefficients:
Social meaning of lexical and grammatical
features in Namibian German:
An addressee identification study
Britta Schulte, HU Berlin, Antje Sauermann, HU Berlin, Heike Wiese, HU
Berlin
QUANTITATIVE RESULTS
QUALITATIVE RESULTS
Categories of participant comments
RESEARCH QUESTION
Are Namibia-specific features of German associated with
informal registers? How do lexical vs. grammatical features
impact the perception of addressees?
CONCLUSIONS
Fig. 2: Participants answers by frequency (font size) and category (color) per condition
Estimate
Error
z value
Pr(>|z|)
DE
-Stand vs. NAM-gram
3.8124
0.6870
5
.549
<.0001
***
NAM
-gram vs. NAM-lex
5.2908
0.9897
5.346
<.0001
***
ME
gender -
0.1104
0.4472
0.247
.8050
DE
-Stand : male
0.9946
0.9335
1.065
.2867
NAM
-gram: male -
1.9495
0.9564
-
2.038
.0415
*
•DE-Standard > NAM-gram > NAM-lex → Significant differences between DE-Standard &NAM-gram and NAM-gram &
NAM-lex
•NAM-gram intermediate position between NAM-lex and DE-Standard
***
***
Fig. 1: Violin plots with means and error bars of participants responses on a scale from 1 (friend) to 9 (teacher) by condition.
DE-Standard NAM-gram NAM-lex
•Namibian German lexical & grammatical features : grammatical
features intermediate position between Germany German
Standard and lexical features
•Social meaning & grammatical features: data supports a
difference between lexical vs. grammatical features (e.g., Labov,
2001; Smith & Durham, 2019)
•also supports Levon & Buchstaller (2015) & Moore (2021) ->
grammatical features carry social meaning, but not to the
same degree as lexical features
•Gender & grammatical features: male speaker more strongly
associated with informality & positive evaluations in line with
previous research (e.g., Meyerhoff, 2014)
Literature
King, R., Nadasdi, T., & Butler, G. R. (2004). First-person plural in Prince Edward Island Acadian French: The fate of the vernacular variant
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Labov, W. (2001). Principles of linguistic change: Volumne 2: Social factors. Language in society: Vol. 2. Blackwell.
Levon, E., Buchstaller, I., & Mearns, A. (2020). Towards an Integrated Model of Perception: Linguistic Architecture and the Dynamics of
Sociolinguistic Cognition. In K. V. Beaman, I. Buchstaller, S. Fox, & J. A. Walker (Eds.), Routledge studies in sociolinguistics. Advancing socio-
grammatical variation and change: In honour of Jenny Cheshire. Routledge.
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Meyerhoff, M., & Walker, J. A. (2013). An existential problem: The sociolinguistic monitor and variation in existential constructions on Bequia
(St. Vincent and the Grenadines). Language in Society, 42(4), 407–428.
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honour of Jenny Cheshire. Routledge.
Sauermann, A., Schulte, B., & Wiese, H. (2023). Sprachkontakt in Namibia: Registerdifferenzierung im Namdeutschen. In B. Hans-Bianchi & B.
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Trudgill, P. (1986). Dialects in contact: Language in society: Vol. 10. Language in society: Vol. 10. Blackwell.
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(Proceedings German Abroad 3) (pp. 273–293). Narr.
→Significant interaction between NAM-gram and speaker gender:
male speaker (mean 4.25) rated significantly lower than female
speaker (mean 5.06)
Language
properties Evaluation
(language)
Evaluation
(speaker) Formality Addressee Identity
•Standard German (Germany): strongly associated with formal registers, `standard’ & out-group usage
•Namibia-specific lexical features: strongly associated with informal registers & in-group usage
•NAM-gram: associated with both formal & informal, in- & out-group; no perceived grammatical features
•Male speaker more strongly associated with informal registers & friendliness
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