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Travel guides and travel reports constitute an important source for the generation and spread of popular geopolitical epistemes and assumptions. With regard to colonial attitudes and their possible perpetuation, it is therefore of great interest what kind of information such texts convey regarding (post)colonial places, and how they contextualize it. The paper compares descriptions of Qingdao (Tsingtau), a German colonized territory between 1897 and 1914, in travel guides and related material from colonial and postcolonial times and in different European languages. It investigates what differences can be found between these descriptions in relation to time, language, and medium (print or online) of publication. Of particular interest is the question whether, and in what ways, colonial perspectives are perpetuated in present-day (especially German) travel literature.
Canadian heritage German across three generations: A diary-based study of language shift in action
(2019)
It is well known that migration has an effect on language use and language choice. If the language of origin is maintained after migration, it tends to change in the new contact setting. Often, migrants shift to the new majority language within few generations. The current paper examines a diary corpus containing data from three generations of one German-Canadian family, ranging from 1867 to 1909, and covering the second to fourth generation after immigration. The paper analyzes changes that can be observed between the generations, with respect to the language system as well as to the individuals’ decision on language choice. The data not only offer insight into the dynamics of acquiring a written register of a heritage language, and the eventual shift to the majority language. They also allow us to identify different linguistic profiles of heritage speakers within one community. It is discussed how these profiles can be linked to the individuals’ family backgrounds and how the combination of these backgrounds may have contributed to giving up the heritage language in favor of the majority language.
The book investigates the diachronic dimension of contact-induced language change based on empirical data from Pennsylvania German (PG), a variety of German in long-term contact with English. Written data published in local print media from Pennsylvania (USA) between 1868 and 1992 are analyzed with respect to semantic changes in the argument structure of verbs, the use of impersonal constructions, word order changes in subordinate clauses and in prepositional phrase constructions.
The research objective is to trace language change based on diachronic empirical data, and to assess whether existing models of language contact make provisions to cover the long-term developments found in PG. The focus of the study is thus twofold: first, it provides a detailed analysis of selected semantic and syntactic changes in Pennsylvania German, and second, it links the empirical findings to theoretical approaches to language contact.
Previous investigations of PG have drawn a more or less static, rather than dynamic, picture of this contact variety. The present study explores how the dynamics of language contact can bring about language mixing, borrowing, and, eventually, language change, taking into account psycholinguistic processes in (the head of) the bilingual speaker.
By way of migration, large numbers of German-speaking settlers arrived in Pennsylvania between roughly 1700 and 1750. Pennsylvania German, as a distinct variety, developed through levelling processes from L1 varieties of these migrants who came mainly from the southwestern regions of the German speaking area. Pennsylvania German is still spoken today by specific religious groups (primarily Amish and Menonnite groups) for many of whom it is an identity marker. My paper focuses on those Pennsylvania Germans who are not part of these religious groups but have the same migration history. Due to their being closer to the cultural values of American mainstream society, they were integrated into it, and during the 20th century their use of Pennsylvania German was continually diminishing. A revival of this heritage language has occurred over the past c. three decades, including language courses offered at community colleges, public libraries, etc., where ethnic Pennsylvania Germans wish to (re-)learn the language of their grandparents. Written Pennsylvania German data from four points in time between the 1860s and the 1990s were analysed in this study. Based on these linguistic analyses, differences between the data sets are shown that point towards a diachronic change in the language contact situation of Pennsylvania German speakers. Sociolinguistic and extralinguistic factors are considered that influence the role of PG and make their speakers heritage speakers much in the sense of recent immigrant heritage speakers, although delayed by 200 years.
Colonial studies
(2019)
Sprache ist ein zentraler Bestandteil menschlicher Kommunikation und dient, neben anderen Funktionen, der Etablierung und Gestaltung sozialer Beziehungen, dem Ausdruck von Macht, von Gruppenzugehörigkeit und Identität, aber auch von Ab- und Ausgrenzung, im Privaten wie im Öffentlichen und Politischen. In diesem Beitrag wird der Blick auf den Umgang mit Sprache im deutsch-kolonialen Kontext gerichtet: Es geht darum, wir durch Vorgaben zum Gebrauch von Sprache(n) und deren variable Umsatzung vor Ort das Deutsche Kaiserreich als Kolonialmacht in den Kolonialgebieten in Ozeanien präsent war und repräsentiert wurde.
Zwischen 1884 und 1914 standen verschiedene Regionen Afrikas und des Pazifiks unter der Kolonialherrschaft des deutschen Kaiserreichs. Teil dieses kolonialen Herrschaftsanspruches war es, Deutsch als Sprache der allgemeinen Kommunikation einzuführen. Um Deutschkenntnisse zu vermitteln, gab es gesetzliche Vorgaben, die den Umfang des Deutschunterrichts in den Schulen näher bestimmten.
Is it possible to undo or reverse language attrition? In other words, has there been, in the case of attrition, a permanent change with respect to the speaker's L1 knowledge, or do we only see temporary effects on the control of that knowledge? It is proposed here that the concept of attrition should include the temporary loss of language skills since it is, so far, not clear whether or to what extent once-acquired linguistic abilities can be permanently lost at all, particularly with respect to an L1. A reversal in the development of attrition after renewed contact with the L1 can support the claim that a decrease in L1 proficiency can be TEMPORARY, and that it is the ACCESSIBILITY of items and structures that is affected by attrition rather than the L1 knowledge (competence) itself. Our primary research interest in the present study is to analyze what skills and features are recoverable and what phenomena persist, (possibly) indicating permanent loss.