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As immigration and mobility increases, so do interactions between people from different linguistic backgrounds. Yet while linguistic diversity offers many benefits, it also comes with a number of challenges. In seven empirical articles and one commentary, this Special Issue addresses some of the most significant language challenges facing researchers in the 21st century: the power language has to form and perpetuate stereotypes, the contribution language makes to intersectional identities, and the role of language in shaping intergroup relations. By presenting work that aims to shed light on some of these issues, the goal of this Special Issue is to (a) highlight language as integral to social processes and (b) inspire researchers to address the challenges we face. To keep pace with the world’s constantly evolving linguistic landscape, it is essential that we make progress toward harnessing language’s power in ways that benefit 21st century globalized societies.
This article examines the language contact situation as well as the language attitudes of the Caucasian Germans, descendants of German-born inhabitants of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union who emigrated in 1816/17 to areas of Transcaucasia. After deportations and migrations, the group of Caucasian Germans now consists of those who have since emigrated to Germany and those who still live in the South Caucasus. It’s the first time that sociolinguistic methods have been used to record data from the generation who experienced living in the South Caucasus and in Germany as well as from two succeeding generations. Initial results will be presented below with a focus on the language contact constellations of German varieties as well as on consequences of language contact and language repression, which both affect language attitudes.
Positioning analysis, a variant of discourse analysis, was used to explore the narratives of 40 psychiatric patients (11 females and 29 males; mean age = 40 years) who had manifest difficulties with engagement with statutory mental health services. Positioning analysis is a qualitative method that captures how people linguistically position the roles and identities of themselves and others in their day-to-day lives and narratives. The language of disengagement incorporated the passive positioning of self in relation to their lives and treatment through the use of metaphor, the passive voice and them and us attribution, while the discourse of engagement incorporated more active positioning of self, achieved through the use of the personal pronoun we and metaphoric references to balanced relationships. The findings corroborate previous thematic analysis that highlighted the importance of identity and agency in the ‘making or breaking’ of therapeutic relationships (Priebe et al. 2005). Implications are discussed in relation to how positioning analysis may help signal and emphasize important life and therapeutic experiences in spoken narratives as well as clinical consultations.
Der Beitrag schlägt das Konzept der 'Positionierung' als Instrument zur empirischen Erforschung narrativer Identitäten auf der Basis von autobiographischen Erzählungen vor. Es wird dafür argumentiert, dass die Perspektive der Positionierung einen materialgestützten und materialadäquaten Zugang zu Prozessen der Identitätskonstitution in mündlichen Stegreiferzählungen bietet, da es die identitätsrelevanten darstellerischen wie performativen Handlungen von Erzählern zu rekonstruieren erlaubt. Dabei wird zwischen verschiedenen Ebenen und Bezügen unterschieden: Selbst- und Fremdpositionierungen, Positionierungen dargestellter Figuren innerhalb der Erzählzeit und von Erzähler und Zuhörern in der erzählten Zeit sowie die Relation zwischen erzählenden und erzähltem Ich. Diese Differenzierungen erlauben nicht nur eine detaillierte Rekonstruktion unterschiedlicher Facetten und Verfahren der Herstellung narrativer Identität, sie eröffnen auch psychologisch und soziologisch aufschlussreiche Einblicke in die Relationen zwischen Identitätsentwürfen auf den verschiedenen Ebenen.