Deutsche Sprache im Ausland
Refine
Document Type
- Article (3) (remove)
Language
- English (3) (remove)
Has Fulltext
- yes (3)
Keywords
- Argumentstruktur (1)
- Astrolabe-Bay (1)
- Bilingualismus (1)
- Deutsch (1)
- Deutsche (1)
- German mission society (1)
- Globalisierung (1)
- Italienisch (1)
- Kolonialismus (1)
- Minderheitensprache (1)
Publicationstate
Reviewstate
- Peer-Review (2)
Publisher
- Routledge (1)
- de Gruyter (1)
Historical sociolinguistics in colonial New Guinea: The Rhenish mission society in the Astrolabe Bay
(2017)
The Rhenish Mission Society, a German Protestant mission, was active in a small part of northern New Guinea, the Astrolabe Bay, between 1887 and 1932. Up until 1914, this region was under German colonial rule. The German dominance was also reflected in rules on language use in official contexts such as schools and administration.
Missionaries were strongly affected by such rules as their most important tool in mission work was language. In addition, they were also responsible for school education as most schools in the German colonial areas in the Pacific were mission-run. Thus, mission societies had to make decisions about what languages to use, considering their own needs, their ideological convictions, and the colonial government’s requirements. These considerations were framed by the complex setting of New Guinea’s language wealth where several hundred languages were, and still are, spoken.
This paper investigates a small set of original documents from the Rhenish Mission Society to trace what steps were taken and what considerations played a major role in the process of agreeing on a suitable means of communication with the people the missionaries wanted to reach, thereby touching upon topics such as language attitudes, language policies and politics, practical considerations of language learning and language spread, and colonial actions impacting local language ecologies.
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.
In South Tyrol the Italian and German languages have coexisted for centuries. After a problematic development in the first half of the 20th century the situation has stabilised through an intense programme to protect the German-speaking minority living there. Though these protective measures were introduced primarily to keep the linguistic identity of the Italian and German language groups stable, they have led to a considerable degree of individual bilingualism, especially with the speakers of German. At the same time certain means were introduced to facilitate the use of German in the legal and administrative context of Italy. So these steps at the end have led to an intensified contact between the languages, and there is a growing awareness of the advantages of speaking more than one language. With the opening towards Europe and with general trends in society like globalisation and individualisation, a new model of a bilingual identity is developing which takes into consideration its usefulness in modem transcultural interaction as well as its value for regional self-identification. This development also leads to a higher degree of linguistic variation in the society of South Tyrol.