Article published in:
Ethnic Styles of Speaking in European Metropolitan AreasEdited by Friederike Kern and Margret Selting
[Studies in Language Variation 8] 2011
► pp. 239–263
Linguistic variation and linguistic virtuosity of young “Ghetto”-migrants in Mannheim, Germany
Inken Keim | Institute for the German Language, Mannheim
Ralf Knöbl | Institute for the German Language, Mannheim
In this paper, we provide an insight into the life world and social experiences of young Turkish migrants who are categorised by German society as “social problem cases”. Based on natural conversational data, we describe the communicative repertoire of one migrant adolescent and that of his friends. Our aims are (a) to isolate those linguistic features that convey the impression of “foreignness”, and stand out among other German speakers’ features, and (b) to analyse the variability in our informants’ discursive practices – i.e. code- or style-switching, as it is commonly referred to in the literature – in order to show how variation serves as a communicative resource. Our findings show that these adolescents’ remarkable linguistic proficiency and communicative competence contrast markedly to their low educational and professional status.
Published online: 22 December 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.8.10kei
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.8.10kei
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Auer, Peter
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