Everyone, there will be a topics course in German linguistics and migration offered in the fall. I am posting the description here. The course has is offered MW afternoons from 2 to 3:15 GERM 3338, if I am not mistaken. German Migrations: Wanderung und Wandel der deutschen Sprache Germany can be presented as a country of historical, cultural, structural, organizational, religious, ideological and idiomatic differences par excellence. However, this „Germany“ mostly exists in the view of outside observers. Within the many regional entities that constitute Germanness within and outside the German speaking regions of Europe, there often exists a close-knit, firmly joined framework of socialization with few differentiated alternatives and with strong identities. When this framework is disrupted by a major event such as migration, this usually leads to a change of language of the effected community. Focusing on three examples, we will explore and contrast different settings of migration and their effects on the German of speakers: in the case of Texas German the emigration to Texas in the 1800s is presently leading to language death; the example of inner-German migrations after WWII led to dialect acquisition, acculturation and a diversification of language registers in regions of South and East Germany; change is currently under way in many German inner cities due to recent immigration waves. We will explore these three settings trying to understand the social and linguistic dynamics behind them. Students taking this course should have advanced knowledge of German, a vivid interest in the language and culture. To overcome shyness to interact with speakers of German – even if at a very basic level – is one goal of this course. We will leave the classroom on several occasions, especially during the first half of the semester. Classes will be taught in English and German, several academic texts, speaker interviews, audio examples and other materials will be in German, however. End-of-semester projects will be presented in German as well. Selected References: Boas, Hans. 2009. The Life and Death of Texas German. Publication of the American Dialect Society. Duke University Press. Ehlers, Klaas-Hinrich. 2011. „Forschungsprojekt: Kontaktlinguistische Untersuchungen zur sprachlichen Akkulturation Heimatvertriebener in Mecklenburg.“ In: Brücken. Germanistisches Jahrbuch Tschechien-Slowakei NF 19, 1-2: 358-374. Wiese, Heike. 2012. Kiezdeutsch. Ein neuer Dialekt entsteht. München. C. H. Beck
Posted on: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 14:57:39 +0000