6,132 research outputs found
Correspondence | Postcard from Mrs. Herbert Stevenson to Mrs. Carl Lay, June 1912
Full text linkPostcard from [Mrs. Herbert] Stevenson at Jacksonville, Alabama to Mrs. Carl [Josie Caldwell] Lay at Gadsden, Alabama, on the occasion of the death of Carl Lay, Jr., June 23, 1912.https://digitalcommons.jsu.edu/lib_ac_caldwell/1152/thumbnail.jp
Central European time: memories of language - lost and found - in the life stories of German-speakers
No full textLanguage maintenance, shift and loss are standard themes in the sociology of language but they are generally framed as homogeneous effects attributable to macro processes of social change or political intervention and adopted as metrics of ‘ethnolingusitic vitality’. As Block (2007) points out, there is also an axiomatic assumption in the academic literature that these linguistic patterns are evaluated in a uniform way, reinforced by the institutional rhetoric of diversity. This chapter takes a different perspective. We are interested in the evolving patterns of language contact and multilingualism in central Europe, and we focus on users and uses of the German language. However, we are not concerned here with the position or status of this language or with the vitality of putative ‘ethnolinguistic communities’, as deduced from an outside perspective. Rather, we ask how individuals who have lived through a turbulent period of social change recount their experience of changes in their linguistic repertoires and those of their families. Our discussion is based on interviews and conversations with individuals in Hungary and the Czech Republic conducted between 1995 and 2005, for all of whom some form of the German language has played a role in their lives. Drawing on Gal’s notions of authenticity and culturally coded temporality (Gal 2006, Gal and Irvine 2001), we explore some of the ways language and linguistic practices feature in the memories of these individuals – stories of language lost, stubbornly maintained, and occasionally (re)found
Introduction: Central Europe as a multilingual space
No full textThis introductory chapter discusses the problematic concept of 'central Europe' and establishes the role of language in forming and contesting identities in this region in order to construct a context and a framework for the following chapters
Diskriminierung deutscher Sprachminderheiten? Verschiedene Ebenen, Begriffe und Widersprüchlichkeiten der Sprach(en)politik in Mittel- und Osteuropa am Beispiel Ungarns
No full textUnter Diskriminierung von Sprachminderheiten versteht man im allgemeinen Vorfälle wie Beschimpfungen oder Benachteiligungen im Bildungs- und Berufsweg. Anders als in den Beispielen offener kultureller Diskriminierung von Maitz/Elspaß in diesem Heft geht es in diesem Beitrag um subtile Einstellungen und Praktiken, die sich in der Summe negativ auswirken (können).Wir wollen dabei besonders auf die Frage eingehen, welche Form der deutschen Sprache im ungarischen Bildungssystem eigentlich sanktioniert wird. Die Unterrichtssprache ist Standarddeutsch, während die Traditionen der deutschen Minderheit mit deutschen Dialekten verbunden sind. Anhand dieser Fallstudie wollen wir zeigen, dass sich aus den verschiedenen Erwartungen an diese Form der Bildung Widersprüchlichkeiten ergeben, die die Sprecher der Dialekte stigmatisieren.In Ungarn ist die Schule die wichtigste Institution zur Vermittlung von Deutsch als Minderheitensprache, einschließlich der Geschichte und kultureller Besonderheiten der deutschen Minderheit. Im besten Falle ermöglicht sie eine zweisprachige Erziehung durch Deutsch als Unterrichtssprache und -medium, nicht nur als Fremdsprache. Dadurch stellt sich den Schulplanern der deutschen Minderheitenschule die folgende Frage nach dem Zweck der Schule: Soll sie den Angehörigen der deutschen Minderheit einen privilegierten Zugang zu dieser Bildung ermöglichen, die nach wie vor sowohl einen hohen symbolischen als auch ökonomischen Wert besitzt, oder soll sie die Sprache so weit wie möglich verbreiten, um damit den Fortbestand (der Geltung) der deutschen Sprache in Mitteleuropa zu sichern (vgl. Heller 1994: 106, 111)? Die gesetzlichen Bestimmungen zum Umgang mit nationalen Minderheiten in Ungarn sehen dabei dabei die erstgenannte Position vor, während in der Praxis der Zugang zu dieser Form der Erziehung über die schulischen Leistungen der Kinder geregelt wird, und nicht (nur) über ihr nationales Zugehörigkeitsgefühl.Wir fragen daher:– Welche Themen und Begriffe greifen die politischen Diskurse um die deutsche Sprache auf und welche Akteure sind daran beteiligt?– Wie beziehen sich die einzelnen Akteure aufeinander und auf welche Funktionen von Sprache und welche Sprachformen beziehen sie sich dabei?– Wie positionieren sich einzelne Deutschsprecher im Beziehungsgeflecht von Hochdeutsch als transnationaler Ressource und Deutsch als Minderheitensprache?Ergänzend zu anderen Beiträgen in diesem Heft wollen wir dadurch herausfinden, in welcher Beziehung verschiedene Sprachen und -formen – hier: Ungarisch, deutsche Dialekte und Hochdeutsch – zueinander stehen. Insbesondere geht es dabei um um die Frage, welchen Raum die offizielle Sprachpolitik diesen Sprachen/Sprachformen einräumt, und ob jemand als Sprecher von Deutsch als Minderheitensprache in einer ungarisch-sprachigen Kultur und/oder als Sprecher eines deutschen Dialekts im hochdeutschen Schulunterricht benachteiligt ist
Representation in the articulation of language policy objectives
No full textThe formulation of language policy in the European context entails not only an abundance of documentation
(position papers, reports, guidelines, strategies, legislative proposals etc) but also the involvement of many individual
political actors operating at different levels within civil society: officials and advisers in the Commission
and other supranational bodies (such as the Council of Europe), government ministers, civil servants, directors of
government-funded agencies (such as the Goethe Institute or the Instituto Cervantes), representatives of minority
groups and so on. While policy documents are scrutinised by political and linguistic analysts in terms of their
content and the discourses in which it is embedded, the articulation of policy objectives by diverse individual actors,
which prefigures and shapes the policies, generally remains unobserved below the level of public statements
by politicians. It may inform the analysis of published policy, but is not typically subjected to analysis itself.
In this paper, we will suggest that an analysis of ways in which language policy objectives are articulated
in discussion is an important but often neglected dimension of the investigation of language policy development.
Drawing on interviews with individuals involved in the formulation of policy in relation to German in
central Europe (in particular in Hungary and the Czech Republic), we will look at how government officials
(both in Germany and Austria and in their neighbouring states), functionaries in government-funded agencies,
representatives of German minority associations, and German language teachers position themselves as both a)
individuals, who have their personal experiences with and opinions on the subject, and as b) representatives of
a wider community with certain vested interests.
Our attention will focus on ways in which our interviewees repeatedly move between expressions of their
personal motivations and the goals of the community they speak for. The question then is how these two dimensions
- the personal/micro and the collective/macro - relate to one another, how they influence each other, and
whether they strengthen or conflict with each other. Using the conceptual framework of positioning theory, we
will try to shed light on the discursive ‘mechanics’ of the interplay between individual and collective positions
adopted by these representative figures
Language and social change in central Europe: discourses on policy, identity and the German language
No full textThis book explores the dynamics of language and social change in central Europe in the context of the end of the Cold War and eastern expansion of the European Union. One outcome of the profound social transformations in central Europe since the Second World War has been the reshaping of the relationship between particular languages and linguistic varieties, especially between 'national' languages and regional or ethnic minority languages. Previous studies have investigated these transformed relationships from the macro perspective of language policies, while others have taken more fine-grained approaches to individual experiences with language. Combining these two perspectives for the first time - and focusing on the German language, which has a uniquely complex and problematic history in the region - the authors offer an understanding of the complex constellation of language politics in central Europe.Stevenson and Carl's analysis draws on a range of theoretical, conceptual and analytical approaches - language ideologies, language policy, positioning theory, discourse analysis, narrative analysis and life histories - and a wide range of data sources, from European and national language policies to individual language biographies. The authors demonstrate how the relationship between German and other languages has played a crucial role in the politics of language and processes of identity formation in the recent history of central Europe<br/
Chris and Stuart Gregory with Doris Leathley and Carl Stevenson with large fish
No full textL-R: Chris and Stuart Gregory and Doris Leathley and Carl Stevenson. Holding largest fish caught in 38 years at Beaver Lake
Being a German-speaker in Central Europe: language policies and the negotiation of identities
No full textThis volume focuses on the ways in which language change, language variation and language contact transform some of the major Germanic languages, as well as the ways in which the relationship between standard and varieties is (re-) conceptualised. How do processes of language contact affect the Germanic languages today? What impact does language contact have on their standard forms? What new varieties
of language are emerging in the process? How do linguistic plurality and difference recur as themes in public discourse and language policy on the one hand, and in narratives and everyday conversations of various social groups on the other? What kind of linguistic ideologies emerge, and how are they shaped by the media? How do these processes affect political decision making and linguistic codification
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