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We discuss an intervention programme for kindergarten and school teachers' continuing education in Germany that targets biases against language outside a perceived monolingual ‘standard’ and its speakers. The programme combines anti-bias methods relating to linguistic diversity with objectives of raising critical language awareness. Evaluation through teachers' workshops in Berlin and Brandenburg points to positive and enduring attitudinal changes in participants, but not in control groups that did not attend workshops, and effects were independent of personal variables gender and teaching subject and only weakly associated with age. We relate these effects to such programme features as indirect and inclusive methods that foster active engagement, and the combination of ‘safer’ topics targeting attitudes towards linguistic structures with more challenging ones dealing with the discrimination of speakers.
According to Haider (2010), we have to distinguish three types of infinitival complements in Present-Day German: (i) CP complements, (ii) VP complements and (iii) verbal clusters. While CP complements give rise to biclausal structures, VP complements and verbal clusters indicate a monoclausal structure. Non-finite verbs in verbal clusters build a syntactic unit with the governing verb. It is only the last infinitival pattern that we address as a so-called coherent infinitival pattern, a notion introduced in the influential work of Bech (1955/57). Verbal clusters are bound to languages with an OV grammar, hence the well-known differences regarding infinitival syntax in German and English (Haider 2003, Bobaljik 2004). On the widespread assumption that German has been an OV language throughout its history (Axel 2007), we expect all three types of infinitival complements to be present from the earliest attestions of German.
According to Haider (2010), we have to distinguish three types of infinitival complements in Present-Day German: (i) CP complements, (ii) VP complements and (iii) verbal clusters. While CP complements give rise to biclausal structures, VP complements and verbal clusters indicate a monoclausal structure. Non-finite verbs in verbal clusters build a syntactic unit with the governing verb. It is only the last infinitival pattern that we address as a so-called coherent infinitival pattern, a notion introduced in the influential work of Bech (1955/57). Verbal clusters are bound to languages with an OV grammar, hence the well-known differences regarding infinitival syntax in German and English (Haider 2003, Bobaljik 2004). On the widespread assumption that German has been an OV language throughout its history (Axel 2007), we expect all three types of infinitival complements to be present from the earliest attestions of German.
This article investigates a public debate in Germany that put a special spotlight on the interaction of standard language ideologies with social dichotomies, centering on the question of whether Kiezdeutsch, a new way of speaking in multilingual urban neighbourhoods, is a legitimate German dialect. Based on a corpus of emails and postings to media websites, I analyse central topoi in this debate and an underlying narrative on language and identity. Central elements of this narrative are claims of cultural elevation and cultural unity for an idealised standard language High German', a view of German dialects as part of a national folk culture, and the construction of an exclusive in-group of German' speakers who own this language and its dialects. The narrative provides a potent conceptual frame for the Othering of Kiezdeutsch and its speakers, and for the projection of social and sometimes racist deliminations onto the linguistic plane.
MULTILIT
(2015)
This paper presents an overview of the linguistic analyses developed in the MULTILIT project and the processing of the oral and written texts collected. The project investigates the language abilities of multilingual children and adolescents, in particular, those who have Turkish and/or Kurdish as a mother tongue. A further aim of the project is to examine from a psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspective the extent to which competence in academic registers is achieved on the basis of the languages spoken by the children, including the language(s) spoken at the home, the language of the country of residence and the first foreign language. To be able to examine these questions using corpus linguistic parameters, we created categories of analysis in MULTILIT.
The data collection comprises texts from bilingual and monolingual children and adolescents in Germany in their first language Turkish, their second language German und their foreign language English. Pupils aged between nine and twenty years of age produced monologue oral and written texts in the two genres of narrative and discursive. On the basis of these samples, we examine linguistic features such as lexical expression (lexical density, lexical diversity), syntactic complexity (syntactic and discursive packaging) as well as phonology in the oral texts and orthography in the written texts, with the aim of investigating the pupils’ growing mastery of these features in academic and informal registers.
To this end the raw data have been transcribed by the use of transcription conventions developed especially for the needs of the MULTILIT data. They are based on the commonly used HIAT and GAT transcription conventions and supplemented with conventions that provide additional information such as features at the graphic level.
The categories of analysis comprise a large number of linguistic categories such as word classes, syntax, noun phrase complexity, complex verbal morphology, direct speech and text structures. We also annotate errors and norm deviations at a wide range of levels (orthographic, morphological, lexical, syntactic and textual). In view of the different language systems, these criteria are considered separately for all languages investigated in the project.
Grammar in everyday talk
(2015)
This book surveys how English speakers use grammar to formulate responses in ordinary conversation. The authors show that speakers build their responses in a variety of ways: the responses can be longer or shorter, repetitive or not, and can be uttered with different intonational 'melodies'"--
"Drawing on everyday telephone and video interactions, this book surveys how English speakers use grammar to formulate responses in ordinary conversation. The authors show that speakers build their responses in a variety of ways: the responses can be longer or shorter, repetitive or not, and can be uttered with different intonational 'melodies'. Focusing on four sequence types: responses to questions ('What time are we leaving?' - 'Seven'), responses to informings ('The May Company are sure having a big sale' - 'Are they?'), responses to assessments ('Track walking is so boring. Even with headphones' - 'It is'), and responses to requests ('Please don't tell Adeline' - 'Oh no I won't say anything'), they argue that an interactional approach holds the key to explaining why some types of utterances in English conversation seem to have something 'missing' and others seem overly wordy.