Thread by @BerLinguistin

“I would really like to speak a little more like a German”—weird way to refer to your way of speaking if you’re already German, isn’t it? Well, for the German-Turkish women aged 16-23 we interviewed in Berlin-Kreuzberg, it is, in fact, quite usual. ⬇️ #linguistweets #TW1615

Speaking/sounding ‘German’ is an ethnic categorization constructed as desirable & socially valued, but also as non-belonging to the unmarked monoglossic people. Yet being classified in an imaginary homogenous group of people ‘with a migration background’ is also problematic. ⬇️

Because of their ethnicity, Turkish-German women get compliments about their German—an apparently positive stance othering them as the “good migrant student” (Bartlett 2007: 217). Refusing to perform this role does not prevent them from experiencing linguistic insecurity. ⬇️

Even in formal situations in which they say that they adjust their way of speaking, German-Turkish women are perceived as different: “accent is how the other speaks” (Lippi-Green 1994: 166). They are in fact EXPECTED to speak ‘differently’ bc of their ‘migration background’. ⬇️

People are thus “listening with an attitude” (Lindemann 2002): They infer social categories such as ethnicity from how people speak -> well, how they look like. Programs cannot focus on speakers only but need to tackle linguistic racism in the HEARERS (see Flores & Rosa 2015). ⬇️

Despite facing racism, our German-Turkish interviewees challenge their perceived ‘non Germanness’ by reinvesting their use of German (and not only their multilingual and multiethnolectal practices). Their ‘different’ German then becomes symbolic of their hybrid identities. /END

This thread is based on research conducted with Martina Oldani. A first paper on the role of gender in language ideologies around multilingual and multiethnolectal practices is out in #OpenAccess in the Journal of Sociolinguistics: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jo….

References below 📚

- Bartlett, Lesley. 2007. Bilingual literacies, social identification, and educational trajectories. Linguistics and Education 18(3–4). 215–231.

- Flores, Nelson & Jonathan Rosa. 2015. Undoing Appropriateness: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and Language Diversity in Education. ...

... Harvard Educational Review 85(2). 149–171.

- Lindemann, Stephanie & Katherine Moran. 2017. The role of the descriptor ‘broken English’ in ideologies about nonnative speech. Language in Society. Cambridge University Press 46(5). 649–669.

- Lippi-Green, Rosina. 1994. Accent, Standard Language Ideology, and Discriminatory Pretext in the Courts. Language in Society 23(2). 163–198.

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