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- Convenor:
-
Christian Mair
(University of Freiburg)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Development of Colonial Languages
- Location:
- Room 1234
- Sessions:
- Friday 10 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
The panel will study mobile multilingualism among African immigrants in Europe, exploring the role of language in community formation among immigrants and in communication between immigrants and resident populations, bringing together perspectives from sociolinguistics and cultural anthropology.
Long Abstract:
The past two decades have seen considerable increase in immigration from Africa to Europe. This has further diversified existing postcolonial multilingualism in countries such as the UK and France and established entirely new multilingual ecologies in places such as Germany and Scandinavia, which did not experience a large influx of African migrants in the period following World War II. The panel will focus on how immigrants' and sojourners' multilingual repertoires change and adapt in these new environments. Thereby, the focus will be on the following questions:
- What is the role of language(s) in community formation among Africans in the European diaspora?
- What is the role of traditional colonial linguistic aligments (e.g. Anglophone-Francophone) in non-English/French-speaking Europe?
- What is the role of indigenous African lingua francas (e.g. Wolof, Lingala), of pidgins/creoles (e.g. English-lexifier West African Pidgin in its various dialects), or other non-traditional hybrid and urban vernaculars (e.g. Camfranglais)?
- Which factors impact on the ethnolinguistic vitality of African heritage languages in the European context?
- What, finally, is the role of English in lingua-franca interaction between immigrants and the resident population in non-English speaking European countries?
In addition to (socio)linguistic studies, we invite contributions that explore the role of languages and multilingualism in the wider social and political context, for example with regard to racialisation, cultural identity and citizenship.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 10 June, 2022, -Stephanie Rudwick (University Of Hradec Kralove) Nsama Jonathan Simuziya (University of Hradec Kralove)
Paper short abstract:
Grounded in ethnography, this paper documents identity politics of the African diaspora in the Czech Republic. Theoretically grounded in raciolinguistics, we provide narratives of African individuals who experience that there are limits to the significance of language against the power of race.
Paper long abstract:
Grounded in ethnography, this paper emerges from a project which aims at developing a nuanced account of the social and linguistic identity politics of Africans in the Czech Republic. Some studies have addressed historical trajectories of people with African heritage in Czechia, but there has been no systematic attempt to examine their contemporary lives. While Czech society has remained more linguistically and racially homogenous than most other European nation states, there is now a noticeable presence of African diasporic people living in the country. In this paper, we provide narratives of African individuals living in the Czech Republic who have varying degrees of Czech language competencies and multiple linguistic life trajectories. Theoretically grounded in raciolinguistics and an approach which sees language and race as co-constituents in dynamics of Othering, we examine the lived realities of Africans in the Czech Republic through a multidisciplinary and ethnographic lens. The study brings to the fore complex racialization processes and linguistic challenges among African residents in the country. Preliminary findings suggest that while there are many instances of racism individuals experience, it is also the lack of Czech language competencies which cause various forms of discrimination. The findings also suggest that on the one hand, there are instances where Czech language skills have the capacity to mitigate the challenges in racial discourses. On the other hand, however, there are limits to the power of language in face of racial prejudices and discrimination.
Henning Radke (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
Paper short abstract:
How are multilingual practices redefined in diasporic settings? This question takes center stage in the proposed paper. It analyses the German-Namibian diaspora and their multilingual practices in both computer-mediated communication (CMC) and face-to-face interaction (FTF).
Paper long abstract:
Migration between Namibia and Germany holds a unique position within the African-German context since Namibia is the only country in Africa that is home to a considerable number German-speaking natives. The community is generally trilingual using Afrikaans and English, too. Furthermore, they have their own non-standard variety named Namdeutsch, which includes structural elements from all the three languages.
This presentation investigates how the meaning of the multilingual practices diversifies when German-speaking Namibians migrate to Germany. How do they use Namdeutsch to create an ingroup-outgroup distinction? How do they position themselves between African and German culture? And what is the role of Namibian languages such as Oshiwambo or Otjiherero? The analysis eventually tackles the question of how multilingual practices are redefined in diasporic settings. Therefore, it adds a new perspective to the Germanic Sprachinselforschung (research on German 'linguistic islands') as it introduces the notion of translocalization, i.e. the global movement, combination and reframing of linguistic resources. To date, research on German linguistic islands has exclusively focused on local dynamics of German in language contact.
The community is particularly suited to address language variation from a diasporic perspective as they draw on their multilingual resources in both face-to-face and computer-mediated communication. Hence, linguistic variation can not only be studied using traditional variables such as age, place of birth and gender, but also in terms of multimodality. Using a corpus based on social media, it was possible to obtain insights into a unique case of migration dynamics within the African-German context.
Marta Lupica Spagnolo (University of Potsdam)
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the domains of use and some linguistic features of Italian-based multilingual practices spoken by fifteen interviewees from Sub-Saharan West Africa who mainly acquired Italian skills in Italy and occasionally reactivate them while working as street vendors in a park in Berlin.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on a continuum of multilingual practices based on the Italian language for which we propose the label "Italian in Transit" (IiT). IiT competencies are acquired by multilingual migrants and refugees along their migration or escape routes in Italy and are occasionally reactivated after moving to other European countries.
Our dataset consists of fifteen interviews with IiT speakers who come from Sub-Saharan West Africa and work as street vendors in a park in Berlin (Germany). Most of the participants learned Italian in Italy. However, two interviewees acquired Italian skills after moving to Berlin from Spain, facilitated by their previous competences in Spanish and/or Catalan. As for their current language uses, the interviewees report mainly speaking Mandinka as an in-group code in the park. Moreover, they sometimes reactivate IiT practices for different communicative purposes, such as for selling their products to Italian-speaking passers-by or referencing shared biographical-migratory experiences.
Linguistically, present infinitives (INFprss) are frequently generalized in eleven of the fifteen interviews. This generalization may be related to the fact that the participants acquired IiT skills at their workplace without supervision. However, unlike in Italian learner and contact varieties, INFprss are often generalized for past (vs. future or present) situations and have a perfective (vs. imperfective) meaning in our corpus. Furthermore, they usually occur with durative verb phrases and in irrealis propositions, thereby often conveying background information. Consequently, their alternation with other moods/tenses is sometimes innovatively employed by IiT speakers to evaluate and structure the information flow, especially in narratives.