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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, -Paper short abstract:
This research, based on sociolinguistic and ethnographic interviews, investigates language attitude of Nigerians, Cameroonians and Ghanaians towards learning the German language. Results show that German is seen as an addition to an existing lingua-franca repertoire comprising English and Pidgin.
Paper long abstract:
This research contributes to the sociolinguistics of migration and globalisation. An investigation of the language attitude of Nigerians, Cameroonians and Ghanaians towards learning and acquiring of German will be guided by the generation 1 and generation 1.5 paradigms. Generation 1 constitutes recently arrived first-generation immigrants. Generation 1.5 comprises pre-adult children who either migrate with their parents or are brought over after a couple of years. These children, who already have a language and cultural behaviour upon migration, are stuck in-between two languages, two cultures, and two generations. The psychological experiences of these pre-adult immigrants, as opposed to the parent generation, display cultural and linguistic hybridity reflected in their attitude towards learning the German language. Generation 1.5 children are "cultural brokers" who negotiate between the host community and the parent generation. This responsibility serves as a vital motivation towards learning the German language. These children are very active within the African diasporic community; they translate and help as bridge-builders between their parents and the rest of the community. Language attitude viewed in this research as a disposition to react favourably or not towards the L2 under study will be examined under the social variables of age, gender, ethnicity and level of education. Ethnographic evidence found in formal and informal language use and linguistic practices of these two generations of speakers is obtained through semi-structured interviews and observations. Findings suggest that German is seen as an addition to an existing lingua-franca repertoire comprising English and Pidgin.
Paper short abstract:
This study will bring together sociological models of racialisation and current research in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, specifically the recent raciolinguistics approach, to study discussions of discrimination, race, and “upward social mobility” in the “New African Diaspora”.
Paper long abstract:
This proposed study will bring together sociological models of racialisation and current research in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, specifically as it has evolved in the recent raciolinguistics approach (Alim et al. 2020, Lo 2020, Alim et al. 2016), to study discussions of discrimination, race, and “upward social mobility” within the Nigerian and wider West African immigrant communities in Germany. I will combine a raciolinguistic perspective (specifically the emergence of terms for racialised groups) with a sociological model of racialisation (as a counterstrategy to racism) to study racialisation as a two-way process by which racism is simultaneously constituted and resisted. Therefore, I will study the lexical-semantic categorisation of the “white Others” in the language use and practices of members of the “New African Diaspora” in Germany and show how this racial categorisation is deployed as a strategic response to racism. The “New African Diaspora” describes the people from sub-Saharan Africa who have migrated since 1990 to seek security and self-actualisation in the West (Okpewho and Nzegwu 2009). In terms of methodology, I will combine quantitative methods (e.g., lexical and collocational statistics) and qualitative approaches (e.g., interactional analysis of longer passages of discourse) to study ideas about race and racialisation in this group. As noted by Garner (2010: 32), as a tool, racialisation makes ‘race’ relevant to a particular situation or context and thus requires an examination of the precise circumstances in which this occurs: who the ‘agents’ are; who the actors are. In other words, who does what and how?
Paper short abstract:
This project investigates the intelligibility of Nigerian English in lingua-franca interactions with German listeners, evaluating how well Germans understand short extracts from English interviews recorded with Nigerian immigrants resident in Germany and identifying major obstacles to comprehension.
Paper long abstract:
This project investigates the use of Nigerian English in lingua-franca interaction in Germany, focussing on the perspective of the German listener. 58 German-speaking respondents were asked to transcribe short extracts from English interviews recorded with Nigerian immigrants and sojourners resident in Germany. In addition to testing comprehension, respondents were requested to rate samples along parameters designed to measure speaker likability and competence. The study’s two major findings are that, in spite of the absence of contextual clues, respondents perform better than expected in the comprehension task, but that the single greatest obstacle to comprehension is the presence of German-language material in the stimulus. As realistic ELF interaction in Germany necessarily involves a level of English-German mixing, the experiment thus points to a major practical problem in ELF interaction. The study also yields provisional findings on gender (with male voices being understood better than female ones) and interactions between assumptions about speakers and transcription performance that should be revisited in future research.
Paper short abstract:
The study investigates language use in banking transactions by identifying the languages of transactions and discussing the prospects of using such languages. Data are drawn mainly from responses to a questionnaire and analysed based on insights from relevant theories and models.
Paper long abstract:
Nigeria, apart from being the most populous black African country, is characterised by high linguistic multiplicity and complexity. Its complexity is due mainly to the fact that apart from the over 500 indigenous languages most of which have different dialects, there are also non-indigenous languages such as English and French in addition to Nigerian Pidgin which is neither completely exogenous nor entirely indigenous. Of these indigenous languages, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba each of which is dominant in each of the three major regions of the country and is spoken natively by more than twenty five million people are national languages while English is the official language. Nigerian Pidgin spoken by over 110 million speakers (Faraclas, 2021) is used mainly as a lingua franca in the country and sometimes as a means of communication among West African immigrant communities (Mair, 2021). Also, banking and remittances constitute a new dimension in international use of Nigerian Pidgin and this deserves attention in order to complement existing works on social media. Until very recently, the official language in the banking sector is English. However, this is gradually changing as customers now have the opportunity of selecting a language of transaction especially when they want to pay bills, withdraw or transfer money through Automated Teller Machine (ATM). Given this background, the present study is aimed at investigating how the banking sector typifies the linguistic landscape of Nigeria by focusing on transactions through ATM. The study will identify the languages being used for transactions on ATM, examine which of them is dominant and also discuss the challenges and prospects of using such languages. The data for the study will be drawn from the scanned (and downloaded) texts of the languages on the ATM of Guarantee Trust Bank and Access Bank of Nigeria. In addition, a questionnaire containing items related to the use of multiple languages on ATM will be administered on some bankers. The data gathered will be analysed based on insights from Myer-Scotton’s Markedness Model and Auer’s notion of structural sedimentation.