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.