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Central European time: memories of language - lost and found - in the life stories of German-speakers

Central European time: memories of language - lost and found - in the life stories of German-speakers
Central European time: memories of language - lost and found - in the life stories of German-speakers
Language maintenance, shift and loss are standard themes in the sociology of language but they are generally framed as homogeneous effects attributable to macro processes of social change or political intervention and adopted as metrics of ‘ethnolingusitic vitality’. As Block (2007) points out, there is also an axiomatic assumption in the academic literature that these linguistic patterns are evaluated in a uniform way, reinforced by the institutional rhetoric of diversity.
This chapter takes a different perspective. We are interested in the evolving patterns of language contact and multilingualism in central Europe, and we focus on users and uses of the German language. However, we are not concerned here with the position or status of this language or with the vitality of putative ‘ethnolinguistic communities’, as deduced from an outside perspective. Rather, we ask how individuals who have lived through a turbulent period of social change recount their experience of changes in their linguistic repertoires and those of their families.
Our discussion is based on interviews and conversations with individuals in Hungary and the Czech Republic conducted between 1995 and 2005, for all of whom some form of the German language has played a role in their lives. Drawing on Gal’s notions of authenticity and culturally coded temporality (Gal 2006, Gal and Irvine 2001), we explore some of the ways language and linguistic practices feature in the memories of these individuals – stories of language lost, stubbornly maintained, and occasionally (re)found.
language maintenance, language shift, ethnolinguistic vitality, language biographies, life stories, central europe, german-speakers, language in hungary, language in czech republic
9780230224353
165-184
Palgrave Macmillan
Carl, J.
81d091c9-bac0-4859-ba2b-0c2e08f7e738
Stevenson, P.
7b8878de-4a5b-4eaf-88d2-034d9041f41d
Carl, Jenny
Stevenson, Patrick
Carl, J.
81d091c9-bac0-4859-ba2b-0c2e08f7e738
Stevenson, P.
7b8878de-4a5b-4eaf-88d2-034d9041f41d
Carl, Jenny
Stevenson, Patrick

Carl, J. and Stevenson, P. (2009) Central European time: memories of language - lost and found - in the life stories of German-speakers. In, Carl, Jenny and Stevenson, Patrick (eds.) Language, Discourse and Identity in Central Europe: the German Language in a Multilingual Space. (Language and Globalization) Basingstoke, UK. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 165-184.

Record type: Book Section

Abstract

Language maintenance, shift and loss are standard themes in the sociology of language but they are generally framed as homogeneous effects attributable to macro processes of social change or political intervention and adopted as metrics of ‘ethnolingusitic vitality’. As Block (2007) points out, there is also an axiomatic assumption in the academic literature that these linguistic patterns are evaluated in a uniform way, reinforced by the institutional rhetoric of diversity.
This chapter takes a different perspective. We are interested in the evolving patterns of language contact and multilingualism in central Europe, and we focus on users and uses of the German language. However, we are not concerned here with the position or status of this language or with the vitality of putative ‘ethnolinguistic communities’, as deduced from an outside perspective. Rather, we ask how individuals who have lived through a turbulent period of social change recount their experience of changes in their linguistic repertoires and those of their families.
Our discussion is based on interviews and conversations with individuals in Hungary and the Czech Republic conducted between 1995 and 2005, for all of whom some form of the German language has played a role in their lives. Drawing on Gal’s notions of authenticity and culturally coded temporality (Gal 2006, Gal and Irvine 2001), we explore some of the ways language and linguistic practices feature in the memories of these individuals – stories of language lost, stubbornly maintained, and occasionally (re)found.

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More information

Published date: 30 April 2009
Keywords: language maintenance, language shift, ethnolinguistic vitality, language biographies, life stories, central europe, german-speakers, language in hungary, language in czech republic

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 68764
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/68764
ISBN: 9780230224353
PURE UUID: c20208e6-e978-409a-96df-a608fde2d2cb

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Date deposited: 29 Sep 2009
Last modified: 05 Aug 2022 16:35

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Contributors

Author: J. Carl
Author: P. Stevenson
Editor: Jenny Carl
Editor: Patrick Stevenson

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