Analyse von Spracheinstellungen zum Deutschen unter Texasdeutschen, DaF-Studierenden in Texas und Muttersprachler*innen aus Deutschland 

• finanziert durch die Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung (Feodor Lynen-Stipendium)
• Laufzeit: ab 10/2022 bis 9/2023; 4/2024

Projektskizze

What is ‚good German‘ or High German? Answering this question plays a central role in current linguistic research. Within Germany, Hanover in particular is considered the center of High German. Although speakers here also have regional characteristics, these are not perceived as strongly as, for example, the regional pronunciation characteristics of speakers in the Upper Saxon region, e.g. Dresden. Phonetic analyses could show, however, that the deviations from standard German are similarly strong for many pronunciation features. But, the Upper Saxon variants are more salient than the regional variants in Hannover.

However, previous research projects were limited to German native speakerswithin German-speaking countries who interact and communicate in a (mainly) German-speaking social environment. Regarding the language attitudes of language islanders (such as Texas Germans) and L2 speakers of German, there is currently still a research desideratum. A first pretest could already show that Texas Germans do have a concept of (High) German, even if the term High German is often replaced by other expressions, such as „Best German“.

In addition, they also have an individual awareness of variety, as they can name regions within their language island where they believe particularly good German is spoken. Attitudes toward Texas German have changed greatly in the more than 170 years of its genesis. After the American Civil War, the German population in Texas increased greatly and Texas German became more widespread. By the outbreak of World War I, there were over 100,000 German speakers in Texas. During World War I and World War II, there was a pronounced hostility to German and speaking the German variety was punishable in Texas. German was no longer allowed to be taught in schools and, in principle, German-speaking Texans were severely discriminated for.As a result, Texas German lost more and more of its importance, so that today there are only about 6,000 mainly older speakers.

The survey of Texas Germans regarding their language attitudes towards (High) German is therefore necessary and of particular scientific interest because a later survey will no longer be possible due to the age or death of the informants. The survey of the language attitudes of German as a foreign language students at the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas/Austin complements the corpus very well, since this informants group is characterized by having actively chosen to learn German despite having been socialized and living in a non-German-speaking social and family environment.

In order to contrast the language attitudes of these two groups, the study also includes language attitudes of German native speakerswho live and grew up within the German-speaking area. Consequently, a comparison of the (yet to be determined language attitude criteria of Texas Germans or L2 speakers with the already well-researched criteria of German native speakers in Germany would provide interesting new insights into language norm knowledge or language perception. Furthermore, the methodological focus of previous research has mostly been on a purely content-analytical analysis of the speech attitude data.

The use of frames as an analysis tool is innovative, since there have been very few studies that exploit the potential of nominal frames to reconstruct semantic concepts. Frames can accordingly be defined as formal structures for the representation of knowledge. Framesemantics „is based on the ideathat word meanings (almost) always refer to structured semantic concepts, experiences, memories and world knowledge – so-called semantic frames – which are indispensable for the correct use of words […]“ (Boas 2014: 44). Frames are constituted by the explicit and implicit (world) knowledge given in the text corpus about the concept in question and consist of a lexical unit (LE) evoking the frame as well as frame elements (FE) and explicit filler values or implicit default values.

The project will involve a fundamental broadening of the research perspective, both in terms of content and methodology. The overall goal of the research project is the collection and framesemantic analysis of language attitudes towards German of informants who live as primarily bilingual speakers within a German language island (Texas Germans) or learn German as a foreign language. The obtained language attitude data of these two groups will then be compared with the language attitude data of German native speakers in Germany.

Literatur

Boas, H. C. (2014): Zur Architektur einer konstruktionsbasierten Grammatik des Deutschen. In: Grammatik als Netzwerk von Konstruktionen. Sprachwissen im Fokus der Konstruktionsgrammatik, Eds. Lasch, A., Ziem, A., (Berlin: De Gruyter), 37-63.