Soziolinguistik

Peter Gilles, in Zusammenarbeit mit Prof. Dr. Evelyn Ziegler, Universität Duisburg-Essen

Ziel dieses Projekts ist es, die Sprachensituation in Luxemburg im 19. Jahrhundert zu beschreiben, und zwar mit Blick auf die Schriftlichkeit und die Sprachenverteilung. Im Zentrum wird dabei das Deutsche stehen. Für diese Perspektivierung spricht, dass das Deutsche neben dem Französischen nicht nur zentrale schriftsprachliche Domänen abdeckt, sondern auch zur gesprochenen Sprache und dialektalen Basis ein Kontinuum erwarten lässt. Dass es im 19. Jh. eine starke systematische Aufeinanderbezogenheit von Deutsch und Luxemburgisch gab, erhellt aus der Tatsache, dass Luxemburgische immer in Relation zum Deutschen betrachtet wurde; dies belegen Varietätenbezeichnungen wie lëtzebuerger Däitsch oder luxemburger-deutsche Mundart.

Zur Zeit wird ein Korpus überwiegend zweisprachiger öffentlicher Aushänge der Stadt Luxemburg vom ca. 1790-1920 zusammengestellt, das die Entwicklung des Hochdeutschen und Französischen sowie den Sprachkontakt mit dem Luxemburgischen erlauben wird.

PhD Julia de Bres, Anne Franziskus

This research project investigates the language ideologies and practices of cross-border workers (‘frontaliers’) in Luxembourg, with particular attention to the relationship between language and power.

As the result of a massive increase in economic migration across Luxembourg’s borders in recent decades, the population of the Grand Duchy now consists of around 43% resident foreigners, who are joined daily by approximately 140,000 frontaliers. These frontaliers, who live in the neighbouring border regions of France, Belgium and Germany, now account for a striking 42% of the workforce. Despite this major social change, very little sociolinguistic research has been undertaken on the language attitudes and behaviours of this group of economic migrants. This represents a major gap in research, given that the official trilingualism of Luxembourg and the high proportion of non-Luxembourgish nationals in the Luxembourg economic market make language diversity one of the key features of Luxembourg workplaces (Fehlen 2006).

The current project will investigate the language ideologies and practices of frontaliers in Luxembourg, with particular attention to the relationship between language and power. The research will involve questionnaires and interviews with cross-border workers at a range of workplaces in Luxembourg, as well as recordings of their actual language practices at work. The research will investigate the ways in which the frontaliers manage language diversity on a daily basis in Luxembourg and how this might contribute (or not contribute) to sociolinguistic cohesion in Luxembourg. The results will be examined from the perspective of the relationship between language and power in Luxembourg, and will be linked to current language policies, with implications for future policy development in relation to language diversity and integration in Luxembourg.

This project is part of a broader research project entitled BRIDGE (Border Regions in Different Geographical Espaces): Creating dialogue across disciplines in border studies. This project explores power relations in border regions from an interdisciplinary perspective, and is being jointly undertaken by the three discipline-based institutes of the IPSE research unit at the University of Luxembourg (Political Science, Geography and Spatial Planning, and Luxembourgish Linguistics and Literature).

The project Private literacy in Luxembourg looks at the private literacies of Luxembourgish people in the 20th century. By “private literacies” are understood all private written documents, such as letters and diaries, and the practices associated with these literacies. The study covers a variety of different aspects: on the one hand, the project is an investigation into private literacy practices provides an insight into people’s language choice, their values and attitudes and hence allows understanding the link between language and identity. On the other hand, the language used for composing these private documents is examined to reveal informants’ norm knowledge and to study language variation in the three languages written, namely Luxembourgish, German and French, with a focus on Luxembourgish and German.

It is a well known fact that language and identity are interwoven. Joseph (2004) explains that the existence and acceptance of a national language are crucial for the development of a national identity. At this moment in time it is difficult to establish to what extent Luxembourgish was already regarded as the national language in the 19th century, but it can be assumed that Luxembourgish has taken on this national symbolic status since the first half of the 20th century (Gilles / Moulin 2003, Moulin 2006). One central aspect in the development and recognition of Luxembourgish as the national language is the development of Luxembourgish as a literary language. The study of private letters and diaries, written in Luxembourg during the 20th century, will deal with various aspects of language, one of them the development of Luxembourgish as a written language accepted for private communication. The project aims to disclose language values and attitudes by looking at the metalinguistic comments found in the data. The analysis of people’s linguistic value system will provide an insight into the relationship between language and identity, and hence may explain the linguistic choices made by the informants in times like for example the Second World War.

The analysis will not only reveal when Luxembourgish became a written language in this particular domain but also which language, e.g. Luxembourgish, German or French, the various writers chose for private writing. Finally, the language itself will be analyzed to unveil the writers’ linguistic norm: the orthography of the letters written in Luxembourgish will be studied to find out, whether writers followed a specific set of orthographic rules, e.g. the Welter-Engelmann system from 1912, or whether they were writing according to their own norm (Gebrauchsnorm). The German or French documents will be looked at to study whether there are interferences from the mother tongue on the levels of lexis, syntax or morphology.