Data Sheet 2_Negotiating ethnolinguistic identity in a multilingual society: social meaning and linguistic choice in Namibian German.csv

Introduction

Linguistic choices rapidly evoke social meanings, that is, information related to social identities, group membership, and social evaluations of the speaker, the hearer, and their relationship, but this activation is influenced by the linguistic domain. Moreover, social meaning and language attitudes are shaped by the societal context, but most previous studies focused on monolingually oriented societies.

Method

We report findings from the German-speaking minority in Namibia, a multilingually oriented society. We conducted an open-guise study (Soukup, 2013) that examined how linguistic choice in different linguistic domains (lexical vs. grammatical choice) evokes social meaning. Namibian German speakers evaluated the same (Namibian German) speaker producing a text in three conditions: (1) in Standard Germany German (DE-stand); (2) with some words replaced by lexical borrowings from English and Afrikaans characteristic for Namibian German (NAM-lex); and (3) with grammatical changes characteristic for Namibian German (NAM-gram).

Results

DE-stand forms were associated with high competence ratings and Germany as the speaker’s place of origin and residence, but also with communicative situations in Namibia where competence in Standard German is important (e.g., at the office). In contrast, NAM-lex led to high solidarity ratings, lower competence ratings, and Namibia as the speaker’s place of origin and residence, and was associated with communicative situations in Namibia where ingroup membership is important/salient (interaction with friends). NAM-gram evoked social meaning in an interesting intermediate way: while the speaker’s place of origin tended to be associated with Namibia, their place of residence was associated with both Germany and Namibia, and participants avoided high ratings on solidarity and competence items.

Discussion

We discuss the results with respect to the identity construction of Namibian German speakers, who use Namibian German linguistic characteristics to distinguish themselves from Germany German speakers (i.e., tourists) but nevertheless associate Standard Germany German with high prestige and competence.