Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T13:40:32.043Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Germans from Different Places: Constructing a German Space in Urban Canada

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2011

Jennifer Dailey-O'Cain*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
Grit Liebscher*
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo
*
University of Alberta, Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, 200 Arts Bldg. Edmonton AB T6G 2E6, Canada, [jenniedo@ualberta.ca]
University of Waterloo, Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, Modern Languages Building, Room 313, 200 University Avenue, West Waterloo ON N2L 3G1, Canada, [gliebsch@uwaterloo.ca]

Abstract

This paper deals with the role of the distinction between Germans from speech islands (the so-called Volksdeutsche) and Germans from Germany (the so-called Reichsdeutsche) in conceptualizing the German community in urban Canada. First, 64 interviews with members of this community were analyzed for stretches of talk in which that distinction was made relevant. Then, a subset of these was chosen for the analysis presented here. Our analysis of these six excerpts employs both conversation analysis and positioning theory in order to show how participants draw on various aspects of place, ethnicity, and time in constructing a German space in Canada and their own ethnic identities in connection with it.*

Type
ARTICLES
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Germanic Linguistics 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Antaki, Charles, & Widdicombe, Sue. 1998. Identities in talk. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Bassler, Gerhard P. 1998. German-Canadian identity in historical perspective. A chorus of different voices. German-Canadian identities, ed. by Sauer, Angelika E. & Zimmer, Matthias, 8598. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Baynham, Mike. 2003. Narratives in space and time: Beyond “backdrop” accounts of narrative orientation. Narrative Inquiry 13. 347366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergen, Doris. 1994. The Nazi concept of ‘Volksdeutsche’ and the exacerbation of anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, 1939–45. Journal of Contemporary History 29. 569582.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dailey-O'Cain, Jennifer, & Liebscher, Grit. 2009. Dialect use and discursive identities of migrants from the west in eastern Germany. Language, discourse, and identity in Central Europe. The German language in a multilingual space, ed. by Carl, Jenny & Stevenson, Patrick, 185202. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
De Certeau, Michel. 1988. The practice of everyday life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ghomeshi, Jila, Jackendoff, Ray, Rosen, Nicole, & Russell, Kevin. 2004. Contrastive focus reduplication in English (the salad-salad paper). Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 22. 307357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giampapa, Frances. 2004. The politics of identity, representation, and the discourses of self-identification: Negotiating the periphery and the center. Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts, ed. by Pavlenko, Aneta & Blackledge, Adrian, 192218. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame analysis. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles, & Heritage, John. 1990. Conversation analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology 19. 283307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, John. 1982. Language and social identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Harré, Ron, & Luk van Langenhove. 1991. Varieties of positioning. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 21. 393407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, Richard. 2008. Rethinking ethnicity: Arguments and explorations. London, Thousand Oaks: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langenhove, Luk van, & Harré, Ron.) 1993. Positioning and autobiography: Telling your life. Discourse and lifespan identity, ed. by Coupland, Nikolas, Nussbaum, John. F., & Grossman, Alan, 8199. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Milroy, Lesley. 1980. Language and social networks. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Pavlenko, Aneta, & Blackledge, Adrian (eds.). 2004. Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prokop, Manfred, & Bassler, Gerhard. 2004. German language maintenance across Canada: A handbook. Edmonton: University of Alberta.Google Scholar
Shenk, Petra Scott. 2007. “I'm Mexican, remember?” Constructing ethnic identities via authenticating discourse. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11. 194220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevenson, Patrick, & Carl, Jenny. 2010. Language and social change in Central Europe: Discourses on policy, identity and the German language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar