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Language, Place, and Heritage: Reflexive Cultural Luxembourgishness in Wisconsin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2011

Kristine Horner*
Affiliation:
The University of Sheffield
*
The University of Sheffield, Department of Germanic Studies, School of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Jessop West, 1 Upper Hanover Street, Sheffield S3 7RA, UK, [k.horner@sheffield.ac.uk]

Abstract

The rapid movement of people and information on a global scale has contributed to the renegotiation of ethnicity and group membership, especially as new networks have been formed across large geographical distances. The focus here is on Belgium, Wisconsin for two interrelated reasons: one of the largest concentrations of people of Luxembourgish descent in the United States is domiciled in that area; moreover, the grand opening celebration of the Luxembourg American Cultural Center took place there in 2010. Taking an ethnographically grounded geosemiotic approach, this paper provides an analysis of Luxembourgish linguistic and cultural heritage displays in Belgium, Wisconsin and explores how localized practices are being renegotiated in the context of augmented transatlantic cooperation.*

Type
ARTICLES
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Germanic Linguistics 2011

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