Discourse Constructions of Youth Identities (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series)

Discourse Constructions of Youth Identities

Pragmatics & Beyond New Series Editor Andreas H. Jucker University of Zurich, English Department Plattenstrasse 47, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected]

Associate Editors Jacob L. Mey University of Southern Denmark

Herman Parret Belgian National Science Foundation, Universities of Louvain and Antwerp

Jef Verschueren Belgian National Science Foundation, University of Antwerp

Editorial Board Shoshana Blum-Kulka Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni University of Lyon 2

Jean Caron Université de Poitiers

Claudia de Lemos University of Campinas, Brazil

Robyn Carston University College London

Marina Sbisà University of Trieste

Bruce Fraser Boston University

Emanuel Schegloff University of California at Los Angeles

Thorstein Fretheim University of Trondheim

Deborah Schiffrin Georgetown University

John Heritage University of California at Los Angeles

Paul O. Takahara Kansai Gaidai University

Susan Herring University of Texas at Arlington

Sandra Thompson University of California at Santa Barbara

Masako K. Hiraga St.Paul’s (Rikkyo) University

Teun A. Van Dijk Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona

David Holdcroft University of Leeds

Richard J. Watts University of Berne

Sachiko Ide Japan Women’s University

Volume 110 Discourse Constructions of Youth Identities Edited by Jannis K. Androutsopoulos and Alexandra Georgakopoulou

Discourse Constructions of Youth Identities Edited by

Jannis K. Androutsopoulos University of Hannover

Alexandra Georgakopoulou King’s College London

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam
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Philadelphia

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Discourse Constructions of Youth Identities / edited by Jannis K. Androutsopoulos, Alexandra Georgakopoulou. p. cm. (Pragmatics & Beyond, New Series, issn 0922-842X ; v. 110) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Youth--Language. 2. Discourse analysis. 3. Identity (Psychology) in youth. I. Androutsopoulos, Jannis K. II. Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. III. Series. P120.Y68 D57 2003 401´.41-dc21 isbn 90 272 5352 8 (Eur.) / 1 58811 355 8 (US) (Hb; alk. paper)

2002038437

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Contributors

Jannis Androutsopoulos, Junior Professor for Mediated Communication, University of Hannover, Germany Peter Auer, Professor, Department of German I, University of Freiburg, Germany Jan Berns, Trainee Teacher and Ph.D. Candidate, Department of German Studies, University of Halle-Wittenberg Lilie Chouliaraki, Associate Professor, Department of Film & Media Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark . Inci Dirim, Coordinator, Graduate Research Group on Educational Experience and Learner Development, Faculty of Education, University of Hamburg, Germany Alexandra Georgakopoulou, Reader in Modern Greek Language & Linguistics, King’s College London, United Kingdom Werner Kallmeyer, Professor, Institute for the German Language, Mannheim, Germany Kuniyoshi Kataoka, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law (English education), Aichi University, Japan Inken Keim, Research Fellow, Institute for the German Language, Mannheim, Germany Tore Kristiansen, Associate Professor, Department of Danish Dialectology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Vally Lytra, PhD Candidate, Department of Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies, King’s College London, United Kingdom Catrin Norrby, Wallenberg Senior Lecturer, Department of German and Swedish Studies, The University of Melbourne, Australia, and Associate Professor, Department of Swedish Language, Göteborg University, Sweden

vi

Contributors

Peter Schlobinski, Professor, Department of German Studies, University of Hannover, Germany Mark Sebba, Senior Lecturer, Department of Linguistics, Lancaster University, United Kingdom Anna-Brita Stenström, Professor, Department of English, University of Bergen, Norway Anita Wilson, Spencer Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Linguistics, Lancaster University, United Kingdom Karolina Wirdenäs, PhD, Department of Swedish Language, Göteborg University, Sweden

Table of contents

Discourse Constructions of Youth Identities: Introduction Jannis Androutsopoulos and Alexandra Georgakopoulou I. Peer group identities Linguistic variation and the construction of social identity in a GermanTurkish setting: A case study of an immigrant youth group in Mannheim, Germany Werner Kallmeyer and Inken Keim

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Nicknames and teasing: A case study of a linguistically and culturally mixed peer-group Vally Lytra

47

Looking back when looking ahead: On adolescents’ identity management in narrative practices Alexandra Georgakopoulou

75

It’s not that I really care, about him personally you know: The construction of gender identity in London teenage talk Anna-Brita Stenström

93

II. Recasting literacy practices Emotion and youth identities in personal letter writing: An analysis of pictorial signs and unconventional punctuation Kuniyoshi Kataoka

119

Spelling rebellion Mark Sebba

151

‘Nike Trainers, My One True Love — Without You I am Nothing’: Youth, identity and the language of trainers for young men in prison Anita Wilson Constructions of identity in German hip-hop culture Jan Berns and Peter Schlobinski

121

173

197

viii Table of contents

III. Representations and positionings Socio-cultural orientation, urban youth styles and the spontaneous acquisition of Turkish by non-Turkish adolescents in Germany Peter Auer and Inci Dirim Swedish youth discourse: On performing relevant selves in interaction Catrin Norrby and Karolina Wirdenäs The youth and the gatekeepers: Reproduction and change in language norm and variation Tore Kristiansen

221 223

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Mediated experience and youth identities in a post-traditional order Lilie Chouliaraki

303

Index

333

Discourse constructions of youth identities: Introduction Jannis Androutsopoulos and Alexandra Georgakopoulou University of Hannover / King’s College London

Talk and identities It is by now a truism within discourse studies that identities are neither ªxed nor categorical properties residing in people’s minds; instead, they are emergent in the sequentiality of discourse, particularly in interactional sites, where they are dynamically (re)created (e.g. Davies and Harré 1990). In this way, their constructions in any speech event are marked by indeterminacy and irreducible situational contingency: e.g. certain identity aspects may be made more salient or relevant than others at diŸerent points of an interaction; in similar vein, identities can be actively reconstructed, reframed, and, even more or less consciously, transgressed and reconstituted (Butler 1990) by discourse participants to suit local interactional projects. In empirical analyses, this means that the once favourable variationist project (cf. Chambers 1995) of forming absolute correspondences and one-to-one mappings between language forms and social identity aspects has been lately re-assessed as a methodologically problematic pursuit. In its place, there is the recognition that identity cannot be viewed in essentialist terms, that is, as a ªxed property of individuals or society that can be easily mapped on to some aspect or kind of social reality. Indeed, relationships between identities and their discursive constructions are complex, anisomorphic, and, to complicate matters even more, indirect, that is, mediated by various social attitudes, stances, values, etc. To take this further, the linguistic indexing of one identity aspect (such as gender, see Ochs 1992) may be mediated by other identity aspects or social practices that construct them. As a result, rather than artiªcially keeping one identity aspect apart from others, and examining it in isolation, it seems more productive to investigate co-constructions and co-articulations of positions in discourse. As Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1999: 190) recently put it in discussing gender identities: The fact that gender is co-constructed with other aspects of identity is not just noise. Focusing on co-construction not only avoids closing oŸ serious analysis; such a focus may be the only way to uncover and begin to explain many important general patterns.

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Emphasis on the emergence and variability of identities in discourse, coupled with an anti-essentialist and anti-realist view of identity, brings together approaches to discourse as diverse as social constructionism and conversation analysis (Widdicombe 1998: 201). As such, it is a legitimate, if not safe, point of departure for any eclectic volume on discourse constructions of identities, such as the present one. It is true that the recent problematizing and, even, deconstruction of the concept of identity, not only in discourse studies, but also, more generally, in social sciences, has, somewhat paradoxically, brought about an intense interest in the concept itself. According to Hall (1996: 1), as the concept of identity has not been superseded by anything else, there is no choice other than to continue to work with and reify it. However, Hall also acknowledges the concept’s irreducibility, which he locates in “its centrality to the question of agency and politics” (idem: 2). As will be seen in this volume, identities both “speak to us or hail us into place as the social subjects of particular discourses” (5) and “construct us as subjects which can be ‘spoken’” of and about (6). On the other hand, they are intimately linked with politics of inclusion, exclusion and more or less strategic self- and other- positionings (see in particular part III of this volume).

Youth identities and language Recent advances in how identity is conceptualized are particularly evident in studies of youth and youth cultures. Classic deªnitions of youth based on age and social institutions (especially school) alone have been problematized in recent discussion. As Wyn and White (1997: 25) aptly put it, “young people do share in common their age, but the social, economic and cultural signiªcance of this physical reality are far from common.” From this point of view, concepts such as adolescence and teenage years, useful as they may be, misleadingly suggest a homogeneous social and cultural experience that hardly corresponds to the richness and range of real-life diversity of young people. In rethinking this ‘global’ concept of youth, Wyn and White (1997) suggest that a progression similar to the concept of gender is appropriate. This involves replacing static with relational approaches, in which the relation of youth to adult (and child) categories is foregrounded. To this eŸect, a cultural understanding of youth is gaining currency over a social or a physiological one. Youth is thus seen as something which is culturally determined in a discursive interplay with musical, visual and verbal signs that denote what is young in relation to that which is interpreted as respectively childish or adult. (Fornäs 1995: 3)

Introduction

In a similar vein, studies of youth culture have been recently moving away from conceptions of class-based youth subcultures in western societies, to approaches which emphasize the diversity of youth-cultural expressions worldwide (cf. Amid-Talai and WulŸ 1995; Shelton and Valentine 1998). This is coupled with a shift of focus from resistance to dominant culture and deviation from mainstream norms to life-style choices in a variety of ethnic groups and local communities. Based on ethnographically derived categories, research is thus concerned with situated communities emerging around aesthetic preferences, hobbies and commodities such as music styles or video games (cf. Epstein 1998; Sefton-Green 1998; Muggleton 2000). A common denominator of such approaches is the assumption that youth identities cannot be understood outside their particular socio-cultural context. While the globalization of cultural commodities and the subsequent homogenization tendencies in youth culture are not denied, there is a concern with the ways in which globally available resources are actively and creatively appropriated by young actors in local contexts. Another point of convergence is to be found in treating youth cultures not as substitutes for an adult status that is not yet achieved, but as practices in their own right. As Fornäs (1995: 2) puts it, to depict the popular cultural activities of the young as merely jolly games which provide them with necessary skills in their search for adult identities is to trivialize and disarm youth cultures.

These shifts in focus are also re¶ected in current sociolinguistic research on language, identity and youth. Identity has always been a key concept in studies of youth language (cf. Androutsopoulos, forthc.). However, the last few years have witnessed signiªcant changes in how the relation between language and identity is conceptualized in this ªeld. From a variationist point of view, this relation is made visible in correlations of linguistic and social variables. Youth is thereby deªned statically, as a biologically delimited group, for purposes of statistical treatment. For instance, highly frequent vernacular variants among Afro-American teenage speakers are interpreted “as assertions of their ethnicity and youthfulness” (Rickford et al. 1991: 119). In recent work within the variationist paradigm, however, a more dynamic view of identity has been adopted. For instance, Eckert (2000) argues that the social meaning of variation patterns is not once and for all ªxed, but emerges out of communicative practice in local communities. In her ethnographically rich work on language variation in a Northern US high school, it is the relations among student groups, rather than age or social class as such, that give social meaning to variation patterns. Such a dynamic view of identity is also subscribed to by studies of youth interaction within the frameworks of conversation analysis and interactional sociolinguistics (e.g. Schlobinski 1995; Rampton 1995; Bucholtz 1999). These have demonstrated how various linguistic resources are contextually selected, combined

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and crafted “into identity claims for presentation to others” (Bauman 2000: 1). Here, the notion of identity refers to ascriptions of group membership as those are performed in interaction (Widdicombe and Woo¹tt 1995; Deppermann forthc.). Despite any diŸerences in focus, the growing literature on youth language exhibits a number of recurrent themes, related both to linguistic features and their communicative functions and social distribution. These apply to numerous languages and speech communities. To begin with, there is a convergence on viewing young people’s language use as a reaction to general conditions of adolescence as a transitional life stage. Two interrelated leitmotifs, originating in studies of youth sociology, are adolescents’ claims for independence from adults and adult authorities, and their engagement in peer-group activities and youth cultural practices, which often involve a departure from mainstream norms and dominant cultural values. Language use in adolescence is often interpreted along this dual axis, i.e. as a symbolic assertion of autonomy and as an index of a¹liation to (or distancing from) relevant peer groups and youth-cultural scenes. As Pujolar puts it, the use of particular speech varieties in the context of youth culture is an important part of the processes whereby young people construct their views about the world and their relationships amongst themselves and with other social groups. (Pujolar 2001: 7)

A heavy vernacular use is probably the most commonly attested to sociolinguistic feature in adolescence, whereby the term ‘vernacular’ refers to phenomena at all levels of linguistic description (cf. Androutsopoulos forthc.). In particular, adolescents have been repeatedly found to use a higher proportion of vernacular phonetic variants than adult speakers from the same socio-economic background (cf. Romaine 1984; Chambers 1995). At the same time, the adolescents’ preference for local varieties and variants has been frequently reported (e.g. Eckert 2000; Kerswill 1996). At the lexical level, “young people’s fondness for slang” was even noted by Leonard Bloomªeld (1984: 49) and repeatedly stated ever since. In particular, heavy use of taboo words, discourse markers and certain processes of word-formation and formal modiªcation, such as clipping or syllable reordering, are often seen as typical features of youth speech. Vernacular use in adolescence is generally explained with reference to indexical and symbolic values of vernacular speech, such as toughness, street smartness or an anti-establishment stance. However, cases such as the churchrelated youth group studied by Schlobinski et al. (1993) or the female “nerds” discussed by Bucholtz (1999), which are characterised by a much smaller presence or even conscious avoidance of vernacular and “cool” teen slang, show that vernacular is not the only resource of adolescent peer discourse. Besides vernacular use, signiªcant attention has been paid to practices of

Introduction

bricolage and polyphonic discourse in adolescent groups. Playful co-articulations of various social voices and cultural resources, e.g. fragments of popular culture, have been reported from various speech communities (cf. Schlobinski 1995; Pujolar 1997; Georgakopoulou 1999), often including two or more languages or language varieties. Distinctive patterns of bilingual speech among adolescents (e.g. Sebba 1993; Kotsinas 1997) frequently involve the use of stylized immigrant varieties, which act as group consolidating resources (see papers in Jørgensen 2001). Another practice attested to in adolescent groups in contemporary multi-ethnic urban environments is “language crossing”, i.e. the use of minority languages or language varieties which do not belong to the speaker, e.g. German youths using English or Turkish (Auer and Dirim 2000), Anglo youths using varieties of Jamaican Creole in England or African-American Vernacular English in the USA (Rampton 1995, 1998; Cutler 1999). As an interactional practice, language crossing foregrounds ethnic group relations and at least partially challenges traditional conceptions of ethnicity. At the same time it is closely related to other well-known communicative skills that are crucial for the assertion of peer-group membership and status from late childhood and onwards, such as competitive verbal play, ritual insults, teasing and ‘dissing’ (e.g. Labov 1972; Goodwin 1990; James 1995; Hoyle and Adger 1998; Lytra this vol.) While the notion of social class was paramount in early sociolinguistic analyses of youth language, the focus has gradually shifted to gender and ethnicity. In addition, language variation is being increasingly looked into in relation to categories and distinctions that have relevance for particular youth cultures. Peer groups have been found to position themselves with reference to what they are not (i.e. in contrast to other local adolescent communities), as well as to the hobbies and expressive lifestyles they engage in, their linguistic means of displaying identity thereby going hand in hand with non-linguistic markers of a¹liation. In this way, language proves to be an integral part of their “specialized semiotic” (Wyn and White 1997: 79). There is a shared realization that social class cannot be easily identiªed as a relevant category in young people’s interaction. As is the case with other identity aspects, its emergence in discourse is deeply interwoven and coarticulated with factors such as gender and ethnicity. A potential analytical revival of interest in social class in young people’s interactions would have to illuminate its interrelations with other aspects of identity and local context as well as being careful to avoid a homogenization of the diversity and multiplicity of young people’s experiences. Vernacular use, linguistic creativity, playfulness, polyphony, and bricolage are resources for young speakers’ “acts of identity” (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985), which relate them to (or distance them from) particular communities. What the current state of the art has made apparent is the need to pay closer attention to

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the inter-relatedness of various linguistic features in the construction of young speakers’ identities in discourse. This is intimately linked with the need for a detailed contextualization of youth interaction, which involves paying attention to the situated use of these resources.

The focus of this volume The aim of this volume is to foreground youth identity problematics in the context of current sociolinguistic and discourse research on identity construction. While we subscribe to a pluralistic conception of youth and youth discourses, as this has been attested to in recent research, and endorse the detailed examination of how youth identities are locally constructed in text and talk, we feel that the signiªcance of social age in identity construction has far from received due attention. Youth interaction has proved to be a fertile ªeld in variationist and interactional sociolinguistics (e.g. work by Bucholtz, Eckert, Rampton, Widdicombe and Woo¹tt). However, the theoretical and methodological understanding of the sociolinguistics of youth (or of language and age for that matter, cf. Eckert 1997) is still lagging behind compared to the related research on language and gender. The tendency to treat youth as a ‘hidden category’ is still prominent. In this way, youth frequently forms — or is rather pushed to — the background of other analytic concerns and identity aspects. It is thus not uncommon for studies to shed light on issues of gender, ethnicity, life-style choices etc., whilst shying away from the possible relevance of the fact that their data come from participants who belong to a speciªc age group. In view of the above, a common orientation of this volume’s chapters is their emphasis on the discursive construction and variability of youth identities as an explicit and valid focus of analysis. Through their detailed empirical analyses, the chapters thus unravel a whole range of identities in diŸerent settings and types of social organization within the age-span usually conceived of as ‘youth’, which ranges from late childhood (cf. Lytra’s contribution) over to the core phase of adolescence (cf. the papers by Georgakopoulou, Kallmeyer and Keim, Stenström and others) and up to post-adolescence, i.e. early twenties (cf. papers by Auer and Dirim, Berns and Schlobinski, Wilson). What emerges from these analyses is the signiªcance and role of activity types in youth identities construction. The term “activity type” (cf. Brown and Fraser 1979; Sarangi 2000) refers to socially and culturally recognized events with relatively stable (or typiªed) settings, communicative goals, participant roles and interaction structures. Active knowledge of the fairly predictable and recurring patterns of activity types is thus instrumental in acquiring membership in a particular group or community. In this case, activity

Introduction

types seem to be at the core of the sociolinguistic life of diŸerent youth groups. At the same time, the predictability or patterning of activity types is far from absolute or constraining. As will be shown, activity types provide sites of lived experience in which locally motivated linguistic choices can be creatively related to extra-situational social categories and meanings. Taken together, the three parts of this volume are organized respectively around the importance of three sets or kinds of activity types broadly deªned here as conglomerates of social events and genres or types of discourse. They will be introduced here shortly and referred to in more detail in the introduction of each part. The ªrst set of activity types involves peer group interaction in various settings, such as home, the school yard, the youth-center, the neighborhood, etc. These prove to be sites that mainly encourage single-sex interactions and are mostly privileged by participants belonging to the core phase of adolescence (school age). Peer group interactions also call for as well as thrive on shared practices, which are typical (or even restricted to) this age-range. A second activity type comprises literacy-based and mediated genres. Here, we ªnd facets of a large cultural ªeld, which ranges from classic literacy activities (e.g. informal letters) to various media formats (e.g. web-sites, radio programs and pop song lyrics), and includes discourses that are actively constructed by youths (personal letters, gra¹ti, internet chats) as well as discourses that are addressed to youth on a mass-media scale. The third activity type comprises situations (e.g. interviews, pre-arranged conversations among informants) in which young people are brought together to act as a kind of focus group on the basis of the common denominator of age. These occasions are normally set up as part of a research project and are aimed at eliciting more or less explicit positionings and self-representations by young participants. Though it is largely the researcher’s aims that determine which of the participants’ identity aspect(s) will be made salient, the actual event does not necessarily exclude or inhibit other aspects of self-presentation. The linguistic choices or devices examined in the chapters are in resonance with the main preoccupations of relevant literature as mentioned above. Several chapters examine codes in a broad sense, i.e. languages or language varieties (styles, registers) which are sequentially juxtaposed to one another, but also voices and genres, e.g. narrative, which can be evoked in bricolage practices (cf. Auer and Dirim, Berns and Schlobinski, Georgakopoulou, Kallmeyer and Keim). Choices that are scrutinized at the micro-level include discourse markers (Kataoka, Norrby and Wirdenäs, Stenström); lexicogrammar features, e.g. lexical choices and modality (Chouliaraki, Stenström); and spelling or, more broadly, manipulations of the graphic code (Kataoka, Sebba). Finally, text and talk are looked at besides (or in conjunction with) other semiotic, essentially non-verbal, means of a symbolic manifestation of identities (Berns and Schlobinski, Wilson).

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These linguistic resources and activity types are shown to bring about, index, or be shaped by certain macro-categories (i.e. larger, extra-situational or exogenous caterogies). On the one hand, there are larger personal, social and cultural identities that come into play, particularly gender (Georgakopoulou, Kataoka, Lytra, Stenström) and ethnicity (Auer and Dirim, Chouliaraki, Kallmeyer and Keim, Lytra, Sebba), but also region (Kristiansen) and social class (Stenström). On the other hand, a number of “master narratives” or “capital D discourses” (Gee 1999) prove to be relevant: nationalism and late modernity (Chouliaraki), normative ideals (Kristiansen), social institutions such as prison and the media, and popular culture practices attended to by youth, especially styles of popular music. The importance of pop music as a symbolic resource in youth culture is wellknown in youth sociology and cultural studies (e.g. Thornton 1995), has been stressed in sociolinguistics with regard to Afro-Caribbean music and British Creole (Sebba 1993; Rampton 1995; Cutler 1999), and is important for a number of chapters in this volume as well (Auer and Dirim, Berns and Schlobinski, Norrby and Wirdenäs, Sebba). The chapters’ analyses are informed by a broad range of data and methodologies. Ethnography is the dominant approach to the social arenas under examination in the chapters by Auer and Dirim, Georgakopoulou, Kallmeyer and Keim, Lytra, and Wilson. Chapters with a less rich ethnographic contextualization, such as the ones by Kristiansen, Norrby and Wirdenäs and Stenström, still draw on a profound knowledge of the populations under examination. In a similar vein, chapters dealing with literacy and media issues (Berns and Schlobinski, Sebba) provide vivid illustrations of media ethnography at work, in which researchers supplement their analyses of media texts with a continuous monitoring of a given ªeld of media discourse which allows them to develop insights into production and reception practices in this ªeld. Remarkably, these chapters are not restricted to one single source of data, but draw on several sources in tracking down one particular phenomenon — see e.g. Sebba’s analysis of unconventional spellings in a range of genres or Berns and Schlobinski’s examination of hip-hop discourse in rap lyrics and radio sessions. Analytically, most chapters subscribe to a close qualitative study of talk and text. Nonetheless, this commitment to the details of interaction is not informed by one approach only but by a range of methodologies and frameworks ranging from conversation analysis (Lytra), critical discourse analysis (Chouliaraki), and narrative analysis (Georgakopoulou), to a combination of qualitative with quantitative discourse analyses (Kristiansen, Norrby and Wirdenäs). In several cases, it is the novel or hybrid nature of the material itself that dictates an integrative empirical approach. The chapter of Kataoka, for instance, combines an examination of discourse particles with a semiotic analysis of pictorial signs. Similarly, Wilson stresses the importance of various ‘semiotic markers’ in prison culture, as in the language of

Introduction

“trainers”, while Berns and Schlobinski discuss the construction of artist identity in German hip-hop culture by drawing on song lyrics and video-clips alike. The above suggests that far from providing a homogenized perspective on youth discourses and identities, this volume highlights and documents multitude and plurality, as these are evidenced in the inter-relations (conªgurations) between macro-categories, activity types, and micro-linguistic resources by means of which youth identities are discursively constructed.

Prefaces to parts I – III Part I: Peer group identities Peer-group identities is a concept with purchase throughout the volume. It is, however, addressed in a more explicit way in Part I, not least since all four chapters explore the interactional practices of young people who form a close-knit group of intimates. In this respect, all the groups investigated could also be described as exhibiting instances of a “community of practice”, i.e. an “aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavor” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992: 464), and who develop shared resources over a period of regular socialization (for a detailed discussion, see Lave and Wenger 1991). In the case of these chapters, this is mostly evidenced in the level of the accumulation of shared codes, ways of talking, beliefs, and values. This shared interactional history is shown to constitute the backdrop as well as being dynamically invoked and recast in local interactional contexts (Georgakopoulou, Lytra). In this way, it provides the indispensable link between the participants’ local linguistic choices and their extrasituational, larger social roles and identities. In addition, communities of practice provide resources that can be actively recruited by the participants in order to signal boundaries between “us” and “them” and symbolic a¹liations or disa¹liations (Kallmeyer and Keim). In Kallmeyer and Keim’s data, at the heart of communities of practice lies a distinctive style of speaking, called ‘Mischsprache’ (i.e. mixed language), with connotations of “street-smartness” and “toughness”. In the spirit of work by Eckert (2000) and Wilson (this volume), it would be interesting to explore how this interacts with other parts of a whole identity kit which comprises other semiotic systems (e.g. styles of dress). Similarly, in Georgakopoulou’s data, the participants’ history of regular interactions over a period time has led to the formation of shared stories, which are more or less strategically drawn upon and recontextualized by participants to suit local contexts. Re¶ecting a well-developed tendency in the literature on gender (e.g. Eckert 2000; Eder 1999; Shuman 1986; etc.), three out of four chapters investigate single-

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sex interactions amongst female participants. Nonetheless, their data hardly supports certain consistent ªndings or generalizations in that literature (for a critique of such generalizations, see Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1999: 190Ÿ). Speciªcally, the street-variety spoken by the participants in Kallmeyer and Keim’s data brings to the fore symbolically invested attributes such as toughness and street-smartness; similarly, swear words and expletives abound in Stenström’s data. Finally, in Lytra’s data of mixed-sex interactions, female participants hold their own in teasing exchanges with their male class mates. These ªndings provide further evidence for the widely held skepticism towards generalizations involving not just the discursive construction of gender but of other identity aspects, too. Sensitivity to contextual parameters, including the activity type that participants are engaged in, is one main antidote to such generalizations. As Stenström illustrates, the setting and topic of conversation are powerful determining factors of linguistic choices. Similarly, in Kallmeyer and Keim’s study, neighborhood talk is used among peers but not towards the adult German social worker. Furthermore, in Georgakopoulou’s data, identity construction is inextricably linked with distinct narrative activities, such as telling stories of projected events, referring to stories of shared events, or dynamically juxtaposing the two. All chapters provide valuable insights into the intimate relationship between peer-group practices, which, as suggested above, are ultimately linked with communities of practice, and the construction of youth identities. They also illustrate the need for further explicating links between such practices and the articulation or indexing of youth identities. This would be a crucial step in the direction of investigating the interactions amongst diŸerent identity aspects (such as age, gender, etc.) in discourse. For instance, in the case of two chapters in this Part (Kallmeyer and Keim, Lytra), the participants’ constructions of youth identities and peer-group practices identities cannot be seen in isolation from issues of language and cultural contact as well as politics of ethnicity. The chapter by Werner Kallmeyer and Inken Keim (Institut für Deutsche Sprache Mannheim) is an ethnographic study of a group of ethnic minority girls (aged 15–21) in Mannheim, the majority of whom are Turkish in origin. The location for the data collection is a youth centre, where the participants meet on a daily basis. The central concept in Kallmeyer and Keim’s work is that of a communicative social style, deªned as the conglomerate of speciªc linguistic and communicative patterns which are used as an expression of social identity. At the heart of this social style lie practices of linguistic variation, which the authors explore in relation to pragmatic rules of speaking that regulate social distance, and systems of social categories for deªning group members and outsiders. Linguistic variation in this case comprises a tapestry of codes, ranging from Standard German and the participants’ home Turkish to the Mannheim city dialect, carica-

Introduction

tured Gastarbeiterdeutsch and a simpliªed multi-ethnic vernacular variety of German, labelled as ‘neighborhood talk’ or ‘mixed language’. Switches to and from any of these varieties have both an interaction-structuring role (inasmuch as they mark topic change of or return to a prior topic) and socio-symbolic functions. In the latter case, they regulate participation roles and manage consensus or dissent in arguments by means of indexing linguistic convergence or divergence. More speciªcally, through code-choices and -switches, participants set boundaries and signal their symbolic disa¹liation from their parents’ generation, the dominant adult German society which confronts them with overt or hidden discrimination, as well as other youth groups which follow alternative orientations in relation to the social world of the foreigners (which they perceive as the “ghetto”). Overall, the participants’ communicative social style seems to be typical of youth cultural styles in its playful handling and pastiche of diŸerent voices (cf. Schlobinski 1995; Pujolar 1997). Vally Lytra (King’s College London) employs an integrative framework of conversation analysis with ethnography in order to investigate teasing practices, more speciªcally nickname-calling, in the school interactions of Greek-Turkish bilingual pre-adolescents with their Greek monolingual peers. Lytra’s micro-analysis focuses on how the discourse identities of teaser and party teased are enacted in the sequencing of teasing exchanges. The analysis brings to the fore a distinction between cases of playful teasing with shared alignments, teasing with a nip in which participants juggle shifting alignments, and teasing with a bite which creates tension between teasers and parties teased. In the former case, the participants’ collusion results in an alternation between the identity of the teaser and the party teased. In the latter two, there is a resistance on the part of the parties being teased and a dynamic negotiation of con¶icting stances or alignments with regard to the activity at hand. Lytra’s combination of micro-analysis with ethnography is instrumental in establishing links between the participants’ local discourse identities and larger social identities. In tune with other chapters in this volume, the participants’ identity of age is found to be discursively co-constructed with and mediated by other identity aspects, in this case, gender and peer-group identities. More speciªcally, teasing is shown to invoke, rea¹rm as well as put to test the participants’ peergroup bonds and shared interactional history (including prior teasing exchanges). Finally, male participants tend to enact playfully aggressive behavior in teasing exchanges (e.g. pulling at girls’ hair), while female participants, in contrast to previous literature, come out as equally assertive. Alexandra Georgakopoulou (King’s College London) focuses on the constructions of social roles and identities in the conversational stories of a group of Greek female teenagers, who socialize on a daily basis in leisurely settings outside school. More speciªcally, the chapter explores the connection between the micro (i.e. the

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interactional details) and the macro (i.e. larger social identities, including youth) through a focus on participation roles in the course of a storytelling. A similar inquiry into extra-situational identities by means of using the participants’ interactional roles (cf. discourse identities) as a useful micro-analytic platform is exempliªed in the chapters by Lytra and Norrby and Wirdenäs. Georgakopoulou’s analysis suggests the importance within the group’s practices of certain types of stories that depart signiªcantly from what can be described as the “narrative canon” within narrative analysis, i.e. the non-shared, personal experience past events story. These non-canonical or a-typical stories in the data at hand involve (a) stories of shared (known) past events, and (b) stories of projected events. The former normally occur in the context of the telling of the latter. In this way, past events are drawn upon and recontextualized as a running commentary on and a comparison base for the events to take place. The close analysis of a narrative episode involving such stories brings to the fore distinct roles (i.e. teller of tales as opposed to assessor of tales) and diŸerentiated agendas for the two participants in question. Not only do participants diŸer in relation to which taleworld (past or future) they prioritize, but also they contribute to the storytelling in diŸerent ways (i.e. by telling or assessing/ evaluating a tale). These local interactional roles are shown to be intimately linked with the participants’ larger social roles and identities as women, friends, and members of a community of practice with a well-developed set of shared resources. In turn, the participants’ youth identities are implicated on one hand in their peergroup practices and on the other hand in the local occasioning of such practices through the construction of narratives. Anna-Brita Stenström (University of Bergen) illustrates linguistic and pragmatic features of adolescent language use by concentrating on gender diŸerences. The study’s point of departure is literature (e.g. Woolard 1997) which supports the view that gender diŸerences in speech originate in child and adolescent years, due to diŸerent socialization practices and peer group structures. Based on extracts of four single-sex conversations from a corpus of London teenage speech, Stenström’s analysis is organized around three levels of description, i.e. choice of topics, choice of vocabulary, and interaction practices. The data at hand illustrate a range of features and patterns that have been widely reported as typical of adolescent speech, including taboo words, slang, pragmatic markers and vague expressions. At the same time, Stenström demonstrates that diŸerent linguistic choices are made in each conversation, depending on participants, setting and topic. Gender diŸerences clearly emerge in the choice of topic (thereby conªrming well-known gendered patterns of language use), but much less so in the participants’ interactional behavior; there, it is not gender but age and speaking situation that prove to play the most important role. Stenström relates her ªndings to language and gender research, pointing out both commonalities (as in the occurrence of greater involve-

Introduction

ment and support in girls’ conversations) and diŸerences (as in the use of expletives among female adolescents).

Part II: Recasting literacy practices The four chapters of Part II examine displays of identity in a wide range of media discourses and literacy practices, covering both personal and mass-media communication. While Kataoka and Wilson are concerned with interaction between friends or people sharing an institutionalized identity (i.e. inmates), Berns and Schlobinski and Sebba focus on discourses that are addressed to more diŸuse ‘communities’, which are delimited by speciªc life-style choices, including preferred style of music and media consumption. Despite any diŸerences in the nature of communities investigated, these chapters share a number of common concerns. To begin with, their data include instances of vernacular literacy, i.e. writing “which is closely associated with culture which is neither elite nor institutional” (Camitta 1993: 228), such as personal letters (Kataoka), prison magazines (Wilson), and instances of computer mediated interaction (Sebba). Secondly, some of the texts analyzed can be said to originate in liminal situations, i.e. “moments when the ordered ¶ow of social life [is] loosened and normal social relations [cannot] be taken for granted” (Rampton 1995: 193 based on Turner 1974), prison texts and internet message boards being clear examples of that. Furthermore, all authors situate their material within its discourse contexts (Fairclough 1995), i.e. the institutional framework of its production and reception. The individual chapters examine writing practices that help cultivate relationships between individuals and/or communities, and set boundaries to other groups and institutional discourses. Emphasis is placed on the ways in which writing is used to project a culturally situated image of self with respect to speciªc audiences. Identity is thereby constructed in the relation between the resources used, on the one hand, and the positioning of youth literacy practices to broader institutional discourses, on the other. A fundamental resource found in various instances of youth vernacular literacy is orality, i.e. features and patterns of informal conversation, e.g. discourse particles (Kataoka), slang (Wilson) or codes and voices familiar from peer interaction (Sebba). These are cases of conversationalisation in written discourse (Fairclough 1995), serving as a means for creating informality and indexing shared background knowledge in mediated interaction. In particular, the chapters by Kataoka and Sebba tap into the largely uncharted territory of manipulations of the written code. Further resources for the media presentation of identity involve the appropriation of genre patterns and the multimodality of literacy practices. In this respect, Wilson and Kataoka pay close attention to the meaning potential (and intentionality of use) of non-verbal means such as typographic choices, color, and

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the interplay of verbal and visual means. A further common concern of these chapters is the tension between youth literacy practices and the institutional discourses that generally frame them. In this respect, they all document how young people, through their writing, challenge and resist constraints and identities that are institutionally ascribed to them. For instance, the devices used in Kataoka’s data to convey expressivity and intimacy in writing, stand in sharp contrast to writing norms in school; in fact, they resemble more those found in comic strips. Similarly, Sebba’s gra¹ti writers obey to spelling norms that are radically diŸerent from those of school. Wilson’s study demonstrates how young prisoners use writing in order to express and maintain an identity as a young person, thus undermining and resisting the institutional identity of a prisoner. A-typical literacy practices are not static over time, but subject to processes of social diŸusion and commodiªcation. Resources originating in small communities (e.g. spelling transformations, special signs or expressions used in informal letters) can develop into new trends, appearing in mass media. For instance, Kataoka notes that unconventional spelling practices in Japan have become increasingly popular. However, they tend to be stripped oŸ their subversive meanings as the social range of their use increases. Indeed, the whole domain of youth-oriented media is particularly suited to an inquiry into the ¶ow and spread of signs and trends, as well as into the rapid integration into the mainstream of (vernacular, innovative) semiotic markers. In his study of vernacular letter writing among young female Japanese friends, Kuniyoshi Kataoka (Aichi University) identiªes a number of strategies of graphic code manipulation. These include the use of unconventional verbal (e.g. transformed, round letters, elongation of vowels, etc.) and pictorial signs (e.g. signs for tears, hearts, etc.) as well as of punctuation. Kataoka argues that these form a kind of anti-language (Halliday 1978), especially in view of the fact that they have been banned from schools due to their acquired associations with delinquency and subversive qualities. This anti-language serves as a shared repertoire of (re)negotiable resources amongst the participants that sets an aŸective tone in their letter-writing, partly by rendering their text more oral and immediate. As a truly multi-functional device, manipulations of graphic code also cue shifts in topics, thus presenting a text-segmentation function, too. In tune with other chapters in this volume (Georgakopoulou, Lytra, Sebba), Kataoka sees the link between such unconventional writing practices and youth identities as an indexical one (Ochs 1992), that is, as indirectly accomplished and mediated by other social stances and identity aspects, in this case, peer-group identities. In this respect, a close relationship between participants, rather surprisingly (but cf. Wolfson’s comparable ªnding, 1982, regarding the use of Conversational Historical Present in narratives) does

Introduction

not lead to a higher degree of code manipulation than the one occurring between participants who are not well acquainted. This makes the self-presentation involved in graphic manipulations rather independent of the relationship of intimacy but intimately linked with a sense of belonging in a large youth community. Mark Sebba (Lancaster University) focuses on the identity display values of spelling. Although orthography is often thought of as a virtually invariable linguistic (sub)system, the sound-to-spelling rules of a language oŸer a variation space which writers can creatively explore, as is sometimes done in advertisement or playwriting. Young people, Sebba argues, are among the principal explorers of this variation’s potential for expressive and social-symbolic purposes. This makes spelling “an ideal site for ideological struggle and rebellion of various kinds”. As a ªrst step, Sebba oŸers a classiªcation of “spaces of orthographic regulation”, in which various writing types and genres are arranged on a continuum, ranging from texts focused on standard orthographic norms (e.g. business letters and mainstream press) to texts which allow for considerable variation or even an emergence of deviant spelling conventions. These include genres of private informal writing, such as letters and diaries, but also other literacy practices popular among the young, such as gra¹ti, fanzines and formats of computer-mediated communication. This framework, which draws on Halliday’s notion of an “anti-language” (Halliday 1978) and Le Page’s notion of “focusing” (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985), allows for the emergence of “focused but non-standard orthographic norms”. Using examples from a range of communities and writing types, Sebba goes on to show how choices in spelling are strategically employed as powerful symbolic devices (as in the constant substitution of by in some Spanish subcultural groups or in the writing of Jamaican Creole) or even as a genre convention (as in English gra¹ti). Sebba also examines orthographic choices in a case of computermediated communication, i.e. imitations of creole style in a message board, and concludes that the Internet is an area where spelling developments may occur, due to its (still) unregulated character. Anita Wilson (Lancaster University) explores the ways in which young male prisoners (15–20 years old) in jails of England and Scotland draw on and recontextualize literacy practices. Working with a multi-modal conception of text as a social semiotic praxis (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996), Wilson illustrates the importance of both verbal and visual codes. Her main argument is that the identities constructed by the young prisoners are more closely aligned with youth culture outside the prison rather than with the institutionalized prisoner identities. However, rather than being a straightforward adaptation of outside the prison practices, the prisoners’ identities are actively created and constructed in a “third space”, which brings together activities and practices from their outside and inside worlds, thus recontextualizing them in creative ways. All those disparate elements of youth identity

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and culture are drawn together by means of the trainer as a speciªc “semiotic marker”, that is, an indicator with speciªc cultural meanings used to enhance or deny particular aspects of identity and self-presentation ranging from visual to verbal markers.

Trainers are very much a symbol of the outside world: tellingly, they get conªscated before or during imprisonment, if their bearers do not conform to certain standards of behavior. In the collages used as decorations of cell walls, trainer texts co-occur with images of cars, female pop stars, sports, etc. Wilson’s study is a powerful illustration of how identity construction draws on verbal and non-verbal codes alike. Jan Berns and Peter Schlobinski (University of Halle-Wittenberg/University of Hannover) discuss displays of identity in German hip-hop discourse. In musicrelated youth cultures such as hip-hop, punk-rock or heavy metal, the formation and display of the identity of an artist or fan is linked with the participation in a range of cultural activities, such as performing, listening to and talking about music. As these cultures rapidly diŸuse on a global scale, local (national) variants emerge, which develop a degree of cultural autonomy, alongside their connection to the original cultural models. Speciªcally, although US American rap is still a powerful model of wide consumption, German artists are now rapping in their mother tongue, and their records are published by local music labels. In the case of hip-hop in Germany, then, cultural identity is intricately bound to processes of deand re-contextualization of global models. A key to the understanding of these appropriation processes is, according to the authors, the stance of being authentic or “real”. For German rap artists, “being real” means to develop an individual style, by re¶ecting in their rap discourse the social conditions of its emergence. A case in point are the lyrics of two German rap groups. The ªrst (“Midnite Sonz”) appropriates the US American “gangsta rap” style with its violence-and-crime lyrics, while the second (“Fünf Sterne Deluxe”) has more jocular and self-referential lyrics, in which allusions to local places and ªgures abound. The authors claim that, other things being equal, the second kind of localized rapping is more appropriate for gaining “street credibility”, i.e. acceptance by fans. In a further step, the authors examine a local radio phone-in program, where young callers can freestyle, i.e. improvise their rap lyrics over the phone. The analysis reveals how an important aspect of hip-hop identity, i.e. the right to use the title of “mc” (master of ceremony) is defended by the host against its misuses by amateur rappers who do not possess the required artistic skills. In this case, self and other identity ascriptions are related to and contested on the basis of practices that deªne ‘skillfulness’ as opposed to apprenticeship.

Introduction

Part III: Representations and positionings In Hall’s terms (1996: 6), identities are positions that the subjects take up in discourse and which tie them to structures of meaning and social processes. At best, these positions can be described as representations, as they are never complete or identical to the subject processes invested in them. By attending, however, to the production of such positions or (self)-representations in discourse, analysts gain valuable insights into participants’ subjectivities. In fact, the concept of positioning has formed a unique point of entry into identity analysis within a broad social constructionist framework (e.g. see Davies and Harré 1990). In simple terms, identities in this framework are viewed as symbolic resources, which people use in various ways in order to position themselves vis-à-vis social and ideological processes. In Kristiansen’s and Chouliaraki’s chapters, the broader framing or contextualization for positionings is provided by processes of de-traditionalization or “late modernity”, as the backdrop for young people’s lifestyle choices and value systems. Orientations to youth (sub)cultures form the master narratives or metaphors in the chapters by Auer and Dirim and Norrby and Wirdenäs. Whatever the macrosocietal processes may be that participants position themselves in or against, all the chapters converge on the multiplicity, ¶eeting character, and heterogeneity of such positionings. Rather than putting forth a uniªed deªnition of youth groups or cultures, the chapters thus reveal and revel in the diŸerent, multiple youth subgroupings and the heterogeneity as well as contradictions involved in the participants’ positionings. This goes hand in hand with the multi-functionality of linguistic choices that present a diŸerent indexicality in diŸerent contexts. For instance, in Auer and Dirim’s chapter, the use of Turkish by non-Turkish speakers in Hamburg (Germany) can by no means be equated with a positive orientation towards “the Turks” as a whole. Instead, its multiple social meanings are constituted of a variety of positionings vis-à-vis cultural groups and trends. In similar vein, in Norrby and Wirdenäs’s chapter, discourse markers variously index interpersonal relationships of solidarity or distance, depending on the topic of conversation and the participants’ roles in it. A piece of pop music shapes a positive orientation positioning to a master narrative at work, which is at the local level occasioned as collusion and solidarity between the participants. This is a clear case of identity consisting in a shared symbolic repertoire by means of which members construct a sense of their similarity in an ongoing historical process. Similarly, in Kristiansen’s data, the positionings of young people in the small Danish town of Naestved rests on constituting themselves as part of a youth community, variously deªned as regional (i.e. “our town”) or as more nation-wide. The former deªnition of a community underlies the participants’ loyalty to their town’s vernacular, while the latter informs an a¹liation with a low variety of Copenhagen. These positionings

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in turn owe their import to the power of normative discourses regulating standard language in the Danish society at large. As in Chouliaraki’s chapter too, normative or mainstream discourses are not invariably resisted or departed from in the participants’ positionings. Instead, in some cases, they are to various degrees conformed with and observed. This important ªnding casts doubt on the blanket view of youth identity constructions as rebellious and anti-normative. It also raises questions about the extent to which the grand narrative of “late modernity” provides unlimited free choices, especially for young people. Indeed, both Chouliaraki and Kristiansen bring to the fore its constraints and limitations. Mainstream youth cultural orientations are also prone to variation in the ways in which they can be complied with, recast, or resisted from, as the chapter by Auer and Dirim vividly illustrates. Resistance and negative orientation can be frequently achieved through alternative positionings which celebrate and draw their resonance from sub-cultural discourses. On the other hand, compliance to youth (sub)cultures can be discursively linked to processes of stylization, whereby representations become more or less conscious, strategic, and artful self-presentations. Peter Auer and I˙ nci Dirim (University of Freiburg/University of Hamburg) discuss the spontaneous acquisition of Turkish by non-Turkish speakers in Hamburg, Germany. The setting of their study are multi-ethnic neighborhoods in which Turks are the largest minority group. The authors’ starting assumption is that the non-native use of Turkish is an ‘act of identity’ (cf. Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985), often paired with explicit identity acts, e.g. statements about the Turks and Turkish culture. However, rather than equating the use of Turkish with a ªxed, uniform attitude towards the Turkish minority and/or the mainstream German society, the discussion shows that the adolescents’ motivations as well as degrees of competence in Turkish are highly diŸerentiated. As such, the Turkish they use presents a variety of social meanings. Based on extensive interviews and recordings of natural conversations, the three following analytic dimensions are formulated along which the participants’ positionings are located: (a) positive or negative position towards “the Turks”, (b) orientation to mainstream vs. sub-cultural (streetcultural) practices, and (c) orientation to youth cultural trends. Together, they constitute a “socio-cultural space”, in which the interviewed youths are positioned. This analysis is backed by rich ethnographic work, which vividly narrates the sociolinguistic proªle of all 25 informants. The authors conclude that a sociological theorizing of youth cultures as consisting of oppositional formations is not well suited to capture the pluri-ethnic urban contexts at the turn of the century. In contrast, their ªndings support the notion of multi-layered social identities and a distinction between subcultural and youth cultural orientations. The starting point of the chapter by Catrin Norrby (Melbourne University) and Karolina Wirdenäs (Göteborg University) is previous research which has

Introduction

attested to the proliªc use of discourse markers by young people as subtle cues of their attitudes to what is talked about as well as to their interpersonal relations. The data comprise informal interviews in single and mixed-sex groups of senior high school students (16–19) in the Götenborg region of Sweden. The interviews were aimed at tapping into the students’ evaluations of nine pieces of music that represented a wide range of musical styles. As in Kristiansen’s chapter, the participants’ evaluations are taken to provide insights into their self-representations as well as positionings vis-à-vis mainstream social stances and values. Within a contextually sensitive framework of analysis, Norrby and Wirdenäs illustrate the intimate link between discourse markers, the topic of conversation and the participants’ roles in it. In sequences of disagreement, the participants are shown to mobilize a set of negatively polite or bluntly face-threatening markers (Brown and Levinson 1987). In contrast, discourse markers that construct a shared youth sub-cultural group identity were produced in response to the piece of hardcore, i.e. a popular style of youth-cultural music. This construction appealed to assumed shared values and linguistically mobilized positive politeness markers that signalled co-operation. As elsewhere in this volume (cf. chapters by Kataoka and Wilson), identities are shown to be indexed by means of the multi-functionality of interactional cues. In addition, an intimate link is established between the ways in which aspects of identities are attended to or made relevant and visible and contextual factors (e.g. topic, activity type or sequence, etc.). Tore Kristiansen (University of Copenhagen) explores the ways in which young people categorize and position themselves in relation to the speech and speakers of their community in the Danish town of Næstved near Copenhagen. The background for Kristiansen’s discussion is a set of norm ideals in Denmark which comprise evaluations of particular ways of speaking that are in turn associated with normative practices. In this “verbal hygiene” (Cameron 1995), the standards are set by Standard Danish (rigsdansk) which stands in sharp contrast to sjællandsk, the local dialect, and københavnsk, the low variety of Copenhagen. Kristiansen places young people’s positionings and self- as well as other-representations in the context of late modernity, as providing a master narrative for identity constructions, which involve making lifestyle choices incorporated into routinized practices of dressing, eating, acting (Giddens 1991), and, as Kristiansen aptly adds, “ways of speaking”. The data for the study involve answers to questionnaires and evaluations of taped voices, collected from adolescents, primary school teachers, and personnel managers, the latter two sets being construed as the voices or spokespersons of the community’s institutional discourses. The quantitative analysis of the data suggests that the adolescents display loyalty to their own vernacular, that is, one of the two nonstandard accents represented in the sample. Rather than as an act of rebellion to normative practices, this positioning is construed by Kristiansen as a “self-esteem

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defense” on the part of the youngsters, provoked by contextual factors involved in the data collection. This is conªrmed by the fact that the adolescents converged with the “gatekeepers” (i.e. school teachers and personnel managers) on negatively evaluating sjællandsk speakers. Comparably, they negatively evaluated københavnsk, the other non-standard accent in the sample. However, in cases where language was not salient in the evaluation, they assigned the latter top positive rankings on both status and solidarity dimensions. This re-evaluation of the Copenhagen high and low variants seems to be part of a nation-wide phenomenon and partly advanced by the media. Rather than as a real liberation from standard ideology, Kristiansen sees this paradox in the representations of adolescents as stressing the unifying and legitimating features of dominant representations. In this way, his data cast doubt on the “rosy picture” of late modernity identity constructions as involving free choice amongst alternatives. Lilie Chouliaraki (University of Copenhagen) discusses the ways in which two youth groups narrate and represent a news broadcast on Greek TV of the event of the killing of two Greek-Cypriots by Turkish military forces in Northern Cyprus. The event took place on the 22nd anniversary (1996) of the occupation of Northern Cyprus by the Turks. Chouliaraki locates her view of identity within post-structuralist and critical approaches and contextualizes her discussion of it in accounts of contemporary social life as late modernity (cf. Kristiansen’s chapter). Using critical discourse analysis for the analysis of the interviews with the two groups, Chouliaraki argues that the ªrst group articulates a traditional or ethnic national identity based on a principle of “radical cultural diŸerence” between the Greek “self” and the Turk as the “other”. In contrast, participants in the second group are more skeptical with regard to the nationalism of the broadcast and, instead, construct their positioning on the basis of a principle of “public good” that dictates a rational rather than emotional assessment of events. In terms of language choices by which participants accomplish these positionings, adjectival attributes and modality ªgure very prominently in the interviews of the 1st group, while pronouns (in particular, a generalized “us”) are of pivotal importance in the 2nd group. The two groups are also shown to diŸer with regard to the discourses of recollection that they employ. In the ªrst group, the broadcast of the event is reported within a “discourse of factuality” that stresses the immediacy and materiality of the event itself. The second group’s reports are, nonetheless, stripped oŸ appeals to factuality on the basis of the program’s visuals. Instead, they are constructed within a “realist discourse of ªction” that lacks emotionality and presents a high degree of dys¶uency around issues of uncertainty (e.g. spatiotemporal details). Chouliaraki’s chapter illustrates the internal heterogeneity and pluralism involved within the allencompassing category of “young people”. Furthermore, as in Kristiansen’s study, the construction of youth identities not only involves departures from mainstream

Introduction

or “traditional” discourses (in this case nationalism) but can also draw on and adopt to varying degrees such discourses.

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Chambers, Jack 1995 Sociolinguistic Theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Cheshire, Jenny 1987 “Age- and Generation-Specific Use of Language”. In Sociolinguistics: An international handbook on the science of language and society, Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar and Klaus J. Mattheier (eds), Vol. 1, 761–780. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. Cutler, Cecilia 1999 “Yorkville Crossing: White teens, hip hop, and African American English”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3:4, 428–442. Davies, Bronwyn and Harré, Rom 1990 “Position: the discursive construction of selves”. Journal of the Theory of Social Behaviour 20: 43–63. Deppermann, Arnulf forthc. “Using the Other for Oneself: Conversational practices of representing outgroup-members among adolescents.” In Discursive construction of identities, Anna De Fina, Deborah Schiffrin and Michael Bamberg (eds.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge UP. Eckert, Penelope and McConnel-Ginet, Sally 1992 “Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as communitybased practice”. Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 461–90. 1999 “New generalizations and explanations in language and gender research”. Language in Society 28: 185–201. Eckert, Penelope 1997 “Age as a sociolinguistic variable”. In The Handbook of Sociolinguistics, Florian Coulmas (ed.), 151–167. Oxford: Blackwell. 2000 Linguistic Variation as Social Practice: The Linguistic Construction of Identity in Belten High. Oxford: Blackwell. Epstein, Jonathon S. (ed.) 1998 Youth culture: Identity in a postmodern world. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. Fairclough, Norman 1995 Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold. Fornäs, Johan 1995 “Youth, culture and modernity”. In Youth culture in late modernity, Johan Fornäs and Göran Bolin (eds), 1–11. London: Sage. Gee, James Paul 1999 An introduction to discourse analysis: theory and method. London and New York: Routledge. Georgakopoulou, Alexandra 1999 “Doing youth in and through conversational narratives”. In Language and ideology, Vol. 1, Jef Verschueren (ed.), 125–142. Antwerp: IPrA. Giddens, Anthony 1991 Modernity and self-Identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Oxford: Polity Press.

Introduction

Goodwin, Marjorie Harness 1990 He-said-she-said. Talk as social organization among black children. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hall, Stuart 1996 “Introduction: Who Needs Identity?”. In Questions of Cultural Identity, Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (eds), 2–17. London: Sage. Halliday, Michael A.K. 1978 Language as social semiotic: the social interpretation of language and meaning. London: Arnold. Hoyle, Susan M. and Temple, Carolyn Adger 1998 Kids Talk: Strategic language use in later childhood. New York and Oxford: OUP. James, Allison 1995 “Talking of children and youth. Language, socialization and culture”. In Youth cultures: a cross-cultural perspective, Vered Amid-Talai and Helena Wulff (eds), 43–62. London: Routledge. Jørgensen, Normann J. (ed.) 2001 Multilingual behaviour in youth groups. Copenhagen: Danish University of Education. Kerswill, Paul 1996 “Children, adolescents and language change”. Language Variation and Change 8(2): 177–202. Kotsinas, Ulla-Britt 1997 “Young people’s language: Norm, variation and language change”. In Stockholm Studies in Modern Philology, New Series 11: 109–132. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Kress, Gunther and van Leeuwen, Theo 1996 Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge. Labov, William 1972 Language in the Inner City. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lave, Jean and Wenger, Etienne 1991 Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge and New York: CUP. Le Page, Robert B. and Tabouret-Keller, André 1985 Acts of identity: Creole-based approaches to language and ethnicity. Cambridge: CUP. Muggleton, David 2000 Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style. New York: New York Univ. Press. Ochs, Elinor 1992 “Indexing gender”. In Rethinking context, Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin (eds), 335–358. Cambridge: CUP.

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Pujolar, Joan 1997 2001

“Masculinities in a Multilingual Setting”. In Language and masculinity, Sally Johnson and Ulrike H. Meinhof (eds), 86–106. Oxford: Blackwell. Gender, Heteroglossia and Power: A Sociolinguistic Study of Youth Culture. Berlin and New York: Walter De Gruyter.

Rampton, Ben 1995 Crossing: Language and ethnicity among adolescents. London: Longman. 1998 “Language crossing and the redefinition of reality”. In Code-Switching in Conversation, Peter Auer (ed.), 290–320. London: Routledge. Rickford, John R. et al. 1991 “Rapping on the copula coffin: Theoretical and methodological issues in the analysis of copula variation in African-American Vernacular English”. Language Variation and Change 3: 193–132. Romaine, Susanne 1984 The Language of Children and Adolescents. Oxford: Blackwell. Sarangi, Srikant 2000 “Activity types, discourse types and interactional hybridity: the case of genetic counselling”. In Discourse and Social Life, Srikant Sarangi and Malcolm Coulthard (eds), 1–27. Harlow: Longman. Schlobinski, Peter 1995 “Jugendsprachen: Speech Styles of Youth Subcultures”. In The German Language and the Real World, Patrick Stevenson (ed.), 315–338. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Schlobinski, Peter, Kohl, Gaby and Ludewigt, Irmgard 1993 Jugendsprache. Fiktion und Wirklichkeit. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Sebba, Mark 1993 London Jamaican. London: Longman. Sefton-Green, Julian (ed.) 1998 Digital diversions: youth culture in the age of multimedia. London: UCL Press. Shelton, Tracey and Valentine, Gill 1998 Cool places. Geographies of youth cultures. London and New York: Routledge. Thornton, Sarah 1995 Club cultures: Music, media, and subcultural capital. Cambridge: Polity Press. Turner, Victor 1974 “Liminal to liminoid in play, flow and ritual”. Rice University Studies 60: 53– 92. Widdicombe, Sue and Wooffitt, Robin 1995 The Language of Youth Subcultures. Social identity in action. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Widdicombe, Sue 1998 “Identity as an analysts’ and a participants’ resource”. In Identities in talk, Charles Antaki and Sue Widdicombe (eds), 191–206. London: Sage.

Introduction

Wolfson, Nessa 1982 CHP: The Conversational Historical Present in American English Narrative. Dordrecht: Foris. Woolard, Kathryn A. 1997 “Between friends: Gender, peer group structure and bilingualism in urban Catalonia”. Language in Society (26): 533–560. Wyn, Johanna and White, Rob 1997 Rethinking youth. London: Sage. Zimmerman, Don 1998 “Identity, context and interaction”. In Identities in talk, Charles Antaki and Sue Widdicombe (eds), 87–120. London: Sage.

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I. Peer group identities

Linguistic variation and the construction of social identity in a German-Turkish setting A case study of an immigrant youth group in Mannheim, Germany Werner Kallmeyer and Inken Keim Institut für Deutsche Sprache Mannheim

1.

Introduction: research context and aim of the study

The analysis which we present in this paper is part of an ethnographically based sociolinguistic study of various immigrant youth groups and their social style of communication.1 The study describes the wide variety of migrant groups and their socio-cultural orientation in relation to diŸerent migrant worlds as well as to diŸerent social worlds of the dominant German society. The development of a social style of communication is grounded in the groups’ socio-cultural orientation as well as in the perception of themselves in relation to relevant others. The main purpose of our study is to analyse the construction of the groups’ social identity in terms of their social style of communication.2 Our study uses ethnographic interviews and participant observation. The data collection consists of audio-recordings of ethnographic interviews, ethnographic records (ªeld notes, photographs), and of audio- and video-recordings of natural conversations. The conversational data are analysed with conversation-analytic and sociolinguistic methods. Our concept of social style is in¶uenced by the anthropological and ethnographic concepts of cultural style, where style is related to a groups’ culture and its social identity.3 In this tradition, cultural style is the product of the adjustment of human communities to their ecological, social, and economical conditions. Part of these conditions is the striving for social equality and for social integration and diŸerentiation. Cultural or social styles correspond with the schematic knowledge of social behavior, and their relevant traits re¶ect distinctive features of the respective cultural paradigm. In this respect, a social style has a fundamentally strategic grounding, and it is deªned as the speciªc cultural solution for existential needs. The

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speciªc characteristics of a cultural style become obvious through a comparison across diŸerent social worlds. Practices of linguistic variation, as described in linguistic and sociolinguistic stylistics, are constitutive of our concept of social style together with other aspects of communicative expression. Style is a holistic concept. Members’ ideas about social styles of communication are prototypically organized: they are constructed around key phenomena, and they have fuzzy boundaries. The construction of a communicative social style is connected with the formation of speciªc linguistic and communicative patterns and rules on diŸerent linguistic levels. Elements from all expressive levels are combined to form a unique expression means. This is a dynamic process: new materials can be incorporated so as to result in diŸerent stades of stylistic density. On the basis of sociolinguistic and ethnographic research results,4 we assume that the following dimensions of expressive behavior are essential for the construction of a social style: pragmatic rules of speaking, especially rules for the regulation of social distance; the construction of systems of social categories for deªning group members and outsiders and the procedures for contextualizing social categories; speciªc verbal and nonverbal aesthetic means; formulaic speech for the handling of speciªc communicative problems; linguistic variation for purposes of interactional organization and for socio-symbolic reasons. In this chapter, we will focus on some of these dimensions, namely, linguistic variation practices, and their relation to speciªc pragmatic rules and to social categorization.

2.

Proªle of the immigrant youth group under investigation

Our ethnographic research has been carried out in a district of the inner city of Mannheim, an industrial town of 320 000 inhabitants in south-western Germany, situated near Heidelberg. Over 20% of Mannheim’s population comprise ethnic minorities, most of them of Turkish origin. In the inner city, some districts have over 60% of population from ethnic minorities. Our ethnographic research has in fact been carried out in one of these districts, a traditional working class district. In this district, there are no ethnically homogeneous youth groups, even though the majority of the group members are of Turkish origin. Most youth groups are single-sex; there are stable girl- and boy-groups, and most of them meet in the district’s youth centers. The group that we will present here is a group of about 15 girls who meet almost daily in one of the youth centers. There, they work together on their school homework; they play games, smoke, listen to music, or dance. The girls are between 15 and 21 years old; most of them are of Turkish origin, two of Italian, one African (from Ghana), one Bosnian, and one Thai. The girls’ parents came to Germany in the 60s as guestworkers. Most of the parents still speak the

Variation and identity in a German-Turkish setting

typical “guestworker’s German” (“Gastarbeiterdeutsch”), a pidginized German variety5 spoken by the ªrst migrant generation, and some of the mothers speak almost no German at all. Most of the girls go to the Haupt- and Realschule (i.e., schools for lower and middle education), some to the Gymnasium. All girls were born in Germany and grew up in the district. The girls’ social networks and their socio-cultural orientation are limited to the social life of the district. From the perspective of the German social worker in the youth center, one of the girls’ main characteristics is their “toughness”; they are characterized as “rough and cool”, and their form of verbal communication within the group is called “district talk” (“Stadtteilsprache”) or “gangster jargon”. According to our observations, the girls’ linguistic repertoire contains, on the one hand, some kind of dialectal variety of their country of origin, that is, in most cases a Turkish or Italian variety which, according to Turkish and Italian experts, has considerable structural and lexical in¶uence from German standard and the local urban dialect (“Mannheimerisch”). On the other hand, the girls’ repertoire contains several German and language mixing varieties, especially: –

– –

the German variety learned at the German school, which corresponds to nearstandard German with local in¶uences; this variety is often used in contact with adults, teachers, instructors, and social-workers; a German-Turkish language mixture used among girls of Turkish origin with numerous code-switchings and integrated German-Turkish constructions; a variety used as a medium of communication between youngsters of diŸerent cultural and linguistic origin, the “district talk” (“Stadtteilsprache”); this is a simpliªed version of a German colloquial variety with special rules of speaking and with a sometimes pidginized morphosyntax, especially with deletion of prepositions and articles: ich geh doktor (I go doctor) or wo kommst du (where do you come). In all these varieties, the girls have varying degrees of active competence.

Besides these varieties, the girls use forms of the Mannheim dialect and forms of the “Gastarbeiterdeutsch” (guestworkers’ German) for caricature and ridicule of speciªc social categories. Speciªcally, the girls use guestworkers’ German for the caricature of the “uninformed and uneducated guestworker” who has historically come from rural regions of southern countries and has worked as an unskilled worker in Germany.

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3.

Linguistic variation in in-group communication between girls of Turkish origin

In in-group situations, when talking to one another, the girls of Turkish origin often use a German-Turkish language mixture even in the presence of members with another linguistic background. Depending upon the partner, the context, and the topic of communication, this in-group variety presents phases, where one of the languages, German or Turkish, can be described as the matrix language with many cases of transfer (e.g., borrowed terms, formulas, formulaic expressions, proverbs) from German or Turkish, respectively. These transfers are clearly marked as insertions or code-switchings, prosodically, phonetically, and lexically. Such clearly marked cases of language variation, where from one point onwards a speaker changes the language or where a clearly contrasting construction from another language is inserted into a matrix language, could be described with code-switching models.6 In these cases, one language plays the dominant and the other a subordinate role.7 But there are numerous cases when speakers choose one language and then the other without assigning dominant status to either one, and complex mixed constructions with varying patterns recur.8 In these language mixing phases, phonetic, lexical, or syntactical elements of the used varieties are smoothly interrelated;9 there is no prosodic break between elements of diŸerent languages, sometimes not even a clear phonetic contrast. The emerging mode of communication could be characterized as an “integrated language mixture” (our term). This mixing variation is patterned and serves various structural and interactional purposes. To analyse these, we need to follow recent studies on linguistic variation and code-switching which focus on the intertwining and mixing of diŸerent codes, to abandon some of the former general assumptions about the regularities of code-switching, and to proceed with reªned structural descriptions. Interestingly, the rich literature on code-switching since the early 80s has shifted from the description of classic code-switching with a contextually established matrix language and clearcut boundaries of the inserted stretch of another code towards the analysis of less marked and grammatically more central combinations and recurrently changing matrix languages with only a short life span producing an ambivalence of the matrix language.10 In our analysis of language variation, we speak of variation practices, where elements of one language are locally combined with elements of the other. The term “variation practices” applies to cases where a matrix language is discernable as well as to cases with language mixing. This language mixing is an essential part of the group’s communicative social style; its characteristics are regular, unmarked, and fast produced turn-intern switches. These switches range from con-

Variation and identity in a German-Turkish setting

structions with “loose” grammatical connections between elements of the two languages to morphosyntactically integrated constructions. In the following example peripheral elements such as interjections, German mann (guy) and Turkish lan (guy), are used as contrasts in a Turkish and German context respectively. Two girls are playing tavla:11 01 NA: baksana orda bir- acHk kapH var ya: *mann bir acHk vuramadHm [ look there is a gap hey guy I have not hit one ] 02 GL: sch will mit dir spielen lan [ I want to play with you guy ]

Both interjections are very common in the district talk. German youngsters use the expression lan talk (“Lansprache”) as another name for the district talk. The next example shows a morphosyntactically integrated construction of German and Turkish elements in a speciªc pattern: German VERB in inªnitive + in¶ected turkish yapmak / etmek (to do). This seems to be a widespread pattern and not only for German-Turkish language contact.12 In Turkish, the verbs etmek / yapmak can be combined with nouns and adjectives only. In the observed mixed variety, they are combined with German unin¶ected verbs. This constitutes an expansion of the Turkish grammatical pattern. In the following example, the German verb feiern (to celebrate) is combined with an in¶ected form of the Turkish yapmak and etmek: BE: ben feiern yapmHycam ki * ama feiern etmiyorum ki [ I will not celebrate my birthday but I do not celebrate ]

Integrated mixing is characterized by a balanced use of elements of both languages and their grammatical interrelation. In the following example, the pattern of the former example is combined with Turkish and German phrases: 01 BE: hele↑ * Riff’i simdi bi vergessen et für ne zeitlang [ well just forget Riff for some time ] 02 BI: ben Riff’e gitmek istedigimi [that I want to go to Riff ]

After the Turkish discourse marker hele (well), the turn continues in Turkish, and the German verb vergessen (forget) is integrated in the Turkish etmek-construction. Turkish seems to be the matrix language. Yet in the second part of the turn, German elements predominate on the basis of two variation practices. Then, the second speaker starts up with Turkish; this again could signal a tendency towards Turkish as the dominant language. However, the second speaker formulates a rejection, and she may be heard using a speciªc variation practice which is rather recurrent in our data: opposing views of following speakers are produced in the language contrast-

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ing to ªrst speaker’s end of turn. Following this practice, in our case, the second speaker has to use Turkish in contrast to the ªrst speaker’s end of turn in German. This example shows the di¹culty with analytical concepts such as matrix language or dominant language, especially in cases where diŸerent variation practices could overlap. (See also section 4.2.).

4.

Discourse functions of variation practices

As the examples above already show, linguistic variation can function as a device for the segmentation of structural parts in a complex utterance: it can mark the diŸerence between background and foreground information, between a proposition and the reason given for it, or between a formulation and its reformulation. But in many cases, just like the switching between utterances, this utterance structuring switching has aditional functions, too. Variation practices can serve very diŸerent discourse functions. Code-switching is often used for marking topic change or the return to an already established topic after interruptions or side activities. An important ªeld of interactional functions is the regulation of participation roles, and another one is the management of consensus or dissent in arguments by linguistic convergence or divergence.

4.1 Linguistic variation as a device for interactional organization A switch of language from German to Turkish and vice versa can function as a device for the selection of the next interactional partner or for the constitution of a new interactional constellation. This kind of language switch was ªrst described as situational code-switching (Blom / Gumperz 1972). Besides that, the language of interaction can be changed, for example, in order to display that a new participant with a known linguistic competence or a speciªc language preference will come into play. Alternatively, the use of Turkish in contrast to German can help separate parallel interactions. Furthermore, a switch of language can function as a device for getting or keeping the ¶oor. The following example illustrates some aspects of the often highly complex functioning of language switching for interactional organization. A couple of girls are in the locker room of the sports grounds with their trainer Corinna, a German social worker. Some of the girls have already changed clothes and are leaving. Gülsen starts with an utterance in Turkish:

Variation and identity in a German-Turkish setting

01 GL: gidelim↑ * tschüss Corinna [ let‘s go bye Corinna ] 02 BE: 03 HA:

tschüss Corinna [bye Corinna ] ya beni beklesenize↓ * [wait for me ]

04 HA: ne kadar gHcHksHnHz * hallo“ könnt ihr nich kurz warten isch hab auch so was/ [you are stupid hey can’t you wait a while I too have some/ ]

The language choice in Gülsen’s ªrst turn is part of the recipient design: Gülsen includes the present Turkish girls, her friend Behiye, and her sister Hatçe, and she excludes all the others of non-Turkish origin. After a short pause, she switches to German with the colloquial farewell formula tschüss and adresses Corinna. In the next turn (02), Behiye too says good bye to Corinna with the same formula. With that, Behiye establishes herself as the recipient of Gülsen’s ªrst turn (gideline ↑) and ratiªes her request. Then Hatçe comes in with the request: ya beni beklesenize (wait for me, 03). The use of Turkish signals that only her sister Gülsen and Behiye are addressed, and that all the others are excluded from the interaction between the three girls. After a short pause, Hatçe continues in Turkish with an insult ne kadar gHcHksHnHz (you are stupid, 04); this implies that the adressees did not react to her request and did not wait for her. After another short pause, she reformulates her request in German: hallo“ könnt ihr nich kurz warten (hey can’t you wait a while, 04). This switch serves several functions: Hatçe reinforces her request, enlarges her audience, and draws all the participants’ attention to the con¶ict between herself and the other two girls. Making the con¶ict public, she reinforces the social pressure on the two girls and makes it harder for them to ignore her request. In this example, code-switching functions as an utterance structuring device, diŸerentiating between an utterance and its reformulation, as well as a means for structuring the social situation, excluding from or including interactional partners into the locally produced interaction.

4.2 Linguistic variation as a device for topical organization in discourse One of the most striking functions in relation to topical organization in discourse is the reinforcement of consensual or controversial speaker reactions by using the ªrst speaker’s language or, respectively, a contrasting one. In the following example, some of these devices will be demonstrated. In integrated mixing, turn-taking plays an important role for diŸerent variation practices. By using the same language or language mixture that the ªrst speaker used at the end of his turn, the second speaker signals consent and ratiªcation of the

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ªrst speaker’s activity. Then, the turn-taking pattern is: A: Turkish – B: Turkish or: A: German/Turkish – B: Turkish/German or: A: Turkish/German – B: German/ Turkish. This will be demonstrated in the following example: Two sisters, Hatçe and Gülsen, discuss who should go to the doctor with their little sister Sükrüye: 01 GL: Hatçe↑ * gitcen mi Sükrüyele oraya ↓ die heult fast [ Hatçe you‘re going there with Sükrüye] [she’s almost crying ] 02 HA: neden↑ nee [why] [no]

Gülsen asks her sister Hatçe in Turkish to go to the doctor with Sükrüye. Hatçe does not answer right away; in an insert sequence, she asks for reasons: neden (why), thereby taking up the chosen variety of Turkish. After that, Gülsen switches to German giving reasons why Hatçe should go with their little sister: die heult fast (she’s almost crying). This language shift can be interpreted as a device for the diŸerentiation between a proposition or an activity and giving reasons for it. Here, this pattern is performed interactively, the question following the language choice of the prior turn. In the fourth turn, Hatçe gives the answer to Gülsen’s request: nee (no). Hatçe’s use of German can be interpreted with reference to two diŸerent variation practices: (1) She follows again Gülsen’s language choice, in accordance with the general variation pattern of convergence: the second speaker follows the ªrst speaker’s language choice. (2) Hatçe’s use of German establishes a contrast to Gülsen’s initial request in Turkish and reinforces Hatçe’s opposition to Gülsen. This contrastive language choice which supports her rejection nee (no) to Gülsen’s request follows the general variation practice of divergence: opposing views or arguments in discourse are produced in contrasting varieties. Interpreted in this way, this short sequence reveals some of the artfully and systematically used variation practices in the group’s mixed variety and the interrelation of diŸerent variation practices. The argument between the two sisters continues for a few more minutes: Hatçe is doing her school homework, and she is reading aloud a German text. Her sister Gülsen interrupts, and addresses her returning to the already established topic: She wants Hatçe to go home because their little sister is waiting for Hatçe who should take her to the doctor: 01 HA: das jahr- (…) wird als bewegung des modernen (...) [the year (…) is (understood) being the movement of the modern ] Hatçe↓ aglHyo 02 GL: [Hatçe I tell ]

Variation and identity in a German-Turkish setting

03 GL: evde diyorum sana <ja:> du sollst (... ...) lü“g nicht Hatçe [I tell you she‘s crying at home] [yes you should-] [don’t lie Hatçe ] üç buçuk dedi 04 HA: [I don’t care man] [she said half past four ] 05 HA: vallahi üç buçuk dedi halt=s maul [ I swear she said half past four] [shut up ] 06 GL: geb net an [don‘t show off ]

Gülsen addresses Hatçe and reminds her of their crying little sister. For this, she uses Turkish in contrast to Hatçe’s homework performance in German. By switching to Turkish, she reinforces her point, her interruption of Hatçe’s actual activity, and the restart of the controversial topic. Hatçe rejects Gülsen’s request by switching to German: mir egaÝl mann (I don’t care man, 04), thereby, marking the opposition to her sister’s request. Starting with an intensiªed request, Gülsen takes up her sister’s language choice (03) but is interrupted by Hatçe, who gives reasons for her rejection, switching to Turkish (üc bucuk dedi, she said half past four, 04). On one hand, the switch may mark the diŸerentiation between rejecting and giving reasons for it; on the other hand, the switch reinforces Hatçe’s opposition to her sister. Till now, Hatçe exhibits linguistic divergence two times which means that she insists on disagreeing. Then, Gülsen uses the pattern of language divergence too, and both girls repeat this contrasting practice. The mutual and reiterated use of this pattern is typical of discussions with opposing arguments. The last two turns, initiated by Hatçe, follow another pattern. They form a kind of paired ritual insult. Ritual insults are very common in the group; they are always produced in the same variety, which means that the second speaker takes up the ªrst speaker’s language choice. In our case, following the opposing-argument-pattern, Hatçe switches to German, and, in this variety, she produces the ªrst part of a ritual insult: geb net an (don’t show oŸ, 06); Gülsen reacts with the second part of the ritual, by taking up the ªrst part’s language: halt=s maul (shut up, 05). This case exampliªes the girls’ natural and routinized use of various variation patterns and practices.

5.

Linguistic variation with socio-symbolic functions

In addition to these variation practices that especially serve utterance and interaction structuring functions, there exist variation practices, where the use of elements of other varieties has socio-symbolic functions, that is, where the code used represents social properties of the speaker or others. Typical of socio-symbolic practices are code-switches, where essential linguistic features are especially marked, at times

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overdrawn in order to convey speciªc social meanings and to contextualize speciªc features of social types or categories. These practices function as a means for the symbolization of social belonging or social distance. In order to demonstrate the sociosymbolic functions of variational practices, we will give an extended example where district talk is used in order to symbolize the tough and rude behavior which indicates ghetto membership, and where, as a consequence, the German social worker Corinna is treated as an outsider. Before we start with the analysis, we will give a short characterization of the district talk. As already mentioned above, this is the communication medium between young people of diŸerent linguistic backgrounds. Schools, playgrounds, and youth centers of the district are the scenes for the formation of this variety. Its characteristics are: –

– – – –

– –

a simpliªed version of the German vernacular with deletion of prepositions and articles, generalization of some verbs like machen (to do), gehen (to go) kommen (to come), and of some adverbs like voll, krass (which function as intensiªers), and cool (as a positive evaluation), the use of some formulas like isch schwör (I swear), special prosodic and phonetic features; a stylization of the “Ausländerakzent” (the foreigners‘ accent in German); a special kind of information transfer which presupposes a high degree of shared knowledge and explicates only small parts of what is necessary for an interlocutor’s understanding; this type of information management functions very well in in-group communication, but when used vis-à-vis outsiders, it has a provocative eŸect; speciªc rules of face-work, for example, with respect to attending to the addressees’ negative face and their right to their personal territory; the demonstration of readiness for aggressive actions, expressed by nonverbal means (for example, threatening gestures and wild looks), by speciªc prosodic patterns (loud and rough voice, fast speach tempo with lengthening of the last syllable of an utterance), and by German or Turkish swear words and swear formulas.

To German outsiders, for example, teachers and social workers, this kind of variety sounds “rough, aggressive, and uneducated”. In the following example, the setting is again the locker room of the sports grounds. The girls are sitting and discussing the last volleyball training with their trainer Corinna. All girls who are present are Turkish except Nok, a girl of Thai origin (grown up in the district, Thai mother, German father). Nok uses elements of the district talk in the conversation with Corinna. Her behavior is implicitly and explicitly criticized by Corinna and later on by her closest friend Hatçe, a Turkish

Variation and identity in a German-Turkish setting

girl. Corinna expresses her evaluation in a playful modality, and Hatçe makes it clear that district talk is not the adequate way of speaking with Corinna. Applying linguistic marking practices, she symbolizes Nok as a rude and rough district kid. The interaction starts when, in the course of the discussion about volleyball, Nok interrupts and addresses Corinna: 01 NO: ←Corinna:→ mein bruder kann nich nach hause: * die laufen hier gleich vorbei↓* [my brother can’t go home right now they will be passing by] 02 CO: hm↑ 03 CO: und da“nn? die solln doch klingeln [ so what] [they should ring the bell ] 04 NO: isch muss rausgehn schlüssel geben↓ aber sie wissen [I must go out give housekey] [but they don’t] 05 NO: doch nicht davon [know anything about it] 06 CO: ←was↓→ * [about what] 07 K

←äh dass→ dass isch hier bin [that I‚m here ] ←wieso↑→ *