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A Qualitative-Heuristical Exploration in Urban Life-worlds. Multilingual Adolescents in St. Pauli and Altona (Federal Republic of Germany)

Abstract (Englisch version)

This research exlores the lingual situation in an european inner-city migration-area with interdisciplinary means. With the help of a qualitative-heuristical research strategy (Kleining) I was able to work out a "thick description" (Geertz) of those multilingual urban conditions and the process of their sociolingual change. This research covers the period between 1993 and 1998. The special focus lays on the relationship between "language", "culture", "national identity" and "social structure". With the use of Henry Lefèbvre's concept of urbanity, I argue that this relationship is reworked, and that new patterns of speech-communities are developing. I shall come out against two common ideas about lingual change in the Federal Republic of Germany: first against the "assimilatonist view" (the language of origin disappears with the third generation of migrants), secondly against the "view of difference" (this is connected in the german sociology of migration with the concept of "ethnic revival" and sees a revitalisation of the languages of origin). The concept of "restricted code" (Bernstein) is still predominant in german sociology, even though it was dismissed in linguistics quite a long time ago. I shall argue about this concept by exploring the phenomenon of "mixed language", that's what the interviewees (migrant and german origin) called their way of speaking. Out of which perspective does this way of speaking appears as restricted? Through the embedding of these lingual practices in the ethnographical concept of "liminality" (V. Turner) the reworking of the relations between lingual practices, "nationality" and "social structure" becomes clear. The usage of language appears therefore as a means of social positioning among adoescents in the research-area. In this process "Turkish" stands out against other migrant languages (Auer).