22.999, Diss: Socioling: Nereo: 'The Dynamics of Language Obsolescence in a...'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-22-999. Tue Mar 01 2011. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 22.999, Diss: Socioling: Nereo: 'The Dynamics of Language Obsolescence in a...'

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1)
Date: 28-Feb-2011
From: Filippo Nereo [Filippo.Nereo at manchester.ac.uk]
Subject: The Dynamics of Language Obsolescence in a Divided Speech Community. The Case of the German Wischau/Vy?kov Enclave (Czech Republic)

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 12:09:07
From: Filippo Nereo [Filippo.Nereo at manchester.ac.uk]
Subject: The Dynamics of Language Obsolescence in a Divided Speech Community. The Case of the German Wischau/Vy?kov Enclave (Czech Republic)

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Please note: German spelling of Wischau is Vy?kos

Institution: University of Manchester 
Program: Department of German 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2011 

Author: Filippo Nereo

Dissertation Title: The Dynamics of Language Obsolescence in a Divided Speech
Community. The Case of the German Wischau/Vy?kov Enclave
(Czech Republic) 

Linguistic Field(s): Sociolinguistics

Dissertation Director(s):
Martin Durrell
Eva Schultze-Berndt
Patrick Stevenson

Dissertation Abstract:

This investigation explores the linguistic consequences of the expulsion of Germans in 1945/46 from the Wischau/Vy?kov speech enclave in the Czech Republic, part of the wave of population transfers of ethnic Germans at the end of World War II, which remain to this day a highly sensitive topic in Czech-German relations. In the context of language obsolescence, this study examines the causal connections between this historical trigger, processes of identification, the wider sociolinguistic context, and the
system-linguistic structure of the language variety, adopting and expanding the theoretical framework developed by Sasse (1992). This study is largely comparative in approach, looking at the parallel communities which emerged after the expulsions, i.e. both the few 'stayers' in the enclave, who until 1989/90 lived under Communism, and the majority of 'expellees', who began new lives in the Capitalist Federal Republic of Germany. It is the first (and probably last) detailed linguistic study of this small, rural and
invisible vestigial group of speakers, whose language variety will invariably become obsolete over the next few years with the death of its last speakers.

This study is based on data elicited chiefly between 2007 and 2009 during fieldwork in the Czech Republic and Germany with the last few remaining witnesses of the expulsion from Wischau/Vy?kov, and the last remaining speakers of its language variety, i.e. the oldest living generation. Data from fieldwork undertaken for the Atlas der historischen deutschen Mundarten in der Tschechischen Republik (ADT) were also analysed. The data were elicited through a mixture of participant observation, unstructured interviews, an authorised recording of native-speaker consultants without the researcher present, and, in the case of the ADT project, traditional dialect atlas elicitation techniques.

Data from the Wischau/Vy?kov enclave show that during this stage of atrophy:
* identity nonetheless crystallises around language for both stayers and expellees, and language is framed within the context of expulsion, which is the primary marker of identity;
* the relationship of stayers with the language variety is largely motivated by nostalgia, whereas the relationship of expellees with the language variety is largely emblematic and motivated by a conviction that, despite the irreversibility of language obsolescence, the language variety has a unique quality and must therefore be preserved for posterity; 
* stayers and expellees alike have assumed multiple identities given the parallel assimilatory measures at force in the Czech Republic and Federal Republic; 
* stigmatisation, severe functional limitations and a lack of intergenerational 
language transmission were crucial contributing factors in language contraction;
* there is no evidence of linguistic decay. On the contrary, the variety remains structurally intact to a large extent, probably owing to the rapidity of loss and absence of 'semi-speakers';
* possible contact features in the speech of stayers are characterised by occasionality and inconsistency most likely as a result of the destabilisation of micro- and macro-level norms.
Finally, this study suggests two avenues to consider for the future, namely a quantitative study of language and identity, and a wider comparative study of language obsolescence in former German enclaves in Central and Eastern Europe. 

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