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Vortrag: Multilingual Codeswitching in Letters

My thesis is concerned with the question what influences language choice in general, and in particular in Tanti's Letters corpus. The corpus contains 333 letters (about 224,000 words) written between 1958 and 1974 by the multilingual Lena Minach to her niece Gisella Minach. While Lena lived in Istanbul, her niece had migrated to the Netherlands in 1954, and so they exchanged letter regularly. These letters contain unique multilingual codeswitching, occurring on average once in every sentence, or every 12-13 words. English and French are the dominant languages in the corpus, while shorter codeswitches involve Turkish, Greek, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, and German.
In order to answer what influences language choice, I investigate the factors participants, content of the discourse, function of the interaction and le mot juste 'the right word', which were suggested by Grosjean (2010). A linear mixed effects regression model indicates a significant effect of the first three factors and dominant context language on language choice. Qualitative analyses show in addition that le mot juste is able to explain codeswitching, either because of the domain- or culture-specificity of a lexical item, or specific connotations which would be lost in translation. In addition, a number of recurrent codeswitches are attributable to personal preference and creative expression.

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Tag: 24.05.2019
Anfangszeit: 15:00
Dauer: 00:30
Raum: 103/ S69
Track: Sociolinguistics
Sprache: en

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