Mapping the complex multilingual repertoires of Greek adolescent immigrants in Germany: consequences for language teaching in migrant communities
Konstantinidis, A., Rothoni, A., Antonopoulou, S., & Koutsogiannis, D.
Diasporic language use has been the focus of research in a wide range of linguistic fields: sociolinguistics of globalization (Blommaert, 2010), literacy studies and heritage language teaching (Lam, 2013), as well as language policy studies (Damanakis et al., 2014). While this body of research has provided useful insights in young immigrants’ language practices and linguistic repertoires, what seems to be missing is a shift of focus from fragmented accounts of their literacy practices in specific chronotopes (Blommaert 2015) to biographical approaches that link these practices to their linguistic repertoires. This presentation addresses the issue by drawing data from an on-going ethnographic research project on the language literacy practices of Greek new migrants living in Australia and Germany. Here, the focus is set on mapping the linguistic repertoires of 15 children living in Germany, ages 11-15, via online interviews (with participants and one of their parents). Following a thematic analysis, mindmaps were developed to illustrate the linguistic choices of participating children in a diverse array of in- and out-of-school practices. The analysis of the data sheds light on the interplay of social and ideological dynamics in Greek neomigrants’ language and literacy practices. Children’s linguistic repertoires are, at the very least, trilingual, comprised by Greek, German and English. At a surface level, each language is associated with a certain domain of the child’s lifeworld: Greek is the language of the family, German is used in school discourse and English in pop culture practices. However, in many cases the reality is much more complex, since this multilingual landscape is shaped by a variety of factors: family language policy and parental socioeconomic background, schooling discourses and practices, children’s own agency and their network of acquaintances. These factors are dynamically intermingled, creating a complex linguistic reality that any modern teaching proposal should take into account.
References
Blommaert, J. (2010). The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Blommaert, J. (2015). Chronotopes, scales and complexity in the study of language in society. Annual Review of Anthropology 44, 105-116.
Damanakis, M., Konstadinidis, A. & Tamis, A. (Εds.) (2014). New migration from and to Greece. Rethymno: University of Crete [in Greek].
Lam, W.S.E. (2013). What immigrant students can teach us about new media literacy. Phi Delta Kappan, 94(4), 62-65.
