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Over the last 20 years, the study of multiethnic youth groups in Germany has covered various aspects: Most notably, there have been studies of the contemporary urban vernaculars (CUVs) emerging in these groups, such as “Kiezdeutsch” (Wiese 2012), the role media plays in the production and distribution of “ethnolects” (Androutsopoulos 2011), and studies of “crossing” in the case of German and Turkish (Dirim & Auer 2004; Deppermann 2007), to name but a few. But while these hint at the complex repertoires which are at the young speakers’ disposal, we still don’t know much about the actual multilingualism occurring in youth groups in Germany. The recent migration movements and the central role English plays in social media are but two of the aspects to be considered.
This presentation provides insight into fieldwork conducted over the course of six months in two youth centers in Hamburg, Germany. In the sense of what Jaspers and van de Weerd call “interactional approaches” (Jaspers & van de Weerd 2023), this project is based on ethnographic research. The central questions are:
1. What do the actual repertoires of young speakers consist of?
2. What role do which heritage languages play?
3. How do young speakers construct and perform their identities using these repertoires?
With a main focus on the construction of identity through language, the talk will give a brief introduction into the field of “language and identity”, laying the groundwork for a model to be used in sociolinguistic studies. Based on this, examples of different ways in which young speakers use heritage languages to construct group-relevant identities will be shown.