Diasporic second language Englishes in the African communities of Germany’s Ruhr Area

  • The Ruhr Area is a metropolitan area located in the federal state of North Rhine-Westfalia in Germany. The region, which has a long history of migration and multilingualism, has recently attracted growing numbers of individuals who bring second language varieties of English to the area, which originate from postcolonial countries in Asia, on the African continent, or on the Indian subcontinent. African communities in particular form close-knit networks in the diaspora and engage in numerous associations, whilst at the same time maintaining ties with their original home countries. Their Englishes, both standardised and pidginised, which developed as a result of language contact in the respective home countries, are subject to a secondary language contact with German, resulting in further language change. This paper describes the sociolinguistics of the various communities, before it documents the African communities’ language preferences and discusses how the Englishes spoken in one individual community, Cameroon English and Cameroon Pidgin English, adapt in the new linguistic ecology. It argues that such diasporic Englishes pose important new territory for the study of English and offer opportunities to extend traditional frameworks towards integrating present-day societies’ realities.

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Metadaten
Author:Christiane MeierkordGND, Bridget FonkeuGND, Eva ZumhaschGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hbz:294-58014
DOI:https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v5n1p1
Parent Title (English):International journal of english linguistics
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2018/06/28
Date of first Publication:2015/01/27
Publishing Institution:Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsbibliothek
Tag:Open Access Fonds
Ruhr Area; West African; diaspora; migration
Volume:5
Issue:1
First Page:1
Last Page:13
Note:
Article Processing Charge funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the Open Access Publication Fund of Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
Institutes/Facilities:Englisches Seminar
Dewey Decimal Classification:Sprache / Sprache, Linguistik
open_access (DINI-Set):open_access
faculties:Fakultät für Philologie
Licence (English):License LogoCreative Commons - CC BY 3.0 Unported - Attribution 3.0 Unported