Languaging in the Global Contact Zone: Polylingual Performances as Transcultural Interface

Abstract

Polylingual languaging has become a typical phenomenon in the global contact zone of migratory space. It is embedded in transnational and transcultural flows of languages. The empirical data of this paper are situated and mediated peer group performances of adolescents of ‘German-Turkish background’ which will be analyzed within a hybridity approach of interactional sociolinguistics and the sociolinguistics of globalization, demonstrating how the adolescents’ polylingual performances can only be understood socio-historically as a transcultural interface. Their performances are attempts to appropriate semantic space where their language is no longer the object of dominant discourse but constitutes an autonomous form of (counter-)discourse in its own right.. Hinnenkamp, Volker. (2016). Languaging in the Global Contact Zone: Polylingual Performances as Transcultural Interface. 10.1007/978-3-658-06510-2_8. Polylingual languaging has become a typical phenomenon in the global contact zone of migratory space. It is embedded in transnational and transcultural flows of languages. The empirical data of this paper are situated and mediated peer group performances of adolescents of ‘German-Turkish background’ which will be analyzed within a hybridity approach of interactional sociolinguistics and the sociolinguistics of globalization, demonstrating how the adolescents’ polylingual performances can only be understood socio-historically as a transcultural interface. Their performances are attempts to appropriate semantic space where their language is no longer the object of dominant discourse but constitutes an autonomous form of (counter-)discourse in its own right.