ETHNOLECT OF GERMAN AND ITS VARIANTS

Abstract

The object of consideration in the paper are innovative styles of communication within and across national, ethnic and social groups. The active exploring of this language phenomenon is particularly important for German and Turkish, two languages that have been in close contact in the quarters of large cities of Germany where migrants of several generation are concentrated for more than 40 years. Nowadays, this style of speech has gone beyond the urban areas and has turned into a new way of speaking used by young native German people. The authors investigate social conditions of the formation, as well as the peculiarities of this social-group dialect (sociolect). Particular attention is paid to the specific character and homogeneity of its morphosyntactic, phonetic and lexical structures. The label ethnolect is indifferent to the ethnicity of its purported speakers, but primarily indexes their difference, i.e. heteroethnic relation to the imagined majority group. Media shows contribute to its development into a kind of secondary and further into a tertiary version of the language. The certain German-Turkish language hybrid is used consciously and intentionally. This new code is created as a metalinguistic symbol of identity and is used to designate some media characters.