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This paper is an introductory survey of the evolution of multiculturalism in Britain and Germany over the past two centuries. The historical approach argues that the main determinants of difference between these nation states lie in their long-term traditional attitudes towards immigrants and ethnic minorities. It focuses upon the patterns of immigration into Britain and Germany as well as the differing imperial traditions, which have both left differing legacies. An equally important historical factor has been the legal position of aliens in the two states, in which, until very recently, Britain adopted a policy of ;MS solis, whereas Germany pursued one of jus sanguinis. The paper then examines the realities of multiculturalism in the two states. Due primarily to the historical traditions of nationality legislation, immigrants and their descendants in Britain have come to play a more important role in recent British history than their contemporaries in Germany, particularly if we examine their role in the political process and in popular culture. While the conclusion reiterates the differences, it also stresses that we should not view Britain and Germany as the opposite ends of the multicultural spectrum, as both are modem liberal democracies with significant ethnic minority populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, public discourse about German national identity has increasingly focussed on the large foreign population within Germany's borders. Whilst right-wing politicians such as Edmund Stoiber foster fears of identity loss ‘Uberfremdung‘), more liberal observers, and indeed the ruling red-green coalition, acknowledge that multiethnicity has by now become an integral part of this identity. The debate experienced its provisional climax in late 2000 and early 2001. Friedrich Merz, then parliamentary leader of the CDU party, introduced the term ‘Leitkultu‘ into the political discourse. The notion suggests the existence of a clearly identifiable spectrum of Gennan cultural values and proposes that foreigners who wished to live in Germany should adhere to these values. Merz's proposal triggered a wave of highly controversial comments which have been evaluated for the purpose of this paper. It draws on roughly 350 newspaper articles and interviews and aims to introduce the English-speaking reader to the complex range of arguments. The Leitkultur debate is taken as symptomatic of the current state of public discourse about foreigners and national identity in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses an extensive corpus of texts from the German media and existing studies of German perspectives on Poland, Russia, the Czech Republic and Slovenia in order to demonstrate that there are two idealised culture cognitive models (ICCMs) that function as overarching categories for Europe: the ICCM west (the members of the European Union (EU) until 2004) and the ICCM east (the central and east European countries) as opposing constructions. These ICCMs are seen as hyperonymic categories to the construction of frames on a lower level. Frames are multielement cognitive models through which a society or nation views and structures its image of itself and that of other societies, countries or nations. The function of the frame is to present a simplified, often manipulative schema of a complex social, political and cultural reality. Frames are structures that include a variety of linguistic devices: metaphors that conceptualise, and nouns, verbs and adjectives that describe and evaluate. This paper focuses specifically on three frames (rationality/irrationality; power/weakness; civilization/barbarism), which have been central to the German media representation of the new EU member states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the process of self-translation undertaken by German exile writers who translated their own works, written in English, the language of their host country, back into their mother tongue, German. It postulates that the necessary precondition for self-translation is not just bilinguality but also bicuUurality and that it is this bicultural status of the self-translators as cultural mediators and not their poetic licence that leads to the significant changes and restructurings that the self-translators make in their German version. The awareness of the heteroskopic nature of the translation, that is, differences in knowledge base between the readerships of the English original version and the German version with regard to the German intertext are the motivation for restructuring their original version. In this process, self-translators differ from other translators and cultural mediators only in their access to the pre-stage of composition, access to the intertext, the intention and the inner language that preceded the original English version. Thus the selftranslators act as editors of their own text and take their decisions to expand or reduce an aspect of their text based on the familiarity of their readership with the German cultural environment or intertext that informs the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Anglo-German relations since 1945 have by and large been friendly at the level of the political elite, on a wider scale British perceptions of Germany and the Germans are for the most part negative and still dominated by images of the Third Reich and the Second World War. It has even been suggested that 'kraut-bashing' is the only form of racism in Britain which is still considered socially acceptable. Going beyond the simplistic but commonly expressed view which dismisses these negative British perceptions of Germany as envy of Germany's post-war economic revival, this paper will argue that there is a range of other reasons which help to account for the negative perceptions British people hold of Germany and the Germans such as the legacy of the Second World War and post-war challenges to British national identity, the nature of the Holocaust and the way history and languages are taught in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper approaches the linguistic setting of a European inner-city, an area with a long history of migration from a sociological and linguistic perspective. After a qualitative-heuristical research and (ethnomethodological) conversation analysis, we are able to present a description of sociolingual conditions and the process of their transformation. In the first part we focus on the relationship between language, culture, identity and social structure. We argue that old structures are breaking up, and that new patterns of speech-communities are developing. We shall come out against common ideas about lingual transformation in the Federal Republic of Germany: against the 'assimilatonist view' (the language of origin disappears with the third generation of migrants) and the 'view of difference', this is connected with the concept of 'ethnic revival' and observes the revitalisation of the languages of origin). Our argument will be put forward in an exploration of phenomenon of 'mixed language' (that's what the interviewees called their way of speaking) in the world of inner-city juveniles. By embedding these linguistic practices in the ethnographical concept of 'liminality', we tried to understand the loosening process of the relationship between linguistic practices, identity through nationality and social structure. The usage of language appears as a means of constructing their social position among adolescents in the location of research where social structure is embodied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a study of mixed language use within the frame of interactional sociolinguistics. Adolescents of Turkish background in Germany have developed their own patterns of bilingualism, in particular mixed varieties of German and Turkish. By the analysis of some transcribed examples of Turkish-German mixed speech (code-switching, code-mixing, code-oscillation, stylised forms of 'Immigrant German') it is shown that the switching and mixing oscillates between local sequential functions and a more global 'We-group'-function. The particular role assigned to 'speaking mixed' can only be appreciated against the specific background of the German migratory discourse. The adolescents' use of hybrid language is an attempt at appropriating semantic space where their language is no longer the object of the migratory discourse as defined by majority society but constitutes an autonomous and exclusive form of (counter-) discourse in its own right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With its focus on simplification universals, developmental orders, teachability, and functional-grammatical bases for acquisition, the well-known research on German (L2) language acquisition has contributed much to SLA research in general. At the same time, sociolinguistic investigations focus squarely on the difficult social conditions that accompany non-native language acquisition in Germany. In keeping with emerging approaches in SLA in general, German language acquisition (GLA) research requires a more holistic focus if we hope to account for individual experience as well as universal influences on attainment. This broad survey of the research highlights several significant factors in L2 German: (1) informal contact with native speakers, offering personal, interactive practice; (2) formal instruction, representing targeted practice focused on linguistic accuracy and complexity; and (3) affective orientations, particularly identity and affiliation, as reflections of learner engagement in the process. These aspects of learner experience appear relevant across an array of theoretical and empirical perspectives. I therefore argue that cognitive models of GLA fail to adequately account for the constraints on both input and contact experienced by most non-native acquirers of German, and that only a purposeful integration of methodologies can capture the complex relationships between cognitive, social and psychological factors inherent in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]