The Sociolinguistic Economy of Berlin

Imagine you want to study language diversity as a phenomenon of contemporary society. Where do you start? You can, for example, ask teachers to count the number of languages that are spoken by their pupils (as has been done for, e.g., Hamburg, see Fürstenau et al. 2003, and for London, see Baker & Eversley 2000). While this is useful for practical purposes, like designing local school curricula, and for knowing which languages are spoken in which areas, it is less helpful for understanding why some places are more diverse than others – and it is often simply taken for granted that cities are the best places to document and study diversity.

But why actually is it that cities seem to be more diverse than other places? Even more basic, what actually is a city? And what does urban diversity tell us with regards to the links between language, social relations, and transnational social structures? In sociology and cultural anthropology, cities have been described as related to economic practices (Sennett 2005, Urry and Gregory 1985), and it is argued that cities have a central role in the global economy (Sassen 1994). Cities are constitutive of global economic relations and are themselves an effect of economic practices. In simpler terms: people who want to earn money oftentimes go to cities to find jobs and other people decide to locate companies where they hope to find a suitable workforce, favourable economic conditions and enough people to buy what they offer. The whole scenario may, of course, change in the future due to online work and online sale but so far, the places where economic value is produced also affect what is considered as social value – things and practices (including linguistic ones!) associated with New York, for example, are cooler than those from the countryside. At the same time, where wealth is produced, many less well-paid jobs are created to cater for the needs of those who earn a lot – who employ cleaning staff and nannies, eat in restaurants, and go to late night shops (see also Sassen 1994). The more poorly-paid workers tend to reside in places further away from the city centre where rent is cheaper and often come from places in the world where living conditions are even less favourable. To cut a long story short, local and global economic conditions have an effect on socio-spatial relations, in micro and in macro terms, and are therefore relevant for language as a social practice, for linguistic prestige and for language diversity. And, indeed, cities are interesting (even if not the only) social and spatial entities to study this.

To explore these questions around language diversity in the city, Britta Schneider, Theresa Heyd and Ferdinand von Mengden from Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, have organised a symposium that delves into the linguistic situation of one city: Berlin.

The Sociolinguistic Economy of Berlin takes place on 30^th September and 1^st of October 2016 and we are pleased to invite you to attend. The symposium includes contributions on traditional and recent dialectal diversity, new and old migrant multilingualisms, as well as emerging linguistic élites in the city, a combination that inspires to conceive of and compare languages in their local but transnationally conditioned socio-economic embeddedness. Additionally, we have invited scholars whose theoretical expertise will help to explore the topic on a more abstract level, including Monica Heller and Barbara Johnstone.

Berlin as a city to study language diversity is compelling – its history as a divided place sheds light on the role of the political-economic system in shaping conditions of language diversity. There are still-felt effects of the Berlin Wall, such as local dialectal repertoires in German and specific formations of ethnic patterning, both differing in eastern and western parts of the city. This makes visible that diversity is no ʻnaturalʼ effect of a city, but caused by market conditions and political systems. It furthermore shows that we can observe not only demographic shifts but also the durability of some social discourses. Finally, we can contrast the cosmopolitanism of some social spheres (e.g., Berlin’s Anglophone hipster culture) with anti-cosmopolitan moves of linguistic gatekeeping that erupt in contexts of urban power struggles such as gentrification, the tourism industry, in education and in job market accessibility.

Taken together, the symposium brings insight into language diversity under conditions of globalised economic relations and histories in local places, in exploring diversity beyond methodological nationalism and in understanding the city as one potential lens through which we can understand such phenomena.

References

Baker, Philip & John Eversley. 2000. Multilingual Capital: The Languages of London’s Schoolchildren and their Relevance to Economic, Social and Educational Policies. London: Battlebridge.

Fürstenau, Sara, Ingrid Gogolin & Kutlay Yagmur. 2003. Mehrsprachigkeit in Hamburg. Münster: Waxmann.

Sassen, Saskia. 1994. Cities in a World Economy. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press.

Sennett, Richard. 2005. Capitalism and the City. Future City, ed. by S. Read, J. Rosemann & J.v. Eldijk, 114-24. London: Spon Press.

Urry, John & Derek Gregory. 1985. Social Relations and Spatial Structures. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Carla Hackett, Neukölln Hipster (Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cood/6065684573)

Recently, I asked my German-speaking, Berlin-based daughter Nanna whether she was able to understand our English-speaking neighbour when he talks with his daughter, Nanna’s best friend. Nanna laughed and obviously thought my question to be funny and replied: “Mami, ich kann doch kein Berlinisch!” which could be roughly translated as “Mummy, you know I don’t speak Berlinish!”. Of course, I also had to laugh and asked myself what it might mean that a German five-year old, with an otherwise fairly good understanding of semantic categories, confuses the language English with a German dialect.

We, Nanna, our second daughter, my partner and I, used to live in Frankfurt, Germany, spend some time in Australia, and have now been living in Berlin for more than a year. Since our arrival, I have been astonished by the amount of English that is spoken on the streets of Berlin. And, surprisingly, it has turned out that Berlin seems to be so popular that many of our friends from other places (e.g., Australia, France, UK, US, Denmark) have either moved to Berlin or visit us regularly. One effect of this is that, most of the time when we see our friends, we communicate in English. Adding to the fact that neighbourhoods like Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg, Mitte or Neukölln, are full of tourists and cafés in which people hang out and speak English, it becomes less surprising that Nanna thinks that English is what the people of Berlin speak.

The question arises whether English actually has become a local language of Berlin. Considering established frameworks of sociolinguistics, we would probably say ‘no’. Think of Kachru’s circle model, where Germany is seen as being part of the “expanding circle”, with English as a ‘foreign’ language. Yet, many speakers in Berlin are not actually ‘foreign’ speakers: they may be ‘foreign’ to Germany from a legal point of view but live here and English is not ‘foreign’ to them. Plus, they are neither ‘foreign’ to a particular sort of culture that is very prominent in the neighbourhoods mentioned, often related to music, art, design and regularly criticised as producing gentrification and Hipsters, now a Berlin cliché. As these environments are often made up of a mix of people from many different countries, including migrants from EU states with high numbers of youth unemployment, English has been established as the lingua franca. And, obviously, this very lifestyle is neither ‘foreign’ to the Germans who participate, who use English on a daily basis and for whom, consequently, English is part of their local experience.

One consideration that may evolve from these observations is related to the analytical and social relevance of the terms ‘global’ and ‘local’. While English is usually regarded to be a ‘global’ language that may become localised in different contexts, these notions may be problematised as vague and as making invisible power inequalities. What do we mean if we say that English is a ‘global’ language? Does the focus on the territorial spread of English make invisible the discourses – based on neoliberal capitalism, colonialism, cultural industries, consumerism – that are responsible for its spread? Does the focus on territorial concepts like ‘global’ and ‘local’ thus enforce the hegemonic, neutralised status of English? And, for the generation of Nanna, do distinctions of global vs. local rather become historical markers, comparable to the history of the potato, now a signifier of Germanness, despite its South American origins?

Scholars have tried to grasp these issues. The notion of glocal is certainly amongst the more prominent ones, attempting to blend both terms together, semantically as well as linguistically. And it is not new to argue that “the dualities of the global and the local, the national and the international, us and them, have dissolved and merged together in new forms that require conceptual and empirical analysis” (Beck and Sznaider 2006:3). In the context of sociolinguistics, the term supervernacular focuses on the fact that a discursive construction like ‘the language English’ is always necessarily localised and is thus, necessarily, realised as a vernacular of that powerful discourse of ‘English’. Accordingly, the ‘English’ spoken in Berlin is a phenomenon that appropriates a discourse of power – speakers demonstrate access to a very powerful linguistic resource – and establishes a vernacular that is local and transnational at the same time.

Using English in Berlin can, of course, mean very different things. Yet, in the context of the specific neighbourhoods mentioned, ‘English’ often signifies access to transnational Communities of Practice that are based in the production of particular forms of lifestyle and in the performance of particular jobs, so, basically, it is an index of a transnational type of class.

At the same time, categories of space seem to remain relevant, as in the example of the term Berlinish, which is a form of localization. All in all it seems that concentrating on territorial distinctions (global – local), without discussing their intersections with economic, cultural and historical discourses, may hide the fact that any face-to-face language use is necessarily local; and it may also hide the fact that any language use is to be analysed as an instance of multivocality, where power differentials are of higher relevance for language choice than geographical trajectories.

Do we reproduce power differentials if we constantly mark the geographical origin of a linguistic resource that has been rendered socially and economically salient – and, as an effect, has spread globally? In this context, we may also ask: Whose ‘English’ is called English and to whose ‘English’ is a localised name attached (which then is typically seen as requiring subtitles in ‘English’ broadcasting)?

In all its temporality and contingency, and although formal education will most certainly put an end to it: Is Nanna’s concept of Berlinish a revolutionary appropriation of ‘English’?

Beck, Ulrich and Natan Sznaider (2006). Unpacking Cosmopolitanism for the Social Sciences: A Research Agenda The British Journal of Sociology, 1-23 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-4446.2006.00091.x

If you are a student or a guest researcher (like me) in Berlin and you need to get or renew a visa or need to change your visa status, you need to wait. The Ausländerbehörde (Immigration Office), which serves Berlin’s non-German citizens, is open three days a week (Monday and Tuesday from 7am to 2pm, Thursday from 10am to 6pm) and as a student you cannot make an appointment. Instead, you have to arrive during office hours and take a number. If there are no more numbers, you cannot talk to an official and you have to try again. Usually you learn, through trial and error, that you must arrive at least one hour, often two, before the office opens and wait outside in order to get a number. It is always nice when your visa renewal time falls in the summer rather than the winter months.

There are no instructions on the official website to tell you about these lengthy waiting times (not even in German!), and no officials offering information about the procedure. The small amount of information you can gather about where to stand and how long to wait comes from the people around you. Everyone waiting uses the language resources they have: L2 German, English, Turkish, among many other languages, attempting to work out if the person ahead or behind them has better information about what is going on. During the wait, strangers share stories about previous experiences at the office.

The monolingual German signage at the Ausländerbehörde stands in stark contrast to the linguistically diverse waiting crowd.

Berlin, in general, is a multilingual city. You hear many languages as you walk the streets: you learn Turkish words when you do your groceries and read ads in Polish, English and Arabic, alongside German, on the trains. The government department for Integration and Migration makes their website available in German, English, Spanish, French, Polish, Russian, and Turkish and boasts that Berlin “was and is a city of immigrants. Immigrants from numerous countries”. 13.7% of Berlin’s population are not German citizens. Why is it then that at the Ausländerbehörde, where clients by definition speak German as an additional language if at all, there is no multilingual information?

Not only is the limited official information provided only in German, it is contradictory and confusing. The writing is small and it takes a number of readings to work out which floor it is you need to go to. In fact, on my first visit I read the sign (above), saw ‘Australien’ and, after confirming with the woman at the front desk (who told me she does not have a phone line, so cannot call any of the offices to get further information), I went to wait on the 3^rd floor. After finally talking to an official I was sent to the 1^st floor where I was meant to be waiting (as a guest academic) to wait some more.

There are a few glimpses of recognition that people navigating the immigration office might need assistance beyond this monolingual signage. A smaller sign (left) indicates the separate entrance for Turkish nationals, the largest group of applicants in Berlin, and includes the German for the country’s name in addition to the Turkish flag. It is unclear, however, which entrance you should choose if you are a visiting academic from Turkey. There is no Turkish language presence at all, only the Turkish flag acknowledging Turkish nationals while quietly insisting on German monolingualism.

What does all of this say about language on the move and social inclusion in a multilingual city? The Ausländerbehörde makes it clear that the nation remains the great arbiter of access to resources and that exclusion is enforced through lack of information in even the major L2s of the country. Offering information in other languages for ‘Ausländer’ (foreigners) challenges the legitimacy of the one language, one nation tie and yet for the people waiting in line speaking, multilingualism is the only way to access information.

In the feature article Jasmin speaks about the good fortune of having grown up with two languages and tells how much she loves both languages and cultures. The journalist must have asked the usual dumb question about whether growing up bilingual hadn’t made her feel “conflicted” (the German word they use is zerissen (“torn apart”) and I like her answer: no it’s normal in the same way that you love your mother and your father and no one ever asks whether having two parents makes you feel conflicted!

Although it might seem like a contradiction, Jasmin goes on to say that she is not raising her own daughter bilingually but in German only. The child is “of course” exposed to Persian and English (presumably it’s impossible to grow up in Berlin or anywhere else in the world today without being exposed to English …). So, the child is actually growing up multilingually with German as the main language. While growing up with German and Persian was special in Jasmin’s generation (she’s 42), being in a multilingual environment is so normal for her daughter (who is 6) that it doesn’t even count as growing up bilingual anymore! (which brings me back to one of my arguments why sociolinguistics needs a paradigm shift)

I like the normality of it all! At the same time, Jasmin is scathing about fellow-Germans who speak English with their children in order to raise them bilingually and all they teach them is “English with a German accent.” I couldn’t agree more – rearing children is hard enough without trying to do it in a foreign language …