On ‘Grammar of Belonging’

Abstract

This contribution is based on the first steps of a new interdisciplinary and multilingual project that analyses interviews with young people with a migration background in Germany in which they are asked about their experiences (how they perceive the employment/training situation, the housing market, the way the authorities deal with them and the opportunity to meet new people). The project intends to identify and analyse linguistic phenomena in the interviews, which will be summarised under the heading “language or grammar of belonging” (Meinhof/Galasiński 2005), focusing on the ways in which the language used is involved in the construction and affirmation of multiple identities that intersect, challenge or complement each other. In fact, diversity and movement, and moreover overcoming the boundary between countries, languages and cultures, are particularly considered in the interviews with young people living the experience of migration and expressing themselves in a language other than their mother tongue. By referring to intercultural experiences and the concepts of intercultural German studies, these texts therefore represent valid material for interdisciplinary studies that primarily examine language. First theoretical references can be found in Wodak et al. (1999). In their studies, they focus their attention on lexis and syntax in order to extrapolate the construction of “unity, difference, uniqueness, origin, continuity, change, autonomy, heteronomy”. Subsequently, De Fina (2003) has focused on the narrative aspects used to construct identity. However, both Wodak et al.’s and De Fina’s study lack systematicity and completeness for the study of identity discourse. In fact, the language used makes use of the whole spectrum of linguistic devices, so that time, place and person enable the positioning of the speaker as belonging to a certain group with which he or she discursively identifies. Therefore, temporal, spatial and personal references should not be separated from the context in which they occur. Discourse analysis is oriented towards the text, which is itself intertextual. Following also Fairclough’s model (1989, 1992), the approach to the text is through lexis, grammar and text structure.