A Narrative Draft on Positive Self-Category in Diverse Social- and Language World
This essay arose during my biographical- and interactional analysis of social and language experiences of young „returnees“, in other words, young women and men of Turkish origin, who grew up in Germany and Austria and re-migrated as teenagers or young adults to Turkey. Arda, the Informant, whom I want to introduce in the following, describes different social worlds in Germany and Turkey. For this, he describes two different which shaped his childhood; on one hand, it is the TurkishWorld in Berlin/ Kreuzberg, in which he was born into and remained until primary school and on the other hand, it is the German-World, in which his family later moved and where Arda was raised until the end of his primary school. After moving back to Turkey, Arda was introduced to a new modern Turkish environment, to which he had to become familiar. In his new world, Arda encounters the loss of his German daily language. For his description Arda uses complex methods of ethnic and social categorisation and more negative and/or positive self-positioning to different worlds. In order to describe his action, he used complex methods of ethnical and social categories and negative and/or positive self-positioning to diverse worlds. The aim of this work is primarily to give a general overview into the field of study of sociolinguistics and its social categories and secondarily the reconstruction of the categorisation-processes and linguistic methods Arda used.
Narrativer Entwurf einer positiven Selbstkategorie in unterschiedlichen Sozial- und Sprachwelten
Dieser Beitrag entstand im Rahmen meiner biografie- und interaktionsanalytischen Studie zu sozialen und sprachlichen Erfahrungen junger „RückkehrerInnen“, d.h. junger Frauen und Männer türkischer Herkunft, die in Deutschland oder Österreich aufwuchsen, und als Jugendliche bzw. junge Erwachsene in die Türkei migrierten. Arda, der Informant, den ich im Folgenden vorstellen werde, beschreibt unterschiedliche Sozialwelten in Deutschland und in der Türkei. Dabei räumt er der Beschreibung von zwei grundsätzlich unterschiedlichen Lebenswelten, die seine Kindheit in Deutschland prägen, großen Raum ein: zum einen der Lebenswelt des Türkenviertels in Kreuzberg, wo er geboren ist und bis zur Einschulung lebte, und zum anderen der deutschen Lebenswelt, in die seine Familie später umgezogen ist und in der er die Grundschule besucht und absolviert hat. Nach der Übersiedlung in die Türkei erlebt Arda eine moderne türkische Lebenswelt, an die er sich anpassen muss. In seinem neuen Leben erfährt er den schmerzlichen Verlust der deutschen Alltagssprache. Zur Beschreibung verwendet er komplexe Verfahren ethnischer und sozialer Kategorisierung und negativer bzw. positiver Selbstpositionierungen zu den verschiedenen Welten. Ziel meiner Analysen ist es nach einem Überblick über die soziolinguistische Forschung zu sozialer Kategorisierung, die Kategorisierungsprozesse und deren charakteristische Eigenschaften und Handlungsweisen, die Arda verwendet, zu rekonstruieren und die sprachlichen Mittel und Verfahren zu beschreiben, die zur Positionierung und zur Selbst- und Fremdkategorisierung verwendet werden.
The immigration from Germany to Turkey is a situation of radical change, which many people of Turkish origin undergo. This also allows them the differentiation of and/or affiliation with different social worlds. In my biographical- and interactional-analytical study of social and linguistic experiences of young “returnees”, I undertook biographical interviews of about one hour with 40 informants (Devran, 2017). The student Arda, whom I want to introduce in the following, attracted my attention because of his self-confident appearance and his manifold self-portrayals and self-evaluations.
The interview, which took approximately one hour, was held in my office at the University of Marmara in Istanbul. Arda was born in Berlin (Kreuzberg), raised in Tempelhof and had to move to Ankara at the age of twelve with his family. At the time of the interview, Arda was 28 years old and in his last year of study. He studied German philology at the University of Istanbul. In his interview, Arda talks about a lot of experiences starting from his birth in Berlin-Kreuzberg, his school time in Berlin-Tempelhof and his study and working experience in Istanbul. In doing so, he relates many of his own experiences, which contain important biographical phases, to the different ways of life and to his attitude towards the particular languages and the way they are spoken. This analysis follows the chronological order of Arda’s biographical events, in accordance with the way Arda presents them in the narrative presentation.
For the analysis of this biographical interview, I will apply concepts that aim to reconstruct the narrative-constructed identities, in particular the concept of positioning and social categorisation.
Lucius-Hoene & Deppermann (2004) and Deppermann (2013) suggest the concept of positioning as an instrument for empirical studies of narrative identities on the basis of autobiographical narration. An important component of the positioning-approach is the social categorisation. Self- and other-positioning contain the attribution and demand of social and personal identity facets, for example the affiliation to social groups or the attribution of moral characteristics. Sociolinguistic-conversation analysis works have endeavoured to describe the process of linguistic realisation and tried to understand the interactively constructed meaning constitution and the evaluation of categories (cp. Drescher & Dausendschön-Gay, 1995; Hausendorf, 2000; Keim, 2008). Linguistic methods, which are used by the conversation participants in active conversation situations in order to analyse people and groups of people in social categories, are in the centre of this research.
The aim of my study is to reconstruct the ethnic and socio-cultural categories, which are constructed in the conversation by Arda, and its characteristics and courses of action, and to describe linguistic methods, which are used for positioning and self- and othercategorisation. Thus, the following aspects are of great importance:
- which ethnical and/or socio-cultural categories are relevant in the conversation in a self- and other-classification
- which characteristics and courses of action are referred to
- which elements of expression are used for social differentiation and which linguistic-communicative methods are referred to in social categories and contexts
- how and which methods are used for self- and other-positioning
- which contrasts are shown and which evaluations through social categorisation are linked
- which linguistic-communicative methods are shown to express social affiliation
- what is defined as “own language”
The fundaments for the following analysis are the social- and linguistic worlds, which are given in the conversation. This all flourished from Arda’s life starting in Germany and ending with his emigration to Turkey: in Germany the closed community of Turkish people and also the life of mainstream German society. In Turkey he encountered different modern Turkish lifestyles: in his family’s daily routine and at the university. In the study of German philology, he also encountered the world of “returnees”, who spoke German and Turkish as their mother tongue and in the call-centre, the world of “returnee”- colleges, who established a specific mixed-language. Furthermore, he had his own world, where he is married to a German wife, and spoke German in his own world.
Out of the narrative illustrations of the biographical phases of Arda, it can be reconstructed that Arda developed in comparison and contrast to the negative public image an implicitly and explicitly positive self-categorisation over several biographical phases. He used several methods of categorisation for the description of the social worlds, especially to label and evoke. He aligned himself with some worlds, he distanced himself from others and with one particular world he deliberately aligned himself.
