Germanic and Slavic Studies

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This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies.

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Repression and forgetting: Coming to terms with the past and identity in Bernhard Schlink’s “Der Vorleser” and Günther Grass’ “Die Blechtrommel”
(University of Waterloo, 2024-09-16) Riese, Paula Sophie
This thesis deals with the representation of coming to terms with the past and identity in two important German novels: Günter Grass' "Die Blechtrommel" (1959) and Bernhard Schlink's "Der Vorleser" (1997). The thesis analyzes the two novels with regard to their thematic treatment of guilt, shame and identity. The narrative techniques and the development of the protagonists are examined. In "Die Blechtrommel", Oskar Matzerath thematizes his story as part of a cross-generational family saga in 20th century Germany. The novel deals with guilt, identity and the political events that shape the lives of the characters. "Der Vorleser" focuses on the love affair between Michael Berg and Hanna Schmitz and the subsequent trial over Nazi crimes in which Hanna is accused. The novel explores questions of morality, guilt and responsibility and the challenges of coming to terms with the Holocaust. The thesis shows that both novels make important contributions to the discussion about coming to terms with the past and identity, despite their different chronology and thematic approaches. While "Die Blechtrommel" offers a direct confrontation with the events of the Second World War through the protagonist Oskar Mazerath, "Der Vorleser" reflects on the long-term effects and moral dilemmas of the post-war generation. Both works illustrate the complex processes of memory and identity formation in German society.
Analyzing the Manuscript Contexts of the Medieval German Verse Novella Die Königin von Frankreich (The Queen of France)
(University of Waterloo, 2024-08-30) Koepcke, Jana
The expectation that a purchased or borrowed book will be essentially identical across all copies worldwide is a modern notion. Every textual witness, meaning every manuscript (handwritten book) of the Middle Ages has its own value, with unique, specific linguistic, cultural, and temporal conditions reflecting its origin and representing a time-bound cultural knowledge. Each medieval manuscript constitutes an invaluable cultural artifact that provides a window into a literary heritage markedly distinct from our own. The transmission of texts together with other texts compiled in one multi-text manuscript are essential characteristics of medieval textuality. My dissertation contributes to our knowledge of fifteenth-century German language multi-text manuscripts, which are an essential element of pre-modern literary culture. I examine the multi-text manuscripts containing the Middle High German verse novella Die Königin von Frankreich (1400/1402), illuminating the insights they offer into the medieval German audiences’ perceptions of their literary heritage. I study manuscripts containing Die Königin von Frankreich and other texts, treating each manuscript as a unified entity created for a specific purpose. My goal is to demonstrate that medieval manuscripts and their collections of texts can be a valuable resource for literary studies. By examining the selection and arrangement of texts in multi-text manuscripts, even works like Die Königin von Frankreich, which were previously considered artistically inferior, can be appreciated in a new way. One key argument is that the interpretation of individual texts, such as Die Königin von Frankreich, is inherently context-dependent, with these works assuming different shades of meaning when surrounded by specific co-texts. Based on the content of the various other texts I establish connections between the collected texts within the respective multi-text manuscript. This examination illustrates that multi-text manuscripts, which might appear disparate to modern eyes, may have exhibited coherence or unproblematic organization to their original medieval audience.
Pedagogical Approaches for Encouraging Interaction Awareness and Interactional Competence in University-Level Second Language Learners
(University of Waterloo, 2024-05-22) Barnett, Richard
With my dissertation, I show how learning about interactional patterns and organizational features of spoken language can be achieved for undergraduate second and foreign language (L2) learners, supported by empirical data and arguments drawn from previous research in L2 pedagogy and Conversation Analysis-Second Language Acquisition (CA-SLA) for integrating interactional learning materials and tasks into undergraduate L2 classroom curricula. Through my study, I examine and evaluate the implementation of learning tasks and activities involving recordings and written transcripts of naturally occurring interactions in the L2 for undergraduate learners to learn about interaction and language. This examination is conducted using Interaction Analysis as a methodological framework of investigation, specifically using a reworked version of Schermuly and Scholl’s (2012) Discussion Coding System (DSC) for Group Interaction Analysis. In order to theoretically ground my research, I propose the understanding of interaction awareness (IA) as a prerequisite for the development of interactional competence (IC), where IA can be understood as learners’ capacity to become aware of aspects that are at the core of IC, such as organizational features and reoccurring interactional patterns, pragmatic and social implications of interactional and linguistic features, as well as non-verbal and prosodic features that are observable in spoken interaction. The focus of my study then concentrates on interactional tasks and learning materials comprising recordings and written transcripts of naturally occurring interactions in the L2 for undergraduate learners of German as a means of encouraging IA and language awareness (LA) by way of processes involving discovery learning (DL) and social learning. With my analyses and discussions, I examine the ways that the learners’ observations and discoveries about features of interaction and language, posited during the recorded learning sessions comprising the dataset of my study, can be conceptualized as IA. The collaborative discovery and meaning construction work enacted by the learners during the recorded language sessions comprising my study allow for a close, empirical investigation of the learners’ processes and methods of conduct for invoking reflection and negotiating understanding about interactional and linguistic features of the L2 encountered in the learning materials, thereby leading to an awareness of interaction and language that can be inferred through the recorded learner interactions. The conclusions drawn from my study findings indicate that the learners demonstrated LA through their discussions about individual lexical items and grammatical concepts, for example, with considerations about observed variations in verbal production of specific lexical items, as well as systematicities in spoken language production of verb conjugations in the L2. The concept of IA pushes this understanding of LA further by borrowing and incorporating elements from Conversation Analysis (CA), as shown when the learners demonstrated their capacity to consider, reflect, and formulate hypotheses about these discoveries within the specific, socially situated contexts of each of the observed interactions. Adding to this, IA can constitute further considerations about interaction and language, for example, cultural, regional, or pragmatic implications comprising specific instances or variations of language use in spoken interaction, or specific processes relating to certain points in the interaction, for example, becoming aware of linguistic and interactional processes and re-occurring patterns to do with positional features of interaction, such as goodbyes and conversational closing sequences.
Transtextual Narratives about the European Union. A qualitative research on structuring, sense-making constructions of reality from a linguistic perspective
(University of Waterloo, 2024-03-28) Schüller, Peter
Narratives are never finished products, but constantly evolving linguistic constructs. Actors use them to position themselves and develop the narratives further in the process. In this respect, narratives are to be understood as specifically interpreted constructions of reality that lie between the level of text and discourse. The aim of this paper is to analyze such narratives about the European Union in three political speeches by the presidents of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker and Ursula von der Leyen. To this end, narrative is methodically analyzed using the narrative constituents 'chronotope', 'actors', 'plot development/emplotment' and 'attitude'. These narrative constituents are in turn divided into sub-constituents that can be analyzed intratextually. The analysis of transtextual narratives offers the possibility of examining constructed sequences of actions that are contextualized in an actor-specific way. In the course of the argumentation of policies or political goals, for example, legitimization strategies can be traced. The constitution of functional actor constellations as well as of spatio-temporal distinct contexts can justify projects and motivate actions. The qualitative-explorative approach of this paper is intended to promote a better understanding of transtextual narratives and thus of a form of discursively constructed realities.
German Heritage Language Attitudes in Ontario: A Case Study about the German Language in German-Canadian Families
(University of Waterloo, 2024-03-19) Hezel, Annemarie Luise
This thesis aims at investigating language attitudes expressed by members of German-Canadian families (n=12) in semi-structured interviews. The analysis draws on methods from the field of Interactional Linguistics and focuses specifically on a linguistic and structural analysis of the collected interview data. Three of the four families speak predominantly German as their family language (home language) while one family exclusively speaks English. The parents and children were interviewed separately in order to ensure the possibility of subsequently comparing the results of both data sets in the discussion section. The analysis largely focuses on implicit and explicit language attitudes toward the German language as well as the way the participants position themselves and others in the interviews. In the process of structuring and organizing the collected data the following four categories were established: (1) Individual-Affective Factors, (2) Practical-Economic Benefits, (3) Potential Obstacles, and (4) The future of German in Canada.
Evaluation of Computer Aided Translation (CAT) Tools in the Translation Process: A Plea for Complementing CAT-Tools with Corpus Linguistical Tools and Methods
(University of Waterloo, 2024-02-01) Hinderer, Dora
The demand for translations of high quality is on a peak while the budget and time resources are low. Consequently, translators need technological support and use Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) tools. Using the open-source tool OmegaT, this thesis investigates how CAT tools support the translation process. The objective of the study are political texts published by the European Parliament. The analysis further demonstrates that CAT tools have certain constraints. Using parts of the monolingual corpus DeReKo, the thesis exemplifies how these limitations can be overcome by using corpora as an additional resource during the translation process. This thesis contributes to the improvement of CAT tools as the main technological resource used by translation experts and outlines weaknesses which negatively impact their work. The findings can be used for optimizing all types of technology dealing with language data because they show how natural language must be understood to process it automatically. Furthermore, the approach taken in this work with regard to the critical examination of available resources can be applied in the future to evaluate and optimize new translation tools.
German Accent Bias – The negative Connotation of the German Accent in English among German Speakers.
(University of Waterloo, 2024-01-26) Stuckler, Angelina
In a globalized world, multilingualism is prevalent, with English as one of its major lingua franca. However, a German accent in English is often perceived as a lack of linguistic competence. An accent is seen as an indicator of otherness or incompetence and can result in major negative outcomes, such as discrimination, a smaller probability of economic success and social inequality or exclusion. Current research shows an internalized hatred of German accents among Germans. The research is based on an extensive literature review and analysis of interviews with German expatriates. Data are analyzed qualitatively to examine linguistic bias toward German accents in English. The results indicate that German English L2 speakers evaluate the German accent negatively. This linguistic bias is manifested in critical comments about a perceptual accent. The theses of this research are firstly, who can recognize and negotiate negative assessment of German accentuated English. Secondly, which mechanisms are they using to evaluate the accent, both implicitly as well as explicitly in a negative way? And lastly, how did the connotation of the accent change over time and which reasons are stated for the avoidance and dislike of a German accent? The results illustrate how this bias becomes relevant in interactions and is revealed through self- and other positioning. The results confirm a negative connotation of the German accent and show that these evaluations play a role in interactions. It becomes clear that the causes and effects of this connotation are subject to change over time and can lead to negative perceptions and linguistic biases. The results offer clues for dealing with the German accent in English, especially for German as a foreign language, to reduce or overcome the negative connotations.
Analysis of the (Co-)Construction of Cultural Belongings in Several Episodes of a Korean-American Podcast
(University of Waterloo, 2024-01-26) Bauermeister, Christina Jasmin
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the “transnational turn” (Pence & Zimmermann, 2012, p. 495) in social, literary, and linguistic studies can be observed as a response to new forms of mobility and global interconnectedness, facilitated by rapid developments in the technological field and the spread of mass media and social media (Noh et al., 2013). This sociolinguistic study therefore investigates a specific small part of social reality construction (Gumperz & Cook-Gumperz, 1996) in one such digital and transnational new domain: in podcast conversations publicly available on YouTube, in particular four episodes of the show “Get Real” produced by Dive Studios, involving speakers with American, Korean, Canadian, and German affiliations. Using the method of interactional analysis (Imo & Lanwer, 2019), I investigate how the speakers co-construct their cultural belongings as individuals and as a group in the conversations through (dis)claiming cultural and linguistic knowledge. The analysis employs Positioning Theory (Davies & Harré, 1990; Harré & Van Langenhove, 1991; Van Langenhove & Harré, 1994) combined with the expert-novice model (Reichert & Liebscher, 2012), examining negotiations of levels of epistemic authority that construct speakers’ belonging to certain abstract cultural group identities, which builds on a conceptualization of culture “as an inventory of knowledge” (Busch, 2009, para. 44). Findings of the analysis reveal the embeddedness of the podcast in the specific ethnographic context of transnational Korea. The mapping of the discursive moves of the speakers in diagrams shows how the speakers relationally position themselves as belonging to more than one cultural community, co-constructing their own transnational new space that is both part of and in-between other larger cultural spaces. While doing so, they still move within the allowances and constraints of ‘transnational Korea’, drawing on its discourses and established personas and constructing different types of Other while constituting themselves as “authentically belonging” at the same time. Their concurrent embeddedness in global social phenomena such as the Korean Wave as well as being steeped with local Korea-specific discourses and ideologies is one of the findings of this thesis. Moreover, the subject position of “transnational Korean” or “Korean” appears to be closed off to certain people groups based on such local ideologies. This can be seen in the troubling effect of a German American immigrant speaker, whose co-membership in the Korean group identity is largely denied. These findings show that transnational German research, as suggested by Pence and Zimmerman (2012), will have to consider local ideologies and ethnographic constraints applying to the social space that the German abroad navigates and relates to.
„Phantom, du bist nicht meinesgleichen!“ Identity in the works of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff
(University of Waterloo, 2023-09-08) Schneider, Lena
This thesis examines the role of identity in the works of German author Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. The analysis of this theme investigates the extent to which the author's mode of execution, composed of depicting conflicts of identity, can be unified into a pattern. Incorporating analysis results from the poems Das Spiegelbild and Am Turme as well as the ballad Das Fräulein von Rodenschild this thesis illustrates that Droste-Hülshoff employs miscellaneous ways and means to approach identity issues in her works. This thesis shows that the exploration of the self with their identity as an object of investiga-tion can involve both an intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the process. Consequently, the examination of identity can be dependent on external influences. Furthermore, Droste-Hülshoff uses doppelgänger or mirror motifs in her works to support the fact that identity is multi-layered and can never be viewed from only one perspective.
The Linguistic Landscape of Leipzig Today: A Place to Mix Sports and Politics
(University of Waterloo, 2023-08-31) Sutherland, Cole
When looking at a space and the people within we often turn to polls, surveys, and elections to gauge the feeling of an area, but what happens when those are not enough or people choose to censor themselves in fear of repercussions? By turning to linguistic landscape studies as a way to get an insight into a space and the people who inhabit it, we can get a true and more natural understanding of the area and see how people leave behind traces of their thoughts through interactions. Protected by anonymity, interacting with the linguistic landscape allows these people to mark spaces and create meanings within, without being associated directly with that message. And so, by turning to a combined approach of Geosemiotics, Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Analysis (ELLA), and turn-taking this thesis can break down moments from the linguistic landscape of Leipzig captured between 2019-2023 and analyse them as more than just photographs. By taking this combined approach I will be able to study the elements of the linguistic landscape and, soccer-related ones in particular, to connect them to the bigger discourses happening around the spaces in which they are placed. By reading the interactions like a conversation left behind for us to discover in the linguistic landscape, we will be able to gain an often overlooked, yet valuable, insight into Leipzig today.
Artistic and Social Tensions in the Pages of Ver Sacrum
(University of Waterloo, 2023-08-30) Devens Ortlieb, Helena
Vienna has for a long time fascinated scholars of history, art, politics and culture. A unique cultural hub at the turn of the twentieth century, Vienna was a modern city and home to many well-known artistic masters. In the fin-de-siècle, Vienna was a bustling center for change, ripe with tradition yet teeming with modern ideas that paved the way for the internal clashes, tensions, and conflicts that permeated the city. Fin-de-siècle Vienna saw one of the most famous artistic separations in Austrian, if not European, history. Young, modern-thinking artists separated from their traditional and rigid forefathers to create the Secession movement in 1897. The group, Die Vereinigung bildender Künstler Österreichs, with Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) and Koloman Moser (1868-1918) at the helm, consisted of modern artists whose mediums ranged from painting to architecture, and their legacy would eventually include a museum, the Secessionsgebäude, and an art journal, Ver Sacrum (1898-1903). In three essays, focusing on Gustav Klimt’s controversial artwork, depictions of the naked body, and Rainer Maria Rilke’s (1875-1926) contributions to the journal, this thesis explores the artistic and cultural tensions that permeated the pages of Ver Sacrum and demonstrates the journal’s role in fin-de-siècle Viennese cultural creation. Using Ver Sacrum to study and understand fin-de-siècle Vienna, this thesis demonstrates how the journal was influenced by the tensions of modern Vienna and how, at the same time, it contributed to those tensions. Emphasizing the journal’s recognition of and contributions to the artistic and social tensions that permeated fin-de-siècle Vienna, this thesis explores Ver Sacrum’s significant place in the creation and understanding of Viennese art and cultural history.
Germanisms in the Upper Silesian ethnolect in Poland: Commodification and Revitalization Germanismen im oberschlesischen Ethnolekt in Polen: Kommodifizierung und Revitalisierung
(University of Waterloo, 2023-06-30) Dirschka, Eva
In this thesis, I examine how commodification of the Upper Silesian ethnolect may contribute to the revitalization of the ethnolect. This project focuses specifically on the Germanisms, which are German loanwords in the Slavic Upper Silesian ethnolect. The Germanisms have contributed to the stigmatization of the ethnolect in the past, and they continue to be a contentious issue in the codification of the ethnolect and in the recognition of the ethnolect as a regional language by the Polish state (Hentschel, 2018). Since the change of the Polish political system in 1989, there has been an ‘ethnic awakening’ in Upper Silesia, a region in southwestern Poland. The results of the Polish National Census in 2002 and a subsequent one in 2011 show the Upper Silesians as the largest minority of the Republic of Poland with over 500,000 speakers of the Upper Silesian ethnolect. Polish legislation does not recognize Upper Silesians as an ethnic or linguistic minority (Michna, 2019). Grassroots movements in efforts to revitalize the ethnolect include a new generation of Upper Silesian speakers who use the Internet for blogging in the ethnolect or for entrepreneurial endeavors that feature the ethnolect in numerous ways. The corpus of merchandise (mainly T-shirts) analyzed in this research project was taken from an online store, the Gryfnie.com company in Upper Silesia, Poland. In support of my thesis argument that commodification of the Upper Silesian ethnolect, as exemplified on the Gryfnie.com printed T-shirts, may contribute to the revitalization of the ethnolect, I evaluated the extent to which Germanisms are promoted on the T-shirts, which revealed that the company features Germanisms on the majority of the Gryfnie.com T-shirts. Many of these Germanisms are in the category of underutilized lexemes by current ethnolect speakers. I also examined the role of the T-shirts in the linguistic landscape and propose that in this context the T-shirts increase the visibility of the ethnolect by shifting the ethnolect from the colloquial setting of individual speakers into the public domain, which allows for an integration of the minority language across the community. Multimodal critical discourse methodology guided my examination of Upper Silesian identity construction on the T-shirts and product labels and showed that the Germanisms are used as distinct markers of Upper Silesianness, and as boundary-markers that define speakers of the ethnolect as members of an ethnic group. The same methodology revealed how the images and texts on the Gryfnie.com T-shirts for young children can aid transmission of the ethnolect by functioning similarly to picture books. Gryfnie.com T-shirts and other merchandise designed for students signal a stance toward inclusion of the ethnolect in the education environment. Enhancing the prestige of the ethnolect and conveying modernity is another strategy employed by the Gryfnie company that can aid transmission of the ethnolect to adolescents and young adults. By drawing on principles of translanguaging as a language practice, I describe how the Gryfnie.com T-shirts may support a shift in the perception of the Germanisms from stigmatized elements of the ethnolect to dynamic forms of linguistic creativity.
COMPLAINTS ABOUT COVID: An Examination of the Structure and Properties of Complaints about COVID-19 Using Conversation Analysis
(University of Waterloo, 2023-04-28) Kull, Sandra Nathalie
In making a complaint, speakers attach a negative assessment to a person, an entity, or an event. Verbalizing such an assessment in interaction transforms a previously individual perception into one that they consider suitable to be negotiated with their interlocutors (Emerson & Messinger, 1977). Complaint recipients, on the other hand, can choose to support the assessment on an affective level or not (dis/affiliation) and to correspond with the complaint by producing structurally fitting responses (dis/alignment) (Pomerantz, 1975). Building on studies of complaints in English, French and Finnish, this thesis examines complaints in naturally occurring German conversation, specifically ones about COVID-19-related matters, using the method of Conversation Analysis. Data stem from the Leibniz Institute for the German Language’s Forschungs- und Lehrkorpus Deutsch (FOLK) and feature exclusively private telephone call interactions made between March 2020 and February 2021. From those, a collection of 25 complaint sequences was assembled. By means of the collection and eight detailed qualitative analyses of different complaint negotiations, the thesis examines the following research questions: 1) Which linguistic resources are employed by speakers to place complaint-initial first assessments? 2) How do recipients express and negotiate dis/agreement, in light of a conversational preference for agreement (Sacks, 1987; Auer & Uhmann, 1982)? 3) To what extent do speakers orient to their complaints and responses as potentially problematic or delicate (Jefferson, 1985)? Findings reveal speakers’ orientation to the delicacy of both placing and receiving complaints: Speakers draw on a variety of lexico-semantic, syntactic, prosodic and paralinguistic features to index the potentially problematic nature of complaining and formulate complaints in a way that they pose minimal threat to their own and others’ face (Brown & Levinson, 1987). Furthermore, disagreement in the form of disaffiliating second-position responses only rarely occurs and tends to be introduced implicitly. This confirms findings on complaints in other languages. Two new insights can be taken away from this thesis: Complaining speakers produce complaints about events using the same constitutive components as in complaints about people; describing the negative impact on themselves and blaming a third party for it. With respect to complaining about COVID-19-related events, a tendency towards implicitness regarding both components can be observed. With a broader scope and regarding the underlying social dynamics of interaction, it could be found that joint complaint activities about jointly experienced circumstances (such as COVID-19) seem to be pursued as a means of cultivating social relationships and solidarity, which is indicated, among other things, by the use of membership categories to signal connectedness.
Native speaker constructions in multilingual families
(University of Waterloo, 2023-01-09) Kat, Regan Marie
This thesis addresses the well-established subject area of native speaker research. Previous research into the native speaker has addressed the history of the concept of the native speaker, criticisms of this concept, and alternative terms for native- and non-native speaker. My research investigates how members of multilingual families construct the concept of the native speaker based on their lived experiences. To further guide my research, I investigate how the families establish and enact language beliefs through their constructions of themselves as multilingual subjects. I have designed small scale, qualitative case studies, which focus on families who share multiple languages as a family. I conducted focus group discussions with three families who share German in their language repertoires, and analyzed the data of two of these families. In the focus group discussions, the family members were encouraged to share their lived experiences as they relate to language use, language ideologies, and sharing multiple languages as a family. The results of this study show that the family members construct the concept of the native speaker based on their lived experiences and most often confirm the existing literature on the subject. A common theme throughout the family members’ constructions of the native speaker is the influence of the monolingual bias. Through the focus on native speaker constructions in the context of a multilingual family, the influence of the family members’ native speaker constructions on their family language polices (FLP) is noted and briefly explored.
Topography and Nature Symbolism in Thomas Mann’s ‘Zauberberg’
(University of Waterloo, 2022-08-31) Eppert, Katharina
In my master's thesis I examine the meaning of topography and nature symbolism in Thomas Mann's novel "The Magic Mountain". I select text passages and chapters that exemplify the importance of mountains, height and snow for the whole story and inevitably lead to the question of whether the story would have worked in the lowlands. For example, the first chapter “Arrival” already resembles a journey to Hades if one looks at the topographical and natural symbolic references that Thomas Mann has skillfully interwoven. But nature, flora, and fauna, and above all the seasons, also play an important role in Mann's contemporary novel and underline the inner and outer movement of the protagonist Hans Castorp. In their fictionalized form of the novel, places such as the Berghof or Davos serve as a cipher that significantly reflects the tension of the whole plot and at some points leads to disorder or disorientation. Spatial movements can be found throughout the text, up and down, right, and left, but those also culminate in the chapter “Snow”, which is why I dedicate a focus of my work to that. On the one hand I examine the symbolic meaning of the snow, which can be seen both as a bringer of death and as a means of blurring the boundaries, on the other hand I deal with the spatial movement (internal and external) of Castorp - and to what extent he can be regarded as the only balancing figure in the novel. A symbiosis of opposites is created, for example, in snow and sea. The work demonstrates the importance of the mountains as the novel's spatial-theoretical setting and explains why flat land and sea are to be regarded as topographical and symbolic "opponents" and decisively advance the plot.
Culture-in-interaction: Using idiomatic-sounding membership categorizations in German interactions
(University of Waterloo, 2022-08-29) Profazi, Nina Rahel
Understanding (Verstehen) and establishing common understanding (Verständigung) are foundational to human communication. Interactants not only work to understand their conversational partners, but they also act to ensure that they are understood correctly themselves. To this end, interactants use a wealth of linguistic and embodied resources which they tailor to their recipients and their communicative purposes in a given interaction. One such resource is the use of membership categorizations, a practice for positioning people within the realm of a jointly experienced world. Such categorizations (of self and others) can take on an idiomatic quality when they carry culturally specific knowledge, that is the communal common ground (Clark, 1996), of a social community. Following Stokoe’s (2010a) work on English, such categorizations as “ich als Mann” or “typisch Italiener” are glossed as “idiomatic-sounding membership categorizations” and examined in this paper for German, using a combination of Conversation Analysis (CA) and Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA). Natural conversations from the corpus FOLK (Forschungs- und Lehrkorpus Gesprochenes Deutsch), at the Leibniz Institut für Deutsche Sprache in Mannheim, Germany, serve as the data basis for this work. The data samples stem from private and institutional domains and include both co-present and telephone interactions. The study at hand provides a qualitative analysis of a collection of such categorizations in spontaneous interactions and will focus on describing their sequential position, as well as their interactional function. Results will show that idiomatic-sounding membership categorizations are used in a number of ways to achieve or maintain mutually shared understanding (intersubjectivity) between interactants. Firstly, and confirming prior findings on idiomatic-sounding membership categorizations, such categorizations are used as summaries of conversational sequences, indicating the speaker's understanding and stance toward the previous conversational action. Furthermore, they are systematically used for accounts, which are regularly employed to justify another person’s behaviour. New insights provided by this work is the use of idiomatic-sounding membership categorizations as an interpretive key at the beginning of a narrative multi-unit turn, thus guiding the reception of the story through the chosen categorical lens. Finally, they represent a linguistic resource for resolving delicate conversational situations and thus maintaining the social solidarity in interaction. The results of this study emphasize the importance of socio-cultural belonging in the process of understanding, as it is made relevant and negotiated in interaction for specific interactional purposes in concrete moments. Cultural knowledge is invoked as an interpretive key for ongoing actions and larger activities, thus providing a window into processes of identity construction, knowledge mediation, as well as the production and reproduction of social order.
L2 discourse markers and the development of interactional competence during study abroad
(University of Waterloo, 2022-01-25) Schirm, Ronald Samuel Karl
In my dissertation, I use the theories and methodologies of Conversation Analysis (or “CA”, see Sacks et al., 1974) to investigate how speakers of a second language (or 'L2') develop the ability to interact in the L2 — or how they develop their interactional competence (or 'IC', see Hall & Pekarek Doehler, 2011). IC research has described how, over time, L2 speakers develop their IC by becoming able to perform actions, such as disagree (Pekarek Doehler & [Pochon-Berger], 2011), tell stories (Berger & Pekarek Doehler, 2018; Pekarek Doehler & Berger, 2018), and complain (Skogmyr Marian, 2021), more recognizably for their co-interactants. To perform such actions in interaction more recognizably, L2 speakers diversify the members' methods (Garfinkel, 1967, p. vii) they employ in performing those actions in the L2. While prior IC research has predominantly taken as an analytic starting point an action environment, I take as a starting a linguistic resource, specifically discourse markers. Discourse markers are words (e.g., English well, German also) or phrases (e.g., English y'know, German guck mal "look") which show the connection between discursive units and instruct co-interactants how to interpret some current turn at talk against the prior talk. Previous IC studies were able to describe developing L2 IC in terms of co-interactants' visible interpretations of L2 speakers' actions. Co-interactants, however, rarely display their understanding of the use of a particular linguistic resource. By taking discourse markers as an analytic starting point, my dissertation thus offers a different approach to and understanding of IC and its development. In my dissertation, I analyze the everyday interactions of two L2 speakers of German — Rachel and Nina — who are sojourning in Germany. First, I analyze speaker Rachel's use of the particle combination achja in sequence initial positions. In response to some information, L1 speakers of German use achja to claim remembering of that information (Betz & Golato, 2008). While Rachel exclusively uses achja in sequence-initial position, she takes advantage of achja's function as a claim of now-remembering to do some other interactional work, specifically to index now-remembering after a search, to backlink, and to do resumption (in combination with the particle also). Following these analyses, I explore the ways in which her experiences participating in German interaction as well as her L1 (English) could be influencing her use of achja also to accomplish resumption in everyday German interaction. I find that Rachel, while using resources from the L2, is transferring a strategy for resumption from her L1 into her L2 in her resumptions. I then do a longitudinal analysis (see Wagner et al., 2018) of Nina's use of the multi-functional discourse marker also. My analysis finds that Nina uses also at the beginning of the sojourn to maintain intersubjectivity and at the end to repair intersubjectivity. I describe Nina's trajectory of IC development through also as pruning, at term which captures both the growth/strengthening of new uses as well as the dropping of others. I also forward an understanding of IC as the ability to contribute to the organization of interaction, one that harkens back to Psathas' (1990) description of interactional competence as the ability to collaboratively produce structures of interaction. In my final chapter, I use my analytical findings to scrutinize the ethnomethodological notions of member and membership, both of which have been broadly described in CA research in terms of culture, society, and language (e.g., Hellermann, 2008, 2011; Robinson, 2016; Sacks, 1992; ten Have, 2002). I argue that, by using such a conceptualization of membership, CA and IC research do not accurately capture the ways in which interactants orient to each other's contributions in interactions, nor do the fields capture the nuanced and fluid nature of membership and differing access to methods that members may have. By diversifying the approaches we take to studying IC — e.g., by taking L2 linguistic resources as our starting points — we can deepen our understanding what it means to become interactionally competent in a second language.
Lost in Translation: How the perception of Characters change in the German Translations of J.R.R. Tolkiens "The Lord of the Rings"
(University of Waterloo, 2022-01-20) Held, Alexander Quintus Andreas
It is an accepted paradigm that translated texts will never be the perfect equivalent to the original text in a different language. It is a fact that foreign literary works will influence a culture through translations. However, this influence of the translation will usually be attributed to the author of the original work, not to the translator. The aim of this study is to raise awareness of the influence of the translator rather than the author, and thus to kill the author of the examined work, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, twice: once as the author influencing the German (fantasy) literature through the German translations of Margaret Carroux and Wolfgang Krege, and a second time as authoritative figure in the academic field of Tolkien studies. To this end, the three text versions have been read following the hermeneutic approach of Paul Ricoeur and subscribing to Roland Barthes Death of the Author paradigm. In this study, the most significant differences have been analyzed, making the impact of the translators on character perception, and, thus, on the influence of The Lord of the Rings, obvious. The analysis resulted in a plethora of significant differences between the three text versions, confirming that translations may deviate from the original work even when translating sentence-for-sentence. The changes include a discussion of xenophobia and racism, thinning the lines of social standings and relations, and many more. I argue that these differences are in themselves an argument for killing the author in Tolkien studies, creating an opportunity to discuss these aspects introduced by translators, and that they are evidence for how translators influence their culture as much as the author.
"Ich glaube, ich bin viele Dinge" – Gender, Sexuality and Nationality in Angelina Maccarone‘s UNVEILED and Faraz Shariat‘s NO HARD FEELINGS
(University of Waterloo, 2022-01-18) Scholl, Katharina
This thesis examines the connection of the identity aspects gender, sexuality, and nationality in Angelina Maccarone’s Unveiled (2005) and Faraz Shariat’s No Hard Feelings (2020). Both films feature queer protagonists who are fleeing or whose parents have fled from Iran to Germany. They deal with the experiences of queer people of colour at their arrival in Germany and examine their crossing not only of national boarders but also boarders between male/female and heterosexual/homosexual. After summarizing the most important concepts and definitions for the terms identity, gender, sexuality, nationality, and intersectionality I present an analysis of both films. Drawing on Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity, I argue that not only gender but also sexuality and nationality are presented as performative and therefore not naturally given aspects of one’s identity. Following Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze and George Yancy’s concept of the white gaze, this part of the analysis will also focus on seer/seen relations between characters that sexually desire each other. The second part of the analysis focuses on the arrival of the migrants in Germany. I argue that the refugee residences displayed in both films can be classified as non-places as described by Marc Augé, places that lack history, relation, and identity and therefore also cause a loss of identity for those who are forced to stay in those liminal spaces. Moreover, Germany as portrayed in the films is exposed as not being an open-minded, tolerant country. The last part of the analysis explores what happens to the characters if gender, sexual and national boundaries are crossed and how the other characters react to these boarder crossings. Taking an intersectional perspective, the analysis focuses on the characters and how they are exposed to several forms of discrimination and othering at the same time. Finally, in a comparison of the two films the similarities and differences in handling these topics are noted. I conclude that while in Unveiled the refugee residence is simply displayed as a desperate, liminal space, No Hard Feelings also highlights the possible action potential of a space in which people read as “the other” come together. Both films highlight the negative impact of stereotypes and attributions of foreigners or homosexual people. The characters struggle to position themselves on one side of the binary between national/foreigner, man/woman, heterosexual/homosexual. Therefore, both films plead for acceptance and normalization of life designs ‘in-between’ nations, genders, and sexualities.
“… als hätte man gerade begonnen zu existieren”: Identity Between Experiences of the Unfamiliar and the Question of Origin in Lutz Seiler’s Novel Stern 111 (2020)
(University of Waterloo, 2022-01-14) Karl, Vanessa
To this day, scholars and writers are concerned with the events of the Wende period and the representation of the DDR in Germany’s cultural memory. This period and its consequences are still relevant today and therefore also questions about a person’s origin and identity. This not only becomes apparent in the encounter of international cultures with their own languages and more or less different pasts but also on “German ground” between two German states: the BRD and the DDR. Already in 2014, Lutz Seiler addressed the DDR in his debut novel Kruso, for which he received the Deutscher Buchpreis. In 2020, he was awarded the Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse for his second novel Stern 111. There has been made no significant research on Stern 111 yet, so this thesis will make a first attempt to locate the novel within discourses of the DDR and Wende period and is concerned with mainly two aspects: the protagonist’s transition from adolescence to adulthood and his transition from a craftsman to a poet. The DDR is not the main plot element, neither before nor after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but functions as a catalyst for the protagonist’s emancipation and individuation. This sets the novel apart from other texts written on the subject. Following a constructionist approach, this thesis combines the discourses “Herkunft” (origin) and “Fremdheit” (otherness/the unfamiliar) and connects them with the concept of narrative identity. The following questions will be guiding the argumentation: How do the characters identify themselves? What identities are attributed to them by others? How do the characters experience “otherness” of the self and the people around them? How is identity negotiated between personal individuation and historical context? The novel illustrates dissolving identity structures in a time in which a whole system falls apart. This forces the characters to find ways of dealing with the imminent loss of security and identity. By exploring such ways the novel introduces a many-faceted notion of origin and identity that is repeatedly affected by change and renegotiation. Rather than being committed to a linear structure, it highlights fragmentary and recurring elements of plot and narrative structure. Such a fragmentary construction of identity is shown throughout the novel, the process of individuation as part of an attempt to achieve a coherent unit does not come to completion.

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