Anna MammitzschPhD-student

• German for beginners I + II
• Process writing and translation (German I)
• Textcomprehension (German I)
• German Literacy (German II)
• Academic writing (German II)
• Thematic course in linguistics: Linguistic Ethnography (advanced level)

Research Interests: 
Sociolinguistics
Linguistic Ethnography
Identity construction in contexts of migration and mobility
Narrative analysis 
Perceptual dialectology 

Research project:

Experiencing and narrating migration: a linguistic ethnography of the identity work among German-speaking migrants in Stockholm

Abstract:

This dissertation explores how German-speaking migrants in Stockholm construct their identities through narratives, addressing a gap in the study of contemporary German migration from a sociolinguistic perspective.

The thesis aims to show how migrants’ narratives about lived experiences of migration and language shape their identity work. It also examines the interrelationship of belonging, categories of identification, and linguistic repertoires that affects how and where participants make a home.

Adopting a linguistic-ethnographic approach, data sets from narrative walking tours, semi-structured interviews, language portraits, group discussions, and reflexive discussions are analyzed and presented as narrative composites. The analysis of interactional data was conducted using positioning and stancetaking analysis to understand how participants position and evaluate themselves, others, and stance objects in their stories.The findings reveal diverse modes of storytelling to conduct narrative identity work among German-speaking migrants, including liminal, binary, and hybrid identity constructions. Furthermore, the discussion of language portraits highlights how participants reproduce hegemonic discourses of migration as well as language ideologies. Moreover, the participants’ repertoires also show how migrants navigate their complex linguistic realities in Stockholm through agentive and multilingual practices.

This thesis uncovers the challenges and privileges of an invisible minority in Sweden as well as the role of language in negotiating belonging and identity. Additionally, it underlines the importance of considering emic perspectives in migration research and demonstrates the value of Linguistic Ethnography as an approach to capture the complexity of constructing migrant identities. Lastly, the thesis demonstrates how narrative identity is performatively staged, scaled on multiple dimen-sions, embodied, practiced and designed as a discursive articulation of the self. Hence despite previous criticism, identity continues to be an important analytical concept in sociolinguistics.

Keywords: German-speaking migration, Linguistic Ethnography, language portrait, lived experience, multilingualism in Sweden, narrative composite, narrative identity, positioning analysis, stancetaking analysis, walking tour