Sprachkontakt und Anredesystem: Eine experimentelle Studie zum Migrationspolnischen in Deutschland

What is it about?

The paper describes contact-induced pragmatic shifts with regard to language change in multilingual environments. It focuses on language attitudes towards the Polish address system and its use in German-Polish bilinguals with a migrant background. The paper is based on an experimental study and shows that contact-induced language attitudes occur before material language transfer. Moreover, bilingual speakers use elements of both languages as elements of the same communicative repertoire in formal address as, with early bilinguals in particular preferring German variants due to their conventionality. These findings on the dynamics of contact-induced pragmatic change show, in turn, that address systems in migrant languages deserve further investigation within a framework of a grander project.

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Why is it important?

To the best of our knowledge, this is a first study on formal address forms in heritage Polish in Germany.