Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Minority Languages: The case of German Brazilian linguistic and cultural practices

研究生克莱尔·英塞尔将在布鲁斯·曼海姆博士的指导下，以巴西为例，研究一种少数民族语言如何在特定的国家背景下帮助组织其使用者的社会地位。一项对巴西南巴西大德州（里约热内卢Grande do Sul）当地多种德语口语的存在和战略缺失的研究，可以表明说话者如何进入平等权利的国家话语，作为一个具有独特历史或种族的群体意味着什么，以及最终成为一个少数群体意味着什么。1824年，第一批来自亨斯鲁克（Hunsruck，位于今天德国西南部的一个地区）的移民来到了南大德州，他们面临着恶劣的自然环境和来自土著和邻近民族的敌意。今天，南大德州约有70万人说亨斯鲁奇德语，这是第二次世界大战后德国移民的最后一波重要浪潮。该研究将使用人种学和正式语言学研究方法来分析语言风格与非语言（美学）风格之间的关系，以及这些风格与巴西其他少数民族的表现之间的关系。收集数据的方式是，在两个不同的地点与说匈语的人住在一起，陪同他们参加非匈语人也会参加的聚会，并进行档案研究。语言样本将被记录在正式和非正式的语境中，数据将被分析特定语言特征的正式变化。这项研究很重要，因为它将有助于理解移民身份对社会关系和政策的影响，以及语言在多语言背景下构建移民身份的作用。这项研究也将有助于社会科学家的教育。

Graduate student Claire Insel, supervised by Dr. Bruce Mannheim, will undertake research on how a minority language helps to organize the social position of its speakers within a particular national context, using the test case of Brazil. A study of the presence and, equally telling, the strategic absence of a spoken local variety of German in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, can indicate how speakers enter into national discourses of equal rights, what it means to be a group with a distinct history or ethnicity, and ultimately what it means to be a minority group. In 1824 the first immigrants from Hunsruck (an area in the southwest of today''s Germany) arrived in Rio Grande do Sul to face a harsh physical environment and hostilities from indigenous and neighboring peoples. Today, some 700,000 people in Rio Grande do Sul speak Hunsruckisch German, the last significant wave of German immigrants having arrived just after World War II. The research will use ethnographic and formal linguistic research methods to analyze how speech styles relate to nonlinguistic (aesthetic) styles, and how these relate to the representation of other ethnic minorities in Brazil. Data will be gathered by living with Hunsruckisch speakers in two different sites, accompanying them to gatherings that nonHunsruckisch speakers attend as well, and pursuing archival research. Linguistic samples will be recorded in both formal and informal contexts and the data will be analyzed for formal variation of specific linguistic features.The research is important because it will aid in the understanding of the implications of immigrant identity for social relations and policy, and the role of language in a multilinguistic context in constructing it. The research also will contribute to the education of a social scientist.