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

研究生克莱尔·因塞尔将在布鲁斯·曼海姆博士的指导下，利用巴西的测试案例，研究少数族裔语言如何帮助组织说这种语言的人在特定国家背景下的社会地位。对巴西南里奥格兰德州当地德语口语品种的存在以及战略上的缺失进行研究，可以表明演讲者如何进入平等权利的国家话语，作为一个具有不同历史或种族的群体意味着什么，以及最终意味着什么。1824年，来自亨斯鲁克(今德国S西南部的一个地区)的第一批移民抵达南里奥格兰德州，面对恶劣的自然环境和来自原住民和邻国的敌意。今天，南里奥格兰德州约有70万人说亨斯鲁基斯语，这是二战后最后一波重要的德国移民潮。这项研究将使用人种学和正式的语言学研究方法，分析说话风格与非语言(审美)风格的关系，以及这些与巴西其他少数民族的表现之间的关系。收集数据的方式包括与讲Hunsruckisch语的人住在两个不同的地点，陪同他们参加非Hunsruckisch人也参加的聚会，以及从事档案研究。语言样本将被记录在正式和非正式语境中，数据将被分析以寻找特定语言特征的正式变异。研究是重要的，因为它将有助于理解移民身份对社会关系和政策的影响，以及在多语言语境中语言在构建社会关系和政策中的作用。这项研究还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.