Gebrochene Welt, gebrochenes Deutsch? Der Einfluss der Sprache des Gastlandes auf das Deutsch von Exilschriftstellern anhand des Beispiels Konrad Merz

Abstract

When germanist Exilforscher describe the influence of living abroad on exile authors' German, the language of the host country is commonly seen as a corrosive influence on the writers' mastery of their native language, isolation from their German-speaking community and the frequent use of a foreign language causing their German to alienate from everyday reality. The linguistic discipline of contact linguistics is concerned with second language acquisition and bilingualism and their impact on peoples' language production. According to contact linguists, acquiring a second or third language means less a loss of competence in the mother tongue than an enrichment of the means of expression the speaker has to hand. Instead of seeing languages as closed systems, contact linguists focus on the individual's ability to interact adequately with his environment. From this viewpoint, mixtures between two languages can be seen not as detrimental to the first language, but as a means of communication or, in literature, as a stylistic device. The example of the often neglected German-Dutch exile writer Konrad Merz shows that this idea of the individual's so called `communicative competence' is in many respects more likely to explain the influence of foreign languages on the style of exile authors than the German-centred notion of language which underlies the assumptions of the Exilforscher.