Abstract
This study aims to analyze linguistic contact in a written language on a sample of advertisements for Russian-speaking immigrants in the German city of Nuremberg, where there is a well-developed infrastructure for Russian-speaking immigrants, including the availability of periodicals. The study has the following research questions: What functions do Russian and German, as well as other languages, perform in advertisements in periodicals for Russian-speaking immigrants? Is there a correlation between the subject matter of the ads and the language or languages used? What phenomena of language contact found in the spoken language of Russian-speaking immigrants are characteristic of advertisements? A corpus consisting of 443 advertisements, obtained through continuous sampling from periodicals, was collected for the study. The analysis revealed that Russian, German, English, Ukrainian, and Latin fulfil specific functions in the advertisements. It was found that, depending on the subject matter, advertisers choose a particular language or language combination for their ads. At the lexical and morphosyntactic levels were identified borrowings from German and English, entirely or partially grammatically integrated into Russian, and cases of code-switching between Russian and German. Thereby, the study highlights one aspect of the linguistic situation of the Russian-speaking community in Germany and may implicitly serve to assess the vitality of the Russian language in Germany.
Highlights
This study aims to analyze linguistic contact in a written language on a sample of advertisements for Russian-speaking immigrants in the German city of Nuremberg, where there is a well-developed infrastructure for Russian-speaking immigrants, including the availability of periodicals
Earlier studies in contact linguistics show that the linguistic phenomena of borrowing, code-switching, and code-mixing, i. e. between German and Russian, are characteristic of the spoken language of Russian-speaking immigrants (Goldbach 2005, Pabst 2007, Pavlova 2019, Warditz 2019). Based on this background information, the present study aims to answer the following questions: What functions do Russian, German, and other languages have in advertisements printed in the periodicals for Russian-speaking immigrants? Is there a connection between the subject matter of the advertisements and the language or languages used? What language contact phenomena, found in the spoken language of Russian-speaking immigrants, are characteristic of advertisements?
The analysis carried out in this study found language contact phenomena at the lexical and morphosyntactic levels
Summary
This study aims to analyze linguistic contact in a written language on a sample of advertisements for Russian-speaking immigrants in the German city of Nuremberg, where there is a well-developed infrastructure for Russian-speaking immigrants, including the availability of periodicals. Аннотация Целью данного исследования является анализ выбора языка и языковых контактов в письменной речи на примере рекламных объявлений для русскоязычных иммигрантов. В рамках исследования были поставлены следующие исследовательские вопросы: (1) какие функции выполняют русский и немецкий, а также другие языки в рекламных объявлениях в периодических печатных изданиях для русскоязычных иммигрантов; (2) существует ли связь между тематикой объявлений и используемым языком или языками; (3) какие феномены языкового контакта, встречающиеся в устной речи русскоязычных иммигрантов, характерны для рекламных объявлений. На лексическом и морфосинтаксическом уровнях были выявлены заимствования из немецкого и английского языков, которые полностью или частично грамматически интегрированы в русский язык, а также случаи переключения кодов между русским и немецким языками. Language choice and language contact in print advertisements for Russian-speaking immigrants in Germany. Along with immigrants from Turkey, Poland, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia, Russian-speaking immigrants form one of the largest immigrant communities in Germany (Statistisches Bundesamt 2019)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
