Re-examining Bernstein: From peer-group ways of speaking to ‘Schriftsprache’ – a study of Turkish-German ‘Hauptschule’ students in Mannheim

Abstract

This paper begins by looking at responses to Bernstein in Germany in the 1970s that criticized his notions of class difference in sociolinguistic codes. As part of a re-examination of Bernstein's ideas, the paper goes on to look at the current communicative situation in German education where urban schools have many second-generation immigrant students. As part of a long-term research project on communicative styles of young Turkish immigrants in Mannheim (see Keim, Sprachliche Varianz und sprachliche Virtuosität von türkischstämmigen ‘Ghetto’-Jugendlichen in Mannheim, Narr, 2007), I explore the uses of German as a school language or ‘Schriftsprache’, in which culture-specific knowledge of genres used in formal and institutional situations are taught. I find that urban adolescents have a wide stylistic repertoire that contains ethnolectal forms, bi- or multilingual mixings, switchings and crossings as well as forms of ‘schooled language’. Elements of this repertoire are used differentially in oral and written narratives. In this paper I will focus on the use of linguistic and communicative resources in written material from different social contexts (formal vs. informal), reconstruct the discursive or social functions of linguistic choices, and compare the discursive procedures used in oral and written texts.