The indexical value of lexical borrowing in a ‘remembrance culture’-community of practice: German loanwords in Belgian WWII-testimonies

Kim Schoofs,Dorien Van De Mieroop

doi:10.1016/j.amper.2019.100054

Abstract

In this study, we scrutinize the locally constructed indexical value of German loanwords in Belgian WWII-testimonies. We argue that these testimonies are situated in a specific WWII-remembrance context which forms a community of practice with its own local style. In particular, we selected three Flemish (i.e. Dutch) and three Walloon (i.e. French) spoken testimonies from our testimony-corpus. Methodologically, we draw on multimodal discourse analysis and carry out qualitative micro-analyses which focus on the discursive features and the sequential characteristics of the data as well as the – verbal and non-verbal – performance features of the context surrounding the German loanwords. The analyses illustrate that narrators incorporate loanwords for their indexical value which invokes the social context, for their highly context-specific semantic value, as contextualization cues for reported speech which then invokes social groups, or a mixture of these options. Overall, the analyses demonstrate on the one hand that, in general, the level of integration into the narrative flow is a good indicator of the German loanwords' function in our testimony-data. At the far-ends of this continuum, loanwords were either highly integrated indexical markers of the social context, or gesturally and prosodically distinguishable markers of the social outgroup. On the other hand, our microscopic analyses also uncovered the opportunities of the fuzziness of this continuum, illustrating these German loanwords’ ephemeral indexical value and their endless potential to create unique social meanings within their community of practice.

Highlights

As a result of the recent “pragmatic turn” [1; p. 71], linguistic research on lexical borrowing has shifted its focus away from a structuralist approach to a usage-based approach
In order to provide such an in-depth insight into the ways in which lexical borrowing occurs in our data, what the social meanings of these German loanwords are and how these can potentially be related to this community of practice, we draw on the method of multimodal discourse analysis
While a Dutch equivalent is readily available to the narrator, this would not have had the same potential in terms of use, nor of social meaning

Summary

Introduction

As a result of the recent “pragmatic turn” [1; p. 71], linguistic research on lexical borrowing has shifted its focus away from a structuralist approach to a usage-based approach. We aim to scrutinize the locally constructed indexical value of German loanwords in a French and Dutch corpus of Belgian WWII-testimonies This corpus is interesting for this study, as it is situated in a very specific WWII-remembrance context which, we argue, constitutes its own specific kind of community of practice. In order to provide such an in-depth insight into the ways in which lexical borrowing occurs in our data, what the social meanings of these German loanwords are and how these can potentially be related to this community of practice, we draw on the method of multimodal discourse analysis This approach presents a detailed analysis of the discursive features and the sequential characteristics (i.e. in terms of turn-taking) of the verbal aspects of the data.

Analysis

Invoking the social context

Invoking the outgroup

Loanwords’ functions in relation to their integration into the narrative

Conclusion