The Loss of German in Upper Silesia after 1945 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The loss of German in Upper Silesia after 1945 by Volkmar Engerer Robert Felty The loss of German in Upper Silesia after 1945. By Volkmar Engerer. (Languages of the world 20.) Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2000. Pp. 25. ISBN 3895866636. $10.60. This installment in the ‘languages of the world’ series from LINCOM provides a brief description of the language contact and shift situation in Upper Silesia. Upper Silesia lies in modern-day western Poland; however, the region changed hands between German and Polish rule several times since the thirteenth century. Engerer includes a concise history of the language situation in the region, as well as a sociolinguistic analysis of the current situation. E uses the region as a prime example of the relationship between language prestige and language shift, on account of the region’s historical development. The work is organized into five sections. The first section provides a brief history of the region beginning in the thirteenth century, before the eastward movement of German speakers in the Middle Ages. This provides the background needed to understand the state of trilingualism in 1945—that of standard German, standard Polish, and Upper-Silesian, which E describes as a Polish dialect with strong German influences (3). Section 2 is a brief explanation of the theories behind language shift. Here E distinguishes between generational changes and life cyclic changes. This distinction leads to four possible scenarios for speakers—those who grew up speaking German but no longer do, those who grew up speaking German and continue to do so, those who did not grow up speaking German but do now, and those who did not grow up speaking German and still do not. All four cases are represented in E’s sample population of thirty-four individuals. Section 3 provides a correlative analysis of German use dependent upon location and education; both seem to be important factors. In Section 4, E describes the various multilingual combinations present in the region. From this analysis E concludes that German monolingualism is not a functional alternative in the region, though Polish monolingualism is. This analysis also shows that most of the speakers are multilingual. Section 5 provides a summary of the findings and the prediction that the ‘tendency in the direction of the trilingual profile Ger/Pol/US [Upper Silesian] seems to have a future if the domains of use stabilise’ (21). Though this book provides new insights into the language situation in Upper Silesia, it also falls short in some respects. Most of E’s generalizations come from quantitative data, though he does not provide any statistics to support the claims. In some sections he divides the population into four or five separate groups, some with only four speakers. With such a small sample it is difficult to make sound generalizations. The brevity of the book also raises the question of why it was published separately, rather than as an article in a refereed journal. In addition, it would have been helpful to include some maps for those who are less familiar with the area in question. Robert Felty University of Michigan Copyright © 2004 Linguistic Society of America