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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1255

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

Language biographies and cultural identity of students with a Russian migration background at the university of Oldenburg

Authors: Kirsch, Kathrin
Submitted by: Kirsch, Kathrin (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, Germany)

It is well known, that students with a migration background are still underrepresented in the German university system (c.f. 19th SS) . This is not the case at the Slavic department at the Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg. More than half of the enlisted students have a history of migration from the former Soviet Union.

Practical considerations for their future professional life (to make use of their bilingual competence) might certainly play a part in their choice of study. On the other hand, previous studies on Russian immigrants (RUSIL 1999) suggest that the private social network stays predominantly Russian, even after longer immigration time. The choice of study of the Oldenburg students could also be related to their social and cultural identity. The participants of the RUSIL study were of a different age group, the students of the Slavic department are younger and the majority of them went through the German school system.

In my presentation I want to address the questions: “How does the language biography reflect on cultural identity for this age group in their twenties?” and “How is the attitude towards the languages of the country in which the students live and learn, German, and the language of their family and country of origin, Russian, reflected on their level of literacy in both languages?”

The analysis of 19 language biographies show that for all of the students, who had acquired Russian as a first language, this language also stays their dominant language of communication with their closest contacts in life after their 20th birthday. German is their language of communication with the wider environment, but also the dominant language of email-communication and reading.

11 language tests on reading comprehension and a short test of proverbs in both languages show solid competence of German, but significant differences in the competence levels in Russian.

The motivation to study Russian and other Slavic languages could thus also be interpreted as an attempt to level the felt cultural identity with the actual competence as a culturally literate speaker of Russian.

References:

19th Social Survey of the Deutsche Studentenwerk conducted by HIS Hochschul-Informations-System

Agheysi, Rebecca, Fishman, Joshua, A. 1970 Language attitude studies. A brief survey of methodological approaches. In: Anthropological Linguistics 11, 137-157

Dittmar, N., Spolsky, B. & Walters, J. 1998. Convergence and divergence in second language acquisition and use: Towards an integrated model. In V. Regan (ed.) Contemporary Approaches to Second Language Acquisition in Social Context. Dublin: University College Press.