Convenors

Carolin Biewer, Ninja Schulz, Marie-Christin Himmel & Lisa Lehnen (University of Würzburg)

Workshop description

Studies in urban sociolinguistics have shown that urban and rural speakers show little divergence in terms of the structures that emerge, but they certainly differ with regard to the speed and the pathways to these (Urbatsch 2015). Thus, there is evidence that urbanity affects the ways in which patterns of usage vary and change progresses. Megacities, which can be characterized as particularly fast-changing urban spaces, provide ideal settings to observe patterns of language acquisition, variation and change.

Within a megacity, urban sub-communities emerge and dissolve as residents move to, from and within the urban space causing some sub-communities to be spatially connected, others to be segregated. These developments have an impact on the construction of individual and communal identities, which can be expected to become visible in language use on structural and discursive levels (Carmichael 2017). The interaction between sub-communities further influences the residents’ stance towards living in the city and is, therefore, a vital part of intra-urban dynamics. So far, however, linguistic research on urban spaces has largely been limited to language use and change within individual sub-communities without taking into account more complex interrelationships of language, space and identity within the entire city or drawing compariso