Language island research
Language island research
1. Definition
Language island research focuses on the study of relatively self-contained settlement units (villages, towns, groups of settlements) that are surrounded by settlements where a different language is spoken. The ‘island’ metaphor conveys, on the one hand, a certain degree of isolation and, on the other, a sense of vulnerability to the surrounding ‘sea’, as well as the notion of an ‘outpost’ or ‘forward post’.
The concept of the ‘language island’ originates from linguistics and was initially applied to the study of minority languages anddialects. Accordingly, language was initially the most important criterion for defining and describing the subject of research. Of particular significance is that branch of ‘language island’ research which also incorporated historical, cultural and ethnic characteristics, and was thus situated at the intersection of linguistics, folklore/European ethnology and history. This branch increasingly became part of the ‘völkisch’ discourse and, against the backdrop of widespread social criticism of the new political order in Central Europe following the First World War and the resulting calls for political revision, encompassed a duty of care towards Germans living outside the state.
Equivalents of the term ‘language island’ in other languages
English: linguistic enclave/island; Polish: wyspa językowa; Czech: jazykový ostrov
2. History of research into linguistic islands
The earliest literature that can be classified as ‘language island’ research in the strict sense began around 1830 and focused primarily on language/dialect and (folk) poetry. In the course of Enlightenment-era statistical regional descriptions, the scope was expanded to include historical and cultural aspects, until the term ‘language island’ came to be used as a synonymous shorthand for a broader phenomenon that could be investigated ethnographically.[1]
The ‘islands’ situated outside the contiguous German-speaking area were regarded as linguistic and cultural relics due to their remoteness and were consequently explored. In Eastern Europe, these included, for example, the Spiš and Gottschee regions, and the Moravian towns of Brno and Jihlava. The German-speaking enclaves in Russia first attracted scholarly attention around 1860, but systematic research into them did not begin until after 1917.
The monograph *Die deutsche Sprachinsel Gottschee* by the German literary historian and folklorist Adolf Hauffen (1863–1930), who hailed from Ljubljana,Ljubljana, was published in 1895 towards the end of this first intensive phase of research into linguistic enclaves and combines historical, linguistic and folkloric-ethnographic aspects. For his account, Hauffen drew on both previously published works and his own fieldwork.
Such empirical research gained in significance after 1900, but particularly from the 1920s onwards, in the form of participant observation and interviews with so-called ‘reliable informants’, gained in importance as the current situation of Germans abroad came to the fore politically and such ‘linguistic enclaves’ were discovered and researched, for which there were hardly any earlier records.
The resurgent interest in the ‘language enclaves’ after 1918 was part of the intensified focus on so-called ‘border and overseas German communities’, to which various associations, institutions and academic disciplines, including the German Institute for Foreign Affairs in Stuttgart and the Association/People’s League for German Culture Abroad. Owing to their number and diversity, but also because of their growing political significance in the wake of territorial cessions and the resulting efforts at revision following the First World War, the ‘language enclaves’ in East Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe played a special role.
Walter Kuhn (1903–1984) from Bielitz/Bielsko-Biała in Austrian Silesia laid the foundations for theoretical and applied research into linguistic islands. His Viennese doctoral thesis on ‘Language Islands in Galicia’, published in 1930, deals not only with the history of settlement but also with the economy, population data, religious and national (ethnic) conditions, as well as schools, the church and ‘ethnic organisation’. Four years later, he provided further theoretical and methodological considerations in the volume *Deutsche Sprachinselforschung* (1934). In it, he defined the ‘language island’ with a ‘völkisch’ emphasis as “a piece of national territory that is spatially separated from the contiguous territory of its own people and surrounded on all sides by foreign ethnic groups”[2], and justified its study as part of a ‘general study of Germanness’, which dealt with ‘German matters’[3] in an interdisciplinary manner and whose aim was a ‘coherent picture of life on the language island’[4]. Whilst for him folklore stood alongside the other sub-disciplines, Gustav Jungbauer (1886–1942) in Prague/Praha brought folklore to the fore and established a folklore of language islands.[5]
(Smaller) ‘linguistic islands’ were regarded as suitable subjects for study due to their manageable size. Furthermore, the researchers believed that, particularly in predominantly agricultural settlements, they would encounter a particularly rich and unadulterated folk culture, which the settlers—referred to as ‘colonists’—had brought with them from their German-speaking ‘ancestral homeland’. They attributed this to the geographical isolation from the mother country, as well as to the special significance of folk culture as an identity-forming element in asserting themselves against a ‘foreign’/ethnically different environment. Many regarded the inhabitants of ‘language islands’ as, so to speak, archetypal Germans, distinguished by perseverance, diligence, thrift, cleanliness and a strong sense of duty and community.
The findings of ‘language island’ research were published in the form of monographs such as those by Hauff and Kuhn; these dealt with individual ‘language islands’ such as the Gottschee or ‘language island regions’ such as Galicia, Volhynia or Transylvania. However, a far greater number of shorter works were published on individual phenomena such as traditional narrative forms (e.g. legends), songs or plays in newspapers, (popular) scientific journals and books, which contributed significantly to raising awareness of the findings from the collections and research, as well as to the visibility of the settlement areas located outside Germany.
Scholars and publicists regarded the collection, publication and preservation of this folk culture as one of their key tasks. Research into ‘language islands’ was understood as applied and political research aimed at preserving German identity abroad and contributed to the emergence and consolidation of collective identities.
With the end of the war in 1945, historical and empirical research into ‘linguistic enclaves’ in Eastern Europe came to an end. Isolated echoes of this research can be found in the folklore studies of displaced persons, among whose leading figures were several former ‘language island’ researchers such as Josef Hanika (1900–1963), Alfred Karasek (-Langer) (1902–1970), Josef Lanz (1902–1981) and Karl Horak (1908–1992). Material collected before 1945, in some cases supplemented by the results of surveys conducted amongst refugees and displaced persons, formed the basis of these publications. However, the term ‘language island’ disappeared from general academic discourse; it is still used only in dialectology.[6]
3. A critique of ‘language island’ research
Scholarly criticism of ‘language island’ research was directed primarily against the alleged closed nature and uniformity of the localities and landscapes under investigation, which largely ignored phenomena such as bilingualism or multilingualism, linguistic and cultural borrowings and transfers, as well as against the restriction to the so-called ‘Altgut’ – that is, to cultural phenomena regarded as relics and therefore highlighted as particularly valuable. Nor did the disparagement and insult of neighbours speaking different languages or belonging to different ethnic groups – referred to as ‘Umvölker’ – which accompanied the special esteem accorded to supposedly ‘genuine’ German culture, and the resulting cultural divide between Germans and, in particular, Slavic peoples, stand up to scholarly criticism. Furthermore, the critique of ideology that began in folklore studies in the mid-1960s deconstructed the ethno-nationalist foundations not only of ‘language island’ research.[7]
In opposition to the traditional construct of the ‘language island’, Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann (1918–1993), who initially belonged to this scholarly tradition herself, the concept of ‘interethnicity’, which paid particular attention to processes of exchange and actively countered national bias.
The materials compiled in ‘language island’ research still constitute, in part, the most comprehensive information available today on large sections of the ‘folkloric traditions’ of the German-speaking population in certain regions, such as Volhynia, prior to 1945; however, their use requires particularly careful source criticism and contextualisation within the history of scholarship.
Bibliography
- Adolf Hauffen: The German-speaking enclave of Gottschee. History and Dialect, Living Conditions, Customs and Traditions, Legends, Fairy Tales and Songs. Graz 1895. (Sources and Research on the History, Literature and Language of Austria and its Crown Lands 3). Reprinted Hildesheim 1979.
- Gustav Jungbauer: ‘Folklore of Linguistic Enclaves’. In: Sudeten German Journal of Folklore 3 (1930), pp. 143–150, 196–204, 244–256.
- Alfred Karasek: ‘Folklore of Linguistic Enclaves’. In: *Deutsche Blätter in Polen* 3 (1926), Nos. 11/12, pp. 569–594.
- Konrad Köstlin: Research into Folk Culture in Border Regions. In: Yearbook for East German Folklore 33 (1990), pp. 1–19.
- Walter Kuhn: The Young German Language Islands in Galicia. A Contribution to the Methodology of Language Island Research. Graz 1930 (German Culture and Abroad 26/27).
- Walter Kuhn: Research into German Language Enclaves. History, Objectives, Methods. Plauen, in press, 1934 (East German Studies / Historical Society in the Wartheland 2).
- Petr Lozoviuk: Interethnicity in the Academic Process. German-language folklore studies in Bohemia and their social implications. Leipzig 2008 (Schriften zur sächsischen Geschichte und Volkskunde 26).
- Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann: On the Question of Inter-Ethnic Relations in ‘Language-Island Folklore’. In: Austrian Journal of Folklore XIII/62 (1959), pp. 19–47.
- Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann: On Interethnic Relations. Danube Swabians, Transylvanian Saxons and their Neighbours. Frankfurt am Main 1978.
Notes
[1] As explicitly stated, for example, by Adolf Ficker: *The Ethnic Groups of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, Their Territories, Borders and Islands*. Vienna 1869, p. 34.
[2] Kuhn: *Language Island Research*, p. 15.
[3] Kuhn: *Language Island Research*, p. 16.
[4] Kuhn: *Language Island Research*, p. 15.
[5] Jungbauer: Ethnography of Language Islands; cf. Lozoviuk: Interethnicity, p. 173.
[6] For example, in Nina Berend: *A Book on Russian-German Dialects*. The origins, development and diversity of a formerly flourishing linguistic landscape far beyond the confines of the German-speaking world. Halle/S., 2011.
[7] Early works worth mentioning here include: Hermann Bausinger: ‘Folk Ideology and Folk Research’. In: Andreas Flitner (ed.): ‘German Intellectual Life and National Socialism’. A Series of Lectures at the University of Tübingen. Tübingen 1965, pp. 125–143; and Wolfgang Emmerich: On the Critique of the Ideology of Folk Culture. Frankfurt am Main 1971 (Edition Suhrkamp 502).
Citation
Heinke M. Kalinke: Research into linguistic enclaves. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2015. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32772 (as at 25 January 2022).
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