Crossing the Lexicon: Anglicisms in the German Hip Hop Community
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Copyright 2012 Matthew E. Garley CROSSING THE LEXICON: ANGLICISMS IN THE GERMAN HIP HOP COMMUNITY BY MATTHEW E. GARLEY DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Marina Terkourafi, Chair Assistant Professor Julia Hockenmaier Professor Rakesh Bhatt Professor Hans Henrich Hock Professor Jannis Androutsopoulos, Universität Hamburg ABSTRACT The influence of English on German has been an ongoing subject of intense popular and academic interest in the German sphere. In order to better understand this language contact situation, this research project investigates anglicisms—instances of English language material in a German language context—in the German hip hop community, where the use of novel anglicisms is especially frequent. This investigation takes a methodologically diverse approach, including complementary corpus, sociolinguistic, and ethnographic analyses. In this dissertation, I focus primarily on an original 12.5-million-word German-language corpus of hip hop discussions from the Internet forums at MZEE.com which includes 11 years of computer- mediated discourse. I supplement these data with an English-language hip hop discussion corpus and a set of ethnographic interviews conducted with hip hop fans and artists in Hamburg in the summer of 2010. I first detail the development of a computational classifier which identifies novel anglicisms in the MZEE.com corpus with high accuracy, yielding a list of 850 frequent anglicisms which is in turn used to identify unexpected wordforms—those which have a non-canonical morphological or orthographic nativization. Through an exploration of the linguistic properties, frequency, and distribution of these forms, I demonstrate the close link between orthographic, morphological, and phonological expressions of these anglicisms and argue that these forms are the result of extraordinary interaction of German and English linguistic-orthographic rules. The next analysis investigates the diachronic fate of anglicisms in the MZEE corpus, finding that frequency in an initial time window is significantly, and negatively, correlated with change in frequency for the set of 850 anglicisms—and this correlation is much stronger for anglicisms than for native German words, indicating the limited shelf life of anglicisms' stylistic utility, a situation corroborated by the subsequent analysis of ethnographic interviews with linguistic actors in the German hip hop community. That analysis reveals systematic and enduring constellations of attitudes toward German, English, and the use of anglicisms which interact with what I term the standard language ideology complex for German (including the related ideologies of the standard language, language purism, and Herderian ideology)—finding a surprising basis of linguistic conservatism which, even when opposed by individual actors, seems to reliably frame metalinguistic discourses. In combination, these findings, 1) that the nativization of anglicism wordforms is rule-governed, even when it appears haphazard or disruptive; 2) that many novel anglicisms seem to have a limited timeframe of popularity; and 3) that the standard language ideology complex and other related ideological stances toward anglicisms are dominant, even in a subcultural community where English material is ubiquitous and linguistic 'resistance' is hypothesized; suggest that concerns about the imminent decline or loss of the German language are (to borrow from Mark Twain, an infamous student of the language) 'an exaggeration'. ii To my mom, my dad, and my grandparents, who always knew I'd make it. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wasn't always certain I'd finish this dissertation. That I did is thanks to those mentioned here, whose guidance, encouragement, support and friendship I can only hope to repay. My advisor, Marina Terkourafi, took a chance on me as a student and patiently let me forge my own path. Marina has been a wonderful and committed mentor, and in fact organized, in response to student interests, the workshop on language and hip hop where my very first research on the subject was presented. Since that time, Marina has been not only an insightful and painstaking reviewer of my work, but a top-notch advisor and supporter, directing me to productive avenues of research, presentation, and publication. I also owe a great debt of thanks to Julia Hockenmaier, who welcomed a student with limited computational knowledge and fostered the development of those skills into a much more robust understanding of the computational aspects of my project. Over the course of several years, I have greatly appreciated the opportunity to collaborate and exchange ideas with Julia, and her patience with my developing abilities and her willingness to expend great sums of time and effort on my behalf were crucial in my ability to bring this project to completion. Rakesh Bhatt has been a friendly face in the Linguistics department since my first day of graduate study, and has since served as a knowledgeable and engaging expert and at the same time a wonderful and encouraging teacher in sociolinguistics, and I attribute my keen interest in language contact to experiences in several of his courses. Hans Henrich Hock has also played a crucial role in the development of this thesis, contributing a deep understanding of linguistic change and an unparalleled knowledge of the relevant literature. I have been honored to work with such an esteemed scholar, and have benefited greatly from his suggestions and comments on my work. Finally, I am grateful to Jannis Androutsopoulos for his generous invitation to supervise my research project in Hamburg. I have had productive and enlightening interactions with Jannis, who is among his many other accomplishments, an inspiring author at the intersection of hip hop and computer-mediated communication. There are a number of other academics who have made great contributions to this dissertation by adding to my understanding of certain subjects, by asking thought-provoking questions, or simply by providing encouragement along the way. I would like to begin by thanking Susan Herring, who has provided a voice of encouragement at various conferences and who I feel has included me in the research community. Others who have made their mark on this thesis by reading my work, providing conference feedback, or simply commenting on various aspects of my work include, Michele Koven, Richard Sproat (now at OHSU), Janet Pierrehumbert at Northwestern, Alexander Onysko at Innsbrück, and Ercan Balcı. I would also like to thank a number of faculty at Illinois and elsewhere who have given me encouragement, advice, and support along the way: Andrea Golato, Karlos Arregi, Jennifer Cole, Abbas Benmamoun, Peter Lasersohn, Dennis Baron, James Yoon, Eyamba Bokamba, Jonathan MacDonald, Randall Sadler, Rick Hallett at NEIU, Lars Hinrichs at UT Austin, Lauren Squires at The Ohio State University, iv Josh Iorio at Virginia Tech, James St. James at Millikin, and Robert Rossow III at NMSU. I would like to extend special thanks to my high school German teacher Thomas Keith Cothrun (now executive director of AATG) for teaching me fluent German in four years despite my best efforts to the contrary, and to my undergraduate German professor Richard Rundell for continuing the process and continuing encouragement throughout my graduate career. I am deeply grateful for the support of other graduate students in (and around) my field at Illinois, a great number of whom are now faculty and professionals in their own right. Many made contributions to this dissertation, and all have provided the kind of positive diversion that refreshes academic creativity: Benjamin Slade, collaborator (in the good sense) in many ways and boon companion; Liam Moran, for writing the script to collect the original corpus; Karen Lichtman, for helping me (finally) figure out how to structure my time; Jill Hallett; Nikos Vergis; Casey and Stefanie Coughlen; Lisa Pierce; Daniel Scarpace; Erin Rusaw; Soondo Baek; Eunah Kim; Tim Mahrt; Amanda Huensch; Lori Moon; Jennifer Cramer; Antje Muntendam; Erica Britt; Adriana Molina-Muñoz; Sarah Simeziane; Aimee Alnet; Gary Linebaugh; Tae-jin Yoon; Vandana Puri Sharma; Kevin Stillwell; Andrew Fister; Andrew Hinderliter; Marco Shappeck; Eman Saadah; Chris Stewart; and Sarah Henneböhl for proofreading quite a bit of German transcription. I am also very grateful to a number of friends outside the field: I would like to thank Boris Pilev, Stanimir Kondov, Iva Yankova, and Radoslav Kirov (Наздраве!) Nick Brönn, Dave Wells, Colleen Cook, Josh Lüdtke, David Holmes, Ellen Smith, Dave, Jared, Steve, Jeff, and the rest of the Armored Gopher crew (for therapeutic dice-rolling and goblin-smashing), Matt Newtson, Brandon Miller, Josh Stowell, Adam Noonchester, Eric Noonchester, Annie Keatley (Horch, Urfriend!), and Tess Halonen (for brilliantly explaining my statistics to me when I didn't even understand them). My research in Germany would not have been possible without the friendly and welcoming contacts inside and outside of the hip hop community: Christoph Baumeister, my first and best contact throughout this project; Johannes Jacubasch and the students of the Hip Hop Academy Hamburg, DJ Mirko Machine, Beat Boy Delles, and Sleepwalker; the artists and hip hop fans in Hamburg who agreed to impertinent interviews