Our current research projects
Lingua franca communication in English
This strand of research is concerned with those interactions in which participants all have English as a second or as a foreign language. At the international level, an interaction conducted in English as a lingua franca might include a Pakistani, a Japanese, and a Kenyan participants. Or, at an intranational level, for example in South Africa, it might include speakers of South African Indian English, Cape Flats English (a variety spoken by the colored population of Cape Town), and Black South African English. Today, the majority of communication in English is lingua franca communication.
To such interactions, speakers potentially contribute with their own variety of English, e.g. Pakistani English, Kenyan English, or English as spoken by a Japanese. Thus, the interactions must be conceived of as Interactions across Englishes, following a concept which I have developed in a series of publications (Meierkord 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007a). The core assumption of this concept is that the different varieties of English potentially merge in these interactions, resulting in the development of new forms of English. In this context, my research focuses on how the varieties mix and blend, as well as what the resultant forms of English used in these interactions look like at the levels of phonetics, phonology, morpho-syntax, the lexicon, and discourse.
Linguistic identities on the African continent and beyond
"Linguistic identities on the African continent" investigates how identity is constructed and conveyed through language(s) on the African continent and beyond.
As our logo illustrates, we conceive of Africa as a continent characterised by migration, as indicated by the 'footprints' transgressing the continent, and by transnational speech communities, as indicated by the coloured boarder-crossing areas.
At present, our research focusses on two areas: South Africa and Kenya. For both countries, we aim at describing current processes of language contact and language change. In South Africa this includes a description of how the forms of English traditionally spoken by the different ethnicities in the country currently influence each other. As regards Kenya, our present focus is on forms of language which involve a mixing of Swahili and English, and which have emerged over the last decades and are rapidly spreading throughout the country.
In the near future, we intend to include diasporic Africa in our analyses, i.e. we will embark on research into African speech communities in Germany.