Germans in the United States

Identities are formed within specific cultural and societal contexts, and language is a very important tool for the formation and communication of these identities. In the context of a monolingual and mono-cultural environment, there is presumably a low state of awareness of how much identities are products of one particular society, culture and language. Identities are not only expressed through language, but they are also shaped, confirmed and challenged by others within one particular cultural and linguistic context. This book explores how acculturation levels and cultural identities of German immigrants are conveyed in discourse. The analysis of the data from group interviews with German immigrants who have resided in the San Francisco Bay Area for one, five, ten and twenty years, demonstrates how time influences the construct of the immigrant identity. This thesis examines code-switching and deixis of person, place and time to show the relationship between acculturation, multicultural identity formation and discourse analysis. Applying discourse analysis to acculturation studies, this thesis offers the concept of cultural reinvention of immigrant identities as an alternative to the concept of acculturation. This book is geared towards readers who are interested in German immigrants in the United States, intercultural communication, cultural adaptation and sociolinguistics.