Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Volume 58 Issue 3

Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Volume 58 Issue 3

Contents
Journal Overview

Introduction: Linguistics and Cultural Studies

Christian Mair, Barbara Korte March 15, 2014 Page range: 195-201

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“Red mal deutsch, Hundesohn, ich halt nicht viel vom Spitten”: Cultural Pressures and the Language of German Hip Hop

Axel Bohmann March 15, 2014 Page range: 203-228

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Abstract

This article presents the results of a study analyzing the discourse of two German rap formations with regard to questions of cultural and linguistic creolization.1 It investigates the ways in which German rappers position themselves vis-à-vis American hip hop culture and some of its most salient concepts. In this process, which is far from being a smooth act of creative localization of the global, (African American Vernacular) English becomes a source of prestige as well as a site for contestation. The different indexicalities connected to it can account for a variety of uses of English in German rap. The resulting discourses at times develop forms that contradict assumptions about the enabling nature of cultural hybridization and localization

Analysing Embedded Discourse Presentation: Bridging Disciplines

Beatrix Busse March 15, 2014 Page range: 229-255

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Abstract

Literary texts are core material in Cultural Studies, especially as taught in German universities. This paper shows how the analysis of literature can be fruitfully enhanced by a linguistic analysis. Recourse is made to what is called New Historical Stylistics, which is first explained in its complexity and then applied to the analysis of embedded discourse presentation in 19th-century narrative fiction. The functions of embedded speech, writing and thought presentation will be explained via recourse to a cognitive stylistic framework drawing on Text World Theory (Werth 1999) and blending theory (Fauconnier / Turner 2002)

Postcolonial Translation: Encounters across Languages, Cultures, and Disciplines

Susanne Mühleisen March 15, 2014 Page range: 257-280

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Abstract

Ever since its emergence in the 1990s, postcolonial translation theory has become a household name in literary and Cultural Studies, with influential works by Tejaswini Niranjana (1992), Douglas Robinson (1997) and topical edited collections by Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi (1999), Maria Tymoczko and Edwin Gentzler (2002), and Raoul J. Granqvist (2006). In postcolonial translation discourse, “translation” is used as a rather broad category that includes interlingual, intralingual and intersemiotic meaning transfer as well as metonymic uses of the term. Sometimes neglected in these debates, however, are some very concrete and tangible linguistic issues concerned in postcolonial translation, and especially in two fields of linguistic inquiry. They can be divided into (1) sociolinguistic and language political considerations and (2) socio-cultural and pragmatic considerations. These concerns will be exemplified in a detailed analysis of two 1960s Shakespeare translations into the Sierra Leonean Creole language Krio, Juliohs Siza (see Decker 1965/1988) and Udat di Kiap Fit (see Decker 1966/forthcoming)

Investigating Culture from a Linguistic Perspective: An Exemplification with Hong Kong English

Frank Polzenhagen, Hans-Georg Wolf March 15, 2014 Page range: 281-303

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Abstract

The special issue in which our article features bears evidence to the growing concern for a linguistically informed study of culture and, vice versa, a culturally informed study of language. In recent years, Cognitive Sociolinguistics has established itself as a viable approach to analyze and systematize linguistic realizations of conceptually coded cultural patterns (see e.g. Wolf / Polzenhagen 2009). In our article, we give a brief summary of the fundamental tenets of the Cognitive-Sociolinguistic approach as regards culture. Highlighting the field of World Englishes, we demonstrate that certain lexical items and entire lexical fields in non-native varieties of English cannot be properly interpreted without cultural background knowledge and, more specifically, without a systematic account of their underlying cultural conceptualizations. This insight is then applied to the analysis of expressions and collocations from Hong Kong English; under investigation are, in particular, socio-culturally salient conceptualizations from the domain of FAMILY. Our paper closes with a discussion of the applicability of Cognitive Sociolinguistics methods and findings to curriculum reform and design. Emphasized here are the potential for students’ hands-on analytic engagement with texts produced in culturally “alien” varieties of English, and, more globally, intercultural competence as a possible learning outcome

Buchbesprechungen

March 15, 2014 Page range: 305-316

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Die Autoren dieses Heftes

March 15, 2014 Page range: 317-317

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About this journal

Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (ZAA) is a peer-reviewed journal that traditionally reflects the entire spectrum of English and American language, literature and culture. Particular attention will also be paid to the new literatures in English, the development of linguistic varieties outside Britain and North America, the culture of ethnic minorities and the relationship between anglophone and neighbouring cultural areas. The journal also welcomes contributions which examine theoretical and interdisciplinary issues in literary, linguistic and socio-cultural research. Thus, ZAA invites contributions concerning a wide range of research on current issues, survey articles featuring recent developments in the fields of culture, literature and language, research reports as well as proposals concerning new directions within the discipline. For two of the journal’s four annual issues articles may be submitted in the field of literary and cultural studies; the remaining two issues will be reserved for special topics, one in literature and culture, the other in linguistics.