The Semiotics of Diaspora:Language Ideologies and Coptic Orthodox Christianity in Berlin, Germany.

Multilingual and Language Shift;Coptic and Middle Eastern Diasporas;Berlin;Germany and Europe;Language Ideologies;Anthropology of Christianity;Anthropology and Archaeology;Social Sciences;Anthropology

Hein, Emily Jane CarterShryock, Andrew J. ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Multilingual and Language Shift;    Coptic and Middle Eastern Diasporas;    Berlin;    Germany and Europe;    Language Ideologies;    Anthropology of Christianity;    Anthropology and Archaeology;    Social Sciences;    Anthropology;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/97982/carterej_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

The dissertation is based on field research in Coptic Orthodox Church congregations in Germany, where Copts are living after emigration from Egypt. The data for the study are drawn from participant-observation, interviews, and recordings in these communities and include analysis of texts collected during fieldwork. The focus is on Copts’ ideologies of language in the diaspora, where their linguistic repertoires – Coptic (sacred language of religious texts), Arabic (most community members;; first language, spoken within the home or with other Copts), and German (language of the new location) – are being reconfigured.The dissertation has these main arguments: (1) in the liturgy and in its textual representations, the three languages are being interpreted as in a temporal progression, in which Arabic – devalued for its association with Islam and Arabs– is to be replaced by German, although there are some tensions surrounding this as yet incomplete process; (2) Copts are making a rhetorical effort, and (in effect) sociological project, to be identified with whites, Europe, and Christendom (seen as overlapping categories), thus evading German anti-immigrant prejudice and becoming part of the majority. This identification entails a semiotics of temporality as well, in the assertion that Christ came ;;out of Egypt” (as, more recently, did the Copts) – thus Egypt is to be included as the root domain of Christianity, rather than excluded from it because of its Muslim majority. This narrated past is part of Copts;; claim to inclusion in the (future) ecumene of Christianity. The author contends that the temporal progression implicit in the language shift in progress (1) can be seen as part of this wider semiotics of temporality (2).The present work contributes to debates on diaspora and the narrative construction of time and space. Its central themes of language ideologies, code repertoires, and textuality and performance are important topics in linguistic anthropology, the anthropology of Christianity and the anthropology of the Middle East and Europe. Detailing how Copts in the diaspora bring to life a dead language, while enthusiastically shifting to German, the dissertation is an ethnography of language contact and language shift.