Cover of the Journal for Discourse Studies- Mimicry of Marginality

The paper deals with discursive portrayals of language learning and language learners. In a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches, it asks whether the status of the language learner is constituted as a phenomenon of marginality or of centrality in current discourses in Germany, and whether this may in some instances be seen as a mimicry of marginality. The qualitative part of the analysis takes positionings by learners and native speakers into account, considering linguistic ways of constituting both the self and others with regard to language(s) and learning. The paper also discusses whether the status transition of a person from learner to language »expert« is depicted as possible, and whether learning a language offers a form of prestige.


Mattfeldt, Anna. 2024. »Everything a Learner Needs« – Constructions of Linguistic and Social  Marginality/Centrality in Discourses about (German) Language Learning and Multilingualism. Zeitschrift für Diskursforschung 2023 (2). S. 204–225.

print
ISSN: 2195-867X

ebook
DOI: 10.3262/ZFD2302204

Back to overview
hierarchy of norms

“If social contradictions are reflected in law, law cannot form a hierarchy of norms free of contradictions.”

Andreas Fischer-Lescano
problem to be solved

“Contradiction is not primarily a problem to be solved but a motor we cannot do without.”

Martin Nonhoff
decolonial scholarship

“Creating decentralizing and decolonizing scholarship on contradiction, contradictory phenomena, and contradicting processes is a challenging task.”

Kerstin Knopf
Is contradiction eurocentric?

“Is contradiction a eurocentric concept, operational phenomenon, and instrument of power?”

Kerstin Knopf
l’illusion d’une unité

“Foucault speaks of contradiction as l’illusion d’une unité.”

Ingo H. Warnke