Workshop details can be found here: http://wp.unil.ch/sina/2018-2
PROGRAMME:
Research findings by Guido Seiler and Mark Louden were presented in a Swissinfo article entitled ‘I recognise every word, but I have no idea what you’re saying’, which was published on 1 November 2017.
You can listen to the radio programme here: https://www.srf.ch/sendungen/kontext/auswandererdialekte-spuren-der-migration
Anita Auer and Alexandra Derungs have presented their recent research findings on “Preserving Swiss Dialect features in the diaspora: The case of New Glarus” at the Eighth Annual Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas (WILA 8), which took place at the University of Copenhagen from 12-14 October 2017.
Guido Seiler presented findings of his research on the language island of the “Shwitzer” at the 19. Arbeitstagung zur alemannischen Dialektologie, which took place at the University of Freiburg/Breisgau from 11-13 October 2017. The abstract of Guido’s talk can be downloaded here: http://paul.igl.uni-freiburg.de/alemtag2017/?Programm
The abstract of the talk that Guido Seiler gave at the SLE 2017 can be found here: http://sle2017.eu/downloads/BOOK%20OF%20ABSTRACTS%20final.pdf
You can listen to the radio programme here: https://www.srf.ch/sendungen/schnabelweid/er-het-e-pfiife-gsmoukt
As part of the workshop “New historical perspectives on non-dominant speakers as agents of contact-induced language change” (ICHL 23, 31 July – 4 August 2017, University of Texas San Antonio, US), Guido Seiler has talked about the language of the Amish Shwitzer.
Anita Auer is giving a plenary talk on “Preserving Swiss Dialects in the Diaspora: The Social Life of a Wisconsin Language Island” on 7 April 2017 from 6:45 – 8:00 at New York University. The talk, which is free and open to the public, will be given as part of the HiSoN 2017 Conference.
Abstract of the talk:
When many people from different nations left Europe for North America during the so-called “Age of Mass Migration” (1850-1920s), a great number of Swiss also left their homeland in search of betterment in North America. A Swiss settlement of particular interest is New Glarus, Wisconsin as (a) it started as a colony (which is atypical for Switzerland), and (b) the town has retained its Swiss identity – being known as America’s Little Switzerland – until today. Usually, historical sociolinguists can only rely on surviving letters and diaries by migrants in order to get a partial insight into their language use, the maintenance of the homeland variety, and the possible shift to the new language. In the case of New Glarus, however, recordings from the 1960s of heritage speakers born as early as the late 1900s (now held in the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies) allow us to better trace the development of a Swiss heritage dialect, as well as processes such as dialect leveling, attrition, and gradual language shift in the diaspora. In this paper, I will thus shed light on the development of a Swiss German dialect in the diaspora through a linguistic study of early and more recent recordings, historical documents, and the cultural memory of “Neuglarner” today.
On 1 April 2017, Guido Seiler is going to give a talk on Language Structure as a Mirror of Social Structure? The Case of the Shwitzer Language of Adams County, IN at the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Details can be found on the poster below.