FOR 5728:  Convergence on Dominant Language Constellations: World Englishes in their local multilingual ecologies (CODILAC)

• Subject Area: Humanities
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 528506225

The Research Unit strives to compare seven representative and heterogenous multilingual world regions in regard to the use and position of English in the local multilingual ecologies. The Unit’s focus lies on linguistically dense micro areas that represent important targets of international and internal migration. We compare Botswana, Cebu City (the Philippines), Cyprus, Kurdistan Region (Iraq), Lagos (Nigeria), North-East India, and Tanzania. We hypothesize that these multilingual areas, much as other similar areas in the world, currently converge on Dominant Language Constellations of functional bilingualism and trilingualism in which English assumes a prominent role (Aronin 2016). Speakers’ language repertoires are reconceptualized in terms of dominance rather than order of acquisition, thus, questioning established constructs such as first, native, second, and third language. The Research Unit is interested in uncovering the dominant sociolinguistic patterns and in explicating the factors that lead to language contact, change, shift, and loss. Language choice and maintenance are interpreted as a function of a language’s symbolic power in particular usage domains (Bourdieu 1991) as well as its social and cultural dominance. Research work is based on the concept of multilingual ecologies that expands and refines Haugen’s (1972) original ideas by adding acquisitional parameters as well as those predicting investment into languages (Darvin & Norton 2015). The Research Unit applies the same design and methodology to the seven world regions. The projects use a contextually enriched and assisted sociolinguistic (online) questionnaire on a sample of 180 participants in each locale. In addition, two-hour long, semi-structured sociolinguistic interviews will be conducted with a subsample of the participants. Both data types will be converted into a unique and unparalleled digital annotated corpus, allowing for extensive statistical analysis and modelling. Participants will be selected from different strata of society, focusing non-elitist populations. Outputs and deliverables include internationally comparable datasets and corpora of English containing sophisticated social background information. We offer a theoretical extension and refinement of multilingual ecologies and Dominant Language Constellations, as well as a synthesis of models of World Englishes. Crucially, the Research Unit goes beyond the canonical national approach to World Englishes considering specific local multilingual ecologies as the sites where linguistic enrichment and conflict are acted out most forcefully and where cross-linguistic interaction is strongest.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• International Connection: Australia, Botswana, Cyprus, Iraq, Nigeria, Philippines, Tanzania

Projects

• Coordination Funds (Applicant Siemund, Peter )
• English as a local lingua franca in the multilingual ecology of Northeast India (Applicant Fuchs, Robert )
• English in selected Local Government Areas of the multilingual ecology of Lagos (Nigeria) (Applicant Schreiber, Henning )
• English in the multilingual ecologies of Botswana (Applicant Shah, Sheena )
• English in the multilingual ecologies of Tanzania (Applicant Kießling, Roland )
• English in the multilingual ecology of the Philippines: Exploring the sociolinguistics of Cebu City (Applicant Siemund, Peter )
• English within the multilingual ecology of divided Cyprus (Applicants Buschfeld, Sarah ;  Vida-Mannl, Manuela )
• The Kurdistan Region’s Language Ecology: The shift from Kurdish to English (Applicant Paul, Ludwig )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Peter Siemund