Guest Speaker - Prof. Joseph Salmons

[Janet Vaughan]

The Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies is pleased to present a 
lecture by
*Professor Joseph Salmons, University of Wisconsin
*
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
4:00 pm in HH 373

Mapping Language Shift in German-speaking Wisconsin

Mark Livengood, Miranda Wilkerson & Joseph Salmons

Recent research has begun to dismantle important stereotypes about 
language and immigration, including the widespread belief that 19th 
century immigrants learned English quickly. This paper builds on such 
work and challenges a number of views about the position of immigrants 
who could not speak English, including some held by scholars. The 
product of collaboration between two linguists and a geographer, this 
paper explores how one immigrant community in the U.S. negotiated the 
learning of English and the loss of its imported language over time and 
space, using a cartographic representation of language ability 
(knowledge of German and/or English) within the community as a key tool.

We draw qualitative and quantitative data from one Wisconsin community, 
Hustisford. The town was founded by Anglo-Americans and always had an 
English-speaking presence but saw an influx of German-speaking 
immigrants in the mid-19th century. Twenty-four percent of the 
population reported being German monolingual in the 1910 Census, 35% of 
those American-born, and most German-born monolinguals (over 59%) had 
arrived before 1880. Contrary to one stereotype, such monolinguals were 
not economically marginalized, e.g. as housewives and farmhands, but 
were active in trades and crafts and even as teachers and clergy. 
Another view is that monolinguals lived geographically and socially 
isolated from an imagined ‘mainstream society,’ but we find them living 
interspersed with bilinguals and presumed English monolinguals. We also 
compare language data against church and school records, where evidence 
points to a broadly German-dominant but overwhelmingly bilingual 
community. Even Anglo-Americans became highly proficient in German. 
Still, the large local German monolingual population appeared to have 
its own distinct social networks and, while by no means marginal, they 
probably were not central members of the local elite.

Knowledge about immigrant monolingualism is an important step towards 
recognizing that an ability to speak English has never really 
characterized an American identity.


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