Mag. Dr.in Verena Platzgummer
Positioning the Self: A Subject-Centred Perspective on Adolescents’ Linguistic Repertoires and Language Ideologies in South Tyrol
Supervision: Brigitta Busch, Eva Vetter
Period: 2017-2021
Contact: verena.platzgummer@eurac.edu
This thesis takes a subject-centred approach to sociolinguistic research and examines how adolescents in the multilingual region of South Tyrol, Italy, position themselves as speakers. Employing an innovative approach to language portrait interviews and their analysis, it produces a situated account of speakers’ positionings in terms of language competence, native-speakerness and affectivity. The analysis ties these positionings to different sets of language ideologies, simultaneously showing how language ideologies enter speakers’ linguistic repertoires, as well as which kinds of language ideologies circulate in the adolescents’ life worlds and beyond. The thesis thus provides an incentive for a critical engagement with language, language ideologies and their consequences for people in South Tyrol and elsewhere.