Documenting Wisconsin Heritage: Wisconsin-German Language and Culture

UW-Madison, Memorial Union: Wednesday, January 30, 2013, 6-8pm

800 Langdon Street Madison, WI 53706 (See: TITU for room on day of presentation)

Presentation:

6-7, Q&A, 7-8

Building upon recently conducted interviews with Wisconsin-German speakers in Sheboygan, Manitowoc, Calumet, and Fond du Lac counties, this presentation addresses the historic and current presence of German-speakers in eastern Wisconsin. Joshua Bousquette, Ben Frey and Alyson Sewell (UW-Madison) will discuss past and present reserach efforts on Wisconsin-German varieties. Then they will present findings related to the changing situation of German speakers living in Wisconsin from early settlement to the present day and the resulting unique Wisconsin-German varieties that developed within these bilingual communities.

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Joshua Bousquette is a Ph.D. candidate in German at UW-Madison. He has previously worked with the “German in Wisconsin” and “Wisconsin Englishes” projects, and has most recently published on the social structure of Frisian-speaking communities in Wisconsin.

Benjamin Frey is a Ph.D. candidate in German at UW-Madison who recently worked with the “German in Wisconsin” project and published on German language newspapers in Wisconsin. His dissertation, Toward a General Theory of Language Shift: A Case Study in Wisconsin German and North Carolina Cherokee, deals with community structure and language shift in Wisconsin German communities, and language revitalization efforts in Eastern Band Cherokee.

Alyson Sewell is a Ph.D. candidate in the German at UW-Madison who worked with Wisconsin-German in Sheboygan County for her 2011 MA project (Functions of Code-switching in Bilingual interactions: Language Alternation to Report Speech in German). She has continued this work with the “German in Wisconsin” project and presented on features of bilingual speech at various conferences and various campus colloquiums.