SprachRaum Berlin. Linguistic Diversity and Social Cohesion in Urban Areas.

Ongoing globalization, population growth in many regions of the world and flight movements are leading to increasing mobility and migration worldwide, the destinations of which are often urban centres such as Berlin. As a result, these centres are becoming spaces of increasingly high linguistic diversity. Today, people from at least 180 countries live in Berlin, and it is estimated that they speak about 120 languages. This linguistic diversity represents an invaluable resource from both a scientific and a social perspective, because language has a dual effect on social cohesion: as a medium of communication within the group and externally, and as a group-constituting, delimiting feature. So far, however, the linguistic landscape of the metropolitan area of Berlin has hardly been researched, nor have the consequences of linguistic diversity for identity and social cohesion in the multilingual area of Berlin.

This situation opens up new research perspectives: What role do factors such as the size of the language community, external contacts, status and visibility of the language in Berlin and in the region of origin play in its social significance? What attitudes and strategies of action regarding their languages of origin do speakers bring with them or develop in the new urban community? How do they construct and use multilingualism through codeswitching, codemixing, translanguaging? From a social point of view, such questions touch on the foundations of cohabitation and social interaction.