The indexical value of lexical borrowing in a ‘remembrance culture’-community of practice: German loanwords in Belgian WWII-testimonies

Journal Pre-proof The indexical value of lexical borrowing in a ‘remembrance culture’-community of practice: German loanwords in Belgian WWII-testimonies Kim Schoofs, Dorien Van De Mieroop PII:

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amper.2019.100054

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Please cite this article as: Schoofs, K., Van De Mieroop, D., The indexical value of lexical borrowing in a ‘remembrance culture’-community of practice: German loanwords in Belgian WWII-testimonies, Ampersand (2019), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amper.2019.100054. This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

The indexical value of lexical borrowing in a ‘remembrance culture’-community of practice: German loanwords in Belgian WWII-testimonies Kim Schoofsa,* Blijde Inkomststraat 21 box 3308, 3000 Leuven, Belgium, [email protected] Dorien Van De Mieroopb Blijde Inkomststraat 21 [email protected] a, b *

Faculty of Arts, KU Leuven Corresponding author

Declarations of interest: none

box

3308,

3000

Leuven,

Belgium,

The indexical value of lexical borrowing in a ‘remembrance culture’-community of practice: German loanwords in Belgian WWII-testimonies In this study, we scrutinize the locally constructed indexical value of German loanwords in Belgian WWII-testimonies. We argue that these testimonies are situated in a specific WWII-remembrance context which forms a community of practice with its own local style. In particular, we selected three Flemish (i.e. Dutch) and three Walloon (i.e. French) spoken testimonies from our testimony-corpus. Methodologically, we draw on multimodal discourse analysis and carry out qualitative micro-analyses which focus on the discursive features and the sequential characteristics of the data as well as the – verbal and non-verbal – performance features of the context surrounding the German loanwords. The analyses illustrate that narrators incorporate loanwords for their indexical value which invokes the social context, for their highly context-specific semantic value, as contextualization cues for reported speech which then invokes social groups, or a mixture of these options. Overall, the analyses demonstrate on the one hand that, in general, the level of integration into the narrative flow is a good indicator of the German loanwords’ function in our testimony-data. At the far-ends of this continuum, loanwords were either highly integrated indexical markers of the social context, or gesturally and prosodically distinguishable markers of the social outgroup. On the other hand, our microscopic analyses also uncovered the opportunities of the fuzziness of this continuum, illustrating these German loanwords’ ephemeral indexical value and their endless potential to create unique social meanings within their community of practice. Keywords: Indexicality, Lexical Borrowing, Multimodal Discourse Analysis, Community of Practice, Belgian WWII-testimonies, German 1 Introduction As a result of the recent “pragmatic turn” [1; p. 71], linguistic research on lexical borrowing has shifted its focus away from a structuralist approach to a usage-based approach. Previously, an extensive amount of attention was paid to classification issues, such as the complex process of categorizing lone other-language insertions as either code-switches or loanwords. However, this proved to be a “notoriously impossible task” [2; p. 10], as it was generally concluded that the criteria for differentiating between the two are “arranged on a continuum” [3; p. 113-114, see also 4]. Moreover, this continuum consists of “fuzzy ground” [3; p. 114] containing in-between categories – such as “nonce borrowings” [3; p. 106]. And even though (some of) these categories may be “conceptually easy”, they still remain “methodologically difficult” [5; p. 591] to distinguish from one another. Hence, rather than further aiming to fulfill the structuralist objective of classifying the distinctions between these different categories, the “pragmatic turn” has put the spotlight on “cultural, social or cognitive factors” [1; p. 71] that may influence and explain the use of loanwords. Given that different languages “have different social meaning[s] in their community” [6], loanwords may be loaded with specific social meanings, or, in other words, indexical value. In particular, ‘indexicality’ refers to linguistic forms’ ability to “link speech to the wider system of social life” [7; p. 53] and “to point to aspects of the social context” [8; p. 4] by evoking “socially shared conceptualizations of space and place, ideologies, social representations about group membership, social roles and attributes … [and] presuppositions about all aspects of social reality” [8; p. 4]. Thus, when a certain linguistic code occurs outside of its usual context, its indexical value can evoke elements of its original context of 1

use and as such may become “meaningful as a metaphor” [9; p. 88] of that context or situation. Consequently, this can create the impression that the indexical value of lexical borrowings is rather fixed, as the use of a particular code may seem to automatically entail certain associations. On the one hand, this is partially true, as language users can employ ‘stereotypical’ linguistic traits. This is based on the idea that certain “codes have a meaning which is independent of the local context” [9; p. 88] and can thus be “brought along” [10] from one context to another. These ‘brought along’-meanings can be used to (dis)affiliate a language user with or from certain groups, because by distinguishing “we-codes” from “theycodes” [11], one can contribute to “the construction of alterity” [12]. However, even though the specific social meaning of a certain linguistic code may be rather fixed for one particular social group, such social meanings will typically not remain stable across time, space or for different social groups. Thus, on the other hand, speakers can draw on their multilingual competences to “bring about” [10] a variety of specific social meanings that are locally constructed in the here and now of each particular interactional context. By employing various language varieties in combination with “prosodic means, voice quality and particular communicative activities” speakers can produce a wide variety of “patterns of inclusion and exclusion” [12; p. 427]. Moreover, by using a particular code, they can “ascribe a given character to a certain social group” [13; p. 197], thus demonstrating the potential of linguistic varieties to be “indexical of social relations” [9; p. 95] or of “social (self- or other) categorization” [14; p. 15]. As a result, the social meanings of linguistic codes tend to be highly ephemeral in nature, due to the fact that they are always locally constructed in a very specific social context. Nevertheless, through repetitive use, local styles may emerge in particular “communities of practice” [see 15]. In these communities of practice, individuals come together due to their “mutual engagement in an endeavor” [16; p. 464] which causes the emergence of specific “ways of thinking and doing” [17; p. 483] as well as of particular practices [16; p. 464]. Importantly, these practices typically comprise the construction of “a linguistic style” [18; p. 683] which can consist, among others, of “specialized terminology and linguistic routines” [19; p. 176]. These specific verbal features offer speakers the means “to actively construct their social identities within the larger macrosociological context” [9; p. 93]. As such, these locally constructed social meanings of particular linguistic codes may become stable within a specific community of practice. In conclusion, the indexical values of a code can thus be considered as “multidimensional” [3; p. 124] and “fluid” [20; p. 78] in nature, while, over time, potentially leading to more fixed associations that can be “brought along” [10] across various situations. These social aspects related to lexical borrowing are nowadays widely studied in sociolinguistic research, with various studies aiming to tease out the socio-cultural factors determining the (potential) success of loanwords [see e.g. 2, 21, 22, 23]. This type of research is typically based on large corpora – often consisting of written data – to determine overarching patterns, which are scrutinized by means of quantitative analyses. Contrastively, and complementary to the wide-angle view that these studies offer, we will carry out a qualitative analysis by focusing on a small set of spoken data, as such aiming to provide a detailed view of the use of loanwords in a specific context. In particular, we aim to scrutinize the locally constructed indexical value of German loanwords in a French and Dutch corpus of Belgian WWII-testimonies. This corpus is particularly interesting for this study, as it is situated in a very specific WWII-remembrance context which, we argue, constitutes its own specific kind of community of practice. The testimonies under scrutiny here originated in the nineties, which makes them part of the ‘WWII-testimony culture’ that arose towards the end of the twentieth century under the influence of the Western European growing interest in human rights [24; p. 14-15]. Contrary to most studies on communities of practice, which focus on 2

data recorded in environments that are as authentic as possible [see e.g. 25], we look at interview data which, in a way, take a step back from ‘real life’ and ‘real’ – meaning physical or virtual – communities of practice. Instead, these interviews can be situated in an elusive, highly specific and self-contained, yet internationally present but nevertheless intangible, community of practice related to the testimony culture originating from WWII. The goal is to investigate whether the German loanwords in our corpus can be seen as contributing to a unique linguistic ‘style’ shared and developed by the members of this ‘remembrance culture’community of practice. 2 Research question, data and method As explained above, the central research question of this article is to tease out how narrators in a WWII-remembrance context employ German loanwords in the construction of their stories and identities. Specifically, the goal is to scrutinize the German loanwords’ locally constructed indexical value(s) and the function(s) they serve as part of the ‘remembrance culture’-community of practice’s specific linguistic style. In order to provide such an in-depth insight into the ways in which lexical borrowing occurs in our data, what the social meanings of these German loanwords are and how these can potentially be related to this community of practice, we draw on the method of multimodal discourse analysis. This approach presents a detailed analysis of the discursive features and the sequential characteristics (i.e. in terms of turn-taking) of the verbal aspects of the data. This is then complemented by a multimodal analytical layer, inspired by multimodal conversation analysis [see e.g. 26] which, in accordance with CA tradition is highly empirical and data-driven [27; p. 2]. Multimodal conversation analysis aims to accomplish a comprehensive understanding of how multimodal resources are used situatedly in building human interaction [27; p. 2, see also 28]. To achieve this, data is transcribed and repeatedly scrutinized to allow for a detailed analysis which integrates body-related, artifactual and spatial aspects of the interaction. By focusing in particular on all the – verbal and non-verbal – performance features of the local context surrounding these German loanwords, we will offer a microscopic answer to the research question formulated above. In order to study the indexical value of German loanwords in WWII-narratives, we selected – from our larger testimony-corpus – three Flemish (Dutch-spoken) and three Walloon (French-spoken) testimonies by Belgian concentration camp survivors who employ German in their narrative. The testimonies consist of interviews conducted by Belgian organizations concerned with WWII-remembrance, namely Fort van Breendonk (‘Fortress of Breendonk’), Kazerne Dossin (Mechelen Transit Camp) and Stichting Auschwitz (‘Auschwitz Foundation’)1. Table 1 provides an overview of these interviews, as well as information on their duration, the period in which they were conducted and the archive in which they are kept: Flemish Frank

Charles

Duration: 1:33:08 Date: 1999-2001 Archive: Fort van Breendonk Duration: 1:09:39 Date: 1999-2001 Archive: Fort van Breendonk

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For more information, see the respective websites: http://www.breendonk.be/en/, https://www.kazernedossin.eu/EN/ and http://83.169.42.184/index.php/en/

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James

Duration: 2:47:00 Date: 1991 Archive: Kazerne Dossin

Walloon Philip

Duration: 1:10:50 Date: 1999-2001 Archive: Fort van Breendonk George Duration: 3:12:18 Date: 1999-2001 Archive: Fort van Breendonk Christian Duration: 2:33:00 Date: 13/05/1992 Archive: Stichting Auschwitz Table 1: Overview of the data with pseudonyms for the narrators Once the corpus was compiled, all fragments containing lone German-language insertions were collected. Next, the fragments closer to the code-switching end of the borrowing continuum were left out and the fragments containing German loanwords were retained, since they are the focus of this article. Subsequently, four fragments were selected which each illustrate one – or a combination – of the most common ways in which German loanwords’ indexical value was found to be locally constructed and employed by the narrators in our corpus. These four fragments were transcribed using the conventions by Jefferson [29] and Mondada [30], to incorporate both prosodic and gestural performance features in the transcription2. As German loanwords were typically much more frequently employed by Flemish narrators than by Walloon narrators, three Dutch fragments and one French fragment were selected, which we analyze in section 3. 3 Analysis In this section German loanwords will be analyzed in four selected excerpts in order to illustrate their various functions in these WWII-testimonies. We uncover how loanwords may invoke, first, a specific social context and, second, certain social groups. Then we conclude the analytical part by teasing out the relation between the loanwords’ level of textual integration and their various functions. 3.1 Invoking the social context A first noteworthy observation about our data is that certain German loanwords occur quite often at specific points in various testimonies. This is, for example, the case in stories relating the morning routine in the ‘Fortress of Breendonk’, such as excerpts (1) and (2). In these descriptions, narrators seem to be almost required to use the specific loanword Bettenbau (‘bed-making’) to properly tell their story, which already points at the high indexical value of this loanword. We see an example of this in excerpt (1), narrated by James, a former Flemish resistance fighter: Excerpt (1)3 2

Table 2 in the appendix provides an overview and explanation of the transcription symbols used in the selected fragments. 3 The German loanwords have been indicated in bold in the English translations.

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In excerpt (1), the narrator talks about the bed-making process the prisoners had to carry out every morning. Instead of using the Dutch fixed expression bed opmaken, he uses a loanword that is uncommon in general, non-military German, namely Bettenbau (line 225, ‘bedmaking’). It is interesting to note that this extremely regulated morning routine is not only verbally described in detail in this excerpt, but also non-verbally, as illustrated by figures (1) and (2) above. Moreover, the Bettenbau-process is not narrated from a personal perspective, but rather from a generic perspective, which presents this as a collective story of a particular community. Finally, the use of passive verbs in combination with modal verbs of obligation (line 225 and 227, moest(en)… worden, ‘had to be made’) projects a stereotypical passive role upon the group of prisoners. All these elements contribute to the fact that this loanword is not simply explained, but that it is also actively displayed through performance features and that the explanation is framed as a collective process that was imposed upon the prisoners. As a result, the story recipients get a thorough idea of the implications contained within the loanword and a vivid image of life in the concentration camp is sketched. It becomes clear that ‘bed-making’ is not merely a collective, daily and seemingly innocent activity, but is instead quite extreme in nature and emblematic for the concentration camp setting. As such, through its highly specific semantic meaning, the loanword Bettenbau indexes the social reality of the concentration camp in the narrative. Importantly, not all interviewees go to such great lengths to explain the particular meaning of loanwords used in the narrative. Rather, they seem to assume that the semantic 5

meaning is known to the story recipients. An example of this can be found in excerpt (2), which is narrated by George, a former Walloon resistance fighter: Excerpt (2)4

Similar to excerpt (1), George refers to the morning routine by means of the German loanword Bettenbau (line 441) instead of the French fixed expression faire son lit, while also using a generic-collective perspective. However, in contrast to the previous excerpt, the exact meaning of the loanword is not explained in this fragment. One could thus assume that the narrator expects his audience5 to be somewhat familiar with the loanword’s semantic meaning. Interestingly, he emphasizes its social meaning instead, namely the extreme nature of the ‘bed-making’ ritual. He indicates its magnitude by referring to it as ‘the great work’ (line 440, le grand travail) and as ‘quite something’ (line 442, c’était quelque chose), while also underlining that the ritual had to be executed in an ‘impeccable’ (line 443) manner. This is then explained further, as the guards – ‘they’ (line 444, on) – repeatedly ‘checked and rechecked’ (line 444, on contrôlait on recontrôlait) the prisoners’ work, which was then judged by either a ‘yes or no’ (line 445, oui ou non), indicating that the prisoners’ execution of the routine was often deemed insufficient. Thus, the narrator repeatedly emphasizes the extreme nature of the ‘bed-making’ ritual, which underlines the loanword’s social meaning. Thus, even though the loanword’s exact semantic meaning is left unexplained, its indexical value is made very clear, as it invokes the extreme nature of this routine typical of the WWIIcontext. In sum, the loanword Bettenbau refers more aptly to the very specific nature of the morning ritual typical of the WWII-context than the Dutch or French language equivalents would be able to do. Importantly, the storyworld of these WWII-narratives’, with which German is of course strongly associated, is governed by a unique and complex set of social norms, as the social space of the camps was “a distorted reflection of the normal social space outside the camps” [31; p. 163]. In other words, a highly specific concentration camp ‘culture’ can be said to have existed in ‘The Fortress of Breendonk’. As a result, Bettenbau can be classified as a cultural borrowing, since it stands for a concept that is unfamiliar in the narrators’ own culture [32; p. 212] and that fills a gap “that no other word is available for” 4

Due to the speaker’s physical disabilities, which entail specific performance features that are not necessarily related to the narration itself (see e.g. the audible in-breaths (.h) throughout the fragment), we refrain from discussing these features here. 5 In these cases, it is possible that the narrator only considers the interviewer as a story recipient – rather than the wider audience the recorded interviews may reach – and that he regards this interviewer as a member of the ‘remembrance culture’-community of practice who would thus be familiar with the (indexical) meaning of this loanword.

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[33; p. 116] due to its highly specific meaning. Yet, as mentioned, the exact semantic meaning is not always explained in the narratives. Narrators may assume that their audience members (particularly the interviewers) are sufficiently familiar with the community of practice that originated around the concentration camps, entailing that they would understand the loanword’s semantic meaning. Yet, even if this exact meaning is not known by the wider audience of the recorded interviews, the indexical value of the use of the code German invokes the specific social context of WWII in the narrative and the extreme nature of its norms and rules, as is underlined by both narrators. 3.2 Invoking the outgroup Another important function of German loanwords in the testimonies, is implicitly invoking the the outgroup, viz., the Nazis. This becomes clear in excerpt (3), in which Charles describes his arrest by the Nazis after he joined the Flemish resistance: Excerpt (3)

The excerpt starts with the narrator setting the scene (line 280, ‘on a certain evening’ when ‘the bell rang’) without referring to the Nazis as story antagonists. This changes in line 282, when the narrator abruptly inserts the German-sounding, yet non-existent loanword draus (‘out’) – which is most likely a blend of raus (‘out’) and draussen (‘outside’) – and repeats 7

this three times. The use of German functions as a “contextualization cue” [34] for direct reported speech here, which automatically assigns the repeated draus to the Nazi-outgroup. These Nazis are further characterized by two types of performance features. First, all three repetitions of draus – as well as the interjections ‘bam’, ‘kick’, ‘smack’ (line 283, boenk, stamp, klets) which ‘report’ the Nazis’ actions – are pronounced loudly and with emphasis. This “global increase of loudness” has previously been found to be a typical prosodical marker used by narrators when quoting Nazi-characters [12; p. 431] and it further assists in characterizing this outgroup’s intrusive actions. Second, a similar observation can be made about the narrator’s gestures. As shown in figures (3) and (4), the narrator synchronizes his words or sounds with the embodiment of the outgroup’s actions (lines 282-283). In particular regarding the use of the loanword draus, the baton-wielding gestures emphasize its indexical value in a similar way as the prosodical marking, as they further characterize the outgroup’s intrusive behavior. This similarity is not surprising as the gesture-speech relationship has been shown to share common characteristics to that between prosody and speech [35]. Of course, reported speech is not necessarily an accurate representation of what happened, as is particularly aptly illustrated here by the narrator’s use of the non-existent German word draus, but it invokes “a tone of authenticity and veracity” [36; p. 549] which offers the narrator the possibility of evaluating the reported speaker [see 37; p. 159]. Thus by stylizing the reported speech in line 282, the narrator on the one hand produces a (seemingly) ‘truthful’ rendition of the original, whilst on the other hand displaying his own evaluation to the audience, as such blending the voice of the animated character with the speaker’s evaluation into a ‘layered’ voice [see 12, 38]. In particular, through the loud and emphasized prosody of the German orders and the gestures accompanying them, the audience is invited to share the narrator’s view of the outgroup as aggressive and powerful, thus constructing alterity between the Nazis and their victims. As such, the narrator’s prosodical marking indicates his “disaffiliation from th[o]se characters and their way of (mis)behaving” [12; p. 420] and this is further supported gesturally, while the use of a German-sounding word made it unequivocally clear which particular outgroup is referred to. In conclusion, the use of the loanword draus in excerpt (3), with its co-occurring gestural and prosodic marking, illustrates how loanwords can be used as categorization devices of social groups and thus create alterity in the narrative. While a Dutch equivalent is readily available to the narrator (namely: buiten), this would not have had the same potential in terms of use (as it cannot serve as a contextualization cue for Nazi reported speech), nor of social meaning (due to the German loanword’s high indexical value, emphasized by prosody and gestures). 3.3 Loanwords’ functions in relation to their integration into the narrative Now that we have established the two main reasons for incorporating German loanwords in these WWII-testimonies – namely to invoke the social context or the Nazi-outgroup – we examine how and to what extent these two functions can be related to their integration into the surrounding text, which is a factor that has already proven its worth in this research field as a relevant criterion for discerning categories of lone other-language insertions (see e.g. [3], [5], [9])6. Yet, as this is not our goal here (cf. introduction), we instead focus on how this integration can be linked to the function of these German words. In order to do this, we look

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Yet, even though structural integration may be a possible criterion for distinguishing between various categories of lone other-language insertions, it does not always guarantee a clear distinction, as is for example the case for ‘bare forms’ (see [5]; p. 590, [9]; 86).

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at the various loanwords used in excerpt (4), in which James (cf. excerpt (1)) further describes the ‘Fortress of Breendonk’’s morning routine: Excerpt (4)

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In this excerpt, the narrator uses various German loanwords, viz., in lines 131 (aufstehen, ‘get up’), 137 and 141 (Kübel, ‘bucket’), 142 (austreten, ‘go to the toilet’) and 144 (schnell, 10

‘quickly’). These loanwords serve various functions, entailing different social meanings, and are integrated into the narrative to differing degrees, which we tease out in detail here. Firstly, as was also the case for Bettenbau in excerpts (1)7 and (2), some of the loanwords in this excerpt barely disturb the flow of the narrative. A good example of this is Kübel8 in lines 137 and 141. By using a German loanword, it is clear that the narrator does not simply refer to a ‘general’ bucket, nor to a specific bucket that is used for scatological purposes, but to this particular type of bucket in the specific context of the concentration camp, thus also evoking the social context as discussed in section 3.1. Moreover, at the same time, the use of the word Kübel allows the narrator to euphemistically refer to a taboo-word by relying on a foreign language. As mentioned above, this descriptive term is highly integrated into the utterance, which is demonstrated by the use of the Dutch definite (line 137) and the demonstrative (line 141) article before Kübel. Similarly, the verb aufstehen (‘get up’) in line 131 hardly disturbs the flow of the narrative through its subjectivization which entails the addition of the Dutch definite article (het aufstehen). Yet, also in this case, the loanword status of aufstehen entails that this word is not merely a description of a regular ‘getting up’ in the morning, but rather an invocation of the social context and its generally-known characteristics, which thus hints at the dehumanizing nature of this morning routine. Secondly, and contrastively, some loanwords are not integrated into the flow of the narrative at all. A good example of this is schnell in line 144, which – similarly to draus in excerpt (3) – stands out from the rest of the narrative. This is not only because of its loanword status, but also due to other performance aspects related to this utterance. First of all, in terms of prosody, it is pronounced more loudly than the other words, thus giving it emphasis. Secondly, in terms of gestural design, schnell is further emphasized by means of a gesture that is different from the other gestures in this excerpt. As we see in the transcription, this narrator makes extensive use of co-speech gestures, which are nicely synchronized with the prosodic events in his speech. These tend to be “iconic gestures” [39] that demonstrate the events of the morning routine, thus supporting the construction of meaning (see figures (5)-(8)). Yet, when pronouncing the word schnell, the narrator uses a “beat gesture” (line 144, see figure (9)), which adds further emphasis to the word, thus supporting the louder speaking volume in a visual way. As Wagner et al. observe, such a gesture may “contribute to the perceived prominence of [the] temporally aligned speech, and can function in the sense of ‘audiovisual prosody’” [35; p. 211]. This audiovisual prosody is marked further through the narrator’s facial mimicry; in this case an emphatic backward movement of his left jaw when pronouncing the word schnell (see figure (9)). Finally, the word schnell is also surrounded by pauses, which break up the rhythmic flow of the narrative. Importantly, during the postloanword pause, the narrator averts his eye gaze (line 144, see figure (10)), thus creating another audio-visual boundary marker which sets this word apart even more. Thus, in short, the many performance features create a holistic embodied effect of ‘difference’ which support this loanword’s function as an enquoting device here. In particular, the use of the loanword schnell brings the largely invisible antagonist-outgroup of the German guards to the fore in the storyworld, while the way in which it is performed and embodied, adds an evaluative “layer” [38] and constructs alterity. Finally, narrators can also integrate loanwords in more ambivalent ways into the surrounding text. An example of this is the loanword austreten (line 142). While it is 7

We are aware that Bettenbau in excerpt (1) is marked by prosodic stress on its final syllable. However, this prosodic marking is far from as intense as it the case for, for example, draus in excerpt (3) and schnell in excerpt (4), but nevertheless its social meaning may be slightly ambivalent as discussed for austreten in excerpt (4). 8 Contrary to Bettenbau though, Kübel is a core borrowing as it encodes a particular object that the narrator had experience with in the specific WWII-context and that thus “fill[s] a lexical gap, in the most narrow sense of the word” [33; p. 120].

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syntactically part of the sentence, this word is also set apart by its accentuated pronunciation, emphasizing each syllable of the word separately, as well as its louder word onset. As a result, it remains vague whether this loanword serves as a contextualization cue [34] for direct reported speech, which would imply that this form should be understood as an imperative (as the higher speaking volume suggests), or whether this verb form is to be interpreted as an infinitive that is incorporated in the Dutch sentence (as the syntactic structure of the sentence implies). In the former case, the use of the loanword would bring the antagonists to the fore as was the case with schnell and draus (see above). In the latter case, the loanword could be interpreted as a cultural borrowing, similar to the loanword Bettenbau in excerpts (1) and (2), as it refers to a highly specific concept that is inherent to the concentration camp context and that cannot be properly captured by its Dutch equivalent.9 This ambivalence of austreten offers the narrator the opportunity to implicitly refer to the storyworld characters by mimicking the way they performed their orders, while at the same time not interrupting the flow of the narrative and invoking the social context. In sum, the loanwords in this excerpt illustrated that narrators incorporate loanwords in their narratives in various ways, for various reasons and with varying social meanings. These are all situated on a continuum, thus on the one hand making it sometimes hard for researchers to delineate or pinpoint the loanwords’ local function unequivocally, while on the other hand offering narrators the opportunity to evoke various social meanings at the same time. 4 Conclusion The aim of this study was to scrutinize how German loanwords’ indexical value is locally used and constructed in Belgian WWII-testimonies. As the analyses showed, the loanwords proved to serve a variety of functions. Firstly, their indexical value was used to invoke the social context of the storyworld within the narrative and as such provide the audience with a vivid image of life in a concentration camp. This was often achieved through the use of cultural borrowings that were syntactically integrated into the surrounding text, such as Bettenbau in excerpts (1) and (2) and austreten in excerpt (4). These loanwords refer to highly specific concepts unique to the concentration camp environment and thus index the social reality of the concentration camp in a way that the narrators’ native language equivalents would not be capable of. These loanwords also added a highly specific semantic meaning to the narrative, which was sometimes extensively explained by the narrator. However, in other cases, such an explanation was absent, which implies narrators may expect their audience to be part of or acquainted with the community of practice related to the WWII-testimony culture. Within this specific community of practice one could argue that a local ‘style’ has developed in which certain German loanwords have acquired highly specific semantic and indexical meanings. As a result, German loanwords can be used within this specific community of practice to “bring along” [10] those meanings which are collectively shared. Yet, even if the audience is not entirely familiar with this local style, the use of the code German in these testimonies still indexes the social context of WWII as well as its highly regulated and extreme nature. Similarly, even though words such as Kübel in excerpt (4) may not particularly refer to a highly specific activity unique to the concentration camps (as was the case with Bettenbau and austreten), the use of the loanword instead of the Dutch equivalent also indexes the social context and its associated characteristics (e.g. dehumanization of prisoners). 9

The specific semantic meaning of the loanword austreten is not explained in excerpt (4). However, austreten occurs in several testimonies within the corpus, from which it becomes clear that it refers to the highly regulated and humiliating manner in which the prisoners had to go to the toilet.

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Secondly, some loanwords that were set apart from the surrounding narrative text, were employed to index certain social groups in the narrative. Specifically, the use of German functioned as a ‘contextualization cue’ for direct reported speech (for example, draus in excerpt (3) and schnell in excerpt (4)). This allowed narrators to implicitly refer to the Nazioutgroup, as this group is stereotypically linked to the use of the code German, which thus has a “they-code” status [10] within this community of practice. Moreover, these loanwords were typically prosodically and gesturally marked to further emphasize the outgroup’s negative categorization, whilst also illustrating the narrators’ evaluation of them. By “layering” [38] their own evaluation with the voice of the storyworld character, narrators could thus further disaffiliate from the outgroup and construct alterity in their narratives [12]. Finally, the analyses also demonstrated how narrators can use German loanwords to mix these functions. Austreten in excerpt (4) formed a particularly apt example of this, as its ambivalent structural incorporation into the flow of the narrative made it impossible to clearly pinpoint whether it invokes the social context and/or a specific semantic meaning, or whether it serves as a contextualization cue invoking the Nazi-outgroup – or, alternatively, entails a combination of these two. Thus, rather than scrutinizing the German words’ structural integration into the flow of the narrative as a way of distinguishing between various categories of lone other-language insertions, our analyses from a pragmatic perspective demonstrated that, on the one hand, the level of integration into the narrative flow was a good indicator of the German loanwords’ function in our testimony-data. At the far-ends of this continuum, loanwords were either highly integrated indexical markers of the social context, or gesturally and prosodically distinguishable markers of the social outgroup. On the other hand, our microscopic analyses uncovered the opportunities that the fuzziness of this continuum entails, as narrators syntactically integrated, yet prosodically set apart certain loanwords, which made these loanwords multifunctional. As such, this article clearly illustrated that narrators employ loanwords for a variety of functions, reasons and in differing and sometimes ambivalent ways. This is only possible because of the loanwords’ ephemeral indexical value, which may sometimes make it difficult to delineate their function(s) unequivocally, but which at the same time underlines their endless potential to create unique social meanings in their community of practice, as well as in other contexts. Appendix Transcription symbol (.) (1.3) buiegaa:l ge↑spannen strak >dan moest er begonnen worden met de< bettenBAU .hh dat=euh *# -->

Explanation Pause shorter than 0.2 seconds Pause, the duration is indicated between brackets The word is cut-off The speaker has stretched the preceding sound Onset of pitch rise The word is emphasized The words between brackets are pronounced faster The text in capital letters is pronounced louder Audible inbreath There is no discernible pause between the words Gestures and descriptions of embodied actions are delimited between two identical symbols The action described continues across subsequent lines until the same symbol is reached 13

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The exact moment at which a screen shot has been taken is indicated with a specific sign showing its position Table 2: Transcription conventions based on Jefferson [29] and Mondada [30] Funding This work was supported by KU Leuven. The funding source had no involvement in the study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. References [1] G. Andersen, C. Furiassi, B. Ilic, The Pragmatic Turn in Studies of Linguistic Borrowing, J. Pragmat. 113 (2017) 71-76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.03.010. [2] A. Calude, M. Pagel, S. Miller, Modelling Borrowing Success - a Quantitative Study of Maori Loanwords, J. Theoret. Linguist. Corpus Linguist. 15 (2) (2018) 1-38. https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2017-0010. [3] Y. Matras, Language Contact, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009. [4] A. Onysko, Anglicisms in German: Borrowing, Lexical Productivity and Written Codeswitching, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 2007. [5] S. Poplack, Code-Switching, in: N. Dittmar, K.J. Mattheier, P. Trudgill, (Eds.), Soziolinguistik. An International Handbook, de Gruyter, Berlin, 2004, pp. 589-596. [6] J. Dyer, Language and Identity., The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics, Routledge, New York, 2007, pp. 101-108. [7] M. Silverstein, Shifters, Linguistic Categories and Cultural Description, in: K. H. Basso, H. A. Selby (Eds.), Meaning in Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 1976, pp. 11-55. [8] A. De Fina, D. Schiffrin, M. Bamberg, Introduction, in: A.D. Fina, D. Schiffrin, M. Bamberg, (Eds.), Discourse and Identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 1-23. [9] P. Auer, C. Eastman, Code-Switching, in: J.O. Östman, J. Verschueren, (Eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2010, pp. 84-112. [10] P. Auer, Introduction: J. Gumperz' Approach to Contextualization, in: P. Auer, A. Di Luzio, (Eds.), The Contextualization of Language, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 1992, pp. 138. [11] J.P. Blom, J. Gumperz, Social Meaning in Linguistic Structures: Code-Switching in Norway, in: J. Gumperz, D. Hymes, (Eds.), Directions in Sociolinguistics, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1972, pp. 407-434. [12] S. Günthner, The Construction of Otherness in Reported Dialogues as a Resource for Identity Work, in: P. Auer, (Ed.), Style and Social Identities: Alternative Approaches to Linguistic Heterogenity, de Gruyter, Berlin/New York, 2007, pp. 419-444. [13] F. Guerini, Being a Former Second World War Partisan: Reported Speech and the Expression of Local Identity, Open Linguist. 1 (2015) 191-210. https://doi.org/10.2478/opli2014-0010. [14] P. Auer, Introduction, in: P. Auer, (Ed.), Style and Social Identities: Alternative Approaches to Linguistic Heterogeneity, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 2007, pp. 1-21. [15] E. Wenger, Communities of Practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999. [16] J. Lave, E. Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991.

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[17] P. Eckert, S. McConnell-Ginet, Think Practically and Look Locally: Language and Gender as Community-based Practice, Annu. Rev. Anthropolo. 21 (1992) 461-490. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.21.100192.002333. [18] P. Eckert, Communities of Practice, in: K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2006, pp. 683-685. [19] J. Holmes, M. Meyerhoff, The Community of Practice: Theories and Methodologies in Language and Gender Research, Lang. Soc. 28 (1999) 173-183. https://doi.org/10.1017/S004740459900202X. [20] This publication is co-authored by one of the authors of this manuscript and thus omitted here to allow blind review. [21] E. Zenner, D. Speelman, D. Geeraerts, Cognitive Sociolinguistics Meets Loanword Research: Measuring Variation in the Success of Anglicims in Dutch, Cogn. Linguist. 23 (4) (2012) 749-792. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2012-0023. [22] E. Winter-Froemel, A. Onysko, A. Calude, Why Some Non-Catachrestic Borrowings Are More Succesful Than Others: A Case Study of English Loans in German, in: A. Koll-Stobbe, S. Knospe, (Eds.), Language Contact in Times of Globalization, Lang, Frankfurt am Main, 2012. [23] E. Zenner, D. Speelman, D. Geeraerts, A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Borrowing in Weak Contact Situations: English Loanwords and Phrases in Expressive Utterances in a Dutch Reality Tv Show, Int. J. Biling. 19 (3) (2014) 333-346. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006914521699. [24] B. Benvindo, E. Peeters, Scherven van de Oorlog: De Strijd om Herinnering aan WOII, De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam, 2011. [25] A. De Fina, Code-Switching and the Construction of Ethnic Identity in a Community of Practice, Lang. Soc. 36 (3) (2007) 371-392. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404507070182. [26] L. Mondada, Emergent Focused Interactions in Public Places: A Systematic Analysis of the Multimodal Achievement of a Common Interactional Space, J. Pragmat. 41 (10) (2009) 1977-1997. [27] A. Deppermann, Multimodal Interaction from a Conversation Analytic Perspective, J. Pragmat. 46 (2013) 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.11.014. [28] L. Mondada, Multiple Temporalities of Language and Body in Interaction: Challenges for Transcribing Multimodality, Res. Lang. Soc. Interac. 51 (2018) 85-106. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2018.1413878. [29] G. Jefferson, Glossary of Transcript Symbols with an Introduction, in: G.H. Lerner, (Ed.), Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2004, pp. 13-31. [30] L. Mondada, Conventions for Multimodal Transcription, https://franzoesistik.philhist.unibas.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/franzoesistik/mondada_multimo dal_conventions.pdf, 2016 (accessed 1/03/2019). [31] M. Suderland, Inside Concentration Camps: Social Life at the Extremes, Wiley, New York, 2013. [32] C. Myers-Scotton, Multiple Voices: An Introduction to Bilingualism, Blackwell, Malden, MA, 2006. [33] A. Backus, Bilingual Speech of Turkish Immigrants in the Netherlands, Tilburg University Press, Tilburg, 1996. [34] J.J. Gumperz, Discourse Strategies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982. [35] P. Wagner, Z. Malisz, S. Kopp, Gesture and Speech in Interaction: An Overview, Speech Commun. 57 (2014) 209-232. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2013.09.008. [36] D. Schiffrin, We Knew That’s It: Retelling the Turning Point of a Narrative, Discourse Stud. 5 (4) (2003) 535-561. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614456030054005. 15

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We investigate German loanwords in Dutch and French WWII-testimonies. The loanwords’ indexical value can invoke the social context and/or social groups. The level of integration into the narrative is a good indicator of loans’ function. Integrated loans invoke the social context; set-apart loans invoke the outgroup. ‘Fuzzy’ cases illustrate loans’ potential to create various unique social meanings.