Language Use in an Old Order Amish Community in Kansas

Abstract

Old Order Amish are a religious group with three languages in its linguistic repertoire: Pennsylvania German (PG), American English (AE), and Amish High German (AHG). The present dissertation examines how this constellation influences language change, what communicative problems it causes, and how communicative problems are resolved. This is achieved by analyzing patterns of language change, socio-cultural factors of language change, language use in various situations, and strategies that are employed to solve communicative problems in a specific speech situation (the sermons). The methods employed are ethnographic (participant observation, interviews), especially ethnography of speaking, and linguistic (comparative analysis of translation tasks and interviews, discourse analysis) . The dissertation shows that the examined speech community undergoes a change in the occupational structure that increases contacts to AE, but maintains the traditional patterns of PG use. The linguistic analysis shows that PG in the community exhibits AE influence in few areas of the linguistic structure, but in all speech situations.