The project looks at communicative practices among younger male Berber-speakers of North African background. Upon arrival in Germany they need to navigate a foreign language environment. As speakers of Berber, or Imazighen (sg. Amazigh), they form part of a minority already in their home countries and they are usually multilingual. Typically, Imazighen speak several varieties of Berber and Arabic, often in addition to French, as well as sometimes English and/or Spanish.

In our project we investigate to what extent the experience of belonging to a minority and being multilingual may impact positively on mastering a new language ecology. Or is it rather the case that minority status implies experiences of oppression and/or ambivalent self-images with possibly negative effects in the context of migration. Special focus lies on unmonitored language acquisition. So far, we know little about the specific of these mechanisms.

Criteria considered significant in the contexts of second language acquisition include age, gender, level of education and duration of exposure to the target language. Observations show that these are not necessarily good predicators for success (or failure) in (unmonitored) second language acquisition. One technique we rely on is the collection of language portraits which initiate in-depth ethnographic interviews with emphasis on participants’ language attitudes.

Our hypothesis is that the mechanisms and dynamics of unmonitored second language acquisition are, to some extent, languages-/culture-specific. This implies we need to investigate practices of language learning commonly relied on in specific communities which may prove particularly robust and possibly more successful for a particular group than other learning strategies.