Now he thinks he's listening to rock music: Identity construction among German teenage girls

Janet Spreckels | University of Freiburg

This paper deals with disaffiliation and membership categorization processes among German adolescent girls. Drawing on a peer-group which I conceptualize as a ‘community of practice’ (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 1992), this case study aims to show how the girls’ disaffiliation and categorization of several outgroups serve to negotiate various identity aspects (gender being one of them). The paper investigates the various linguistic resources and communicative strategies the girls apply in their everyday identity negotiations. Further, I will discuss which of these resources and strategies can be seen as typical instances of (German) youngspeak. The data is taken from a larger conversation analytic and ethnographic research project on talk-in-interaction among a group of ‘normal’ German high school girls.

Keywords: community of practice, ethnographic conversation analysis, gender studies, identity research, membership categorization, positioning

Published online: 05 May 2009
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.184.04spr

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