Namibian German and gender: A corpus study on the use of transferred lexical items

This chapter presents a quantitative corpus study of informal speech from male and female adolescent and adult Namibians with L1 German. A key feature of Namibian German is various forms of language mixing, mostly with material from English and Afrikaans. Previous sociolinguistic research, as well as statements by community members, suggest that male speakers might use more other-language material in their speech. I identified other-language material in a corpus of peer group conversations by Namibian German adolescents and adults and investigated the amount of transferred lexical items (other-language material excluding multi-word code-switches) that speakers of different age and gender used. Furthermore, I analyzed the proportion of the donor languages English and Afrikaans. Concerning the frequency of transferred lexical items, the results show an age difference between younger and older speakers, but fewer clear differences between speakers of different gender. English is the prime donor language in all groups, but subtle differences in the proportion of Afrikaans may point to interesting sociolinguistic dynamics.