Die Grenze des Brandenburger deutsch-sorbischen Gebiets in der Linguistic Landscape

Abstract

The Border of the German-Sorbian Area in Brandenburg in the Linguistic Landscape

In socio-linguistic research of the linguistic landscape, conclusions about social and linguistic situations are drawn from linguistic presence, amongst other things. This approach is methodologically used in this article to investigate the marking of the border between the monolingual German and the bilingual German-Sorbian area in the state of Brandenburg. For this purpose, in 2015 – at a time when the revision of the traditional settlement area of the Sorbs/Wends in the state of Brandenburg was not yet reflected in the signposting – signs marking the location of places and borders were photographed and analysed. The findings were then related to the actual, legally defined area of Sorbian/Wendish settlement, whereby it can be observed that there are deviations in both directions. Constellations of protagonists are studied briefly. It becomes clear that from the sole consideration of the Linguistic Landscape without knowledge of the context it is not possible to draw conclusions about the processes behind it.