The multilingual hospital. The Production of Migration through Language as Communicative and Social Infrastructure (B05)

• Subject Area: Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 501120656

The project investigates how monolingual and multilingual nurses use and shape German as a lingua franca during their daily communicative practice on a hospital ward. The speakers’ diverse language varieties form the communicative and social infrastructure for exchanging complex information at the workplace and for negotiating social meaning and belonging. In a longitudinal perspective, the project asks, what significance members of the community of practice as well as third parties attribute to linguistic diversity, and whether a common variety of the lingua franca emerges through processes of interactive convergence.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1604: Production of Migration
• Applicant Institution: Universität Osnabrück
• Project Head: Professorin Dr. Christine Dimroth