Philology Matters
Login
Journal Cover
Philology Matters · Series: Academic Staff · Volume 50, Issue 3 · 2024

Identity within German as a Foreign and German as a Second Language and Literature

Share Cite This Article DOI DOI: 10.36078/987655021
CC BY 4.0 Litsenziya
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Creative Commons License

Copyright © 2026 by the author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Abstract

The aim of this article is to link the fields of German as a Foreign Language (DaF) and German as a Second Language (DaZ) and the current discussion on identity development with the potential for identity development through literary texts. Language is fundamentally considered a means of identity formation in the field of DaF/ DaZ, often referred to as language identity or the identity of language. The starting point is that every individual’s identity is constituted or co-constituted by their language(s) (including regional and sociolects) and their language use. This is particularly central to the field of DaZ when people migrate to Germany without knowledge of German and are assumed to experience identity loss and the gradual emergence of a new identity.

Keywords:
German
identity
second language
literature
knowledge
foreign language
language use
literary text
field
language identity

No Content Available