Page 453 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

Communicating Identity in Intercultural Communication 431

slightly from that of the others in the higher proportion of German structures
and elements. In some interactions – for example, discussions about their school
affairs – German was their dominant language. This shows, according to Keim,
that in the course of their educational careers outside the ghetto, the girls’ lin-
guistic competences and preferences had changed: in specific constellations, to-
gether with specific topics, the relevance of mixing had decreased, and the rel-
evance of German had increased.
When all girls attended schools outside the ghetto, they acquired a high
competence in mono-lingual German. For the oldest girls, who had just started
university study, German had become the central means of expression in all pro-
fessional domains. But in in-group communication, all the girls still preferred
mixing. At this later time of Keim’s study, it had become a means of symboliz-
ing their affiliation with the category of the ‘German-Turk’ and their dissocia-
tion from the Turkish-speaking world, as well as from the German-speaking
majority. When Keim asked them about their ideal life-partner, they sponta-
neously answered that they would only marry a German-Turk, a man who could
mix languages. Thus, the formation of German-Turkish mixing, as well as the
use of monolingual German, are closely related to the speakers’ processing of
social experiences and to their construction of a genuine socio-cultural identity.
Besides language, clothing is also an important resource for indexing or
symbolizing cultural identity.

2.3. Non-verbal formation of ‘us’ and ‘them’
2.3.1. Women’s headscarves as a boundary marker
We deal in this section with the symbolic discourse about the headscarves worn
by Muslim women and their potential to arouse controversy. Clothing is one of
the cultural signs that have an effect at first glance and convey meaning in a var-
iety of ways. Clothing can mark the boundaries of age, sex/gender, status, re-
ligion and many other dimensions. Its symbolic significance is thus “multi-
vocal” (Korff 1990). Schöning-Kalender (2000) shows Islamic discourse as sig-
nificant in two regards: for one thing, as a body of religious rules and regulations
that does or does not prescribe the clothing of confessing Muslims, for another,
as a political ideology that is symbolized by specific forms of clothing. If Tur-
kish, German or French state and school authorities point out that Islam does
not absolutely prescribe that women wear veils, they can thereby draw on a rich
literature of Islamic experts (Mernissi 1989 Bilgin 1997). On the basis of the
Turkish constitution, there are strict clothing requirements for public institu-
tions that are oriented to basic secular principles (i.e. prohibition of wearing
headscarves). As a second dimension, Schöning-Kalender (2000: 191) de-
scribes political Islam, for which the veiling of women has become a public