Negotiation of resources in everyday activities of a multilingual Berlin street market: a linguistic ethnography approach

Abstract

Abstract The Maybachufer Market is an urban street market in Berlin-Neukölln that constitutes a highly diverse urban context by bringing together people of different social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. Through linguistic ethnography, this paper explores the negotiation of various resources in everyday communicative practices and activities of this urban space. The market setting with its multiethnic and multilingual community constitutes a spatial repertoire with a rich pool of resources. Although German, Turkish, and English are prominent as local and international lingua francas, various other languages and resources are used in the market activities involving different types and modes of interaction. The study shows that the respective communicative practices, which seem random at first glance, in fact follow specific interactional patterns with respect to communicative goals and interactional roles, including different social relations and identity constructions. While exploring everyday activities and the linguistic behaviours at a highly diverse urban market, the study contributes to our understanding of spatial repertoires, metrolingual and convivial practices, and communicative patterns in multilingual and multiethnic interactions in highly diverse urban spaces.