SOCIOLINGUISTICA 26/2012 Anne Franziskus/ Peter Gilles ‘Et le präis direct etikett?’ Non-overlapping repertoires in workplace communication in Luxembourg 1. Introduction In today’s globalised economy, multilingual workplaces are increasingly becoming the norm (Roberts 2007: 415) and open up opportunities for new forms of contact between growingly diverse work populations. Some scholars refer to this new impact of migration as ‘superdiversity’ (Vertovec 2007; Creese/ Blackledge 2010a). In sociolinguistics, it recently has been proposed to focus “on the way in which the new diversity becomes the site of negotiations over linguistic resources” (Creese/ Blackledge 2010a: 550). In many ways, Luxembourg’s workplaces constitute a promising research site for studying how such new forms of contact may overlap with more traditional forms of multilingualism. Located on the Germanic-Romance language border, the Grand Duchy has indeed had a long-standing tradition of multilingualism dating back to mediaeval times. From the 19 th to the mid of the 20 th century German and French where mainly used as written languages, while Luxembourgish, which originated from a Central Franconian dialect, served as the dominant spoken language for most domains (‘medial diglossia’). Since the language law of 1984 the trilingualism of Luxembourgish, French and German has been officially acknowledged 1 . Since the 1950s this already diverse language situation has further been complexified by the considerable increase of migration movements (mainly from Italy and Portugal, but also from the Balkan States and the Cape Verde Islands). In recent years, the percentage of resident foreigners in the population reached 43 % according to the national office of statistics (Statec 2010a), which is the highest proportion within the European Union. Furthermore, a newer form of migration has been on a steady increase since the 80’s: cross-border workers, who live in the neighbouring areas of France, Germany and Belgium, come to work in Luxembourg on a daily basis. In 2010, they accounted for 44 % of Luxembourg’s entire workforce (Statec 2010b). These migration movements are mainly attributable to Luxembourg’s substantial economic success, particularly in the sectors of services and finance. As a result, the country is in constant need of skilled and unskilled labour force, which compels companies to hire outside of Luxembourg (Fehlen/ Pigeron- Piroth 2009). Although most of the cross-border workers come from France (50 %) and French-speaking Belgium (25 %), the proportion of German speakers is steadily on the 1 This fact differentiates Luxembourg from other multilingual countries in Europe, (e.g. Belgium or Switzerland) where the languages are distributed geographically. For a detailed description of the Luxembourgish language situation, see Fehlen 2009; Gilles 2011; Horner/ Weber 2008. Authenticated | anne.franziskus@uni.lu author's copy Download Date | 12/7/12 7:33 AM