Karsten Schmidt

Dr. phil, Member of IMIS since March 2021, since October 2012 research assistant to Prof. Dr. Rolf Schöneich (formerly Thieroff) in the field of German Studies/Linguistics at Osnabrück University, 2018: Doctorate at Osnabrück University, 2016-2018 research assistant at the Institute of German Studies at Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, 2010-2012: Studied German Studies (specialist Master's degree) at Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, 2006-2010: Studied German Studies and Journalism and Communication Studies at Freie Universität Berlin.

My previous research focus was primarily on the grammar of contemporary German, in particular graphematics and orthography theory and morphology, which also formed the main research context of my dissertation.

For some time now, I have also been interested in questions of language use at the interface with sociology and would like to build up or expand a second research profile in this area. The subject of my habilitation project is Pierre Bourdieu's work on the sociology of language, particularly with regard to social inequality and linguistic power relations, the reproduction of certain linguistic concepts and the "symbolic violence" that emanates from them. This field of work also has numerous overlaps with the area of migration. A guiding assumption here is that multilingualism in migration society and its meaning(s) can be understood as an interest-driven production process characterized by power asymmetries and, according to the further assumption, must be seen in relation to the production of the idea of the normality of a linguistically homogeneous society (with a standard form of language that has been elevated to a benchmark, so to speak) - the "imago of linguistic relations" (Utz Maas) that is characteristic of (European) nation states.