Linguistic Reflections in German and Russian in Julya Rabinowich: A Comparative Study of Oral Autobiographical Narrative and the Novel Spaltkopf

Abstract

The Austrian author Julya Rabinowich, born in Leningrad in 1970 to a family of Russian Jews and emigrated to Vienna at the age of 7, is one of the most renowned representatives of contemporary literature in the German language. Rabinowich made her literary debut in 2008 with Spaltkopf (Split Head), her most strongly autobiographical novel. In 2012, the writer was interviewed by Michaela Bürger-Koftis as part of the research project Polyphonie. Mehrsprachigkeit_Kreativität_Schreiben. This interview can be understood as a linguistic biography, as Rabinowich recounts her experiences related to the languages in her linguistic repertoire, focusing particularly on German and Russian. From this account, the author’s Spracheinstellungen (linguistic attitudes), as well as the impressions and emotions related to her two main languages, emerge. The aim of this study is to compare the interview passages in which Rabinowich expresses herself regarding German and Russian with excerpts from Spaltkopf where the relationship of the protagonist, Mischka, with these two languages emerges. In this way, it will be possible to determine whether Spaltkopf reflects not only the author’s migratory experience but also her linguistic biography. Furthermore, it will be analyzed if and to what extent the expression of linguistic attitudes and emotions related to German and Russian differs between the novel and the oral autobiographical account. To examine how Rabinowich expresses her linguistic experiences and emotions related to German and Russian, a qualitative analysis of the texts will be conducted, with a theoretical approach based on the concepts of linguistic biography and verbalization of emotions developed by Brigitta Busch and Reinhard Fiehler.