Dr Esther Jahns
Dr Esther Jahns
Curriculum vitae
Scientific career
| since 02/22 | Postdoctoral researcher in the project participate@uol, University of Oldenburg |
| 01/22 | PhD at the School of Philosophy at the University of Potsdam: "Language ideologies and linguistic choices of German-speaking Jews in Berlin - A qualitative analysis ", referees: Prof Ulrike Demske; Prof Sarah Bunin Benor, PhD. |
04/18-10/20 | Coordinator of the DFG research group "Emerging Grammars in Language Contact Situations: A Comparative Approach"(FOR 2537) |
02/14-03/18 | Research assistant at the Chair of History and Variation of the German Language (Prof. Dr Ulrike Demske), University of Potsdam |
06/11-10/12 | Project Coordinator Sociolinguistics Symposium 19, Free University of Berlin |
Non-scientific career
- University of Potsdam, advisor to the Vice President for International Affairs, Alumni and Fundraising
- UAS7 e. V. Universities of Applied Sciences, Head of the Office
- Employment and Service Centre for International Applicants (uni-assist e.V.), Head of Application Service
- International Office of the University of Potsdam, Programme Coordination of the IQN project (International Quality Network)
- Office of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs, Central Office for Foreign Education, advisor for the evaluation of foreign educational certificates
- Office of the KMK - Pedagogical Exchange Service, SOKRATES
Study programme
- Freie Universität Berlin; Degree: M.A. Languages of Europe: Structures and Usage - German Studies specialisation
- Saarland University, Saarbrücken; Degree: Diplom translator for French and Russian
- Institute supérieur de la traduction et de l'interprétariat, Brussels (semester abroad)
- Université d'Angers, France (visiting student)
Memberships
- Society for Applied Linguistics e.V. (GAL)
- International Society for Dialectology of German e.V. (IGDD)
- Centre "Language, Variation, Multilingualism" (SVM)
- International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)
- German Society for Linguistics (DGfS)
Research
Research within the framework of participate@uol:
- Sprachangstst im akademischen Kontext /Language anxiety as a barrier to academic participation
- Translanguaging in university teaching
Dissertation (defended 01/22):
"Language ideologies and linguistic choices of German-speaking Jews - A qualitative analysis"
Research interests:
- Language ideologies
- Social meaning of language
- Language awareness
- Jewish languages
- Language contact and multilingualism
Lectures
| 09/25 | Language Experience of Multilingual Students in German Studies, GAL Annual Conference, University of Hildesheim |
| 06/25 | "I have always believed that I can be so good in German because I have these other languages." (with Dilovan Evîn), International Finnish German Studies Conference, Jyväskylä, Finland |
| 01/25 | Diglossic translanguaging - Multilingual practices and language ideologies of Jewish speakers in contemporary Berlin, University of Duisburg-Essen |
| 12/23 | Does academic language anxiety prevent participation? University of Cologne |
| 07/23 | Language anxiety as a barrier to academic participation (with Oliver Bunk), International Pragmatics Association(IPrA); Université Libere de Bruxelles, Belgium |
| 03/23 | The role of Yiddish in the linguistic repertoire of German-speaking Jews in contemporary BerlinYiLAS3: Yiddish in the21st century, University College London, Great Britain |
| 08/22 | "That's really cool to say, so Machanot" Revealing speakers' justifications for linguistic choicesMethods XVII, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz |
| 03/22 | Diglossic translanguaging - How German-speaking Jews perceive and explain their linguistic choices, ICLaVE 11, online-Vienna, online-Austria |
| 01/20 | Authenticity and Prescriptivity - Language Ideologies and Language Choices of Jewish Speakers in Contemporary Berlin, at the invitation of the Centre for Language, Variation and Migration, University of Potsdam |
| 11/19 | "Yiddish is just a totally familiar thing" - Use and perception of multilingual resources in the repertoire of Jewish speakers, at the invitation of the Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel and the Europa-Universität Flensburg |
| 10/19 | Positioning in the community - How German-speaking Jews perceive and make use of their multilingual resources, Marginality and Centrality in Contradictory Discourses of Religious and National Belonging BTWS#2, Turku, Finland |
| 06/18 | Emerging Grammars in heritage speakers' language use (with Heike Wiese, Artemis Alexiadou), International Symposium on Bilingualism 12, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada |
| 02/18 | The social meaning of contact-induced language variation - Linguistic choices of German-speaking Jews, Research School Language Contact within Systems and Speakers, University of Potsdam |
| 12/17 | Variation in the linguistic repertoire of German Jews in contemporary Berlin: Local interpretation of a global repertoire? 49th Annual Conference Association for Jewish Studies, Washington, D.C., USA |
| 10/16 | Between accommodation and distinction. The linguistic repertoire of German-speaking Jews, The Sociolinguistic Economics of Berlin, FU Berlin |
| 07/16 | Do Jews in today's Germany speak their own Jewish language? Jewish Languages, Jewish Cultures: New Perspectives in Jewish Studies Research, LMU Munich |
| 06/16 | The hidden linguistic repertoire of Jews in contemporary Germany, Sociolinguistics Symposium 21, Murcia, Spain |
| 11/15 | "The Hebrew word is of course more modern!" Do language ideologies shape the linguistic choices of Jews in Germany? Communication in the country of Babel, University of Bern, Switzerland |
| 05/15 | Identity and Language: Jewish speech in contemporary Germany, Germanic Linguists Annual Conference 21, Provo, Utah, USA |
| 03/15 | Linguistic repertoire of contemporary Jewish communities, 16th North German Linguistic Colloquium, Hanover, Germany |
| 03/15 | Studies on the current language use of Jews in Germany (poster), Mehrsprachigkeit - Abseits des Mainstreams, University of Potsdam |
| 03/14 | Ich bin am Vortragen oder warum die englische 'progressive form' so selten mit dem Progressiv übersetzt wird, 15th North German Linguistic Colloquium, Osnabrück |
panel
| 02/24 | Short-AG Evaluating register(s)(with Oliver Bunk, Annika, Labrenz, Antje Sauermann), DGfS 2024, Ruhr-University Bochum |
| 07/23 | Changing language ideologies (with Naomi Truan), AILA2023, Lyon, France |
| 06/16 | Contemporary Jewish Linguistic Repertoires, Sociolinguistics Symposium 21, Murcia, Spain |
Publications
Jahns, Esther (2025): Perception and interpretation of linguistic practices of Jewish speakers in contemporary Berlin. Osnabrück Contributions to Language Theory 105. https://doi. org/10.17192/obst.2025.105
Jahns, Esther (2025): "That's totally cool to say then, so machanot!" - Revealing speakers' justifications for linguistic choices. In: Wagner, Susanne & Stange-Hundsdörfer, Ulrike (eds.): (Dia)lects in the 21st century: Selected papers from Methods in Dialectology XVII (Mainz, 2022). Berlin: Language Science Press, Language Variation Series. 10.5281/zenodo.14925847
Feldhaus, Michael and Hüllbrock, Nadine and Jahns, Esther and Kleinschmidt-Schinke, Katrin and Meier, Sarah (2025): Participation through digitalisation, language awareness and lifeworld orientation - working paper on participation in the participate@UOL project. University of Oldenburg. urn :nbn:de:gbv:715-oops-59602
Jahns, Esther (2024): Diglossic translanguaging - The multilingual repertoire of German-speaking Jews. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111322674
Jahns, Esther (2024): "Das hebräische Wort ist natürlich moderner" -Verwendung mehrsprachiger Ressourcen zur discursiven Aushandlung säkularer und religiöser Identitäten. In: Anusiewicz-Baer, Sandra, Hild, Christian & Abualwafa Mohammed (eds.): Religious Education in Transfer. Mediation between religions, languages and cultures RKBG IV. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
Jahns, Esther (2024): Academic register anxiety? - How language ideologies influence university students' oral participation. European Journal of Applied Linguistics. vol. 12, no. 1, 2024, pp. 212-237 https://doi.org/10.1515/eujal-2024-0003
Truan, Naomi and Jahns, Esther (2024) Introduction: Language ideologies-again? New insights from a flourishing field. European Journal of Applied Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1515/eujal-2024-0021
Jahns, Esther (2023): Positioning in the community - the interplay of language, nationality, and religion for Jewish speakers in Berlin. In: Acke, Hanna, Silvia Bonacchi, Charlotta Seiler Brylla and Ingo Warnke (eds.): Marginality and Centrality in Contradictory Discourse on Nationality and Religion. Discourse Patterns. Berlin: De Gruyter. 10.1515/9783111039633-005
Jahns, Esther (2022-today): Judeo-German Dictionary. Los Angeles: Jewish Language Project. https://jdw.jewish-languages.org/
Wiese, Heike; Alexiadou, Artemis; Allen, Shanley; Bunk, Oliver; Gagarina, Natalia;
Iefremenko, Kateryna; Jahns, Esther; Klotz, Martin; Krause, Thomas; Labrenz, Annika; Lüdeling, Anke; Martynova, Maria; Neuhaus, Katrin; Pashkova, Tatiana; Rizou, Vicky; Rosemarie, Tracy; Schroeder, Christoph; Szucsich, Luka; Tsehaye, Wintai; Zerbian, Sabine, & Zuban, Yulia (2019). RUEG Corpus (Version 0.3.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3236069