Bilingual language use in the family environment

There are various studies investigating the speech community of people of German descent from Russia (Russlanddeutsche) and their language use. In my data, I find various language contact phenomena, most remarkably code-switching. I examine how the Russlanddeutsche alter their speech according to its possible functions in discourse. Thus, my qualitative study focuses on the morpho-syntactic and interactional linguistic analyses of spoken data in natural contexts and situations. In order to thoroughly answer the complex question ‘How do speakers use the languages available to them?’ I have taken the following socio-cultural factors into account: the sociolinguistic aspects of the interlocutors taken from their biographies, especially information about the preferred language of the speakers etc.