SPRACHFEHLER ALS LITERARISCHES AUSDRUCKSMITTEL ANA BILIC DAS KLEINE STÜCK VOM GROSSEN HIMMEL This paper elaborates a theme at the interface between linguistics and
literature on the case example of a novel which belongs to the immigrant literature
as part of the contemporary Austrian literature. The Croatian author Ana Bilic
describes in her first novel written in German language Das kleine Stück vom
großen Himmel (The small part of the big sky) published in 2002 the love
relationship between a Croatian unnamed female student and the Austrian student
Ernst which takes place in Vienna. The unusual thing in this novel is the fact that in
numerous sentences and passages the author uses a strange German language
which is characterized by interference mistakes, or to be precise a Croatian-
German language variation which more or less differs grammatically and lexically
from standard German language. In the paper this consciously alienated language
is being investigated concerning the influence of the Croatian mother tongue of the
author, but also concerning common mistakes while learning German language.
The paper also analyses the motivation of Ana Bilic for such in the context of
immigrant literature unusual language use, which is also connected with the plot of
the novel. Thus qualitative as well as quantitative methods of analysis are being
used, whereby the former ones refer to the content and the latter ones to the
frequency of interference mistakes in the book. The interference mistakes belong
on one side to the fictional (text-internal) world and on the other side to the factual
(text-external) level, because they reflect the plot of the book and establish on the
level of content and language a connection between the first-person narrator and
the author, who also had to learn German after her arrival to Vienna. As a result of
this most interference mistakes appear in the first chapters of the novel, which
reflects the first phase in German language learning of the female narrator. Further
on in the novel the quantity of the mistakes decreases parallel to the rising foreign
language abilities of the narrator, which holds true for the less frequent language
acquisition and competence mistakes. The aim of the Ana Bilic is obviously to
show by means of the plot and the language use the mechanisms and the process
of foreign language acquisition, whereby she makes an innovative contribution to
the contemporary German-speaking immigrant literature.

SPRACHFEHLER ALS LITERARISCHES AUSDRUCKSMITTEL ANA BILIC DAS KLEINE STÜCK VOM GROSSEN HIMMEL. -