“The breakfast for real toilers”: Commodification practices and the enregisterment of local language in the post‐industrial Ruhr Area

Pecht, Nantke

Abstract

This article examines how commodification practices of Ruhrdeutsch, a formerly stigmatized variety, contribute to local language awareness and enregisterment. Following the decline of the Ruhr Area's heavy industry and the shift from the secondary to the tertiary economic sector, companies have discovered the value of local marketing strategies to create “authentic” products. Focusing on the gastronomic sector, I discuss how the region's working-class image is co-constructed by producers of commodified items and how these serve to reinforce a “newly emerging” regional identity. Based on linguistic-ethnographic fieldwork in a catering company and a bakery, I argue that authenticity is achieved through a combination of imagery and regiolect features, and that selected features have acquired emblematic status.