Even as certain Canadian Mennonite writers objectify (and so appear to threaten, and even subvert) the conventions and rituals that sustain the Mennonites' centuries-old identity as "a people apart," many of them employ linguistic devices that function to endorse and support the Mennonites' exclusivistic culture -- characterized by the affirmation of the insider and suspicion of the outsider. Indeed, through the persistent use of a linguistic discourse that often only "insiders" can understand -- by their use, that is, of mother tongue (German and Low German) -- these writers maintain, and perhaps even extend, the barriers that separate the Mennonites' minority culture from the contemporary social order.
