Münster’s Sociolect Masematte – from Secret Language to Common Language? Sophia Kleinhage local identity Geheimsprache marketing Sondersprache Marketing linguistic landscape secret language sociolect Linguistic Landscape Lokalidentität Münster’s sociolect Masematte is a Rotwelsch dialect that was spoken in four districts of the city until the end of World War II. Over a long period of time Masematte was considered almost forgotten but in the recent past it has become more and more present in Münster’s linguistic landscape, as shown in the first analysis of this paper. It becomes evident that Masematte is nearly exclusively used for marketing purposes. As a second step, +nbsp;we analyze which functions Masematte has or aims to have as a PR strategy. The basis for this analysis is data from semi-structured interviews with representatives of selected enterprises that use Masematte in their marketing. It becomes apparent that Masematte is particularly used to express local identity and evoke such among the target group. At the same time, Masematte obviously also serves as a kind of unique selling point of the enterprises. Philipps-Universität Marburg Marburg Deutschhausstraße 9, 35037 Marburg 2024 2024-09-05 2024-09-05 Text article urn:nbn:de:hebis:04-0010-2024-324-87432 ger 3196261-0 1 1 (2024) 1 https://journals.uni-marburg.de/regiolingua/article/download/8743/8444 10.17192/regiolingua.2024.1.1.8743 https://journals.uni-marburg.de/0010/2024/324/8743 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0