Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1044

Part of Session 181: Folk linguistics and society (Other abstracts in this session)

Second language learners' beliefs and evaluation about standard and dialectal speech and how they shape their language use

Authors: Ender, Andrea
Submitted by: Ender, Andrea (FRIAS Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany)

Sociolinguistic variation is an integral part of everyday life communication. This means that variation is present in the linguistic environment that serves as input to second language learners in a naturalistic context. In the Swiss German context, learners are constantly confronted with the coexistance of two varieties – local dialect(s) and the standard variety – and with variation between these two in everyday communication (Berthele 2004; Werlen 1998). These two varieties are therefore also subject to learners' evaluation. Second language learners hold attitudes towards the need to acquire the second language (Culhane 2004; Gardner 1979, 1985) and the status and importance of language(s) within the indivual "derives in a major way from adopted or learned attitudes" (Baker 1988: 112). Surely what people believe about their language(s) is a very important key to an understanding of their culture and their language use (Niedzielski & Preston 2000, Garrett 2010), and in the case of language learners also their learning process.

This paper presents what immigrants learning 'German' in a mostly untutored situation in the Swiss German speaking part of Switzerland think about the standard and the dialectal varieties. The data originates from structured interviews with the learners and illustrates how the learners categorize the two varieties as ‘easy’ vs ‘hard to learn/speak’, ‘well-' or 'odd-sounding', 'useful' or ‘dispensable' etc. Furthermore, it is examined how the beliefs and evaluations relate to factors such as variation in the first language, length of residence, amount of language instruction and personal and professional networks and eventually differ from or conform to the beliefs and evaluations of the surrounding community. As these insights are supported by results on how they use the two varieties in free speech and in an elicited task, it can be shown how the attitudes determine the process of acquiring one (or both) of the two varieties in a diglossic environment.

References:

Baker, Colin (1988): Key issues in bilingualism and bilingual education. Clevedon [etc.]: Multilingual Matters.

Berthele, Raphael (2004): Vor lauter Linguisten die Sprache nicht mehr sehen – Diglossie und Ideologie in der deutschsprachigen Schweiz. In: Christen, Helen (ed.): Dialekt, Regiolekt und Standardsprache im sozialen und zeitlichen Raum. Vienna: Edition Praesens, 111–136.

Culhane, Stephen F. (2004): An Intercultural Interaction Model: Acculturation Attitudes in Second Language Acquisition. Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 1: 50–61.

Gardner, Robert C. (1979): Social psychological aspects of second language acquisition. In H. Giles & R. St. Clair (eds.), Language and Social Psychology (pp. 287-301). Oxford: Blackwell Press.

Gardner, Robert C. (1985): Social psychology and second language learning: the role of attitude and motivation. London: Edward Arnold Publishing.

Garrett, Peter (2010): Attitudes to Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Niedzielski, Nancy A. & Dennis R. Preston (2000): Folk linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Werlen, Iwar (1998): Mediale Diglossie oder asymmetrische Zweisprachigkeit? Mundart und Hochsprache in der deutschen Schweiz. Babylonia 1: 22–35.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Second language learners' beliefs and evaluation about standard and dialectal speech and how they shape their language use