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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 1341

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

Folks’ perceptions of language variation and their real world. Evidence from online studies

Authors: Elspaß, Stephan Johannes (1); Möller, Robert (2)
Submitted by: Elspaß, Stephan Johannes (Universität Augsburg, Germany)

The paper presents methods and results of a study in perceptual dialectology (PD) conducted for the “Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache (AdA)” (‘Atlas of Colloquial German’, Elspaß & Möller 2003ff.; cf. also Elspaß 2007, Möller & Elspaß 2008), compared with results from various surveys for this atlas on lexical, grammatical and phonological variation. The AdA is based on internet surveys of contemporary colloquial German which is spoken particularly by the younger urban generation of the German speaking countries. The aim of the PD study was to elicit a) lay peoples’ notions on the localization and range of their own regional variety and on its relation to other regional varieties of German and b) the terms for the geographical area to which they attribute their own variety. For an elicitation of the mental representation of regional varieties, the study successfully adopted the use of online questionnaires, which are generally employed for the “Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache”. Thus, rather than using the traditional method of hand-drawn maps (e.g. Preston 1999; Anders 2008; Lameli, Purschke & Kehrein 2008), informants were asked to click a number of given place names in a questionnaire to mark places where regional varieties ‘similar’ to their own varieties are spoken or to mark the degree to which other varieties differ from their own varieties. The resulting maps display shades of linguistic similarities in relation to individual locations and can also be combined to give a synopsis of thousands of informants’ linguistic view of regional differences in the German speaking world.

 

References:

 

Anders, Christina (2008): Mental Maps linguistischer Laien zum Obersächsischen. In: Helen Christen & Evelyn Ziegler (eds.). Sprechen, Schreiben, Hören. Zur Produktion und Perzeption von Dialekt und Standardsprache zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts. Wien: Praesens. 203–229.

Elspaß, Stephan (2007): Variation and Change in Colloquial (Standard) German – The Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache (AdA) Project. In: Christian Fandrych & Reinier Salverda (eds.): Standard, Variation and Language Change in Germanic Languages. Tübingen: Narr. 201–216.

Elspaß, Stephan & Robert Möller (2003ff.): Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache (AdA). URL: www.atlas-alltagssprache.de.

Lameli, Alfred, Christoph Purschke & Roland Kehrein (2008): Stimulus und Kognition. Zur Aktivierung mentaler Raumbilder. Linguistik online 35/3, 55–86. [URL: http://www.linguistik-online.de/35_08/lameliEtAl.pdf.]

Möller, Robert & Stephan Elspaß (2008): Erhebung dialektgeographischer Daten per Internet: ein Atlasprojekt zur deutschen Alltagssprache. In: Elspaß, Stephan & Werner König (eds.): Sprach­geographie digital. Die neue Generation der Sprachatlanten. Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Olms. (Germanistische Linguistik 190–191), 115–132.

Preston, Dennis R. (2011): Methods in (applied) folk linguistics: Getting into the minds of the fol. AILA Review 24, 15–39.