Code choice and code-switching in Swiss-German internet relay chat rooms

  • In the German-speaking regions of Switzerland, dialect is spoken by all social groups in most communicative situations, Standard German being used only when prescribed. Swiss dialects rarely appeared in written form before the 1980s, apart from the genre of dialect literature. Due to the growing acceptance of informal writing styles in many European languages, dialect is increasingly employed for written personal communication, in particular in computer-mediated communication (CMC). In Swiss Internet Relay Chat (IRC) rooms, varieties of German are used side by side as all chatters have a command of both standard and dialectal varieties. Depending on the channel, the proportion of dialectal contributions can be as high as 90 percent. The choice of a particular variety depends on both individual preference and on the predominant variety used within a specific thread. In this paper I take a quantitative approach to language variation in IRC and demonstrate how such an approach can help embed qualitative research on code-switching in CMC.

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Metadaten
Author:Beat SiebenhaarORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-1151136
URL:http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2006.00289.x
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2006.00289.x
Parent Title (English):Journal of Sociolinguistics
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2006/08/16
Date of first Publication:2002/08/16
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2010/05/04
GND Keyword:Dialektologie; Schweizerdeutsch; Chatten <Kommunikation>
Volume:10.2006
Issue:4
Page Number:26
First Page:481
Last Page:506
Source:http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2006.00289.x ; (in:) Journal of Sociolinguistics 10/4, 2006, S. 481-506
HeBIS-PPN:225408872
Dewey Decimal Classification:4 Sprache / 43 Deutsch, germanische Sprachen allgemein / 430 Germanische Sprachen; Deutsch
Sammlungen:Germanistik / GiNDok
Linguistik
Germanistik / GindokWeimar
Linguistik-Klassifikation:Linguistik-Klassifikation: Dialektologie/Sprachgeografie / Dialectology/Linguistic geography
Licence (German):License LogoDeutsches Urheberrecht