Linguistik
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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.
Der Beitrag dokumentiert die linguistische Sonderposition, die Bern in der schweizerdeutschen Sprachlandschaft hinsichtlich der soziolinguistischen Varianz einnimmt. Dabei steht nicht die linguistische Analyse der Stadtberner Soziolekte und deren exakte Abgrenzung voneinander im Vordergrund, sondern die Einstellungen, die die Mundartsprecher den ihnen bekannten Varietäten gegenüber äußern. Das Bild, das sich aus den Tondokumenten ergibt, wird ergänzt durch Anekdoten aus dem Umfeld linguistischer Auseinandersetzung mit dem Berndeutschen. Insgesamt zeigt sich, dass die soziolinguistische Trennung nicht mehr so stark ist, wie sie im letzten Jahrhundert beschrieben wurde. Markierte Varietäten der Ober- und der Unterschicht verlieren an Prestige und werden abgebaut.
Sociolinguistic research has shown that attitudes towards linguistic variants can distinguish different speech communities. The importance of attitudes for an explanation of linguistic change was examined and compared to traditional explanations by sociolinguistic and dialectologic variables. Therefore the dialect of Aarau was investigated, a small town situated between the two cities of Bern (80 km in the west) and Zürich (50 km in the east) in the German speaking part of Switzerland. Bern and Zürich both are centres of a larger dialect region, Aarau lies in the contact zone of these two dialects. Phonetic variables of the idiolect of 55 speakers were compared to historical data and related to their attitudes towards the neighbouring dialects. The findings so far show no significant correlation of attitudes and language change, but further research including morphology will refine the results. The inclusion of attitudes to explain linguistic change can complement the understanding of linguistic change, but it can not explain it.