2022-04-12, 14:30–15:00 (Europe/Vienna), Room 6
In the Bavarian-speaking part of Austria, one finds a lively dialect landscape that allows for gliding between the poles of dialect and standard German (Ammon 2003; Wiesinger 2014). Thus, before the turn of the millennium, 95% of the inhabitants reported using dialect or colloquial language in their everyday life (Steinegger 1998). A more recent study (Ender/Kaiser 2009) also came to comparable results. The language varieties used in every-day life are not evaluated neutrally, but are subject to certain attitudinal patterns (Bellamy 2012; Moosmüller 1990; Soukup 2009; Vergeiner et al. 2019): dialect speakers are assessed as cozy but less educated, standard speakers as more competent but less friendly. These attitudes sometimes lead to social discrimination (Elspaß 2005; Grogger/Steinmayr/Winter 2020).
Schools seem to play a significant role in the acquisition of these attitudes (Kaiser/Kasberger 2021; Kasberger/Kaiser 2019; Sieber/Sitta 1994), yet in this context (and beyond), it would be quite possible to consider the different varieties within a society as potential in the language teaching context (Kaiser/Ender 2020). However, programs follow-ing a critical awareness approach (Bucholtz et al. 2014; Siegel 2006) seek to promote the reflection about language attitudes and to improve language awareness in the school con-text. Such a program dedicated to the reduction of stereotypes and the promotion of equal opportunities has not yet been undertaken in the German-speaking world to our knowledge.
The two projects Mitn Redn kemman d'Leit z'somm (InterRed) and Sprachliche Vielfalt ver-stehen, wertschätzen und ausbauen (SpraViVe) at the University of Salzburg have addressed this research gap. Materials for school levels 4, 6 and 10 were developed in the form of 10 teaching units, which are introduced into German lessons in 18 partner schools to reduce stereotypical presuppositions and to raise language awareness. With the help of a pre-posttest study with control groups, the intervention will be scientifically monitored in the winter semester of 2021/22. In addition to questions on socio-economic background, the questionnaire contains direct attitude questions (semantic difference scales), matched-guise audio recordings (Likert scales), questions on social network and ambiguity tolerance, which are collected fully randomized from the students via LimeSurvey.
This paper focuses on the attitudinal change towards a more neutral evaluation of the varie-ties "Dialekt" and "Hochdeutsch" among 10th grade students (n=approx. 240) and 6th grade students (n=approx. 320) as collected through the matched-guise tasks. The direct variables are the attitudinal ratings of teachers and students in the matched-guise blocks, which were recorded in 8 guises (16 language samples) by different speakers of the survey. The data will be calculated in a multilevel model in order to visualize and take into account random effects such as school or class clustering. The preliminary results will shed light on attitudi-nal changes of students on the dimensions of "correctness" and "pleasantness" (Preston 2017), thereby demonstrating the efficacy of the intervention.
Ammon, Ulrich. 2003. Dialektschwund, Dialekt-Standard-Kontinuum, Diglossie. Drei Typen des Verhältnisses Dialekt – Standardvarietät im deutschen Sprachgebiet. In Jannis Androutsopoulos & Evelyn Ziegler (eds.), "Standardfragen". Soziolinguistische Perspektiven auf Sprachgeschichte, Sprachkontakt und Sprachvariation, 163-171. (Variolingua. Nonstandard – Standard – Substandard 18). Frankfurt a. M. u.a.: Peter Lang.
Bellamy, John. 2012. Language Attitudes in England and Austria. A Sociolinguistic Investigation into Perceptions of High and Low-Prestige Varieties in Manchester and Vienna. (Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik – Beihefte 151). Stuttgart: Steiner.
Bucholtz, Mary et al. 2014. Sociolinguistic Justice in the Schools: Student Researchers as Linguistic Experts. Language and Linguistics Compass 8(4). 144-157.
Elspaß, Stephan. 2005. Zum sprachpolitischen Umgang mit regionaler Variation der Standardsprache in der pluralistischen Sprachgesellschaft. In Jörg Kilian (ed.), Sprache und Politik. Deutsch im demokratischen Staat, 294-313. (Duden Thema Deutsch 6). Mannheim: Dudenverlag.
Ender, Andrea & Irmtraud Kaiser. 2009. Zum Stellenwert von Dialekt und Standard im österreichischen und Schweizer Alltag – Ergebnisse einer Umfrage. Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 37(2), 266-295.
Grogger, Jeff, Andreas Steinmayr & Joachim Winter. 2020. The wage penalty of regional accents. NBER Working Paper Series (Working Paper 26719).
Kaiser, Irmtraud & Andrea Ender. 2020. Innere Mehrsprachigkeit als Potential für den Deutschunterricht. In Miriam Langlotz (ed.), Grammatikdidaktik – theoretische und empirische Zugänge zu sprachlicher Heterogenität, 237-271. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren.
Kaiser, Irmtraud & Gudrun Kasberger. 2021. Children's sociolinguistic preferences: the acquisition of language attitudes within the Austrian standard-dialect-continuum. In Jean-Pierre Chevrot, Anna Ghimenton & Aurélie Nardy (eds.), Sociolinguistic variation and language acquisition across the lifespan, 130-160. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kasberger, Gudrun & Irmtraud Kaiser. 2019. "I red normal" – eine Untersuchung der varietätenspezifischen Sprachbewusstheit und -bewertung von österreichischen Kindern. In Lars Bülow, Ann K. Fischer & Kristina Herbert (eds.), Dimensions of Linguistic Space: Variation – Multilingualism – Conceptualisations. Dimensionen sprachlichen Raums: Variation – Mehrsprachigkeit – Konzeptualisierung, 319-340. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang.
Moosmüller, Sylvia. 1990. Einschätzung von Sprachvarietäten in Österreich. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 83. 105-120.
Preston, Dennis R. 2017. The cognitive foundations of language regard. Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 53(1). 17-42.
Sieber, Peter & Horst Sitta. 1994. Die Rolle der Schule beim Aufbau von Einstellungen zu Dialekt und Standardsprache. In Harald Burger & Annelies Häcki Buhofer (eds.), Spracherwerb im Spannungsfeld von Dialekt und Hochsprache, 199-213. (Züricher germanistische Studien 38). Bern u.a.: Peter Lang.
Siegel, Jeff. 2006. Language ideologies and the education of speakers of marginalized language varieties: Adopting a critical awareness approach. Linguistics and Education 17(2). 157-174.
Soukup, Barbara. 2009. Dialect use as interaction strategy: a sociolinguistic study of contextualization, speech perception, and language attitudes in Austria. Wien: Braumüller.
Vergeiner, Philip C. et al. 2019. Sprachnormvorstellungen in sekundären und tertiären Bildungseinrichtungen in Österreich. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 86(3). 284-330, https://doi.org/10.25162/ZDL-2019-0011. (16 September, 2021.)
Wiesinger, Peter. 2014. Zur Interaktion von Dialekt und Standardsprache in Österreich. In Peter Wiesinger (ed.), Das österreichische Deutsch in Gegenwart und Geschichte, 101-112. (Austria: Forschung und Wissenschaft – Literatur und Sprachwissenschaft 2). Wien: Lit-Verlag.
2014-2018 German studies education;
2018: Study assistant;
2018-2019: Project staff "Variantengrammatik des Deutschen";
2019-now: Project staff "Sprachliche Vielfalt verstehen" & "InterRed";
2021: Winner of "Salzburger Regionalitätspreis 2021" for the project "InterRed"