DiÖ. 2021a. PP02: Variation und Dialektwandel in Österreich (in real und apparent time). DiÖ-Online, https://www.dioe.at/projekte/task-cluster-b-variation/pp02 ['Variation and dialect change in Austria (in real and apparent time)']
DiÖ. 2021b. PP03: Sprachrepertoires und Varietätenspektren. DiÖ-Online, https://www.dioe.at/projekte/task-cluster-b-variation/pp03. ['Language repertoires and variety spectrums. DiÖ-Online']
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Entringer, Nathalie, Peter Gilles, Sara Martin & Christoph Purschke. 2021. Schnëssen. Surveying language dynamics in Luxembourgish with a mobile research app. Linguistics Vanguard 7(s1). 20190031.
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Hilton, Nanna H. 2021. Stimmen: A citizen science approach to minority language sociolinguistics. Linguistics Vanguard 7(s1). 20190017.
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Leemann, Adrian, Marie-José Kolly, Jean-Philippe Goldman, Volker Dellwo, Ingrid Hove, Ibrahim Almajai, Sarah Grimm & Sylvain Robert. 2015. Voice Äpp: A mobile app for crowdsourcing Swiss German dialect data. Interspeech 2015. 2804–2808.
Möller, Robert & Stephan Elspaß. 2015. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache (AdA). In Roland Kehrein, Alfred Lameli & Stefan Rabanus (eds.), Regionale Variation des Deutschen: Projekte und Perspektiven, 519–539. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. ['Atlas of everyday German (AdA). In Roland Kehrein, Alfred Lameli & Stefan Rabanus (eds.), Regional variation of German: projects and perspectives']
Pheiff, Jeffrey & Simon Kasper. 2020. Die Erhebung der regionalsprachlichen Syntax des Deutschen: horizontal, indirekt, vertikal und online. Niederdeutsches Wort 60. 34–87. ['The survey of the regional syntax of German: horizontal, indirect, vertical and online']
Abstract –Variational linguistic studies that focus on larger areas are usually confronted with the problem that they are not very reliable with respect to individual localities, since the number of respondents is usually relatively small compared to the respective number of inhabitants. This can be compensated by embedding the data in a larger geographic context, as Möller & Elspaß put it for the Atlas der deutschen Alltagssprache: „Es kann jedoch auf diesem Weg ohnehin nicht angestrebt werden, sichere Auskünfte über die Variation an jedem einzelnen Ortspunkt geben zu können. Um ein Bild vom Gebrauch in einem Gebiet zu gewinnen, müssen vielmehr immer die Daten für die benachbarten Punkte mit betrachtet werden.“ (Möller & Elspaß 2015: 521 f.) Thus, the cumulative evidence of the horizontal dimension can partially compensate for the low reliability of the vertical dimension. However, if the focus is on an apparent-time analysis of individual localities, such studies are certainly limited.
On the other hand, studies that aim to do just that, and therefore target multiple recordings per location with fixed sociodemographic variables, tend to be geographically wide-meshed, so that geolinguistic inferences for a larger area can only be drawn in less detail (cf. e.g. DiÖ 2021a, DiÖ 2021b).
The question, then, is what data aggregation options are available to represent the linguistic reality of a place as well as possible while achieving a narrower geographic spread of place points. It looks like apps can do just that. Well advertised, this can provide large amounts of data from a dense network of localities in a short time. However, limitations with respect to age groups in their mid-50s and older must be accepted here (see e.g. Entringer et al. 2021, Hasse et al. 2021, Hilton 2021, Leemann et al. 2015, Leemann et al. 2018, Pheiff & Kasper 2020).
In this paper, a pilot study for Tyrol is presented, which tries to link these two dimensions in the best possible way: Similar to the fire departments, the 301 brass bands in Tyrol (279 municipalities) are an integral part of local structures and are therefore largely supported – especially in rural areas – by people whose self-image is shaped by these structures and who have their center of life in this place. On average, about 3 percent of the inhabitants of a village are members of the respective local music band. And the members belong to the most diverse social groups (which the brass band association also points out in an image campaign where it says: “… dass es in einem Musikverein egal ist, wie alt man ist, welches Geschlecht man hat oder welchen Beruf man ausübt“ ['... that in a local brass band it doesn't matter how old you are, what gender you are or what profession you have']). This suggests: The communities with their different social realities are represented here in miniature – an ideal playground for (variational) linguistic studies. Moreover, their family and friendship ties within the bands may also encourage more older members to participate in an online questionnaire provided by the web tool WikiSpeech (cf. Draxler & Jänsch 2008), which consists of 40 (modernized) Wenker sentences to be translated into dialect. In the paper, first results will be presented and the method will be critically reflected.