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Social and cognitive perspectives need to be accounted for in any variationist theory because language is not just a private concern, but moreover the key for our social life. We argue that the notion REPRESENTATION is a key concept to mediate the individual and the social level and therefore should be integrated into variationist linguistic theory.
The notion REPRESENTATION has been used for variationist linguistic theory, but remains somewhat fuzzy (e.g. Anders et al., 2010; Krefeld & Pustka, forthcoming; Lameli et al., 2008; Purschke, 2011). Different understandings have been coexisting in Europe-based Romance and German Dialectology and Perceptual Dialectology formalised in the US (e.g. Preston, 2018). Within these approaches, REPRESENTATION has rarely been delineated from or related to similar notions such as conceptualisation, mental image, perceptual state or representation in a technical or biopsychological sense (e.g. in reference to language models or brain structure).
In this paper, we elaborate our social constructivist understanding of REPRESENTATION as process of an individual interacting with the surrounding world (cf. Berger & Luckmann, 1967). This interaction can be described as resonance relationship (Rosa, 2016). We understand representations as results from predictive, perceptual and evaluative processes (Hohwy, 2013; Clark, 2016). They are mental entities with a “Gehalt” and they are intentional respectively directed (cf. Brentano, 1874).
Although the language worlds diverge in complex ways, it is plausible that there is a common ground how speakers represent linguistic variation. Relying on two available studies from different language families and cultural backgrounds, we focus on the example of German and Hebrew. Thus, we provide answers to our overarching research question: How can the notion of REPRESENTATION facilitate cross-linguistic analyses of variation? Fundamentally, we provide a systematic overview of REPRESENTATION and related processes in variationist frameworks and cognitive sociolinguistics. Then, we argue that a systematic operationalisation of REPRESENTATION is necessary and promising for any cross-linguistic analysis of speakers’ representations of linguistic variation.
As empirical basis, we compare two interview corpora (German and Hebrew; for a detailed description see Hoffmeister, 2021 and Striedl, 2022) that we collected independently, but with similar methods and research aims. Starting with qualitative content analysis, we develop analytical codes that enable us to reconstruct speakers’ representations. There is common ground in how speakers represent language cross-linguistically, even though their social worlds and linguistic ecosystems differ considerably. Most German and Hebrew speaking participants relied on concepts such as correctness, prestige, aesthetics, mediality (oral vs. written), communicative utility and identity indication for their classifications.
By operationalising the key concept of REPRESENTATION for cross-linguistic studies on language variation, we provide tools to bridge disciplinary boundaries between different philologies (i.e. German and Hebrew) and enhance variationist linguistic theory with a typological perspective that builds on the tenets of cognitive sociolinguistics (cf. Bisang, 2008; Kristiansen, 2008).