Austrian and Swiss variants in fiction: An analysis of 24 novels and insights from authors and editors

References –
  • Ammon, Ulrich. 1995. Die deutsche Sprache in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz: Das Problem der nationalen Varietäten. Berlin & New York: de Gruyter.
  • Ammon, Ulrich, Hans Bickel & Alexandra N. Lenz (eds.). 2016. Variantenwörterbuch des Deutschen: Die Standardsprache in Österreich, der Schweiz, Deutschland, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Ostbelgien und Südtirol sowie Rumänien, Namibia und Mennonitensiedlungen, 2nd edn. Berlin & Boston: de Gruyter.
  • Bickel, Hans & Christoph Landolt. 2018. Duden Schweizerhochdeutsch: Wörterbuch der Standardsprache in der deutschen Schweiz, 2nd edn. Berlin: Dudenverlag.
  • Curchod, Claude. 2014. Üblichkeiten oder Besonderheiten? - Helvetismen in ausgewählten Romanen Deutschschweizer Autoren. Unveröffentlichte Lizenziatsarbeit. Universität Zürich.
  • Dürscheid, Christa, Stephan Elspaß & Arne Ziegler (eds.). 2018. Variantengrammatik des Standarddeutschen. Ein Online-Nachschlagewerk. Verfasst von einem Autorenteam unter der Leitung von Christa Dürscheid, Stephan Elspaß und Arne Ziegler. Open-Access-Publikation http://mediawiki.ids-mannheim.de/VarGra/index.php/Start. (30 October, 2023.)
  • Ebner, Jakob. 2019. Duden Österreichisches Deutsch: Wörterbuch der Gegenwartssprache in Österreich, 5th edn. Berlin: Dudenverlag.
  • Hägi, Sara. 2000. Helvetismen im Werk Deutschschweizer Schriftstellerinnen/Schriftsteller der Gegenwart: Unveröffentlichte Examensarbeit. Universität zu Köln.
  • Muhr, Rudolf. 1997. Die österreichische Literatursprache - Wie entstehen die Normen einer plurizentrischen Standardsprache?: Ergebnisse einer AutorInnenbefragung. In Rudolf Muhr & Richard Schrodt (eds.), Österreichisches Deutsch und andere nationale Varietäten plurizentrischer Sprachen in Europa: Empirische Analysen (Materialien und Handbücher zum österreichischen Deutsch und zu Deutsch als Fremdsprache 3), 88–116. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.
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 Abstract –

The pluricentricity or pluriareality of the German language has been well-documented in the field of linguistics, as exemplified by the “Variantenwörterbuch des Deutschen” (Dictionary of lexical variation in German) and the “Variantengrammatik des Standarddeutschen” (Regional variation in the grammar of Standard German). Additionally, the two dictionaries “Duden Österreichisches Deutsch” (Duden Austrian German) and “Duden Schweizerhochdeutsch” (Duden Swiss High German) have contributed to raising awareness of the differences between the German standard varieties. According to the premise of current lexicography, positing that newspaper texts represent the written standard of the German language (cf. Ammon et al. 2016: XIV), recent editions of these reference works rely predominantly on extensive newspaper corpora. Consequently, this has resulted in relatively limited attention towards diatopic variation in fiction.
However, Ammon already pointed out in his foundational work on the pluricentricity of the German language that particular attention should be given to regional variants in literary works, as editors occasionally make adjustments to Austrian and Swiss authors' texts to align with common German or even German German (cf. Ammon 1995: 467–474). Subsequent studies, such as Hägi (2000) and Curchod (2014) on Helvetisms, as well as Muhr (1997) and Wiesinger (2014) focusing on Austriacisms, have further explored this topic. Building upon the findings of these works on the one hand, and insights from the “Variantenwörterbuch” and the “Variantengrammatik” on the other, I devised two strategies to investigate the occurrence of diatopic variants in selected works of contemporary literature. In this contribution, I aim to present the combination of quantitative data-driven and qualitative-hermeneutical methods, which allow for both internal and external perspectives.
For the quantitative analysis, I compiled a corpus containing 12 novels each from Austrian and Swiss authors, which then were morpho-syntactically annotated. In this corpus, I extracted lexical, grammatical, phraseological, and orthographical variational phenomena as specified in the aforementioned reference works. Calculating the frequencies of these identified variants in each work facilitated comparisons between the Austrian and Swiss sub-corpora in terms of various linguistic aspects. In addition, I conducted detailed, personalised questionnaires based on the findings of the corpus linguistic investigation. These questionnaires were administered to three Austrian and three Swiss authors, as well as editors from 60 different publishing houses. The obtained qualitative insights confirmed the heterogeneous frequency patterns of diatopic variants in fiction, as indicated in the corpus analysis.
In my contribution, I will demonstrate the interweaving of results from both empirical approaches through different scenarios to illustrate the occurrence of Austrian and Swiss variants. The interplay between corpus analysis and the perspectives of authors and editors will shed light on the factors and actors that contribute to the use or avoidance of areal variants. Consequently, it can be deduced whether Germany's dominance over the other centres (cf. Ammon et al. 2016: XLI) still prevails in the publishing industry today, and to what extent the Austrian and Swiss Standard German varieties are respected and appreciated as independent and equal. Finally, the potential that literary texts, as opposed to newspaper texts, offer for variationist linguistic studies will be addressed.

Google Docs for Questions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Pa1oNeIoWuYLeeu09GX7p5ROwbs5ceeGwVa0S95lTUo/edit?usp=drivesdk

For questions, please contact Ms. Rimensberger here: https://www.ds.uzh.ch/apps/cms/pfs/personen.php?detail=848