Exploring patterns of perceived regional variation among non-linguists in “Europe’s most homogenized speech community”


References

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Abstract

Late-modern Denmark has been widely described as a particularly linguistically standardized society (for an overview, see, e.g., Kristiansen, 2020). The linguistic situation was not always like that, however, and this change, largely associated with social and societal developments in the 20th century, was both rapid and profound (cf. also Pedersen, 2003). Summarizing the overall lines of the story, Kristiansen (2009: 167) writes that “Denmark entered the 20th century as a ‘normally’ diverse European dialect society and left it, arguably, as Europe’s most homogenized speech community” (our emphasis). The Danish dialects (in the sense of regional varieties, traditionally the vernaculars of the non-mobile, rural population) have been described as losing ground at a particularly fast rate when compared to the situations characterizing other countries in Europe. While dedialectization trends exist in other countries in Europe, the ongoing leveling of regional dialect features is less advanced, on aggregate, than is the case in Denmark (for further discussion, see, e.g., Britain, 2020). However, a comprehensive mapping of the contemporary Danish dialect/variety landscape does not currently exist. Addressing this research gap, this study explores patterns of perceived regional variation among non-linguists in present-day Denmark, adopting a perceptual dialectology approach (for an overview, see Preston, 2018). We present the results of a draw-a-map experiment (cf. Preston, 1982 et seq.) conducted at four survey locations – the cities of Aalborg, Aarhus, Copenhagen, and Odense – involving university students as respondents. We present a series of mental map visualizations based on GIS analysis of the aggregated draw-a-map data (cf. Montgomery & Stoeckle, 2013; Montgomery, 2022) and examine attitudinal and metalinguistic, descriptive data (cf., e.g., Kristiansen, 2009; Preston, 2018) provided by the respondents. The results reveal a tendency for the Danish respondents to identify and recognize the same (perceived) varieties as the most perceptually salient across the different survey locations; yet, we also note variation in terms of respondents’ mental maps, which indicates that the sociodialectological landscape is characterized by more heterogeneity than generally reported in previous sociolinguistic research. We compare our results with findings from traditional dialect research (e.g., Rasmussen et al., 2000 ff.), thus highlighting some of the ways in which our findings contribute to a better understanding of sociolinguistic variation and change in late-modern Denmark.