age-related effects; colloquial language; occupational complexity; spatial autocorrelation; variationist sociolinguistics; Language and Linguistics; Education; Linguistics and Language
Abstract :
[en] While dialectal variation is often investigated from a geographical angle, there exists substantial variation both within the community and individual. The aim of the present article is to investigate the extent to which spatial, occupational, and age-related factors are associated with the diversity of linguistic variants reported per informant at a given locality. Drawing on colloquial language data from the Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache 'Atlas of Colloquial German,' we found that informants from southeastern Germany and Austria reported familiarity with more variants. Moreover, we multifactorially operationalize occupational complexity, a variable that can capture the effects of different communicative, technical, and physical skills required in a job (via the Dictionary of Occupational Titles). Bayesian multilevel modeling revealed that informants in occupations involving physical precision work and communicative complexity reported less familiarity with variants, and that younger informants were familiar with a wider range of variants.
Disciplines :
Languages & linguistics
Author, co-author :
Wirtz, Mason A. ; Department of German Language and Literatures, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria
Pickl, Simon; Department of German Language and Literatures, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria
Niehaus, Konstantin; Department of German Language and Literatures, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria
Elspab, Stephan; Department of German Language and Literatures, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria
Möller, Robert ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de langues modernes : linguistique, littérature et traduction > Langue allemande et linguistique synchronique et diachronique de l'allemand et la littérature allemande du Moyen-Age ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Lilith - Liège, Literature, Linguistics
Language :
English
Title :
Spatial, occupational, and age-related effects on reported variation in colloquial German
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