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Research on regional linguistic variation typically involves data collection in the field. This process itself can take up several months if not years. In the present study we demonstrate how we can use web interactives in collaboration with media outlets for a fast gathering of regional, sociolinguistic data. In collaboration with SPIEGEL ONLINE and Tagesanzeiger, we developed a web interactive that predicts users' regional backgrounds from within German-speaking Europe. More than 1.9M people have participated in the interactive, more than 770K users have provided metadata. Said metadata allowed us to capture regional variation in language as of today, which we can compare to historical survey data-enabling us to track the evolution of German in Europe over the past 40 years. We report on regional levelling of lexical variants, a process which appears to be particularly prevalent in the northern parts of German-speaking Europe. We further found an effect of (former) national and regional borders on language use. This innovative paradigm allows us to collect sociolinguistic data of an unprecedented scale-at the same time it presents significant challenges, both of which-benefits and challenges-will be discussed in this contribution.

What almost all accounts of standardisation histories have in common is a focus on printed, formal or literary texts from writing elites. While Haugen identified the written form of a language as “a significant and probably crucial requirement for a standard language” (Haugen in Am Anthropol 68:922–935, 1966a ; Haugen, in: Bright (ed) Sociolinguistics, The Hague: Mouton, 1966b : 929; cf. also Haugen, in: Asher (ed) The encyclopedia of language and linguistics, Pergamon, Oxford, 1994 : 4340), and while print certainly constitutes an important instrument for the dissemination of codified norms, it remains to be established what role hand-written texts played in standardisation processes. In nineteenth-century Europe, mass-literacy, which is generally seen as a precondition of standardisation processes, was only possible because large parts (or even the majority) of the population learnt to write (and read) hand-written texts. In the vast volume of private texts that were produced during the various wars and emigration waves of the nineteenth century, not only codified norms, but also (regional) norms of usage were widely transmitted. Private letters and diaries, in particular, have proved to be a valuable text source for the investigation of such norms and their diffusion (cf. Elspaß, in: Hernández-Campoy, Conde-Silvestre (eds) The handbook of historical sociolinguistics. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, 2012 ). With examples from a corpus of German emigrant letters, the present contribution will try to demonstrate that grammatical norms of usage which were literally not visible in printed texts at the time, but which are now considered standard, formed part of the standardisation process of German.

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.

The present contribution addresses the phenomenon of grammatical change using a historical sociolinguistic approach, which is based on the principle that systematic language change can only be described and explained by accounting for sociopragmatic and variational factors of language use. The approach is illustrated by an empirical investigation of the change of selected morphological and syntactic features in (Middle) New High German, using Labov’s distinction between ‘language change from above’ and ‘language change from below’ as a starting point of analysis. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate that the historical sociolinguistic approach not only complements other methods of historical linguistics, but may also lead to results and findings that could perhaps not be achieved by other methodological approaches. Moreover, it is considered central to the description and explanation of the development of language varieties in periods of language standardisation.

Focusing on the sociolinguistic history of Germanic languages, the current volume challenges the traditional teleological approach of language historiography. The 30 contributions present alternative histories of ten 'big' as well as 'small' Germanic languages and varieties in the last 300 years. Topics covered in this book include language variation and change and the politics of language contact and choice, seen against the background of standardization processes of written and oral text genres and from the viewpoint of larger sections of the population.

This paper aims to identify and analyze geographical patterns of (morpho)syntactic variation in traditional Austrian dialects using non-aggregative dialectometric methods (factor analysis). Based on a comprehensive dialect corpus obtained by direct dialect interviews including 163 speakers from 40 locations throughout Austria, our analyses of 79 variants of 30 (morpho)syntactic variables not only show geographical patterns in Austria’s dialects, but also address the linguistic basis of the geographical structures revealed. In particular, the results show that variables at the morphology–syntax interface contribute most to geographical structuring. We argue that this finding is related to structural conditions of these variables and the historical development of the respective variants.

This article examines perceptions of and attitudes towards the use of non-German languages in Austrian schools from the perspective of students and teachers. By differentiating between teachers, students with exclusively German L1 and students with a non-German L1, different perspectives on code-switching in group work situations are examined. For this purpose, data was collected via online questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions between students. The results show that switching to another language in group work settings is perceived as inappropriate, in particular by those students who have no competence in a language other than German. Moreover, they associate switching with poorer performance in class and interpret the use of a language other than German in class to be antagonistic or talking behind the back of people who do not speak that language (“gossiping”). In contrast, – and contrary to the assumption that they evaluate language switches in the classroom more negatively due to stricter normative views – teachers show a consistently more positive perception of code switching behaviour and its multilingual speakers. It can be concluded from the findings that multilingualism in the school context and its overall benefits should not only be addressed in teacher training, but that it would also be useful to raise students’ awareness of multilingual practices.

The present contribution addresses the phenomenon of grammatical change using a historical sociolinguistic approach, which is based on the principle that systematic language change can only be described and explained by accounting for sociopragmatic and variational factors of language use. The approach is illustrated by an empirical investigation of the change of selected morphological and syntactic features in (Middle) New High German, using Labov’s distinction between ‘language change from above’ and ‘language change from below’ as a starting point of analysis. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate that the historical sociolinguistic approach not only complements other methods of historical linguistics, but may also lead to results and findings that could perhaps not be achieved by other methodological approaches. Moreover, it is considered central to the description and explanation of the development of language varieties in periods of language standardisation.

The Special Research Area (SFB) “German in Austria (DiÖ). Variation – Contact – Perception” is a major humanities project (FWF F060) funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), in which, for the first time, six institutes based at three universities (Graz, Salzburg, and Vienna) and at the Austrian Academy of Sciences are jointly involved in researching and documenting German in Austria. In nine sub-projects, they are dedicated to researching variation and change.

While previous dialectometric analyses of colloquial German have explored the spatial distribution of variants in order to sketch a picture of how German-speaking areas are linguistically structured, there have been no investigations into the extent to which reported everyday language use converges to or diverges from the standard language. What is more, dialectological perspectives have largely neglected the role of social factors such as age, gender, and mobility on patterns of language variation in colloquial German in lieu of strictly examining geography as a predictor for differences in the spatial distribution of variation in everyday language use. In this paper, we attempt to reconcile dialectometric and sociolinguistic perspectives by examining, in an integrative manner, the influence of social and spatial variables in predicting differences in patterns of variation in colloquial German. Specifically, we analyze ten phonetic-phonological variables from the Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache (‘Atlas of Colloquial German’) and address the question of where informant reports of colloquial German resemble (non-)standard language. To do so, we employ generalized additive mixed-effects models (GAMMs), which can simultaneously detect underlying (non-)linear aggregate geographical patterns and identify the relative importance of social predictors. Our results indicate that geography is the strongest predictor of differences in colloquial German, and that the interaction between age and gender most notably affects the number of (non-)standard variants informants report for their respective locality. Methodological implications for applying GAMMs to the investigation of social and spatial variation are discussed.