As a proof of concept, this paper marries construction grammar (CxG) with the third wave of variation study, under the auspices of cognitive sociolinguistics. The CxG argument that linguistic knowledge commonly takes the form of constructions is extended to (socio)linguistic knowledge manifest in speaker design (strategic use of variation for interactional purposes). Two sociolinguistic constructions in Austrian German serve as showcase: (1) the antagonistic L-quote construction and (2) the antagonistic L-interjection construction. In (1), interactants’ dialectal quotes negatively other-position a quotee; in (2), dialectal interjections denigrate an opponent. Discourse data confirm these patterns as systematic, societally entrenched, and widespread, providing the basis for arguing their constructionality. Cognitive sociolinguistics is ideally poised to take on further exploration of the interplay of individual and social cognition implicated.

AbstractThis article addresses the unresolved issue of systematic survey area selection for large-scale quantitative Linguistic Landscape (LL) studies. It presents a strategy of ‘hypothesis-driven stratified sampling’ whereby survey areas are picked out in a nested, multi-step process on the basis of the configuration of local LL audiences (regarding age, multilingualism, and tourism) and ambient activity types (commercial vs. residential). The rationale for this strategy is drawn from variationist sociolinguistics; and the undertaking is accordingly cast as ‘Variationist Linguistic Landscape Study (VaLLS)’. The details of the design are showcased and implications discussed in the context of the large-scale project ‘ELLViA – English in the Linguistic Landscape of Vienna, Austria’. More generally, it is shown how the application of state-of-the-art variationist principles and methodology to quantitative LL research significantly enhances the latter’s scientific rigor, which has been a major point of criticism.

The German language area is characterised by a range of different dialects. The fundamental division into the Low, Middle, and Upper German area (see Figure 1) is based on a phonological process called the Second Consonant Shift (Grimm's Law) (Barbour and Stevenson 1998: 85ff.). This classification will also serve as the starting point for this chapter. For the development of a German standard language as a variety accepted nation-wide, two processes were particularly important, which, according to Mihm (2000), can be called processes of Überschichtung (superimposition of acrolectal strata) (Auer 2005: 28). The first process of Überschichtung falls into the period of Early New High German (approx. 1350–1650) with its new socio-cultural conditions (urban development, foundation of universities, reformation, etc.) – the period where a German written standard is considered to have been founded (Wolff 2004: 103ff.; Ernst 2005: 138ff.). Martin Luther's translation of the Bible into German (between 1522 and 1545) had a great influence on this process. Luther's geographical and linguistic origin in the eastern middle German region close to the Low German area is generally regarded as a favourable condition (Besch 2000: 1717) for him to include both High and Low German features in the translation. Another important factor, both in the process of Überschichtung and for the distribution of Luther's translation, was Gutenberg's invention of the printing press. Between 1522 and 1546 one in five German households owned an edition of Luther's translation (Ernst 2005: 166). The introduction of a written standard led to a situation where ̳a spoken standard came into being which affected many parts of morphology and syntax and some parts of phonology, while other features, particularly in phonology and in the lexicon, remained dialectal‘ (Auer 2005: 28). In the northern parts of Germany the bourgeoisie adopted more High German forms (in the 16th and 17th centuries), which led to the development of a High German (standardised) H-variety with Low German substrate (see the Low German area in Figure 1) and no standardisation process (Stellmacher 1997: 34). In the western and southern areas this led to convergence (Mihm 2000: 2112) and the emergence of regional spoken varieties with a much larger geographical scope than the local dialects. However, these new-emerging varieties were still so regionalised that it makes no sense to talk about a spoken German national standard yet. The second process of Überschichtung took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: A spoken German national standard came into being as an actual Substandard 1 to the written standard, or an Umgangssprache that was available nation-wide alongside the local (geographically bound) dialects (Schmidt 2004: 285ff.). The two most important book publications were Theodor Sieb‘s ̳Deutsche Bühnenaussprache‘ (literally German stage pronunciation) in 1898, which determined a Low German pronunciation of High German, and Konrad Duden‘s Orthographisches Wörterbuch in 1902. Once more the bourgeoisie of northern and central Germany adopted a spoken variety which was closer to the written language and had

Dieser Artikel gibt einen Überblick über die zentralen Methoden und Theorien der Spracheinstellungsforschung sowie ihre aktuell und traditionell häufigsten Anwendungsgebiete. Anschließend an einen Abriss wichtiger Erhebungsverfahren der ‚Mutterdisziplin‘ der sozialpsychologischen Einstellungsforschung werden die verschiedenen Vorgangsweisen der Spracheinstellungsforschung präsentiert, inklusive der lange dominanten Methode der ‚matched-guise technique‘. Im Anschluss daran werden die Verflechtungen der Methodologie mit entsprechenden Theorien und Modellen von (Sprach)einstellungen aufgezeigt und entschlüsselt. Ein kognitiv orientiertes und ein integrativ kognitiv-soziokonstruktionistisches (interaktionistisches) Modell von Spracheinstellungen und den damit verbundenen Äußerungsprozessen werden im Detail vorgestellt. Schließlich werden saliente Anwendungsbereiche der Spracheinstellungsforschung, nämlich in der variationistischen Soziolinguistik, in der Sprachsoziologie und in der angewandten Linguistik, angeführt und exemplarisch illustriert. Ein wichtiges Fazit des Beitrags ist, dass Spracheinstellungen und deren Manifestation (Äußerung) immer relativ und spezifisch zu einem bestimmten Kontext stehen, was, wie auch gezeigt wird, insbesondere die vielfach beobachtete Variabilität von Forschungsergebnissen und deren komplexe Beziehung zur Verhaltensexegese erklären kann. Der Artikel schließt mit einem Aufruf zu methodischem Eklektizismus und integrativer Theorieauffassung im Interesse einer vielseitigen, multiperspektivischen Darstellung von Spracheinstellungen und ihrer Rolle im kommunikativen Alltagsleben.

This contribution presents the basic rationale and principles of a new hybrid discipline of historical sociolinguistic philology, or the sociolinguistically informed study of ancient texts, as showcased in the current special issue. It is shown how an interactional model of communication validates and scaffolds the application of synchronic sociocultural linguistic theory and findings to the analysis of ancient texts in order to achieve a more fully contextualized account and interpretation of their meaning from a perspective contemporary to their origination. In fact, it is argued that any study of ancient texts should take the perspective of its producer(s) and addressee(s) into consideration, and that written language use cannot be satisfactorily accounted for without reference to the immediate, on-the-ground-level social context and situation within which it arose.

Current third-wave or Speaker Design approaches to sociolinguistic variation hold that speakers may use variation strategically to create certain communicative effects (such as the projection of interactional personas and alignments). This paper explores the implications that such approaches have for empirical research methodology. For this, the discussion draws on a case study of language shifting from standard Austrian German into Austrian non-standard/dialect on a TV discussion show, in order to expound the following issues: (1) how to identify strategic uses of language variation and shifting; (2) how to generate empirical evidence for the fact that such strategic language use is interpreted accordingly by listeners. It is suggested that media data are particularly useful in this enterprise, and that close attention must be paid to listeners’ perceptions of (non-)standard language and the associated social meanings in order to explain what speakers ‘do’ when they perform strategic shifts e.g. from standard to non-standard language in local interaction.

Over the past fifty years, ‘matched-guise’-type speaker assessment experiments have seemingly become the methodological bedrock of social psychological ‘language attitude’ research. In the study that pioneered this technique, Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner and Fillenbaum (1960) outline its basics as follows, in application to their own investigation of ‘evaluative reactions’ towards English and French in Canada:

As handbooks on the social psychological study of attitudes routinely profess, over the past hundred years, ever since the inception of the field, the most commonly used method in attitude measurement has been the use of rating scales (e.g. Schwarz 2008). 2 Such scales can take a variety of forms, though the three classic types are those developed in the works of Thurstone (e.g. 1928), Likert (e.g. 1932), and Osgood and associates (e.g. Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum 1957) – (for further discussion see Himmelfarb 1993; Krosnick, Judd and Wittenbrink 2005). Indeed, Osgood et al.’s ‘semantic differential’ attitude measure ‘is the foundational technique used most often in research today’ (Krosnick, Judd and Wittenbrink 2005: 33). Under this technique, a series of selected antonymic adjectives are placed at opposite ends of scales (traditionally of seven increments). Informants then evaluate a given stimulus by placing a checkmark on each scale, with the instruction that the closer they tick to either end, the more they indicate the respective adjective pole to apply to the stimulus. Informants’ attitudes are then computed via a compilation of scores from the scales. The popularity of the semantic differential technique is largely explicable by its simplicity in terms of design and administration. Unlike Thurstone and Likert scales, which require extensive prior calibration and must be designed anew for each research context, Osgood attitude measurements typically involve adjectives ‘that are very general and heavily saturated with evaluative meaning’ (Himmelfarb 1993: 57), as well as thoroughly researched from all possible an-

No AccessZum Phänomen ›Speaker Design‹ im österreichischen DeutschBarbara SoukupBarbara Soukuphttps://doi.org/10.14220/9783737003377.59SectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail About Previous chapter Next chapter FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited by"Da pendelt sich die Sprache automatisch so ein": Sprachliche Identität, Akkommodation und Management von innerer und äußerer Mehrsprachigkeit bei Tiroler Privatvermietern29 August 2017 | Zeitschrift für Angewandte Linguistik, Vol. 2017, No. 66 Download book coverVolume 001 1ISBN: 978-3-8471-0337-0 eISBN: 978-3-7370-0337-7HistoryPublished online:April 2015 PDF download

Mixed methods research (MMR) is currently on the rise in the social sciences. This paper provides a theoretical discussion and a practical illustration of MMR in the social psychological study of language attitudes. First, I review perceived obstacles to MMR - in particular, the 'incompatibility thesis', whereby quantitative and qualitative methods are assumed to clash epistemologically. I propose an alternative account by which qual and quan research on language attitudes can be integrated on a common theoretical basis that holds attitudes to constitute interactionally processed 'human epistemological constructs' (HECs). I apply this approach in MMR on Austrian German, where I integrate a qual analysis of language-attitudinal HECs found in discourse data with a quan speaker evaluation experiment designed to corroborate the qual exegesis.

Situated at the nexus of variationist, interactional, and cognitive sociolinguistics, the present article discusses the phenomenon of ‘Speaker Design’, or the strategic use of linguistic varieties in interaction to achieve certain communicative effects (e.g. identity projections). Speaker Design is seen as essentially grounded in processes of conversational ‘contextualization’; these processes are outlined from an interactional and from a cognitive perspective in turn. Then, the phenomenon is illustrated in data from an Austrian TV show in which a speaker arguably performs a strategic shift from standard Austrian German into Bavarian-Austrian dialect to create a negative alignment with an opponent. Based on the claim that any such communicative effects of Speaker Design are contingent upon listeners’ inferencing of respective interpretations, which in turn requires a respective ‘perceptual competence’ (perceiving the contrastiveness of the linguistic cues at hand, associating different social meanings with them), the paper then presents two empirical tests (one speech perception elicitation test, one speaker evaluation experiment) to derive evidence for such perceptual competence in an Austrian TV audience regarding standard and dialect usage. It is argued that adducing such empirical evidence is ultimately a prerequisite for any claims regarding the interactional workings of Speaker Design.

Abstract In the literature on professional international consulting, the use of a foreign language (such as English) is typically cast as problematic and as an obstacle to successful intervention. In this article, we present evidence to the contrary, showing that conducting a specific form of professional consulting called ‘supervision’ in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) can be beneficial rather than detrimental to the outcome. We analyze data of one international supervision event using the ethnographic framework of ‘nexus analysis’ (Scollon and Scollon 2004). Nexus analysis operates by investigating how macro-level societal discourses (e.g. professional discourses of supervision) and cultural tools (e.g. the use of ELF) interplay in and mediate local moments of interaction. In our case, using ELF in international supervision can slow down the process, which in turn is actually an important intervention strategy in supervision because it facilitates reflection work and is thus conducive to positive outcomes. We argue that nexus analysis is well poised to investigate the effects of such interplay of ELF use and societal (professional) discourses on the ground. Further, conducting studies that show the benefits of ELF use in supervision can ultimately engender more positive attitudes among professionals in this regard.

Quantitative social psychological studies of ‘language attitudes’ (particularly speaker evaluation experiments using the ‘matched-guise technique’) are a popular area of research. But they have also been the subject of much criticism, especially from the perspective of social constructionism. This article focuses on two central points of debate: the issue of whether or not (language) attitudes should be regarded as stable mental entities, and the issue of the attitude–behavior link. Contrary to what has been suggested, adopting a constructionist perspective on these issues does not entail abandoning all quantitative methodology in favor of qualitative (discourse) analysis. Rather, it means conceptualizing speaker evaluation experiments as contextually situated ‘communicative events’. Under such a recast, experiments can be usefully harnessed for the explication of sociolinguistic behavior such as strategic style-shifting. More generally, quantitative ‘language attitude’ research needs to take constructionist considerations into account in order to retain its scientific relevance today.