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The present study takes a variationist perspective to explore the varietal repertoires of adult learners of German as a second language (L2), that is, their variable use of standard German, Austro‐Bavarian dialect, and mixture varieties. Forty L2 learners completed a virtual reality task involving interactions with dialect‐speaking and standard‐German‐speaking interlocutors. Using Bayesian multilevel modeling, the goal was to explore differential outcomes in the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence by determining whether participants adjusted their varietal behavior to match that of the interlocutor (i.e., varietal convergence). The results show that there were no interindividual addressee‐dependent convergence tendencies. A holistic person‐centered analysis of individual learners’ intraspeaker variation revealed that only select L2 learners adjusted their usage patterns but did not entirely invert their usage of dialect and standard language as a function of the variety of the interlocutor. Introspective qualitative data speak to potential drivers behind the differential development of L2 (multi)varietal repertoires.

Symposium at AILA 2021

Panel bei der internationalen Konferenz

Sociolinguistic variation in Austria and the German-speaking part of Switzerland has traditionally been described in very different terms. In Austria, the linguistic range between the standard language and the local dialects has been referred to as a ‘standard-dialect-continuum’, whereas the German-speaking part of Switzerland has often been cited as the typical example of a ‘diglossic’ language community. The sociolinguistic situation in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, which is part of a primarily Bavarian-speaking but also of the Alemannic dialect region, has not been thoroughly examined in any studies up to date. In this paper, we present results from an online-survey in Austria and Switzerland on the everyday use of dialect and the standard language. According to our informants’ estimates, the sociolinguistic situation in both Austria and German-speaking Switzerland is characterised by a significant percentage of dialect use. Still, the standard language is regarded quite differently in the two countries. A considerable proportion of the Swiss informants perceive the standard language as a ‘foreign language’. However, this does not seem to be a common attitude among the Austrian informants. The main difference between the two countries lies in the observation that Austrians feel they use an intermediate form between dialect and the standard language, a so-called ‘Umgangssprache’, in many situations, whereas the Swiss indicate that they speak their local dialect or the standard language under specific communicative circumstances. However, the German-speaking Swiss population, as well as the informants from Vorarlberg, do not seem to use an intermediate form. The situation in Vorarlberg is particularly interesting. On the one hand, as far as the status of dialect and the dichotomy of dialect and standard are concerned, Vorarlberg patterns similar to the German-speaking part of Switzerland. On the other hand, people from Vorarlberg have to adapt to their Bavarian