Nominal address and introductions in three national varieties of German : Intralinguistic variation and pragmatic transfer to English

Using a large-scale survey, we explore reported nominal address and introduction routines in first encounters at international academic conferences. Our focus is on variation in such routines among respondents originating in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in their first language (L1) German and in English (L2 English, their second or further language). In L1 German, introduction by first name and last name tends to be the unmarked choice, with some national variation present. Similar national variation exists in L2 English, albeit to a lesser extent, showing some pragmatic transfer from the respondents’ L1 German variety to L2 English. In comparison to the results for L1 speakers of three national varieties of English, the German L1 speakers’ emulated behaviour diverges from their L1 behaviour without necessarily reflecting English L1 behaviour in most cases.