Forthcoming: (Dia)Lects in the 21st Century: Selected Papers from Methods in Dialectology XVII

Susanne Wagner (ed), Ulrike Stange-Hundsdörfer (ed)

Synopsis

This book offers an in-depth exploration of contemporary issues and methodologies in the fields of dialectology and sociolinguistics. Readers will find a diverse collection of studies that examine how language varies and changes across different regions, communities, and social contexts. The book covers a wide range of languages, including German, English, Yiddish, Russian, and Japanese, providing a global perspective on linguistic diversity.

Key themes include the use of modern data sources, such as social media, to study language patterns and the impact of digital communication on regional dialects. The book also addresses the dynamics of language contact in expatriate communities, revealing how speakers adapt and merge linguistic features from different dialects.

Several chapters focus on the evolution of dialectological research, offering critiques and new approaches to studying regional language variations. Readers will also encounter innovative methods, such as cognitive geography, which uses mental representations of space to understand dialect variation, and tone distance measures, which are crucial for studying tonal languages.

Additionally, the book presents case studies on how non-experts perceive and categorize dialects, providing insights into the public's understanding of linguistic diversity. It also tackles challenges in selecting dialect speakers for research, especially in urban environments, where traditional criteria may no longer apply.

Overall, this book is a valuable resource for linguists, researchers, and anyone interested in the complex and ever-changing landscape of human language. It highlights the importance of adapting research methods to keep pace with the evolving nature of language and offers fresh perspectives on how we study and understand dialects and language variation.

Chapters

  • Part 1: Geolinguistic methods and big data in dialectology
  • Extracting “non-standard” data from the Twitter API
    Kimberley Baxter
  • Infinitival ain’t in African American English
    Kimberley Baxter, Jon Stevenson
  • The ‘Atlas of colloquial German in Salzburg’
    Julian Blaßnigg, Irmtraud Kaiser, Peter Mauser, Konstantin Niehaus
  • A cognitive geographic approach to dialectology
    Cognitive distance as a predictor for perceptual dialect distance
    Hedwig G. Sekeres, Martijn Wieling, Remco Knooihuizen
  • Part 2: Corpus-based studies and dialect change
  • A directional shift in linguistic change
    A longitudinal study on English-speaking Expatriates in Japan
    Keiko Hirano
  • Minimal minimal pairs
    Vocalic length in Unterland and Polish Central Yiddish
    Chaya R. Nove, Ben Sadock
  • Tracking language change in real time
    Challenges for community-based research in the 21st century
    Katharina Pabst, Sam Brunet, Alison L. Chasteen, Sali A. Tagliamonte
  • Corpus-based Low Saxon dialectology
    Janine Siewert, Martijn Wieling, Yves Scherrer
  • Leaner, cleaner and full of attitude
    The New Atlas interviews
    Alison Burkette, Lamont Antieau
  • Part 3: Dialectology, linguistic identity, and social factors
  • “Das ist dann schon total cool zu sagen, so Machanot”
    Revealing speakers’ justifications for linguistic choices
    Esther Jahns
  • Regional prosodic variation in the speech of young urban Russians
    Quantitative vowel reduction in Moscow and Perm
    Margie Post
  • How important is information about grandparents when selecting a dialect speaker?
    Akiko Takemura
  • Part 4: Theoretical approaches and innovations in dialectology
  • Dialectology as “Language Making”
    Hegemonic disciplinary discourse and the One Standard German Axiom (OSGA)
    Stefan Dollinger
  • „Es werden im wesentlichen [sic!] nur Wörter aufgenommen, welche deutlich unterschiedlich zum Hochdeutschen sind.“
    On the verticality of lay dialect collections and the attempt to measure it
    Yvonne Kathrein
  • Applying the state-of-the-art tonal distance metrics to a large dialectal dataset
    H. M. W. Sung, Jelena Prokić, Yiya Chen
  • Convergence and divergence of tone paradigms across Tai dialects in the 21st century
    Chingduang Yurayong, Saknarin Pimvunkum, Yuttaporn Naksuk

Biographies

Susanne Wagner, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Susanne Wagner studied English Philology, Latin Philology and General Linguistics at Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, graduating in 1998 with a Magister Artium. Her PhD thesis (Freiburg, 2003) focuses on gender assignment in the traditional dialects of Southwest England (where apples are "hes“) and Newfoundland, Canada (where storms are "shes“). Her previous academic positions include the University of Oxford (2012-2015) and Chemnitz University of Technology, where she also completed her postdoctoral thesis ("Habilitation“) in 2012. Since 2015, she has been professor of English Linguistics at the University of Mainz.

Her research interests include sociolinguistics and Language Variation and Change in L1 varieties of English, focusing on morphosyntactic features; urban and traditional dialectology; corpus linguistics; and issues in the statistical modelling of sociolinguistic variables. She also investigates the role of variation in the EFL context, including bias in EFL textbooks.

Ulrike Stange-Hundsdörfer, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Ulrike Stange-Hundsdörfer is interested in studying language variation and change. She currently works on recent changes in the use of pseudo-passives in British English and on innovative uses of the intensifiers so, particularly in American English.

Book cover

Published

August 21, 2024
LaTeX source on GitHub

Series

Language Variation

Print ISSN

2366-7818
Cite as
Wagner, Susanne & Stange-Hundsdörfer, Ulrike (eds.). Forthcoming. (Dia)Lects in the 21st Century: Selected Papers from Methods in Dialectology XVII. (Language Variation). Berlin: Language Science Press.
Copyright (c) 2024 Susanne Wagner, Ulrike Stange-Hundsdörfer; Kimberley Baxter, Jon Stevenson, Alison Burkette, Julian Blaßnigg, Irmtraud Kaiser, Peter Mauser, Konstantin Niehaus, Stefan Dollinger, Keiko Hirano, Esther Jahns, Yvonne Kathrein, Chaya R. Nove, Katharina Pabst, Margie Post, Hedwig G. Sekeres, Martijn Wieling, Remco Knooihuizen, Janine Siewert, H. M. W. Sung, Akiko Takemura, Chingduang Yurayong, Ben Sadock, Sam Brunet, Alison L. Chasteen, Sali A. Tagliamonte, Yves Scherrer, Lamont Antieau, Jelena Prokić, Yiya Chen, Saknarin Pimvunkum, Yuttaporn Naksuk

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