No abstract

In modern Danish, a handful of pronouns may be used to refer to a generic referent. In recent decades, the second person singular pronoun du has gained ground, apparently in parallel to similar recent developments in other languages. Even though generic du may not be as old as the traditional generic pronoun man, it is not a new variant in Danish if we by "new" mean that it has come into existence within the last 30-40 years. To all appearances, it has been used before the influence from English became significant in the last part of the 20 th century, and the generic du as such need therefore not be explained by contact with English, as often assumed. In order to study the spread of the generic use of du we analysed the use of pronouns with generic reference in a large sample of speakers, most of whom were recorded during sociolinguistic interviews twicethe first time in the period 1978-1989 and the second time in 2005-07. The speakers come from four locations in Denmark, and three different age cohorts are represented in the study. The results show both a rise and a decline in the use of generic du in the time interval from the 1970s and 1980s till today in accordance with the hypothesis that the increased use of generic du began in Copenhagen and started spreading from Copenhagen to the rest of the country before the time of the old recordings in the 1980s. However, the use of generic du has peaked, or is about to peak, in the Danish speech community seen as a whole, and the developments in the use of generic pronouns should probably be seen within an overall perspective of stable variation.

The paper focuses on motivations for the spread of new features within a speech community, and on the trajectories the changes follow during diffusion. One set of data represents language use, and here focus is on two changes which have been going on in Danish over the past 40 years, one grammatical and one phonetic. The other set of data are results from a nationwide speaker evaluation experiment which tests the subconscious attitudes to different types of speech among the youth in five different places covering Denmark from east to west. Results show that changes spread centrifugally from Copenhagen, even to the extent that reversal of changes spreads from Copenhagen. Furthermore, the attitudes reflected in the speaker evaluation experiment support the theory that language change is motivated by social psychological factors. Finally, it is argued that it is worthwhile considering the possibility of media being involved in processes of linguistic change.Artiklen fokuserer på årsager til spredning af nye traek i et sprogsamfund, og på hvordan spredningen foregår. Et datasaet repraesenterer sprogbrug, og her fokuseres på to forandringer som har fundet sted i dansk gennem de sidste 40 år, en grammatisk og en fonetisk. Det andet datasaet stammer fra en landsdaekkende undersøgelse af underbevidste holdninger til forskellige typer af talesprog blandt unge på fem forskellige steder placeret i en linje der daekker Danmark fra øst til vest. Resultaterne viser at aendringerne i brug spredes centrifugalt fra København, i en grad så resten af landet følger trop også når København reverserer en igangvaerende aendring. De vurderinger der kommer til udtryk i holdningsundersøgelserne, understøtter teorien om at sprogforandring er motiveret af socialpsykologiske faktorer. Til slut argumenteres der for at det er vaerd at overveje mediernes mulige rolle i sprogforandringsprocesser. [Danish]

This paper combines a quantitative study of the two most important Danish pronouns used for generic reference, du and man, with interaction analyses. The quantitative study shows an overall increase in the use of generic du at the expense of man. However, a large scale quantitative study alone cannot tell us much about the finer differences between the two variants, let alone come up with explanations for the change in their use. In this paper, we demonstrate a way to supplement a quantitative study with detailed interaction analyses with the aim of interpreting the tendencies demonstrated in the quantitative study. Whereas there is no difference between generic du and man with respect to propositional meaning, our interactional analyses reveal important differences in their interpersonal potentials: Generic du is to a larger degree than man used as a resource for enactment and involvement. This difference between du and man is due to du retaining some of its second person meaning also when used generically, and the rise in the use of generic du is likely to reflect an ongoing process of intimization in the society at large.

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