Tapping into German Adjective Variation: A Variationist Sociolinguistic Approach

Abstract

Following the Labovian paradigm, the present study uses variationist quantitative methods to examine the linguistic and social factors influencing adjective choices in German. By focusing on adjectives of positive evaluation (such as cool ‘cool’, toll/geil ‘great’), an analysis of over 3,000 tokens reveals that the choice of using one adjective over a competing counterpart is structured systematically. This choice is heavily constrained by the social factor age, with gender also influencing variation to varying degrees. The syntactic position of the adjective also conditions use, with some adjectives favoring predicative position and others favoring attributive or stand-alone position. Comparisons across apparent time, as well as with previous research, indicate that the semantic field of positive evaluation is a perpetually changing locus of variation. By applying variationist methods to German data, the present study illustrates how German lexis can index social meaning, paving the way for future research on German lexical variation. More broadly speaking, this study also contributes to ongoing variationist sociolinguistic research on German language variation and change.*

Sociolinguistic competence and varietal repertoires in a second language: A study on addressee‐dependent varietal behavior using virtual reality

“…The standard German variety is also used when it is assumed that the interlocutor cannot understand the local variety, for example, with L2 speakers or speakers from other German-speaking countries (Ender & Kaiser, 2009). Importantly, social factors have also been shown to influence linguistic choices across varieties of German, such as gender (e.g., Stratton, 2020Stratton, , 2022, age (e.g., Ziegler et al, 2021), education (e.g., Beaman, 2020Beaman, , 2021, and identity and social network (e.g., Beaman, 2020;Lippi-Green, 1989), though the effects of these factors can differ between dialect regions.…”

“…To tackle the aforementioned research lacuna, the present study analyzes data from 40 adult migrants with L2 German living in Bavarian-speaking Austria. Informed by the growing body of variationist sociolinguistic research on varieties of German (e.g., Beaman, 2020Beaman, , 2021Bülow & Vergeiner, 2021;Ender & Kaiser, 2009Stratton, 2020Stratton, , 2022Vergeiner, 2020;Wirtz, 2022), we explore by way of Bayesian multinomial modeling and qualitative analysis whether and why migrants with L2 German acquire sociolinguistic resources that are typical of first language (L1) speakersspecifically, varietal convergence to the (non)standard variety of the interlocutor. Thematically, this facilitates first insights concerning how L2 learners deal with sociolinguistic variation in their immediate input in the noninstructed context, that is, whether they retain strictly standard German speech classically taught in the classroom context or whether they integrate nonstandard speech into their repertoires as a means of accommodating to the community around them.…”

Where didwergo? Lexical variation and change in third-person male adult noun referents in Old and Middle English

“…Although geography is often reported as the predominant explanatory factor for lexical variation, lexis is highly structured along the axes of social and stylistic variation. In recent work, several lexical sets have been explored, such as dinner versus tea (Jankowski & Tagliamonte, 2019), words of profanity (Tagliamonte & Jankowski, 2019), adjectives of strangeness (Tagliamonte & Brooke, 2014), and adjectives of positive evaluation (Stratton, 2022b; Tagliamonte & Pabst, 2020).…”

“…For instance, Sankoff, Thibault, and Bérubé (1978) analyzed the semantic field of verbs which mean “to dwell,” which led to the notion of “weak complementarity”: the idea that linguistic variables can be identified through distributional properties and distribution across a speech community (Sankoff & Thibault, 1981:207). Recent studies have followed in this tradition when analyzing lexical variation (e.g., Stratton, 2022b; Tagliamonte & Brooke, 2014; Tagliamonte & Pabst, 2020). The concept of a semantic field, however, predates the variationist tradition and has its roots in structuralist semantics (Trier, 1931), with the important distinction between semasiology and onomasiology (Geeraerts, 2010).…”