In the spring of 2007 I received the Brückner Foundation Memorial Grant, a $3000 grant to complete a project in Germany during the summer. As a German-speaking student of linguistics, I decided to study German dialects in five different German cities - Berlin, Dresden, Augsburg, Stuttgart, and Hanover. My focus was on the perceptions that native German speakers from various locations hold concerning the dialects I studied. I collected a total of 150 surveys (30 in each city). I also recorded eleven short audio interviews.
The study population was intended to be as broad as possible to obtain a variety of different perspectives. I surveyed males and females from the ages of 13 to 80, both native and nonnative German speakers. Surveys were most often obtained in parks, where I looked for busy areas where there were park benches and people sitting around. I avoided places of business (except for outdoor marketplaces, and in places where I was explicitly invited), because I did not want to be accused of interfering with business or annoying customers. I endeavored to find two or three different study locations in every city, and to look for varied locations.
Questionnaire. - The questionnaire begins by requesting the age, gender, place of birth, and town of current residence of the respondent. It asks the respondent to list any dialects they speak and to write down some words or phrases that are typical of this dialect. The respondents are then asked to rate each of the studied dialects (Berlinerisch, Sächsisch, Bayrisch, Schwäbisch, and Hochdeutsch) on a scale of 1-5 against four personality traits. Respondents were asked if they would spontaneously associate these traits (Friendliness, Education, Refinedness, and Politeness) with a speaker of each dialect. They were also asked to list other traits that they may spontaneously associate with a speaker of each dialect.
It was intended that the questionnaire include both qualitative and quantitative information, and that it focus on the perceptions of dialects rather than on the dialects themselves. Additionally, while it was suspected that many respondents would spontaneously associate certain personality traits with certain dialects, a respondent had the option of writing that there are no personality traits associated with a dialect.
I collected twenty questionnaires in each of the five locations. To read more about the questionnaires and to see an example, click here.
Map Diagram. - The map diagrams consisted simply of a blank map of the country of Germany. Respondents were asked to draw and label the main dialect regions in Germany and to indicate their place of birth on the map with a star.
I collected ten questionnaires in each of the five locations. To see examples of map diagrams, click here.
Interviews. - I collected at least two oral interviews in each of the five locations, spoken by a speaker of the dialect that I was studying in that location. Interviews rarely lasted more than a minute or two, and they were the only part of the project that did not focus completely on the perceptions of a dialect but rather the dialect itself. Respondents were asked to orally list common words or phrases of their dialect, and to read a standard phrase with the intonation and grammar of their dialect: Montags gehe ich in den Park und lese. ("On Mondays I go to the park and read").
To hear audio recordings of this sentence in each dialect and an example interview, click here.
The data collected for this project is an encyclopedia of the attitudes among the speakers of German. There is a general respect for Hochdeutsch as the Standard German, but there are also a myriad of different positive and negative attributes associated with the many dialects of German and the regions and peoples with which they are associated. Germans seem to know a great deal about these dialects.
The majority of respondents reported that they spoke a dialect of some sort in every place but Hanover (50% in Berlin, 80% in Dresden, 80% in Augsburg, 60% in Stuttgart, and 15% in Hanover).
In the section on attitudes towards different dialects, there arose a general pattern: each dialect was rated as sounding Friendly, Uneducated, Unrefined, and Polite. There are many variations on this pattern, which will be discussed with each individual city. However, there was hardly ever a very universal agreement on the four qualities: some people in Dresden think Schwäbisch sounds rude, others say polite. The patterns are not very stark.
In fact, the most common response to any query was indifference. Each quality was rated from one to five, and three (signifying the middle ground) was the most common response. If the respondent did not answer a question I took that as another expression of indifference, and altogether about half of all responses were indifferent. People just did not want to rate dialects on this scale of qualities.
The most interesting feature of the map diagrams (at least, from an American English-speaking perspective) is just how detailed they are. Most Germans know of at least ten distinct dialect boundaries, and people most often agree on their name and location. However, there seem to be an infinite number of subtle distinctions within dialect boundaries; cities and even small towns are known for their local dialects.
For an in-depth discussion of each city, click here.