Barbara Soukup
PhD, Sociolinguistics ('08)
Research interests:
Language attitudes and ideology, discourse analysis
and
interaction, language and culture, sociolinguistic variation,
language
policy, endangered languages
Dissertation (2007):
THE STRATEGIC USE OF AUSTRIAN DIALECT IN INTERACTION -
A SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF CONTEXTUALIZATION, SPEECH PERCEPTION, AND
LANGUAGE ATTITUDES
* Abstract
* Acknowledgments
Short description:
My analysis of the strategic use of Austrian dialect in interaction comprises three
parts: (1) a language attitude survey of attitudes and
stereotypes Austrians
hold towards dialectal and standard Austrian German; (2)
a perception
experiment assessing Austrian native speakers’ perception of what
constitutes
standard vs. dialectal speech; and (3) a discourse analysis that is
based on
findings from (1) and (2) and examines how Austrian speakers strategically
exploit the stereotypes associated with and invoked by dialect
use to
contextualize their utterances, creating communicative effects such as
antagonistic keyings and alignments.
My dissertation contributes to sociolinguistic discourse analysis by
further
illuminating the macro-micro-social links and meaning-making processes
involved
in contextualization. Further, I contribute to variation study with my
analysis of
the dialectic between language attitudes and the use of different varieties
in
interaction. Third, I contribute to the field
of language attitude study, by
showing how a quantitative speaker evaluation experiment can
gain new
functionality and validity through being tailored to and integrated into a
broader
research agenda.
