Attitudes of South Tyrolean University Students towards German Varieties

Mara Maya Victoria Leonardi

doi:10.3390/languages6030137

Abstract

This paper examines language attitudes of South Tyroleans towards German varieties used in educational institutions by means of a questionnaire survey with 55 university students. The aim of this paper is to provide an insight into subjects’ attitudes towards their own and other German (standard) varieties, with a focus on the sociolinguistic situation in South Tyrol (northern Italy). Previous studies have shown that the German-speaking community often have the notion that their own standard variety is deficient combined with a feeling of linguistic inferiority towards German speakers from Germany. Therefore, this article seeks to answer the following research questions: Which attitudes do South Tyrolean university students have towards the different German (standard) varieties? Do university teacher-training students get in touch with the concept of the pluricentric variation within the German standard variety during their education? Results reveal that despite a certain awareness of the issue of linguistic variation in the German language, the standard variety used in Germany still enjoys high prestige among our subjects compared to other German standard varieties. Moreover, results show that the students were hardly confronted with the subject of the German standard variety used in South Tyrol or with the variation of the German language during their high school years. However, this changes as soon as they attend university.

Highlights

Despite the enormous work which has been done in fields like social psychology, anthropology, sociolinguistics, or language learning research, defining the concept of ‘attitude’ is by no means straightforward
The main object of this paper is to examine speakers’ attitudes towards the different German varieties used in South Tyrol, a multilingual province in northern Italy, where Italian, German, and Ladin are recognized as official languages
Previous empirical studies have shown that attitudes towards the Southern Bavarian variety1 are almost exclusively positive, while attitudes towards the German standard variety sometimes tend to be negative: the German standard variety is often associated with educational institutions, with German tourists from Germany, and it is sometimes even perceived as a foreign language (e.g., Abel 2007; Leonardi 2020)

Summary

Introduction

Despite the enormous work which has been done in fields like social psychology, anthropology, sociolinguistics, or language learning research, defining the concept of ‘attitude’ is by no means straightforward. The main object of this paper is to examine speakers’ attitudes towards the different German varieties used in South Tyrol, a multilingual province in northern Italy, where Italian, German, and Ladin are recognized as official languages. Earlier language attitude work in South Tyrol demonstrated ambiguous outcomes (Section 2.1). Previous empirical studies have shown that attitudes towards the Southern Bavarian variety are almost exclusively positive, while attitudes towards the German standard variety sometimes tend to be negative: the German standard variety is often associated with educational institutions, with German tourists from Germany, and it is sometimes even perceived as a foreign language (e.g., Abel 2007; Leonardi 2020). The standard variety from Germany serves as a prestigious variety (e.g., Riehl 1994; Ciccolone 2010; Hofer 2020; Leonardi, forthcoming). Austrians and Swiss people often evaluate and consider the standard variety from Germany as more correct and prestigious than their own standard variety (e.g., Ammon 1995; Scharloth 2005a, 2005b; Schmidlin 2011; Gatta 2017; de Cillia and Ransmayr 2019)

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Conclusion