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Michael Elmentaler: Sprachlagenspektren im arealenVergleich. Vorüberlegungen zu einem Atlas der deutschen Alltagssprache

In the last two decades, there has been an increasing tendency for research in linguistic geography to concentrate on speech strata greater in extent than the old local dialects, namely, the regional dialects, as in the „Mittelrheinischen Sprachatlas“ [Linguistic Atlas of the Middle Rhine Region], and urban dialects, as in the regional atlases for the Munich and Nuremberg areas, regional colloquial language (as in the word atlases of Eichhoff 1977–2000, Friebertshäuser / Dingeldein 1988 and Protze 1997 or regionally accented pronunciation in reading aloud (König 1989). However, since only standardized surveying methods (questionnaire, text to be read aloud) are used, the data thus obtained are only of limited value as evidence for the speech habits of the informants in everyday situations. Again, the fact that nowadays the individual speaker is competent in several levels of speech, which he or she can deploy according to the situation, can only be taken into account to a limited extent. For these reasons, the present paper looks at several methodological proposals about how a regional comparison of such speech strata can be made, in order to facilitate the compilation of a linguistic atlas of everyday German. It is necessary to collect data for spontaneous speech in various situations which would then allow the reconstruction of individual ranges of speech strata. By using the tried and tested methods normally employed in the study of linguistic variation, regional comparisons of the speech strata, as well as of the ranges of variation found within these strata, and of individual features can be made, due consideration being given to the quantitative and qualitative parameters involved.