Variational Pragmatics of German: Comparing Commun. Patterns

Lead The trinational project Variant Pragmatics of German investigates regional differences in the use of communicative patterns. There is a widespread assumption that such differences exist in German-speaking countries. It is also assumed that differences in communicative patterns repeatedly lead to misunderstandings and irritations between people from different areas. The project explores these questions by examining communicative patterns in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, both cross-nationally and domestically. Content and aim of the research project The project focuses on the study of phenomena concerning the use of routine formulae, politeness particles, speech acts (such as complaints or requests) and salutation behaviour. The overall aim of the project is to establish how variation in this phenomena area is distributed geographically and how the prevailing assumptions about communicative patterns in the public sphere relate to data of actual language use. For this purpose, data from Germany, Austria and Switzerland will be collected in a strictly areal-comparative manner and compared with relevant attributions from media discourse. The findings from the investigations will be made useful both on a theoretical level (especially for pragmatics and pluriareality research) and with regard to methodology; the dialogue with other disciplines, such as sociology and psychology, will also be fruitful. An explicit goal of the project is also to have an evidence-based impact on public discourse. Scientific and social context Empirical studies on areal variation in the German-speaking world exist in large numbers, but they have mainly focused on pronunciation, lexis and grammatical phenomena, not on the pragmatic dimension. The project closes this gap and places the public discourse on communicative differences in German-speaking countries on a broad empirical foundation. Such an investigation, which is at the interface between variation linguistics and pragmatics, has not been carried out before. This is in stark contrast to the great public interest in this topic, which is reflected in numerous media reports, interviews and blog posts. Keywords Variational linguistics, (historical) pragmatics, sociolinguistics, pluriareality of German