Dialect cultures

Only a few years ago, vernacular was barely given a chance of survival at long sight. But informal ways of communication through the internet and the mobile phones recently brought an unexpected renaissance to dialect usage and it is once again a focus of research interest. Though dialect literature is still unpopular among academic researchers. Apparently the understanding of dialect art is still influenced by one variety, namely the idyllic, naive retrospective regional literature (Heimatdichtung) as it evolved in the nineteenth century. However, dialect usage as an artistic phenomenon is manifold and can perform an impressive range of functions. It was in the early days of dialect art in the Austro-Bavarian linguistic area, when it had not yet undergone thematic and formal standardization and the ideology of Volkssprache had not yet exerted influence upon it, that it achieved a complete autonomy within the standard language-oriented elite`s culture. With bitter adversaries and enthusiasts even in the highest educated class dialect art, like no other genre, polarised the contemporary value judgment. It was loved by emperors and dispised by the critics, it was cultivated both by the great masters and laypersons. But above all its interaction of dialect, music and mime was a genuine form of expression of a very prolific cultural area. The reduction of dialect art to an autochthonous vehicle of expression for ordinary people from the countryside which idealizes the notion of heimat together with the effective undermining of the prestige that dialect held during its early heyday have caused it to fall into almost complete oblivion. This research project aims to provide a complete view of the functions and aesthetic possibilities of dialect art during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as well as its historical significance. Three interdependent tasks will be given especial emphasis: 1) philological recording, analysis and presentation of the material, 2) the developing of an aesthetic of the Austro-Bavarian dialect art before 1800 and 3) a critical interdisciplinary characterization of its historical manifestations. Furthermore, the project wants to identify and analyze the basics of stereotypes and pattern of values which are still prevalent in today`s society.

Dialect usage as an artistic phenomenon is manifold and can perform an impressive range of functions. The project Dialect Cultures I aimed to provide a complete view of the aesthetic possibilities of Austro-Bavarian dialect art during the 17th and 18th centuries in order to document its long forgotten historical significance. After reorientation towards an electronic data acquisition and presentation (according to FWFs Open Access Policy), the projects emphasis was placed on the philological recording and processing of the material and on the critical presentation of its historical forms. Through well-directed research, 4000 handwritten and printed texts in dialect or nearly in dialect have been found from this time period. According to various selection criteria, half of them have been entered into our database, which currently consists about 1300 works in over 1900 versions from two centuries, categorized under poetry, drama or prose and classified as either a purely textual source or a textual source combined with musical notation. The advantages of this form of presentation are obvious: After the Internet launch (planned for the end of 2014) all materials and information, from the source up to research literature, will be available on one platform for the first time. The transcriptions can be checked against the digital sources, the analysis can be compared to the research status and the work can be located biographically and contextually. This unique collection of materials on dialect art includes hundreds of critical first editions; furthermore over 120 authors and composers have been recorded.