Functional Prestige in Sociolinguistic Evaluative Judgements Among Adult Second Language Speakers in Austria: Evidence from Perception

Abstract

This study explores the perception of (Austrian) standard German and Austro-Bavarian dialect varieties by 111 adult speakers of German as a second language (L2) in Austria, tested through ‘smart’ and ‘friendly’ judgements in a matched-guise task. Our goal was to determine whether L2 speakers, both at the group level and as a function of individual differences in standard German and dialect proficiency, reflect the attitudes of Austrian speakers by (a) judging the dialect higher in terms of friendliness in solidarity-stressing situations (e.g., in a bakery) and (b) attributing the standard variety a higher indexical value in terms of intelligence in status-stressing settings (e.g., at the doctor’s office), a phenomenon in Austrian-centered sociolinguistics known as ‘functional prestige’. Bayesian multilevel modeling revealed that L2 speakers do not adopt attitudinal patterns suggestive of functional prestige and even appear to reallocate certain constraints on sociolinguistic perception, which seems to depend on individual differences in varietal proficiency.