Mason A. Wirtz

PhD Project

Inter- and Intra-Individual Variation in Adult L2 Sociolinguistic Repertoires.
Dynamics of Linguistic, Socioaffective and Cognitive Factors

This page contains a brief overview of my PhD project, which I am writing in collaboration with Dr. Andrea Ender, Dr. Irmtraud Kaiser and Dr. Simone Pfenninger. For anyone interested in more details, please visit the project website, where information on participation is also included. Articles, book chapters and data resulting from this dissertation will be uploaded to publications. This project is in part funded by Stadt Salzburg: Kultur, Bildung und Wissen.

Rationale

In the past decades, migration and immigration as a result of increased mobility have become the rule rather than the exception in most societies, and there exists a growing trend in both national and international policies to promote integration. Austria in view of its wide array of language varieties ranging from local vernaculars over intermediate varieties to standard German does, however, present a significant challenge for second language (L2) learners. In particular, Austrians oftentimes command a large varietal repertoire in that they can socially and situationally opt (consciously or otherwise) for one language variety over another as a means to communicate or evoke a certain effect from the interlocutor. This ability in combination with understanding the communicative effect(s) engendered by the respective variety is widely referred to as “sociolinguistic competence” (Regan 2010: 22). In particular, proficiency in wielding target-like sociolinguistic variation can allow a second language learner to expand beyond communicating basic linguistic information – it allows learners to fulfill other social functions in the target language community, such as establishing friendships and community ties. In the words of Geeslin (2014: 11): “[t]he ability to ‘live’ in a second language rests on the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence.”

Yet, there exists no research on learner sociolinguistic development in the Bavarian-Austrian context, despite its well-documented difficulty for L2 learners in general (Ender 2017, 2019). That said, research pertaining to the following questions remains largely outstanding: (a) How do learners overcome difficulties in the sociolinguistic acquisition process in the Bavarian-Austrian context? (b) Which complex, dynamic constellation(s) of learner individual linguistic, socioaffective and cognitive factors are strongly associated with superior sociolinguistic competence? (c) How do different language varieties of the same first language (L1) – in the case of this dissertation: English – impact the development of the individual sociolinguistic repertoire in the second language? In light of increasing mobility and thus growing counts of expats in Austria (e.g. due to Austria’s growing need for highly qualified workers from abroad, particularly in MINT subjects1), it now appears of unprecedented necessity to scrutinize the magnitude of the effects of the myriad individual factors on native English speakers’ acquisition of sociolinguistic variation and attempt to identify those factors that predict variable sociolinguistic competence in the naturalistic context.

Objectives

General aims

In the Dynamics of Sociolinguistic Competence (DYNSC) project, I set out to explore and unpack the inter- and intra-individual variation in second language learners’ acquisition and development of sociolinguistic competence against the backdrop of the Bavarian-Austrian naturalistic context. The main goals are to: (1) explore the extent to which and how L2 learners integrate standard German and dialect varieties into their multivarietal sociolinguistic repertoires, both in production and perception; (2) establish the extent to which my set of predictors (length of residence, varietal exposure, varietal proficiency, cognitive capacity and varietal socioaffect) can predict differential outcomes in sociolinguistic competence; (3) explore how learners deal with dialect and standard German when acquiring L2 German in Bavarian-speaking Austria and (4) provide initial insights as to the variability (= change over time) in and idiodynamic nature of the process(es) underlying L2 sociolinguistic development, and pinpoint potential environmental and psychological stimuli for change during the sociolinguistic development process. To do so, I make use of an extensive test battery capitalizing on a cross-sectional and longitudinal, mixed methods design in addition to innovative and interdisciplinary elicitation methods such as virtual reality. As a whole, I hope the results from this project will be the springboard to developing pedagogical material that aids migrants in better dealing with the language variation in Austria from the beginning of their journey abroad. Moreover, the methodological approaches developed and refined in this project should address current issues regarding the limited availability of convenient and successful (statistical) techniques for collecting and analyzing inter-individual and intra-individual data on L2 sociolinguistic acquisition and microdevelopment.

Research questions

The goals sketched in the previous section are of considerable theoretical and practical importance, as they reside at the heart of educational and political debates both on immigration and language acquisition and constitute a largely exploratory and uncharted territory in the new and quickly expanding thread of research on sociolinguistic development and attainment. Materializing from this wide range of goals, the following general, overarching research questions will be addressed:

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