Realizing [χ] for /r/ in Eifel German and Corresponding Attitudes (eBook)

Scientific Study from the year 2018 in the subject German Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Bonn (IAAK), language: English, abstract: It has been proposed that in Modern Standard German no other phoneme is as variable in terms of pronunciation as /r/. Although the IPA system includes seven types of rhotics in its system, it has been argued that several more r-sounds exist which are not included in the class of rhotics due to a lack of a consistent definition. One of these r-sounds, not included in the class of rhotics, is the voiceless uvular fricative [χ] which has been found to be frequently used for /r/ by speakers of Eifel German in the Eifel area.

Past research has suggested a steady decline in the use of dialects and regiolects, which are becoming more and more gerontolects. This is also true for Eifel German which has been proposed to be rather used by older generations nowadays. In addition to age, it has been claimed that speech style also has an effect on speakers of a certain dialect altering their speech behavior in careful and casual speech styles. While several studies exist on peoples’ assessment which specific pronunciations are most frequently used in the area in which they live, no systematic study exist on the actual speech behavior of the people living in the Eifel area in which speech styles are varied, as to the knowledge of the author.

This study tries to fill this research gap by, first of all, investigating whether there is a difference in the realization [χ] for /r/ across age groups, secondly, the effects of different speech styles in actual speech behavior and lastly analyzing informants’ attitudes towards Eifel German. By analyzing four age groups ranging from 20 to 59 and varying speech styles, the study tries to gain greater insights into age differences and the effect of careful and casual speech styles on actual linguistic behavior from people coming from the Eifel area. Two informants were used for each age group amounting to a total of eight participants. To elicit casual speech data a taboo game was used, whereas as wordlist-reading task was used to gather careful speech data. Based on previous findings, the study aims at finding out whether the Eifel German dialect is in decline and how people living in the Eifel feel about this dialect. The paper starts with the theoretical background providing a comprehensive