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Perceptual Dialectology

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lightbulbAbout this topic
Perceptual Dialectology is the study of how non-linguists perceive and categorize dialects and accents within a language. It examines the social, cultural, and psychological factors influencing these perceptions, focusing on individuals' attitudes towards linguistic variation and the implications for identity and communication.
lightbulbAbout this topic
Perceptual Dialectology is the study of how non-linguists perceive and categorize dialects and accents within a language. It examines the social, cultural, and psychological factors influencing these perceptions, focusing on individuals' attitudes towards linguistic variation and the implications for identity and communication.

Key research themes

1. How do speakers cognitively perceive, evaluate, and socially interpret dialectal variation within their speech communities?

This research theme focuses on individuals' mental representations of dialect boundaries, linguistic distinctiveness, and social attitudes towards dialect varieties. It matters for understanding language identity construction, sociolinguistic salience, language change dynamics, and linguistic self and group awareness. Perceptual dialectology methods (e.g., draw-a-map tasks, speaker evaluations, and surveys of dialect labels) reveal folk linguistic knowledge, stereotypes, and language ideologies underpinning social and linguistic perceptions of dialects.

Key finding: Using the draw-a-map method with Istanbul residents, the study found that despite Istanbul’s cultural diversity, relatively few respondents reported using dialects themselves, yet perceptions of dialectal variation were... Read more
Key finding: Perceptual dialectology of the North-East of Scotland revealed that while broad region-level dialect labels such as 'Doric' feature prominently, hyperlocal identity constructs show heterogeneous perceptual patterns. The study... Read more
Key finding: Investigating Greek-speaking urban Cypriots' perceptual dialect maps revealed a small number of salient sociolinguistic regions and an emphasis on urban dialect areas, consistent with regional dialect levelling. Participants... Read more
Key finding: Through perception surveys with raters from Bern, Zurich, and Hessen (Germany), the study revealed that specific segmental phonetic features in Swiss German dialects are systematically linked to aesthetic judgments and... Read more

2. What are the cognitive and linguistic mechanisms underpinning perceptual dialectal intuitions and judgments?

This theme explores the psycholinguistic and cognitive foundations of intuitive judgments elicited by dialectal and linguistic input, including how stereotype-driven automatic inferences and linguistic processing shape folk dialect knowledge. Understanding these mechanisms informs the epistemic status of folk linguistic intuitions and their reliability or susceptibility to cognitive illusions, thereby clarifying how people construct linguistic stereotypes and dialect perceptions.

Key finding: The paper develops a psycholinguistic explanation for intuitions arising from verbal case descriptions, showing that automatic stereotype-driven inferences during verb comprehension produce intuitions that can be... Read more
Key finding: By defending a minimal, psychological conception of inference as reasoned change in view, and grounding Helmholtzian computational models of perception in this framework, this paper argues that perceptual inferences are... Read more
Key finding: The paper distinguishes levels of explanation in pragmatics (the 'what and why' versus the 'how' of communication), arguing that Gricean pragmatics primarily addresses the goals of communication (W-level), while processing... Read more

3. How do social attitudes, identity constructs, and evaluative categories interact with folk linguistic conceptions in diverse dialectal contexts?

This theme investigates the relationship between social identities, language ideologies, and evaluative linguistic metaconcepts (such as dialect labels or prestige markers). It considers how mutable social and cultural factors influence folk perceptions of dialects and their symbolic meanings, including the stability and contestation of dialect labels across geographic and social spaces. These dynamics are crucial for understanding language standardization pressures, dialect levelling, and the socio-cognitive construction of dialect prestige or stigma.

Key finding: A large national survey with 3143 respondents revealed complex attitudes toward Standard Canadian English, including limited knowledge or definitional clarity of the ‘Standard Canadian English’ label among half of... Read more
Key finding: This study examined the metalinguistic label ‘White Arabic’ (WA) emerging in various Arab countries and found that understandings and boundaries of WA differ markedly across speakers and contexts, reflecting contradictory... Read more
Key finding: Using Google Trends data to analyze search behavior related to the dialect labels ‘Brummie’, ‘Devon’, and ‘Mancunian’, the study found these terms are not exclusively linked to dialectal naming but carry multiple social and... Read more
Key finding: Historical and perceptual dialectology data show that the ‘Doric’ label, now predominant for the northeast Scottish dialect, only arose in the twentieth century replacing earlier geographic labels such as ‘Buchan’ or... Read more

All papers in Perceptual Dialectology

Arabic has been traditionally described as a canonically diglossic language , with Standard Arabic (SA) as the high variety and spoken vernaculars as low varieties. Further research has proven that the actual linguistic landscape in... more
In this paper, we highlight two recently developed, technology-enabled platforms for documenting the small Walser varieties spoken in northwestern Italy. These platforms address the urgent need to record linguistic varieties that are... more
Вранці, в суботу, 24 травня 1952 року, об 11-й годині дня студенти виявили в саду у дворі філологічного факультету Чернівецького університету на дереві на 10-метровій висоті-національний синьо-жовтий прапор та ОУНівську листівку «До... more
Universidade Federal da Paraíba/CNPq ResUmo os estudos sobre "Atitude", no Brasil, não têm recebido a ênfase merecida. Nos idos de 1980, em algumas reuniões do GT de sociolinguística da Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação em Letras e... more
Os estudos sobre “Atitude”, no Brasil, nao tem recebido a enfase merecida. Nos idos de 1980, em algumas reunioes do GT de Sociolinguistica da Associacao Nacional de Pos-Graduacao em Letras e Linguistica (ANPOLL), algumas sessoes foram... more
Ele (a) O, a, lhe, se Si, consigo, ele(a) Nós Nos Conosco, nós Vós Vos Convosco, vós Eles (as) Os, as, lhes, se Si, consigo, ele(as) Quadro 01: Distribuição dos pronomes pessoais no português padrão No que se refere ao pronome acusativo... more
This study sheds light on the boundary between the informants' individuallinguistic micro-perspective and the socio-linguistic macro-perspective in modern regional languages of German by combining qualitative content analysis and scalable... more
Esta pesquisa apresenta análises sobre avaliação linguistica no português europeu madeirense, através de corpora (entrevistas sociolinguísticas selecionadas a partir da amostra Funchal do CORPORAPOT e Corpus Sociolinguístico do... more
The aim of this study is to bring forth the notion of insularity in terms of frontier space, hybrid by definition, characterised by a dynamic relation and inner and outer fluctuation. First and foremost, we try to identify to what extent... more
This article examines supplementary clauses in Slovenian, focusing on the conjunction ki and criteria that classify cases with the conjunction ki as supplementary clauses. The fundamental properties of supplementary clauses which... more
Sommario: Introduzione. .......................................................................................................................... ...........................................................2 1. La banca dati......... ...... more
Synonymity and Translated Finnish. A Corpus-based View of Contextuality of Synonymous Expressions and Lexical Features Specific to Translated language University of Joensuu Publications in the Humanities 35.
Language not only facilitates communication but also constructs social identities through listeners' perceptions and language ideologies. This study examines how listeners perceive second-generation Chinese Americans when they switch... more
Objetivamos com esta pesquisa analisar a variedade dialetal de Roraima sob a ótica dos próprios residentes da região. Para isso, este estudo coletou algumas postagens da página de Instagram South BV City,... more
A reorganização do quadro pronominal do português brasileiro atinge diretamente a configuração dos pronomes-objeto. Para a representação do acusativo de segunda pessoa, por exemplo, é possível encontrarmos a concorrência entre, pelo... more
l633_41.html). Tutti i diritti, in particolare quelli relativi alla traduzione, alla citazione, alla riproduzione in qualsiasi forma, all'uso delle illustrazioni, delle tabelle e del materiale software a corredo, alla trasmissione... more
The word parkade 'parking garage' is widely recognized as a good example of a twentieth-century Canadianism, on account both of its origin and of its frequency. This article draws on newspaper evidence from the United States and Canada to... more
Toukokuussa 1981 tein Sysman lukion ensi-ja toisluokkalaisille kyselyn heidan murteentuntemuksestaan. Tarkoituksenani oli saada selville, minka verran koululaiset tuntevat kotipitajansa vanhaa kansankielta ja missa maarin he tiedostavat... more
Convolutional neural networks allow new representations of texts that extend the standard statistical approaches. By combining frequency and context of words as well as allowing multidimensional treatments (graphical form, lemma and part... more
Der Beitrag skizziert regionale Unterschiede im Spannungsgefüge von Standard und Dialekt in den Regionen Deutschlands. Es wird deutlich, welche Konfigurationen der Standard-Dialekt-Achse sich im intergenerationellen Vergleich nachweisen... more
Nelle zone montuose tra Veneto e Trentino è oggigiorno possibile trovare tre piccole isole linguistiche di un antico dialetto germanico, il cimbro, insediatosi in questi territori tra i secoli XI e XIII, probabilmente in seguito a... more
relação a variedades do português brasileiro e, em especial, de variedades linguísticas nordestinas, por meio dos depoimentos de informantes voluntários -no total, cinco alagoanos, dois baianos e um paulista -, acerca de identidade e de... more
Atti e memorie della Società Dalmata di Storia Patria» è una rivista scientifica internazionale. Seguendo il «Regolamento per la classificazione delle riviste nelle aree non bibliometriche» dell'Anvur, i testi pubblicati sono vagliati,... more
The April, 6th, 2009 Mw 6.3 L'Aquila destructive earthquake represented the first real-case to test the entire emergency seismic network infrastructure (Rete Mobile Real Time, REMORT). Less than 6 hours after the earthquake... more
This article discusses attitudes towards and perceptions of different kinds of suburban-sounding Swedish-ranging from new urban youth styles (here called suburban slang) to a more formal Swedish with a "suburban touch", due to, in... more
In dieser Diplomarbeit wird der Gebrauch von Germanismen im kajkavischen Dialekt von Međimurje dargestellt, weil die Mehrheit der Germanismen in der kroatischen Sprache gerade im kajkavischen Dialekt bis heute erhalten ist. Mithilfe... more
This talk retraces the interesting parts of my thinking over the past decade. Starting with a cross-linguistic comparison of the social situations of Canadian English and Austrian German, it led me to identify silo-concepts in German... more
The purpose of this paper is to study the current sociolinguistic situation of the language community of Xálima through the prism of the theory of community of practice. We define the community of practice as an aggregate of people who... more
Türkiye’nin kültürel çeşitliliğine rağmen, halk dilbilimi ve algısal diyalektoloji araştırma haritasında dikkate değer bir boşluk olarak kalmaktadır. Bu makale, İstanbul’da gerçekleştirilen ve çizim harita yöntemi kullanılan diyalektal... more
The so-called potential mood in Finnish – not a mood after all? The morphological moods of the Finnish language include the indicative, the imperative and the conditional mood. The pervading view is that the fourth mood is the so-called... more
This paper presents a synchronic analysis of two items-bass and ġayr-in Siwi Berber and Arabic L2 spoken in the Siwa Oasis (Egypt). Despite their different etymologies, both items have followed a similar grammaticalization path, going... more
A COVID-19 trouxe mudanças significativas para a sociedade. O uso de máscaras faciais é uma delas, e, de acordo com Freitag e Tejada (2022), esse uso pode instaurar mudanças na língua implicando em compensação linguística. Este trabalho... more
This study aims to heed the call of giving importance to the creative aspects of first language interference in oral English communication. It contends that languages have their own distinct features but this does not mean inferiority or... more
This thesis investigates the appearance of linguistic ideologies and stereotypes in four recent Disney films (Frozen 2013, Moana 2016, Coco 2017, and The Lion King 2019) as they compare to those studied in older animated films in the... more
RESUMO. No intuito de debater o condicionamento das normas sociais na implementação de novas formas linguísticas em uma comunidade de fala, discuto no presente trabalho a relação entre as atitudes de uma amostra de falantes do português... more
The paper deals with Lithuanian lexemes related to the semantic sphere of the human body. In this study, the oldest portion of the lexicon is analysed, i.e. somatonyms ofIndo-European heritage. The aim of the research is double fold:... more
The Vancouver Linguistic Questionnaire: Fall 2022, was designed to test the varieties of different lexical variables and asked participants a range of background questions. The
Dialect contact occurs whenever speakers of mutually intelligible language varieties interact. Many linguists are interested in the outcome of such contact—how it leads people and languages to vary and change, and what such patterns can... more
This reply explores issues with documenting prosodic structures given their unique relationship with metalinguistic knowledge. New evidence and perspectives are incorporated into a deeper investigation of Budai Rukai and the analytical... more
L'analisi che segue prende le mosse da una riflessione, a lungo meditata, suggerita da due punti di osservazione particolari: la scuola e l'università. La mia personale esperienza didattica si muove, infatti, tra questi due luoghi del... more
The current investigation addresses a vital lacuna in forensic authorship studies, and more concretely, in Native Language Influence Detection (NLID) research: narrowing down a speaker’s native dialect instead of only their native... more
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