Beyond Sounds and Stereotypes – Exploring Phonaesthetic Perceptions of Swiss German Dialects
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Date of Publication
July 9, 2024
Publication Type
Conference Paper
Division/Institute
Language
English
Uncontrolled Keywords
Description
In German-speaking Switzerland, both print and online media regularly publish rankings based
on public surveys, assessing the popularity of dialects like Bern German, Zurich German, and
Valais German. Over the years, these rankings have shown relative stability, along with stereotypical
associations linked to these dialects, such as notions of coziness, attractiveness, or arrogance.
Our study delves into the field of phonaesthetics [2, 3, 4, 8, 17] and perceptual dialectology
of German varieties [1, 11, 12, 13, 14]. We aim to understand how Swiss German dialectal
sound features are subjectively evaluated and which features give rise to stereotypical dialect
attributions. We also explore the impact of extralinguistic factors, such as age, gender, education,
attitudes toward the region, mobility, and personality, on these evaluations. We thus investigate
the role of regional features in language perception and evaluation [13], examining the
inherent value and social connotations hypotheses [5, 6].
Our pilot study focuses on the (ethno-)dialectologically most relevant dialect areas in Swiss
German, namely Bern and Zurich [9, 15], which consistently receive different positions in popular
dialect rankings. These areas are both critical urban centers in German-speaking Switzerland,
with Bern serving as the political hub and Zurich as the economic center. We examine 24
linguistic variables, including 9 vowels and 15 consonants, within single-word utterances (e.g.,
<Rad> [ra̠ːt rɑːt], <fünf> [fɔ͡
ɪf fyːf], <Milch> [mɪlχ mɪʊχ], <Hund> [hʊnt hʊŋ]). These variables
create 48 minimal pair items, contrasting Bern German and Zurich German variants where possible,
in a matched-guise design. We measure reaction times using Implicit Association Tasks
[7, 16] and assess six dimensions of evaluation: three aesthetic descriptors (beauty, status, and
eros [8]), and three subjective dialect attributes (urban/rural, soft/hard, and friendly/aggressive).
Our study includes three listener groups: residents of Bern, residents of Zurich, and a control
group from Hessen, Germany, who are unfamiliar with both dialects.
We hypothesize that aesthetic evaluations of dialectal sound features are influenced by
learned sociocultural factors, listeners' extralinguistic characteristics, and specific acoustic
characteristics. Additionally, we anticipate that the mapping of sound features to subjective dialect
attributes will primarily apply to the Swiss German listener groups, rather than the German
control group, as the associations in question are deeply ingrained [6] but still linked to certain
sounds [10]. We will present initial results of the Implicit Association Tasks using linear mixed
effects models in our presentation.
References
[1] Anders, Christina, Markus Hundt & Alexander Lasch (eds.). 2010. Perceptual Dialectology. Neue Wege der
Dialektologie. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter.
[2] Aryani, Arash, Markus Conrad, David Schmidtke & Arthur Jacobs. 2018. Why 'piss' is ruder than 'pee'? The
role of sound in affective meaning making. PLoS ONE 13 (6): e0198430.
[3] Crystal, David. 2008. A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. 6th edition. Malden, MA & Oxford: Blackwell.
[4] Crystal, David. 1995. Phonaesthetically speaking. English Today 11(2), 8–12.
[5] Giles, Howard, Richard Bourhis & Ann Davis. 1979. Prestige Speech Styles: The Imposed Norm and Inherent
Value Hypotheses. In: McCormack, William C. & Stephen A. Wurm (eds.). Language and Society: Anthropological
Issues. The Hague: Mouton, 589–596.
[6] Giles, Howard & Nancy Niedzielski. 1998. Italian is beautiful, German is ugly. In: Bauer, Laurie & Peter
Trudgill (eds.). Language Myths. London: Penguin, 85–93.
[7] Greenwald, Anthony G., Debbie E. McGhee, & Jordan L. K. Schwartz. 1998. Measuring individual differences
in implicit cognition: the implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74, 1464–1480.
[8] Kogan, Vita V. & Susanne Maria Reiterer. 2021. Eros, Beauty, and Phon-Aesthetic Judgments of Language
Sound. We Like It Flat and Fast, bur Not Melodious. Comparing Phonetic and Acoustic Features if 16 European
Languages. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 15:578594.
[9] Lameli, Alfred, Elvira Glaser & Philipp Stoeckle. 2020. Drawing areal information from a corpus of noisy
dialect data. Journal of Linguistic Geography 8, 31–48.
[10] Leemann, Adrian, Marie-José Kolly & Francis Nolan. 2015. It’s not phonetic aesthetics that drives dialect
preference: The case of Swiss German. Proceedings ICPhS 2015.
[11] Preston, Dennis R. 1982. Perceptual Dialectology. Mental Maps of United States dialects from a Hawaiian
perspective. Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics 14 (2), 5−49.
[12] Preston, Dennis R. 1989. Perceptual dialectology: Nonlinguists’ Views of Areal Linguistics. Dordrecht:
Foris.
[13] Purschke, Christoph & Philipp Stoeckle. 2019. Perzeptionslinguistik arealer Sprachvariation im Deutschen.
In: Herrgen, Joachim & Jürgen E. Schmidt (eds.). Sprache und Raum. Ein internationales Handbuch der Sprachvariation.
Vol. 4: Deutsch (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft. 30.4). Berlin & Boston:
De Gruyter Mouton, 844–861.
[14] Sauer, Verena & Toke Hoffmeister. 2022. Wahrnehmungsdialektologie. Eine Einführung (Germanistische Arbeitshefte
50). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.
[15] Stoeckle, Philipp & Christian Schwarz. 2019. Ethnodialektale Räume in der Deutschschweiz. In: Nievergelt,
Andreas & Ludwig Rübekeil (eds.). Raum und Sprache. Festschrift für Elvira Glaser zum 65. Geburtstag. Heidelberg:
Winter, 391–408.
[16] Weirich, Melanie, Stefanie Jannedy & Gediminas Schüppenhauer. 2020. The Social Meaning of Contextualized
Sibilant Alternations in Berlin German. Frontiers in Psychology 11:566174.
[17] Winkler, Anna, Vita V. Kogan & Susanne Maria Reiterer. 2023. Phonaesthetics and personality – Why we do
not only prefer Romance languages. Frontiers in Language Sciences 2:1043619.
on public surveys, assessing the popularity of dialects like Bern German, Zurich German, and
Valais German. Over the years, these rankings have shown relative stability, along with stereotypical
associations linked to these dialects, such as notions of coziness, attractiveness, or arrogance.
Our study delves into the field of phonaesthetics [2, 3, 4, 8, 17] and perceptual dialectology
of German varieties [1, 11, 12, 13, 14]. We aim to understand how Swiss German dialectal
sound features are subjectively evaluated and which features give rise to stereotypical dialect
attributions. We also explore the impact of extralinguistic factors, such as age, gender, education,
attitudes toward the region, mobility, and personality, on these evaluations. We thus investigate
the role of regional features in language perception and evaluation [13], examining the
inherent value and social connotations hypotheses [5, 6].
Our pilot study focuses on the (ethno-)dialectologically most relevant dialect areas in Swiss
German, namely Bern and Zurich [9, 15], which consistently receive different positions in popular
dialect rankings. These areas are both critical urban centers in German-speaking Switzerland,
with Bern serving as the political hub and Zurich as the economic center. We examine 24
linguistic variables, including 9 vowels and 15 consonants, within single-word utterances (e.g.,
<Rad> [ra̠ːt rɑːt], <fünf> [fɔ͡
ɪf fyːf], <Milch> [mɪlχ mɪʊχ], <Hund> [hʊnt hʊŋ]). These variables
create 48 minimal pair items, contrasting Bern German and Zurich German variants where possible,
in a matched-guise design. We measure reaction times using Implicit Association Tasks
[7, 16] and assess six dimensions of evaluation: three aesthetic descriptors (beauty, status, and
eros [8]), and three subjective dialect attributes (urban/rural, soft/hard, and friendly/aggressive).
Our study includes three listener groups: residents of Bern, residents of Zurich, and a control
group from Hessen, Germany, who are unfamiliar with both dialects.
We hypothesize that aesthetic evaluations of dialectal sound features are influenced by
learned sociocultural factors, listeners' extralinguistic characteristics, and specific acoustic
characteristics. Additionally, we anticipate that the mapping of sound features to subjective dialect
attributes will primarily apply to the Swiss German listener groups, rather than the German
control group, as the associations in question are deeply ingrained [6] but still linked to certain
sounds [10]. We will present initial results of the Implicit Association Tasks using linear mixed
effects models in our presentation.
References
[1] Anders, Christina, Markus Hundt & Alexander Lasch (eds.). 2010. Perceptual Dialectology. Neue Wege der
Dialektologie. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter.
[2] Aryani, Arash, Markus Conrad, David Schmidtke & Arthur Jacobs. 2018. Why 'piss' is ruder than 'pee'? The
role of sound in affective meaning making. PLoS ONE 13 (6): e0198430.
[3] Crystal, David. 2008. A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. 6th edition. Malden, MA & Oxford: Blackwell.
[4] Crystal, David. 1995. Phonaesthetically speaking. English Today 11(2), 8–12.
[5] Giles, Howard, Richard Bourhis & Ann Davis. 1979. Prestige Speech Styles: The Imposed Norm and Inherent
Value Hypotheses. In: McCormack, William C. & Stephen A. Wurm (eds.). Language and Society: Anthropological
Issues. The Hague: Mouton, 589–596.
[6] Giles, Howard & Nancy Niedzielski. 1998. Italian is beautiful, German is ugly. In: Bauer, Laurie & Peter
Trudgill (eds.). Language Myths. London: Penguin, 85–93.
[7] Greenwald, Anthony G., Debbie E. McGhee, & Jordan L. K. Schwartz. 1998. Measuring individual differences
in implicit cognition: the implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74, 1464–1480.
[8] Kogan, Vita V. & Susanne Maria Reiterer. 2021. Eros, Beauty, and Phon-Aesthetic Judgments of Language
Sound. We Like It Flat and Fast, bur Not Melodious. Comparing Phonetic and Acoustic Features if 16 European
Languages. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 15:578594.
[9] Lameli, Alfred, Elvira Glaser & Philipp Stoeckle. 2020. Drawing areal information from a corpus of noisy
dialect data. Journal of Linguistic Geography 8, 31–48.
[10] Leemann, Adrian, Marie-José Kolly & Francis Nolan. 2015. It’s not phonetic aesthetics that drives dialect
preference: The case of Swiss German. Proceedings ICPhS 2015.
[11] Preston, Dennis R. 1982. Perceptual Dialectology. Mental Maps of United States dialects from a Hawaiian
perspective. Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics 14 (2), 5−49.
[12] Preston, Dennis R. 1989. Perceptual dialectology: Nonlinguists’ Views of Areal Linguistics. Dordrecht:
Foris.
[13] Purschke, Christoph & Philipp Stoeckle. 2019. Perzeptionslinguistik arealer Sprachvariation im Deutschen.
In: Herrgen, Joachim & Jürgen E. Schmidt (eds.). Sprache und Raum. Ein internationales Handbuch der Sprachvariation.
Vol. 4: Deutsch (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft. 30.4). Berlin & Boston:
De Gruyter Mouton, 844–861.
[14] Sauer, Verena & Toke Hoffmeister. 2022. Wahrnehmungsdialektologie. Eine Einführung (Germanistische Arbeitshefte
50). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.
[15] Stoeckle, Philipp & Christian Schwarz. 2019. Ethnodialektale Räume in der Deutschschweiz. In: Nievergelt,
Andreas & Ludwig Rübekeil (eds.). Raum und Sprache. Festschrift für Elvira Glaser zum 65. Geburtstag. Heidelberg:
Winter, 391–408.
[16] Weirich, Melanie, Stefanie Jannedy & Gediminas Schüppenhauer. 2020. The Social Meaning of Contextualized
Sibilant Alternations in Berlin German. Frontiers in Psychology 11:566174.
[17] Winkler, Anna, Vita V. Kogan & Susanne Maria Reiterer. 2023. Phonaesthetics and personality – Why we do
not only prefer Romance languages. Frontiers in Language Sciences 2:1043619.