Читать книгу Levelling and diffusion in the Cumbrian city dialect of Carlisle - Sandra Jansen - Страница 6

This part of the chapter deals with the dialect contact framework. Dialect contact due to mobility lies at the heart of the geolinguistic processes diffusion and levelling which have been discussed widely in the sociolinguistic literature in recent years (e.g. Trudgill 1986; Britain 2002; Kerswill 2003; Steele 2008; Atkinson 2011; Flynn 2012).

Mobility increased dramatically over the course of the 20^th century and is a major part of today’s society. Increased mobility leads to an increase in contact between individuals from different geographical and social areas and thus to the increase of dialect contact scenarios which Trudgill (1986: 1) defines as “contact between varieties of language that are mutually intelligible.”1 Possible contact scenarios are when people go on holiday or when they travel to the next bigger city for shopping or for cultural events. These are rather short-term contacts and are often discarded in dialect contact research while commuting and moving can be interpreted as long-term contact situations which can lead to and further language change. But not only mobility can influence language change. The area that people orient themselves towards or away is also an important factor (cf. Montgomery 2012; Leach, Watson and Gnevsheva 2016). Britain (2010b) emphasises social practice, attitudes and orientation as key factors for dialect change scenarios.

In the following part I present various processes that are related to dialect contact scenarios.