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Category: Project

Description: The present study is the first in the field of variationist SLA to explore adult German as a second language learners’ varietal repertoires, that is, their variable use of standard German, Austro-Bavarian dialect, and mixture varieties. Specifically, 40 L2 learners were subjected to a virtual reality task involving interactions with dialect-speaking and standard German-speaking interlocutors. The goal was to explore differential outcomes in the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence by determining whether subjects adjusted their varietal behavior to match that of the interlocutor (i.e., varietal convergence). The results show that there were no inter-individual addressee-dependent convergence tendencies. A more careful analysis of individual learners’ intra-speaker variation revealed that only select L2 learners adjusted their usage patterns, but did not entirely invert their frequency profiles in function of the variety of the interlocutor. Introspective qualitative data speak to potential drivers behind the differential development of L2 (multi-)varietal repertoires.