ABSTRACT
A quantitative variationist analysis of the language use of three generations in three Danish field sites shows that of the five Southern Jutlandic families, only the youngest generation makes use of a considerable amount of dialect variants. The present chapter widens the scope of investigation of the family study by adding quantitative analyses of 28 young Southern Jutlandic informants in interviews with a dialect-speaking and a standard-speaking interviewer. The results show that use of local variants within the group varies from total to none, and that some of the informants are code switchers. Ethnographic observations in school show that dialect is used unmarked alongside standard, even in class. Qualitative analyses of interviews involving three generations in the field site demonstrate how positive ideologies regarding the local dialect is excessively passed on across generations. It is argued that these ideologies, grounded in sociohistorical factors tied to Southern Jutland, profoundly influence the slowing-down of dialect levelling. By virtue of becoming a fully integrated part of Denmark in 1920 and, prior to this, alternately under German and Danish rule, Southern Jutland has a unique history. The analyses show how elder generations ascribe to the dialect a central role in the ongoing place-making processes and the local construction of belonging to the region. These ideologies are still passed on, but they are contested and challenged as well by contemporary societal changes occurring within the lifetimes of the generations under study. Overall, the account of change processes in the speech community of Southern Jutland is conceptualized as contributing to the charting and operationalization of what Coupland has coined ‘sociolinguistic change’.
