ABSTRACT
This chapter covers German Dialects, regiolects, Low German, youth language, and research on ethnicity and gender for countries where German is the sole official national or a co-official language. German dialectology currently focuses on regional, space-related variational issues. Perceptual dialectology is strong regarding both German regiolects and dialects. Low German is in decline, spoken only by the older generation, and otherwise mostly used either as a sociosymbolic means to express identity, or as a way to create a glorified pre-industrial image of a supposedly stress-free past. To counter this development, Low German is taught in kindergartens and is also taught and examined in schools and universities. In German youth language, heterogeneity has proven to be the typical feature. The most recent research focuses on spoken interaction between teenagers in specific situations, applying methods of pragmatics to uncover patterns of communication. In Genderlinguistik, a growing number of studies contributes to a variety of existing, good-quality research output, some of which is discussed controversially within linguistics and beyond.
