ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Stefan Dollinger presents five points of critique that have been levied against pluricentricity since the 1990s. They are tackled one by one, starting with the critique against the Österreichisches Wörterbuch (Austrian Dictionary), then moving on to the charge of ideology—the most persistent point of critique—which is contrasted with enregisterment processes. A pluri-arealist bias is then identified as working against pluricentricity, i.e. that pluri-arealists have their own biases, which have not been addressed. The model of borders in German has been undertaken by Peter Auer, Frans Hinskens and Paul Kerswill, and Auer’s model will be questioned and reinterpreted as it pertains to Austria. Relying on Scheuringer’s infelicitous border study, Auer models the Austrian–Bavarian border very differently from the comparable German–Dutch border, a problem that is resolved using Occam’s razor. Finally, the point that pluricentricity is an outdated concept in a unified Europe is taken up, showing that we cannot expect in a Europe, when unified, for linguistic identity markers to decrease, as studies in Canada have shown that the opposite may be the case.
