Perceptual dialectology in second language learners of German

Abstract

The goal of this thesis is to investigate how second language learners of German perceive language variation. A three-part linguistic experiment was carried out on twenty university students to determine their ability to discriminate dialects from the standard language, their understanding of dialects, and their attitudes towards dialects. I found that the discrimination ability of students is generally high, and that language proficiency predicted discrimination ability. Intelligibility was generally poor and was unaffected by language proficiency. Students generally found Low German dialects to be more pleasant than Central and Upper German dialects.