The Sociolinguistic State of Alemannic Dialects

Abstract

The various dialects of Alemannic, a set of German dialects spoken in South-Western Germany, North-Eastern France, and Switzerland, are spoken by, in general, a decreasing number of people in these regions. However, the amount by which this has decreased varies drastically from region to region. This thesis consists of a study looking at the current usage of the dialects in Germany, a comparison of these statistics with those from France and Switzerland, and an analysis of the possible historical causes for the established disparity. It finds that major events non-linguistic events, primarily political, have caused continuing and self-perpetuating shifts towards standardised languages in France and Germany, and a lack of such events in Switzerland has precluded it from such shifts.