Randi Neteland

This PhD thesis is written as a part of the larger project Language development in industrial towns (Språkutvikling på industristader), financed by the Norwegian Research Council.

Industrial towns are interesting because of the intense dialect contact situations that occur due to a dramatic population growth. In theory this population growth should trigger a certain kind of dialect change called koinéization by Trudgill and others. Koinéization is described as a process in three stages, where the original dialect becomes so changed through the process that the outcome is a new dialect (or to be precise: a koiné). In such diffuse speech societies, with so many different dialects accommodating to each other, the children do not necessarily acquire the local dialect: i.e. acquisition of a dialectal phonological feature can be obscured simply because of the numbers of other-dialect speakers. How the new dialect turns out, is determined by at least three kinds of factors: 1) the population growth factor: who the newcomers are, in what numbers they come and where they come from, 2) the factor of social language: e.g. language norms and values, the social status of different kinds of dialects, or stylistic language variation, and 3) internal linguistic factors, e.g. the substitution of one sound with another is relatively easy, but splitting or otherwise restructuring of your phonological system is difficult.

My project is on the dialects of the industrial towns of Sauda and Årdal. The towns are located in different counties (Rogaland and Sogn og Fjordane), but belong to the same dialect group in western Norway. My thesis will be an investigation of selected language variables in the dialects of these two towns (the last hundred years) and a comparison of their language change patterns. It is a longitudinal sociolinguistic project focussing on the dialects’ development and change over the last hundred years. We have collected speech data (sound material) that dates back 20 years or more, and I intend to collect new speech data in May/June 2011. I aim to include some of the informants from the old material again, to serve as so-called panel informants. In addition it will be a trend study of the generations represented in both old and new data. This comparison of the same generations in different moments in time is particularly interesting in these industrial towns, because it can shed light on the variability both in individuals and between individuals. I also hope to get some qualitative interview data on the informants’ understandings or interpretations on the diversity of options and choices represented in the speech society.

Neteland is affiliated with the Department of Linguistics, Literary and Aesthetic Studies.