The Pluricentricity Debate: On Austrian German and other Germanic Standard Varieties

This book unpacks a 30-year debate about the pluricentricity of German. It examines the concept of pluricentricity, an idea implicit to the study of World Englishes, which expressly allows for national standard varieties, and the notion of pluri-areality, which seeks to challenge the former. Looking at the debate from three angles methodological, theoretical, and epistemological the volume draws on data from German and English, with additional perspectives from Dutch, Luxembourgish, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian, to establish if and to what degree pluri-areality and pluricentricity model various sociolinguistic situations adequately. Dollinger argues that pluri-areality is synonymous with geographical variation and, as such, no match for pluricentricity. Instead, pluri-areality presupposes an atheoretical, supposedly neutral, data-driven linguistics that violates basic science-theoretical principles. Three fail-safes are suggested the uniformitarian hypothesis, Poppers theory of falsification and speaker attitudes to avoid philological incompatibilities and terminological clutter. This book is of particular interest to scholars in sociolinguistics, World Englishes, Germanic languages and linguists more generally.