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Chapter 30 - Urban Speech Styles of Germanic Languages

from Part V - Language Contact and Nonstandard Varieties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2020

By
Pia Quist  and
Bente A. Svendsen
Edited by
Michael T. Putnam  and
B. Richard Page
Michael T. Putnam
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
B. Richard Page
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
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Summary

This chapter gives an overview of contemporary urban speech styles in Northern European cities as they have been described by sociolinguists throughout Scandinavian and Northern European countries. By “contemporary urban speech styles” we refer to new contact-induced speech styles or varieties that have emerged among young people in multilingual urban neighborhoods. The chapter outlines linguistic parallels that have been documented across Scandinavia in particular, as well as in Northern Europe, focusing on, first, structural findings such as variation of the verb second constraint, variation of grammatical gender, variation in pronunciation as well as lexical features; second, the chapter gives an account of studies on social identities connected to, perceptions of and media constructions of contemporary urban speech styles.

Keywords

ethnolectmultiethnolecturban speech stylecontactidentityperceptionmedia
Type
Chapter
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The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics , pp. 714 - 735
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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