Speakers
Description
Historical language data can give us an insight into the conceptual and everyday world of past times. However, this insight very often only related to a small group of the society with a strong political and social influence. What the linguistic and social situation looked like for the majority of the population can usually only be guessed through the interpretation of others, as only a small proportion took part in the written production, that is available to the posterity. It was only in the 19th century that dialectology, which was still young at the time, showed an increasing interest in the language used by the rural society. For a representation of the language, the less mobile, less educated and manually working peasant class (often referred to as NORMs or NORFs) was usually chosen, as they were assumed to produce the “most original” and “purest” dialect. Attempts were also made to explain or understand historical language change processes based on recent dialectal conditions. In addition to the language atlas projects, which adhered to this methodological paradigm until the second half of the 20th century, the dialect dictionaries played (and still play) a central role in the documentation and preservation of dialect forms. A prominent example, which also provides the basis for our presentation, is the “Dictionary of Bavarian Dialects in Austria” (‘Wörterbuch der bairischen Mundarten in Österreich’, WBÖ). The project looks back at a long history, starting in 1912. In line with the academic study of dialect and the close interlinking of dialectology and ethnology, the aim was to gain an “insight into the entire imaginative and emotional world of dialect” (‘Blick in die gesamte Vorstellungs- und Gefühlswelt der Mundart’). (Seemüller & Much, 1911). The main interest was therefore in the documentation of the everyday vocabulary of the rural population in the first half of the 20th century. To this end, a comprehensive collection of material was started in 1913, most of which was collected over the next few decades with the help of so-called volunteer “collectors” (‘Sammler’). The survey was based on “questionnaires aimed at collecting dialect vocabulary and gaining knowledge of the associated factual and folkloristic material” (‘Fragebogen, die in gleicher Weise darauf hinzielen, den Mundartwortschatz zu sammeln sowie Kenntnis von dem dazugehörigen sachlichen und volkskundlichen Gut zu gewinnen’) (preface of WBÖ Vol. 1: XVI). Since the foundation of the WBÖ and the data collection, a lot of time has passed, and society has undergone major social changes. In Austria, for example, today only 3.5% of the population works in the agricultural sector, compared to almost a half at the beginning of the 20th century (cf. Zeitlhofer, 2011, p. 46; Statistics Austria). If we look at the linguistic material of the WBÖ from today’s perspective, there are some considerable differences to the way the language is used today. Many terms from the historical rural context seem unfamiliar, are not known anymore, their use seems inappropriate or discriminatory. In our presentation, we will systematically examine the material of the WBÖ for negative characterizations and designations of persons. For the most part, these pejorative terms are created by expanding the basic meanings of lexemes and transferring certain prototypical characteristics to persons. These semantic transfers are often metaphorical (cf. examples 1 and 2), but in some cases they can also be extended metonymically (cf. example 3). 1. 2. 3. Geige (fiddle) ‘mocking term for a long, lean girl’ Gocke (corn) ‘misshaped person’ or ‘stupid person’ Fetzach (rag) ‘worthless woman’s dress (derogatory)’ -> ‘careless woman’ Some of the material generated goes back directly to or emerges from the survey. Other content was expressed immediately or arose through associations, which is partly due to the survey’s lack of systematicity. Contents that the rural society was aware of were deliberately asked, while the authors of the dictionary came from the middle-class milieu and the incredibly detailed survey encouraged both collectors and informants to discuss other topics that were still unknown to science. The question is examined as to which areas the respective designates primarily come from, which triggers can be found and which processes take place during a semantic transformation. In addition, we will address the question of which groups of people the negative designations refer to and whether there are correlations with the semantic processes behind them.
