Augschburgerisch auf Facebook: Enregisterment und Mediatisierung eines urbanen Dialekts
AbstractThis article examines language and local identity in an urban space analysing the enregisterment of a local variety at one of the most relevant dialect borders in Germany: the Bavarian city of Augsburg which is in close proximity to both Upper Bavaria and Bavaria’s capital Munich. The local dialect of Augsburg mixes Swabian-Alemannic and Bavarian features and it is because of this mix that Swabians, the group to which the Augsburgians are generally deemed to belong to, are often regarded not to be ‘proper’ Bavarian speakers. Augschburgerisch has become a stylized register with authenticated sociolinguistic features and can thus be employed to construct local identity and index a stereotyped group of speakers, e. g. that local dialect speakers are down-to-earth but grumpy and close-lipped towards strangers. This study examines Augsburgian on social media by qualitatively analysing posts from a local Facebook group. In these posts, authentification practices are used to resolve the ambiguous nature of what it means to be ‘Bavarian’ and the intricacies imposed on the speakers by the border situation while also highlighting the users’ creativity via ironic role alignments.