Dialect Levelling and the Standard Varieties in Europe
This issue of Folia Linguistica is devoted to the relationship between the European Standard varieties and the on-going changes in the dialects for which they represent the overarching variety. It is widely assumed in (social) dialectology that the Standard varieties have gained momentum in the repertoires of most European speech communities, particularly during this Century. Indeed, there is overwhelming evidence that the relevance of the Standard varieties in everyday life has increased greatly äs a consequence of modernization and mobility in the industrialized European societies, äs a result of the centralization of the state and the spreading mass media, and in particular following the changes in the educational system, which for the first time brought the Standard varieties — in their written, bul also in their spoken form — into the reach of the 'masses'. Although the linguistic changes which followed suit were different from one country to the other (and often not even uniform within one country), there can be littie doubt that the addition of a Standard variety to the repertoire of large parts of the population which hitherto had only spoken dialect has had an important structural impact on the (traditional, or base) dialects. This impact can be described in terms of convergence, i.e. the structural assimilation of the low (=dialect) to the high (=standard) variety. In the simplest case of what should rather be called "advergence" (Mattheier 1996:34), this means that the dialects lose their distinctive traits and adopt those of the Standard variety. All too often, however, the process is a two-sided one and the ongoing changes are therefore of a more complex nature: not only do the dialects converge to the Standard, the Standard also converges towards the dialects, i.e., it takes on regional features ("destandardization"; et*. Auer 1997). In both cases, structural levelling takes place: after a period of transition in which variability may increase due to the co-existence of various competing forms, one of them is relinquished. Levelling on the standard-dialect dimension is usually both verticaP and 'horizontal': in jointly converging towards the Standard variety, the