Forestillinger om storby og landsby – og valg af dialekt eller standard

Abstract

In this article we explore possible correlations between the use of dialect/standard on one hand and ideas about place (village/city) and future (education/job) on the other, among 28 15-year-old pupils in a dialect-speaking area of Southern Jutland in Denmark. Taking advantage of the fact that all pupils were interviewed, by a dialect- as well as standard-speaking researcher, we analyze the population as a whole, as a small social field. We suggest that the population is characterized by four, supra-individual positions: 1) locally oriented (dialect); 2) regionally oriented (standard); 3) a dialect-speaking position oriented away from the village, towards technical higher education, having few experiences with the supra-local; and 4) a standard-speaking or code-shifting position oriented towards big cities and academic education, having multiple experiences with the supra-local. We argue that the idea of future place (as opposed to occupation) is backgrounded in position 3), making this position a possible challenge to the notion of place in sociolinguistics. And we argue that the local place is no longer at stake in position 4), allowing for a positive assessment of both village and city. We briefly discuss the relevance of individuel life stories, network and overarching socially instituted discourses, as well as methodological challenges and/or advantages with analyses combining objective language data and subjective experience data.