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Intermediate Language Varieties: Koinai and regional standards in Europe
Edited by Massimo Cerruti and Stavroula Tsiplakou
[Studies in Language Variation 24] 2020
► pp. 31–54

Chapter 2
Regional varieties in Norway revisited

| MultiLing, University of Oslo

This chapter examines diverging tendencies towards vertical convergence in different parts of Norway and patterns of emergence and enregisterment of intermediate regional varieties – at the level of language use, but particularly at the level of perception. Over the last decades the Norwegian language space has undergone substantial restructuring, partly due to increasing mobility, urbanisation and globalisation. More dialect and language contact has led to increased dialect levelling, dialect shift, bi-dialectism, emergence of koinai, multiethnolectal speech styles and possibly also intermediate regional varieties. While previous studies suggest that regional lects may be emerging, this paper presents arguments on the basis of results from a recent large-scale study, as well as other recent work, to the effect that these still seem to remain structurally relatively incoherent, unfocussed and unstable and have little indexical value or symbolic significance.

Keywords: regional varieties, dialect levelling, vertical convergence, Norwegian, mobility, indexicality, perception and self-evaluation, enregisterment, translanguaging, ontology
Article outline
  • Prologue
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Restructuring of the Norwegian society
    • 2.2Linguistic diversity in Norway
    • 2.3Dialect developments in contemporary Norway
  • 3.Regional varieties
    • 3.1Regional varieties in Scandinavia
    • 3.2Regional varieties in Norway
    • 3.3Deconstruction of lects
    • 3.4Regional varieties revisited
  • 4.Concluding remarks
    • 4.1A fiction in the minds of linguists?
    • 4.2A reality in the lives of people?
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 June 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.24.02roy
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