The role of dialect exposure in receptive multilingualism
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Charlotte Gooskens
Charlotte Gooskens is Associate Professor of European Linguistics at the department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Groningen. Her research interests include sociophonetics, linguistic distance measurements, receptive multilingualism and experimental linguistics. She is currently principal investigator of the projectMutual intelligibility of closely related languages in Europe: linguistic and non-linguistic determinants. 
and
Wilbert Heeringa
Wilbert Heeringa was born in 1970, and obtained his doctorate at the University of Groningen. He passed with distinction. He is currently involved in projects which investigate the mutual intelligibility of closely related languages (since 2011 in Groningen) and vowel variation in Saterland Frisian (since 2013 in Oldenburg).
Abstract
Previous investigations of inter-Scandinavian intelligibility have shown that, in general, Norwegians are better at understanding the closely related languages Danish and Swedish than Danes and Swedes are at understanding Norwegian. This asymmetry is often explained by the strong position that dialects hold in Norway as opposed to in Denmark and Sweden. In Norway, the general public is more exposed to language variation than in Sweden and Denmark. Due to this exposure Norwegians are assumed to have higher language awareness and more possibilities for linguistic transfer than Swedes and Danes. This could make it easier for them to understand closely related language varieties. The aim of the present investigation is to get an answer to the question whether Norwegians are better at understanding Nordic varieties relative to linguistic distances than Danes. If it is indeed the case that Norwegians have more language awareness, we would expect them to be better than Danes at understanding varieties with the same linguistic distance to their native variety. Our results show that Norwegians are generally better at understanding Nordic language varieties than Danes are. However, this can be explained by linguistic distances and knowledge of the language varieties in the test. No evidence was found for more general language awareness among Norwegians than among Danes.
About the authors
Charlotte Gooskens is Associate Professor of European Linguistics at the department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Groningen. Her research interests include sociophonetics, linguistic distance measurements, receptive multilingualism and experimental linguistics. She is currently principal investigator of the project Mutual intelligibility of closely related languages in Europe: linguistic and non-linguistic determinants.
Wilbert Heeringa was born in 1970, and obtained his doctorate at the University of Groningen. He passed with distinction. He is currently involved in projects which investigate the mutual intelligibility of closely related languages (since 2011 in Groningen) and vowel variation in Saterland Frisian (since 2013 in Oldenburg).
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
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- EFL motivation development in an increasingly globalized local context: A longitudinal study of Chinese undergraduates
- Mentor invitations for reflection in post-observation conferences: Some preliminary considerations
- Special Thematic Section
- The effectiveness of Lingua Receptiva (LaRa) in multilingual communication – Editorial
- How to check understanding across languages. An introduction into the Pragmatic Index of Language Distance (PILaD) usable to measure mutual understanding in receptive multilingualism, illustrated by conversations in Russian, Ukrainian and Polish
- English as a lingua franca versus lingua receptiva in problem-solving conversations between Dutch and German students
- Receptive multilingualism in Turkish-Turkmen academic counseling sessions
- Facilitating mutual understanding in everyday interaction between Finns and Estonians
- The role of dialect exposure in receptive multilingualism
- A matter of reception: ELF and LaRa compared
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Writing systems and language contact in the Euro- and Sinocentric worlds
- Globalization in the margins: toward a re-evalution of language and mobility
- Co-construction of ``doctorable'' conditions in multilingual medical encounters: Cases from urban Japan
- EFL motivation development in an increasingly globalized local context: A longitudinal study of Chinese undergraduates
- Mentor invitations for reflection in post-observation conferences: Some preliminary considerations
- Special Thematic Section
- The effectiveness of Lingua Receptiva (LaRa) in multilingual communication – Editorial
- How to check understanding across languages. An introduction into the Pragmatic Index of Language Distance (PILaD) usable to measure mutual understanding in receptive multilingualism, illustrated by conversations in Russian, Ukrainian and Polish
- English as a lingua franca versus lingua receptiva in problem-solving conversations between Dutch and German students
- Receptive multilingualism in Turkish-Turkmen academic counseling sessions
- Facilitating mutual understanding in everyday interaction between Finns and Estonians
- The role of dialect exposure in receptive multilingualism
- A matter of reception: ELF and LaRa compared
