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The Sound And The Fury: Comparative Sociolinguistic Studies In German, Logan C. Pecinovsky

Honors Theses

The German nation has a long history of fragmentation, from the mini-states of the Middle Ages to the eastern and western republics of the recent past. These barriers affected the speech community in particular. Among the various borders that shifted through Central and Eastern Europe for centuries, dialects arose as a result of strong political and cultural identities. Without a strong centralizing force to integrate them, the many communities remained relatively homogenous, which provided fertile soil for unique linguistic development. The most recent partition of East and West scarcely lasted half a century and did not create a discrete speech …