Dear colleagues,
In response to a posting from January 2022, in which a debate on possible structural bias in German dialectology and its effects on groups of speakers, a new publication has been offered in open access. The context to this debate, a "Gelehrtenstreit" or "Germanistikstreit", can be found here: https://linguistlist.org/issues/33.521/ .

This new publication is based on archival work and highlights connections between the past and the present via concepts, definitions and linguist practitioners. In particular, the life of Eberhard Kranzmayer (1897-1975) offers the key biographical and intellectual details on a disciplinary legacy that would warrant further attention. It is reasoned that the present-day problem lies in disciplinary legacy, a certain traditional outlook, and in historical connections that were carried on beyond 1945, so that, today, the concepts of what German is and what it is not may be seen as unintentionally but surprisingly "old" and outdated, regardless of the computer-based methods that have found entry into the field as of late.

The paper can be accessed here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09579265241259094

Linguistic Field(s): History of Linguistics
Sociolinguistics

Subject Language(s): German (deu)

Language Family(ies): West Germanic