Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/36-1181

Title: (Dia)Lects in the 21st Century
Subtitle: Selected Papers from Methods in Dialectology XVII
Series Title: Language Variation
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Language Science Press
http://langsci-press.org
Book URL: https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/447

Editor(s): Susanne Wagner, Ulrike Stange-Hundsdörfer

Reviewer: Daniel Strogen

SUMMARY

(Dia)lects in the 21st Century: Selected Papers from Methods in Dialectology XVII is an edited volume compiled by Susanne Wagner and Ulrike Stange-Hundsdorfer. The volume comprises sixteen papers from the seventeenth Methods in Dialectology conference, held in 2022. Broadly speaking, the papers address contemporary issues in the field of dialectology, with particular attention given to the application of methodologies. As such, the organisation of the volume is thematic but with a clear methodological focus: the first two sections group papers by research tools and data types, while the latter two group papers by their sociolinguistic focus and theoretical orientation.

The opening section, ‘Geolinguistic methods and big data in dialectology’, contains four papers that all use large datasets, quantitative approaches, and geospatial analysis, but to different ends. Baxter’s ‘Extracting “non-standard” data from the Twitter API’ explores the potential of social media data for corpus-based analysis, here applied to African American English (AAE) syntax. Building on this digital-corpus approach, Baxter and Stevenson’s ‘Ain’t + infinitive verb in Black/African American English’ takes a more targeted view, presenting the first stage of a comprehensive atlas of AAE syntax and examining the distribution of the ain’t + infinitive structure relative to didn’t + infinitive. Shifting from English to German, Blaßnigg, Kaiser, Mauser, and Niehaus’ ‘The Atlas of colloquial German in Salzburg’ reports on an ongoing large-scale survey documenting variation from local dialects to near-standard German, showing how traditional atlas work can integrate modern data-collection methods. Finally, Sekeres, Wieling, and Knooihuizen’s ‘A cognitive geographic approach to dialectology’ moves from production to perception, investigating how both geographic distance and “cognitive distance” (speakers’ mental estimates of spatial separation) shape perceptual dialect differences. Together, these papers illustrate the range of “big data” sources now available to dialectologists, from social media corpora to large-scale surveys, and how such data can support both production- and perception-oriented research.

The second section, ‘Corpus-based studies and dialect change’, presents five papers using corpora to examine how dialects change over time, often in response to contact or shifting social contexts. Hirano’s ‘A directional shift in linguistic change’ analyses longitudinal data from an English-speaking expatriate community in Japan, showing how dialect contact can redirect change trajectories over time. Nove and Sadock’s ‘Minimal minimal pairs moves to the heritage language context’, comparing vowel length contrasts in Polish Central Yiddish with the understudied Unterland (Transcarpathian) variety, thus contributing to the documentation of endangered dialects. Adopting a community-study perspective, Pabst, Brunet, Chasteen, and Tagliamonte’s ‘Tracking language change in real time’ reflects on methodological challenges in following Toronto speakers from later life into retirement, an age range often overlooked in change studies. Siewert, Scherrer, and Wieling’s ‘Corpus-based Low Saxon dialectometry’ takes a long-term view, charting similarity and change in Low Saxon from the 19th century to the present, while Burkette and Antieau’s ‘Leaner, cleaner, and full of attitude’ traces the methodological evolution of the Linguistic Atlas Project from intensive, hours-long elicitation sessions to its present-day hybrid format. Collectively, these papers highlight how corpus methods can capture both historical and contemporary change, as well as the methodological adaptations needed to study it.

The third section, ‘Dialectology, linguistic identity, and social factors’, shifts focus from methodology to the interplay between dialect use, speaker identity, and sociocultural variables. Jahns’ ‘Das ist dann schon total cool zu sagen, Machanot’ introduces the linguistic-positioning task, a new methodological tool for probing how speakers perceive and rationalise their own and others’ linguistic choices. Post’s ‘Regional prosodic variation in the speech of young urban Russians’ investigates whether traditional regional prosodic differences persist in younger speakers in Moscow and Perm, linking production patterns to broader questions of urban identity. Takemura’s ‘How important is information about grandparents when selecting a dialect speaker?’ examines the Japanese haenuki (“native-born”) criterion, a three-generations-in-place requirement, and its role in defining dialect speakers in survey contexts. Although working in different linguistic and cultural settings, all three studies explore how identity and social criteria mediate the perception, production, and definition of dialects.

The final section, ‘Theoretical approaches and innovations in dialectology’, engages with conceptual and methodological advances in the field. Dollinger’s ‘Dialectology as “language making”’ critiques anti-pluricentric perspectives in German dialectology through the lens of ‘language making’ (Krämer et al., 2022), identifying a long-standing “One Standard German Axiom” (OSGA) that frames German as a single, self-contained entity and delegitimises non-dominant standard varieties. Kathrein’s ‘Es werden im wesentlichen [sic!] nur Worten aufgenommen...’ examines three layperson-created dialect collections from Tyrol to investigate how non-specialists conceptualise and demarcate their dialects in relation to the standard language, providing an empirical counterpoint to Dollinger’s more theory-driven critique. Sunga, Prokić, and Chen’s ‘Applying the state-of-the-art tonal distance metrics to a large dialectal dataset’ assesses four methods for calculating tone distances in dialectometry, addressing the long-standing neglect of tone in phonetic distance measures despite its global prevalence. Closing the volume, Yurayong, Pimvunkum, and Naksuk’s ‘Convergence and divergence of tone paradigms across Tai dialects in the 21st century’ applies such quantitative methods to Tai dialects spoken across Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam, demonstrating their utility for mapping large-scale areal patterns. Together, these papers showcase the theoretical, methodological, and empirical breadth of contemporary dialectology.

EVALUATION

Overall, (Dia)lects in the 21st Century is a timely contribution, reflecting both the breadth of current research in, and the increasing methodological diversification of, dialectology (Chambers & Trudgill, 1998). The editors have curated a volume that includes both traditional and emerging methodologies, offering insights into geospatial analysis, corpus methods, identity-focused research, and theoretical critique. Moreover, the inclusion of papers that cover a wide range of linguistic varieties - from AAE to Tai dialects - highlights the volume’s commitment to showcasing dialectology as a global field (Boberg et al., 2018).

One of the volume’s key strengths is its methodological range. The first two sections demonstrate how advances in data collection and processing are enabling fine-grained quantitative analyses on a scale that would have been logistically unfeasible in early dialectology (Nerbonne, 2018). The “big data” studies in Part I, for instance, highlight how both production and perception can be examined using data sources such as social media corpora and measures of cognitive distance, while the corpus-based papers in Part II offer valuable models of tracking change across communities and historical periods. This range of approaches will be particularly useful for dialectologists seeking to integrate new tools into established frameworks.

The volume is not without some limitations, though these are in part a reflection of its nature as a conference proceedings covering a wide field. While the editors’ thematic grouping aids navigation, the overall coherence is somewhat uneven. In some sections, papers share only a broad thematic umbrella rather than a tightly defined research agenda. This is most evident in Parts III and IV, where contributions grouped by sociolinguistic focus and theoretical orientation display considerable diversity in their approaches; the range of languages and topics, while stimulating, can occasionally dilute thematic unity. That said, the diversity of perspectives arguably outweighs this slight loss of cohesion, offering a richer sense of the breadth of current work in dialectology.

In addition, the absence of a concluding chapter or editorial synthesis means that cross-cutting themes, such as the relationship between methodological choice and the types of sociolinguistic insight produced, remain implicit rather than explicitly drawn out. Such a synthesis could have strengthened the book’s utility by providing an integrated set of takeaways. A further challenge is uneven accessibility. While many contributions are clear and well contextualised, others assume familiarity with specialised techniques. This is not unusual for a conference volume, but it may limit its reach among graduate students or researchers entering dialectology from adjacent fields. On the other hand, for established scholars in dialectology, these papers will be an asset rather than an obstacle.

The editors largely succeed in their stated aim of providing 'a valuable resource for linguists, researchers, and anyone interested in the complex and ever-changing landscape of human language.' The volume effectively captures the current diversity of dialectological research, though the accessibility varies depending on reader background, as noted earlier.

Looking forward, the volume's most significant contribution may lie in its methodological contributions. Several papers introduce techniques that could be applied beyond their original contexts - the linguistic-positioning task in Part III, the tonal distance metrics in Part IV, and the corpus-based approaches in Part II all offer frameworks that future researchers can adapt and refine. More broadly, the volume demonstrates how traditional dialectological questions can be approached through innovative methodological lenses, suggesting productive directions for the field's continued evolution.

REFERENCES

Boberg, C., Nerbonne, J., & Watt, D. (2018). Introduction. In C. Boberg, J. Nerbonne, & D. Watt (Eds.), The handbook of dialectology (pp. 31–55). Wiley Blackwell.

Chambers, J. K., & Trudgill, P. (1998). Dialectology (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Krämer, P., Vogl, U., & Kolehmainen, L. (2022). What is “language making”? International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2022(274), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2021-0016

Nerbonne, J. (2018). Methods: Introduction. In C. Boberg, J. Nerbonne, & D. Watt (Eds.), The handbook of dialectology (pp. 352–355). Wiley Blackwell.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Daniel Strogen is a PhD candidate at Swansea University, specialising in Welsh language shift. His research focuses on patterns of language decline among new Welsh speakers, employing mixed methods approaches informed by sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. He holds degrees in English Language, Primary Education, and Social Research Methods, and has published short fiction alongside his academic work. His broader interests include dialectology, language attitudes, and language policy.