Features of describing terminological apparatus within urban language studies

Abstract

Throughout their millennia of history, cities have been linguistically diverse. Urban language differs from other forms of language existence, including literary language at all linguistic levels: phonological, grammatical, syntactical, lexical and idiomatic. This article deals with the terminological apparatus within the framework of sociolinguistic research into the German-speaking tradition, which belongs to the studies of linguistic variability of German speaking groups, living in big cities: “urbanlect”, “metropolitanlect”, “regional language”, “city language” and “local language”. The article attempts to distinguish these concepts. In the sphere of sociolinguistics, the variety of the terminological apparatus, used to describe various forms of language existence, is not only a consequence of the need to describe a large number of diverse language phenomena within different categories (territorial division, social stratification, national attribute, etc.), but also a consequence of its basic concepts uncertainty and their interaction on which this apparatus is based: language, a language norm and a dialect. Thus, the problem, associated with the definition of the status of a particular language variety as a separate language or as a dialect of some language is still open. This in turn leads to difficulties in distinguishing, for instance, the notions of “regiolect” and “regional language” within general categories. The purpose of this article is to find the most appropriate set of concepts and terms that can be applied in the study of the linguistic variation of urban vernaculars at the phonological and phonetic levels, taking into account the peculiarities of the German urban colloquial language.