Language Attitudes in England and Austria: A Sociolinguistic Investigation Into Perceptions of High and Low-Prestige Varieties in Manchester and Vienna

In both Manchester and Vienna, there is much anecdotal evidence about the social implications of one’s spoken language variety. However, the evaluation of a person’s character based on the way they speak might not necessarily be the same in different countries with different languages. If evaluations of a speaker’s social class, professional status and general character change according to the country and language, then in which ways? By applying a very similar methodological framework in each of these cities, this study sets out to examine the extent to which perceptions of a speaker may vary with the social and linguistic context of each urban environment. Many sociolinguistic studies have already investigated how the way we talk influences the perceptions others have of us. The research presented in this book expands on this idea by directly comparing data across two nations with two different languages.