This paper demonstrates how mobility affects language change in real time and reports on the results of my PhD-thesis. In the thesis I made a real time panel study in three towns in distinct dialect areas in Denmark and examined language change in 23 speakers recorded in 1978 to 2010. The results emphasize the advantages of approaching mobility from different angles when investigating patterns of language change. The present paper focuses on six geographically and socially mobile informants.
At the time of the early recordings, the three towns were in different stages of ongoing dialect leveling processes (Pedersen 2003). In the town of Odder, dialect leveling was advanced (Nielsen and Nyberg 1992; 1993), informants’ language being regional dialect or regional standard (Auer, Hinskens et al. 2005). In the towns of Vinderup and Tinglev, informants’ languages featured substantial amounts of dialect features (Kristensen 1980; Pedersen 1986). In 2005 to 2010, researchers at the Danish National Research Center for Language Change in Real Time (LANCHART) and the University of Southern Denmark re-interviewed informants, thus providing data for investigating language change in real time (see www.lanchart.dk).
Quantitative analyses of morphological and phonological variables show that the mobile informants all mark themselves differently than their non-mobile peers, thus answering a question posed by synchronic studies on mobility and language change (Andersson and Thelander 1994; Bowie 2000). It also shows different patterns of language change in the language of the non-mobile from the three towns. In Odder, language has changed slightly towards Danish standard. In Vinderup, dialect has been leveled extensively between recordings (especially among female informants), whereas in Tinglev, informants’ language has not changed at all. In order to explain how the language change of the non-mobile affect the language change of the mobile informants one needs qualitative analysis that gives attention not only to geographical, social and mental mobility but also to place effects connected to the three different towns, i.e. the ensemble of sociolinguistic conditions within speech localities (Horvath and Horvath 2001; Britain 2009; Blommaert 2010).