Preliminary Report on Dialect Attitudes in Austrian and Slovene Carinthia

It is well known that the Slovene language situation is variegated, made up of a complicated interaction between multiple local dialects, regional dialects, the colloquial standard and the literary language. Even with this complicated interaction and the growing influence of the literary language and the regional dialect of Central Slovenia, several recent surveys of relatively large numbers of Slovenes indicate that large majorities of respondents claim to be fluent in and regularly use the local dialect (Lundberg 2010, 2013). These surveys are uniform in showing that the local dialect plays an important role in local identity in Slovenia. There do seem to be differences in dialect usage patterns and the influence of different varieties of Slovene on the local dialect based on the region of origin of the respondents. These variations are particularly noticeable in the peripheral dialect regions (Lundberg 2014: 248). This study is based on a preliminary analysis of a questionnaire on dialect attitudes and perceptions of use in one such peripheral dialect region, the Slovene-speaking areas in Austrian and Slovene Carinthia, hereafter Koroska.1