dialectologie

Dialectologie, or dialectology, is the branch of linguistics that studies how regional and social varieties of language differ and distribute themselves across space and communities. It seeks to describe pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and usage as they vary, and to understand how these differences form dialect continua and change over time. The field often treats dialects as both observable speech patterns and socially constructed identities, while recognizing that the boundary between dialect and standard language is fluid and contested.

Geographic dialectology focuses on the spatial distribution of linguistic features, using tools such as isoglosses and dialect maps to illustrate boundaries where features change. Sociodialectology or sociolinguistics explores how social factors—age, gender, class, ethnicity, occupation, or urban-rural context—influence variation within a speech community. Key concepts include the dialect continuum, isogloss, and sprachbund, and researchers often study how contact and convergence shape dialects.

Methods combine fieldwork with corpora and quantitative analysis. Researchers gather phonetic, lexical, and syntactic data via interviews, elicitation, and observation, then encode features with transcription and annotation. Data sources include dialect atlases and corpora; well-known references include the Atlas Linguorum Europae (ALE) and the Linguistic Atlas of North America (LANA), as well as national surveys of dialects. Dialectometry applies statistical distances to compare overall variation between locations.

Dialects are studied for linguistic, historical, educational, and cultural reasons. Dialectology intersects with sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, contact linguistics, and anthropology, contributing to understanding language change, bilingualism, language contact, and policy implications.