Rudolf Muhr
Universität Graz, Austria

The overlapping argument and other misconceptions about the pluricentricity of German

The discussion about the pluricentricity of German was started in 1984 by M. Clyne. Ever since the dispute is going on between two camps - one that calls itself pluricentric and is based on the national state as its descriptive base and other the pluriareal one that considers German as a mere agglomeration of linguistic regions.

This conception reduces national variation to a regional one and deliberately ignores the social and individual identity that national varieties provide for linguistic communities. The pluriareal conception of German is a truly dominant conception that downgrades the Austrian variety to a type of Bavarian. And indeed most supporters of this concept are dialectologists and historical linguists that are not willing to accept that nation states are the framework in which linguistic variation is being shaped and maintained.

The presentation will particularly deal with two arguments that are put forward by  supporters of the pluriareal concept: The so called "overlapping argument" and the "heterogenity-argument". These  arguments might also be used in the case of American/Canadian  English; French French / Swiss French / Belgium French etc. and are therefore of general interest for the theory of pluricentric languages. They will be dealt with in detail.