Återbesök i Eskilstuna : En undersökning av morfologisk variation och förändring i nutida talspråk

Sammanfattning: Real-time replications of empirical studies of language use are scarce. This study of language change in real time replicates an investigation of the social variation of spoken Swedish in the medium-sized town of Eskilstuna, using data collected 29 years after the original study. It combines the merits of a panel and a trend study exploiting data from 13 re-recorded informants from the 1960’s and 72 new informants sampled in the same way as the original 83 ones. By this method individual, generational and community change have been traced.The empirical material consists of informal conversation-like interviews. Seven morphological and morphophonological variables have been analyzed with quantitative methods. These variables are sociolinguistically marked and, according to the prevailing linguistic opinion in Sweden, in the process of more or less rapid change from regional dialect towards spoken standard. The rate of change at the level of the community, however, has been low. The social class- and age-conditioned differences have decreased, even if they are still statistically significant in most variables, whereas the gender-conditioned differences have increased. It is also demonstrated that social mobility and integration in the local community have an impact on the linguistic behavior, but only in specific combinations with other social variables.By implicational scaling it is shown that the variation is ordered and regular and that it is possible to discern different varieties in Eskilstuna speech.Where there is any change at all in these variables between 1967 and 1996, this manifests itself both as individual and generational change. Idiolectal change is strongest before age 50, but there are also informants older than 50 who have changed, either in the direction of more standard or more local speech.The comparison between the methods demonstrates that a trend study is the most reliable way of investigating real-time change.