From the Terminology of Sociolinguistically Informed Dialectology

Cilj je ovoga članka da kroz izbor i opis nešto novijeg nazivlja u dijalektologiji pokaže u kojemu se smjeru ova disciplina u europskim zemljama kreće u istraživanju i promišljanju dijalekata.Traditional dialectology has been a discipline describing language varieties and thus, implicitly or explicitly, questioning the unexceptional neogrammarian sound laws. In its description of language varieties it is seen as predecessor to sociolinguistics. In its methods of data collecting traditional dialectology relies on idiolects of mostly rural speakers, while sociolinguistics looks at speech communities, their members interaction and their linguistic repertoires. Sociolinguistically informed dialectology has developed its methodology for the study of urban dialects, their social stratification in connection with social hierarchy, age, education, ethnicity and gender of their members. Its interests include the activity of social networks and contacts between regions in interpreting dialect change. With regard to terminology modern dialectology relies on some traditional terms like convergence and divergence, levelling, koineisation, but has also developed new terminology like advergence, focusing, difusness, simplification, accommodation, covert prestige etc. The paper aims at describing the dialect processes to which some of these terms refer