Esta pesquisa ocupa-se em investigar, à luz da Teoria da Variação laboviana, o emprego de tepe em lugar de vibrante em onset silábico na fala da comunidade bilíngue (português-italiano) de Flores da Cunha (RS), alternância que não se verifica na fala de monolíngues-português. Utilizaram-se dados de dois bancos, VARSUL e BDSer, levantados de entrevistas realizadas em 1990 e 2009, o que possibilitou fazer um estudo em tempo real. A análise da fala de 40 informantes, 20 de cada banco, revelou um decréscimo na frequência total de aplicação da regra: 41% nos dados do VARSUL, 31% nos do BDSer, indício de regressão da regra. Na análise em tempo real, estudo de tendência, observou-se semelhança no papel favorecedor ou desfavorecedor das variáveis controladas, exceto no que diz respeito à variável Idade. O estudo de painel mostrou que os informantes diminuíram a aplicação da regra com o passar dos anos, o que contraria a expectativa de estabilidade do padrão linguístico da fala adulta. / This is a research about the use of tap where a trill is expected in Brazilian Portuguese, which does not occur in the speech of monolinguals, but can be verified in the speech of Portuguese-Italian bilinguals who live in the city of Flores da Cunha (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil). The analysis follows the Theory of Language Variation, by William Labov. The data come from two different sources, VARSUL and BDSer data banks, which have sociolinguistic interviews recorded in 1990 and 2009. This fact enabled us to carry out a real time study. The analysis of the speech of 40 informants, 20 from each bank, showed a decrease in the total frequency of rule application: 41% in the speech of VARSUL informants, 31% in the speech of BDSer informants, a sign of rule regression. The real time analysis, tendency study, showed that the role of the variables under control has not changed along 20 years, except the role of the variable Age. The pannel study showed a decrease in rule application by the three informants studied. This goes against the expectation of a stable linguistic behavior in adult speech.

Die vorliegende Arbeit skizziert eine materialistische Antwort auf die Frage, welche gesellschaftliche Bedeutung Sprache hat, in welchem Sinne sie Bedingung für und inwiefern sie in Abhängigkeit von gesellschaftlichen Strukturen ist. Den Rahmen bildet die materialistische Geschichtsauffassung und Gesellschaftstheorie. Sie wird zunächst in ihrer Ausarbeitung durch Marx und Engels ohne Verbindung mit einer entwickelten materialistischen Sprachtheorie eingeführt. Es folgt ein Gang durch sprachtheoretische Fragestellungen, die unterhalb der gesellschaftstheoretischen Ebene angesiedelt sind: Wittgensteins Auffassung der Sprache als Regelfolgepraxis wird als Idealismuskritik des Abbildungsparadigmas in der Sprachphilosophie gedeutet, anhand der Kulturhistorischen Schule der russischen Psychologie wird Sprache als Orientierungsmittel und materielle Basis komplexerer Zwecksetzungen bestimmt und schließlich an Brandoms pragmatistischer Rekonstruktion der logischen Gliederung der Sprache die Stellung innersprachlicher Regelstrukturen diskutiert. Die gesellschaftliche Ebene wird im letzten Kapitel anhand von materialistischen Gesellschaftstheorien der Sprache (Gramsci), der Ideologie (Projekt Ideologietheorie) und des Diskurses (Fairclough) wieder aufgenommen und mit den Resultaten der vorangegangenen Kapitel vermittelt. Dabei wird die zuvor entwickelte Bestimmung der Sprache als Mittel der Orientierung und Zwecksetzung im Verhältnis zu nichtsprachlichen gesellschaftlichen Strukturen und ihrer historischen Besonderung entfaltet. / The text provides an outline of a materialist answer to what significance language has in relation to society, in which sense it is a condition for and in how far it is dependent on social structures. The materialist notion of history and materialist social theory serve as theoretical framework. They are first introduced as developed by Marx and Engels without any relation to a full-fledged materialist language theory. In a second step problems of language theory below the level of social theory are tackled: Wittgenstein‘s concept of language as a praxis of rule-following is interpreted as a critique of the idealism that informs the representation paradigm in language philosophy; following the cultural-historical psychology language is defined as means of orientation and material basis for complex goal setting; Brandom‘s pragmatist reconstruction of the logical structure of language serves as background for discussing the status of immanent rule structures of language. The social level is then taken up again and mediated with the results of the discussion of sub-social language theories by drawing on materialist social theories of language (Gramsci), of ideology (Projekt Ideologietheorie), and of discourse (Fairclough). The definition of language as a means of orientiation and goal setting is developed in its relation to non-language social structures and their historical specificity.

Introduction to the Theory of Language Correctness. The theme of this Thesis is the novel conceptualization of the subject field, which is, in the Czech context, traditionally dealt with within the theory of language cultivation, from the perspective of the so-called ontological "socialism" (esp. Itkonen, 1978; 2003). The first two chapters explain why the subject field of the (theory of) language cultivation is to be newly approached from this very perspective. The conceptual discussion in the first chapter identifies three underresearched factors (reaction of the Protectorate elites to the Nazi occupation policy; variety-based approach to the "language" and physicalism) that had negative effect to the debate on these questions and therefore they should not be taken into consideration; the terminological discussion in the second chapter supports the claim that it is not suitable to associate the traditional term (theory of) language cultivation with this novel conceptualization. The third chapter introduces in detail the so-called ontological "socialism" according to which there are not only spatiotemporal entities, i.e. language means, but also non-spatiotemporal entities, i.e. language rules qua actually existing social facts, in the subject field of linguistics. The fourth chapter provides a...

This study combines linguistic and economic points of view to deliver insights into two national translation services markets. Translation services form a relatively large market and provide quite a high number of jobs globally. In this industry, which is largely unregulated by government bodies, translation agencies have the potential to act as quality warrantors by applying elaborate quality-assurance procedures and requiring their freelance translators to possess certain qualifications. A controversial yet widely mentioned qualification is being a native speaker of a specific language. Drawing on a critique of the conventional "native speaker" concept and on insights from economics, Language Management Theory, and critical discourse analysis, this study investigates how the native-speaker status, along with other translator qualifications, is used as an argument for higher quality and a higher price in marketing and price-setting strategies of translation agencies in the Czech Republic and Germany when it comes to a technical translation into a non-local language. The research makes use of the market-research technique called "mystery shopping" and is designed as a combination of experimental and observational qualitative research methods. The four distinct stages, which correspond with...