Spoken standard. Linguistic studies on spoken German with regard to didactics

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The formal curriculum for German classes (Bildungsstandards, 2003) explicitly mentions speaking in the standard language as an educational objective. From a linguistic perspective, however, it is far from clear what standard German is. Some argue that the high level of variation inhibits any reasonable description of a spoken standard. German teachers, in contrast, are expected to evaluate the oral performance of pupils - considering also their mastery of the standard variety. As long as linguists do not provide criteria for the assessment of spoken utterances, teachers as well as ordinary speakers will tend to judge spoken performances against the background of a written language bias or a preference for written language norms. This written language bias is also documented in many German textbooks, which in the most cases have not considered the empirical and theoretical results of spoken language research and mediality studies. It is the core objective of the proposed project to (re-)construct a modified, usage-based concept of standard language, taking into account the variation and the medium-specific characteristics of spoken language. We assume that speakers are implicitly guided by actual norms of spoken language differing from the codified standard.The empirical basis for this endeavour will be the systematic analysis of an already compiled corpus of classroom interactions as well as national TV talk show discussions. The talk shows are especially useful for the analysis of spoken language constructions because participants can be assumed to be geared to a standard language use due to the supra-regional and public character of the show - which spoken-language-specific constructions occur in such more or less formal talk situations? The classroom interactions allow for another perspective insofar as the implicit and explicit corrections of the teachers can be studied in order to reconstruct their norm orientation. Moreover, the functional variation of standard and nonstandard forms indicates the awareness of (subsistent) norms. These two research methods will be combined in our project in order to attain an empirically based concept of spoken standard language. The project will focus on the (re-)construction of a spoken standard on a syntactic level but will also consider morphological, phonological and lexical aspects. The essential insights of spoken language research and mediality studies need to be applied to grammar and language education.