Dialect (non-)acquisition and use by young people of migrant background in Germany

This article reports on a study investigating the use of regional language features by young people of (mostly Turkish or Balkan) background who were born, or raised from an early age on, in Stuttgart/Germany. The results of the Stuttgart study show that most young speakers from migrant families do not accommodate the local or regional dialect, but rather speak their own (multiethnolectal) variety of German. Existing evidence on dialect (non-)acquisition and (non-)use by speakers with similar social, linguistic and cultural backgrounds in other parts of Germany suggests that this finding reflects a general tendency. Some possible explanations for the non-acquisition and non-use of dialectal features are discussed.