Linguistic Variation and German as a Foreign Language: Contributions from an Analysis of two Textbooks

Abstract

Many times, school and political institutions overestimate the standard norm and rarely recognize the legitimacy of linguistic variation. However, the (historical, geographical, social or stylistic) variation belongs to all languages and cannot be ignored. In the classroom, both of mother tongue and foreign language, it is necessary to approach the variation, in order that the student can use the language in diverse and realistic contexts, without creating a stereotyped vision of the language. Thus, our objective is to understand if and in what contexts different varieties of the German language materialize in two textbooks of German as a foreign language, one for adolescents and another for adults. The methodology is quantitative-qualitative, establishing a panoramic view of the variation and analyzing the treatment given to it in the selected activities. The results suggest that the books address only some aspects of geographic and stylistic variation. In the discussion, these results are problematized, to help teachers in the appreciation and management of didactic materials, in relation to linguistic variation.

Keywords:
Linguistic Variation; German as a foreign Language; textbooks