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The annual microcensus provides Germany’s most important official statistics. Unlike a census it does not cover the whole population, but a representative 1%-sample of it. In 2017, the German microcensus asked a question on the language of the population, i.e. ‘Which language is mainly spoken in your household?’ Unfortunately, the question, its design and its position within the whole microcensus’ questionnaire feature several shortcomings. The main shortcoming is that multilingual repertoires cannot be captured by it. Recommendations for the improvement of the microcensus’ language question: first and foremost the question (i.e. its wording, design, and answer options) should make it possible to count multilingual repertoires.
Das Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache (IDS) führt seit den 1990er Jahren regelmäßig Repräsentativerhebungen zu sprachlichen Fragen durch. Über die letzten Umfragen, die Deutschland-Erhebung 2017 und die Erhebung Dialekt und Beruf 2019, wurde bereits in dieser Reihe berichtet. Informationen über die Deutschland-Erhebung 2017 finden sich in Folge 1 bis 6 dieser Reihe. In den Folgen 7 bis 9 wurden Ergebnisse der Erhebung Dialekt und Beruf 2019 vorgestellt. Im Winter 2022 hat das IDS eine neue Repräsentativumfrage durchgeführt: die Deutschland-Erhebung 2022. Darin wurden Einstellungen zum Deutschen und anderen Sprachen sowie die Wahrnehmung von sprachlichen Veränderungen erfasst. In dieser Folge 10 werden die Erhebung und erste Ergebnisse vorgestellt
Language attitudes matter; they influence people’s behaviour and decisions. Therefore, it is crucial to learn more about patterns in the way that languages are evaluated. One means of doing so is using a quantitative approach with data representative of a whole population, so that results mirror dispositions at a societal level. This kind of approach is adopted here, with a focus on the situation in Germany. The article consists of two parts. First, I will present some results of a new representative survey on language attitudes in Germany (the Germany Survey 2017). Second, I will show how language attitudes penetrate even seemingly objective data collection processes by examining the German Microcensus. In 2017, for the first time in eighty years, the German Microcensus included a question on language use ‘at home’. Unfortunately, however, the question was clearly tainted by language attitudes instead of being objective. As a result, the Microcensus significantly misrepresents the linguistic reality of different migrant languages spoken in Germany.
This paper explores how attitudes affect the seemingly objective process of counting speakers of varieties using the example of Low German, Germany’s sole regional language. The initial focus is on the basic taxonomy of classifying a variety as a language or a dialect. Three representative surveys then provide data for the analysis: the Germany Survey 2008, the Northern Germany Survey 2016, and the Germany Survey 2017. The results of these surveys indicate that there is no consensus concerning the evaluation of Low German’s status and that attitudes towards Low German are related to, for example, proficiency in the language. These attitudes are shown to matter when counting speakers of Low German and investigating the status it has been accorded.