Reconstructing historical language contact between Slavic languages and Austrian varieties of German: theoretical assumptions, methodological approaches and general results

Undisputedly, slavic languages have had a considerable influence on german and the attitudes towards multilingualism in austria. This article portrays theoretical reflections, new findings and innovative methodological approaches to the reconstruction of historical language contact between slavic languages and austrian varieties of german. These approaches were jointly developed within the task cluster on language contact of the austrian special research programme “german in austria. Variation – contact – perception”. In this context, the implications of historical and recent slavic-german multilingualism on german in austria are of special interest. The paper concludes with an overview of preliminary research results, methodological lessons learnt and considerations for further sociolinguistic research in historical contexts.