On the relationship between complexity of primary occupation and L2 varietal behavior in adult migrants in Austria.

This article explores for the first time the relationship between occupational complexity (operationalized using the complexity measures indicated in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles) and adult migrants’ L2 sociolinguistic repertoires in the Austro-Bavarian naturalistic context. We analyzed the data of 36 adult migrant L2 German speakers who participated in a virtual reality experiment involving interactions with dialect-speaking and standard German-speaking interlocutors, the goal being to capture subjects’ interpersonal varietal behavior, i.e., their addressee-relational, differential use of standard German, Austro-Bavarian dialect, and mixture varieties. Bayesian multinomial mixed-effects models revealed that subjects with occupations requiring more manual handling and physical precision work were predicted to employ dialect varieties more often, but exclusively in interaction with the standard German-speaking interlocutor. A person-centered visual-quantitative analysis additionally facilitated insights concerning which migrants deviated most notably from group-level patterns, and how these deviations may relate to the complexity of their primary occupation. More generally, this study paves new ground with respect to how we can operationally define and capture the complexity of occupational status, and moreover sets out a new direction for research questions investigating how career-related differences impact on (L2) language variation and use.