Perceptions, attitudes and actual usage in the context of internal and external multilingualism at schools in Austria

The linguistic reality at schools in Austria is characterised by diverse and dynamic internal and external multilingualism. This raises the issue of whether the coexistence of German varieties (= internal multilingualism) and different first languages (= external multilingualism) is considered and used as a linguistic resource facilitative of learning or as an obstacle to it. In particular, there is the problem of how teachers deal with these different forms of multilingualism. To answer these questions, data from online surveys, interviews, focus group discussions as well as classroom recordings at a school in a rural region of Salzburg were analysed. The results show that teachers’ and students’ dialect use, as well as non-German first languages permitted by teachers (limited to a few classroom interactions) is not perceived as an obstacle to learning. However, there is also no discernible awareness of advantages of multilingualism for school success, although dialect, for example, is generally perceived as positive. The classroom recordings show that dialect and standard language use are not clearly separated according to teaching formats and different classroom situations but vary on a micro-level of communication. Overall, results reveal that both students and teachers seem to have a high awareness of language variation in the classroom and the degree of ‘appropriateness’ of its use, which varies depending on subject, teaching and examination format, context, and situation.