One of my kind? Language and Ethnicity among Danish adolescents

Language attitude studies are of great value to sociolinguistics – they complement studies of linguistic variation and provide studies of linguistic change with valuable insights and explanations. Hence, understanding how language variation is perceived among the members of a speech community is an important part of the study of linguistic variation and its social meaning. Recent studies of language and ethnicity in Denmark show that salient linguistic traits are common to minority background speakers in both Århus and Copenhagen, pointing to the existence of an ethnic variety of Danish. This chapter presents results from a language recognition study carried out in Århus and Copenhagen. By employing the methodology from language attitude research, the study aims at investigating how different groups of adolescents recognize and perceive different speech styles.