ESTONIAN ACADEMY
PUBLISHERS
eesti teaduste
akadeemia kirjastus
The Yearbook of the Estonian Mother Tongue Society cover
The Yearbook of the Estonian Mother Tongue Society
Impact Factor (2022): 0.3
ETNODIALEKTOLOOGILINE UURIMUS VIIE PIIRKONNA ÕPILASTE MURDETUNDMISEST; pp. 32–59
PDF | doi:10.3176/esa61.02

Author
Siim Antso
Abstract

A study on the perception of Estonian dialects among students from five regions

The article examines the dialect perception of students from Kuressaare, Jõhvi, Pärnu-Jaagupi, Tartu and Võru. The data was collected with the draw-a-map task known from perceptual dialectology, specifically from the works of Dennis R. Preston. Students were asked to mark all the dialects they know on an Estonian contour map with parish outlines and the biggest cities. These mental maps allow the analysis of how a person (or a group of people) represents and organises the surrounding world. According to the hypothesis, the closer a person lives to a dialect area, the better he/she should know the boundaries. To analyse the mental maps, I used ArcGIS software similar to that used by Montgomery and Stoeckle (2013) and constructed aggregated mental maps.
The analysis of the mental maps experiment revealed that the students’ residence actually does affect their percpetion of dialects, with the exception of the Võru and island dialects. The latter are probably better known because of their distinct local identity and presence in media. Nevertheless, differences can be found in the mapping of those two dialects. The Võru dialect area marked by students from Saaremaa was generally smaller than the Võru dialect area marked by their inland counterparts. Most students from Võru tagged two islands (Saaremaa and Muhu) under the label island dialect, while students from other schools only marked one (Saaremaa).
When analysing other dialects that the students marked more often, local differences in the perception of dialects emerged more greatly. For example, students from western Estonia marked different island dialects more commonly than others. Similarly, students from southern and eastern Estonia marked the Mulgi and Setu dialects and the eastern dialects, respectively, more commonly.

References

Antso, Siim 2015. Etnodialektoloogiline uurimus Eesti murdealadest. Magistritöö. Käsikiri Tartu Ülikooli eesti keele osakonnas.

Assmuth, Laura 2005. Meie ja „teised“: perifeeria identiteedid. – Piirikultuuriq ja -keeleq. Piirikultuurid ja keeled. Konvõrentś Kurgjärvel, 21.–23. rehekuu 2004. Toim. Karl Pajusalu, Jan Rahman. (= Võru Instituudi toimõndusõq 17.) Võro: Võro Instituut.

Bell, Scott, Jace Iong 2011. Sketch mapping and geographic knowledge: what role for drawing ability? – Understanding and Processing Sketch Maps. Proceedings of the COSIT 2011 workshop. Belfast, Maine, USA, September, 2011. Ed. Jia Wang, Klaus Broelemann, Malumbo Chipofya, Angela Schwering, Jan O. Wallgrün. (= IfGI prints 42.) Amsterdam: IOS Press.

Braber, Natalie 2015. Language perception in the East Midlands in England. Investigating East Midlands adolescents’ perception of language variation in the UK. – English Today. The International Review of English Language 31 (1), 16–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0266078414000509.

Dictionary = Dictionary of Human Geography. 2013. Ed. Noel Castree, Rob Kitchin, Alisdair Rogers. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acref/9780199599868.001.0001.

Downs, Roger M., David Stea 1973. Cognitive maps and spatial behavior: process and products. – Image and Environment. Cognitive Mapping and Spatial Behavior. Ed. Roger M. Downs, David Stea. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 312–317.

Fought, Carmen 2002. California Students’ Perceptions of, You Know, Regions and Dialects? – Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology. 2. Ed. Daniel Long, Dennis R. Preston. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 117–136.

Ladegaard, Hans 2006. Review of Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology (­Volume 2). – Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 27 (2), 177–179.

Lameli jt 2008 = Alfred Lameli, Christoph Purschke, Roland Kehrein. Stimulus und Kognition. Zur Aktivierung mentaler Raumbilder. – Linguistik Online 35 (3), 55–86. http://www.linguistik-online.com/35_08/lameliEtAl.pdf.

Montgomery, Chris, Philipp Stoeckle 2013. Geographic information systems and perceptual dialectology: a method for processing draw-a-map data. – Journal of Linguistic Geography 1 (1), 52–58.

Murray, Debra, Christopher Spencer 1979. Individual differences in the drawing of cognitive maps: the effects of geographical mobility, strength of mental imagery and basic graphic ability. – Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 4 (3), 385–391.

Niedzielski, Nancy A., Dennis R. Preston 2000. Folk Linguistics. (= Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 122.) Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783110803389.

Pajusalu jt 2009 = Karl Pajusalu, Tiit Hennoste, Ellen Niit, Peeter Päll, Jüri Viikberg. Eesti murded ja kohanimed. 2., täiend. tr. Toim. Tiit Hennoste. Tartu Ülikooli eesti ja üldkeeleteaduse instituut, Eesti keele Instituut. Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus.

Preston, Dennis R. 1989. Perceptual Dialectology. Nonlinguists’ Views of Areal Linguistics. (= Topics in Sociolinguistics 7.) Dordrecht: Foris Publications. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783110871913.

Preston, Dennis R. 1999. Introduction. – Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology. 1. Ed. Dennis R. Preston. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, xxiii–xl. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/z.hpd1.

Saareste, Albert 1932. Eesti keeleala murdelisest liigendusest. – Eesti Keel 1–2, 17–41.

Suurna, Ranel, Eveli Sisas 2010. GIS ja kartograafia alused. Tallinn: Riiklik Eksami- ja Kvalifikatsioonikeskus. http://www.ekk.edu.ee/vvfiles/0/GIS_loeng.pdf.

Back to Issue