This project aims at reflection and contextualization of linguistic research on the German language in Austria (focusing on the Second Austrian Republic) from the perspectives of history of science, philosophy of science, and sociology of knowledge.

Against the backdrop of radical constructivist (in Luhmann’s sense: operational) and historical-epistemological approaches, (linguistic) scientific knowledge is regarded as a convention, (re)produced and reified/hypostatized as well as transmitted within historically and socially embedded practices. Consequently, linguistic knowledge tells nothing about an observer-independent, “objective” (linguistic) reality, but rather indicates social, political, institutional – in short, ideological – aspects of its production and dissemination.

The project focuses on research from various linguistic perspectives on the variation of the German language in Austria, particularly on dialects on the one hand and an “Austrian” (standard) German on the other.