On the continuity and discontinuity of sociolinguistic research: language, languages and interaction processes in Hradec Králové

Abstract

The development of research areas, disciplines and sub‐disciplines is hard to map; thus, researchers can often choose to what extent they want to represent it: either via the rhetoric of continuity or revolution. Using Hradec Králové (HK) as an example I demonstrate that a number of sociolinguistic findings are relevant across different research paradigms. I present an overview of the urban speech studies carried out by B. Dejmek (esp. Dejmek, 1981 and 1987) and the interactional studies arising since the 1990s. I discuss the issue of research on multilingualism and superdiversity in the city. Finally, I report on my own research on the linguistic landscape of HK and introduce and comment on the concept of the perception scale of the representation of individual languages. I sketch the development of sociolinguistic research as a fairly coherent whole, which is shaped by the linguistic reality, the shared knowledge of this reality and the researchers themselves, who reject or follow their predecessors. Hence, the presented coherent whole is not a mere expert construct – its formation can essentially be studied “turn‐by‐turn”, similarly to a conversation analyst studying individual turns in an ongoing interaction or in a dialogical network (see Nekvapil – Leudar, 2002).