I did my graduate work partly in Germany at the universities of Münster and Cologne, where I received my first and second "Staatsexamen" (MA and MAT), and in Berkeley where I received my Ph.D. in Germanic Linguistics. Afterwards I came directly to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From the very beginning I have held the position of Assistant Chair which includes the responsibilities for the content, organization and coordination of the language program as well as the TA supervision and TA training program. I have also offered a wide variety of courses and seminars on applied linguistics (teaching methods), sociolinguistics, dialectology, German grammar, and stylistics. As far as my research is concerned, I wrote my dissertation on "Studien zum Dialekt von Krefeld am Niederrhein". Contrasting my phonological and morphosyntactic fieldwork data with previous investigations I found evidence for diachronic as well as synchronic instances of language change, a phenomenon that continues to fascinate me. Combining modern methods of sociolinguistic research on "change in progress" with the more traditional structuralists ones, I learned a lot about ongoing change in the area. Moreover it was thrilling to be almost literally an eye-witness to day-by-day instances of the process of "High Germanization". A revised version of my dissertation was published as “Sprachwandel im Dialekt von Krefeld” in 1989. It was the combination of my interests in language change and in dialectology and sociolinguistics (language contact) that determined my subsequent research in the Alemannic area of the Upper Rhine in Colmar ( Alsace, France) and in Freiburg/Müllheim ( Baden, Germany). Although linguistic enquiries and analyses had been carried out in both areas before, they had never systematically compared, or contrastively analyzed the processes of dialect loss and language shift. Not only the different linguistic history but also the very specific linguistic legislation accounts for deviating evolutions on both sides of the border. I elicited my data from an enquiry with high school students in both countries and analyzed them (using the SAS statistical program) according to the usual sociolinguistic variables. The results have been published in a series of articles and a book “Sprachkontakte und Sprachattitüden Jugendlicher im Elsaß und in Baden” (1998). Apart from deepening my understanding of language change and loss the project just mentioned also sharpened my interest in language policy, as a result of which I published several articles on the linguistic situation and its language planning implications in France, Belgium, the U.S., and the European Union. It was also through my interest in language-in-contact phenomena in border regions, that I co-organized a “Ringvorlesung” (series of conferences) on ”Niederländisch am Niederrhein” during my second visiting professorship at the Gerhard Mercator University in Duisburg, Germany in 1997. The presentations of well known scholars dealt with the contact of German and Dutch, two languages having been used of old in the Lower Rhine region which harbors some of the paramount dialect isoglosses separating Dutch, Low German and High German. They describe the linguistic correlation of the dialects spoken on both sides of the Dutch-German border as well as the factors responsible for their gradual growing apart. The loss of very specific dialect characteristics but, most of all, the gradual replacement of the local dialects with a more standardized variety (Umgangssprache) eventually led to the dissolution of what used to be a coherent language territory. The book I edited on the topic was published in Spring 1998. Language in contact-phenomena in an even larger area in Western and Eastern Europe is one of the major points of interest in another book I have edited and in which are discussed specific aspects of “Historische Stadtsprachenforschung” from roughly the 12th century until today. It appeared in 1999. There has always been another area of interest in my scientific and professional career, viz. teaching. My research and experience in the field of sociolinguistics, my studies in pedagogy, as well as my years of teaching experience in both Germany and the U.S., have led me to a proficiency-oriented, communicative approach to teaching. We practice this approach at UNC in our undergraduate introductory German language program. Its practical application is reflected in my professional activities, including presentations and workshops, as well as in papers and in a second-year textbook, Spektrum. Grammatik im Kontext (and its ancillaries), which I co-authored in 1992.
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