The Linguistic Reality in Austria from the Perspective of International Migrants and Cross-Border Workers with Slovenian Citizenship

The article deals with the linguistic reality of Slovenian citizens in Austria who, by transferring their place of residence or place of work, enter a linguistically heterogeneous social space due to the official German language, its varieties, and other languages that are spoken there. The purpose of the research was to find out, on the one hand, which languages and linguistic genres Slovenian citizens use in their (working) daily life in Austria and, on the other hand, whether there are statistically significant differences between international migrants and cross-border workers. The study contributes a first sociolinguistic insight into a still largely unexplored topic.
Keywords: language practice, international migrants, cross-border workers, Austria, German language

The article deals with the linguistic reality of Slovenian citizens in Austria. On the one hand, the author wished to find out which languages and language types Slovenian citizens use in their (working) daily life in Austria, and on the other hand, whether there are statistically significant differences between the target groups “international migrants” and “cross-border workers.” Data for the empirical part was collected utilizing a questionnaire (n = 507), which the author analyzed quantitatively, and guided interviews (n = 15), analyzed qualitatively.
Because Austria has an extremely heterogeneous linguistic reality, both international migrants and cross-border workers do not face only “one” German language. German as a language is expressed in various language genres, especially in Austria. Consequently, it is not surprising that most international migrants and cross-border workers experience a “language shock” immediately after moving to or starting to work in Austria. This shock is experienced mainly by those who were included in the formal context of learning German as a foreign language in Slovenia. Due to the idealization of the standard version of the German language, they are unaware of the extraordinary differentiation of the Austrian German language, mainly expressed through dialectal versions. As the study results suggest, some international migrants and cross-border workers internalize certain words and phrases of Austrian dialect variants over time. 
Nevertheless, international migrants and cross-border workers are more likely to use standard German. Compared to cross-border workers, international migrants rated their knowledge of standard German significantly higher. The author assumes these differences are because German is their second language or the environmental language, i.e., the language with which they come into regular contact outside the work context. In contrast to international migrants, cross-border workers are significantly more likely to use Austrian and Slovenian dialect versions. In this usage context, some of the interviewed cross-border workers claimed that their coworkers were mainly people whose first language was Slovenian.
Linguistic heterogeneity in Austria concerns not only different German language genres but also the languages of migratory movements and (foreign) languages that individuals have learned within the framework of a formal context. In their (working) daily lives, respondents and interviewees also come into contact with English, the languages of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Turkish, Russian, Romanian, etc. The author, therefore, concludes that the linguistic reality in Austria for international migrants and cross-border workers is, as Vertovec (2006) puts it, “super-diverse”.