In the course of a general process of social modernization throughout Europe since the early modern period, a communicative modernization has also taken place. In this context, both horizontal mobility and the various forms of population shift connected with it have played a role. European sociolinguistic research has dealt with the various social reasons for these variety shifts and variety changes. These articles are compiled and edited for the first time in the submitted work.

Im Zentrum der Beitrage steht die Erforschung des soziolinguistischen Phanomens deutsche Sprachinsel unter kontaktlinguistischem, sprachhistorischem, dialektologischem und sprachpolitischem Aspekt. Die vielfaltigen linguistischen und soziolinguistischen Entwicklungen, die deutsche Sprachvarietaten ausserhalb des deutschen Sprachraums durchlaufen, konvergieren dabei letztlich in dem Gegeneinander von Spracherhaltung und Sprachverlust.
The focus of the essays is the investigation of the sociolinguistic phenomenon of German linguistic enclaves with respect to language contact, language...