WEIL: 'S G'HORT SO---- A MISMATCH BETWEEN USE AND TEXTBOOKS

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between corpus-based linguistic research on language usage and the presentation of linguistic structures in textbooks. The paper concentrates on variation in German casual connectors. The use of casual connectors by Germans will be contrasted with their presentation in textbooks. Of special interest is “weil”, which has reportedly been used with verb in second position. The analysis of several spoken, a written, and the researcher’s own email corpus shows that “da” and “denn” are being replaced by “weil” in its two different uses. A qualitative analysis of the incidence of “weil” in the email corpus will be discussed to further understand the usage of the connector. It will be shown that the goals of the classroom and the practices in teaching casual connectors do not reflect the use of casual connectors in informal settings in Germany. It is recommended that corpus linguistics findings should be utilized by teachers and material developers for a communicative classroom.