Swiss themes in three “pluricentric” German language textbooks

Researchers agree that German is a pluricentric language and the pedagogical implications of pluricentricity have been spelt out in the D-A-CH-Konzept. This article examines three current textbooks for German as a foreign language with regard to their coverage of Switzerland as a German-speaking nation. After a brief discussion of the Swiss linguistic situation, especially the diglossic relationship between Swiss Standard German and the Swiss-German dialects, the article demonstrates that Themen neu and Stufen international contain more factual information about Switzerland than Moment mal!, but only the latter offers linguistically authentic examples of language use. The article concludes by pointing out that pluricentric German language textbooks for beginners are unfortunately still rare.