Übergänge zwischen Standard und Non-Standard - welches Deutsch vermitteln wir im DaF-Unterricht ?

Those of us who are involved with teaching German – either within German-speaking countries or outside – are frequently confronted with the question: Which German variety shall I teach? For a long time, the answer seemed clear: 'Standard German', of course. But what is 'Standard German'? Who actually speaks this variety? Studying everyday German language use, it turns out that native speakers of German frequently use grammatical constructions which are stigmatized from the perspective of grammars of Standard German as 'ungrammatical' or 'non standard'. Still, participants in everyday interactions keep on using these syntactical forms as conventionalised resources in order to produce various communicative activities. In this article I will focus on two constructions that native German speakers use in their everyday talk: sentences with tun ('do') as auxiliary and 'dense constructions'. I will argue that these seemingly 'ungrammatical' constructions fulfil various communicative functions; furthermore, they illustrate transitions between standard and non-standard, as well as between written and oral uses. The article will raise the question of how to cope with such 'deviations from Standard German', which at the same time represent highly functional and conventionalized patterns of everyday language reality.