Mental models of linguistic varieties 271Figure 1. The bubble task. Artwork by Andreas Gerber, Bern
In order to facilitate the task, the researcher gave the participant a form
with prepared columns for the number of the bubble, space for the labels of
the languages/varieties, and some space for the description of each entry.
Although this mapping of visual form onto languages is – from an objectiv-
ist and matter-of-factly point of view – quite nonsensical, almost everybody
spontaneously and joyfully started to suggest such associations (3 Partici-
pants out of the 45 did not participate in this task - only one of them cate-
gorically refused to do the task because he felt it was nonsensical). The