The present standard-dialect situation in the Stuttgart area is the object of differing opinions amongst German dialectologists. Some regard it to be a situation of vital dialects developing alongside but independently of the German spoken standard. Others consider it to be a situation of an advanced standardisation resulting in the disappearance of the dialects in favour of spoken standard German. This study is about ordinary adolescents’ lay perspective on this dialect-standard situation – about their atitudes to the local dialect (Swabian) and to spoken standard German (Hochdeutsch). The investigation of the adolescent’s conscious and subconscious language atitudes, as well as of their metalinguistic constructions of Swabian and Hochdeutsch, show how they position themselves in the social ideological processes underlying their own language use and the dialect-standard situation of the area.