The issue of determining the role of dialects and further prospects of their existence in the modern linguistic situation in Austria is still relevant and scientifically important. The article presents the experience of studying three Austrian dialects: Styria, Carinthia and Vorarlberg. Based on modern dialectological sources the phonetic, lexical and grammatical features of these dialects are under consideration. The author makes some conclusions about the prospects of their further development.

The article deals with the issue of the social prestige of the dialect in the modern linguistic situation in Austria. The conclusions about the status of dialects as the form of the German language in Austria, the fields of application and the trends of further development are made on the basis of the surveys of Austrian respondents held on Facebook and Internet forums.

The article deals with the problem of the influence of the dialects on the ethnic culture of Austria. The analysis involves the names of the Austrian national and cultural realities, human age, behavioral and physiological characteristics adopted in certain regions of Austria as well as Austrian dialectal phraseological units, proverbs and sayings, forms of greeting and farewell that are considered to be the components of the Austrian ethnic culture. The author makes the conclusions about the role of dialects as a means of preserving the national identity of the Austrians and their national culture.

The vocabulary of the Vienna dialect consists of a number of lexical units of various status and origins and represents an open and constantly developing system. The article gives the characteristics of the basic features of the Vienna dialect and describes the following way to enrich its vocabulary: word formation, change of the word meaning, loanwords, formation of dialectical phraseological units.

The issues of the Austrian dialects description, their vocabulary research and the prospects in the Austrian national variant of the modern German language are still urgent and scientifically significant. The author relies on the point that at present the Vienna dialect is the leading and the most prestigious Austrian dialect. There are revealed the basic peculiarities of its vocabulary, given the classification of the dialectal lexical units and the conclusions about the language transformation processes in the Vienna dialect.

There is characterized the role of dialecticisms in the Swiss fiction. Text forming and stylistic functions of dialecticisms are described with the consideration of their peculiarities as the originality markers of the Swiss national variant of the modern German literary language.