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5.2. Attitudes and applications - Coggle Diagram
5.2. Attitudes and applications
5.2.1. Attitudes to language
language attitudes - language ideology
not clear distinction
Some sociolinguists use the terms interchangeably.
language ideologies
- deeply seated beliefs that people hold about language and are reflected in
societal values
(and the prestige) of languages and language varieties - tends to include how a person views their own language(s)
Language attitudes
- more
personal
and are more influenced by the beliefs of the
individual
speaker and hearer.
Linking linguistic attitudes (based in social prejudice) to spurious educational consequences - widespread
[r] - less accents
argue - disadvantage their users in the area of reading in particular.
Vs. NOT essential - manage to distinguish the meanings of son and sun even they sound the same
Factors influencing social judgments:
Politics - People’s attitudes to Swedish and Danish reflected Scandinavian politics
Positive feelings to speakers of a language or language variety - affect Intelligibility
find it easier to understand languages and dialects spoken by people they like or admire.
Stereotypes
attitudes people hold about social groups based on stereotypes are mapped onto the language variety
random - accents or languages they have never heard before
Gender
women’s speech is more heavily criticized than men’s speech.
Social and political factors
select an official or national language
E.g., English vs. Wells, English vs. French in Québec, Québec French vs. Parisian French
Religious
significance and
cultural
importance
e.g., selecting a script for Somali.
5.2.1.1 Overt and covert prestige
Standard
variety -
Overt
prestige
speech indexes their high social status and their social identity.
taught in elocution classes
overtly
admired and identified as a model of “good” speech by
ALL
sections of the community -> “best” accent
Positive
attitudes towards
vernacular
or
non-standard
varieties:
covert prestige
.
SOLIDARITY
IF NOT valued -> would not continue to be used.
rarely admit to valuing them (at least to strangers).
explain - despite their “official” protestations, people clearly do value vernacular varieties.
In Britain, New Zealand - children are taught to speak RP: never be caught using this accent outside the classroom; local accent is the only possible way of speaking to friends, workmates and family.
Speakers are
not always aware
which variety they speak – they recognize the value of the standard and believe they speak that variety, criticizing others speaking the
vernacular
.
SLIDE8
British Jamaican
Creole or Patois
: although less and less spoken, several features are incorporated into the local vernaculars.
covert
prestige -
few use it admit
to outsiders that proficiency in this variety is greatly admired, especially among young Black British.
Young Black people – a deplorably deficient form of English which hinders their educational progress.
Some teachers – describe as “babyish”, “careless and slovenly”, “lacking proper grammar” and “very relaxed like the way they walk”!
In fact, Patois - complex grammar, distinctive pronunciations, own literary material
=> Comments are largely based on ignorance and prejudice. It is the fact that they are used by African Caribbean immigrants – a low-status group in Britain – that shapes attitudes towards these varieties.
Multicultural London English (MLE) / Jafaican.
used by young people of several ethnic backgrounds
The use is associated with poor lower class
a systematic variety with a core of innovative phonetic, grammatical and discourse features ><
condemned
as “
slang
” and “
broken English
Negative attitude was tested in a study using “
matched guise
” technique
same girl was viewed as more intelligent, when spoke in working- class accent than when she was identifiable as an African Caribbean child.
Ethnic identity
and
social status
- the basis of people’s evaluations.
5.2.1.2. Attitudes to standard British English and RP
English used to be considered inferior to languages such as Latin or Greek until the eighteenth century– the prestige of a language variety
changes
in varying social context!
Prestige codes emerge by
social consensus
and owe NOTHING to their intrinsic linguistic features.
Standard British English
has an enormous legacy of
overt
prestige.
regarded as a symbol of British nationhood
promoted as the
only acceptable
variety for use in all official domains.
Vernacular dialects
- downgraded
Standard accents - highly regarded by those who
don’t use
them.
assess recordings of
RP speakers
- more intelligent, industrious, self-confident and determined than
regional-accented
speakers
rated ahead of all other accents
Even outside Britain, RP -
overtly
admired model in many countries
many New Zealand teenagers in the 1980s and 1990s rated
RP
more
highly
than any
New Zealand accent
(though interestingly, by 1998, not as highly as a North American accent).
the
persistent
relatively high ratings of RP – at least on
overt
measures.
New Zealanders – objecting - but minority.
Local accents
- more friendliness and sense of humour, and other dimensions which measure
solidarity
or
social attractiveness
.
5.2.1.3 Attitudes to vernacular forms of English
MLE, are rapidly developing – vernacular varieties
condemned or ridiculed by those who consider themselves guardians of the language >< ambivalently even by their users.
African American Language (AAL)
found even among university students in Japan
the USA - center of a debate about the role in education for at least four decades.
5.2.1.4 African American Language
Standard American English (SAE) and Mainstream White American English (MWAE)
AAL - distinct and systematic variety
critics assume that AAL use indicates ignorance rather than choice.
media use tends to support negative attitudes
African American newsreaders and movie stars typically use SAE/ MWAE
entertainers and sports celebrities - use AAL features - restrict them to more intelligible, stereotypical features in less formal contexts.
subtle reinforcement of negative attitudes - AAL users - less well- educated, down- at- heel and often unsavoury characters.
AAL constantly labelled and re-labelled
Ebonics, the 1970s, revived and popularized in the 1990s
a furore and even resulted in a Senate sub-committee hearing on the status of AAL and its role in education.
African American
parents
were
unconvinced
would be
better
devoted to acquiring SAE/ MWAE.
fears that the use of AAL - strategy for preventing their children from achieving educational success.
many successful African Americans asserted the importance of
maintaining and giving status
to AAL
resisting
attempts by the majority group to impose SAE/ MWAE on everyone.
Oakland Unified School District Board of Education
Ebonics
- as a
language system
support its use as a bridge to learning SAE or MWAE in school.
Adopting SAE/ MWAE - a betrayal of their home dialect
advocating bidialectal - like asking a woman to pretend to be a man for the duration of each working day, or vice-versa.
Arguments about the social disadvantages of using AAL
“If you use AAL you won’t get a good job”
Fallacy that African American children who use SAE/ MWAE will get good jobs.
evidence - ethnicity rather than language - primary basis of discrimination.
Negative attitudes to language varieties can serve to reinforce social, racial and ethnic prejudice.
=> Racist attitudes, not linguistic deficit or even dialect difference
5.2.1.5 Vernacular forms of English: users and contexts
Support for so-called grammar teaching - derives from the misleading association of grammar with authority, hierarchy, tradition and elitism, and order and rules
=> more harm than good
standard dialect - socially defined entity, not a linguistically defined one.
Standard English (in every country) - English used by educated people with high social status
no one
uses 100%
vernacular
or
nonstandard forms
nonstandard English, use
fewer standard forms
vernacular forms
survive
– attitudinal
increase their use of standard forms as the context becomes more formal
use of vernacular forms is
clearly patterned
and
systematic
,
Children who use vernacular forms are NOT disadvantaged by inadequate language.
disadvantaged by
negative attitudes
towards their speech –
5.2.1.6 A note on methodology
5.2.1.6.1 Societal treatment
infer attitudes
by observing the way language is used in the
public domain
unobtrusive method of collecting data
e.g., government documents; educational documents; and employment, novels
Cartoons
- parody dispreferred language features - societal stereotypes.
-
linguistic landscape
- insights into attitudes to language.
advertisements
(written and spoken) - preferred speech styles and accents
Record and collect People’s views about language issues on the radio, on TV, on the net and in the press.
provide useful clues to language changes in progress
suggest areas for further study
provide interesting indications of the range of attitudes held in a community.
-> rarely provides a representative picture of how widely held such views are.
5.2.1.6.2 Direct measures
Ask direct questions
yes/ no questions are easy to code
written questionnaire or an interview schedule
Written questionnaires can be anonymous and can even be sent out by post
collect answers from large numbers of people
open questions:
Answers require careful analysis
need to be categorized
offer the possibility of eliciting richer and more interesting data
Disadvantage
Acquiescence bias - give the answers they think their interviewer is looking for - culturally influenced
very low response rates to written questionnaires
people may not reveal their true attitudes
people who respond are particular barrow to push results may NOT be representative of the views of the community as a whole.
5.2.1.6.3 Indirect measures
observing
what people do
provide a measure of their attitudes to language.
Enrolment in language classes - a positive attitude to a language.
Attitudes have three components:
an
affective
component (e.g., how we feel about the language)
a
conative
component (e.g., what we are likely to do in relation to a language).
a
cognitive
component (e.g., what we know or believe about a language)
Matched guise technique
playing recorded stimuli of different languages and accents to listeners and asking them to respond to the voices on a range of dimensions
problem
of getting speakers.
Major challenge
- getting truly comparable data
5.2.3 Sociolinguistics and Forensic Linguistics
Their work is especially important in legal settings – court cases, police interviews, etc.
examining language used in academic writing, in trademarks, in phone conversations, in blogs, in text messaging and in email interactions.
providing expert evidence to courts
identify sociolinguistic clues and understandings - resolving legal questions and contribute to justice being done.
Examine every level of linguistic analysis.
Phonetic
analysis: accent identification
Lexical
analysis: important to detect plagiarism
Syntactic
analysis: purposely misleading sentence structures, biased grammatical strategies!
Forensic linguists
study written and spoken language use in different contexts
The semantic - convey very different associations. The potential for cross-cultural misunderstanding and the serious implications
conversations between the police and the suspects
simply explaining the suspect’s rights
persuasion and suggestions
reassurance and expressions of empathy
suspects often consider the question “what do you understand by your rights?” as challenging and face-threatening.
an effort to communicate the results of such analyses so that they can be used in police training.
Examine courtroom interaction
lawyer’s choice of words - significant in conveying a particular perspective.
a number of pragmatic strategies - lawyers use to suggest that the victim was willing rather than resistant.
microaggressions
Brief and commonplace daily indignities
often (though not only) verbal
intentional or unintentional
communicate hostile, derogatory or negative attitudes to any social group or community.
goes unnoticed by those who are not the target.
cause discomfort or anger.
Example
: Subtle discrimination based on accent or dialect; repeated mispronunciation of a person’s name; and telling someone who looks non-white that they “speak very good English” brief and commonplace daily indignities,
Protesting
- counter microaggression when the perpetrator is unaware of the effect of their comments.
5.2.2. Sociolinguistics and education
5.2.2.1 Vernacular dialects and educational disadvantage
misleadingly linked
children who tend to use more standard dialect forms are more successful than children who tend to use a greater frequency of vernacular forms.
Research to investigate
the extent to which the use of vernacular forms may act as a
barrier
to
communication
between teachers and pupils.
Fact:
A. Middle-class children tend to do better than working-class children.
A. Minority group children don’t do as well as children belonging to the mainstream culture.
B. Middle-class children tend to use more standard dialect forms
B. Working-class children tend to use a greater frequency of vernacular forms.
Developed programs to change teachers’ negative attitudes and develop their appreciation of linguistic diversity.
Public debates
the place of vernacular dialects in schools, and the (erroneous) claims that children who use vernacular forms are linguistically deprived or deficient.
Provided advice and recommendations for classroom practice
Dialect differences can lead to miscommunication
Little evidence that children who use vernacular forms have trouble understanding the standard English: Able to translate them accurately into the vernacular equivalents
Change the speech of children who use vernacular forms is: fruitless; Motivation and free choice are crucial factors
provide students with guidance on which vernacular forms are most salient to listeners
Vs. primary obligation is to educate the community to accept variation and vernacular forms
5.2.2.2 Linguistic deficit
Effect of contextual factors on speech.
Children from minority and working-class backgrounds who were tested under these conditions generally did not do well.
Middle- class children tended to do much better. They were much more willing to answer questions at length.
important differences in the experiences of middle-class children compared to others being tested
Standard dialects were used
testing conditions are not the same for all the children- kind of questions asked more familiar to middle-class children.
language of the tests was more similar to that of middle-class children
claims that minority group children and working-class children were linguistically deprived were generally based on
inadequate tests.
Children were linguistically deficient or “had no language” or were limited to a “
restricted code
” --- firmly
REFUTED
.
The
formality and unfamiliarity
of the testing context – the misleading inference of linguistically deprived
children who responded monosyllabically in a test interview >< voluble and communicative in
different contexts
storytelling by African American teenagers were more developmentally
advanced
or
mature
than those used by the white teenagers.
At the secondary level, the
vocabulary range
of middle-class children differs from that of working-class children.
some are more familiar with words of Graeco-Latin origin at an advantage - more likely to succeed in exams
Children from homes where adults don’t read for entertainment - develop a different range of vocabulary –great value in many spheres of their
daily lives
working-class children fail in school
criteria for success are middle-class criteria
familiarity with the vocabulary essential advantage for middle-class children
schools are essentially middle-class institutions
did
NOT
identify with the
school’s
values, knew that the school did
NOT
recognize their skills and values.