Covert Prestige Research Articles

A corpus‐based analysis of adjective amplification in Hong Kong, Indian and Philippine English

AbstractThis study considers a corpus‐based approach for analysing adjective amplifier systems (very, really, so, etc.) in Hong Kong English (HKE), Indian Englsih (IndE) and Philippine English (PhiE) based on data from the International Corpus of English. The current study adds to existing research by providing insights into the understudied adjective amplifier systems of Asian Englishes. The study describes the amplifier systems in HKE, IndE and PhiE, and it ascertains if these amplifier systems are undergoing change. In the latter context, the analysis assesses if really or so is replacing very as the dominant adjective amplifier in these varieties—a trend shown to be at work in Inner Circle varieties of English. The results of Conditional Inference Trees show that the amplifier systems of HKE and IndE are very stable and amplifier choice in these varieties is determined predominately by intra‐linguistics factors (adjective type, syntactic context and semantic category). In contrast, the amplifier system of PhiE shows notable signs of ongoing change, which is driven predominately by social factors (age and gender of speakers). The results indicate that during stasis and initial stages of change, language‐internal factors determine amplifier choice, while social factors become more important once changes have reached the midrange. The paper argues that once certain variants (really and so) gain social meaning, it is this social meaning (the association with specific social groups) that drives and accelerates change as speakers want to associate with social groups that carry covert prestige.

Meeting in the Middle: Sociophonetic Convergence of Bad Bunny and J Balvin’s Coda /s/ in Their Artistic Performance Speech

The artistic performance of identity by top Latin music artists can be heard on many Top-40 US radio stations, since, as of July 2023, 20% of the Billboard Hot 100 is (Spanish language) Latin music. This study aims to determine the variants found in the pronunciation of coda /s/, a robust phonetic differentiator of regional and social dialects, in the top songs versus in the spontaneous speech of the two top Latin music artists in the global market. Are Bad Bunny and J Balvin holding to the pronunciation of their respective regional variety in their artistic performance speech (APS, my term) or are they shifting to a different pronunciation? What motivations might cause a difference in the pronunciation of their APS and spontaneous speech? Bad Bunny and J Balvin’s pronunciation of coda /s/ is analyzed in depth as sociophonetic data: their performances of songs from 2018 to 2020 that charted at the top of the Hot Latin Songs Billboard chart as well as on The Billboard Hot 100 chart, and their spontaneous speech from their most-viewed Spanish-language interviews and Instagram Live recordings on YouTube recorded between 2018 and 2020. Bad Bunny overwhelmingly used deletions (∅) in his spontaneous speech—which is typical of an island Puerto Rican—but used a statistically significant amount of maintenance of the sibilant [s] and its aspirated variant [h] in his APS (p < 0.0001). J Balvin primarily used [s] in his spontaneous speech—which is typical of Medellín, Colombia—but used about 50/50 [s] and (∅) in his APS. They are both shifting to a different pronunciation in their APS and converging towards each other, and the difference is statistically significant (p < 0.0001). This dialect convergence could be the beginning of an identity-based pan-Latinx dialect leveling that is, on the one hand, the “in-crowd” pronunciation with covert prestige but, on the other hand, is part of the formation of an evolving multi-regional connector variant diffused through popular music and pop culture.

Nigerian Pidgin English

Nigerian Pidgin (hereafter NP) is the most widely spoken language in Nigeria, but many Nigerians view it negatively, as they associate it with uneducated people in the country and often caricature it as a bad form of English. However, attitudes towards NP in the diaspora and its role as a marker of social identity within and outside Nigeria have not been researched. Through informal interviews and focus group discussions with 10 Nigerians (5 men; 5 women) in Canada, I find that the participants choose NP as the language they use to express their identity as Nigerians in Canada. While the women embraced Standard English, the men had more positive attitudes towards NP suggesting covert prestige. Therefore, this study provides a good pilot project for analyzing attitudes towards NP and its role as a language of identity for Nigerians in the diaspora.

Exploring attitudes towards French, English, and code-switching in Manitoba (Canada)

ABSTRACT This study contributes to the understanding of attitudes towards monolingual and code-switched varieties by examining the perceptions of 95 bilinguals towards Manitoban French, Canadian English and code-switching in Manitoba, a Canadian province where French is a minority language with official federal status. By means of a matched-guise test, we explore French-English bilinguals’ social evaluations of the three linguistic varieties and examine how these social evaluations vary according to participant characteristics (i.e. age, gender, mother tongue, origin, and sociocultural identity). In our experiment, participants listened to a speaker using Manitoban French, Canadian English and code-switching and rated each guise on several solidarity and status traits. Results from the cumulative link mixed effects models reveal that French and English are rated similarly for status. Overall, both French and English elicit feelings of attachment, but a preference towards French emerges among participants born in Manitoba. Code-switching is rated lower than the monolingual varieties in most status and solidarity traits, which indicates that our participants implicitly value linguistic purism. However, results also show that participants born in Manitoba and those with French as their mother tongue ascribe covert prestige to code-switching.

Linguistic Variation, Social Meaning and Covert Prestige in a Northern Moroccan Arabic Variety

This paper addresses how gender and age, as macro-sociological factors, influence variation and change in the Northern Moroccan Arabic variety of Ouezzane, and how social meaning plays a role in this variation. To do so, it examines the high degree of variability in the realization of two phonetic variables, the voiceless alveolar plosive /t/ and the voiceless uvular plosive /q/, in a corpus of semi-scripted interviews with 20 local informants. The data for the study was gathered during several fieldwork campaigns carried out between 2014 and 2021. The analysis combines quantitative and qualitative methods. Quantitative comparisons are drawn across gender and three age categories (under 30, between 30 and 50, and over 50) to search for gender and/or age markers, while the data are qualitatively analyzed with regard to the increase in the use of certain allophones, attrition and loss of other variants, and metalinguistic comments made by informants on those traits. These two methods make it possible to identify how the phonetic variables analyzed contribute to the construction of various identities, such as an “older person” identity, as well as self-affiliation with particular social groups, such as “artisans” or “rural women”, from which other groups, such as male university graduates, are keen to distance themselves.

The Impact of Language Attitude on the use of Swear Words: A Sociolinguistic Study of Pashtu Non-native Speakers of English

Swear words make an important aspect of any language despite their taboo nature. Taking this feature of language into account, this paper investigates how the language attitude of Pashtu non-native speakers of English towards Pashtu and English languages might impact the use of swear words in these languages in different situations. Data from30 male undergraduate university students were collected through semi-structured interviews. The analysis revealed that Pashtu non-native speakers of English had a positive attitude towards English and Pashtu languages owing to instrumental and integrative motivation, respectively. Swearing in Pashtu and English was shown to be determined by the speakers’ perceptions of the degree of offensiveness of swear words in the languages, social status of the users of the language in the society, and the setting and context in which those words were used. It was concluded that the positive attitude of Pashtu non-native speakers towards English and Pashtu resulted in their swearing-in English and Pashtu for different reasons: swearing-in English was controlled by the high status of the language in the society, whereas swearing-in Pashtu was used as a marker of solidarity and covert prestige.

Arabic corpus linguistics ed. by Tony McEnery, Andrew Hardie, and Nagwa Younis

Reviewed by: Arabic corpus linguistics ed. by Tony McEnery, Andrew Hardie, and Nagwa Younis Clive Holes Arabic corpus linguistics. Ed. by Tony McEnery, Andrew Hardie, and Nagwa Younis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. Pp. iv, 235. ISBN 9780748677375. $100 (Hb). Arabic is a major language spoken natively by c. 300 million people and is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, yet there have been few corpus linguistics (CL) studies devoted to it. Arabic corpus linguistics, edited by Tony McEnery, Andrew Hardie, and Nagwa Younis, is a collection of essays intended to begin redressing the balance. It is intended for three categories of reader: (i) Arabic corpus linguists (currently a tiny group), (ii) corpus linguists and those in allied fields such as text linguistics who have no experience of working with Arabic data, and (iii) Arabic linguists unfamiliar with CL methods and goals. There are ten chapters: a ground-clearing introduction, and nine chapters on specific issues. Chs. 2–6 are in essence methodological, covering ways of creating, making accessible, and analyzing Arabic corpora; Chs. 7–10 exemplify the actual application of these methods and data sets in current CL research on Arabic. The introductory chapter, written by the editors, begins with some basic facts about Arabic that are relevant in CL, in particular its root-and-template morphology, and the peculiarities of its orthography and commonly used romanized transliteration systems. It also offers some observations on salient sociolinguistic issues, such as its 'diglossic' nature. It then introduces CL as a method of enquiry and outlines the present state of its application to Arabic as an emerging field. An important focus in CL research to emerge in recent decades has been collocation, facilitated by the development of key-word-in-context (KWIC) concordancing tools applied to large corpora of English (see e.g. Sinclair 1991). The elaboration of corpora by type and corpus annotation (tagging), which permits analyses of different types (grammatical, semantic), have also made great progress. Most of this introductory material is well known, but some of the statements about Arabic are poorly phrased or out of date. On p. 2, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is said to be 'the most [End Page 202] prestigious spoken form' of the language. But MSA is not a 'spoken form' of Arabic in any normally accepted sense, as no Arab speaks it natively; it is an institutionally (and often imperfectly) learned formal variety. Its main spoken use is in the reading aloud of preprepared written texts such as news bulletins, speeches, lectures, and other formal oral performances, and deviations from the prepared text generally result in a 'mixed' form of Arabic nearer to the speaker's normal dialectal speech. As for its 'prestige', MSA certainly carries 'overt prestige' as the 'official' language of all Arab states, the vehicle of a valued literary heritage and of an ancient religious culture (Ferguson 1959). But, as more recent Arabic sociolinguistic research from many locations (Jordan, Iraq, the Gulf States, among others) has demonstrated, it is rarely if ever the source of (Labovian) 'covert prestige' (i.e. influences below the level of conscious manipulation) in normal speech—that is usually the dialect of the capital city or of some other center of political power and/or social influence. Examples are the dialect of Cairo in Egypt, Baghdad in Iraq, and Damascus in Syria. Nor are the oft-repeated dicta that 'Egyptian Arabic is "the most influential Colloquial Arabic"' and that 'from the 1950's onwards, the Egyptian media was predominant in the Arabic speaking world' (2–3) any longer true. Over the past quarter-century or so, the internet and the proliferation of regional Arab electronic media have brought about decentralizing changes to the sociolinguistic landscape of the Arabic-speaking Middle East and North Africa. By any measure, the Egyptian media and film industry no longer rule the roost the way they did in the 1950s to 1960s in the heyday of Arab nationalism. Times have changed both geopolitically and linguistically, and there are now many new production centers and media outlets, from the countries of the Maghreb to the Levant to the Gulf...

Metapragmatic stereotypes about geographical diversity in Greece

Abstract Over the past decades, contemporary sociolinguistics has challenged the existence of fixed and rigid linguistic boundaries, thus focusing on how the speakers themselves define language varieties and how specific linguistic choices end up being perceived as language varieties. In this light, the present paper explores the influence of metapragmatic stereotypes on elementary school pupils’ attitudes towards geographical varieties. Specifically, we investigate children’s beliefs as to the acceptability of geographical varieties and their perception of the overt and covert prestige of geographical varieties and dialectal speakers. Furthermore, we explore the relationship between the children’s specific beliefs and factors such as gender, the social stratification of the school location and the pupils’ performance in language subjects. The data of the study was collected via questionnaires with closed questions. The research findings indicate that the children of our sample associate geographical varieties with rural settings and informal communicative contexts. Moreover, children recognize a lack of overt prestige in geographical variation; at the same time, they evaluate positively the social attractiveness and the personal reliability of the geographical varieties and their speakers. Our research showed that pupils’ beliefs are in line with the dominant metapragmatic stereotypes which promote language homogeneity.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL BASES FOR LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES (on the example of English language)

Language is a basic manifestation of human being and his/her place in society. The form of language existence and trajectory of its development are influenced (among other things) by the nature of socio-political relations among its native speakers. The article discusses social and linguistic features of the English language functioning on the territory of two major centers of English – USA and Great Britain (compared). It shows that perception of the speech Norm and the degree of deviation from it differ in these countries. This fact is the result of cultural and historical events which underlie the formation of socio-political attitudes and influence the language. The difference is not only in linguistic characteristics of the language Norm/Standard in these countries but also in the character of its social markedness. In Britain language hierarchy is based on class division of British society where Standard English is characteristic of High class. In USA it is based on national or racial prejudice and is the result of long-standing discriminating language policy which is aimed at strengthening the role of Standard English as the language of Caucasian majority. Political, historical and cultural factors along with autonomy of language development in these countries underlie language ideologies and socio-political attitudes that divide people on the basis of race (USA) or class (Great Britain). Covert prestige of language standard gave rise to resistance of Standard English to the influence from the outside.

Ein Vorschlag des dialektbasierten Hochdeutschunterrichts für die Wolgadeutschen in Argentinien

Wie in vielen anderen deutschen Gemeinschaften in Amerika wurde bei den Wolgadeutschen in Argentinien bis heute eine dialektale Varietät des Deutschen aufrechterhalten. Diese wurde i.d.R. nur mündlich weitergegeben, verfügt über covert prestige für die Sprecher und dient als Marker ethnischer Identität. Die Sprache der Mehrheitsgesellschaft (Spanisch im Falle der Wolgadeutschen in Argentinien) verfügt dagegen über overt prestige und objektiven Nutzen für den Alltag. Auch dem Hochdeutschen wird ein objektiver Nutzen, z.B. für die berufliche Zukunft, zugesprochen. Gleichzeitig wird die von der Gemeinschaft gesprochene Varietät meist als inkompatibel mit dem Hochdeutschen wahrgenommen: Die Sprecher des Dialekts sind oft der Meinung, dass die Dialektkenntnisse für sie eher ein Hindernis als eine Hilfe beim Erwerb des Hochdeutschen darstellen. Nichtsdestotrotz gab es bereits Initiativen dialektbasierten Hochdeutschunterricht für die Wolgadeutschen in Argentinien voranzutreiben: So initiierte z.B. Arndt Schmidt ein Programm zur Ausbildung der Lehrer im wolgadeutschen Dorf Santa Maria in der Provinz Buenos Aires. Der vorliegende Artikel geht auf die Frage des Deutschunterrichts für Dialektlerner ein, gibt einen kurzen Überblick über die soziolinguistische Situation der Wolgadeutschen in Argentinien und macht einen Vorschlag eines ursprungsdialektbasierten Hochdeutschunterrichts.

Apparent-time study of interdental-stopping among English-monolingual Finnish- and Italian-heritage Michiganders

The production of coronal oral stops in place of interdental fricatives, referred to as interdental-stopping, has been documented in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (UP) [3, 2], as well as, in other ethnic-heritage influenced English varieties. However, there is a lack of quantitative inquiry into the degree to which this salient feature is present among Michigan UP's now predominantly monolingual English-speaking communities; recent studies have focused primarily on the last remaining older-aged bilinguals [1]. Michigan’s UP is in an ideal position to examine to what extent this feature is present among a rural and predominantly monolingual English-speaking community. The present study examines 40 Finnish-Americans and 44 Italian-Americans, whom are all monolingual speakers from Michigan’s Marquette County. Both samples are stratified by age, sex, and socioeconomic status. All data are obtained from a passage task. To what degree, if any, does stopping occur among the Finnish- and Italian-heritage monolingual-English speaking communities? This study reveals interdental-stopping occurring most often among working-class males but least among Italian middle- and younger-aged groups. The study's apparent-time construct highlights a potential change in the covert prestige that has been typically associated with this feature among the older generation [1]. The decrease of interdental-stopping among the younger generation indicates a shift in the feature's prestige within the community.

The role of social networks in the retention of /f/ aspiration among Mexican migrant workers in the Pacific Northwest

Abstract Fricative /f/ aspiration (i. e., /f/ -> [h] in words such as afuera ‘outside’ and fui ‘went.1sg’) is a nonstandard rural feature of Spanish that occurs in a Pacific Northwest speech community of migrant farmworkers of Mexican descent. While the historical change in Spanish from /f/ > [h] has an extensive literature (see Naro 1972; Penny 1990; Pensado 1993; Torreblanca 1984), the social and linguistic factors that condition the variable’s synchronic use are poorly understood (Renaud 2014). This study examines the current trajectory of /f/ aspiration in the context of migration in the U.S., utilizing sociolinguistic interviews conducted with 28 participants ranging in age from 17 to 71, born in either Mexico or the U.S. The study demonstrates that speakers who are more tightly integrated into local family and agriculture networks are more likely to produce [h]. A significant interaction between gender and age is also found: while women of all ages are sensitive to the standard variant and use less of the stigmatized variant [h] overall, young men are robust producers of [h]. It is suggested that this variant holds covert prestige among men of Mexican descent working in agriculture in the migrant setting of the Pacific Northwest.

Investigating Linguistic Prestige in Scotland: An Acoustic Study of Accommodation between Speakers of Two Varieties of Scottish Standard English

This paper investigates the attachment of overt and covert prestige to different varieties of Scottish Standard English (SSE), namely, Scots-SSE and Anglo-SSE. SSE itself encompasses wide linguistic variation and is often described as an accent continuum: at one pole are the typically “Scottish-sounding” speakers, who use a high proportion of traditional Scottish phonological features (and who are referred to as speakers of “Scots-SSE” for the purposes of this study), and at the other end of the spectrum are those who more closely emulate Southern Standard British English, using more anglicised features than Scottish (referred to here as speakers of “Anglo-SSE”). Although both varieties are broadly viewed as high prestige in Scotland, there has been little research to investigate the subtler social nuances attached to Anglo-SSE and Scots-SSE. In order to explore this, the study observes interactions between female lower-middle class speakers — a group for whom linguistic variation due to social pressure should be particularly pronounced — of Anglo-SSE and Scots-SSE. The systematic linguistic changes made by the speakers during interaction with one another are analysed with reference to the principles of Communication Accommodation Theory (Giles et al. 1991) to reveal the possible social implications of their behaviour. The study analyses realisations of the vowels /e/ and /o/, which are typically monophthongal in quality for Scots-SSE speakers and diphthongal for Anglo-SSE speakers. To determine the extent to which speech accommodation occurs, the variants produced by speakers in interaction with others using the same speech variety are compared to those that are produced when they talk to speakers who use the contrasting variety. There are salient patterns to the distribution of /e/ and /o/ variants in the speech of the Anglo-SSE and Scots-SSE speakers, suggesting that these are socially stratified within the given context. The Anglo-SSE group showed more evidence of convergence to the contrasting variety than the Scots-SSE group, who generally maintained their own speech style throughout the interactions. The patterns of variation appear to reflect the association of overt and covert prestige with the different varieties. The general avoidance of anglicised variants across the experiment might suggest that the speakers assigned a higher level of overt prestige to Anglo-SSE, which might have been viewed as an inappropriately formal speech style given the informality of the context. In turn, the adoption of Scots-SSE features by Anglo-SSE speakers seems to indicate that these are assigned covert prestige, perhaps as a result of their strong connotations with Scottish national identity. In general, the accommodative strategies used by the speakers during interaction with each other seem to reflect an effort to decrease the sense of an “in-group/out-group” distinction, likely perceived as a result of their different speech styles.

How (in)coherent can standard languages be? A perceptual perspective on co-variation

In this paper, we propose that the coherence of standard language varieties is as much, if not more, a matter of language perception and evaluation as of language production. We will show, first, that the co-occurrence of standard and non-standard variants in present-day Belgian Standard Dutch is to a large extent determined by the prestige of these variants, be that overt prestige (related to status and dominance) which motivates the use of standard forms, or covert prestige (related to dynamism and media cool) which increasingly motivates the use of non-standard forms. But prestige (whether overt and conservative, or covert and modern) is not the only force that shapes and maintains coherence in Europe's standard languages. We will argue, second, that the increasing occurrence of zero prestige variants in standard language contexts suggests the existence of a “perceptual harmony” criterion, i.e. a tacit agreement between speaker and hearer on how much socially meaningful variability a specific context may implicate or allow.

Variación sociofonética de las consonantes del castellano chileno [Sociophonetic variation in Chilean Spanish consonants

This paper explores the sociophonetic variation of the consonants of Chilean Spanish. It analyzes the socially-indexed allophones of /t???/, /t???/, /r/, /?/, /?/, /s/, /d?/, /?/, /f/, /l/ and /b/, and concludes that in the young generation, speakers of all social classes are adopting prestige allophones of /t???/ on a massive scale; that a process of sociolect leveling is affecting /t???/, /r/, /?/ and /?/, possibly under the influence of an exonorm in the case of /t???/ and /r/; that /s/ has developed new stigmatized allophones due to the operation of covert prestige; and that certain allophones of /s/ and /d?/ which were socially unmarked in the past are becoming stigmatized, likely as a result of hypercorrective use. It further concludes that /?/ is for all intents and purposes extinct, and that the stigmatized allophones of /f/ and /l/, as well as a non-stigmatized allophone of /b/, have been largely abandoned.

Singapore Colloquial English: Issues of prestige and identity

ABSTRACTSingapore Colloquial English (SCE) or ‘Singlish’ is a variety very distinct from Singapore Standardised English (SSE), and its use is a polarising issue in Singaporean society. In stark contrast to the results of most language attitude studies in which non‐standardised varieties are rated positively along solidarity dimensions, participants of matched‐guise studies investigating Singaporean attitudes toward SCE have assigned lower solidarity ratings for SCE than for SSE. This is in stark contrast to anecdotal and public opinion that SCE is a language of solidarity and identity for most Singaporeans. By including participants from non‐tertiary sectors and a wider range of stimulus guises as well as supplementing matched‐guise results with interview data, this study seeks to reveal the covert prestige that SCE does, in fact, appear to enjoy in Singaporean society. While the matched‐guise results of this study largely conform to previous findings, the interview data suggest that many participants were basing their ratings on perceptions of SCE use in the public domain rather than the private domain. The study has implications for the extent to which we can extrapolate results from matched‐guise studies, a widely used instrument for the study of language attitudes in the last 50 years.

The social value of a dialect: linguistic attitudes of young people in Lithuanian cities

Language standardization ideology prevailing in most European countries sustains a lower social value of dialects in comparison to the standard language. The linguistic variety of social elite, media, public administration, and public use – the standard language – is often rated as ideal or at least more adequate for most domains of language use than local dialects. This paper investigates the situation in Lithuania, analyzes linguistic attitudes towards dialects of upper-secondary school students in Lithuanian cities. The data gathered in the context of the project “Lithuanian language: ideals, ideologies and identity shifts, 2010-2013” group discussions organized in schools of nine Lithuanian cities (Alytus, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Marijampolė, Panevėžys, Šiauliai, Telšiai, Utena and Vilnius) as well as the experimental data, is analyzed for the social value of Lithuanian dialects. The research revealed both overt and covert prestige of dialects. The overtly declared prestige of a dialect is weak and the social value is lower when comparing to the standard language. Moreover, the usage of a dialect is fairly strictly limited and involving only a private sphere, non-official communication. On the other hand, an indirect evaluation when describing stereotypical characteristics of a dialect speaker has shown a rather positive covert prestige of the dialects. Even though dialect speakers are not distinguished by a superior status or social power and are most often seen as coming from a rural environment, which is not modern and associated with old traditions, social attractiveness of a dialect speaker is specifically emphasised, also the dimension of social solidarity and resistance to standardization associated with a dialect is highlighted. The results of the research point out some tendencies of the (not yet extinguished) vitality of dialects.

Discrete bilectalism: towards co-overt prestige and diglossic shift in Cyprus

This article explores the nuances in the type of diglossic society in Cyprus towards a characterization of the precise stage of diglossic progression that accurately describes the current sociolinguistic state of Greek-speaking Cyprus. The question concerns the identification of that status as diglossic, as standardwith-dialects (social dialectia), or as bidialectal. We propose that the society can be characterized as diglossic, likely moving towards diaglossia. The term co-overt prestige is also introduced here, juxtaposed both with canonical Bourdieuan overt prestige and with the concept of covert prestige (Trudgill 1972), a juxtaposition which drives the classification. This article also puts forth the notion of (discrete) bilectalism to capture the “linguality” of Greek Cypriot speakers, that is, bilectal in the local vernacular, the L variety (Cypriot Greek), and the superposed official language, the H variety (Standard Modern Greek), thereby refuting the notion of a continuum bridging the two varieties. The case is also made here that studying language acquisition and development in diglossic societies contributes to a better understanding of discrete linguistic systems in children and fully developed speakers alike.

Is Cameroon Pidgin flourishing or dying?

Cameroon Pidgin English (abbreviated to CamP) is one of the languages of wider communication in Cameroon, a country second only to Papua New Guinea in terms of its multiplicity of languages for a relatively small population. CamP is used alongside other languages like English and French (official languages), Fulfulde, Arab Choa, Ewondo and Duala (lingua francas), and over 250 indigenous languages. What is, however, peculiar about CamP is that it is not restricted to a particular class of people or to people from a particular region. A language which arose as a result of the desperate need for a link language between people who spoke mutually unintelligible languages has now established itself as a major force to reckon with in the linguistic landscape of the country. One of the main preoccupations among researchers on CamP has been its relationship with Cameroon English (CamE), which has higher status. While CamE is an official language in the country's constitution, CamP enjoys covert prestige bestowed on it by Cameroonians as a language of wider communication, social interaction, intimacy, etc. However, Cameroonians have been given to understand that the coexistence of CamP and CamE is responsible for the falling standard of English in the country, as a result of which CamP should be eradicated at all costs. This attitude has led to the stigmatisation and intimidation of CamP speakers as educational authorities all over the country attempt to ban the language, and refer to it in such pejorative terms as bad English, poor English, bush English, join join English etc. Such hostility has tended to drive the language underground so that speakers rarely express their liking for the language overtly. They are suspicious of language authorities and thus have developed an ambivalent attitude towards anything that has to do with CamP. Thus if those speakers who use CamP daily as the main medium of communication were to be asked what they think about its status, functions and prospects, the results would be largely negative (Schröder, 2003), not because they do not like the language but simply because they have been intimidated and stigmatised. This ambivalence has caused serious methodological difficulties for researchers, which have marred most results of studies on the functions, status and prospects of CamP. The inability to adopt an appropriate methodology to research the topic has given rise to conflicting findings and statements on the relationship between CamP and CamE, some of which are sometimes truly baffling (see Ngefac & Sala, 2006; Ayafor, 2005; Kouega, 2001; Chia, 2009). Researchers insensitive to the situation carry out research on CamP and obtain results that paint a completely distorted picture of the situation on the ground. In this light, certain basic questions about this relationship remain to be settled: What is actually the relationship between CamP and CamE? Is CamP really facing death? Is CamP losing ground to CamE? Is CamP soon going to lose its identity and idiosyncrasies to CamE or is CamP going to supplant CamE? This paper will consider how various researchers have grappled with these questions. By analysing their statements, it will attempt to explain the controversies that have characterised research on the relationship between CamP and CamE thus far.

Jezik i nacionalizam (review)

Snjezana Kordic. Jezik i nacionalizam. Zagreb: Durieux, 2010. 430 pp. Snjezana Kordic, a native of Osijek, Croatia, received her doctorate from the University of Zagreb in 1993. She then moved to Germany, where she has taught at a number of different universities. In addition to numerous articles and reviews, Kordic has published several books, including well-received works on the syntax of relative clauses (Kordic 1995, 1999) and on the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of pronouns and other selected high-frequency words that combine lexical meaning with grammatical functions (2001, 2002). She is widely known in Croatia as the author of a long series of polemical texts that have appeared in the journals Republika and Knjizevna republika since 2001, in which she sharply criticizes the work of various Croatian linguists and argues that, from the viewpoint of linguistic science, it is impossible to speak of a separate Croatian (standard) language. For Kordic, the only tenable position is that there is a single Serbo-Croatian with several standardized variants which differ from each other only in negligible, linguistically insignificant ways. Her book Jezik i nacionalizam (Language and nationalism) is an extended effort to prove this point. Kordic examines the relationship between language and nation in a broader sense, but her main focus is on the sociolinguistic situation of the former Yugoslavia, and Croatia in particular. The book is divided into three main sections: Linguistic purism, A polycentric standard language, and Nation, identity, culture, history. Kordic has extensively researched the scholarly literature on language and national identity and makes many valid points throughout. However, when she begins her book with a section on Purism and Nazism and directly compares Croatian linguists to Nazi German purists, it is immediately apparent that the work is unlikely to offer a dispassionate view of sociolinguistic issues in Croatia. The sharply polemical tone of her writings in Republika and Knjizevna republika is evident throughout. For example: They [Croatian purists] produce neologisms in an infantile fashion, and say that this activity of theirs, which is otherwise characteristic of pre-schoolers, requires great knowledge (25). She accuses linguists of lying when they claim that Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian are separate languages (120), states that some might think that it is worthwhile to examine the assertions of Croatianists critically because they underestimate the mental abilities of the reader (136-37), and speaks of the autism or autistic traits of Croatian linguistics (165, 371). To be fair, Kordic has herself been subjected to harsh criticism in Croatia (the book under review here has provoked especially strong reactions, including a lawsuit brought against the Croatian Ministry of Culture for subsidizing its publication), and her objections to views propounded by some Croatian linguists are often legitimate. Nonetheless, the acerbity of some of her language makes an unprofessional impression. Kordic defines purism as unnatural, undemocratic, and as having no basis in linguistics. She sees it as a completely negative phenomenon, something that is imposed by a small elite group on the rest of the language community. It is true, as she says, that purism typically has pejorative connotations among linguists and that notions of purity and of cleansing a language by eliminating undesirable elements have no objective basis. However, I would argue that Kordic's view of purism is too narrow and one-sided. Although purism is most often discussed in the context of standard languages, purism in some form is probably characteristic of all language communities. Even members of nonprivileged groups may reject forms that are seen as not belonging to their particular varieties; the phenomenon of covert prestige is well documented. I think that prototypical examples of standard language purism at the national level are best understood in relationship to other types of language-management activities, which may take place on a smaller scale (see Spolsky 2009). …