Standard Language Ideology Research Articles

Decentering the colonial native speaker

Abstract: In this article, we advocate a speakerhood studies approach as part of an effort to decenter the 'native speaker' in linguistics. Recent critiques of native-speakerhood problematize this construct's links to essentializing discourses born of ethnolinguistic nationalism and colonialism and advocate for more specific and less reductionist approaches to describing speakers in linguistics (e.g. Babel & Grammon 2021, Birkeland et al. 2024, Cheng et al. 2021). We argue that it is important to consider—indeed, to center—conceptions of speakerhood in multilingual, transnational communities that offer a contrast to discourses centered on language purism, nationalism, and standard language ideologies. We examine data from speakers of Quechua, analyzing ways in which their ideologies of speakerhood diverge from naturalized scientific discourses in linguistics, in order to demonstrate the possibilities and the stakes of a speakerhood studies approach.

People incorrectly correcting other people: The pragmatics of (re-)corrections and their negotiation in a Facebook group

In highly standardized literate cultures, orthographic norms are perceived as socially binding, giving rise to negative evaluations of ‘incorrect’ writing, i.e., writing that deviates from the norm. This is evident in prescriptive practices in interactions on social media including direct corrections of a deviance (*you’re) or comments more or less implicitly referring to it (“would be great if you knew how to spell”). In this study, we focus on a special type of corrections and the reactions to them: incorrect corrections. They are often corrected in so-called re-corrections, which frequently give rise to entire chains of corrections and comments that reflect diverse practices and attitudes both shaped by and towards normativity. By conducting an exploratory case study, we investigate (meta-)pragmatic strategies of stancetaking – such as mocking or doing being an expert – as well as their negotiation in (re-)corrections. Specifically, we focus on three posts taken from the public Facebook group People Incorrectly Correcting Other People consisting of, on the one hand, decontextualized screenshots showing an incorrect correction and ensuing re-corrections framed by the reaction of the poster posting them to the group. On the other hand, given the large number of group members, they include a myriad of additional comments discussing (re-)corrections at a meta-level. Our analysis suggests that re-correcting serves to criticize not a mistake but the positioning of correctors as superior. Thus, it implicitly challenges the normativity of standard language ideologies by exposing the hypocrisy of prescriptive practices.

Lingua francas as evidence of standard language ideology in historical perspective

Lingua francas as evidence of standard language ideology in historical perspective

‘The Subversion of Dialects’: Changing Attitudes towards Rural Varieties of Galician

The gheada and the seseo are the two pronunciations most stigmatised by the top-down standardising tradition of Galician from the mid-19th century. Social stereotypes of peasantry, ignorance, and vulgarity were built on them. Nowadays, those stereotypes are the basis for indexical pointing. These pronunciations were outlawed from schools in the past. Today, despite having been considered standard by The Royal Galician Academy since 1982, they are almost absent from the classrooms, including those of Galician language and literature. This situation is detrimental to the linguistic capital of its users as compared to that of standard speakers. Nonetheless, since the end of the 20th century, there has been a social resignification of the gheada and seseo, symbolically used to express authenticity, ethnolinguistic adherence, and/or socio-political and cultural resistance. Currently, the emergence of vernacular language ideologies (VLIs) counterbalances the weight of standard language ideologies (SLIs) on these phenomena. This article analyses the linguistic attitudes of a sample of young people towards these two dialectal varieties as opposed to the standard pronunciations. It also identifies the indexical associations of contrasting varieties and their evolution over time. For this purpose, the matched-guise technique in combination with semantic differential scales (SDSs) has been applied. The results show that whereas standard pronunciations index social success, dialectal pronunciations index solidarity. However, while the standard indexical values are very stable, a rise in dialectal ratings is observed over fifteen years, which means an improvement of the attitudes towards them. As in other European minority languages, this phenomenon indicates a process of value levelling of the linguistic varieties and the growing weight of the VLIs in late modernity in Galicia.

Exploring the intersections of language ideologies and affect: The case of multilingual ‘returnee’ women in Turkey

Abstract This study explores the discursive construction and negotiation of exclusion and belonging, at the conceptual intersection of language ideologies and affect. Focusing on a group of multilingual ‘return’ migrant women of Turkish heritage, who were born, raised, and educated in Germany in Turkish migrant families and later settled in Turkey as highly-qualified adult professionals, the paper delves into the complexities of their lived experiences of languages. Based on in-depth interviews with eight multilingual women with diasporic upbringings in Germany and now residing in Turkey, the paper argues that the construction of authentic membership and the sense of (un)belonging is achieved through intensive affective engagements with standard and prescriptivist language ideologies in Turkey. It is further discussed that prevailing hegemonic language ideologies in both diasporic and local contexts create unique discursive sites of a marginalized and gendered vulnerability for the multilingual ‘returnee’ women in the study.

What does linguistic structure tell us about language ideologies?

Abstract This paper examines how bilingual and monolingual German speakers’ language use reflects underlying linguistic ideologies. I present a corpus study on bilingual and monolingual German speakers, focusing on phonological, lexical, and discourse pragmatic features. The data suggest that bilingual speakers use more markers of formal language and fewer markers of informal language in formal communicative situations than monolingual speakers. I argue that this is due to monolingual ideologies and standard language ideologies, particularly influencing these formal settings in bilingual speakers. These ideological patterns may lead to linguistic pressure in bilingual speakers to align with the monolingual majority, a phenomenon related to majority language anxiety. Complementing the corpus analysis, semi-structured interviews with bilingual speakers provide personal insights, further illuminating how linguistic ideologies shape their linguistic choices and social experiences.

Danish language legislation and de facto language policies

ABSTRACT For many years Denmark has had a reputation for being laissez-faire in language matters. There is no explicit language legislation, and the Danish Language Council has mainly descriptive functions. However, there is a powerful standard language ideology, and in other societal domains such as education or immigration, language is heavily regulated. In this paper, I shall first give the background, i.e. the situation for the Danish language and other languages in Denmark, and then zoom in on the debate about the pros and cons of a language act supplemented with specific questions related to education or immigration to grasp the de facto language policies at play.

College Composition Graduate Instructors’ Development of Conceptual and Practical Tools for Responding to Student Writing

Recent scholarship has demonstrated the need for criticality toward writing assessments that privilege standard language ideologies and correctness-based approaches. However, teachers continue to experience discrepancies between their intentions and actions, struggling to address both content and form in facilitative, constructive commentary. This study uses the activity theory framework of pedagogical tools, composed of conceptual and practical tools, to analyze through interviews and commented-on papers how two college composition graduate instructors responded to student writing. This study finds that while one teacher held and enacted consistent and congruent pedagogical tools grounded in sociocultural theories of writing development, the other experienced entrenched conflict between competing beliefs about evaluative and process-oriented purposes for teaching writing. These contrastive experiences illustrate how instructors’ development of pedagogical tools is mediated by interactions between their epistemological orientations and language ideologies, reinforcing the need to surface tacit beliefs about Standardized English and academic writing. This study concludes with recommendations for productive intervention in novice composition teachers’ development of response practices.

Authorised voices: literacy practices of language revitalisation through education

ABSTRACT Current research on language revitalisation through education has highlighted the impact of the standard language ideology on minoritised language practices. This ideology is intertwined with emerging literacy practices in language revitalisation, leading to debates on what to teach minority language students, and how. The paper argues that language education is as much about the language standard, as it is about the sociolinguistic voices that are raised in the language revitalisation classroom. Some heteroglossic voices become authorised as a language that is worth writing in when educators derive their authority from two sources: anonymity and authenticity [Woolard, K. A. (2016). Singular and plural: Ideologies of linguistic authority in 21st century Catalonia. Oxford University Press]. The analysis shows how anonymous and authentic voices are authorised within a literacy-based language educational programme in North-East Romanian Moldavia; the programme has evolved in the context of the regional Hungarian – often called Csángó – language revitalisation. The authorisation of voices has profound implications for the specific purpose of language education and the content of language classes, its methodology and its desired long-term consequences. By bringing together Woolard's concept of linguistic authority and sociolinguistic voice, the analysis suggests that authorising voice is crucial in understanding emerging literacy practices of language revitalisation through education.

LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY: SOCIOLINGUISTIC MEANING OF THE CONCEPT

The article discusses the sociolinguistic concept of language ideology against the background of the international and Ukrainian research of the subject. Language ideology is usually treated a set of widely held beliefs about the language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and language practice. Language ideologies are not always clearly articulated and often include all kinds of assumptions about the nature of language and its use. Language ideology is shaped in the public discourse that involves a wide range of participants and it plays a significant role in the processes of language standardisation and in the formulation of language policy. Also discussed is the standard language ideology which refers to the belief that the variety that has its roots in the speech of the most powerful group in society is superior to other ways of speaking the language. Language ideology may be quite influential at the grassroots level and in the absence of formal law it can work as «policy with the manager left out». The article also addresses the issue of the structure of language ideology as a complex multidimensional construction consisting of a set of ideologemes. It is assumed that the influence of individual ideologemes may increase or go down, depending on a variety of socio-political, economical, demographic and other variables. Presumably language ideology has a core part and a periphery where new ideologemes are generated some of which gain influence and some decline. Top-down language ideology is determined by the government policy while bottom-up ideology is generated by the civil society institutions, scientific and academic community, language activists, the media etc. Ukrainian and international experience demonstrate that top-down and bottom-up language ideologies may alternate or combine simultaneously or at different times.

Linguistic landscaping from above in China: scale-making and language ideologies

Abstract The sociolinguistics of mobility is one of Jan Blommaert’s significant theoretical legacies vis-à-vis language interactions in the age of globalization. This paper investigates the mobilization of English as a semiotic resource in the public space of Chinese cities to reveal how the process of linguistic landscaping rescales English in China’s layered language regime. In the three investigated cities in eastern China, the English language has been conceptualized as a symbol of internationalization, and the affective potentials of English signs turn the cities into spaces of friendliness. I argue that the visual bilingualism for internationalization purposes is loaded with state ideologies, and English semiotization in the urban space demonstrates the state’s keenness for international recognition and integration into the global world. Inherent in this linguistic landscaping process are Englishization as internationalization ideology, standard language ideology, and linguistic purism ideology. While the translocal status of English in the world language system serves to upscale the cities to a higher scale level, the valorization of English in the official domain also reinforces the hegemonic power of English in the indexicality order, marginalizing social groups with limited English literacy. Thus, a critical, dialectical lens is needed to analyze the role of English in top-down linguistic landscaping.

Nazwa „mowa chachłacka” w relacjach powojennych przesiedleńców ze Wschodu zamieszkałych w zachodniej Polsce

THE NAME MOWA CHACHŁACKA (KHAKHOL LANGUAGE) IN ACCOUNTS FROM DISPLACED POST-WAR MIGRANTS FROM THE EAST TO WESTERN POLAND This paper concerns the usage of the linguonym mowa chachłacka (Khakhol language) in Galicia, Podolia and Volhynia during the first half of the 20th Century. Therefore, it can be considered in the realm of historical sociolinguistics.The source material is comprised of interviews, recorded 1992–2006, with over 100 forced migrants from eastern voivodeships of the interwar Second Polish Republic. After World War 2, the respondents were resettled from their home towns into the new borders of post-war Poland, areas which belonged to Germany until 1945. The research method chosen was partially standardized interviews, which were first recorded and then written down.The paper is focused around the following issues: 1) which linguistic variety was referred to as mowa chachłacka in the interwar period within the researched communities, 2) whether this name contained a value judgement, 3) what was the prestige of mowa chachłacka in these communities. The first chapter of the paper concerns the history of the Russian lexeme хохол/хaхол, which forms the basis of the linguonym mowa chachłacka, and which has been used since the 17th Century to refer to Ukrainians. The article takes into account ideas concerning researching social attitudes to a language, such as standard language ideology and monoglossic ideology.

“Talk to the hand”: handling peer conflict through gestural socialization in an elementary classroom

Although researchers of language and communication have become increasingly interested in both embodiment and conflict in recent years, little is known about how elementary students use embodied actions modeled by their teachers as they engage in peer conflicts. This paper addresses such questions, focusing on the “quiet coyote” gesture and the “open hand prone” gesture, two emblems commonly used as classroom management strategies in elementary grades. Building on work in language socialization, gesture studies, and other areas of discourse analysis, I propose what I call a gestural socialization perspective for analyzing the nuanced ways the US second-grade children in this study use and socialize one another to use these gestures, as well as other semiotic resources, to handle peer disputes. An ethnographically informed, multimodal discourse analysis centering on a multiracial group of girls reveals how students' gesture practices draw on their teacher's gestural socialization practices while also diverging from them, especially with regard to gestural form, stance object, intended recipient, and accompanying metapragmatic commentary. These aspects of the participants' appropriations of the “open hand prone” and “quiet coyote” emblems, together with their use of gestural innovations, metagestures, and other semiotic resources, allow them to take more oppositional stances than those made relevant by the teacher's practices. Through these multimodal stances, students take a hands-on approach to starting, continuing, and closing peer disputes on their own terms. Overall, the study highlights how participants' handling of disputes often subverted a local emphasis on conflict avoidance, efficiency, and appropriateness and the developmentalist, neoliberal, and standard language ideologies underpinning these norms. The paper closes with a discussion of implications for research and pedagogy, emphasizing the importance of closely attending to the multimodal, interactionally emergent, and culturally situated nature of conflicts among children and people of all ages.

The Politics of Prescriptivism: One Style Manual, One Century

This article analyzes the changing prescriptive aims of the New York Times style guides from 1923-2015. While the editors of the style guides are not always explicit about the political pressures that result in changes from one edition to the next, the development of the entries throughout the 20th and 21st centuries demonstrates the power of standard language ideology at work. By tracing the changing prescriptions over the decades, this study highlights the complicated but important nature of the politics of prescriptivism.

Exploring TESOL graduate students’ perceptions towards Global Englishes in Nepal

ABSTRACT With the global spread of English, an entrenched native speakerism ideology is problematized by the Global Englishes (GE) paradigm. GE scholars have called for actions to implement Global Englishes language teaching (GELT) to prepare learners to use English with diverse English users. Before implementing any classroom innovation like GELT, exploring learners’ perceptions of GE and GELT is essential since they provide valuable insights for instructional planning and material development tailored to learners’ needs. The present study examined the perceptions of 10 TESOL graduate students in Nepal, an under-researched population and context, toward standard English, regional South Asian English varieties, GE, and GELT. Using a volunteer sampling technique, the participants were recruited from two universities in Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal. The interview data revealed that the participants repudiated a standard language ideology associated with the Inner Circle contexts and opted to learn English to communicate with diverse English users. The participants also reported that South Asian Englishes have distinct features influenced by South Asian values, cultures, and traditions. Although participants acknowledged the affordances of implementing the GE paradigm, they were reluctant to use English varieties in their classrooms due to inadequate GE learning materials.

The discursive tensions of Darija in Morocco's online news articles: A diachronic corpus-assisted approach

In keeping with a diachronic corpus-assisted discourse approach, this study explores the way Darija, the colloquial Arabic variety in Morocco, has been discursively constructed in online news articles over a ten-year timespan. To this end, a specialized corpus of over one million words was compiled from the news website Hespress. The study integrates the analysis of collocational frequencies and contextual examination of concordances, interrogating the links of the discourses encircling Darija with major sociopolitical events. Notwithstanding the local deep-seated linguistic rivalries and the prevailing standard-language ideology, the findings suggest that Darija during this period adopts a joint discourse of resistance with Amazighiya (Berber) against the Arabophone ideology, arguing for a consolidated constituency of Moroccanness, fundamental to the maintenance and (re)production of the country’s cultural identity. Such findings shed light on language as a site of struggle, in which issues of social and institutional inequities are negotiated between contested ideologies.

Indexing Deficiency: Connecting Language Learning and Teaching to Evaluations of US Spanish

The examination of language attitudes towards US Spanish variables unearths indexical meanings rooted in deficit perspectives, particularly in educational contexts. Standard language ideologies undergird pedagogical practice and learning experiences in second language (L2) and heritage language (HL) Spanish classes. The present study utilizes dual research paradigms of social cognition (matched guise technique (MGT); implicit association test (IAT)) to determine if varying experiences with (Spanish) standard language ideologies in academic settings condition bias towards standardized Spanish (SS) and US Spanish (USS) repertoires. L2 and HL students as well as teachers of Spanish (n = 81) have more positive associations of SS in both the MGT and IAT, demonstrating that standard language ideologies influence perceptions of language acquisition and academic language learning. No correlations between the bias measures were reported yet attitudes did not differ, suggesting that attitudes are stable and reflected in both early learnings of social information and lived experiences throughout formative education. These results contribute to a growing body of research that examines how monoglossic ideologies reinforce and reproduce the stigma associated with features of US Spanish(es).

A variationist corpus analysis of the definite article with personal names across three varieties of Spanish

It has been shown that the presence of a definite article (DA) prior to a personal name (PN) varies not only across languages, but also across varieties of the same language. Spanish is an example of a language that demonstrates DA+PN variation across varieties. However, few studies have quantitatively analyzed this DA+PN variation. The current study examined which linguistic and social factors govern the variation of DA+PN in the speech (sociolinguistic interviews) of 54 speakers from Santiago (Chile), Mexico City, and Granada (Spain) from the online PRESEEA Corpus. Statistical analyses found that the DA+PN realizations are most favored by speakers from Santiago across all educational levels. Speakers from Santiago also favor DA+PN realizations more with female names than male names, demonstrating a gendering of language. Speakers from Mexico City and Granada demonstrated few overall DA+PN realizations, with the least realizations among those with more educational attainment, possibly indicating the effect of a standard language ideology for these communities with regard to DA+PN. Thus, not only do these varieties differ in overall frequency in which DA+PN appears to be the norm in Santiago and much less common in Granada and Mexico City, they also differ in terms of which social factors govern DA+PN realizations in each variety.

Changing Hungarians' L1 education / Jövőt formáló anyanyelvi nevelés

The transmission and maintenance of Hungarian standard language ideology is extremely harmful socially because it perpetuates social inequity and reduces the nation's resources. The insistence on speaking Hungarian “correctly”, i.e., that all Hungarians speak their mother tongue “correctly”, is both unrealistic and socially extremely damaging. In addition to anecdotal evidence cited from belletristic authors Gyula Illyés (1930s), Szilárd Borbély (21st century) and others, the results of several sociolinguistic studies are cited to show how unrealistic such expectations are. These studies cover important sociolinguistic variables e.g., t-final verbs and the inessive case ending (bVn) as used by Hungarians in Hungary, in Transcarpathia (Ukraine) and in Transylvania (Rumania). The social harms that result are illustrated by several well-documented cases of linguicism. The author recommends that the evaluation of linguistic phenomena in terms of “correct – incorrect” should be abandoned and replaced by “appropriate – inappropriate” evaluations (where appropriate language use varies according to speech partners and speech situations). The subtractive language education prevalent in Hungarian schools should be replaced by additive education. Teacher training should be revamped similarly, but the most difficult task ahead is changing the culture of widespread belief in “correct Hungarian” and cultivating a more democratic language ideology which, rather than striving to eliminate language variation, respects linguistic varieties and their speakers.

A Critical Analysis of Standardized Testing in Speech and Language Therapy.

This review article critically interrogates the history and the current practice of standardized assessment in speech and language therapy. Speech and language assessments utilizing standardized linguistic norms are a critical tool for constructing disability and controlling disabled individuals. Such practices are rooted in a medical model of disability where the linguistic practice(s) of the individual is pathologized to create normalcy and disorder. We examine how these practices are anchored in eugenics and the racist logics of intelligence testing in which racialized populations were rendered as linguistically and biologically inferior. This review article shows how ideologies governing standardized assessments are influenced by racism, ableism, and the nation-state and serve as foundational mechanisms to enable surveillance and capital production. It demonstrates how standard language ideologies are central to standardized testing. Speech and language therapy practices upholding these ideologies contribute to unrestrained wealth generation for the testing industry. The review article ends with a call for clinicians, educators, and researchers to critically examine the relationship between standardized assessment, race, disability, and capitalism in speech-language therapy. This process will contribute toward dismantling the hegemonic role of standardized assessment in oppression and marginalization of speech and language-disabled individuals.