Standard Language Ideology Research Articles

Razlike u stavovima studenata srbističke i nefilološke orijentacije prema standardnom srpskom jeziku

The aim of this paper is to present students' attitudes towards standard Serbian language and to find out if results verify the existence of standard language ideologies. In this study there were 240 participants (120 of which were students of University of Belgrade and 120 were students of University of Priština with temporary Head office in Kosovska Mitrovica). Half of that number was students of Serbian language and the other half were students with no linguistic background. The hypothesis we wanted to prove was that students of Serbian language have a more specific perception of standard Serbian language compared to their colleagues that have no formal linguistic education. Students filled in the questionnaire with attitudes they evaluated on a Likert-type scale, and the results were processed statistically. Results prove that students of Serbian language more often categorically agree or disagree with certain claims, that they are more prone to code switching and relating standard language to its traditional areas of use, that they have ideological attitudes towards standard language qualities and negative attitude towards "non-canonical" linguistic forms, all as a result of higher influence of standard language ideology upon them.

Minority language maintenance and the production‐prescription interface: Number agreement in New York Yiddish

AbstractStandardization is a focus of language maintenance efforts in many, but not all, minority language communities. What is the impact of this choice on interspeaker variation in maintained languages? This study investigates variable number agreement in Yiddish, a minority language spoken by two distinct communities in the New York area: (1) Hasidic Jews, who maintain the language without standardization, and (2) Yiddishists, who are overtly committed to maintaining a “correct” Yiddish. An analysis of data from 40 sociolinguistic interviews shows that Yiddishists have significantly higher rates of normative agreement than Hasidim do. The Yiddishists’ standard language ideology has also contributed to a leveling of the differences across grammatical constructions, a predictor that is more robust among the Hasidic speakers. These community‐based differences in speech reflect differences in speakers’ prescriptive judgments, which were elicited through a novel postinterview text editing task.

Trivializing language correctness in an online metalinguistic debate

This study focuses on trivialization as a key strategy for challenging subjects who defend standard language, and for challenging standard language ideology in itself. While previous research has emphasized trivialization as a strategy for perpetuating the status quo, this study exemplifies the opposite function. Drawing on stance theory, the analysis focuses on the formation of the participating subjects and the stance object (linguistic correctness), and the link between them. The data consist of 157 posts from two blog comments sections, 32 of which trivialize linguistic correctness. The analysis shows that interlocutors mainly trivialize linguistic correctness through negative other-positioning, thus avoiding explicit metalinguistic arguments. Furthermore, the study illustrates and underlines how language ideological meaning is created in contention by emphasizing differences.

Standard language ideology in an English-medium Irish secondary school

The current paper aims to address how one English-medium school functions from the different perspectives within the school: the principal, student/teacher classroom interaction and the students. This approach allows us to see the power differential of the different stakeholders in a school and how iconisation, fractal recursivity, and erasure affect teenagers in Dublin. This paper presents interview data with a principal and the students in a secondary school. Taking a qualitative approach to these data, I show that standard language ideology is linked with economic disadvantage. The school principal’s approach to identifying, problematising and seeking to eliminate certain types of nonstandard language in the school reflects a standard language ideology and is consistent with a raciolinguistic approach to linguistic discrimination. The data suggest that the students themselves take a more nuanced approach.

Introduction: in the shadow of the standard. Standard language ideology and attitudes towards ‘non-standard’ varieties and usages

ABSTRACT This special issue provides new perspectives on how standard language ideology (SLI) informs and influences attitudes towards ‘non-standard’ language varieties. Standard languages are commonly viewed as uniform, minimally varying (homogeneous) forms of language [Haugen, E. 1966. “Dialect, Language, Nation.” American Anthropologist 68: 922–935.], and existing research in the area of language standardisation has largely focussed on standard languages in (perceived) monolingual nations, mainly restricted to those in Western Europe. The theoretical frameworks used to discuss language standardisation have often assumed that speakers of standard languages are monolingual (even if tacitly acknowledging varieties related to the standard, which can differ in terms of their ‘distance’ from that standard). Yet standard languages always exist alongside other languages and language varieties (including ‘non-standard’ varieties of the standard itself), and many speakers use the standard as an acquired variety alongside at least one other variety or language. This special issue challenges the assumption of monolingual standard languages, by presenting evidence of the impact – linguistic, social and cultural – of standard language ideologies on ‘non-standard’ language varieties that exist alongside standard languages in various political and cultural contexts within and outside Europe.

“Flipgrid netiquette”: unearthing language ideologies in the remote learning era

ABSTRACT Flipgrid as an asynchronous video-mediated online discussion platform has offered a space for teachers and students to interact and show their thinking in remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. While Flipgrid discussions can afford educators the chance to build on students’ creative language use, the choices teachers make when designing the discussions can also perpetuate standard language ideologies and purist language norms. This study presents a critical analysis of free and available teaching materials designed to support the use of Flipgrid, highlighting examples that foster or constrain student language choice and body positioning according to socially constructed norms for “Flipgrid netiquette.”

“It just sounds proper common”: Exploring the social meanings expressed by nonstandard grammar

It has been suggested that morphosyntax has more constrained social meanings than phonological variation, despite the scarcity of empirical research evidencing this claim. By using frequency correlations to isolate stylized moments of grammatical variation, this paper provides evidence of the rich social meanings constructed by nonstandard11We use the term ‘nonstandard’ to refer to linguistic variants that are not codified in the standardised variety of a language. This reflects usual practice in variationist sociolinguistics. We recognize the hegemony of standard language ideologies and the potential for the term ‘nonstandard’ to further marginalize highly regular and frequent modes of language. However, alternative terms such as ‘regional dialect forms’ do not capture the fact that grammatical items are employed across regional and social styles of speech. Also, as our paper demonstrates, variants identified as ‘nonstandard’ are routinely stigmatized, whereas forms described as ‘regional’ are not always sanctioned in the same way or to the same degree; compare, for instance, the use of negative concord (I didn’t do nothing to mean ‘I didn’t do anything’) with the use of a variant like multiple modals (I might could do it to mean ‘I might be able to do it’). Our use of ‘nonstandard’ is intended to identify variants which undergo prescription precisely because of comparison with standardised alternatives. However, note that we refer to individual nonstandard variants as elements of a person’s diverse repertoire (Snell 2013), without presuming that a specific instance of a nonstandard form equates to speaking in a ‘nonstandard dialect’. grammar. In particular, we show that, whilst definite article reduction (DAR), nonstandard were, and negative concord work together in one British working class young person's speech to produce an intimate, collaborative style, these variants are used strategically to index subtly different states and alignments. We also show that other grammatical variants – use of nonstandard irregular preterit forms and demonstrative them – are not used strategically to convey interactional positioning. The different function of these variants demonstrates the diversity of morphosyntax, raising questions about the relationship between grammar and social meaning, ideology, pragmatics and linguistic processing. We argue that addressing these questions not only benefits our understanding of social meaning across different levels of linguistic architecture, it also provides us with better evidence to advocate for alternative (and more suitable) models of linguistic variability in educational discourse.

Are our brains more prescriptive than our mouths? Experience with dialectal variation in syntax differentially impacts ERPs and behavior

We investigated online auditory comprehension of dialectal variation in English syntax with event-related potential (ERP) analysis of electroencephalographic data. The syntactic variant under investigation was the double modal, comprising two consecutive auxiliary verbs (e.g., might could). This construction appears across subregional dialects of Southern United States English and expresses indirectness or uncertainty. We compared processing of sentences with attested double modals and single modals in two groups of young adult participants: listeners who were either familiar (Southern) or unfamiliar (Unmarked) with double modal constructions. Both Southern and Unmarked listeners engaged rapid error detection (early anterior negativity) and sentence-level reanalysis (P600) in response to attested double modals, relative to single modals. Offline acceptability and intelligibility judgments reflected dialect familiarity, contrary to the ERP data. We interpret these findings in relation to usage-based and socially weighted theories of language processing, which together capture the effects of frequency and standard language ideology.

Hierarchical Relationship between the Seoul Dialect and Non-Mainstream Dialects of Korea in a TV Show

This study investigates the hierarchical relationship between the Seoul dialect and non-mainstream dialects of Korean. Through an analysis of the Korean TV drama Reply 1994 (〈응답하라 1994〉), the study examines how mass media promotes standard language ideologies and simultaneously marginalizes non-standard varieties in Korean society. Data clearly show the hegemonic position of the Seoul dialect and the marginalization of nonstandard varieties. Media representations of language and identity in the drama demonstrate how the Seoul dialect comes to be a dialect of power in Korean society. To date, very little is known about the language ideologies of the Korean language. By filling the gap in the literature, this study sheds new light on the research on language ideology and also provides new insights into the field of second dialect acquisition.

Bidialectal Practices and L2 Arabic Pragmatic Development in a Short-Term Study Abroad

AbstractThe current study takes a bidialectal perspective for the conceptualization of pragmatic competence and its development through illuminating the need for the field to move forward and overcome the standard language ideology in research on L2 pragmatic competence. To this end, it brings bidialectal practices to the forefront to investigate L2 Arabic pragmatic development in a short-term study abroad programme. In particular, bidialectal practices, or the ability to use one or more spoken varieties alongside Modern Standard Arabic, are explored in this study in relation to appropriateness and pragmatic strategies in the production of apologies, refusals, and requests. A spoken discourse completion task that included scenarios with varied power and social distance combinations were utilized to collect data from 36 participants (21 L2 Arabic learners and 15 L1 Arabic speakers) in an eight-week study abroad sojourn. Findings indicated an overall improvement of pragmatic competence over the period of eight weeks. Specifically, significant developments were demonstrated in appropriateness scores and learners’ use of bidialectal practices in pragmatic strategies. Moreover, the qualitative analysis of strategies development identified areas in which learners converged towards or diverged from L1 speaker norms. Methodologically, the study shows that utilizing bidialectal practices to measure L2 Arabic pragmatic competence development is key to understanding learners’ developmental trajectories.

Understanding Heritage Language Learners’ Critical Language Awareness (CLA) in Mixed Language Programs

Despite the prevalence of mixed language programs across the United States, their impact on the unique socio-affective needs of heritage language (HL) students has not been researched sufficiently. Therefore, the present study examines HL learners’ critical language awareness (CLA) in a mixed Spanish undergraduate program at a small private university in the eastern United States. Sixteen HL learners enrolled in different Spanish upper-level courses participated in the study. Respondents completed an existing questionnaire to measure CLA, which includes 19 Likert-type items addressing different areas, such as language variation, language ideologies, bilingualism, and language maintenance. Overall, the results show that learners in the mixed language program under study have “somewhat high” and “high” levels of CLA. The increased levels of CLA in learners who had completed three courses or more in the program, coupled with their strong motivation, suggests that this program contributes positively toward HL students’ CLA. However, respondents’ answers also reveal standard language ideologies, as well as the personal avoidance of code-switching. Based on these findings, two areas that could benefit from a wider representation in the curriculum of mixed language programs are discussed: language ideologies and plurilingual language practices.

Policy Mechanisms of the Standard Language Ideology in England’s Education System

ABSTRACT This article examines textual traces of the standard language ideology within current education policy in England, focusing on post-2010 reforms which are characterised by a (re)shift towards conservatism, discipline, and standards. Using tools and methods from critical stylistics and the critical discourse analysis of language policy, I interrogate a number of mechanisms which textually reinforce and reproduce the standard language ideology: curriculum documents, assessment instruments, national test materials and guidance for teachers. Whilst previous criticisms of current policy have focused on individual policy mechanisms, in this article I examine these mechanisms as a cluster, showing how they work together as de facto language policy. I show how teachers are presented with a de-historicised and de-politicised version of standardised English which masks the structural power relations that are embedded in language, and how they are constructed as standard language role-models who have a professional duty to reproduce the standard language ideology.

Social meaning and the obsolescence of traditional local structures

Abstract This paper discusses the obsolescence of h-dropping as a local feature in Maryport, West Cumbria. Using sociolinguistic interview data, a quantitative approach and mixed-effects modelling is used to explain the linguistic changes in the community. Sociolinguistic accounts of h-dropping always state that the feature is and has been stigmatised in England since the 18th century. However, the oldest speakers in the sample do not change their level of h-dropping in more formal speech styles, which indicates that the standard language ideology of “proper” English might not be pervasive for them. However, for speakers born after 1960 the use of h-dropping is decreasing in apparent time. From the 1960s onwards, Maryport has seen social change as the strong neighbourhood ties broke up and from the 1980s experienced strong job losses. I argue that these social changes are correlated with the decline and eventual obsolescence of h-dropping in the community.

‘That’s not how we speak’: interpreting monolingual ideologies in courtrooms

ABSTRACT The paper examines the operation and impact of monolingual ideologies relating to English in interpreter-mediated courtrooms in Australia. This is an issue relevant to courts in many geographical places, especially in Anglophone nations with common law systems. Using recurrent thematic analyses, the paper draws on interviews with 36 court interpreters working in Australia. From the perspective of legal interpreters, the paper explores three specific language ideologies linked to a ‘monolingual mindset’ [Michael Clyne (2005) Australia's Language Potential, UNSW Press.] of courtrooms: accent as a key marker of Australian English according to standard language ideologies; monolingual assumptions that there is only one version of each language; and negative perceptions of the bilingual abilities of court participants from minority backgrounds. The findings illustrate the ‘us-them’ distinction as both a cause and an outcome of the perpetuation of monolingual ideologies, which, in turn, feed into the conditions for the production and reproduction of existing power structures and ideological uses of language, with ramifications for the fairness and justice of legal processes. The paper concludes by highlighting the pervasiveness of monolingual ideologies in courtrooms, the need for multilingual and multicultural training of legal professionals and the relevance of collaboration between interpreters and legal professionals to addressing monolingualism in Australian courtrooms.

Sociolinguistic perspective on varieties of English: implications for teaching

The article explores the issue of language standardisation and sociolinguistic roots of varieties of English. It answers the question why some varieties of the English language become recognised as „standard” whereas other varieties are regarded as less prestigious or inferior and advocates the importance of sociolinguistic competence for teachers. Two models of language standardisation (the „popular” and the „expert” model) are critically discussed, providing a detailed explanation of the process of language standardisation and the formation of standard language ideology. The most frequently described variety of English in the UK, the Received Pronunciation, is described in greater detail, tracking down the reason why it has become recognised as the "standard" variety. A strong standard ideology with World Englishes and the current position of regional variations of English as its „deficient” or „fossilized” versions is discussed. The notions of language system and language use are considered in relation to the superiority or inferiority of different varieties. It has been shown that the social component is pivotal in understanding why certain varieties are regarded as less prestigious or inferior despite having equally rich and complex language systems. Such factors as stereotypes and ownership have an impact on their status too. The article proceeds to the discussion of implications of these sociolinguistic aspects for teaching. The importance of teachers' critical awareness of sociolinguistic realities is emphasised. Such benefits of raising students' awareness of varieties of English are presented: avoiding or reducing misunderstandings and misinterpretations in foreign language communication, recognising linguistic and cultural diversity, demonstrating relevance to real-life situations. Specific examples of practising language varieties are given.

Stylistic variation in Hebrew reading tasks

AbstractOne of the core assumptions of the sociolinguistic interview methodology is that read speech tasks may be used to elicit more standard variants from a speaker. This link between reading and standardness, however, is a socially constructed relationship that may differ across cultures. Standard language ideologies in Israel differ from those in well-studied English speaking communities, and exhibit a complex tension between the notions of standardness and correctness. Drawing on a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews of 21 Hebrew speakers, this paper analyzes the variation in two Hebrew morpho-phonological variables. The results show a pattern of use that differs from the cline typically observed, which suggests that Hebrew speakers have a specialized reading register that recruits distinctive stylistic resources. These findings highlight the nature of reading as a stylistic performance that may manifest differently according to local language ideologies.

Nations and Numbers: Elementary Mathematics Education as a Nationalizing Tool

One of the central elements of the nation-building process in the 19th century wasthe attempt to homogenize the citizenry, i.e. to fabricate national citizens. Besidesthe military and church, schools were considered to be the main agencies capable ofachieving this national homogenization. In this paper, focusing on the education inSwitzerland and France, I argue that elementary mathematics education was alsoused for this particular purpose. I make the case that throughout the 19th centurymathematics education became a way to familiarize the people with a standardizedlanguage – a language that was supposed to help them master their specific social,cultural and political realities.Key words: mathematics education; nation building; Standard Language Ideology;state formation.

The Need to Dismantle “Standard” Language Ideology at the Community College: An Analysis of Writing and Literacy Instructor Attitudes

ABSTRACT In spite of years of sociolinguistic research establishing that all language varieties are valid and equal, there is a disconnect between this knowledge and pedagogical practices at the college level. Certain Englishes, particularly those of minoritized speakers, are stigmatized, and “standard” English is upheld as the goal of writing and literacy instruction. To better understand this disconnect, we conducted a study to examine writing and literacy instructors’ attitudes toward “standard” and “nonstandard” Englishes in the community college setting. Employing a critical discursive approach to analyze language ideologies, we discovered that instructors held beliefs that were deeply rooted in standard language ideology, including attitudes toward nonstandard Englishes that superficially expressed tolerance but which underlyingly revealed rejection through lack of appreciation and validation. We argue that professional development that focuses on developing critical language awareness is needed for instructors, which—crucially—must begin with increasing awareness of the language ideologies that govern our beliefs, as these ideologies ultimately discriminate against speakers of stigmatized languages.

The French language: monocentric or pluricentric? Standard language ideology and attitudes towards the French language in twentieth-century language columns in Quebec

ABSTRACT Quebec has a tradition of language columns, articles discussing questions related to the French language produced by a single author and published regularly in the periodical press. This study examines the content and discourse of a sample of these language columns produced by six authors in Quebec during the twentieth century to explore possible changes over time in the variety of French viewed as the standard or ideal French to aspire to. The article explicitly examines this question from the perspective of pluricentricity, little discussed in work on language columns to date, to test the hypothesis that there is a change over time from a strongly monocentric view of the standard to a somewhat more pluricentric view. The results show that while all the authors of language columns examined here adhere in varying degrees to a monocentric view of standard French, there is nonetheless a shift over the course of the century towards an acceptance of a more pluricentric model of standard French. These findings show the value of a small-scale, detailed qualitative approach in highlighting issues that deserve to be further explored.

‘Say it like the Queen’: the standard language ideology and language policy making in English primary schools

ABSTRACT This article presents an analysis of the standard language ideology within a corpus of school-designed language policy documents from 264 primary schools in England. It examines the processes by which standard language ideological concepts (e.g. ‘Standard English’, ‘correctness’, ‘hegemony’) get textually manifested in school policies, and how these are intertextually and interdiscursively shaped by the broader educational policy context that teachers work in, notably the large-scale curriculum and assessment reforms of National Curriculum 2014. Using tools and methods from critical language policy, I reveal how new meanings emerge in the machinery of the policy-making process and at the contact points between policy levels. I trace how the standard language ideology within government policies gets reconstructed in school policies, with an emphasis on linguistic ‘correctness’ and the near-exclusive requirement for students and teachers to use standardised English in speech and writing. I discuss policies of surveillance, whereby teachers are discursively constructed and positioned as standard language ‘role models’: as powerful and authoritative figures who are granted a license to police, regulate and suppress their students’ language, whilst also having their own language controlled and monitored. Finally, I argue for the place of critical language awareness within the policy-making process at school level.