Language and Society (week 6&7) - Language ideologies & Authenticity

THE OLDEST KIND OF TRADITIONAL VERNACULAR (pretty funny if you ask me)

historical baseline against which future studies could be measured.

Rural areas

Questionnaires (one or two word answers)

NORMs; non-mobile, old rural men. (Chambers and Trudgill 1998)

Unconscious speech, as the NORMs were given questionnaires.

Dialectology to the bright lights of the city and investigating women, ethnic groups, different ages, etc.

• Firmly place based
  • still... New York, Norwich, Detroit
• Socially 'untainted'
  • Well...: They only really studies tightly-knit communities, so there was still a sense of something pure
• Male
  • Still gendered: Women's linguistic behaviour needed explaining, male was seen as the norm (male gangs=AAVE)
• Traditional, unchanging
  • Jup, stable communites, 'normal' sociolinguistic transmission; cities with significant demographic upheaval avoided
• Unconscious speech
  • Still hunting that vernacular (of the city) and trying to find the 'least observed speech'
• non-mobile
  • Well, mobile individuals were even excluded from dialectology in cities (ex. for Labov you couldn't be any older than 8 when you got there.

She showed how youth in tower hamlets (youth centre, east London) displayed interethnic communication, how swell!
(ei) in face, make, Dave spread from Bangladeshi immigrant boys to British boys. 

authentic language - produced in authentic contexts by authentic speakers. Affects a lot of what socioling does. 

Describes nostalgia we have when viewing prior times. The changes happening are seen as loss. So grab some villagers and record them authentically while you still can! (it's way past my bedtime...)

BUCHOLTZ

Characteristics of social groups can be explained with reference to cultural and/or biological characteristics believed to be inherent to the group

• "Women talk a lot because they are more interested in social engagemet than men"
• Finns are silent...
• Young people can't communicate orally anymore, all they do is text.

BUCHOLTZ

Used to further a cause:

enable scholarly activity or political alliance through creation of common identity, or otherwise make stable ground for further social action... Use for short term goals and be aware of long-term limitations.

• dominance and difference in language and gender studies, celebration of women's linguistic abilities
• descriptions of AAVE

1. Linguistic isolationism
2. Linguistic mundaneness
3. The linguist as obstacle to linguistic authenticity
4. The linguist as arbiter of authenticiy

There are no complex words in that whatsoever, eh? -.-

To put it simply:

• isolated language with no influence from outside
• monolingualism = 'unmarked'
• >Authentic as hell

Research on geographic mobility could be seen as quite an important counterbalance

Well if you insist: It is all 'bout the fact that authentic = really boring everyday stuff to the person you're recording, that makes it very unconscious, commonplace and NATURAL.

However, to critique a bit and change POV: 'quotidian language' is only a subset of actual language use. Conversation analysis thinks conversation is the most authentic from where all other kinds of language derive.

By simply being there tbh... 'Observer's paradox' -  you wanna see something authentic but the fact that you're there negates that. -> much research desinged to minimise this 'problem'. Ethnography, participant observation come to mind

Well in the end the linguist decides who is authentic and who isn't, so shucks!

Process by which certain people turn into 'posers'... erhm, I mean: through constantly negotiated social practices, speakers claim certain identities:

• use of AAVE
  • White hiphop fans (told you... and they only really use emblematic forms)
  • Middle class African Americans
  • Asian Americans seeking to display solidarity
• use of british regional accents
  • britpop singers (most of use are too young to know about this)
  • populist classical musicians (why even bother?)
  • the 'authentic' north v RP South

1. The perception of language and discourse that is constructed in the interests of a specific social or cultural group;
2. Ideologies are multiple - different group = distinct takes on same phenomenon
3. Awareness of ideological nature of these views differs;
4. Mediation btwn. social structures and forms of language
5. ideologies are productively used in the creation and representation of various social and cultural identities, such as nationalism and ethnicity.

Gender neutral language (recognised as ideological by most) vs. standard English and grammar as hegemonic standard (defended as common sense by most).

• Iconisation
  • Linguistic features understood as iconic of the identities of certain speakers. E.g. Southern Americans and 'drawl'.
• Fractal recursivity
  • Creation and reproduction of ideologies in general. E.g. Bosnian being created to project onto the nation-state. Reiterates and enforces the difference btwn social groups.
• Erasure
  • Ignore social groups and facts that are not in line with the ideological scheme
  • E.g. Catalan as dialect of Spanish, Valencian as dialect of Catalan.
  • Dialects don't have grammars..

 - nation building in general - one nation, one language

 - Association of classical Arabic with Islam

 - Pronunciation of BATH vowel in northern England.

bias towards an abstracted, idealized and homogenous spoken language which is imposed and maintained by dominant instiutions and has a written form as model. It is drawn primarily form speech of upper middle classes. 

• abstracted (artificial)
• imposed and maintained by power
• written language = holy 
• upper middle class speech

 - negative thoughts about varieties are a possible consequence, as well as languages in general that don't have an established standard. This works together with fractal recursivity and erasure.

Standard = uniform; the elite are prestigious and so characteristics of them gain prestige; language of elite = prestigious = standard. - FRACTAL RECURSIVITY RIGHT THERE

Correctness: Standards becomes common sense, everything else is incorrect and can beocme discriminated against -> accents, dialects... 

External authority: language not innate to people who speak it but externalised to dictionaries and revered in texts like Shakespeare. Defined by elites.

Historicity, independence and heritage: time depth = really legitimate languages. Ridiculous 800 yrs. claim for English. 'Heritage has to be protected from corruption and decay' - complaint tradtition

syntactic theory based on standard English

Chomsky and Halle based on English teaching volume for phonological theory

Describing stuff from written perspective: t/d deletion (how about it was never even there in the spoken part?) Why is careful language the starting point?

non-standard assumes dialect is linked to it. It really does not have to be.

Linguistic changes assume standard starting point

history of /au/ in southern England and New Zealand:

• Southern England: standard [au], most dialects [ɛu]. [ɛu] is explained as a change from [au]. But there is no evidence for this. Historical records for the dialects suggest [əu] became [ɛu], and that [au] played no part.
• - New Zealand English has [ɛu - ɛə]. This is explained as a change from [au]. But there is no evidence of this change. Most dialects transported to NZ in 19 th century had [ɛu]…

Lack of retroflex consonants in Taiwanese Mandarin.

• Standard Beijing Mandarin has retroflex consonants. The majority Chinese language spoken in Taiwan, Southern Min, does not. Taiwanese Mandarin’s lack of retroflex consonants is an example of a language change which stems from contact with Southern Min. 
• However, almost all of the Mandarin speakers who came to Taiwan in the late 1940s came from areasthat did not have retroflex consonants either…. No language change necessary…

authentic speaker, critical period for dialect acquisition, influence of media on language. 

> big methodological and theoretical concerns that are hard to study and define

• Firmly place-based. Locally oriented and speaks the output language that emerges naturally from that location. (whatever that means)
• As socially 'untainted' as possible, which goes to say that he has never left the natural habitat and experienced unnatural social influences.
• Gendered (that's why I've been using male forms here). Women's speech considered inauthentic
• Unchanging. The 'real' peasant = the former peasant
• Unconscious speech: no performance speech. Does not critically reflect what he says
• non-mobile

Nope, we all have assumptions about who speaks certain dialects well. (Eckert)