Category Archives: language attitudes

From Standardization to Linguistic Discrimination

|

I am working on a chapter on language attitudes for my book-in-progress for Routledge. I just wrote the following section, trying to explain how a language moves from having a standard form to having full-blown language-based discrimination. Is this too grossly over-simplified? The book is intended for students.

1) A standardized variety of a language emerges in the collective minds of a community of language users, based on the written form, and often (not always) related to the notion of a nation state.

2) The standard becomes associated with social prestige. As the standardized variety grows in stature and recognition in the collective minds of its users, ideologies emerge relating to the standard. These ideologies are based on who uses the standard and how these users perpetuate the perceived importance of the standard. Discourse about language emerges. The stature of the standard is discursively reinforced over time. Importantly, the ideals of the standard are applied not only to written language, but to spoken language, as well.

3) People whose speech (and writing) is perceived as being too distant from the standard are negatively viewed and denigrated for their language use. Their use of language is perceived by those within Standard Language Culture as a personal affront; that is, non-standard users are seen are refusing to play by the “self-evident” rules of language. Language use has shifted from being a property of the collective community of speakers to being in the hands of an elite group. Negative attitudes emerge towards those who do not conform to the norms of the elite.

4) The perceived rules of language use become so collectively engrained for an elite group of users that they form a perimeter around them. People who do not use language in the same way they do are effectively shut out from all sorts of social and public functions. Linguistic discrimination is in effect, but because the elite group perceives their language use as the only way of using language, language-based discrimination goes largely undetected, unaddressed, and dismissed.

And I’m like, dude, pick on someone your own size

|

Last month, this article in the UK’s Observer got under my skin enough that I sat down and wrote a response in the form of a letter to the editor. There are so many linguistic misperceptions and downright falsehoods in the piece that, frankly, I had a hard time knowing where to start. Likewise, I had a hard time fitting all of my beef with the piece into the 300-word maximum specified for letters to the editor.

I chose to focus on what bothered me most, and that is that this man, who I am aware is a “very important person” in Britain, started the entire tirade by complaining about his granddaughter. Like, what kind of person does that? As if teenage girls don’t have enough self-esteem issues without their grandfather complaining about them in a newspaper which is read by millions of people around the world.

At any rate, it is clear that the letter will not be published elsewhere (no doubt there are bigger fish to fry than some linguist complaining about self-important men complaining about the demise of English), so I’ll publish it here.

Dear editors,

With reference to Peter Preston’s concerns about his granddaughter’s English (“The Americans are coming — but we’re like, whatever,” 30.07.2017): I assure Mr. Preston with 100 percent certainty that his granddaughter does not speak American English. Ask a hundred British people to assess her speech compared to an American teenager, and they will tell you the same thing: his granddaughter speaks British English. It is not the same British English that Mr. Preston speaks, and it won’t be the same English spoken in the UK in 50 years, but it is unmistakably British English. Unlike Mr. Preston’s claims, British English will never be “absorbed” by American English.

 

How do I know this? Because I am a scientist who studies language systems. My statements are based on 150 years of research in the field of linguistics, not on opinion. Mr. Preston’s complaints offer nothing new or enlightening, nor for that matter anything grounded in science. Contrary to popular belief, the influence of television and other forms of media remains relatively negligible when it comes to language contact and change. As Mr. Preston points out, vocabulary items such as you guys, like, and awesome may drift into everyday speech, but these are just words. Changes in how sentences are put together, changes in pronunciation – that’s a different story. The effects of media influence in these core areas is a growing field of inquiry: note, for example, Professor Jane Stuart Smith’s work on changes in the pronunciation of Glaswegian English in connection with the EastEnders series.

Decades of research shows that teenage girls are trendsetters when it comes to language change, and, no, people like Mr. Preston do not like it—after all, they are teenage girls, a most maligned segment of our population.

But really, picking on his own granddaughter?

Sincerely yours,

Elizabeth Peterson, PhD

University Lecturer, English Philology

Department of Modern Languages

Unioninkatu 40, Box 24

University of Helsinki, Finland 00014

Round Table with Professor Edgar Schneider: Similects, universals or something else? Problematizing historical and social perspectives on ESL varieties

|

Together with Raphaël Domange, a PhD student from the University of Stockholm, I am hosting a round table on a most current and relevant topic: the views we hold of second language varieties of English (for example, English as it is used in India, Ghana, Singapore, etc.), and how we talk about and research such varieties.

The round table, which takes place on June 16, 2017, will be led by a leading scholar in the area of World Englishes, Professor Edgar Schneider from the University of Regensberg, Germany.

The day will begin with focused discussions on a few key areas: 1) “Angloversals” vs. similects, 2) education and ideologies, and 3) methods and theory.

In addition to Professor Schneider, we have nine other scholars who will be joining us as discussants. Here is a bit of information about them.

Heli Paulasto, University of Eastern Finland. Heli joins us as an expert on so-called Angloversals. Here are a few of her publications on this topic:

Meriläinen, L. & Paulasto, H. (2017) ‘Embedded Inversion as an Angloversal: Evidence from Inner, Outer, and Expanding Circle Englishes’. In Filppula, M., Klemola, J. & Sharma, D. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Paulasto, H. (2014) ‘Extended uses of the progressive form in L1 and L2 Englishes.’ English World-Wide 35 (3), 247-276.

Lea Meriläinen, University of Eastern Finland. Lea is also an expert on Angloversals.

Meriläinen, L. & Paulasto, H. 2017. “Embedded Inversion as an Angloversal: Evidence from Inner, Outer, and Expanding Circle Englishes”. In Filppula, M., Klemola, J. & Sharma, D. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Meriläinen, L. (fc.) “The progressive form in learner Englishes: Examining variation across corpora”. To appear in World Englishes.

Paula Rautionaho, University of Tampere. Paula is investigating the use of progressive vs. non-progressive in ESL varieties. 

“The effect of grammatical contexts on the progressive vs. non-progressive alternation across World Englishes” (with Sandra C. Deshors, ICAME 2017.

Jan-Ola Östman, University of Helsinki. Jan-Ola is interested in language contact, language minorities, language ideologies and language rights.

http://norden.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:730884/FULLTEXT01.pdf

http://norden.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:730884/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Simo Määttä, University of Helsinki. Simo comes from an interpreting and translation perspective. He is also interested in language rights.

Määttä, Simo. (2017, submitted) English as a Lingua Franca in Telephone Interpreting: Reformulations, Mistakes, Representations, and Linguistic Justice. The Interpreter’s Newsletter 22. Special Issue on Corpus-based Dialogue Interpreting Studies. Bendazzoli,C. (ed.).

Määttä, Simo. (2017) ELF, Community Interpreting, and Linguistic Injustice. Paper at the the ELF10 conference at U Helsinki, panel 4 on June 13. 

Joseph McVeigh, University of Helsinki/University of Jyväskylä. Joe is interested in discussing issues that deal with a native-speaker bias and the teaching of English. Joe is currently finishing his PhD for the University of Helsinki.

Andy Kirkpatrick, Griffith University. Andy is interested in the role of local Englishes and langauge education policy in Asia. He is hosting a panel on the future of English as a Lingua Franca at ELF10 Conference in Helsinki.

Iris Schaller-Schwaner, University of Fribourg. Iris is interested in exploring the notion of similects, in addition to practical and oral skills.

Schaller-Schwaner, Iris (2015). ELF oral presentations in a multilingual context: intelligibility, familiarity and agency. In: Bowles, Hugo & Cogo, Alessia (eds.) International Perspectives on English as a Lingua Franca: Pedagogical Insights (International Perspectives in ELT) Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan: 72-95.

Svetlana Vetchinnikova, University of Helsinki. Svetlana is an expert on English as a Lingua Franca. She is a co-organizer of the ELF10 conference in Helsinki.

During the morning session, 9.30 to noon, these discussants and Professor Schneider will discuss our main themes in focus groups. In the afternoon, 1 to 4 pm, Professor Schneider will serve as the main discussant as the groups summarize their discussion. The afternoon session is open to the public.

In pursuit of “Bad English”

|

Later this month, I’m off with my family for a visit to Trump’s America. No, not Trump’s America, per se–that’s just an unfortunate sidenote (I hope) — but rather a visit to the wonderful linguistics program at North Carolina State University, in Raleigh. The researchers in this program have been trendsetters for decades in their community-centered linguistic investigations, providing an inspirational model of how we as scholars can give back tangible benefits to the communities we work with.

The purpose of the visit is to re-acquaint myself and to update my knowledge, from a U.S. perspective, about the relationship of ethnicity, education, language rights and human rights. After 13 years of living in Finland, it is clear that my understanding of the situation in the U.S. has become outdated and distant. I’ll be in Raleigh for just about three months, and during that time I have my work cut out for me: I hope to finish three chapters for my book, “Bad English”: An introduction to language attitudes and ideologies, which is under contract with Routledge, a UK-based publisher. The folks at NCSU, including my host Jeff Reaser, have very generously agreed to give me both feedback and input on my manuscript.

The book is based around a course I have taught at the University of Helsinki for many years. In the course, we talk about how some people have strong attitudes against the way other people speak — for example in a multi-ethnic or urban variety of English — and how that came to be the case. We talk about why language attitudes exist in English, how those attitudes got there, and how they are perpetuated. We also talk about several varieties of English that many (myself not included) would consider marginal or “incorrect”: English as a global lingua franca, creole varieties of English, African American English, and even the English of children who are learning it as their mother tongue. The reason we study all these different varieties is so that we can observe what they have in common, and how the attitudes toward them compare.

The book, which is expected in 2019, will cover the same themes, in addition to discussing London English, New Delhi English, and Singapore English. I clearly have my work cut out for me! I am lucky to have several academic friends whose work I can draw from and who I can collaborate with. My own students have been an immense help with the process, informing the work every step of the way.

To make it crystal clear: the book is NOT about putting down or ridiculing varieties of English and the people who speak them. The reason it is called “Bad English,” in quotes, is because this is how many people refer to these varieties, but without exactly knowing why. This book explains why. In doing so — I am not going to pretend otherwise — I hope to succeed in changing the way readers view these varieties. It seems to have worked on my students; lets see how it goes with a wider audience.

I was surprised to notice that the book is already listed in Amazon India: http://www.amazon.in/Bad-English-introduction-attitudes-ideologies/dp/1138237469 Along with a page count and expected publication date! This is quite amazing, considering I have not written the book yet! Nonetheless, feel free to leave a review. (I’m joking, I’m joking)

Keep up the good work

|

Now I have to brag a bit about my MA students. The name of the course is “English in Finland,” which of course can be interpreted quite widely — that was the point. The students are all completing their MA theses in the Department of Modern Languages in the English program. They are an incredible group!

At this point, there are eight brave souls who have stuck with it. I want to to tell you about their topics. At the outset, I think it is worth mentioning that there are some advantages to studying a language at a distance from its native speakers, or what might be considered its “home.” This psychological distance is very important for the students in our program, opening up opportunities for research that simply would not be possible in, say, the US or the UK. They just don’t have all that baggage. You’ll soon find out what I mean.

Without naming any student names, here are the topics:
1) The role of English for Middle Eastern asylum seekers in Finland, based on interview data
2) The use of prepositions in written English by native speakers of Finnish, based on a corpus of essays from upper secondary school students
3) English-Finnish codeswitching in a community of Finnish snowboarders, based on recorded conversations
4) How the word yes has been appropriated into Finnish (written as jees, in case you are wondering): what it means in Finnish compared to English, who uses it, and why, based on online data
5) How children at an English language daycare in Finland self-regulate, how they create patterns of use, who monitors their language
6) A comparison of the total amount of spoken language of African American actors vs actors of other backgrounds in 13 Oscar-winning “Black” films (I bet you can guess the student’s results…)
7) A comparison and account of the terms refugee, asylum seeker and migrant in English-language press in Finland, before and after the current immigrant changes
8) A survey evaluation of Finnish and Swedish speakers’ attitudes and social understanding of ethnic terms in English (including some very derogatory ones!): African-American, American Indian, Black, Chinaman, Cracker, Eskimo, Jap, Jew, Jewish, Kike, Mulatto, Native American, Nigger, Paki, Redskin, and White trash. I understand that this list has a lot of shock value; rest assured that the goal of the study is to make sure that students are taught which of these terms are OK to use and which ones are not–and why.

Occupational hazards

|

Every now and again, due to the nature of our work at the university, we get phone calls or emails from the press, from restaurants, from grandmothers, and whoever else who decides they need an “expert” opinion about English.

This week, I got a phone call from Ilta Sanomat, a Finnish newspaper that is probably best characterized as borderline tabloid journalism. It’s much more The Sun than it is The Times, let’s say. They wanted someone to evaluate a video clip featuring the heads of Finland’s nine political parties speaking English. There is a big election coming up, after all.

I am not at all comfortable with this type of task. My initial reaction was to turn this task down. It was a terrible story for the paper to pursue in the first place, I thought. They know full well that language is as divisive a topic as there is, and that is exactly the point. Language and politics? Oh, hell yeah. Why not go ahead and throw religion into the mix, as well, to really go for it?

In my teaching and research, I strive to work against negative stereotypes and attitudes about the way people speak. I sure do not want to add fuel to the fire. Not only that, but I have very strong feelings about native speakers of English (or any other language, for that matter) being elevated to some revered status, just because they are native speakers. Yawn. So boring. So colonial. So pointless. But in my case, I am not “just” a native speaker, I am also a trained linguist, and, furthermore, a descriptive sociolinguist. I agreed to do the interview because I thought my views might not be as ugly as the next person they might call, frankly.

So I agreed to do the task and complete the interview, although I am still not sure I made the right decision. I watched and listened to the video and commented about it out loud while I spoke on the phone to the journalist. (Of course the journalist took the most inane, off-hand comment I offered and turned it into the headline and the main point of the story, but that is another issue).

All in all, the story could have turned out much worse. I guess I made my point about being a descriptive linguist. There were a couple of misses in terms of the quotations, but this is not surprising considering that the interview was conducted in English, and, not only that, but some of the linguistic terminology I used clearly went over the journalist’s head.

But the part that really disturbs me? The readers’  comments that have been posted online in response to the story. As of tonight, there are more than 300 comments from readers, and they are not pretty. The attitudes displayed about language, linguistic rights, and also, actually, about me, are interesting as to what they reveal, but also quite horrifying.

No doubt I should have heeded my initial reaction instead of agreeing to do this evaluation. Did I do the wrong thing by agreeing to the interview? In the larger scheme of things, I realize this is not a huge issue, but I am disappointed that I participated in something that goes against my philosophy as a linguist.

Here is the link to the story: http://www.iltasanomat.fi/vaalit2015/art-1426818757096.html#comments-anchor