4- Language ideology and standard languages

Question 1

Correctedness

Answer 1

The notion that certain words, word forms, and syntactic structures meet the standards and conventions (that is, the “rules”) prescribed by traditional grammarians.

Question 2

Linguistic descriptivism vs prescriptivism

Answer 2

Linguistic descriptivism: The analysis of how language is used by its speakers / writers.
It is a non-judgmental approach to analyzing language usage.
Linguistic prescriptivism: The belief that a particular form of language is superior to another and should be treated as such. It imposes rules on the usage of language, establishing the ‘correctness’ of certain words, phrases, grammar and the ‘incorrectness’ of others.

Question 3

Standard language

Answer 3

A language variety that has undergone substantial codification of grammar and usage, although occasionally the term refers to the entirety of a language that includes a standardized form as one of its varieties.

Question 4

Processes of standarization

Answer 4

Selection, codification, elaboration of function, and acceptance.

Question 5

Destandarization

Answer 5

A fading away of the belief in a ‘Best’ Language (Standard Language Ideology).

Question 6

Abstand vs ausbau languages

Answer 6

Abstand language: A language variety or cluster of varieties with significant linguistic distance from all others.
Ausbau language: A standard variety, possibly with related dependent varieties.

Question 7

Language idiology

Answer 7

Conceptualizations about languages, speakers, and discursive practices.
Like other kinds of ideologies, language ideologies are pervaded with political and moral interests and are shaped in a cultural setting.

Question 8

Language attitudes

Answer 8

The study of what people think about different linguistic varieties and how those perceptions about language relate to perceptions of attitudes about different users of language.

Question 9

Semantic shift

Answer 9

Incremental changes to the meaning of a word or a phrase.
Sometimes included within the scope of grammaticalization, semantic shift need no entail structural reanalysis of the word or phrase. That is, a verb might be severely weakened or altered over time.

Question 10

Semantic bleaching

Answer 10

The gradual loss of the most specific, contentful aspects of the meaning of a word until it is left with vague or more generic connotations only.

Question 11

Semantic derogation

Answer 11

Semantic shift that results in a word acquiring more negative associations or meanings.

Question 12

Linguistic relativism

Answer 12

Holds that the value of one factor is not wholly independent of the value of another factor, but instead is somehow constrained by it.
Weaker position than determinism.
Associated with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which suggests that the way we perceive the world around us is in some way reflected in the way we talk.

Question 13

Perceptual dialectology

Answer 13

The study of people’s subjectively held beliefs about different dialects or linguistic varieties.
The focus on lay perceptions about language complements the regional dialectologists’ more objective focus on the way people are recording as speaking.

Question 14

Sociolinguistic monitor

Answer 14

The store of acquired knowledge that lets us detect the choice of alternate ways of saying the same thing and derive information from that choice.

Question 15

Social identity theory

Answer 15

A social psychological theory holding that people identify with multiple identities, some of which are more personal and idiosyncratic and some of which are group identifications.
Experimental word in this framework suggests that people readily see contrasts between groups in terms of competition and seek to fins means of favoring the co-members of the group they identify with over others.

Question 16

Salience

Answer 16

A maddeningly under-defined term when used in sociolinguistics.
Sometimes refers to how readily a particular variant is perceived.
Sometimes refers to a non-linguistic factor that the context or participants appear to have foregrounded in discourse.

Question 17

Accomodation theory

Answer 17

The process by which speakers attune or adapt their linguistic behaviors in light of their interlocutors’ behavior and their attitudes towards their interlocutors.
Encompasses both convergence and divergence from interlocutors’ norms.

Question 18

Communication accomodation

Answer 18

The full term for accommodation in which accommodation between individuals’ linguistic behavior is seen as only one way which individuals converge or diverge from each other.

Question 19

Attunement

Answer 19

A term sometimes preferred over accommodation because of the strong (but incorrect) association of a specific strategy convergence with the more general phenomenon of accommodation.

Question 20

Covergence vs divergence

Answer 20

Convergence: Accommodation towards the speech of one’s interlocutors. Accentuates similarities between interlocutors’ speech styles, and/or make the speaker sound more like their interlocutor. It is assumed to be triggered by conscious or unconscious desires to empathize similarity with interlocutors we like, and to increase attraction.
Divergence: Accommodation away from the speech of one’s interlocutors. Accentuates differences between interlocutors’ speech styles, and/or makes the speaker sound less like their interlocutor. It is assumed divergence is triggered by conscious or unconscious desires to empathize differences and increase distance.

Question 21

Symmetric vs asymmetric acommodation

Answer 21

Symmetric accommodation: It means both interlocutors converge or diverge.
Asymmetric accommodation: It means one interlocutor converges while the other diverges.

Question 22

Subjective and objective measures

Answer 22

Subjective and objective measures: A speaker’s perceptions of their own performance and their performance evaluated by some external measure.