Linguistic inequality

 1. Introduction Use of different linguistic items by a speaker for communicating the same
message within different social situation gave birth to the idea of linguistic and social inequality.
In the same way people with different social and cultural background show the levels of social
inequality as well as different social status. the most solid achievements of linguistics in the
twentieth century has been to eliminate the idea that some languages or dialects are inherently
better than the other. Linguists recognized that some varieties of language are considered by lay
people to be better than the other. but they point out that linguistic commonalities have been
given more importance than the linguistic differences. They would claim that if they were shown
the grammar of two different varieties of completely unfamiliar language, one with high and the
other with low prestige, they could not tell which was which.
 2. Linguists would probably say the same about Linguistic differences between individual
speakers if: there are differences between the grammars of two people, there is no way of
knowing which has the higher prestige in society simply by studying the grammars. There are
individuals who have inherently incomplete grammars, such as small children, foreigners and
people with mental disabilities, and leave intact the claim that all normal people are equal with
regard to their grammars. Linguistics should be descriptive not prescriptive, that slogan raises
problems:
 3. It is harder than many linguists realise to avoid prescriptivism, since the historical
Development of linguistic theory has been so closely linked to the description of prestigious
varieties such as standard Languages. Labov pointed out that: the normal method of obtaining
information about a person’s language is to ask them for judgments on sentences, a method
which is virtually useless with speakers of non-standard variety who also know the standard one,
since the judgements always relates to the latter rather than to normal speech. Linguists have
studied standard varieties rather than non-standard varieties, and the reasons are:  Linguists are
academics and therefore know standard language.  They work in a long tradition, in which
standard languages were studied so that they could be taught.  The foreign-language teaching
market needs good studies of standard varieties , but not of non- standard varieties.
 4. The doctrine of linguistic equality deflects attention from language as a possible source of
social inequality. If language were something which automatically developed at the same pace
and to the same extent in all normal people, then those of the same age or degree of maturity
 should automatically be at the same linguistic level. This view leaves two problem areas: 1.
Concerned with abnormal speakers (such as foreigners and people with mental disabilities). 2.
Concerned with the effects of prejudice: prejudice does exist but the doctrine of linguistic
equality leads to the conclusion that eliminating prejudice would leave abnormal speakers as the
only people with the linguistic problems.
 5. Types of Linguistic Inequality Linguistic Inequality Subjective Inequality strictly Linguistic
Inequality Communicative Inequality
 6. Subjective Inequality It concerns what people think about each other’s speech. (i.e.
Linguistic Prejudice is a product of subjective inequality). It is a very common notion that people
are thought more or less intelligent or friendly according to the way they speak. This is a
common thinking that right way of speaking conveys that the speaker is much valuable than the
one who uses wrong way of speaking. So language is a source of social inequality.
 7. strictly Linguistic Inequality It relates to the linguistic items that a person knows. The
linguistic items one knows show the experience of the person. Vocabulary is the field where this
experience can be most obvious where some individual has a rich set of technical terminology
for a particular field of life e.g. agriculture, fishing, linguistics etc., In different social situation
the people perform differently because of the linguistic items they know (i.e. where as others
have virtually no vocabulary for those filed ).
 8. Communicative Inequality It is concerned with knowledge of how to use linguistic items to
communicate successfully rather than simply with knowledge of linguistic items. communicative
inequality refers to: 1. the kind of knowledge or skill that is needed when using speech to interact
with other people. 2. It also includes inequalities in the way in which speakers select variants of
linguistic variable in order to present a favorable image which means that communicative
inequality subsumes subjective inequality.
 9. Subjective Inequality Evaluation of language Prejudice of pupils Subjective Inequality
Stereotype& how to study them Language based prejudice prejudice of teachers
 10. Language based prejudice The first kind of inequality involves prejudices about particular
way of speaking. One person can draw conclusion about another person’s character and abilities
simply on bases of how that person speaks, regardless of the content of what they say. We need
information about another person’s personality because it affects our own behaviour. Note: It is
 socially problematic because the conclusion drown may be wrong, and may either underestimate
or overestimate the extent to which the speaker has various social desirable qualities .
 11. Social stereotype: Stereotypes refer to specific characteristics, traits, and roles that a group
and its members are believed to possess. Stereotypes can be both positive and negative, although
negative are more common. if social prototype is shared by many people in the society it is
called Social stereotype. Prejudice : Is a characteristic of a social stereotype which is only
weakly predictable from the other characteristics (or not predictable at all). It is defined as
having negative attitudes toward a group and its members. Language prejudice: is a characteristic
which we expect people to have because of the way they speak, and the link between the speech
and this characteristic lie through the type of person that (we think) speaks like that.
 12. Evaluation of language The way a person speaks is simply a clue to social information and
is in itself neutral ,neither good nor bad. So the evaluation of language is based on the evaluation
of the speakers and not on the speech forms themselves, because it is easy to find examples
where the same speech pattern is evaluated quite differently in different communities. How
people evaluate the dialect or language that they speak themselves? because this is so closely
linked to their selfevaluation. Society functions best when all its members are proud to be what
they are, so they should all value there own speech because they value the community to which
they belong.
 13. Why don’t all people speak in the way that they obviously believe they should? To reach the
answer we must: 1. Consider the mechanism by which values get established, and recognise that
on the whole the values accepted by wider community will be those of most powerful group
within it, since this will be the one that controls such channel of influence as the schools and the
media. 2. Consider the problems of actually doing what the teachers recommend. the most highly
valued speech-forms are those of one particular group in a society ( the most powerful), although
they are accepted beyond that group as a result of influence of schools, etc.
 14. prestige describes the level of respect accorded to a language or dialect as compared to that
of other languages or dialects in a speech community. The concept of prestige in sociolinguistics
is closely related to that of prestige or class within a society. Generally, there is positive prestige
associated with the language or dialect of the upper classes, and negative prestige with the
language or dialect of the lower classes. The concept of prestige is also closely tied to the idea of
 the standard language, in that the most prestigious dialect is likely to be considered the standard
language.
 15. Overt Vs. Covert Prestige Overt prestige is acquired by those speakers who have command
of a standard dialect (or dialects) that is socially defined as that spoken to gain social status
within the wider community; often that of the elite. Covert prestige, is acquired by those
speakers desiring to belong; to be considered a member of a certain community. Overt prestige
vs. Covert prestige
 16. Stereotype& how to study them • People use the speech of others as a clue to non-linguistic
information a bout them, such as there social background and even personality traits like
toughness or intelligence. • What is subjective reaction test? • It is a method first developed by
social psychologists (Lambert 1967, Giles and Powesland 1975,Giles and Bradac 1994) the
method has been adopted by Labov as a part of his methodology for investigating. linguistic
variability.
 17. Subjective Reaction Test to analyze the stereotypes Here the investigator prepares a tape-
recording (recording of a series of people reading the same content or passage). Listener whose
stereotypes are going to be investigated might be asked to make ten to twenty judgments about
the owner of the speech and to fill a questionnaire. His judgments can then be compared from
one voice to another. The listener for example would be asked to locate the speaker somewhere
on a particular scale such as toughness, intelligence, friendliness or geographical area. Seven
points scale can be used for this purpose let say: (very tough, tough, somewhat tough, neutral,
somewhat gentle, gentle, very gentle). The result of subjective reaction tests typically show
clear differences both between voices and between subjects (different voices evoke different
stereotype in the mind of the same person, whilst the same voice may suggest different
stereotype to different people).
 18. Subjective reaction method can be made in two ways: 1. Matched guise technique: this
method was created by Lambert and it is a few recordings by the same speaker, who uses
different languages or dialects, and so the listener would not notice similarities in voice quality,
s/he must think that it is a very different speakers. The listener is then asked to evaluate the
personal qualities of the individuals recorded – without knowing that it is the same person –
according to the linguistic variety used, and in line with the stereotypes and social prejudices of
these linguistic varieties, which tend to be uniform. 2. Subjective reaction method(developed by
Labov): which has been more sophisticated by controlling the speech used in such way as to
make it possible to identify the particular linguistic features to which the hearers were reacting.
(p.214)