individual is therefore a member of many different groups. It is in the best interests of most people to be able to identify themselves on one occasion as members of one group and on another as members of another group. Such groups also may or may not overlap. One of the consequences of the intersecting identifications is, of course, linguistic variation: all people do not speak alike, nor does any individual always speak in the same way on every occasion. The variation we see in language must partly reflect a need that people have to be seen as the same as certain other people on some occasions and as different from them on other occasions.
How identities are constructed and manifested is a pervasive issue in sociolinguistics. We will see its relevance to language use in the chapters that follow. In chapters 5–7, we will address how the concept of identity is approached through different sociolinguistic methodologies. Chapter 8 will show how the study of identities is addressed in this study of multilingualism, and chapter 11 will include a discussion of research on gender and sexuality identities.
Beliefs about Language and Social Groups
A key aspect of the study of language and social groups is that how languages are evaluated usually has very little to do with their linguistic features, and much more to do with the social status of the groups associated with them. These beliefs about linguistic groups also influence how language users use particular features and varieties of languages and are thus central to our understandings of social groups and language use.
Many people hold strong beliefs on various issues having to do with language and are quite willing to offer their judgments on these issues (see Bauer and Trudgill 1998; Niedzielski and Preston 1999). They believe such things as certain languages lack grammar, that you can speak English without an accent, that French is more logical than English, that parents teach their children to speak, that primitive languages exist, that English is degenerating and language standards are slipping, that pronunciation should be based on spelling, and so on and so on. Much discussion of language matters in the media concerns such ‘issues’ and there are periodic attempts to ‘clean up’ various bits and pieces, attempts that Cameron (1995) calls ‘verbal hygiene.’ Unfortunately, often people who voice opinions on this do not have any background in linguistics, but it has proven difficult to educate them otherwise. (But we hope that, after reading this book, you will go on to try.)
While sociolinguistic research on language largely focuses on a descriptive, not prescriptive, approach, attitudes and ideologies about language influence language use, as well as being areas of study in their own right. In the next two sections, we will look at two strands of research that address how such lay beliefs about language and social groups are an important part of the study of sociolinguistics.
Language ideologies
Sociolinguists have increasingly been aware that how people feel about different ways of speaking, and how they evaluate particular linguistic features, plays a role in how they use language. Here we will review research on language ideologies, and in the next section we will discuss research on language attitudes. These two areas of study are generally distinguished in two ways: language attitude research looks at the ideas about specific varieties held by people from different sociolinguistic groups, while language ideology research looks at societal discourses and how they are reproduced in media as well as public and private speech. Language attitudes and ideologies clearly interact and influence each other, and the lines between them may become blurred. However, there are also methodological differences, with language ideology research focusing more exclusively on discourse analytic methods and traditional language attitude research employing methods which seek to elicit speakers’ views, often via surveys.
Errington (2000, 115) describes the study of language ideologies as ‘a rubric for dealing with ideas about language structure and use relative to social contexts.’ Particularly relevant here are ideologies which privilege certain ways of speaking as inherently ‘better’ than others. While there are many language ideologies (see Fuller 2019 for an overview), here we will introduce three commonly occurring language ideologies: the standard language ideology, the purist ideology, and the monoglot ideology.
The standard language ideology
The standard language ideology revolves around the belief that a particular variety of a given language (the standardized variety) is superior to other related varieties (which are often labeled as ‘dialects,’ as discussed in chapter 2). Inherent in this ideology is the belief that languages are internally homogeneous, bounded systems. The concept of hegemony is important here; hegemonic ideologies are dominant ideologies which achieve their dominance in society through broad consensus and acceptance of them as some sort of ‘truth.’ Although as linguists we know that there is nothing linguistically superior about the standard, belief in its superiority is so widespread that many people will come up with arguments about why certain nonstandard features of language are linguistically inferior (i.e., ‘lazy’ or ‘illogical’). Here, even those who are disadvantaged by these ideologies believe in them – thus it is not uncommon for speakers of nonstandard varieties to consider their own language deficient because they have accepted the standardized language ideology as ‘truth.’ Lippi‐Green (2012) exemplifies and refutes the standard language ideology in a chapter titled ‘The Real Trouble with Black English,’ saying that although criticisms of AAVE are often made on the basis of linguistic inferiority, linguistic analyses have shown that AAVE is a rule‐governed, systematic language with every bit as much sophistication as any other variety of English. What bothers speakers of Standard English is that they feel that continued use of AAVE is a rejection of mainstream – often perceived as White – middle‐class values.
The standard language ideology can also be used to discriminate against ‘non‐native’ speakers of a language; the main principle is the same, that one way of speaking is inherently better than all others, but in this case the ways of speaking are linked to being a learner or second language speaker of a language. Lindemann and Moran (2017) discuss the use of the term ‘broken English’ in the US context. A major finding of their study is that this term is used to construct the ‘other’ in US society and is often used as a descriptor for people who are described negatively in other ways (e.g., criminals). In the cases in which ‘broken English’ is assigned to a person of high social status, it is used to portray their high status as problematic or perhaps undeserved.
The purist ideology
A second common ideology is a purist ideology, which rests on the idea that languages – again, as static, bounded systems – should not change but should retain a pure state. This attitude often stigmatizes youth speech as well as other innovations which are part of the natural development of language. Research by Albury and Carter (2018) illustrates this for Maori, the indigenous language of New Zealand. This language was once essentially outlawed by British colonialists, but is now being revitalized, and older speakers have negative attitudes about the Maori spoken by younger speakers who include innovative features; in other words, they have purist ideologies about language. However, this research illustrates an important aspect of hegemonic ideologies: despite dominance, hegemony is never complete (Woolard 1998). In this case, some of the youth who speak Maori are resistant to purist attitudes; for instance, they used loanwords from English and in surveys they gave responses noting that all languages borrow vocabulary. Further, the overwhelming majority of these youths did not feel that one needed to completely master the language in order to use it, but rather that using the language with
