Language & Identity in Multilingual Environments Adapted from Representations & Self- Representations Laura A. Janda.

Language & Identity in Multilingual Environments

Adapted from Representations & Self-Representations

Laura A. Janda

Overview

• National identity linked to language– History of nationalism

• What is a language? – Why is it a core factor of identity?– How many languages & countries are there?

• Matrix vs. embedded languages– Colonialism & post-colonialism– Group vs. individual interests

Nation, Nationality, and Nationalism

• Are innovative, recent concepts, artifacts created in late 18th century in W. Europe (Anderson 1991)

• Prior to the advent of nationality, and in the absence of technologies such as print, railroads, automobiles, how were human societies organized?

Religious communities

Dynastic realms

Local communities

Local Community• Defined by place – people who are close

enough for face-to-face contact• Can be multilingualReligious Community• Defined by faith, but could potentially reach all

mankind• Often used a sacred language, “superior” to

vernacularsDynastic Realm• Defined by loyalty to royal leader• Eventually took on nationalist features in W.

Europe

Nationalism – A product of W. European Romanticism

• Three German philosophers:

Johann Gottfried Herder

Wilhelm von Humboldt

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Nationalism – A product of W. European Romanticism

• Three German philosophers:

Johann Gottfried Herder

“Has a nation anything more precious than the language of its fathers?”

Nationalism – A product of W. European Romanticism

• Three German philosophers:

Wilhelm von Humboldt

Language is the “spiritual exhalation” of the nation

Nationalism – A product of West European Romanticism

• Three German philosophers:

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“Men are formed by language far more than language is formed by men”German nation and language are superior

A modern definition of nation (Anderson 1991)

• An imagined political community that is both limited and sovereign

• Imagined because members cannot all know each other

• Limited because no nation encompasses all of mankind, nor even aspires to

• Sovereign because nations came into being during Enlightenment and strive for freedom

• Community because a nation is conceived of as a horizontal comradeship of equals

What do the people of a nation share?

• A name• A language• A territory• Myths & memories• A culture• An economy• Rights and duties

Q: Which are necessary? Which are un/chosen? Which are objective/discrete?

An “ideal” nation-state assumes ONE nation = ONE state

Language (Andersen 1991)

• A language is a powerful means to root a nation to a past because a language looms up from the past without any birthdate of its own, and suggests a community between a contemporary society and its dead ancestors

• Poetry, songs, national anthems create a simultaneous community of selfless voices

Why is language a key factor in identity? (Janda forthc)

• Vehicle for culture (both “C” and “c”)• Vehicle of transmission for “wordless”

media (dance, cuisine, handicrafts)• If language is lost, access to culture is also

lost• Cultural concepts are embedded in

language• Language and culture co-evolve, are

continuously tailored to each other

What is a language? A dialect?• Mutual comprehensibility?

– This works for some situations, but are there counterexamples?

• It doesn’t work for :– German (incomprehensible

dialects)– Norwegian,Swedish,Danish

(comprehensible)– Slavic (both situations)– Chinese

Q: What’s going on?

A: IMAGINATION

Problem with the “ideal” nation-state

• Q: How many countries are there in the world?

• A: 192.• Q: How many

languages are there in the world?

• A: At least 6912.

Why are languages important? (Harrison 2006, Janda forthc)

• They contain information about culture and human interaction

• They contain information about sustainable use of niche environments

• They contain information about the human brain

Most languages of the world belong to indigenous nations

Languages are repositories of human knowledge

Most of human knowledge is in the hands/mouths of indigenous peoples

Matrix and Embedded Languages

• Matrix – a language that is connected to political structures, that serves purposes of national or regional communication

• Embedded – a language that is used within a single ethnic group, that is under pressure from a matrix language

Nearly all indigenous languages are embedded languages

Colonialism & Post-Colonialism

• Colonialism has – Created “new” boundaries and identities that

persist in post-colonial era– Treated indigenous peoples and their

languages in different ways– Sometimes shifted the identity of languages

as matrix vs. embedded

Group vs. Individual Interests for Indigenous Languages

• Group Interests– Preserve indigenous language– Have monolingual speakers, transmission to

young generation– Have education in native language

• Individual Interests– Social and economic upward mobility– Fluency in (one or more) matrix language

Language and Identity

Culture embodies those moral, ethical and aesthetic values, the set of spiritual

eyeglasses, through which (people) come to view themselves and their place in the

universe. Values are the basis of a people’s identity, their sense of particularity as members of the human race (Ngugi wa

Thiong’o).

The story so far

• We classify people in terms of general ‘person-types’– E.g. Man, Brit, Londoner, Educated

• We apply the same classification to ourselves as we search for a social identity.

• Our identity varies according to:– Who we are interacting with– The situation (e.g. formal/casual)

Who am I?

P e r s o n

F e m al e M al e Se ni o r J uni o r B r i t L o ndo ne r E duc ate d

M e

1 0 0 % 1 0 0 %6 0 % 4 0 % 7 0 % ? %

Variable is a

• Membership of a category is usually a matter of degree,– E.g. a chair is a ‘better’ item of furniture than

an ash-tray.

• Similarly for our social self-classification,– E.g. my daughters are ‘better’ Londoners than

I am.

• Degrees of membership can be shown as percentages.

Language

• We signal our social identity in various ways, e.g. clothing, behaviour.

• Perhaps the most important signal is language because:– It’s learned socially.– It allows many distinctions (e.g. one per

phoneme).– Each token (instance) can be chosen

independently, which allows fine-tuning.

Acts of identity

• Every word is an “act of identity in a multi-dimensional social space” (Le Page).

• This is different from (simple) accommodation because we’re following– Abstract social prototypes (‘person-types’)– Not the people in front of us.

• Acts of identity fine-tune our face (= ‘public self-image’)

Who are they?

L i ve r pudl i an Am e r i c an

B e at l e

5 0 % 5 0 %

New York

• How do you study “the language” of a complex city such as New York?

• William Labov’s answer (PhD, 1962-66): study sociolinguistic variables.

• E.g. (r): [r] ~ Ø (e.g. car = [kɑ:r] ~ [kɑ:])• He tested this idea with a brilliant

pilot study.

Background

• Labov (a New Yorker) observed that (r) was variable.

• The old standard in NYC was (r):Ø.

• The new educated standard seemed to be (r):[r]

• For example,

Hypotheses

• Use of (r) varies with social class and age.

• Maybe sex matters too.

• And ‘style’ (attention to language).

• And phonological context (before C or word-final).

Method: speaker selection

• Select an easy measure of “education”:– wealth.

• Select places which cater for people of differing wealth:– department stores.

• Three stores qualified:– Saks: for the very rich– Macy’s: for the comfortably off– Klein: for the poor

Method: choice of words

• Select some words containing (r), e.g. fourth, floor.

• Get assistants in those places to say those words:– Ask where to find some item known to be on

the fourth floor.– Then pretend not to have heard the answer.

• Record their answers out of sight.

Results

• In this way he collected data from 264 subjects in just over six hours.

• He counted (r):[r] as % of all (r).

• He distinguished:– Saks, Macy’s, Klein– First and second utterance– Fourth and floor

(r) by store, word and utterance

So …

Use of (r) does indeed vary with:

• Education/wealth/social class – Evidence: differences among stores

• Style/attention to language– Evidence: first versus second utterance– But less so in Saks

• Phonological context– Evidence: fourth versus floor

Main findings

• Different sociolinguistic variables are sensitive to different social variables.

• Variable scores show variable allegiance to alternative person-types.

• Education is always important:– education/social class is always relevant (in America

as much as in UK).– Women are always more ‘standard’ than men

(provided they have access to education).– Formal speech (e.g. reading lists) is always more

‘standard’ (as defined by education) than casual.

Bibliography

• Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities. London/New York: Verso.

• Edwards, John. 1985. Language, Society and Identity. Oxford: Blackwell.

• Harrison, K. David. 2006. When Languages Die: The extinction of the world's languagesand the erosion of human knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Janda, Laura A. Forthcoming. "From Cognitive Linguistics to Cultural Linguistics", to appear in Slovo a smysl/Word and Sense.