Language Attitudes in the American Deaf Community:

Chapter 1 Language Attitudes

1 Chapter 1 Language Attitudes It is generally difficult to distinguish attitudes to language varieties from attitudes to the perceived groups and communities by ­ members who use them. Language varieties and their forms are often not simply characteristic of a community, but even enshrine what is distinctive in the community and in a sense “constitute” that community . (Garrett, 2010, p. 16) Majority or socially dominant languages or language varieties become the “standard” after years of use and acceptance by most members within a given society. These languages are normally favored over minority or socially subordinate languages or language varieties because of their association with social, economic, and educational privileges. This does not necessarily mean that all members of the majority have acquired these privileges because of their use of the majority language. A person from a less-privileged background may speak the majority language or variety proficiently and people listening to his or her speech may assume that the person has a good social standing. In this sense, the perception of standard language or variety generates a stereotypical image of a person or group enjoying the benefits of the community. A standard language or variety is not inherently prestigious; it simply acquires prestige when its “speakers have high prestige, because prestige is attributed by human beings to particular social groups and to inanimate or abstract objects, such as Ming vases and language varieties, and it depends on the values attributed to such objects” (Milroy, 2001, p. 532). In this sense, the standard language carries overt prestige (Wolfram & Schilling-Estes, 2006, p. 184). That is, members of a society make mental associations between the majority language or variety and social prestige; minority-language users usually aspire to gain proficiency in the standard language or, at least, acknowledge that the prestige associated with that language is associated with social, economic, and educational success . Even though a minority language or variety may be recognized as a natural linguistic system by both majority and minority communities, the Hill_Pgs 1-164.indd 1 11/14/2012 9:47:54 AM 2 : Chapter 1 minority language or variety is not as prestigious in the majority-language community based on the majority-language community’s attitudes toward the language and the perception of social status of the minority-language community. In spite of the stigmatized status of the minority-language community, the community and its language are able to endure because community members treasure the language as part of their social identity. The concept of the stigmatized language being favored within the community is called covert prestige (Wolfram & Schilling-Estes, 2006, p. 184). The English Language as a Standard in Multilingual Settings To understand the relationship between majority and minority languages in terms of prestige and stigma, we examine several documented cases of English used as the standard language: contention between the French- and English-speaking communities in Montreal, Canada, in the 1960s; Hawaiian-raised Japanese university students dealing with the Japanese and English languages in Hawaii in 1990s; and families of Mexican heritage dealing with the Spanish and English languages in United States. Prior to the 1970s, the French-speaking city of Montreal had been dominated by the English-speaking community even though the Englishspeaking community was in the minority and the French language had been stigmatized (Barbaud, 1998). The city was originally under French sovereignty until the British overtook the city in 1760 (Levine, 1990), and an enclave in Quebec was granted to the French-speaking community to preempt a possible future conflict (Barbaud, 1998). After the conquest, commercial activities were under the control of the British and Scottish minorities, and subsequent waves of immigrants of British and Scottish origins as well as Italian, Jewish, and other European origins had settled in the city (Levine, 1990). English was the language of commerce in ­ Montreal’s economy, and people participating in the commercial activities in various roles were expected to speak English. With Montreal’s demography becoming increasingly ethnically and linguistically diverse, there were some conflicts between ethnic and linguistic communities, but the main metropolitan conflict was between English and French (Levine, 1990). In the first half of the 1900s, English-speaking people enjoyed their privilege of using English exclusively in various settings and were not expected to understand French, but French-speaking people were expected Hill_Pgs 1-164.indd 2 11/14/2012 9:47:54 AM Language Attitudes : 3 to use and...