Talk:Prestige (sociolinguistics)

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 17 August 2020 and 23 November 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): ArushiBhatia321, Lihuamh.

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 August 2021 and 10 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Timpickard.

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment in Fall 2016. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Juniper Branchflower.

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Cyberbot did its job properly, but the dead link was to an apparently unpublished student paper. I removed the link, since there are two other sources cited for the same idea. Cnilep (talk) 04:13, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Prestige (sociolinguistics)/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Comment(s)

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Compared to many articles on linguistic and especially sociolinguistic topics, this one is relatively good. Still, it will bear several improvements. A few works or ideas might be added: Early work on caste distinction probably inspired later work on class and race distinction, as discussed here. See especially J. Gumperz (1958) "Dialect differences and social stratification in a North Indian village," American Anthropologist. Such work might be mentioned. Work on distinction in sociology - especially Bourdieu (1984) - might also be described. The work of Basil Bernstein (1971) is contemporaneous with vital work by Labov, Trudgill and others, and probably should be mentioned. Work such as Irvine & Gal (2000) on the ideological constructs that link linguistic varieties to social groups, and the political construction of identity, should be mentioned. ["Language ideology and linguistic differentiation," in P. Kroskrity Regimes of Language] On the other hand, some sections could be reduced or rationalized: Some items in Notes are full bibliographic references, but most are simply footnotes. This should be made consistent. The large sections of Notes and References might be combined, shortened, or generally cleaned up. {{Main}} tags might be used to point to Wikipedia discussions of dialect, diglossia, standard language, and ideally 'language and gender' (though the appropriate page doesn't yet exist for the last of these). The sub-section 'Connection with "standard" language' should be streamlined, with the latter three paragraphs made more similar to one another both in content and length. Cnilep (talk) 21:19, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Last edited at 21:19, 26 April 2009 (UTC). Substituted at 03:22, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

New sections and article layout

It is always good to have new contributors to Wikipedia or to a particular article. There is, however, a tendency for new contributors to add information to a new section or to the "lead" (the upper-most section, the one without a header). New information can be very useful, but if it duplicates (or contradicts) information in existing sections, it may be better to edit those sections rather than to create a baroque and unwieldy article layout. That's not a Wikipedia policy; it's just my opinion. But I do hope new contributors will have a look at what is already here and change it or add to it where appropriate. Happy editing, Cnilep (talk) 03:08, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Reference not cited

This book was in the list of references, but isn't cited in the text.

• Thomason, SG; Kaufman, T (1992). Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07893-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |lastauthoramp= ignored (|name-list-style= suggested) (help)

I have therefore removed it, but if I missed where it is cited, feel free to put it back. Cnilep (talk) 06:20, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Reference does not contain mention of claim

"and in Norway, Bokmål and Nynorsk.[47]"

Fergusson 1959, when you use the search function on it, does not contain the strings "norwa", "norwe", "nyn" or "bok"... Thus, unless the search function doesn't work on it (which it does for, say, "swiss" and several other examples), it cannot make any claims about Norwegian the forms Nynorsk or Bokmål. I strongly suspect this reference was not placed in the right point in the paragraph, since it would appear it IS relevant to other things referenced. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Antyla (talk • contribs) 11:13, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

You're right, Ferguson doesn't include Norwegian in that article. I wonder if the editor who added that was confusing it with John Gumperz's work in Norway in the early 1960s? Anyway, I've removed Nynorsk and Bokmål, and changed the order to match the order they are treated in Ferguson 1959. Cnilep (talk) 01:50, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Revisions

In the paragraph “Though women use prestige dialects more frequently..." some of the information from the study was taken out of context and didn’t specify that the study focused specifically on poorer populations in diglossic societies, and implied that generally that men have greater means of acquiring a second language, which can imply things that are not true. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ArushiBhatia321 (talk • contribs) 17:45, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

I reorganized the introduction and added a few sentences to summarize what the rest of the page was about. Even though the information that was already there was correct, it didn't necessarily reflect the contents of the page well. ArushiBhatia321 (talk) 00:55, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Added "With certain exceptions," to "they are the language varieties of the prestigious social classes. Therefore, the prestige variety of a given language community or nation-state has symbolic significance and may act as an instrument of political power." The prestige a certain language/variety has is dependent on the audience and context (ex. covert prestige), so in order to account for those exceptions, I added that phrase at the beginning.ArushiBhatia321 (talk) 01:01, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Added Edits to Lead: The presence of prestige dialects is caused by the correlation between the prestige of a group of people and the language that they use vs. the language or variety that is regarded as more prestigious in that community. The level of prestige a group has can also influence whether the language that they speak is considered a dialect/variety (which implies that it is somewhat subordinate) or its own separate language.ArushiBhatia321 (talk) 13:05, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Social class is correlated with what language is considered more prestigious, and studies in different communities have shown that sometimes members of a lower social class attempt to emulate the language of individuals in higher social classes to avoid how their natural language would construct their identity. The relationship between language and identity construction influences the language used by different genders.ArushiBhatia321 (talk) 13:05, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Sociolinguistic prestige is especially visible in situations where two or more distinct languages are in use, and in diverse, socially stratified urban areas, in which there are likely to be speakers of different languages and/or dialects interacting frequently. The results of language contact depends on the power relationship between the interacting languages.ArushiBhatia321 (talk) 13:05, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Edits to Gender and Covert PrestigeArushiBhatia321 (talk) 13:05, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Added information from Walt Wolfram Documentary.ArushiBhatia321 (talk) 13:05, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Added "Role of the Education System" section.ArushiBhatia321 (talk) 13:05, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Added paragraph in the Social Class section about application in Spain.ArushiBhatia321 (talk) 13:05, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Added paragraph in Gender and covert prestige section about AAVE by non-African Americans use to enjoy covert prestige.ArushiBhatia321 (talk) 13:51, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Added paragraph about prestige in media.ArushiBhatia321 (talk) 13:51, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Copied from User:ArushiBhatia321/sandbox —Preceding undated comment added 04:16, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Lippi-Green "heavy Arab accents"?

I'm afraid I don't have copy of English with an Accent readily at hand, but if memory serves, Lippi-Green contrasted the use of American versus other (national/regional) accents of English, rather than native-accented versus foreign-accented English. According to a snippet available from Google Books she writes: "...the good guys – Aladdin, Princess Jasmine and her father – talk like Americans, while all the other Arab characters have heavy accents." There is no mention of 'Arab[ic] accents' in this snippet, at least. And as an anonymous editor pointed out, Jaffar has a British accent; also, Iago has a Brooklyn accent. Cnilep (talk) 00:04, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

I have just looked at a couple of short excerpts from the film, and it does not seem to be the case that "the minor characters all have heavy Arab accents." The peddler, a minor character that seems to be voiced by Robin Williams, does have a vaguely Arab-sounding accent, but slips into a sort of American working class accent at times during his sales pitch. The merchant who threatens to cut off Jasmine's hand does not have a recognizably Arab accent, but speaks in a menacing, gravely voice. Perhaps some people hear that as cod-Arab, but I don't.

There is apparently a copy of Lippi-Green's book in a library near me. I am not sure if the library is open during this latest pandemic wave, but if it is I will try to find what she actually wrote about the film. Cnilep (talk) 03:04, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Found it. As I thought, Lippi-Green does not say what this article imputes to her about 'Arab accents'. The snippet about "heavy accents" is, in fact, a quotation of someone named Precker (who, annoyingly, is not in the book's 'Shortened bibliography', but seems to be Michael Precker's 1993 film review). Lippi-Green's point is, as I had remembered, that Disney protagonists (as well as their romantic partners and their mothers) tend to speak Standard American English, while other characters (including but not limited to antagonists) are more likely to speak forms of English marked for class, race, region, etc. Cnilep (talk) 07:09, 13 January 2021 (UTC)