Hating one's own speech

[Dave Paulson]

This topic reminds me of a certain point in the documentary *Sociology is a
Martial Art, *where Pierre Bourdieu discusses hating the accent from his
hometown.

See this clip at the 10-minute mark:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtJp_ULuKeQ

"I was ashamed of my accent, which I had corrected when I went to the Ecole
normale...When I got to Dax and I heard the accent I was horrified! Even
today certain accents make me physically ill. And yet it is the accent that
I had...Here's a true form of symbolic violence."

Best,
Dave Paulson


On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 12:24 PM, galey modan <gmodan at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Eric,
>
> No research on people hating the way they speak comes to mind, but I'm sure
> if you search for the term "linguistic insecurity", whatever is out there
> will come up. Also relevant is the research on language shift looking at
> what happens when people devalue their language variety in practice, even
> if they may value it ideologically. Examples are Sue Gal's "Peasant Men
> Can't Get Wives" or Don Kulick's _Language Shift and Cultural
> Reproduction_.
>
> best,
>
> Galey
>
>
> 2013/5/17 daria schwalbe <daria.schwalbe at gmail.com>
>
> > Hi Eric,
> > 'hate' is a very strong word. I did come across a variety of negative
> > attitudes expressed towards ones own language during my own feldwork
> among
> > the Yupik (eskimo) population of Chukotka (Siberia) and Alaska. Usually
> > these expressed discoursively in phrases which outline one form of
> speaking
> > being better, richer, more correct or, as Shannon writes, 'proper'  way
> of
> > speaking than the other. Explicitely, the negative attitudes towards
> > ones language (rather than way of speaking) are expressed through claims
> of
> > it being unneccessary, unsuitable, slow, hard lto learn, etc. There are
> > also cases of mockery of ones way of speaking (particular accent),  but
> > never directly "i hate the way i speak". i think you might find some
> > interesting cases in studies on urban migrant socieies, and also maybe
> > analysis of rap-texts. cheers
> >
> >
> > 2013/5/17 s.t. bischoff <bischoff.st at gmail.com>
> >
> > > Hello Eric,
> > >
> > > I'm not sure if this is what you are interested in but...an
> undergraduate
> > > student of mine did a case study within his own family regarding
> heritage
> > > language loss. His family came from a Puerto Rican Spanish background
> and
> > > his parents spoke Puerto Rican Spanish as their L1. He found that his
> > > parents decided not to teach him and his siblings Spanish (the parents
> > L1)
> > > because they felt their variety of Spanish "wasn't the good kind" of
> > > Spanish. The parents instead encouraged the children to learn "proper
> > > Spanish" in school as an L2 (English being the children's L1 at this
> > > point), which was an option for the children once they were in high
> > school.
> > > He wasn't able to come across anything in the literature that reflected
> > > this, however. It is curious that the parents claim to have made a
> > > conscious decision to not teach their variety of Spanish to their
> > children
> > > because they saw it as a non-prestige or low variety.
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > > Shannon
> > >
> > >
> > > On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 3:10 PM, Eric Henry <Eric.Henry at smu.ca> wrote:
> > >
> > > > A student asked me for some resources today on "people who hate how
> > they
> > > > speak." It got me thinking about the devaluation of nonstandard
> > dialects
> > > or
> > > > accents by standardizing language ideologies, and how they are
> adopted
> > > and
> > > > reproduced even by the speakers themselves.
> > > >
> > > > A lot of the cases that came to mind though are more ambivalent than
> > > > negative - that is, while the speakers may perceive their own speech
> to
> > > be
> > > > problematic (especially in official or institutional interactions),
> > they
> > > > still maintain positive social value in other domains (the domestic
> or
> > > > local sphere). I'm trying to think of any research on situations
> where
> > > > speakers aesthetically stigmatize their own speech across the full
> > range
> > > of
> > > > interactional contexts. Any thoughts? Feel free to reply on or off
> > list.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > > Eric Henry
> > > >
> > >
> >
>



-- 
Dave Paulson
PhD Student & University Fellow
Temple University, Department of Anthropology
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
United States