LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 12.JUL.2000 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 12.JUL.2000 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Stefan Israel [stefansfeder at yahoo.com]
Subject: LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 11.JUL.2000 (01) [E]

A short comment on prestige in language change:

Ron, responding to John Tait about Shetlandic, cited
the greater prestige of Scots as a cause for Norn's
decline.  Linguists have been abandoning prestige as
too vague and misleading a term; identity and
association come closer.

Many looked-down upon vernacular varieties, such as
Cockney, Black English and many other varieties of
stigmatized social groups continue to exist or even
thrive, despite stigma, despite ample access to more
mainstream varieties.  These speakers often take local
pride in their variety, giving it what linguists have
called 'covert prestige', but many badmouth their own
vernacular, are ashamed of it-- but won't give it up.

The variety you speak helps define for you and others
what group you're associated with.  If you want to
belong to the group, you usually need to reflect that
in your speech (and clothes etc.)
If you stop speaking your group's vernacular, your
group takes that as rejection, you're "getting to good
for us" (or too hickish/plebian etc.).  If you can
make the jump from your in-group to another group you
want to join (the middle-class, or a biker gang etc.),
it's worth changing your speech, but it's not worth it
if you offend your old support group without being
accepted by the new group.  Nor is it worth it if you
don't feel the need to leave your in-group to begin
with.  Is it documented how Shetlanders viewed Norn as
it declined?

Prestige and identity are superficially similar
concepts, but I think you'll find that identity is the
more accurate and revealing one.

We might ask more precisely, why did Shetlanders want
to or need to signal greater connection with Scots
speakers around 1700, (I think that's the transition
period) and not earlier.  Greater economic integration
etc. with the mainland and declining contact with
Norway-Denmark would be a likely factor for
Shetlandic.

We see a similar case e.g. in north Germany: growing
economic dependence of post-Hanseatic Germany on High
Germany seems to have been a major factor in the
increasing shift towards bilingual High German/Platt.
Economic/military dependence on High Germany after
Napoleon helped drive many North Germans to entirely
abandon Platt; I don't believe Shetlandic shared that
pressure.  Educated Platt speakers of the 1600's added
High German to their Platt, and then French, in part
to distinguish themselves from the uneducated.  Do we
know if Shetland society stratified that way, en route
from Norn to lowlands Shetlandic?

Stefan Israel
stefansfeder at yahoo.com

Ron wrote:
> Another important point, made both by
> Smith and Barnes, is that of why Norn died out. They
> suggest that it died out
> because Scots came to be regarded as the language of
> prestige, and Norn as a
> low status vernacular. As Barnes puts it:
>
>'The reason Norn died, both in Orkney and Shetland,
> was because the Northern Isles became more and more
> orientated towards Scotland. By the seventeenth
> century most if not all the inhabitants could speak
> fluent Scots, and as ties with Scandinavia, in
> particular Norway, weakened, the motivation to
> perpetuate a low-prestige vernacular with no
> official status or written form disappeared.'

----------

From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Language varieties

Stefan wrote:

> Ron wrote:
> > Another important point, made both by ....

I don't think I wrote that.

In fact, I just checked in the archive
(http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html) and found that the
writer of that piece was no other than our dear John Magnus Tait.

Best regards,

Reinhard/Ron

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