LL-L: "Language politics" LOWLANDS-L, 14.JUL.2000 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 14.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, 13.JUL.2000 (04) [E]

John Tait wrote about my comment on Shetlandic and
sociolinguistics:

Stefan:
> >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.
>
John:
> The sociolinguistic model is of dubious value in
> analysing the Shetland
> situation, where there is little social
> stratification in any case, and even
> less identification between such stratification as
> does exist and language.

I'm actually not referring to social stratification in
Shetland.  Shetlanders interact with the larger world,
and -there- is the question of social interaction.  We
do not need to focus on social strata either.
investigating social stratification is revealing in
many cases, but obscuring in others, as increasing
numbers of linguists are realizing.
There are far more factors to bear in mind: identity
based on solidarity within an age group, within
members of a club, or a gang or clique, identity based
region or religion, profession, etc.

How do Shetlanders of varying groups (by age,
profession, education, neighborhood, degree of
rootedness in a small or large community etc.)
interact with the larger Anglophone world?
Too broad a question, I know, but it might shed light
on Shetlandic developments.

> It is almost as if, having
> adopted the Labovian model for analysing speech, the
> linguistic establishment
> must force all varieties of language into that
> mould.

That is exactly what often happens (with any fairly
successful theory, really), but you'll find younger
linguists getting beyond Labov and his approach.

> It may be that this very lack of a 'covert prestige'
[of Shetlandic] > factor will hasten its
> decline. As more young people in Lerwick grow up
> speaking standard English,
> the identification between Shetlandic and Shetland
> identity will probably
> become less clear cut; and, there being no social
> reason to continue to speak
> Shetlandic, it may simply be abandoned

We may be closer than it seemed:  what I was saying
was that identity is the leading factor in language
shift  (sometimes vertical social strata are involved,
often it's social groupings that are not defined that
way)--  and voila: Shetlandic identity has weakened,
and Shetlandic is threatened with decline.

We could take the case of Swiss German-- before the
First World War, the dialect was certainly spoken, but
was stigmatized and under pressure.  A command of High
German was used to emphasize group identity (in this
case higher social class).  The two World Wars led all
Swiss to want to distance themselves from Germany, and
all Swiss touted Swiss German as a badge of Swissness,
to demarcate themselves from that other group.  In
both cases we see the role of identity: language
choice helps mark who is in what group, and who isn't.

Stefan Israel
stefansfeder at yahoo.com

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