Linguistic insecurity

Linguistic insecurity comprises feelings of anxiety, self-consciousness, or lack of confidence in the mind of a speaker surrounding their use of language. Often, this anxiety comes from speakers' belief that their speech does not conform to the perceived standard and/or the style of language expected by the speakers' interlocutor(s). Linguistic insecurity is situationally induced and is often based on a feeling of inadequacy regarding personal performance in certain contexts, rather than a fixed attribute of an individual. This insecurity can lead to stylistic, and phonetic shifts away from an affected speaker's default speech variety; these shifts may be performed consciously on the part of the speaker, or may be reflective of an unconscious effort to conform to a more prestigious or context-appropriate variety or style of speech. Linguistic insecurity is linked to the perception of speech varieties in any community, and so may vary based on socioeconomic class and gender. It is also especially pertinent in multilingual societies. Linguistic insecurity comprises feelings of anxiety, self-consciousness, or lack of confidence in the mind of a speaker surrounding their use of language. Often, this anxiety comes from speakers' belief that their speech does not conform to the perceived standard and/or the style of language expected by the speakers' interlocutor(s). Linguistic insecurity is situationally induced and is often based on a feeling of inadequacy regarding personal performance in certain contexts, rather than a fixed attribute of an individual. This insecurity can lead to stylistic, and phonetic shifts away from an affected speaker's default speech variety; these shifts may be performed consciously on the part of the speaker, or may be reflective of an unconscious effort to conform to a more prestigious or context-appropriate variety or style of speech. Linguistic insecurity is linked to the perception of speech varieties in any community, and so may vary based on socioeconomic class and gender. It is also especially pertinent in multilingual societies. Linguistic insecurity is the negative self-image a speaker has regarding his or her own speech variety or language as a whole, especially in the perceived difference between phonetic and syntactic characteristics of one's own speech and those characteristics of what is considered standard usage, encouraged prescriptively as a preferable way of speaking, or perceived socially to be the 'correct' form of the language. Linguistic insecurity arises based on the perception of a lack of 'correctness' regarding one's own speech, rather than any objective deficiencies in a particular language variety. This perception is at odds with modern linguistic knowledge, which generally holds that all forms of language are linguistically equal as devices of communication, regardless of the various social judgments attached to them. Modern linguistics normally refrains from making judgments about language as used by native speakers, rejecting the idea of linguistic correctness as scientifically unfounded, or at least assuming that any notions of correct usage are relative in nature; popular linguistic ideas and social expectations, however, do not necessarily follow the scholarly consensus. In one of its earliest usages, the term linguistic insecurity was employed by linguist William Labov in his 1972 paper on the social stratification of the pronunciation of /r/ to describe the attitude that employees, at three different retail stores in New York, have towards their own speech patterns, in comparison to the Standard English form. Labov theorized that those employees who had the most extreme shift in style from their own speech variety (a casual style) to the standard form (a more emphatic style) were more insecure in a linguistic sense. The term has since been used to describe any situation in which a speaker is led to hypercorrect, or shift one's patterns of speech, due to a negative attitude or lack of confidence regarding one's normal speech. This lack of confidence need not be consciously acknowledged by a speaker in order for him/her to be affected by linguistic insecurity, and the changes in pronunciation and stylistic shifts indicative of linguistic insecurity can emerge absent of speaker intent. Linguistic insecurity may also be a characteristic of an entire speech community, especially in how it relates to other speech communities of the same language that employ a more standardized form. Linguistic insecurity might be induced by the belief that language is an extraneously regulated system that needs to be formally taught to its native speakers, rather than acquired in a natural way. This is often the case in standard language cultures, where a codified standard idiom tends to be equated with the language as a whole. As linguistic insecurity is related to the perception of how one speaks in comparison to a certain form, the notion of standard and prestige forms of languages is important. The standard form of a language is regarded as the codified form of language used in public discourse, while the prestige form is the one perceived to receive the most respect accorded to any variety of the language. Variables that differentiate standard and prestige forms include phonetic realization, vocabulary, syntax, among other features of speech. The status of these forms is related to the concept of language ideology, which explains how varieties of language are correlated with certain moral, social or political values. Many societies value the belief that language homogeneity is beneficial to society; in fact, the existence of a 'common language' is an intrinsic part of an imagined community, which defines a nation. However, the concept of a language norm is highly flexible. Nations often codify a standard language that may be different from regional norms. For example, Standard English in the United Kingdom is based on the south-eastern dialect and accent centered around London. In other parts of the UK, various dialects are spoken, such as Scots and Geordie; even in London, there exist Cockney and Estuary accents. Studies of young people in Glasgow show that they self-report linguistic insecurity, describing their own speech as 'slang' in comparison to the 'standard form' and attempting to incline their own speech to the standard. Prestige forms may also demonstrate linguistic insecurity. Again, in the UK, Received Pronunciation (RP), a prestige accent, has been affected by other varieties of speech. Though the standard form historically aimed towards RP, it is not a perfect imitation. The result is that RP speakers now demonstrate changes in phonetic realization in the direction of the standard. Despite these shifts, a person using an RP accent would tend to give the impression that he or she is well-educated and part of a higher socioeconomic class. This is because these traits are often associated with RP speakers; they index specific concepts that are presupposed by the community. Similarly, in general, forms of speech gain their status by their association with certain class characteristics. This indexicality does not need to be passive: in Beijing, young urban professionals actively adopt usages considered typical of prestigious Hong Kong and Taiwan speech in an effort to index themselves as cosmopolitan. It also does not need to be positive: speech forms may also index negative characteristics. In his study of attitudes towards varieties of United States English, Preston demonstrates that people often associate the Southern accent with a lack of sophistication, indexing speakers with such an accent as being backwards and conservative; and that Southern speakers themselves perceive their language to be inferior, exhibiting linguistic insecurity. Speakers experiencing linguistic insecurity exhibit alterations of their normal speech which are reflective of their insecurity, and often are a result of the speaker attempting to compensate for the perceived deficiencies in their own speech variety. These effects of linguistic insecurity can come in the form of changes in pronunciation, as in the case of the retail store employees in William Labov's example, or even syntactic deviations from the speaker's normal speech variant. One documented linguistic effect of linguistic insecurity is hypercorrection. Hypercorrection is the over-application of a perceived rule of grammar in order to appear more formal or to appear to belong to a more prestigious speech community. A common instance of hypercorrection in English is the use of the personal pronouns 'you and I' as a correction of 'me and you' in situations in which the accusative personal pronoun 'me' is more appropriate. Because the use of 'you and I' is internalized as the more grammatically sound form in the mind of many English speakers, that rule becomes over-applied in a situation when a speaker wants to compensate for perceived linguistic deficiencies. A speaker may try to avoid feelings of linguistic insecurity and perceived stigmatization by projecting a more educated or formal identity and emulating what is perceived as a more prestigious speech variety. Inadvertently, hypercorrection may index a speaker as belonging to the very social class or societal group that led to the linguistic insecurity. For example, linguist Donald Winford found after studying Trinidadian English that there was a knowledge that there was a stigmatization associated with less prestigious phonological variants, creating a situation in which individuals belonging to a 'lower' social class would attempt to replicate phonological aspects of the more prestigious forms of English, but did not do so successfully, thus engaging in hypercorrection.