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Article published In:
What’s so standard about standards? Variationist principles and debates
Edited by Jonathan R. Kasstan
[Asia-Pacific Language Variation 8:2] 2022
► pp. 174–205

Standard-ness, national ideologies and their embedding in ‘sociolinguistic theory’

 | University of Delhi
In spite of the centrality of the vernacular in sociolinguistics, we find, it is constantly pitched against the standard, failing to make meaning on its own. It is common practice in western sociolinguistics to identify variants as standard or non-standard, thus marking a distinction between the two and their social meanings. However, when researching English in non-western contexts, such a distinction may not always be tenable. This study reports on variation in the use of a pre-verbal auxiliary – derived from English periphrastic Do – in the speech of Indo-Guyanese speakers, a community of Indian descent in Guyana. A series of matched guise tests were conducted which suggest confusion in the minds of speakers in unambiguously labeling the variants as English, creole or mixed. Further, auxiliary variants are evaluated neutrally without attaching greater or lesser value or prestige in spite of an on-going change at an advanced stage. This has consequences for the very notions of standard and standard-ness, which continue to dominate sociolinguistic modelling of variation in western contexts.
Keywords: Anglophone creoles, standard, attitudes, national ideology, nonwestern, language ideologies, vernacular, Guyana
Article outline
  • 1.Overview of theoretical issues
    • 1.1What does standard-ness tell us about the nature of society and the relationship between variants and their users?
    • 1.2Standard-ness, social meaning and advancement of language change
  • 2.Objectives, data and the research design
    • 2.1Study overview
    • 2.2Variables and the sociolinguistic profile of change
      • 2.2.1Social meaning of (daz) and variants
    • 2.3Perception tests
  • 3.Research findings
    • 3.1Occupational suitability
    • 3.2Socio-economic class and education
    • 3.3Standard English, mixed and creole
    • 3.4Demography and ethnicity
  • 4.Local language ideologies
    • 4.1Language use: Reported and observed
    • 4.2Local language ideologies and overt metalinguistic commentaries
    • 4.3Gutman scales: Qualities associated with linguistic varieties
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 December 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aplv.22007.sat
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