engleski

Language ideologies for the masses: Prescriptivism live on Croatian national television

The mass media have long been one of the most effective channels for the propagation and normalization of various ideas and beliefs from positions of power, including language ideologies. By reaching a huge (national and transnational) audience, television and radio programs can easily portray subjective, political, and unfounded beliefs about language use as ‘objective’, ‘neutral’, and ‘scholarly’ – in other words, as ‘incontestable knowledge’ and ‘truth’. This study uses a multimodal critical discourse approach (Verschueren 2012, Machin & Mayr 2012, Fairclough 2015) in order to analyze the promotion and commonsensicalization of the ideology of the standard language (Milroy 2001), the monoglossic ideology (Wardhaugh & Fuller 2015), and related ideas and sets of ideas about language and languages on Hrvatska radiotelevizija (Croatian Radio and Television). It focuses on the afternoon television show Dobar dan, Hrvatska (Good afternoon, Croatia), which is broadcast on weekdays (approx. 50 minutes) on HRT-HTV 1 (TV Channel 1) and is later available on the broadcaster’s digital platform (HRTi). The program deals with various general-interest topics and includes live reports and studio interviews, while the final segment (approx. 5-8 minutes) features a ‘language expert’ who has observed and taken notes on the participants’ language production. Within the established and normalized frame of the standard language ideology, the ‘language expert’ then explains what was ‘wrong’, ‘incorrect’, ‘improper’, etc. in the participants’ language use. The questions which the study aims to answer are the following: (1) what (language) ideologies are promoted by the ‘language expert’? and (2) what verbal and non-verbal strategies does the ‘language expert’ employ in the promotion of these ideologies? The results suggest a strong presence of (1) the ideology of the standard language and (2) the monoglossic ideology, including (3) the ideology of literal meanings, (4) the ideology of the source language, (5) the ideology of monosemonymy (one form ~ one meaning), (6) the ideology of false analogy, and (7) the ideology of zero redundancy. In addition, (8) trivial formal variation is stigmatized, and (9) legitimate linguistic data is erased (Irvine & Gal 2000). Criticism is directed at media professionals and average speakers, who are blamed for corrupting Croatian, while strategies include verbal and non-verbal stigmatization of common non-standard and supposedly non-standard forms through sarcastic rhetorical questions and disapproving comments about the low quality of media content, unprofessionalism, and impoliteness, as well as non-verbal signs of irritation, disgust, etc. on the part of the ‘expert’. The study demonstrates that a more rational and scholarly approach to language is required in the mass media so that unfounded and exclusionary ideas are not promoted and normalized as ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’, all of which can only heighten Croatian speakers’ (both linguistic and extralinguistic) insecurity, feelings of incompetence, and their reluctance to participate in public discourse, resulting in increased asymmetries of power and access to resources within Croatian society.

language ideologies, MCDA, prescriptivism, mass media, Croatian

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