engleski

Fighting glottophobia: I have an accent, so what?

Any symbolic function is by nature one of identity, of determining ; it classifies and divides, but on the other hand, if it is strong and expansive, it both conquers and assimilates. The symbolic function of language has a vital role in assuring the internal cohesion of social groups at various levels. Language is a set of signs in whose usage one can read social relationships. Some idioms/languages are not present in public communication at all, while some occasionally appear in some domains, which means that the dominant group in society does not allow them access to public communication channels. The standard or seeming (quasi)standard, being ''ideologically neutral'' and ''democratic'', is supposed to assure access to all channels no matter who their real owner may be. Tollefson's "planned inequality", ranking some languages/idioms higher than 80 others, results from working out the norm in an institutionalized way or from different sorts of social pressure by the ruling stratum which imposes its "elaborated" code as "the standard''. On the other side, non- standard languages are stigmatised although nobody should face criticism and derision because of his/her language. Glottophobia or linguistic discrimination, grounded on someone's native language or accent, is coincided with linguistic xenophobia because some speakers find themselves judged, excluded, and even penalised for the way they speak. The aim of this paper is to reconsider different linguistic perceptions and especially negative linguistic attitudes leading to linguistic prejudices and intolerance between speakers of different cultural backgrounds, different speech styles and different communicative repertoires.

glottophobia, linguistic discrimination, accent, intolerance

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