engleski

You are all illiterate! – Language ideologies and language conflict in language teaching

The educational system is one of the most influential societal domains for establishing and passing on ideologies (Bourdieu 1991, Wodak 2009). A key role in the process is played by teachers, who (consciously or unconsciously) promote and normalize ideological views on the content they teach. This paper adopts a critical applied linguistics (Pennycook 2001) perspective in order to study what linguistic and extralinguistic ideologies are promoted in teaching Croatian and other languages in Croatia by correcting students’ language production. The study was conducted by using printed and digital questionnaires, and through a qualitative analysis of the respondents’ answers (N = 153). The findings indicate a strong presence of (1) the ideology of the standard language (Milroy 2001), (2) the ideology of the native speaker (Doerr 2009), (3) the monoglossic ideology (Wardhaugh & Fuller 2015), (4) the ideology of monosemoformy (one meaning ~ one form), (5) the ideology of the source language, and (6) the ideology of one regional standard, all presented as ‘commonsensical’ and ‘neutral’ views, with various regional/social dialects portrayed as illegitimate (non-)language. These ideologies are promoted by using strategies which include (1) the stigmatization of trivial formal variation, cross-linguistic influence, and heteroglossia (Blackledge & Creese 2013), (2) aggressive feedback, (3) public shaming, (4) multimodal expression of disapproval, (5) pretending not to understand students’ production, and (6) the strategy of apparent descriptiveness (Starčević 2016). Because such promotion of these ideologies encourages intra-speaker and inter-speaker language conflict (Nelde 1997), (1) linguistic varieties and extralinguistic identities are delegitimized and erased (Irvine & Gal 2000), while (2) students report feelings of embarrassment and demotivation, as well as schizoglossia (Haugen 1962), linguistic self- hatred (Giles & Niedzielski 1999), and other-hatred. Consequently, given the negative effect of such correction practices on students’ self-confidence and motivation, teachers are sometimes perceived as language breakers (Starčević 2014).

language ideologies, language conflict, language teaching, language breaker

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