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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 409

Part of Session 108: Negotiating communicative practices in school (Other abstracts in this session)

Construction of ideologies in school metalanguage. A study of other-repair in Hungarian

Authors: Szabó, Tamás Péter
Submitted by: Szabó, Tamás Péter (Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary)

Hungarian is a standard language culture (Milroy 2001), and linguistic prescriptivism has a long tradition. In classroom conversations, making ideologies on erroneous and correct language use is common, while convenient occasions for practicing public speech are really rare. In Hungarian formal education, the rules of Standard Hungarian are mainly taught by participating in various metadiscourses between students and their teachers.

In the present paper ideology is not defined as a telementation of inner beliefs or knowledge, but as a describing, explaining, legitimizing or illegitimizing statement on acts observable in practice (Potter–Edwards 2003). Metalanguage is defined as a socially constructed, (self-)reflective discourse on language (Laihonen 2008).

The present paper is based on data from a survey carried out in 2009 by the author. Students of age 6–11, 14–15 and 17–19 and teachers of Hungarian language and literature were interviewed in semi-structured research interviews, while students of age 14–15 and 17–19 filled in questionnaires (N=1195 students). 61 classroom observations were also made. Data analysis focused on the construction of language ideologies in metadiscourses. Ideology construction was analysed as a dynamic process, using a Conversation Analysis methodology (Laihonen 2008). The analysis of agency concluded that in ideology construction, quoting and the assimilation of other people’s voice both have special impact (Aro 2009).

The present paper focuses on other-repair and ideologies legitimizing or illegitimizing this practice. The analysis of other-repair in classroom discourse concluded that teachers often use other-repair as a means of the reconstruction of three dominant positions: (1) more competent speaker, (2) primary knower and (3) discourse manager. If repair was completed by a metalinguistic explanation or an explicit evaluation, it was analysed as a secondary legitimizing act of the repair (the primary legitimation comes from the position of the teacher guaranteed by the hierarchical structure of school system). The same three types of self-positioning was observable in the research interviews when one of the informants repaired the speech of another and he or she explained why he or she did that. Questionnaire answers concerning repair habits of the informants were analysed along three dimensions: (1) gender; (2) age (year 7 and 11) and (3) school system (primary school vs. grammar school on year 7, technical college vs. grammar school on year 11). If a statistically significant difference occurred, girls and grammar school students positioned themselves as more conform and as more competent speakers. It means that the use of metalanguage in self-positioning has different patterns in these groups.

References
Aro, Mari 2009. Speakers and Doers. Polyphony and Agency in Children’s Beliefs about Language Learning. Jyväskylä, University of Jyväskylä.
Laihonen, Petteri 2008. Language ideologies in interviews: A conversation analysis approach. Journal of Sociolinguistics 668–693.
Milroy, James 2001. Language ideologies and the consequences of standardization. Journal of Sociolinguistics 530–555.
Potter, Jonathan–Derek Edwards 2003. Sociolinguistics, Cognitivism, and Discursive Psychology. International Journal of English Studies 1, 93–109.