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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 757

Part of Session 181: Folk linguistics and society (Other abstracts in this session)

Towards a developmental folk linguistics. A study of Hungarian

Authors: Szabó, Tamás Péter; Mátyus, Kinga
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 metalanguage is defined as a socially constructed, (self )reflective discourse on language (Laihonen 2008). From this point of view, early years of institutional education has a great impact on the metalinguistic socialization of the speaker. Therefore it would be interesting to study how children construct linguistic evaluations and ideologies during these years.
The core of the present paper is based on data from a survey carried out in 2009 by the first author. Students of age 6–9 were interviewed in semi-structured research interviews. Data analysis focused on the construction of language ideologies in metadiscourses. Ideology was 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). Ideology construction was analysed as a dynamic process, using the Conversation Analysis methodology of Laihonen (2008).
The main topic of the research interviews was other-repair. While building narratives on their own communication experiences, interviewees evaluated common words and phrases often stigmatized in standard Hungarian. In these evaluations repeated patterns could be found, and, in addition, explanations were often given. These explanations, frequently occurring in the form of set phrases, were analyzed as core language ideologies. The analysis of agency concluded that quoting and assimilating other people’s voice are both important factors in ideology construction (Aro 2009).
In addition, a pilot study was carried out, in which the second author interviewed children attending kindergarten to investigate whether metalanguage – as found in the above mentioned research – can be studied in the speech of 4-year-olds. As other studies have proved (cf. Nardy–Barbu 2006), children of this age already show metalinguistic awareness and can solve metalinguistic tasks.
Our analysis tools and methods were the same in all age groups.
Studying the metalinguistic narratives in the speech of different age groups, this paper aims to provide data for developmental folk linguistics in Hungarian.
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.
Nardy, Aurélie – Stéphanie Barbu 2006. Production and judgment in childhood. The case of liaison in French. In: Frans Hinskens (ed.), Language Variation – European Perspectives. Volume 1. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins. 143–152.
Potter, Jonathan–Derek Edwards 2003. Sociolinguistics, Cognitivism, and Discursive Psychology. International Journal of English Studies 1, 93–109.