Linguistic Diversity and Standard Ideology in Denmark

Aktivitet: Tale eller præsentation - typerForedrag og mundtlige bidrag

Lian Malai Madsen - Oplægsholder

Andreas Candefors Stæhr - Oplægsholder

Sociolinguists have recently suggested that the changing social conditions across Europe results in a relativisation of sociolinguistic values (Coupland 2009: 45), which disturbs the ideology of ‘one best language’ and potentially results in “de-standardisation” (Coupland 2009: 44, cf. Coupland & Kristiansen 2011). Denmark, however, has often been characterised as having a sociolinguistic history of particularly strong standardisation of the spoken language (e.g. Kristiansen 2009), and in this national context is it is argued that while a previously ‘low prestige’ variety has gained a new status of ‘best’ speech, the ideological investment in a ‘standard’ variety is still intact (Coupland & Kristiansen 2011: 28). In our presentation, we add to the picture the kind of vernacular and hybrid language use we are witnessing in larger European cities. Since this type of language use involves linguistic forms originating from a range of national languages, one might expect that it contributes to the development of “less determinate and more complex” sociolinguistic value associations (Coupland 2009: 43), which may question the position of a standard language ideology and the bounded code-model of language it implies. We discuss if this is the case through investigating how the urban vernacular is placed in the Danish sociolinguistic order. We draw on different data types from an ethnographic sociolinguistic study (Madsen et al. 2016) as well as social media and mass media productions involving hybrid urban language use and discuss the metapragmatic acts we find here in relation to the socio-linguistic history and the wider language ideological environment in Denmark. Basing our argument on Agha’s discussion of ‘slang’ registers (Agha 2015), we suggest that although the contemporary urban linguistic practices we attend to, certainly in the situations of their use may undermine a bounded code-model of language, the wider processes of enregisterment across various communication platforms, in fact, suggest that this hybridity does not pose any significant challenge to the standard language ideology, but rather contribute to its reproduction.
6 dec. 2019

Begivenhed (Seminar)

TitelSociolinguistic Seminar
Dato06/12/2019 → …
AfholdelsesstedUniversity of Copenhagen
ByCopenhagen
Land/OmrådeDanmark
Grad af anerkendelseInternational begivenhed

ID: 231549997