We turn now to discuss the types of study that consider language attitudes more specifically as attitudes. Attitudes can be defined as subjective evalu-ations of both language varieties and their speakers, whether the attitudes are held by individuals or by groups. This may be another way that they contrast with ideologies. You know that an evaluation is a judgment that fixes the value or weight of something. If that evaluation is subjective, this means that it is an opinion and therefore the value it fixes does not have an objective basis. In contrast, ideologies are more often closely related to a factual base, such as that language X is the sole official language used in the schools. This doesn’t mean facts aren’t involved in attitudes, but does mean that the evalu-ation itself isn’t directly based on facts.
For example, facts may show that speakers of a certain language (or dialect) are primarily persons of high socio-economic status. But to judge their lan-guage as superior (e.g. “clearer”, “more logical”) to other lanlan-guages spoken in the same community has no direct factual basis. Yet, many times community members place a high value on the linguistic varieties spoken by persons of high socio-economic status and a low value on those varieties spoken by per-sons of lower status. You can say that such attitudes are unfair, but in every community speakers come up with such judgments. Almost always, these subjective evaluations are based on the characteristics of the speakers of the linguistic varieties.
But the important point for us to notice in this chapter is that such evalu-ations are attached to the varieties, too, not just to the persons who habitually speak them. And evaluations make a difference in whether people will make an effort to learn certain languages, as well as in their attitudes. For example, people who don’t speak certain languages as their L1 typically make an effort to learn to speak certain languages, but they ignore others. For example, in San Antonio, Texas, not as many English-speakers make an effort to learn Spanish
as the Spanish-speaking immigrants from Central and South America make an effort to learn English.
5.5.1 How attitudes arise
Social psychologists tell us that a major motivation for holding attitudes is that people strive for positive self-esteem and this esteem is established at least in part through comparisons with others and their groups. Clearly, holding attitudes involves categorization of individuals, both self-categorizations and categorization of others. One way of improving self-esteem is to compare yourself to other individuals. But everyone also makes classifications based on his or her in-group in comparison with relevant out-groups. Social psycho-logists talk about the need for both distinctiveness (i.e. differentiation) of the self, and inclusion of the self into larger groups (Hogg and Abrams, 1993).
These needs are the source of attitudes (i.e. evaluations) toward others and, ultimately, of ideologies that may be used to mobilize one’s group in opposi-tion to the “other”. As we have argued in earlier chapters, because language is such an omnipresent group marker, making comparisons of the status of your group’s language with that of other groups’ languages is a readily available way to give our group cohesion and distinguish it from other groups.
Just as we make comparisons with other groups, we should recognize that in the eyes of others, the identity that they attach to our group is the identity they attach to us. As John Edwards (1999: 103) notes, “people are evaluated in terms of characteristics that, in a broad-brush sort of way, reflect perceptions of the group to which they seem to belong. The implication is obvious:
individuals – with all their personal strengths and weaknesses – are viewed in stereotypical group terms.”
5.5.2 How do attitudes evolve and how do they matter?
Political and socio-economic forces can change community attitudes toward language varieties and motivate learning a second language that has gained prestige among the powerful persons in the larger nation state. As you can imagine, studies have shown that individuals prefer to speak language vari-eties that are associated with the members of high-status groups. So, if speak-ing a particular language variety seems to be one qualification for joinspeak-ing a high-status group (and the individuals in question have other qualifications, such as education, and can see that mobility is an option in the society where they live), people will learn and use that variety. The quest for mobility is typically reflected linguistically in this way.
This is what has happened in the case of both the standard dialect of Chinese, Putonghua, and Cantonese in southern China. Both are gaining speakers among migrants to Guangzhou, the capital of Guang Dong Province (Miao,
2001). Putonghua has been the national standard variety of Chinese since the 1950s, but it wasn’t widely used until recently. And remember that many of the so-called dialects of Chinese are different enough from each other to be called different languages. For this reason, it isn’t as easy for all Chinese cit-izens to learn to speak Putonghua as it may be to learn or at least understand the standard dialect in your country. This is especially the case in the south of China because Putonghua is based on a northern dialect of Chinese.
Cantonese, one of the main southern Chinese varieties, is the L1 of many people in Guang Dong province, as well as in neighboring Hong Kong. Can-tonese is very different from Putonghua. In fact, Yuling Pan (2000: 22) states,
“In terms of phonological, lexical, and syntactic features, Putonghua and Can-tonese are as different as two languages like Italian and English.” Certainly, for a Cantonese speaker to learn Putonghua amounts to having to become bilingual.
Thus, one reason why Putonghua wasn’t widespread in Guangzhou is that it is not easy to learn. This is so not only for the natives of Guangzhou, but also for migrants from the neighboring areas who speak a native dialect closer to Cantonese than Putonghua. In addition, the rural migrants often share more than their language variety with Guangzhou residents; as fellow southern Chinese, they share more cultural values with Guangzhou than with the north (and Putonghua speakers there).
But there is another reason why Putonghua wasn’t widespread until recently and remains in competition with Cantonese. First, consider the socio-economic prestige of Guangzhou City (formerly called Canton). Guangzhou has an ex-ceptionally strong economy compared with most other areas in China and a good deal of local pride for this reason. The only other Chinese city where a local dialect rivals the prestige and use of Putonghua is Shanghai, also an industrial center (and also in the south). In both places the local dialects are common even in official settings. Guangzhou’s industrial success has attracted short-term rural migrants who have been more loyal to their local capital than to the nation as a whole because economic advantages have come largely through local connections.
But, in addition, Guangzhou has also attracted more urban-based migrants who come to Guangzhou after graduation. (This generally “urban to urban”
movement is allowed under a government provision for migration to “seek employment after graduation”.) These more educated migrants are more likely to know Putonghua than Cantonese. At the same time, the central government is strongly encouraging the spread of Putonghua in general. The kind of jobs these better-educated migrants hold down require a good deal of inter-group communication, much more so than the factory jobs of the rural short-term migrants where not so much interaction is necessary.
Thus, these new migrants and the growing use of Putonghua across the nation and in other places result in more use of Putonghua in at least some of the more powerful circles in Guangzhou. (The proximity of Hong Kong, which was transferred from British control to China in 1997 and where Putonghua is
now encouraged as a replacement for English in many areas, also is important in raising the use of Putonghua in neighboring Guangzhou.)
5.5.3 If you can’t change national boundaries, change attitudes
If the boundaries of groups are rigid and therefore it is difficult for non-dominant group members to take advantage of possibilities for socio-economic mobility that the dominant group enjoys, then a less dominant group may do one or both of two things: (1) either engage in inter-group competition regard-ing the relative recognized statuses of the groups or (2) engage in creative strategies to enhance the low-status group’s image.
Various forms of inter-group competition initiated by the French have marked English–French relations in Canada since the 1960s, especially where the French in Québec Province are involved. Everywhere, conflicts over official use of languages in the schools and in other official venues are examples of inter-group competition. For example, recently in Britain there have been at least occasional calls to add the languages of such immigrant groups (e.g. Punjabi or a West African language) to official choices for study of a second language.
More often than may be realized, groups use various creative strategies to enhance the value of their languages. One strategy a group may use is to draw attention to its literary or other universally valued tradition (or even invent such a tradition). Nations have been known to invent noble pasts, complete with invented royalty. Such strategies figured when Denmark, Norway, and Sweden sought to distinguish their nations and the three mutu-ally intelligible Scandinavian varieties they speak as three separate languages (Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish).
A strategy employed in Uganda in the 1990s was to “invent” a language (Bernsten, 1998). This language, Runyankitara, is emerging through a realign-ment of four western Bantu varieties. In the colonial period, these varieties became considered as separate languages in large part through the efforts of competing missionaries. Each missionary group established a separate ortho-graphy for the one of the four mutually intelligible varieties in its area. The four, from north to south, are Runyoro, Rutooro, Runyankore, and Rukiga. In the 1990s movements to amalgamate them began, and Runyankitara was born.
Some of its advocates are instructors at Uganda’s Makerere University, who are speakers of these varieties, and they managed to get courses in Runyankitara added as an option in the university’s offerings.
In many ways, the creation of this new language is a reflection of the Western Bantu speakers’ resistance to the role of Luganda in government policies. Like Runyankitara, Luganda is a Bantu language. Luganda has had a privileged place as the most prestigious indigenous language in Uganda since colonial days under the British. The rise of Runyankitara (as a combination of what previously were four separate languages) challenges Luganda’s position as the
Ugandan Bantu language with the most speakers. Of course any challenge to the place of Luganda also is directed against the economic and political power of Luganda’s speakers, the Baganda.