Linguistic insecurity
Linguistic insecurity comprises feelings of anxiety, self-consciousness, or lack of confidence in the mind of a speaker surrounding their use of language.
Linguistic insecurity is situationally induced and is often based on a feeling of inadequacy regarding personal performance in certain contexts, rather than a fixed attribute of an individual.
[1] Linguistic insecurity is linked to the perception of speech varieties in any community, and so may vary based on socioeconomic class[2] and gender.
[citation needed] Linguistic insecurity is the negative self-image a speaker has regarding his or her own speech variety or language as a whole, especially in the perceived difference between phonetic and syntactic characteristics of one's own speech and those characteristics of what is considered standard usage, encouraged prescriptively as a preferable way of speaking, or perceived socially to be the "correct" form of the language.
Linguistic insecurity arises based on the perception of a lack of "correctness" regarding one's own speech, rather than any objective deficiencies in a particular language variety.
[7] Linguistic insecurity might be induced by the belief that language is an extraneously regulated system that needs to be formally taught to its native speakers, rather than acquired in a natural way.
These effects of linguistic insecurity can come in the form of changes in pronunciation, as in the case of the retail store employees in William Labov's example, or even syntactic deviations from the speaker's normal speech variant.
Inadvertently, hypercorrection may index a speaker as belonging to the very social class or societal group that led to the linguistic insecurity.
For example, linguist Donald Winford found after studying Trinidadian English that there was a knowledge that there was a stigmatization associated with less prestigious phonological variants, creating a situation in which individuals belonging to a "lower" social class would attempt to replicate phonological aspects of the more prestigious forms of English, but did not do so successfully, thus engaging in hypercorrection.
Speakers experiencing linguistic insecurity may also undergo, either consciously or unconsciously, a change in register from their default language variety.
After conducting a linguistic survey in 1960s New York City, Labov found evidence that the usage of /r/ by speakers was predictable except in a specific case involving the lower middle class.
At the time, the pronunciation of /r/ at the end of words and before consonants became a prestige marker and the degree to which it was realized in casual speech correlated with the socioeconomic status of the respondents.
They identify the upper class usage as correct and admit that their behavior is different, leading to a disparity that manifests itself as linguistic insecurity.
[21] In the Owens and Baker study mentioned above, the authors used the CILI and ILI test to conclude that women are more linguistically insecure than men.
Out of a sampling data of 80 participants, 42 of which were female, women scored higher on the ILI and the CILI, which indicates high manifest linguistic insecurity.
Though the t-tests for the differences were only significant at .07 and .06 levels, the authors feel that this was due to a small sample size and that the uniformity of the results was enough to confirm their hypothesis.
Additionally, these findings are consistent with Labov's original New York study and lead to the conclusion by Owens and Baker that women display more linguistic insecurity than men.
Dialectal differences could lead to inappropriate testing procedures or prejudice of educators (having lowered expectations[25] and assuming the child is inarticulate and hesitant[26]).
In this environment, AAVE-speaking students may develop linguistic insecurity, leading to a rejection of the standards as "posh" or reluctance to speak at all to hide their "inability" to use language.
[27] Insecurity about what "sounds right" may result in the avoidance of the invariant be by deleting it from an instance in which it would be proper to use it (e.g. "They said they were told if they didn't follow orders they would courtmarshled or shot as deserters").
For example, mental health care providers may attribute speaker's behavior to cognitive or emotional deficits, even to a psychopathological extent.
His linguistic insecurity in the clinical setting with a norm of SAE made him reluctant to speak, but he was fluent and expressive in his own speech community and with his descriptions of his experiences outside the ward.
The intervention of eliciting answers was meant to encourage Arlene to speak more freely, but her linguistic insecurity led her to focus her attention on the perceived inadequacy of her language style and she responded by saying less rather than more.
[29] They conducted a study of an area in the Mandingo zone of Mali that exhibited a linguistic continuum between two different forms: Bambara and Malinke.
The dialects follow this pattern, as those closer to the capital are perceived as more prestigious; the most peripheral form in Sagabari can even prompt mockery of the individual using it.
Although the vast majority in this country grows up hearing and speaking exclusively this creole, it continues to be seen as an inferior, primitive tongue as well as a malformed version of French.
Though it is the majority of people who cannot participate in the French-driven areas of society, the "ideology of disrespect and degradation" surrounding creoles leads to great linguistic insecurity.
As Arthur Spears put it, an "internalized oppression" is present in these members who relate important figures in society (and their success) to speaking French, devaluing their own language of Haitian Creole.
Due to the separation from France after the Treaty of Paris in 1763 and the multilingual environment, Quebec French become more anglicized through English pronunciations and borrowings.
