In language use, Standard English is considered by many to be a baseline of excellence and correctness from which all other variants are gauged. Its potential to elicit overt prestige and connote authority makes it the default variant utilised in formal, official contexts where one needs to construct an identity of capability and of social clout.
Obversely, non standard variants of English function to promote in-group solidarity in their facilitation of covert prestige. Furthermore, any deviation from the conventions of Standard English in formal contexts can be render one as unintelligent or incapable or even offensive in not adhering to the linguistic paradigm necessitated by the official nature of the context.
However, it seems as though Electronically Mediated Communication is facilitating a shift in these preconceived societal attitudes towards Standard and Non Standard varieties of English.
According to a recent study by Knox College in Galesburg, writers whose emails include more errors were believed to be more apathetic, and participants were more likely to assume the writer was a superior. It seems that typo-laden, abbreviation-ridden and grammatically incorrect emails are perceived to be a sign of social dominance as it implies that the writer of the "sloppy" email is too busy to adhere to the Standard conventions of English and that their audience is not significant enough to warrant such attention to detail.
Similarly, deliberate lack of punctuation (specifically question marks) seems to insinuate a similar type of social hierarchy in by rendering the modality of a request higher to make them seem peremptory. This phenomenon was addressed in a recent Huffington Post article by Susan Cain who contends that the elision of the question marks in question are not born from laziness, but deliberate social cues in an attempt to signal power and authority
No comments:
Post a Comment