i'd like to say a few things about the connection between linguistic diversity and linguistic inequality uh or in general diversity and inequality it's it's a it's a theme a motive that has kept me uh you know busy throughout most of my career um i have to start from social linguistics you know social linguistics essentially is the study of linguistic diversity all right it's a study of how in in the language or different languages but let's take one language um people appear to have different varieties of it okay so they they speak it with different accents
there are dialects there aren't there are no legs there are social necks and so on all right so we are we have been able as a discipline and very successful over over uh over about a century you know to identify these objective differences between varieties of language in that sense social linguistics is uh if if you wish the study of how linguistic differences can be connected to social differences by critics like race or social class or ethnicity gender uh age and what and what have you professional group and what have you so we're familiar with
that this is one particular way of looking at social linguistics and a very respectable one i mean most introductions to social linguistics will stop here now in my view uh they stopped too early uh in the sense that the the social dynamic of language specifically of this kind of diversity within language the variation of language all right it's never complete without a contemplation of how it connects to real social processes and these real social processes are processes of evaluation right of in other words value attribution now to to summarize that into one slogan uh every
form of linguistic difference become at some point and for some reason and in the hands of some people for some person all right an instrument of inequality okay so every social linguistic difference may be turned into a feature of social inequality okay so you may be somebody who speaks a particular language with an accent of course that's that's that's great to have that accent you know it's beautiful and locally let's say it's valued because it contributes to like the atmosphere of your village where you live or your the region where you live uh it enables
all other people to do to project like a certain identity even a certain charm upon you and so on nothing wrong with it okay but socially all right it is evaluated as lower than for instance the standard and that's what you encounter when you go to school when you are hunting for jobs when when you want to become somebody let's say uh who's active in the public sphere and what have you there's a number of ways in which all of a sudden this difference can become a feature of inequality right and so for me this
is the real social linguistics it's it's a it's an it's an approach to language in which you look uh what at least in which you you have to start from objective differences in language but instantly realize their potential for discrimination for social discrimination right for forms of evaluation revaluation evaluation okay that may change all the time but that lead at any point at any moment you know to a social linguistic system as a stratified system a system that works like a hierarchy right in which you have better varieties better okay like the standard variety and
less better or varieties that are good but only in your village or only within your age group or only within your gender group and so on and so on and so on so this is an essential uh element of uh of of social linguistics and a real social linguistics in that sense a value of of a valuable a valuable social insulin valuable social linguistics uh in my view should be one that addresses exactly this edge this edge uh of inequality right and examine the reasons why particular features in particular in the hands of particular people
right in particular situations in particular communities but also in particular chronotopes for instance may become uh objects of discrimination of exclusion or on the other side of privilege of over-privileging and so on and so on uh now you can call this political so this would be a more political social linguistics but you are really really missing the essence of the social in social linguistics unless you're addressing the issue of real real i.e political very often also structural okay inequality in language thank you very much
