Causes of Prestige
Different languages and dialects are accorded prestige based upon factors which include "rich literary heritage, high degree of language modernization, considerable international standing, or the prestige of its speakers". Having many of these attributes will likely mean the language is viewed as being of high prestige; likewise, a language or dialect with few or none of these attributes will be considered to be of low prestige. This phenomenon is not limited to English-speaking populations. In Western Europe, multiple languages were considered to be of high prestige at some time or another, including "Italian as the Mediterranean lingua franca and as the language of the Renaissance; and the 17th-18th century French of the court culture".
There is a strong correlation between the prestige of a group of people and the prestige accorded to the language they speak, as "language is intertwined with culture". Linguist Laurie Bauer's description of Latin's prestige exemplifies this phenomenon:
| “ | The prestige accorded to the churchmen, lawyers and scholars who used Latin was transferred to the language itself. Latin was held to be noble and beautiful, not just the thoughts expressed in it or the people who used it. What is called 'beauty' in a language is more accurately seen as a reflection of the prestige of its speakers. | ” |
Walt Wolfram, a professor of linguistics at North Carolina State University, notes that he "can't think of any situations in the United States where low-prestige groups have high-prestige language systems".
Read more about this topic: Prestige (sociolinguistics)
Famous quotes containing the word prestige:
“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)