What is prestige in sociolinguistics?
Prestige in Sociolinguistics
In sociolinguistics, prestige is the degree of respect and social values associated with a particular language, dialect, or various features of a language used by members of a community.
“Social and linguistic prestige are interrelated,” notes Michael Pearce. “The language of powerful social groups usually carries linguistic prestige and social prestige is often granted to speakers of prestige languages and varieties.”
Prestigious varieties are the family of languages or dialects that are generally considered by society to be the most “correct” or otherwise superior. In many cases, these are ideal forms of language, although there are exceptions, especially in situations of occult prestige where a non-standard dialect is extremely valuable.
In addition to dialects and languages, prestige is also applied to small linguistic features, such as the pronunciation or use of words or grammatical structures, which cannot be pronounced enough to form individual dialects. The concept of prestige provides an explanation for the phenomena of change of form between speakers of a language or languages.
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