Refine
Document Type
- Article (5)
Language
- English (5) (remove)
Has Fulltext
- yes (5)
Keywords
- Soziale Wahrnehmung (3)
- Akzent (2)
- discrimination (2)
- impression formation (2)
- Berufsbezeichnung (1)
- Bildungspolitik (1)
- Diskriminierung (1)
- Diskursanalyse (1)
- Erwartung (1)
- Ethnizität (1)
Publicationstate
- Postprint (5) (remove)
Reviewstate
- Peer-Review (5)
Publisher
- Sage (5) (remove)
Aims and objectives:
Language debates in Latvia often focus on the role of Latvian as official and main societal language. Yet, Latvian society is highly multilingual, and families with home languages other than Latvian have to choose between different educational trajectories for their children. In this context, this paper discusses the results of two studies which addressed the question of why families with Russian as a home language choose (pre)schools with languages other than Russian as medium of instruction (MOI). The first study analyses family narratives which provide insight into attitudes and practices which lead to the decision to send children to Latvian-MOI institutions. The second study investigates language attitudes and practices by families in the international community of Riga German School.
Methodology:
The paper discusses data gathered during two studies: for the first, semi-structed interviews were conducted with Russian-speaking families who choose Latvian-medium schools for their children. For the second study, a survey was carried out in the community of an international school in Riga, sided by ethnographic observations and interviews with teachers and the school leadership.
Data and analysis:
Interviews and ethnographic observations were subjected to a discourse analysis with a focus on critical events and structures of life trajectory narratives. Survey data were processed following simple statistical analysis and qualitative content analysis.
Findings/conclusions:
Our data reveal that families highly embrace multilingualism and see the development of individual plurilingualism as important for integration into Latvian society as well as for educational and professional opportunities in the multilingual societies of Latvia and Europe. At the same time, multilingualism and multiculturalism, including Russian, are seen as a value in itself. In addition, our studies reflect the bidirectionality of family language policies in interplay with practices in educational institutions: family decisions influence children’s language acquisition at school, but the school also has an impact on the families’ language practices at home. In sum, we argue that educational policies should therefore pay justice to the wishes of families in Latvia to incorporate different language aspects into individual educational trajectories.
Originality:
Language policy is a frequent topic of investigation in the Baltic states. However, there has been a lack in research on family language policy and school choices. In this vein, our paper adds to the understanding of educational choices and language policy processes among Russian-speaking families and the international community in Latvia.
Prejudice against a social group may lead to discrimination of members of this group. One very strong cue of group membership is a (non)standard accent in speech. Surprisingly, hardly any interventions against accent-based discrimination have been tested. In the current article, we introduce an intervention in which what participants experience themselves unobtrusively changes their evaluations of others. In the present experiment, participants in the experimental condition talked to a confederate in a foreign language before the experiment, whereas those in the control condition received no treatment. Replicating previous research, participants in the control condition discriminated against Turkish-accented job candidates. In contrast, those in the experimental condition evaluated Turkish- and standard-accented candidates as similarly competent. We discuss potential mediating and moderating factors of this effect.
Aversion to loanwords may express itself in various ways: deliberate and motivated by ideology of linguistic purism or more implicit and motivated by the strength of one’s national identification and ethnolinguistic vitality. A study of Polish philology students assessed their tendency to choose loanwords versus synonymous native words. The results supported a two-path model of linguistic purism. Social identity (strength of identification) directly predicted avoidance of loanwords, whereas ideological concerns (conservative political views) predicted it indirectly, through purist ideology.
Psychological research has neglected people whose accent does not match their appearance. Most research on person perception has focused on appearance, overlooking accents that are equally important social cues. If accents were studied, it was often done in isolation (i.e., detached from appearance). We examine how varying accent and appearance information about people affects evaluations. We show that evaluations of expectancy-violating people shift in the direction of the added information. When a job candidate looked foreign, but later spoke with a native accent, his evaluations rose and he was evaluated best of all candidates (Experiment 1a). However, the sequence in which information was presented mattered: When heard first and then seen, his evaluations dropped (Experiment 1b). Findings demonstrate the importance of studying the combination and sequence of different types of information in impression formation. They also allow predicting reactions to ethnically mixed people, who are increasingly present in modern societies.
Feminine forms of job titles raise great interest in many countries. However, it is still unknown how they shape stereotypical impressions on warmth and competence dimensions among female and male listeners. In an experiment with fictitious job titles men perceived women described with feminine job titles as significantly less warm and marginally less competent than women with masculine job titles, which led to lower willingness to employ them. No such effects were observed among women.