| Abstract [eng] |
Vilnius – as many other multicultural and multiethnic cities – is often assumed to be tolerant of various social and ethnic groups. Therefore, it is interesting to see if one could also find such positive attitudes towards one of the two largest ethnic minorities in Vilnius and in Lithuania – the so-called ‘Russian’ ethnic minority. (In order to use more inclusive terms, they will be called hereafter Lithuanian-Russians). Previous research shows that subconscious language attitudes towards Lithuanian-Russian speakers are rather negative. These speakers are less often described as educated, successful or having a good job than other ‘ethnic’ Lithuanians from Vilnius (Čičirkaitė 2019: 139-140). To answer the question whether these associations are typical only to the Lithuanian–Russian accent or to any accent in Lithuanian, three types of speech were chosen to be compared: (a) Vilnius speech without an accent, Lithuanian (b) with Lithuanian–Russian and (c) with Scandinavian accents. Such attitudes are certainly related to a sort of social distance towards Lithuanian-Russians. Although some sociologists argue that there is no social distance towards Lithuanian-Russians in Lithuania (Vildaitė ir Žibas 2010; Petrušauskaitė 2013), this thesis seeks to reevaluate this statement drawing on subconscious language attitudes. To do so, theoretical foundation of indexicality order by Michael Silverstein (2003) is employed. To assess subconscious language attitudes, a verbal guise test was used. 151 students from Vilnius schools with Lithuanian as the main language participated in the experiment. Students were split into two groups. The first one did not know the professions of the speakers, while the second group knew which of the professions each speaker represented. Both student groups listened to 6 male voices. (a), (b) and (c) varieties were represented by two voices each. Significant differences were noticed in the evaluation of the two Scandinavian speakers, so only one of the voices was included in the results. Students described speakers with their own words, answering open-ended questions that related to trustworthiness, so-called status (e.g. educated, smart) or dynamism (e.g. interesting, confident) traits. In the case of the first student group, the results show that speakers without an accent were more often assigned status and dynamism traits than speakers with an accent. However, the evaluations were different when the students were asked about trustworthiness. Then both speakers with a Scandinavian accent and speakers without an accent were considered more trustworthy. When it comes to Lithuanian-Russian accent, the speakers with it appeared less trustworthy. It is likely that such negative subconscious language attitudes reflect social distance towards Lithuanian-Russians. As for the second group of students, the assigned high social status profession led to Lithuanian-Russians gaining more status traits, but neither dynamism evaluation nor trustworthiness were affected by the profession. It was, however, surprising that speakers without an accent were not affected by the assigned low-status profession. However, the speaker with a Scandinavian accent was evaluated even more negatively due to his low-status profession. It is important to point out that in this group only Lithuanian-Russian speakers were seen as less trustworthy. This can also confirm that social distance towards Lithuanian-Russian minority group actually exists. It is hence suggested that negative representation of Lithuanian-Russians in the media may be one of the reasons for social distance. Social distance can also exist due to language nationalism, which is the predominant language ideology at school. To reduce negative language attitudes and social distance, it is important to base language teaching on descriptive linguistics. In addition, it may be important to encourage students to evaluate existing linguistic ideologies more critically. |
