Mental models of linguistic varieties 269course gives perfect examples of this construal, e.g. in the very widespread
idea of French being THE logical and clear language par excellence (“Ce
qui n’est pas clair n’est pas français”, attributed to Antoine de Rivarol; cf.
also Swiggers 1990).
Whereas the two models outlined by Geeraerts, both essentially cultural
(and more specifically European) in nature, clearly belong to the realm of
“language ideologies”, some of the metaphorical mappings listed in Table 1
also draw on the experiential domain. E.g., the construal of LANGUAGE AS
A BARRIER clearly relates to the early experience of any language learner
(first, second or nth language) that the lack of proficiency often entails no
or only partial achievement of communicative goals and thus imposes se-
rious constraints on the fulfillment of basic needs. Moreover, the construal
of LANGUAGE AS A TIE OR BOND clearly relates to the again very early
experience of language as one of the most important domains of coopera-
tive social practice. If anything were to materially substantiate the intrinsi-
cally abstract nature of a social group in the first place, then it would be
converging cooperative social practice such as the cooperative use of sym-
bols in social interaction.
In the remainder of this contribution, I will discuss data collected in a
folk linguistic study (cf. Berthele 2006) that relates directly to the models
outlined here. Bloomfield reportedly referred to non-linguists’ evaluations
and ideas about language by using the depreciative term “stankos”. One of
my goals will be to demonstrate that the folk’s descriptions of varieties and
languages expose not only more ‘descriptive accuracy’ than linguists gen-
erally assume, but also that surprisingly consistent perceptual patterns re-
garding e.g. the relation between the phonology of varieties and the evalua-
tive-attitudinal comments can be discovered. These patterns will be shown
to lead to the hypothesis that the mental models of languages and varieties
are not always purely ideological, but that there can be an important expe-
riential component that feeds into the construction and social reproduction
process of these models.
- The Study
The data discussed below were collected in the Swiss-German context. The
particular advantage of the Swiss-German language situation is that it is
characterized by a relatively high degree of ethnolinguistic vitality of local
dialects – at least if compared to the surrounding Romance or Germanic