Linguistic insecurity comprises feelings of anxiety, self-consciousness, or lack of confidence in the mind of speakers surrounding their use of language. Often, the anxiety comes from speakers' belief that their speech does not conform to the perceived standard and/or the style of language that are expected by the speakers' interlocutor(s). Linguistic insecurity is situationally induced and is often based on a feeling of inadequacy regarding personal performance in certain contexts, rather than a fixed attribute of an individual. This insecurity can lead to stylistic, and phonetic shifts away from an affected speaker's default speech variety; these shifts may be performed consciously on the part of the speaker, or may be reflective of an unconscious effort to conform to a more prestigious or context-appropriate variety or style of speech. Linguistic insecurity is linked to the perception of speech varieties in any community and so may vary based on socioeconomic class and gender. It is also especially pertinent in multilingual societies.
Description Linguistic insecurity is the negative self-image that speakers have regarding their own speech variety or language as a whole, especially in the perceived difference between phonetic and syntactic characteristics of their own speech and the characteristics of what is considered standard usage, encouraged prescriptively as a preferable way of speaking, or perceived socially to be the "correct" form of the language. Linguistic insecurity arises based on the perception of a lack of "correctness" regarding one's own speech, rather than any objective deficiencies in a particular language variety. The perception is at odds with modern linguistic knowledge, which generally holds that all forms of language are linguistically equal as devices of communication, regardless of the various social judgments attached to them. Modern linguistics normally refrains from making judgments about language as used by native speakers, rejecting the idea of linguistic correctness as scientifically unfounded, or at least assuming that any notions of correct usage are relative in nature; popular linguistic ideas and social expectations, however, do not necessarily follow the scholarly consensus. In one of its earliest usages, the term linguistic insecurity was employed by the linguist William Labov in his 1972 paper on the social stratification of the pronunciation of /r/ to describe the attitude of employees at three different retail stores in New York City towards their own speech patterns in comparison to Standard English. Labov theorized that employees who had the most extreme shift in style from their own speech variety (a casual style) to the standard form (a more emphatic style) were more insecure in a linguistic sense. The term has since been used to describe any situation in which a speaker is led to hypercorrect, or shift one's patterns of speech because of a negative attitude or lack of confidence regarding one's normal speech. The lack of confidence need not be consciously acknowledged by speakers for them to be affected by linguistic insecurity, and changes in pronunciation and stylistic shifts indicative of linguistic insecurity may emerge absent of the speakers' intent. Linguistic insecurity may also be a characteristic of an entire speech community, especially in how it relates to other speech communities of the same language that employ a more standardized form. Linguistic insecurity may be induced by the belief that language is an extraneously-regulated system, which needs to be formally taught to its native speakers, rather than being acquired in naturally. That is often the case in standard language cultures in which a codified standard idiom tends to be equated with the language as a whole.
Standard and prestige forms As linguistic insecurity is related to the perception of how one speaks in comparison to a certain form, the notion of standard and prestige forms of languages is important. The standard form of a language is regarded as the codified form of language used in public discourse, and the prestige form is the one perceived to receive the most respect accorded to any variety of the language. Variables that differentiate standard and prestige forms are phonetic realization, vocabulary, syntax, and other features of speech. The status of those forms is related to the concept of language ideology, which explains how varieties of language are correlated with certain moral, social or political values. Many societies value the belief that language homogeneity is beneficial to society; in fact, the existence of a "common language" is an intrinsic part of an imagined community, which defines a nation.
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