by Emilie Hautemont and Rebecca Rosenthal
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Language Ideologies and Emojis.
People (especially Swarthmore college students or Swatties) have strong opinions; so it’s no surprise that these strong opinions extend to the use of language. In our Introduction to Linguistics course this semester, we learned more about language ideology, a term for a person or group of people’s views on how language should or should not be used. We decided to investigate some of the language ideology held by Swatties. After all, these ideologies about language have been shown to impact how well two people can collaborate [1], what sort of language appears on public road signs [2], and even if a speaker is perceived as, like, one type of person or another based on their usage of the word “like” [3]!
We looked at two aspects of language use among Swarthmore College students: (1) learning another language and (2) using emoji. Since all Swarthmore students have a language learning requirement for graduation and many (if not all) are fluent users of electronic devices, we expected to see a wide variety of ideologies regarding these two specific types of communication.
Understanding this context, we administered surveys to assess how our peers' communication - both studied languages and the more informal, digital emojis - is impacted by their biases and stereotypes. We asked questions about how students perceived the use of a second language or emoji as well as their personal habits for using emoji and reasoning for learning a second language.
We looked at two aspects of language use among Swarthmore College students: (1) learning another language and (2) using emoji. Since all Swarthmore students have a language learning requirement for graduation and many (if not all) are fluent users of electronic devices, we expected to see a wide variety of ideologies regarding these two specific types of communication.
Understanding this context, we administered surveys to assess how our peers' communication - both studied languages and the more informal, digital emojis - is impacted by their biases and stereotypes. We asked questions about how students perceived the use of a second language or emoji as well as their personal habits for using emoji and reasoning for learning a second language.
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