What Are Language Discourses?

A language discourse is any sustained debate, discussion, or body of opinion about language itself — how it should be used, who uses it correctly, what changes in language mean for society, and whether language can (or should) be controlled. When we talk about language discourses, we are engaging in meta-language: language about language.

Meta-Language and Talking About Language

Everyone has opinions about language. People argue about whether text-speak is ruining English, whether political correctness has gone too far, whether regional accents should be used on the news, and whether new words should be added to the dictionary. These everyday arguments are language discourses, and they reveal deep-seated attitudes and ideologies about language, identity, power, and social belonging.

Key Definition: Meta-language — language used to describe, discuss, or analyse language itself. When a newspaper columnist argues that young people can no longer write proper English, they are using meta-language.

At A-Level, you are expected not only to understand these debates but also to engage with them critically, using evidence from linguistic research to support or challenge the positions people take. Paper 2 Section B of the AQA 7702 specification requires you to write an opinion piece about a language debate, demonstrating both your knowledge of language discourses and your ability to construct a compelling argument.

Language Attitudes

A language attitude is a belief, feeling, or evaluation that a person holds about a particular language variety, accent, dialect, word, or usage. Language attitudes can be positive (admiration for a prestige accent) or negative (condemnation of slang or non-standard grammar), and they are shaped by social, cultural, and historical factors rather than by any objective linguistic reality.

The linguist Howard Giles demonstrated through his research that people make rapid judgements about a speaker's intelligence, trustworthiness, friendliness, and social status based solely on their accent or dialect. These judgements reveal our language attitudes, and they have real-world consequences — affecting employment, education, housing, and social relationships.

Key Definition: Language attitude — a set of beliefs, evaluations, and feelings about a language variety, accent, or usage, shaped by social and cultural factors rather than linguistic evidence. Language attitudes can lead to discrimination and social gatekeeping.

Common Language Attitudes in British Society

Attitude	Example	Underlying Belief
Standard English is superior	"She doesn't speak properly" (about a dialect speaker)	Non-standard varieties are deficient
RP is the correct accent	"Newsreaders should speak clearly" (meaning RP)	Regional accents are less clear or professional
Language is declining	"Nobody can spell any more"	Past usage was better than present usage
Slang corrupts language	"Young people just grunt at each other"	Informal language is lazy or unintelligent
Text-speak damages literacy	"LOL and emoji are destroying English"	New communicative practices threaten traditional literacy

These attitudes are widespread, but they are not supported by linguistic evidence. As we shall see throughout this course, linguists consistently demonstrate that all language varieties are equally systematic, rule-governed, and expressive.

Language Ideologies

A language ideology is a broader, more systematic set of beliefs about what language is, how it works, and what it should be. Language ideologies are embedded in social institutions — education, the media, government, the legal system — and they shape language policies, educational practices, and public discourse.

Key Definition: Language ideology — a coherent set of beliefs and assumptions about language that is embedded in social institutions and cultural practices, influencing how language is taught, evaluated, regulated, and discussed.

The most powerful language ideology in English-speaking societies is the Standard English ideology — the belief that there is one correct form of English, that this form is superior to all others, and that everyone should aspire to use it. This ideology is so deeply embedded that most people accept it as common sense rather than recognising it as an ideology at all.

Key Language Ideologies

Ideology	Core Belief	Consequence
Standard language ideology	One variety is inherently correct and superior	Non-standard speakers are stigmatised and penalised
Prescriptivist ideology	Language should follow fixed rules set by authorities	Change and variation are seen as error and decline
Linguistic nationalism	A nation should have one language and that language defines national identity	Minority languages and immigrant languages are marginalised
Linguistic purism	Foreign borrowings and neologisms contaminate the language	Attempts to resist loanwords and new coinages
Language endangerment ideology	Technology and social change are destroying language	Moral panic about texting, social media, and youth language

The Standard English Ideology

Standard English (SE) is the variety of English associated with education, formal writing, government, and the media. It is defined primarily by its grammar and vocabulary rather than by accent — one can speak Standard English with any accent.

However, the Standard English ideology goes much further than simply recognising SE as one variety among many. It asserts that SE is the only legitimate form of English — that SE represents English as it should be, while everything else is a deviation, corruption, or error. This ideology has several important consequences:

Educational gatekeeping — Pupils who speak non-standard varieties may be marked down in assessments, told they are speaking or writing incorrectly, and made to feel that their home language is inferior.
Employment discrimination — Speakers of non-standard varieties may face discrimination in job interviews and professional settings where SE is expected.
Self-stigmatisation — Speakers of non-standard varieties may internalise the belief that their language is wrong or inferior, leading to linguistic insecurity.
Erasure of variation — The richness and diversity of English dialects is undervalued and may be lost as speakers shift towards SE.

The linguist James Milroy and Lesley Milroy (1999, Authority in Language) argued that the standard language ideology functions as a form of linguistic authority that serves the interests of dominant social groups. Standard English is standard not because it is inherently better but because it is the variety used by those in power.

Prescriptivism in Public Discourse

Prescriptivism — the belief that language should follow fixed rules and that deviations from those rules are errors — is the dominant voice in public discourse about language. Newspapers, television programmes, social media, and everyday conversation are filled with prescriptivist commentary:

Letters to newspapers complaining about the misuse of the apostrophe
Television presenters being criticised for pronunciation
Online articles listing "common grammar mistakes"
Social media posts mocking spelling errors
Books such as Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves (2003), which became a bestseller by celebrating punctuation pedantry

This prescriptivist discourse serves several social functions:

Social distinction — Correct usage becomes a marker of education and class, allowing speakers to signal their social status and to identify (or exclude) others.
Cultural gatekeeping — Prescriptivist rules determine who gets published, who gets hired, who gets promoted, and whose voice is taken seriously in public life.
Moral authority — Prescriptivists often frame language standards in moral terms — correct usage is associated with discipline, care, and intelligence, while non-standard usage is associated with laziness, ignorance, and moral decline.
Nostalgia — Prescriptivism is often linked to a romanticised view of the past in which people supposedly spoke and wrote more correctly.

Key Definition: Prescriptivism — the belief that there are fixed rules governing correct language use, and that deviations from these rules are errors that should be corrected. Prescriptivism is contrasted with descriptivism, which aims to describe how language is actually used without making value judgements.

Linguists, by contrast, generally adopt a descriptivist approach — studying language as it is actually used in all its varieties and recognising that change and variation are natural, inevitable, and not inherently negative. The tension between prescriptivism and descriptivism is one of the central language discourses that you need to understand for this course.

Why Language Discourses Matter for A-Level

Understanding language discourses is essential for Paper 2 Section B of the AQA specification. You will be given a topic related to a language debate and asked to write an opinion piece expressing your own view, using evidence from your study of language to support your argument. To do this effectively, you need to:

Know the key debates — prescriptivism vs descriptivism, standard English, political correctness, texting and literacy, gender-neutral language, dialect discrimination, English as a global language
Know the key linguists — and be able to cite their research and arguments
Understand the arguments on both sides — even if you take a strong position, you should demonstrate awareness of counter-arguments
Use linguistic evidence — real examples, data, and research findings, not just opinions
Write persuasively — using rhetorical techniques appropriate to the genre of opinion writing

Exam Tips

When discussing language attitudes and ideologies, always demonstrate that you understand the difference between what people believe about language and what linguists have discovered about language. The gap between popular belief and linguistic evidence is often where the most interesting analysis lies.
Use specific examples from public discourse — newspaper articles, social media posts, television programmes — to illustrate language attitudes and ideologies.
Be prepared to analyse prescriptivist arguments critically, identifying their underlying assumptions and evaluating them against linguistic evidence.
Remember that AQA expects you to express your own view, but your view should be informed by linguistic knowledge, not just personal opinion.
Practise identifying language discourses in the media — every week brings new examples of debates about language in newspapers, magazines, and online.