The last acceptable prejudice: Attitudes to dialectical variation in the Czech Republic

In a society increasingly more aware of social inequalities, language-based discrimination remains one of its last acceptable prejudices. Language is still used to discriminate on the grounds of other attributes, such as race, gender, religion or social class, otherwise unacceptable to discriminate against in public discourse. This study investigates this phenomenon, known in sociolinguistic research as language attitudes, in the context of dialectical variation in the Czech Republic.

Even though methods of folk linguistic research and perceptual dialectology have long been used to examine people's attitudes to and perception of dialects, this project aims to contribute to the field by introducing a yet unexplored context of this ethnolinguistic nation, while answering some unresolved issues within the novel space of Czech sociolinguistics.

Czechia's unique context, rooted in ethnolinguistic nationalism, explains both the lack of studies in this field and why it is a topic worth investigating. The Czech language was exceptionally politicised during the 19th century National Revival, with many linguists doubling as national leaders, for example, Josef Jungmann. This created a nation-state with an unusually precise alignment of the national language's territory with the nation and the state.

Additionally, the continued promotion of Standard Literary Czech under the Communist regime led to the neglect of studying nonstandard varieties and hindered sociolinguistic research in the country in more recent years.

Although language attitudes have been thoroughly explored in countries like the UK, US, and Japan, and the theory is well-established in Czech linguistics, calls for empirical research on attitudes in the country have never been adequately addressed. While assumptions that Czech linguistic attitudes reflect prejudice against Common Czech and local dialects exist among both researchers and the general public, this has never been tested in a comprehensive research project.

As a measure for addressing challenges historically deterring researchers from examining attitudes to Czech dialects, this project also aims to approach dialectical variation through the lens of enregisterment as a process that makes certain linguistic forms recognised as indexical of a speaker through historically disseminated ideological schemes that connect them to currently held attitudes.

The methodology will begin with a media ethnographic research of celebrity interviews and reality TV shows, where people naturally encounter and react to different dialects and accents, supplemented by examining social media commentary on these programs. Building on this, more conscious attitudes towards Czech dialects will be tested in a survey composed of perceptual dialectological techniques, such as a draw-a-map test and evaluation of attributes like correctness, prestige, attractiveness, Czechness, and/or others.

In combining direct with less direct methods of investigating language attitudes, the project will answer three main research questions: (1) What are the perceptions and attitudes of Czech people towards dialectal variation of the Czech language? (2) How do language attitudes reflect linguistic and wider societal ideologies and language policies in the Czech Republic? (3) How do well-established methods of perceptual dialectology used primarily in Western academia perform in a different national, linguistic and ideological context?

With much untapped potential, the Czech sociolinguistic space presents an excellent opportunity for applying modern methods and theories, such as enregisterment. This project seeks to provide both insights into the country's unique sociolinguistic environment and into testing established methods in a new national, linguistic, and ideological context, benefiting researchers in other Central European, post-Soviet, and global settings.