Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2018, Page 117

language use in Europe, as part of the European network and research programme SLICE
(Standard Language Ideology in Contemporary Europe). The verbal guise test is an exper-
imental technique developed to elicit subconscious or covert evaluations on language vari-
eties in a speech community. The European norm in the results from these tests, as seen
in its most consistent form in Denmark, appears to be that participants in the evaluation
test value some dialects above others, reflecting a national or regional status hierarchy of
dialects.
The question of this paper is whether such a status hierarchy of dialects has been
established or can be found in the Faroese language community. There is no official spo-
ken standard variety of Faroese, and dialect use is accepted in public and private domains,
resulting in a usage pattern that differs from other West European countries, but resem-
bles that of the neighbouring country Norway. Tórshavn represents a growing financial
power center, yet the relative status of the Tórshavn dialect in a Faroese dialect prestige
hierarchy remains unclear.
In this paper we present an overview of dialect studies and language attitude tests in
the Faroe Islands. We then present the results from a language attitude test from 2015,
measuring reactions to five regional varieties of Faroese. The test includes a verbal guise
test to elicit covert reactions to Faroese dialects and a label ranking task to elicit overt state-
ments on language variation. 204 Faroese 15-year-old students were tested.
The results from the label ranking task indicate a common notion of a Faroese dialect
hierarchy that favors the Tórshavn dialect. However, the reaction patterns in the verbal
guise test reflect no such hierarchy. The Faroese results thus diverge from the evaluation
patterns found in a number of comparable Danish and European verbal guise tests, yet are
similar to the patterns found in one European test locality: Western Norway. The Faroese
and West Norwegian results may strengthen a hypothesis that an established standard lan-
guage and standard language ideology will increase the likelihood that test takers use
dialect as a main evaluation criterion in verbal guise tests. The Faroese verbal guise test
thus forms a contribution to an empirical base to understand the impact of covert social
attitudes on language change in Europe.
Edit Bugge Jógvan í Lon Jacobsen
Institutt for språk, litteratur, Føroyamálsdeildin
matematikk og tolking Fróðskaparsetur Føroya
Høgskulen på Vestlandet 100-Tórshavn, FøROyAR
5063-Bergen, NOREG jogvanlj@setur.fo
Edit.Bugge@hvl.no
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