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In sociolinguistics, prestige is the level of respect normally accorded to a specific language or dialect within a particular speech community, relative to other languages or dialects. Sociolinguistic prestige is therefore one manifestation of, or analogous to, the more general phenomenon of social stratification – especially class. In general, a language or dialect associated with an upper class has positive prestige, while a language or dialect associated with a lower class has "negative prestige". Historical examples of prestige languages include the court languages used by royal elites. At the opposite extreme, members of underclasses have often communicated in particular forms of cant. Prestige languages/dialects are often tied closely to a standardized language/dialect, in that the latter is usually considered more prestigious within a speech community, than a language/dialect that diverges significantly from linguistic norms. However, there are many exceptions to this rule, such as Arabic, in which Egyptian Arabic is widely used in mass media aimed at international audiences, while Literary Arabic (also known as Standard Arabic) is a more prestigious form.〔Jenkins, Siona. ''Egyptian Arabic Phrasebook''. Lonely Planet Publications, 2001. p. 205〕〔Haeri, Niloofar (2003). ''Sacred Language, Ordinary People: Dilemmas of Culture and Politics in Egypt''. Palgrave Macmillan, ''passim''.〕 Sociolinguistic prestige is especially visible in situations where two or more distinct languages are in use, and in diverse, socially stratified urban areas, in which there are likely to be speakers of different languages and/or dialects interacting frequently. Despite any perceptions that a particular dialect or language is "good/better" or "worse/bad" than its counterparts, when dialects and languages, are assessed "on purely linguistic grounds, all languages — and all dialects — have equal merit". ==Causes== Different languages and dialects are accorded prestige based upon factors which include "rich literary heritage, high degree of language modernization, considerable international standing, or the prestige of its speakers". Having many of these attributes will likely mean the language is viewed as being of high prestige; likewise, a language or dialect with few or none of these attributes will be considered to be of low prestige. This phenomenon is not limited to English-speaking populations. In Western Europe, multiple languages were considered to be of high prestige at some time or another, including "Italian as the Mediterranean lingua franca and as the language of the Renaissance; and the 17th-18th century French of the court culture". There is a strong correlation between the prestige of a group of people and the prestige accorded to the language they speak, as "language is intertwined with culture". Linguist Laurie Bauer's description of Latin's prestige exemplifies this phenomenon: Walt Wolfram, a professor of linguistics at North Carolina State University, notes that he "can't think of any situations in the United States where low-prestige groups have high-prestige language systems".〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Prestige (sociolinguistics)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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