Linguistic insecurity

Linguistic insecurity comprises feelings of anxiety, self-consciousness, or lack of confidence in the mind of a speaker surrounding their use of language. Often, this anxiety comes from speakers' belief that their speech does not conform to the perceived standard and/or the style of language expected by the speakers' interlocutor(s). Linguistic insecurity is situationally induced and is often based on a feeling of inadequacy regarding personal performance in certain contexts, rather than a fixed attribute of an individual. This insecurity can lead to stylistic, and phonetic shifts away from an affected speaker's default speech variety; these shifts may be performed consciously on the part of the speaker, or may be reflective of an unconscious effort to conform to a more prestigious or context-appropriate variety or style of speech. Linguistic insecurity is linked to the perception of speech varieties in any community, and so may vary based on socioeconomic class and gender. It is also especially pertinent in multilingual societies. Linguistic insecurity is the negative self-image a speaker has regarding his or her own speech variety or language as a whole, especially in the perceived difference between phonetic and syntactic characteristics of one's own speech and those characteristics of what is considered standard usage, encouraged prescriptively as a preferable way of speaking, or perceived socially to be the "correct" form of the language. Linguistic insecurity arises based on the perception of a lack of "correctness" regarding one's own speech, rather than any objective deficiencies in a particular language variety. This perception is at odds with modern linguistic knowledge, which generally holds that all forms of language are linguistically equal as devices of communication, regardless of the various social judgments attached to them.