What is Ethnic Chauvinism?

Answer 1

Linguistic chauvinism is the idea that one's language is superior to others. For a few examples, the Greeks called all non-Greek speakers barbarians, the French are only at home where French is spoken, and English speakers consider the ability to speak another language a social defect.

Answer 2

The elitism of linguistic chauvinismThis may not be the most circumspect answer. However, it may serve as a starting point for a more thorough investigation into the meaning of 'linguistic chauvinism'.

Piecemealing a definition for linguistic chauvinism roughly yields an unreasoning belief in the superiority of a national language or mother tongue (one's native language).

I will continue to look for additional reference material that might broaden this definition.

Answer

Linguistic Chauvinism is the inherent gender bias found in most languages.

In European languages, for instance, you find some nouns end in an 'a' and some in an 'o'. a-ending nouns are feminine and o-ending nouns are masculine. Not only do o-ending nouns typically outnumber the a-ending nouns, but you will find in many languages, a tendency to make insulting labels end in the feminine a.

English is a little different: We don't have gender specific nouns (what gender, for instance, is a car?), but we do have a gender bias in our language. For instance (until recently) it was mailMAN, fireMAN, and so on. We have started to replace such terms with the "gender neutral" mail carrier/mail person/ etc. Also, people will find that many authors (male or female) have a tendency to masculinize, rather than feminize gender neutral object: we're most likely to use the pronoun he rather than the pronoun it, just as one example.

This issue became extremely hot-button in the 80's as women's rights groups, some of them rather extreme, became more and more common. Chauvinism is a politically and socially loaded term, which is why many/most linguists will refer to it as gender-bias

Answer 3

The most famous example of linguistic chauvinism is the word barbarian. Bárbaros means non-Greek speaking, hence uncivilized. It isn't even a real word, in the sense of having a root meaning, but a mocking dismissal of all foreign speech as a nonsensical bar-bar-bar sound.

Another kind of linguistic chauvinism is the disdain toward the Scots, or Anglic dialect of English, among the English - who speak the Saxon dialect of English. In fact the chauvinism of the Saxon dialect, also known as Standard English, is such that being able to speak anything else is often a social defect.

But in the case of Scots the error and the mistake are particularly spectacular, for the broad Scots that uses fufor full, and lugs for ears is no reduced form of anything. It is the direct inheritor of an unbroken tradition that goes further back in literary English history than Standard English does. The Saxon dialect of London, which became modern Standard English, did not even exist during the great period of Old English literature - much of which, like Beowulf, was written in the Anglic ancestor of modern Scots English.

Answer 4

Linguistic chauvinism is the idea that one's language is superior to others. An example of linguistic chauvinism is the Greeks history of calling anyone who did not speak Greek a barbarian.

Answer 5

Ethnic Chauvinism is the excessive love of one's own race/ethnicity, usually meaning that all other races/ethnicities are looked down upon as inferior.