Academic register anxiety? – How language ideologies influence university students’ oral participation

Abstract

This paper deals with the registers of spoken language in university classes, their prestige, and the language ideologies linked to them. I will show that, due to these ideologies, the academic registers can trigger strong emotions that hinder oral participation. Previous research on language anxiety has revealed that formal situations are an important trigger. Therefore, the academic context is an interesting research site for language or register anxiety, as it offers a range of highly formal communicative situations. Academic language can be conceptualized as a set of distinctive registers that must be acquired by students. However, it is seldom made explicit which linguistic competences are expected and that their acquisition is a process. This might trigger feelings of anxiety in the classroom, especially for students who perceive themselves as not mastering these registers or who have already experienced unbelonging or exclusion due to their linguistic repertoire. Based on qualitative interviews with students from a German university, I will show that proficiency in the academic registers is often perceived as competence and knowledge in the respective discipline. This ideology together with other factors can lead to less or no oral participation in class.