Fluent Essays

The readings introduce many concepts central to the study of applied linguistics. choose one concept (already chosen see below) from the readings and explain what it means. Then, give some examples of how this concept relates to or functions in your lives. In crafting your text, please adhere to the following guidelines: • Begin by identifying your concept and explaining it. Assume that your readers are NOT familiar with this concept. It is your job to explain it. Please use your own words in crafting your explanation. Do not quote from the text or another source. Writing your own explanation shows your instructor that you understand the concept. • Give at least 1 examples of how this concept relates to or functions in your lives. In offering these examples, be sure to explain how they illustrate the focal concept. Giving examples shows your instructor that you can apply your understanding of the focal concept to new situations. In addition, be sure to: • Limit your response to 250 words. • Proper APA style Chosen Concept: “The ideological process of standardization is underpinned by the metalinguistic process of codification, in which the norms of a privileged variety are established and perpetuated through print technology.” My advice: You can talk about the important role of printing technology in the spread of certain languages. Give some examples such as the Gutenberg Galaxy Language Ideology Author(s): Kathryn A. Woolard and Bambi B. Schieffelin Source: Annual Review of Anthropology , 1994, Vol. 23 (1994), pp. 55-82 Published by: Annual Reviews Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2156006 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected] Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Annual Reviews is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Annual Review of Anthropology This content downloaded from �������������165.123.34.86 on Mon, 28 Jun 2021 13:25:58 UTC������������� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms https://www.jstor.org/stable/2156006 Annw Rev. Anthropol. 1994. 23:55-82 Copyright C 1994 by Annual Reviews Inc. All rights reserved LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY Kathryn A. Woolard Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093 Bambi B. Schieffelin Department of Anthropology, New York University, New York, New York 10003 KEY WORDS: language politics, literacy, language and colonialism, language contact, linguis- tics INTRODUCTION The terms ideology and language have appeared together frequently in recent anthropology, sociolinguistics, and cultural studies, sometimes joined by and, sometimes by in, sometimes by a comma in a trinity of nouns. We have had analyses, some of them very influential, of cultural and political ideologies as constituted, encoded, or enacted in language (100, 239, 298). This review is differently, and (on the surface) more narrowly, conceived: our topic is ideolo- gies of language, an area of scholarly inquiry just beginning to coalesce (185). There is as much cultural variation in ideas about speech as there is in speech forms themselves (158). Notions of how communication works as a social process, and to what purpose, are culturally variable and need to be discovered rather than simply assumed (22:16). We review here selected research on cultural conceptions of language-its nature, structure, and use-and on con- ceptions of communicative behavior as an enactment of a collective order (277:1-2). Although there are varying concerns behind the studies reviewed, we emphasize language ideology as a mediating link between social structures and forms of talk. Ideologies of language are significant for social as well as linguistic analy- sis because they are not only about language. Rather, such ideologies envision 0084-6570/94/1015-0055$05.00 55 This content downloaded from �������������165.123.34.86 on Mon, 28 Jun 2021 13:25:58 UTC������������� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 56 WOOLARD & SCHIEFFELIN and enact links of language to group and personal identity, to aesthetics, to morality, and to epistemology (41, 104, 186). Through such linkages, they often underpin fundamental social institutions. Inequality among groups of speakers, and colonial encounters par excellence, throw language ideology into high relief. As R. Williams observed, a definition of language is always, implicitly or explicitly, a definition of human beings in the world (320:21). Not only linguistic forms but social institutions such as the nation-state, schooling, gender, dispute settlement, and law hinge on the ideologization of language use. Research on gender and legal institutions has contributed impor- tant and particularly pointed studies of language ideology, but they are re- viewed elsewhere (see 81, 213). Heath (135) observed that social scientists have resisted examining lan- guage ideology because it represents an indeterminate area of investigation with no apparent bounds, and as reviewers we note this with wry appreciation even as we find that the resistance has worn down. Although there have been recent efforts to delimit language ideology (138a, 327), there is no single core literature. Moreover, linguistic ideology, language ideology, and ideologies of language are all terms currently in play. Although different emphases are sometimes signaled by the different terms, with the first focusing more on formal linguistic structures1 and the last on representations of a collective order, the fit of terms to distinctive perspectives is not perfect, and we use them interchangeably here. At least three scholarly discussions, by no means restricted to anthropol- ogy, explicitly invoke language or linguistic ideology, often in seeming mutual unawareness. One such group of studies concerns contact between languages or language varieties (118, 133, 135, 152, 219, 249, 285). The recently bur- geoning historiography of linguistics and public discourses on language has produced a second explicit focus on language ideologies, including scientific ideologies (173, 256, 268). Finally, there is a significant, theoretically coherent body of work on linguistic ideology concentrating on its relation to linguistic structures (214, 237, 258, 275). Beyond research that explicitly invokes the term ideology are numerous studies that address cultural conceptions of lan- guage, in the guise of metalinguistics, attitudes, prestige, standards, aesthetics, hegemony, etc. There is an emerging consensus that what people think, or take for granted, about language and communication is a topic that rewards investi- gation, and the area of study is in need of some coordination. We note a particularly acute irony in our task of delimiting this emerging field. One point of the comparative study of language ideology is to show the cultural and historical specificity of visions of language, yet as reviewers we See Silverstein (279:312, footnote) for an account of why this should be. This content downloaded from �������������165.123.34.86 on Mon, 28 Jun 2021 13:25:58 UTC������������� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY 57 must decide what counts as language. We run the risk of excluding work in which language does not seem focal precisely because the group studied does not compartmentalize and reify social practices of communicating, does not turn Humboldts energeia (activity) of language into ergon (product) as does the European-American tradition (41, 155, 198, 203, 258). Our purpose is not to distinguish ideology of language from ideology in other domains of human activity. Rather, the point is to focus the attention of anthropological scholars of language on the ideological dimension, and to sharpen the understanding of linguistic issues among students of ideology, discourse, and social domination. WHAT IS LINGUISTIC IDEOLOGY? Linguistic/language ideologies have been defined as sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use (275:193); with a greater social emphasis as self-evident ideas and objectives a group holds concerning roles of language in the social experiences of members as they contribute to the expression of the group (135:53) and the cultural system of ideas about social and linguis- tic relationships, together with their loading of moral and political interests (162:255); and most broadly as shared bodies of commonsense notions about the nature of language in the world (258:346). Some of the differences among these definitions come from debates about the concept of ideology itself. Those debates have been well reviewed elsewhere (9, 31, 78, 100, 298, 327), but it is worthwhile to mention some of the key dimensions of difference. The basic division in studies of ideology is between neutral and critical values of the term. The former usually encompasses all cultural systems of representation; the latter is reserved for only some aspects of representation and social cognition, with particular social origins or functional or formal characteristics. Rumseys definition of linguistic ideology is neutral (258). For Silverstein, rationalization marks linguistic ideology within the more general category of metalinguistics, pointing toward the secondary derivation of ide- ologies, their social-cognitive function, and thus the possibility of distortion (275). Ideological distortion in this view comes from inherent limitations on awareness of semiotic process and from the fact that speech is formulated by its users as purposive activity in the sphere of interested human social action. In critical studies of ideology, distortion is viewed as mystification and is further traced to the legitimation of social domination. This critical stance often characterizes studies of language politics and of language and social class. A second division is the siting of ideology. Some researchers may read linguistic ideology from linguistic usage, but others insist that the two must be carefully differentiated (164). While metalinguistic discourse, as Silverstein This content downloaded from �������������165.123.34.86 on Mon, 28 Jun 2021 13:25:58 UTC������������� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 58 WOOLARD & SCHIEFFELIN suggested, is a sufficient condition for identifying ideology, Rumseys com- monsense notions (258) and Heaths self-evident ideas (135) may well be unstated assumptions of cultural orthodoxy, difficult to elicit directly. Al- though ideology in general is often taken as explicitly discursive, influential theorists have seen it as behavioral, pre-reflective, or structural, that is, an organization of signifying practices not in consciousness but in lived relations (see 78 for a review). An alertness to the different sites of ideology may resolve some apparent controversies over its relevance to the explanation of social or linguistic phenomena. The work we review here includes the full range of scholars notions of ideology: from seemingly neutral cultural conceptions of language to strate- gies for maintaining social power, from unconscious ideology read from speech practices by analysts to the most conscious native-speaker explanations of appropriate language behavior. What most researchers share, and what makes the term useful in spite of its problems, is a view of ideology as rooted in or responsive to the experience of a particular social position, a facet indicated by Heaths (135) and Irvines (162) definitions. This recognition of the social derivation of representations does not simply invalidate them if we recognize that there is no privileged knowledge, including the scientific, that escapes grounding in social life (205). Nonetheless, the term ideology reminds us that the cultural conceptions we study are partial, contestable and contested, and interest-laden (151:382). A naturalizing move that drains the conceptual of its historical content, making it seem universally and/or timelessly true, is often seen as key to ideological process. The emphasis of ideological analysis on the social and experiential origins of systems of signification counters this naturalization of the cultural, in which anthropology ironically has participated (9). Some of the work reviewed here may seem to be simply what anthropol- ogy has always been talking about anyway as culture now in the guise of ideology (31:26), but the reconceptualization implies a methodological stance (279). The term ideology reminds analysts that cultural frames have social histories and it signals a commitment to address the relevance of power rela- tions to the nature of cultural forms and ask how essential meanings about language are socially produced as effective and powerful (9, 78, 241). APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY Language ideology has been received principally as an epiphenomenon, an overlay of secondary and tertiary responses (34, 36), possibly intriguing but relatively inconsequential for the fundamental questions of both anthropology and linguistics. But several methodological traditions and topical foci have encouraged attention to cultural conceptions of language. We review work in several areas: ethnography of speaking; politics of multilingualism; literacy This content downloaded from �������������165.123.34.86 on Mon, 28 Jun 2021 13:25:58 UTC������������� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY 59 studies; historiography of linguistics and public discourse on language; and metapragmatics and linguistic structure. There are many connections among these, but the work tends to form different conversations, varying in the social and linguistic themes they foreground. Our bibliography is a representative sampling of the research done in these areas. To illustrate some of the social variation in conceptions of language, and in the institutions and interests to which they are tied, we reach back to earlier studies that were not conceived in the frame of ideological analysis, but which we believe can be rethought profitably in relation to the concerns outlined above. ETHNOGRAPHY OF SPEAKING The ethnography of speaking has long given attention to ideology as neutral, cultural conceptions of language, primarily through description of vernacular speech taxonomies and metalinguistics (24, 121, 242). The ethnography of speaking was chartered to study ways of speaking from the point of view of events, acts, and styles, but Hymes (158) suggested that an alternative focus on beliefs, values and attitudes, or on contexts and institutions would make a different contribution. This alternative enterprise has been taken up more recently. Language ideology has been made increasingly explicit as a force shaping the understanding of verbal practices (21, 46, 91, 138b, 210, 272, 303). Genres are now viewed not as sets of discourse features, but rather as orienting frameworks, interpretive procedures, and sets of expectations (128:670; see also 23, 42, 43). Local conceptions of talk as self-reflexive action have been explored for a variety of genres such as oratory (210), disputes (38, 116, 186, 188, 196), conflict management (253, 315), and also as the foundation of aesthetics in such areas as music (90). Ethnographers of speaking have studied the grounding of language beliefs in other cultural and social forms. For example, language socialization studies have demonstrated connections among folk theories of language acquisition, linguistic practices, and key cultural ideas about personhood (49, 63, 138, 187, 217, 231-234, 262,267,284). The eventual critical response of the ethnography of speaking (158) to speech act theory (13, 270) stimulated thought about linguistic ideology. Speech act theory is grounded in an English linguistic ideology, a privatized view of language emphasizing the psychological state of the speaker while downplaying the social consequences of speech (308:22; cf 244, 255, 275). This recognition triggered taxonomic studies of conceptualizations of speech acts in specific linguistic communities (308, 318), research on metapragmatic universals (309, 310), and numerous ethnographic challenges to the key as- sumptions of speech act theory (74, 150, 178, 221). Ethnographers of Pacific This content downloaded from �������������165.123.34.86 on Mon, 28 Jun 2021 13:25:58 UTC������������� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 60 WOOLARD & SCHIEFFELIN societies identified the centrality of intention to speech act theory as rooted in Western conceptions of the self, and argued that its application to other socie- ties obscures local methods of producing meaning (75, 76, 230, 292a). As is true of cultural anthropology in general, ethnographers of speaking have increasingly incorporated considerations of power in their analyses, again leading to a more explicit focus on linguistic ideology. Baumans (22) histori- cal ethnography of language and silence in Quaker ideology was an important development, because it addressed a more formal, conscious, and politically strategic form of ideology. Silence has been recognized as carrying a paradoxi- cal potential for power that depends greatly on its varying ideologization within and across communities (103). Advocating a view of linguistic ideol- ogy as interactional resource rather than shared cultural background, Briggs finds social power achieved through the strategic use not just of particular discursive genres, but of talk about such genres and their appropriate use (41). Speakers in multilingual communities have marshaled purist language ideolo- gies to similar interactional ends (146; see discussion of purism below.) Eth- nographers have also seen the role of language ideology in creating power in other guises and moments: the display of gender and/or affect (26, 28, 143, 163, 175, 188, 232), the strategic deployment of honorifics (3), the regulation of marriage choices (167), and the display of powerful new social affiliations and identities introduced through missionization (187, 254, 314). LANGUAGE CONTACT, COMPETITION, AND POLITICS Research on self-conscious struggles over language in class-stratified and especially multilingual communities has treated language ideologies as so- cially, politically, and/or linguistically significant, even when the researchers primary interest may be in debunking such ideologies (64, 84, 277). The identification of a language with a people has been given the most attention (95, 160, 302). It is a truism that the equation of language and nation is a historical, ideological construct (61, 69, 118, 127, 201), conventionally dated to Herder and eighteenth century German romanticism, although the famous characterization of language as the genius of a people can be traced to the French Enlightenment and specifically Condillac (1, 179, 235). Exported through colonialism to become a dominant model around the world today, the nationalist ideology of language structures state politics, challenges multilin- gual states, and underpins ethnic struggles to such an extent that the absence of a distinct language can cast doubt on the legitimacy of claims to nationhood (33:359; 4, 32, 51, 61, 87, 95, 115, 140, 171, 176, 202, 238, 243, 299, 305, 307, 317, 319,323,325). Ironically, movements to save minority languages are often structured around the same notions of language that have led to their oppression and/or This content downloaded from �������������165.123.34.86 on Mon, 28 Jun 2021 13:25:58 UTC������������� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY 61 suppression (5, 6, 32, 80, 169, 206, 305), although traditional or emergent views that resist this hegemonic construction have been documented (10, 57, 105, 306). The equation of one language/one people, the Western insistence on the authenticity and moral significance of the mother tongue, and associated assumptions about the importance of purist language loyalty for the mainte- nance of minority languages have all been criticized as ideological red her- rings, particularly in settings where multilingualism is more typical and where a fluid or complex linguistic repertoire is valued (10, 176, 194, 206, 238, 273, 282). Modern linguistic theory itself has been seen as framed and constrained by the one language/one people assumption (194). Although the validity of the nationalist ideology of language has often been debated or debunked, less attention traditionally has been given to under- standing how the view of language as symbolic of self and community has taken hold in so many different settings. Where linguistic variation appears to be simply a diagram of social differentiation, the analyst needs to identify the ideological production of that diagram (162). Recent studies of language poli- tics have begun to examine specifically the content and signifying structure of nationalist language ideologies (127, 277, 285, 326). Peirces semiotic categories have been used to analyze the processes by which chunks of linguistic material gain significance as representations of particular populations (104). Researchers have distinguished language as an index of group identity from language as a metalinguistically created symbol of identity, more explicitly ideologized in discourse (105, 168, 302). Irvine (162) finds that Wolof villagers construe linguistic differentiation as iconically related to social differentiation, distinguishing inter- and intra-lingual variation and devising a migration history for a particular caste to match their linguistic difference. Here we see how linguistic ideology can affect the interpretation of social relations. Mannheim (204) also notes different cultural ideologies of different kinds of linguistic variation in southern Peru. Endogenous variation in Quechua, which is seen simply as natural human speech, is not socially evaluated by speakers. But in Spanish, which is regarded as pure artifice, phonological markers and stereotypes are common and lead to hypercorrection among sec- ond-language speakers. In this case, linguistic ideology drives linguistic change along different paths. Language varieties that are regularly associated with (and thus index) par- ticular speakers are often revalorized-or misrecognized (37) not just as symbols of group identity, but as emblems of political allegiance or of social, intellectual, or moral worth (37, 72, 79, 101, 102, 120, 149, 195, 207, 277, 325). Although the extensive body of research on linguistic prestige and lan- guage attitudes grew up in a social psychological framework (109), the in- trapersonal attitude can be recast as a socially-derived intellectualized or be- This content downloaded from �������������165.123.34.86 on Mon, 28 Jun 2021 13:25:58 UTC������������� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 62 WOOLARD & SCHIEFFELIN havioral ideology (Bourdieus habitus) (37, 107, 119, 144, 149, 153, 200, 251, 311, 324, 325, 328). Such meanings affect patterns of language acquisition, style-switching, shift, change, and policy (120, 251). Moreover, symbolic revalorization often makes discrimination on linguistic grounds publicly ac- ceptable, whereas the corresponding ethnic or racial discrimination is not (156, 193, 197, 219, 326). However, simply asserting that struggles over language are really about racism does not constitute analysis. Such a tearing aside of the curtain of mystification in a Wizard of Oz theory of ideology (9) begs the question of how and why language comes to stand for social groups in a manner that is socially both comprehensible and acceptable. The current pro- gram of research is to address both the semiotic and the social process. Communities not only evaluate but may appropriate some part of the lin- guistic resources of groups with whom they are in contact and in tension, refiguring and incorporating linguistic structures in ways that reveal linguistic and social ideologies (146). Linguistic borrowing might appear superficially to indicate speakers high regard for the donor language. But Hill (148) argues that socially-grounded linguistic analysis of Anglo-American borrowings and humorous misrenderings of Spanish reveals them as racist distancing strate- gies that reduce complex Latino experience to a subordinated, commodity identity. The commodification of ethnolinguistic stereotypes, ostensibly posi- tive, is also seen in the use of foreign languages in Japanese television adver- tising (124). The appropriation of creole speech, music, and dress by white adolescents in South London, who see only matters of style (again, commodi- fied), is in tension with black adolescent views of these codes as part of their distinctive identity (143). Basso (20) classically describes a Western Apache metalinguistic joking genre that uses English to parody Whiteman conversa- tional pragmatics, in a representation of and comment on ethnolinguistic dif- ferences and their role in unequal relations. In the Javanese view, learning to translate (into high Javanese from low) is the essence of becoming a true adult and a real language speaker, and Siegel (273) argues that Javanese metaphori- cally incorporates foreign languages into itself by treating other languages as if they were low Javanese. Whether a code is a language or not depends on whether its speakers act like speakers of Javanese. Encounters with the lan- guages of others may trigger recognition of the opacity of language and concern for delineating and characterizing a distinctive community language (259). Linguistic ideology is not a predictable, automatic reflex of the social experience of multilingualism in which it is rooted; it makes its own contribu- tion as an interpretive filter in the relationship of language and society (211). The failure to transmit vernaculars intergenerationally may be rationalized in various ways, depending on how speakers conceptualize the links of language, cognition, and social life. For example, Nova Scotian parents actively discour- This content downloaded from �������������165.123.34.86 on Mon, 28 Jun 2021 13:25:58 UTC������������� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY 63 age children from acquiring a subordinated vernacular, because they believe it will somehow mark their English (211); Gapun parents blame their childrens dissatisfaction and aggression as the roots of the loss of the vernacular (187); and Haitian parents in New York City believe their children will speak Kreyol regardless of the input language (263; cf 329). Beliefs about what is or is not a real language, and underlying these beliefs, the notion that there are distinctly identifiable languages that can be isolated, named, and counted, enter into strategies of social domination. Such beliefs, and related schemata for ranking languages as more or less evolved, have contributed to profound decisions about, for example, the civility or even the humanity of subjects of colonial domination (93, 166, 204, 216, 236). They also qualify or disqualify speech varieties from certain institutional uses and their speakers from access to domains of privilege (37, 57, 68, 120, 191, 288). Language mixing, codeswitching, and creoles are often evaluated as indicating less than full linguistic capabilities, revealing assumptions about the nature of language implicitly based in literate standards and a pervasive tenet that equates change with decay (25, 120, 127, 174, 224, 251, 265). Written form, lexical elaboration, rules for word formation, and historical derivation are often seized on in diagnosing real language and ranking the candidates (111, 165, 235, 287). Grammatical variability and the question of whether a variety has a grammar play an important part (80). The extension of the notion of grammar from the explicitly artifactual product of scholarly intervention to an abstract underlying system has done nothing to mute the polemics (222). Language Policy Macrosocial research on language planning and policy has traced distinctive ideological assumptions about the role of language in civic and human life (2, 18, 19, 33, 228, 285, 322, 326) and distinctive stances toward the state regula- tion of language, for example, between England and France (65, 118, 136, 139, 201). Cobarrubias has sketched a taxonomy of language ideologies underlying planning …