Introduction Language Ideology as a field of inquiry

Abstract

Abstract As Raymond Williams observed, “a definition of language is always, implicitly or explicitly, a definition of human beings in the world” (1977:21). The essays in this volume examine definitions and conceptions of language in a wide range of settings. They focus on how such defining activity organizes individuals, institutions, and their interrelations. Representations, whether explicit or implicit, that construe the intersection of language and human beings in a social world are what we mean by “language ideology.” There is as much cultural variation in ideas about language and about how communication works as a social process as there is in the very form of language (Bauman 1983:16; Hymes 1974:13-14, 31). However, language ideology is of anthropological importance not simply because of its ethnographic variability but because it is a mediating link between social forms and forms of talk (if I may be forgiven a turn of phrase that emphasizes product over process). As all of the contributions to this volume point out, ideologies of language are not about language alone. Rather, they envision and enact ties of language to identity, to aesthetics, to morality, and to epistemology. Through such linkages, they underpin not only linguistic form and use but also the very notion of the person and the social group, as well as such fundamental social institutions as religious ritual, child socialization, gender relations, the nation-state, schooling, and law.