Linguistic Ideologies Research Articles

How long is ‘the Russian street’ in Israel? Prospects of maintaining the Russian language

The article illuminates a sociolinguistic aspect of the large wave of immigration from the Former Soviet Union to Israel in the 1990s. It also investigates the discrepancies between the declared linguistic ideology, language management strategies, and actual language practices. The ubiquitous presence of Russian in the Israeli public sphere goes hand in hand with the rapid shift from Russian to Hebrew in the second generation of immigrants. The article discusses future perspectives of the maintenance of Russian in Israel through coordinating family efforts to preserve the immigrant heritage and multilingual educational policy at the state level.

“ ‘Schwedis’ he can’t even say Swedish” - subverting and reproducing institutionalized norms for language use in multilingual peer groups

The present study explores how minority schoolchildren in multilingual peer group interactions act upon dominant educational and linguistic ideologies as they organize their everyday emerging peer culture. The data draw from ethnographies combined with detailed analysis (CA) of video recordings in two primary monolingual school settings in Sweden. Bakhtin’s processual view of how linguistic norms are used for overcoming the heteroglossia of language is used as a framework for understanding how monolingualism is talked-into-being in multilingual peer groups. As will be demonstrated, the children recurrently participate in corrective practices in which they playfully exploit multiple linguistic resources (syntactic, lexical and phonetic features) and the turn structure of varied activities (conflicts, accusations, insults, classroom discourse) to play with and consolidate a collective critical view of not-knowing correct Swedish. Moreover, they transform faulty talk (repeating structural elements, recycling arguments, using parodic imitations, joint laughter, code-switching) to display their language competence, assert powerful positions and strengthen alliances in the peer group. It is argued that such forms of playful heteroglossic peer group practices are highly ambiguous and paradoxically tend to enforce power hierarchies and values associated with different social languages and codes, thus co-constructing the monolingual ideology.

A minimal approach is insufficient

It has become fashionable in recent years to question the basic assumptions in Chomskyan linguistics, at least in relation to evolutionary theory. The frequent revisions of formalist linguistic ideology throughout Chomsky’s long career have regularly challenged academic linguists with new ways of “doing” their subject – often to the consternation of those who have built careers on the superseded theories. His latest incarnation of theory is Minimalism, although Chomsky insists that it is a program to discover language theory and not a theory itself. It has, though, been particularly severe on previous generations of linguistics practitioners, throwing out major components of previous canonical models, such as Deep and Surface Structure. It would be easy, therefore, to dismiss this book by Kinsella as just another rearguard action by a Principles & Parameters theorist unwilling to give up their life’s work. That, however, would be both unfair and factually wrong. Kinsella is at the start of her career, a career that promises, on the basis of this book, to be highly productive; and this book is not a defence of older theories against encroaching Minimalism, it is a careful and considered deconstruction of the current theoretical proposals of the Minimalist program. Kinsella does not offer a comparative review of PP and she shows that, in terms of evolutionary theory, the Emperor’s new clothes appear to be threadbare, at the very least.

Multilingual dynamics among Portuguese-based migrant contexts in Europe

This paper explores insights and understandings of multilingual dynamics within European-based migrant contexts where Portuguese plays a role. The intermediate position of Portuguese migration in Europe (simultaneously host and sending country) gives Portuguese a bipolar sociolinguistic status at the European scale, both as a ‘dominant’ and ‘non-dominant’ language, useful to use as an analytical springboard. Drawing on linguistic ethnographic work developed in two sites – Portuguese migrant women in London and Eastern European migrant children in Portugal – this paper discusses the tools used to (a) describe the informal emerging and creative multilingual use happening in local configurations of speakers, linguistic ideologies, artifacts, histories and institutions, and (b) explain how this creativity is re-scaled into dominant discourses situated in momentary yet simultaneously long-term historical sociolinguistic configurations, differently narrated by the multiple actors involved. A combined focus on personal trajectories and ‘history in person’, discursive dynamics of recontextualisation and re-scaling and an understanding of the power dynamics in intersubjective spaces helps develop the idea of polycentric speaking positions, affected by local creativities and constraints happening in conflicting historically configured hybrid spaces of verbal interaction.

Lexicography as a philosophy of language

This article analyses the presuppositions about language upon which lexicography is built, and examines the linguistic ideologies to which dictionary projects in turn contribute. The contention is that dictionaries produce and reproduce specific and historically contingent beliefs about language, which are then co-opted into wider social and political practice such as the reification of national linguistic difference by national dictionary projects. To explore this contention, the article surveys the claims made by lexicographic projects and analyses the ways in which this ‘lexicographic ideology’ is invoked in a selection of political initiatives and philosophical works.

Teoría crítica de la lingüística: un enfoque humanístico

The paper presents some of the main thesis of the “Critical Theory of Linguistics” on which the author is working at present, together with epistemological and ethical motivations underlying them. It starts from the Humboldtian axiom “language is real only while speaking each time”, opposing this viewpoint to several theoretical positions in the 20th century; positions that have replaced the fact of considering human speech as something rigorously individual and historical by images of “language” reduced to systems and rules acting beyond individuals and investigated under scientistic methodologies. Contrary to “linguistic ideologies” which have become dominant she proposes to follow the Kantian commitment of studying the human being not in order to “describe”, but aiming that he should “make the best possible out of himself”. Thus she unites the criticism against the metaphysics underlying formal structuralisms with an ethics in accordance with Western humanism. She also underscores the importance of studying language from a historical and comparative perspective.

Constructing Literate Israelis: A Critical Analysis of Adult Literacy Texts

Literacy in the national language is a necessary skill particularly for migrants. State institutions regulate the acquisition of linguistic resources as a way of controlling and distributing citizenship rights. It follows that programs and texts for teaching immigrants may serve as conduits for national and linguistic ideologies. The article critically analyzes texts teaching Hebrew to unschooled Israeli adult immigrants during a literacy campaign in the 1960s-1970s. It argues that these texts were employed for the Israeli nation-building project, constructing an image of the literate Israeli citizen who participates in civic life, as well as accepts his or her role within the socio-cultural structure of the time. The analysis of texts within their contexts provides insights for better understanding the process of enculturation and language socialization of immigrants.

The Novel as an Insight into Linguistic Attitudes and Ideologies: Or What Can the Novel Bring to the Understanding of Language Decline and/or Maintenance?

The Novel as an Insight into Linguistic Attitudes and Ideologies: Or What Can the Novel Bring to the Understanding of Language Decline and/or Maintenance?

Immigration and language education in Catalonia: Between national and social agendas

Most analyses of the sociolinguistic aspects of immigration focus on contexts where a single language is official and widely used. In bilingual Catalonia, newly arriving immigrants find themselves in a situation where the administration seeks to treat Catalan as a fully functional public language while large sectors of the local population still treat it as a minority language not adequate to be spoken to strangers. Popular language practices and discourses often seem to suggest that Catalan serves to assert identity while Spanish serves for practical communicative purposes, thus contradicting the official narratives over language and integration. Thus, what we find is that immigrants are required to adjust to different, competing, often blatantly contradictory linguistic ideologies and practices. In this article, I will seek to describe these contradictions and historical changes together with their implications for the local political economy of intergroup relations. I begin with a brief theoretical grounding of the concepts uses. To this follows a historical account of educational language policies addressed to immigrants since the mid-1980s. A change in official discourses from language as national symbol to language as a means for social cohesion is documented. Language policies are contrasted with ethnographic data on linguistic practices in everyday life in various settings. To conclude, I reflect on the significance of these phenomena for a general understanding of the role of languages in the construction of social difference in contemporary societies.

From Cognitive Linguistics to Social Science: Thirty Years after Metaphors We Live By

Abstract In the thirty years since the appearance of Metaphors We Live By, cognitive linguistics has developed into a flourishing autonomous branch of inquiry. Interdisciplinary contacts, however, have largely been restricted to literary studies and the cognitive sciences and hardly extended towards the social sciences. This is the more surprising as, in 1970s anthropology, metaphor was seen as a key notion for the study of symbolism more generally. This contribution explores the cognitive linguistic view of social and cultural factors. Lakoff and Johnson appear ambivalent regarding the relation between culture and cognition; but they share the belief, elaborated in detail by Gibbs and Turner (2002), that cultural factors can be accounted for in terms of cognitive processes. This view runs into both methodological and philosophical difficulties. Methodologically, it assumes that cultural factors can be reduced to cognitive processes; philosophically, it boils down to a Cartesian emphasis on inner experience explaining outer phenomena. There are substantial anti-Cartesian strains both in contemporary philosophy and in a major current of Eighteenth- Century philosophy. The latter, in particular, emphasized the importance of embodiment and metaphor in cognition. As an alternative, I will sketch a more consistently semiotic- and practice-oriented approach that proceeds from linguistic practices to cognitive processes rather than the other way around. It takes practices as irreducibly public and normative; on this approach, so-called linguistic ideologies (Silverstein 1979) play a constitutive role in both linguistic practice and language structure. This alternative builds on recent developments in linguistic anthropology and the work of Peirce and Bakhtin. It suggests a different look at the relation between cognition, language, and social practice from that suggested in cognitive linguistics.

Linguistic science and nationalist revolution: Expert knowledge and the making of sameness in pre-independence Ireland

ABSTRACTThis article examines the linguistic ideological work entailed in the analyses of Irish by the “revolutionary scholar” and cofounder of the Gaelic League, Eoin MacNeill. It does so to discern one central way in which the essentialized link between the Irish language and a unified Irish people became an efficacious political construction during the armed struggle for independence in the early 20th century. It shows how MacNeill used authoritative linguistic science to engender nationalist sentiment around Irish through semiotic processes even as he challenged a dominant conception of language prevalent in European nationalist movements and social thought. The essay argues that MacNeill wrote against the unilateral valorization of codified linguistic homogeneity and embraced the heterogeneous variation of spoken discourse even as he sought to consolidate Irish national identity through sameness claims. This critical examination suggests that scholars of nationalism reconsider the taken-for-granted homogenizing efforts of nationalist endeavors that are ubiquitously presumed to negatively sanction linguistic variation. (Nationalism, linguistic ideology, Ireland, semiotics, heterogeneity, Eoin MacNeill, Gaelic League, Europe, scientific knowledge)

Security or Insecurity?

What is What is security-talk? How is it woven into public discourse and in turn shapes it? Methodologically, a democratic society's use of complex concepts like is open to different forms of critique. In traditional research, the predominant strategy is to look at how the concept is applied through the general (Bakhtin), assuming and reinforcing a grand narrative of threats, and of security as defense -- an objective, neutral term connoting protection from perceivable threats. A different critical approach breaks down the concept through the language of its application. It asks: whose security are we talking about? What happens to normative discourse when it faces security? Whose sense of security matters as we move around in the public domain? Engaging recent scholarship, this review essay analyzes the linguistic ideology of and security-talk as a cultural, social and political concept in specific historical settings, mainly from the internal security-talk of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship.

Consequences of Contact: Language Ideologies and Sociocultural Transformations in Pacific Societies – Edited by Miki Makihara and Bambi B. Schieffelin

Consequences of Contact: Language Ideologies and Sociocultural Transformations in Pacific Societies – Edited by Miki Makihara and Bambi B. Schieffelin

Linguistic Anthropology in 2008: An Election‐Cycle Guide

ABSTRACT Loosely following the structure of the U.S. election cycle, I identify some of the more important institutions and events that have recently served as venues for field‐building scholarly practices and processes in linguistic anthropology. I examine various trends and concerns animating recent publications on language and social life. I discuss the ongoing impact on the field of recent major works that attempt to codify methodological and theoretical approaches to the intersection of language and society. I also consider some of linguistic anthropology's emergent ventures, including new collaborative projects and new proposals for interdisciplinary work. Finally, I discuss some of the political implications of academic specialization, disciplinary boundaries, and impending “generational shift,” both in the subdiscipline and the academy generally. I close by raising questions about future directions and possibilities for research in linguistic anthropology and other interdisciplinary enterprises. [Keywords: linguistic anthropology, interdisciplinarity, linguistic ideology, semiotic practices, linguistic variation]

Linguistic Ideologies, Economies, and Technologies in the Language Culture of Contemporary Russia (1987–2008)

In this article I outline a theoretical and methodological framework for pursing a comprehensive study of the dominant issues and trends of Russian language culture from the Perestroika era through the present day. My chief claim is that the general shape, tone, and trajectory of a language culture will change over time and depend largely on the interdependence of three driving forces: language ideologies, economies, and technologies. To illustrate and substantiate this working hypothesis I examine both secondary theoretical sources and concrete case studies from the language culture of contemporary Russia (1987–2008).

Land, Language and Social Identity in Aboriginal Australia

Views of pre-contact Aboriginal social groupings have ranged from those which posit a linguistically-defined, homogeneous ‘tribe’ to others which, more recently, have asserted that language plays little or no role in Aboriginal constructions of social identity. Given the obvious, different degrees of linguistic diversity in different parts of the continent, it seems of interest to look at native linguistic ideologies and the ways in which notions of language and linguistic difference are integrated with other variables in the construction of social identity. This paper begins to look at differential constructions of social identity in three parts of Australia—Cape Keerweer in Cape York, the Western Desert, and western Roper River and suggests some directions for future research.

The poetics and politics of Navajo ideophony in contemporary Navajo poetry

This article describes aspects of Navajo sound symbolism within its social and political contexts. Specifically, it focuses on the use of Navajo ideophony. Examples of Navajo ideophony are presented from a variety of verbal and written genres including song, narrative, place-names, and contemporary written poetry. It is argued that Navajo ideophony is an important poetic device in Navajo aesthetics and that its current promotion in written poetry challenges a simple view of ideophony as fragile in the face of outside contact. Navajo ideophony also challenges a received Western linguistic ideology that devalues such expressive forms.

From Cognitive Linguistics to Social Science: Thirty Years After Metaphors We Live By

In the thirty years since the appearance of Metaphors We Live By, cognitive linguistics has developed into a flourishing autonomous branch of inquiry. Interdisciplinary contacts, however, have largely been restricted to literary studies and the cognitive sciences and hardly extended towards the social sciences. This is the more surprising as, in 1970s anthropology, metaphor was seen as a key notion for the study of symbolism more generally. This contribution explores the cognitive linguistic view of social and cultural factors. Lakoff and Johnson appear ambivalent regarding the relation between culture and cognition; but they share the belief, elaborated in detail by Gibbs and Turner (2002), that cultural factors can be accounted for in terms of cognitive processes. This view runs into both methodological and philosophical difficulties. Methodologically, it assumes that cultural factors can be reduced to cognitive processes; philosophically, it boils down to a Cartesian emphasis on inner experience explaining outer phenomena. There are substantial anti-Cartesian strains both in contemporary philosophy and in a major current of Eighteenth- Century philosophy. The latter, in particular, emphasized the importance of embodiment and metaphor in cognition. As an alternative, I will sketch a more consistently semiotic- and practice-oriented approach that proceeds from linguistic practices to cognitive processes rather than the other way around. It takes practices as irreducibly public and normative; on this approach, so-called linguistic ideologies (Silverstein 1979) play a constitutive role in both linguistic practice and language structure. This alternative builds on recent developments in linguistic anthropology and the work of Peirce and Bakhtin. It suggests a different look at the relation between cognition, language, and social practice from that suggested in cognitive linguistics.

Linguistic Identities in a Basque-speaking School: Teachers’ and Students’ Discourses of Multilingualism

Abstract This article represents an attempt to analyse how youngsters in the Basque Country construct their linguistic identity in interaction. The study is based on the hypothesis that youngsters in a bilingual community such as the Basque Country, with strong demands for national devolution, may experience more intensely than other citizens the tension between (1) a perception of language as a means for constructing a national identity and (2) a perception of language as a commodity which contributes to the socioeconomic promotion of the individual. The study is based on an analysis of the discourses that are drawn upon by three youngsters, during a focus-group session, and their teachers of Basque, Castilian and English in the course of a research interview. The analysis focuses on the notions of ‘social action’ and ‘psychological stance’ as discursive resources that the participants use in order to construct their personal linguistic ideology.

Language Ideologies of the High Academy of the Quechua Language in Cuzco, Peru

Founded in 1990, The High Academy of the Quechua Language is a Peruvian organization committed to the preservation of the Quechua language. In Peru, the Academy is well known for the zeal of its members, who firmly believe that Quechua can and should be saved from extinction and that, on account of their own authority and expertise, they should take the lead in its revitalization. The purpose of this article is to examine these assumptions, their underlying ideologies, and the ways in which they have influenced the decisions and practices of the Academy. The analysis focuses on the organization's nationalistic bent, its linguistic ideologies, the construction of its expertise, and the tensions that exist both among its members and between them and other actors. It is argued that the Quechua Academy's stances and practices conspire against its own ability to make a lasting contribution to the revitalization of Quechua, obstruct the efforts of other agencies and experts who are also working to promote the language, and are infused with class values that alienate the Quechua-speaking people they claim to serve.