Blackwell Reference Online

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This chapter identifies some of the political and social factors that shape language ideologies, the belief systems that determine language attitudes, judgments, and, ultimately, behavior ( Spolsky, 2004 ). These represent “the socially and culturally embedded metalinguistic forms of language and language use” including “conceptions of ‘quality,’ value, status, norms, functions, ownership, and so forth” ( Bloemmert, 2006 : 241). Language ideologies have both personal and societal valence. For any user of language, it would be impossible not to have some ideology of language, however inchoate; as Silverstein notes, “people have ideologies of language … [as] a necessary entailment of the fact that language, like any social semiotic, is indexical in its most essential modality” (1998: 130). Hence, all users of language and all speech communities possess ideological frameworks that determine choice, evaluation, and use of language forms and functions. Some political influences on linguistic ideology can be observed directly, as when one language or language variety is promoted or proscribed; more must be inferred, and are not always susceptible to direct investigation of discrete communicative events. A brief nod to historical disciplinary roots: anthropology and linguistics emerged during an epoch when legitimation of discrete national states was an intellectual project of enormous ... log in or subscribe to read full text