Definitions Several scholars have noted difficulty in attempting to delimit the scope, meaning, and applications of language ideology. Linguistic anthropologist Paul Kroskrity describes language ideology as a “cluster concept, consisting of a number of converging dimensions” with several “partially overlapping but analytically distinguishable layers of significance,” and cites that in the existing scholarship on language ideology “there is no particular unity . . . no core literature, and a range of definitions.” One of the broadest definitions is offered by Alan Rumsey, who describes language ideologies as “shared bodies of commonsense notions about the nature of language in the world.” This definition is seen by Kroskrity as unsatisfactory, however, because “it fails to problematize language ideological variation and therefore promotes an overly homogeneous view of language ideologies within a cultural group.” Emphasizing the role of speakers’ awareness in influencing language structure, Michael Silverstein defines linguistic ideologies as “sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use.”Silverstein, M. (1979). Language Structure and Linguistic Ideology. In P. Clyne, W. Hanks, and C. Hofbauer (eds.), The Elements (pp. 193–248). Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Definitions that place greater emphasis on sociocultural factors include Shirley Heath’s characterization of language ideologies 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”Heath, SB. (1977). Social history. In Bilingual Education: Current Perspectives. Vol. 1: Social Science, pp. 53--72. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics. and Judith Irvine’s definition of the concept as “the cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, together with their loading of moral and political interests.”Irvine, J. (1989). When talk isn't cheap: language and political economy. American Ethnologist 16(2):248-67. Critical vs. neutral approaches The basic division in studies of language ideology is between neutral and critical approaches to ideology. In neutral approaches to language ideology, speakers’ beliefs or ideas about  language are understood as being shaped by the cultural systems in which they are embedded, but no attempt to identify variation within or across these systems is made . Often, a single ideology will be identified in such cases. Characterizations of language ideology as representative of an entire community or culture, such as those routinely documented in ethnographic research, are common examples of neutral approaches to language ideology. Ethnography of speaking Studies of "ways of speaking" within specific communities have been recognized as especially productive sites of language ideological investigation . They often include a community's own theory of speech as a part of their ethnography, which allows for the documentation of explicit language ideologies on a community-wide level or in “the neutral sense of cultural conceptions.” A study of language socialization practices in Dominica, for example, revealed that local notions of personhood, status, and authority are associated with the strategic usage of Patwa and English in the course of the adult-child interaction.Paugh, A.L. (2005). ‘Acting adult: Language socialization, shift, and ideologies in Dominica, West Indies’, in J. Cohen, K.T. McAlister, K. Rolstad, and J. MacSwan (eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism. Cascadilla Press, Somerville, MA, 1807–1820. The use of Patwa by children is largely forbidden by adults due to a perception that it inhibits the acquisition of English and thus restricts social mobility, which in turn has imbued Patwa with a significant measure of covert prestige and rendered it a powerful tool for children to utilize in order to defy authority. Thus there are multiple, competing ideologies of Patwa in Dominica: one which encourages a shift away from Patwa usage ; and another which contributes to its maintenance. Linguistic ideologies in speech act theory J. L. Austin and John Searle's speech act theory has been described by several ethnographers, anthropologists, and linguists as being based in a specifically Western linguistic ideology that renders it inapplicable in certain ethnographic contexts. Jef Verschueren characterized speech act theory as privileging “a privatized view of language that emphasizes the psychological state of the speaker while downplaying the social consequences of speech,” while Michael Silverstein argued that the theory's ideas about language “acts” and “forces” are “projections of covert categories typical in the metapragmatic discourse of languages such as English.” Scholars have subsequently used speech act theory to caution against the positioning of linguistic theories as universal applicable, citing that any account of language will reflect the linguistic ideologies held by those who develop it.Pratt, M.L. (1986). Ideology and Speech-Act Theory. Poetics Today 7.1: 59-72 Language policy Governmental policies often reflect the tension between two contrasting types of language ideologies: ideologies that conceive of language as a resource, problem, or rightHult, F.M., & Hornberger, N.H. (2016). Re-visiting orientations to language planning: problem, right, and resource. Bilingual Review/La revista bilingüe, 33(3), 30-49. Available from bilingualreview.utsa.edu and ideologies that conceive of language as pluralistic phenomena. The language-related policies that emerge in such instances often reflect the compromise that is reached between these two types of ideologies.Hult, F.M., & Pietikäinen, S. (2014). Shaping discourses of multilingualism through a language ideological debate: The case of Swedish in Finland. Journal of Language and Politics, 13, 1-20. According to Blommaert and Verschueren, this compromise is often reinterpreted as a single, unified ideology, evidenced by the many European societies characterized by a language ideological homogenism. Ideologies of linguistic purism Purist language ideologies or ideologies of linguistic conservatism can close off languages to nonnative sources of innovation, usually when such sources are perceived as socially or politically threatening to the target language.Weinstein, B. (1989). Francophonie: Purism at the International Level. In The Politics of Language Purism, ed. Bjorn H. Jernudd and Michael Shapiro, pp. 53-80. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Among the Tewa, for example, the influence of theocratic institutions and ritualized linguistic forms in other domains of Tewa society have led to a strong resistance to the extensive borrowing and shift many of its neighboring language communities have experienced. According to Paul Kroskrity this is due to a "dominant language ideology" through which ceremonial Kiva speech is elevated to a linguistic ideal and the cultural preferences that it embodies, namely regulation by convention, indigenous purism, strict compartmentalization, and linguistic indexing of identity, are recursively projected onto the Tewa language as a whole.Kroskrity, Paul V. (1993). Language, History, and Identity: Ethnolinguistic Studies of the Arizona Tewa. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Kroskrity, Paul V. (1998). Arizona Tewa Kiva Speech as a Manifestation of Linguistic Ideology. In Language ideologies: Practice and theory. Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity, eds., pp. 103-122. New York: Oxford University Press. Literacy Literacy cannot be strictly defined technically, but is rather a set of practices determined by the language ideology of a community . It can be interpreted in a multitude of ways that are determined by political, social, and economic forces.Street, B.V. (1984). Literacy in Theory and Practice. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press According to Kathryn Woolard and Bambi Schieffelin, literacy traditions are closely linked to social control in most societies. The typical European literacy ideology, for example, recognizes literacy solely in an alphabetic capacity. Kaluli literacy development In the 1960s, missionaries arrived in Papua New Guinea and exposed the Kaluli to Christianity and modernization, part of which was accomplished through the introduction of literacy.Schieffelin, B. B. (2000). Introducing Kaluli Literacy: A Chronology of Influences. In P. V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of Language: pp. 293–327. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. The Kaluli primers that were introduced by the missionaries promoted Westernization, which effectively served to strip the vernacular language of cultural practices and from discourse in church and school. Readers written in the 1970s used derogatory terms to refer to the Kaluli and depicted their practices as inferior, motivating the Kaluli to change their self-perceptions and orient themselves towards Western values. The missionaries ’ control of these authoritative books and of this new “technology of language literacy” gave them the power to effect culture change and morph the ideology of Kaluli into that of modern Christianity.
Definitions Scholars have noted difficulty in attempting to delimit the scope, meaning, and applications of language ideology. Linguistic anthropologist Paul Kroskrity describes language ideology as a “cluster concept, consisting of a number of converging dimensions” with several “partially overlapping but analytically distinguishable layers of significance,” and cites that in the existing scholarship on language ideology “there is no particular unity . . . no core literature, and a range of definitions.” One of the broadest definitions is offered by Alan Rumsey, who describes language ideologies as “shared bodies of commonsense notions about the nature of language in the world.” This definition is seen by Kroskrity as unsatisfactory, however, because “it fails to problematize language ideological variation and therefore promotes an overly homogeneous view of language ideologies within a cultural group.” Emphasizing the role of speakers’ awareness in influencing language structure, Michael Silverstein defines linguistic ideologies as “sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use.”Silverstein, M. (1979). Language Structure and Linguistic Ideology. In P. Clyne, W. Hanks, and C. Hofbauer (eds.), The Elements (pp. 193–248). Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Definitions that place greater emphasis on sociocultural factors include Shirley Heath’s characterization of language ideologies 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”Heath, SB. (1977). Social history. In Bilingual Education: Current Perspectives. Vol. 1: Social Science, pp. 53--72. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics. and Judith Irvine’s definition of the concept as “the cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, together with their loading of moral and political interests.”Irvine, J. (1989). When talk isn't cheap: language and political economy. American Ethnologist 16(2):248-67. Critical vs. neutral approaches The basic division in studies of language ideology is between neutral and critical approaches to ideology. In neutral approaches to language ideology, beliefs or ideas about a language are understood to be shaped by the cultural systems in which it is embedded, but no variation within or across these systems is identified . Often, a single ideology will be identified in such cases. Characterizations of language ideology as representative of one community or culture, such as those routinely documented in ethnographic research, are common examples of neutral approaches to language ideology. Ethnography of speaking Studies of "ways of speaking" within specific communities have been recognized as especially productive sites of research in language ideology . They often include a community's own theory of speech as a part of their ethnography, which allows for the documentation of explicit language ideologies on a community-wide level or in “the neutral sense of cultural conceptions.” A study of language socialization practices in Dominica, for example, revealed that local notions of personhood, status, and authority are associated with the strategic usage of Patwa and English in the course of the adult-child interaction.Paugh, A.L. (2005). ‘Acting adult: Language socialization, shift, and ideologies in Dominica, West Indies’, in J. Cohen, K.T. McAlister, K. Rolstad, and J. MacSwan (eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism. Cascadilla Press, Somerville, MA, 1807–1820. The use of Patwa by children is largely forbidden by adults due to a perception that it inhibits the acquisition of English , thus restricting social mobility, which in turn has imbued Patwa with a significant measure of covert prestige and rendered it a powerful tool for children to utilize in order to defy authority. Thus there are many competing ideologies of Patwa in Dominica: one which encourages a shift away from Patwa usage and another which contributes to its maintenance. Linguistic ideologies in speech act theory J. L. Austin and John Searle's speech act theory has been described by several ethnographers, anthropologists, and linguists as being based in a specifically Western linguistic ideology that renders it inapplicable in certain ethnographic contexts. Jef Verschueren characterized speech act theory as privileging “a privatized view of language that emphasizes the psychological state of the speaker while downplaying the social consequences of speech,” while Michael Silverstein argued that the theory's ideas about language “acts” and “forces” are “projections of covert categories typical in the metapragmatic discourse of languages such as English.” Scholars have subsequently used speech act theory to caution against the positioning of linguistic theories as universally applicable, citing that any account of language will reflect the linguistic ideologies held by those who develop it.Pratt, M.L. (1986). Ideology and Speech-Act Theory. Poetics Today 7.1: 59-72 Language policy Governmental policies often reflect the tension between two contrasting types of language ideologies: ideologies that conceive of language as a resource, problem, or rightHult, F.M., & Hornberger, N.H. (2016). Re-visiting orientations to language planning: problem, right, and resource. Bilingual Review/La revista bilingüe, 33(3), 30-49. Available from bilingualreview.utsa.edu and ideologies that conceive of language as pluralistic phenomena. The linguistic policies that emerge in such instances often reflect a compromise between both types of ideologies.Hult, F.M., & Pietikäinen, S. (2014). Shaping discourses of multilingualism through a language ideological debate: The case of Swedish in Finland. Journal of Language and Politics, 13, 1-20. According to Blommaert and Verschueren, this compromise is often reinterpreted as a single, unified ideology, evidenced by the many European societies characterized by a language ideological homogenism. Ideologies of linguistic purism Purist language ideologies or ideologies of linguistic conservatism can close off languages to nonnative sources of innovation, usually when such sources are perceived as socially or politically threatening to the target language.Weinstein, B. (1989). Francophonie: Purism at the International Level. In The Politics of Language Purism, ed. Bjorn H. Jernudd and Michael Shapiro, pp. 53-80. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Among the Tewa, for example, the influence of theocratic institutions and ritualized linguistic forms in other domains of Tewa society have led to a strong resistance to the extensive borrowing and shift that neighboring speech communities have experienced. According to Paul Kroskrity this is due to a "dominant language ideology" through which ceremonial Kiva speech is elevated to a linguistic ideal and the cultural preferences that it embodies, namely regulation by convention, indigenous purism, strict compartmentalization, and linguistic indexing of identity, are recursively projected onto the Tewa language as a whole.Kroskrity, Paul V. (1993). Language, History, and Identity: Ethnolinguistic Studies of the Arizona Tewa. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Kroskrity, Paul V. (1998). Arizona Tewa Kiva Speech as a Manifestation of Linguistic Ideology. In Language ideologies: Practice and theory. Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity, eds., pp. 103-122. New York: Oxford University Press. Literacy Literacy cannot be strictly defined technically, but rather it is a set of practices determined by a community's language ideology . It can be interpreted in many ways that are determined by political, social, and economic forces.Street, B.V. (1984). Literacy in Theory and Practice. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press According to Kathryn Woolard and Bambi Schieffelin, literacy traditions are closely linked to social control in most societies. The typical European literacy ideology, for example, recognizes literacy solely in an alphabetic capacity. Kaluli literacy development In the 1960s, missionaries arrived in Papua New Guinea and exposed the Kaluli to Christianity and modernization, part of which was accomplished through the introduction of literacy.Schieffelin, B. B. (2000). Introducing Kaluli Literacy: A Chronology of Influences. In P. V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of Language: pp. 293–327. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. The Kaluli primers that were introduced by the missionaries promoted Westernization, which effectively served to strip the vernacular language of cultural practices and from discourse in church and school. Readers written in the 1970s used derogatory terms to refer to the Kaluli and depicted their practices as inferior, motivating the Kaluli to change their self-perceptions and orient themselves towards Western values. The missionaries ' control of these authoritative books and of this new “technology of language literacy” gave them the power to effect culture change and morph the ideology of Kaluli into that of modern Christianity.
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