Language use and structure Many scholars have argued that ideology plays a role in shaping and influencing linguistic structures and speech forms. Michael Silverstein, for example, sees speakers' awareness of language and their rationalizations of its structure and use as critical factors that often shape the evolution of a language's structure. In this instance, the accepted usage of the masculine pronoun as the generic form came to be understood as a linguistic symbol of
patriarchal and male-dominated society, and the growing sentiment opposing these conditions motivated some speakers to stop using "he" as the generic pronoun in favor of the construction "he or she." This rejection of generic "he" was rationalized by the growing desire for
gender equality and women's empowerment, which was sufficiently culturally prevalent to regularize the change. Alan Rumsey also sees linguistic ideologies as playing a role in shaping the structure of a language, describing a circular process of reciprocal influence where a language's structure conditions the ideologies that affect it, which in turn reinforce and expand this structure, altering the language "in the name of making it more like itself." These speakers glottalized consonants in situations in places more competent speakers of Xinca would not because they were less familiar with the phonological rules of the language and also because they wished to distinguish themselves from the socially-dominant Spanish-speakers, who viewed glottalized consonants as "exotic." 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. 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."
Language contact and multilingualism Several scholars have noted that sites of cultural contact promote the development of new linguistic forms that draw on diverse language varieties and ideologies at an accelerated rate. According to Miki Makihara and Bambi Schieffelin, it becomes necessary during times of cultural contact for speakers to actively negotiate language ideologies and to consciously reflect on language use.
Language policy and standardization The establishment of a standard language has many implications in the realms of politics and power. Recent examinations of language ideologies have resulted in the conception of "standard" as a matter of ideology rather than fact, raising questions such as "how doctrines of linguistic correctness and incorrectness are rationalized and how they are related to doctrines of the inherent representational power, beauty, and expressiveness of language as a valued mode of action.".
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 right and ideologies that conceive of language as pluralistic phenomena. 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. 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.
Alexandra Jaffe points out that language purism is often part of "essentializing discourses" that can lead to stigmatizing habitual language practices like
code-switching and depict
contact-induced linguistic changes as forms of cultural deficiency.
Standard language ideology As defined by
Rosina Lippi-Green, standard language ideology is "a bias toward an abstract, idealized homogeneous language, which is imposed and maintained by dominant institutions and which has as its model the written language, but which is drawn primarily from the spoken language of the upper middle class." According to Lippi-Green, part of this ideology is a belief that standard languages are internally consistent. Linguists generally agree, however, that variation is intrinsic to all spoken language, including standard varieties. Standard language ideology is strongly connected with the concepts of
linguistic purism and
prescriptivism. It is also linked with
linguicism (linguistic discrimination).
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. According to Kathryn Woolard and Bambi Schieffelin, literacy traditions are closely linked to social control in most societies. 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. Teachers display their language ideologies in classroom instruction through various practices such as correction or repair, affective alignment, metadiscourse, and narrative (see Razfar & Rumenapp, 2013, p. 289). The study of ideology seeks to uncover the hidden world of students and teachers to shed light on the fundamental forces that shape and give meaning to their actions and interactions. ==See also==