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Wednesday, March 02, 2011

English in the World and "Ideology"

Looking more into "language ideologies" and came across this helpful footnote from Seargeant 2008:
Approaching this issue from the tradition that has developed under the rubric of ‘language ideologies’ (Woolard, 1998; Blommaert, 2006), the assertion that the subject of English in the world is one that is predominantly ideology-led reads as something of a truism. Within this tradition, all language use happens within a framework of entrenched beliefs (ideologies) about language, and it is these patterns of belief that create the pragmatic conventions and orientations which imbue linguistic behaviour with particular meanings (Silverstein, 1979). In the case of ‘world’ English, however, the ideologies that structure research and discussion are often explicitly foregrounded, leading to a situation where debate in this area regularly takes a self-consciously political turn. There is, then, a distinction – though one more of degree than of kind – between the explicitly ideological (the political) and the ideology of entrenched beliefs (the cultural); and it is the former which inflects the majority of work on English within a globalized context.
OK....let's hear it for the latter, though! That sounds better to me.

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