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Language Ideology

Submitted by Barbara Andersen on Sat, 2008-04-19 05:16

Over the years Cultural Anthropology has published a wide range of essays by linguistic and cultural anthropologists in the language ideology framework. This framework explores how social differences—divisions of gender, class, race, and other culturally significant distinctions—are produced, indexed, and rationalized through language. Ideology can be located in linguistic practice, in metalinguistic discourse, and in metapragmatics. Such studies often attempt to show how specific semiotic processes operate to transform an “external,” social position into an “internalized,” more or less subjective identity position. Studies of language ideology can enrich our understanding of how constructs such as race, class, gender, ethnicity, and the nation are (re)produced in everyday interactions.

Readers interested in these and related issues may also wish to consult our lists on Narrative, Discourse, and Rhetoric and Performance.

Economy of Words
Douglas R. Holmes
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 2009, Vol. 24, No. 3: 381-419
Supplemental Material

Governmentality, Language Ideology, and the Production of Needs in Malagasy Conservation and Development
Paul W. Hanson
Cultural Anthropology May 2007, Vol. 22, No. 2: 244-284
Supplemental material

Anthropology and the New Technologies of Communication
Brian Keith Axel
Cultural Anthropology August 2006, Vol. 21, No. 3: 354-384

The Listening Subject of Japanese Modernity and His Auditory Double: Citing, Sighting, and Siting the Modern Japanese Woman
Miyako Inoue
Cultural Anthropology May 2003, Vol. 18, No. 2: 156-193

Languages of Sex and AIDS in Nepal: Notes on the Social Production of Commensurability
Stacy Leigh Pigg
Cultural Anthropology Nov. 2001, Vol. 16, No. 4: 481-541

"A Broke-Up Mirror": Representing Bajan in Print
Janina Fenigsen
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 1999, Vol. 14, No. 1: 61-87

Knowing One's Place: National Language and the Idea of the Local in Eastern Indonesia
Webb Keane
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 1997, Vol. 12, No. 1: 37-63

The Politics of Discursive Authority in Research on the "Invention of Tradition"
Charles L. Briggs
Cultural Anthropology Nov. 1996, Vol. 11, No. 4: 435-469

Preserving Indian Culture: Shaman Schools and Ethno-Education in the Vaupes, Colombia
Jean Jackson
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 1995, Vol. 10, No. 3: 302-329

Truth and Intentionality: An Ethnographic Critique
Alessandro Duranti
Cultural Anthropology May 1993, Vol. 8, No. 2: 214-245

Culture and Categorization in a Turn-of-the-Century Barcelona Elite
Gary W. McDonogh
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 1991, Vol. 6, No. 3: 323-345

Ethnic Protest and Social Planning: A Look at Basque Language Revival
Jacqueline Urla
Cultural Anthropology Nov. 1988, Vol. 3, No. 4: 379-394

The Art of Being Indirect: Talking about Politics in Brazil
Teresa Pires do Rio Caldeira
Cultural Anthropology Nov. 1988, Vol. 3, No. 4: 444-454

Talk and Real Talk: The Voices of Silence and the Voices of Power in American Family Life
Herve Varenne
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 1987, Vol. 2, No. 3: 369-394