Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality
03 Jul 2003-
TL;DR: In this article, the construction of modernity and its others in seventeenth-and eighteenth-century England is discussed. And the critical foundations of national epic: Hugh Blair, the Ossian controversy, and the rhetoric of authenticity.
Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Making language safe for science and society: from Francis Bacon to John Lock 3. Antiquaries and philologists: the construction of modernity and its others in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England 4. The critical foundations of national epic: Hugh Blair, the Ossian controversy, and the rhetoric of authenticity 5. Johann Gottfried Herder: language reform, das Volk, and the patriarchal state in eighteenth-century Germany 6. The Brothers Grimm: scientizing, textual production in the service of romantic nationalism 7. Henry Rowe school craft and the making of an American textual tradition 8. The foundation of all future researches: Franz Boas, George Hunt, Native American texts and the construction of modernity 9. Conclusion.
Citations
More filters
Book•
01 Jan 2005TL;DR: This engaging 2005 introduction offers a critical approach to discourse, written by an expert uniquely placed to cover the subject for a variety of disciplines, including linguistics, linguistic anthropology and the sociology of language.
Abstract: This engaging 2005 introduction offers a critical approach to discourse, written by an expert uniquely placed to cover the subject for a variety of disciplines. Organised along thematic lines, the book begins with an outline of the basic principles, moving on to examine the methods and theory of CDA (critical discourse analysis). It covers topics such as text and context, language and inequality, choice and determination, history and process, ideology and identity. Blommaert focuses on how language can offer a crucial understanding of wider aspects of power relations, arguing that critical discourse analysis should specifically be an analysis of the 'effects' of power, what power does to people, groups and societies, and how this impact comes about. Clearly argued, this concise introduction will be welcomed by students and researchers in a variety of disciplines involved in the study of discourse, including linguistics, linguistic anthropology and the sociology of language.
1,477 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that it is not enough to acknowledge that languages have been invented, nor that linguistic metalanguage constructs the world in particular ways; rather, we need to understand the interrelationships among metadiscursive regimes, language inventions, colonial history, language effects, alternative ways of understanding language, and strategies of disinvention and reconstitution.
Abstract: In this paper we argue that although the problematic nature of language construction has been acknowledged by a number of skeptical authors, including the recent claim in this journal (Reagan, 2004) that there is no such thing as English or any other language, this critical approach to language still needs to develop a broader understanding of the processes of invention. A central part of our argument, therefore, is that it is not enough to acknowledge that languages have been invented, nor that linguistic metalanguage constructs the world in particular ways; rather, we need to understand the interrelationships among metadiscursive regimes, language inventions, colonial history, language effects, alternative ways of understanding language, and strategies of disinvention and reconstitution. Any critical (applied) linguistic project that aims to deal with language in the contemporary world, however estimable its political intent may be, must also have ways of understanding the detrimental language effects i...
704 citations
Cites background from "Voices of Modernity: Language Ideol..."
...In their discussion of the work of Bruno Latour (1993) and Michel Foucault (1970), both of whom, in their different ways, sought to understand how it is that we came to be modern, Bauman and Briggs (2003) suggest that Latour “misses language, that is, the role of its construction as autonomous and the work of purification and hybridization this entails in making modernity”...
[...]
...…of Bruno Latour (1993) and Michel Foucault (1970), both of whom, in their different ways, sought to understand how it is that we came to be modern, Bauman and Briggs (2003) suggest that Latour “misses language, that is, the role of its construction as autonomous and the work of purification and…...
[...]
...Crucial to this project was Locke’s “positioning of language as one of the three ‘great provinces of the intellectual world’ that are ‘wholly separate and distinct’” (Bauman & Briggs, 2003, p. 299)....
[...]
...Second, in a parallel process, a linguistic metalanguage—or as we prefer, given its broader coverage, a metadiscuscursive regime (Bauman & Briggs, 2003, p. 299)—was also invented....
[...]
TL;DR: The authors summarizes how and in which ways those conditions have a commodifying effect on language and focuses on contemporary tensions between ideologies and practices of language in the shift from modernity to late modernity.
Abstract: Although language can always be analyzed as a commodity, its salience as a resource with exchange value has increased with the growing importance of language in the globalized new economy under the political economic conditions of late capitalism. This review summarizes how and in which ways those conditions have a commodifying effect on language and focuses on contemporary tensions between ideologies and practices of language in the shift from modernity to late modernity. It describes some of these tensions in key sites: tourism, marketing, language teaching, translation, communications (especially call centers), and performance art.
538 citations
Cites background from "Voices of Modernity: Language Ideol..."
...…of existing political economies rather than from the creation of radically new ones, commodification remains in tension with formerly dominant liberal tropes of language, culture, citizenship, and nation (Bauman & Briggs 2003, Budach et al. 2003, Alsagoff 2008, Wee 2008, Silva & Heller 2009)....
[...]
01 Jan 2007
TL;DR: The authors explored one particular set of approaches to the topic which seems particularly useful for understanding what bilingualism might mean today, in this context of social change, and how new understandings of it, as ideology and practice, also contribute to linguistic and social theory.
Abstract: Bilingualism is today as much a topic of academic research and public debate as it has ever been in the period since the end of World War II, as globalization and the new economy, migration and the expanded and rapid circulation of information, keep the question at the forefront of economic, political, social and educational concerns. The purpose of this book is to explore one particular set of approaches to the topic which seems particularly useful for understanding what bilingualism might mean today, in this context of social change, and how new understandings of it, as ideology and practice, also contribute to linguistic and social theory. In particular, the book aims to move the field of bilingualism studies away from a ‘common-sense’, but in fact highly ideologized, view of bilingualism as the coexistence of two linguistic systems, and to develop a critical perspective which allows for a better grasp on the ways in which language practices are socially and politically embedded. The aim is to move discussions of bilingualism away from a focus on the whole bounded units of code and community, and towards a more processual and materialist approach which privileges language as social practice, speakers as social actors and boundaries as products of social action.
354 citations
TL;DR: The translation rubric gathers together practices of transduction, (in)commensuration, circulation, enactment of reference, standardization, and various forms of... as mentioned in this paper argues that the translational process mediates among the domains of knowledge and action that the communications themselves play a role in separating.
Abstract: Current research finds the label “translation” an apt characterization of diverse communicative practices. This review argues that the term points to a whole family of semiotic processes. Writings on translation share a key insight: Different social worlds—including those of scholars—emerge through forms of communication in which practices, objects, genres, and texts are citable, recontextualizable. This generative process mediates among the domains of knowledge and action that the communications themselves play a role in separating. The connections and differentiations, as framed by metadiscourses, construct relations of power and politics. I seek to highlight a widening, productive conversation about translational practices among studies of science, in medical, legal, and linguistic anthropology, in research on Christianities, and in advocacy. The translation rubric gathers together practices of transduction, (in)commensuration, circulation, enactment of reference, standardizations, and various forms of...
291 citations
References
More filters
Book•
01 Jan 1983
TL;DR: In this paper, Anderson examines the creation and global spread of the 'imagined communities' of nationality and explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialisation of religious faiths, the decline of antique kingship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of vernacular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time.
Abstract: What makes people love and die for nations, as well as hate and kill in their name? While many studies have been written on nationalist political movements, the sense of nationality - the personal and cultural feeling of belonging to the nation - has not received proportionate attention. In this widely acclaimed work, Benedict Anderson examines the creation and global spread of the 'imagined communities' of nationality. Anderson explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialisation of religious faiths, the decline of antique kingship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of vernacular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time. He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was modularly adopted by popular movements in Europe, by the imperialist powers, and by the anti-imperialist resistances in Asia and Africa. This revised edition includes two new chapters, one of which discusses the complex role of the colonialist state's mindset in the development of Third World nationalism, while the other analyses the processes by which all over the world, nations came to imagine themselves as old.
25,018 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1962
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors presented a series of lectures with the following topics: Lecture I * Lecture II* Lecture III * Lectures IV* Lectures V * LectURE VI * LectURES VI * LII * LIII * LIV * LVI * LIX
Abstract: * Lecture I * Lecture II * Lecture III * Lecture IV * Lecture V * Lecture VI * Lecture VII * Lecture VIII * Lecture IX * Lecture X * Lecture XI * Lecture XII
15,492 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored the race and gender dimensions of violence against women of color and found that the experiences of women of colour are often the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourse of either feminism or antiracism.
Abstract: Over the last two decades, women have organized against the almost routine violence that shapes their lives. Drawing from the strength of shared experience, women have recognized that the political demands of millions speak more powerfully than the pleas of a few isolated voices. This politicization in turn has transformed the way we understand violence against women. For example, battering and rape, once seen as private (family matters) and aberrational (errant sexual aggression), are now largely recognized as part of a broad-scale system of domination that affects women as a class. This process of recognizing as social and systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual has also characterized the identity politics of people of color and gays and lesbians, among others. For all these groups, identity-based politics has been a source of strength, community, and intellectual development. The embrace of identity politics, however, has been in tension with dominant conceptions of social justice. Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in mainstream liberal discourse as vestiges of bias or domination-that is, as intrinsically negative frameworks in which social power works to exclude or marginalize those who are different. According to this understanding, our liberatory objective should be to empty such categories of any social significance. Yet implicit in certain strands of feminist and racial liberation movements, for example, is the view that the social power in delineating difference need not be the power of domination; it can instead be the source of political empowerment and social reconstruction. The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite- that it frequently conflates or ignores intra group differences. In the context of violence against women, this elision of difference is problematic, fundamentally because the violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class. Moreover, ignoring differences within groups frequently contributes to tension among groups, another problem of identity politics that frustrates efforts to politicize violence against women. Feminist efforts to politicize experiences of women and antiracist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color' have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur on mutually exclusive terrains. Al-though racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices. And so, when the practices expound identity as "woman" or "person of color" as an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling. My objective here is to advance the telling of that location by exploring the race and gender dimensions of violence against women of color. Contemporary feminist and antiracist discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. Focusing on two dimensions of male violence against women-battering and rape-I consider how the experiences of women of color are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourse of either feminism or antiracism... Language: en
15,236 citations
TL;DR: Methodological preliminaries of generative grammars as theories of linguistic competence; theory of performance; organization of a generative grammar; justification of grammar; descriptive and explanatory theories; evaluation procedures; linguistic theory and language learning.
12,586 citations