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This chapter discusses how naming or labeling a speech style and linking it to a social group is itself a political act, a creation of indexicality. As such, it allows for second orders of indexicality to emerge, that is, characterizations of the kind of people who recognize and name such speech styles. The writing of this book is itself therefore a multiply performative and socially creative act. The chapter also highlights the importance of perspective ‐‐ such as insider vs. outsider ‐‐ in analyzing stereotypes and humor in the mass mediated messages discussed in the book.

This chapter continues the exploration of the notions of construction, language symbolism, language conflict and language as proxy through an examination of paratexts and poetic compositions. Paratexts, such as titles, dedications, epigraphs and jacket copies have received little or no attention in relation to studying Arabic in the social world. This chapter argues that since most encounters with texts are mediated through these thresholds, scholars of language in the social world must pay attention to them for the information they yield on language ideology and the deployment of culture to do politics in society. The same is true of poetic compositions. This chapter further identifies the most productive tropes of language ideology in the modern world, together with their constitutive metaphors, in order to shed light on issues of language conflict and language anxiety. The tropes of crisis, fossilisation and war act as shorthand codes for the promulgation and recursive circulation of Arabic language ideology in society. As a given of this world, Arabic language ideology does its work without drawing attention to itself. Although the terrain dealt with in this chapter is historically and intellectually different from the one dealt with in Chapter Two, the conceptual unities underlying these two terrains reveal infra-structural continuities in the study of Arabic in the social world across time.

After a century and a half of French colonial rule, most adults in the Marquesan archipelago of French Polynesia now use both their Eastern Polynesian language 'Enana as well as a local variety of French, code-switching between them—sometimes intrasententially—across genres and contexts. This chapter explores the contradictions and effects of both official discourses and everyday socializing interactions in such a context of shifting languages. In particular, language socialization data from two families at two time periods a decade apart evidences the ways in which 'Enana are rejecting in practice the diglossic separation of their two codes, producing and reproducing instead the officially lamented but covertly prestigious charabia/sarapia to index their identities as both French and Polynesian.

Various perspectives have been brought to bear on the interrelationship of language, culture and identity within sociolinguistics, the sociology of language, social psychology and linguistic anthropology. This chapter is structured into five overarching sections, setting out a wider theoretical framework surrounding the nexus of language and social life. The chapter seeks firstly to define a conceptual framework for examining the interplay of language and sociocultural identity, before addressing the symbolic value of languages, essentialist conceptions of identity and the relationship between language and nationalism. It then introduces the concept of language ideologies and reviews theoretical understandings of how speakers’ culturally constituted beliefs and feelings about language can be seen to impact upon their use of different linguistic varieties. The chapter subsequently considers language socialisation, and focuses on how bilingual (immersion) education may interact with considerations of language and identity, ideologies and socialisation in diverse settings internationally. The framework established will thus conceptualise how these matters can help to frame the key themes and objectives of the book.

This chapter examines language ideologies and political discourse of the bilingual, indigenous Polynesian community of Easter Island, Chile, where the local Rapa Nui language has in the past been considerably marginalized by Spanish. It details how Rapa Nui speakers came to challenge this situation, first by pushing syncretic Rapa Nui–Spanish speech styles into public and political domains, and more recently, by constructing purist Rapa Nui speech styles. The chapter argues that the Rapa Nui deploy syncretic and purist speech styles as linguistic registers in political discourse to perform stances, and are voicing different but complimentary sets of values—those of democratic participation, and those of primordialism and ethnic boundary construction. The case study illustrates the ways in which the users of an endangered ethnolinguistic minority language have contributed to revalorizing and maintaining their language by establishing new linguistic registers, increasing the linguistic heterogeneity of their language.

This chapter pursues the twin themes of language ideology and cultural politics by considering issues of textual identity and language choice in hybrid texts. As understood here, hybrid texts (prose fiction) are texts written by authors of Arab origin – descent or heritage – not in Arabic, but in another language, such as French, English or Hebrew, among Palestinians in Israel. These texts are assigned to different cultural locations, which may be defined by the dominant language of the text, the background of the author or in a third space or twilight zone between these two worlds. One of the main arguments of this chapter revolves around the dialogic nature of these texts in the linguistic sphere, in the sense that the overt/present language of the text always recalls its covert/absent language. The interplay between languages, their ideologies and cultural politics is enacted through this dialogism. Language symbolism and language as proxy are used as the main tools for investigating the above issues. This chapter reveals that hybrid texts are another rich site for exploring language in the social world and never more so than when conflict, whether in reality or as memory, is simmering in the background.

This chapter considers the role that participants’ ideological and attitudinal stances play in determining their current language practices. Language practices among former-GME students – both the overall extent and nature of interviewees’ Gaelic use – were demonstrated in the previous chapter to be rather limited among the majority of participants, with past socialisation experiences emerging as a key consideration in interviewee accounts, questionnaire responses, and statistical correlations. Building on that understanding, this chapter presents an analysis of interviewees’ language ideologies with a view to understanding how interviewees’ beliefs and linguistic identities may also influence their language practices. Ideologies are particularly examined in respect of appropriate Gaelic use, the wider Gaelic community, and the perceived relevance of Gaelic for cultural identities. A quantitative perspective is then brought to bear on these considerations using online attitudinal survey data.

Language ideology about Tongan lexical honorifics, or lea faka 'eiki, “chiefly language”, has changed over the past 200 years. The number of levels of honorification described, and some of the specific lexical items associated with each level, have remained stable. However, under the impact of British colonization through Methodist missionization, the conceptualization of who is indexed by the use of honorifics has changed significantly. Most notably, the Tui'i Tonga, who was both a sacred and a secular leader, has been replaced by the King as the target of the higher level of honorification. The honorific system was caught up ideologically in a shift from a Tongan traditional hierarchy to a Tongan secular modern nation state hierarchy. Ideologically, this shift was heavily influenced by the European Protestant concern, to create a separation of church and state, which happened elsewhere as well—e.g., Korea and Japan.

This final chapter draws together the principal research findings presented in the book, providing a synthesis of key conclusions in respect of the overarching research questions initially outlined in chapter 1. The discussion presented will relate these findings to previously formulated theories of language revitalisation, and the possible role of education in language revitalisation (as addressed in chapters 2–3). The chapter firstly offers a summary of participants’ present-day Gaelic use, before drawing together findings from the qualitative and quantitative analyses of informants’ ideologies and attitudes. Such speaker perceptions are discussed in relation to Gaelic language use, sociocultural identities, and attitudes to GME as an education system generally. Finally, this chapter draws together the principal conclusions of the book’s principal empirical chapters, with a view to assessing how participants’ beliefs, attitudes and ideologies concerning Gaelic impact on language practices, and on likely future prospects for the maintenance of Gaelic in Scotland. A number of recommendations for activists and policymakers attempting to revitalise minority languages internationally are then presented.

Since gaining independence in 1922, the Irish Government’s pro-Irish language policy has gone through several stages of development, moving from openly coercive maintenance strategies in designated areas (Gaeltacht) and obligatory Irish-medium schooling throughout the country, to a contemporary stance where the state sees Irish speakers as customers who require services. Policy for the majority Anglophone population is now based on a heritage role for Irish. Despite the evolution of state and community policies, some early ideological stances have remained at the core of decision-making. In the first decade of the twenty-first century the state has further reassessed its positions. The power of ideologically driven state language policy has inevitably produced mismatches which may paradoxically have further endangered the future of Irish as a community language. This chapter focuses on the stance of the monolingual English-speaking minority and inactive Irish speakers in Gaeltacht regions.

The opening chapter sets the scene with respect to ways in which language ideologies evolve discursively. The argument is sociocognitive. At the bottom of all discursive activity lie conceptual metaphors of language and other related abstract concepts such as the “nation-state”. Possible statements derived from these conceptual metaphors form the stuff of which culturally valid myths are constructed, and these drive the construction of hegemonic discourses on language. As no discursive formations can be free of ideology (in the political and nonpolitical sense of the term), hegemonic discourses will eventually lead to the formation of discourse archives, in which certain things may be said (i.e., are “true”) and others not, and it is through the power of archives to shape our construction of the language worlds in which we live that canonical “histories” appear. A further argument here is that canons, linguistic or literary, must be challenged.

This chapter investigates the nature of ideological transformation among Wangkatha language consultants in Western Australia, highlighted in the wake of Native Title legislation designed to determine the veracity of Aboriginal claims to land rights. It identifies a schism between the actual and perceived benefits of successful claims, and explores the role of language as it is used by expert witnesses and community members. On-the-ground perceptions about how linguistic practices may be interpreted by a land claim judge influence practice and, potentially, ideology, with a transition from a dialect mesh to an ideologically bounded mosaic, from the prestige of language ownership to the power of language proficiency, and from extreme individual multilingualism to language guardianship. Proficiency in an unchanged, well-bounded traditional language is simultaneously venerated and guarded while traditional ideologies about linguistic identity are overshadowed, at least in the political and legal context.

This chapter provides an introduction into the main types of manipulated languages, e.g., play language, honorifics, avoidance languages, etc., and explores socio-registers in Africa. The chapter also presents information on the language ideologies on which these derived languages are based.

This chapter charts an ideology of linguistic difference, shaping how Korowai of West Papua have evaluated Indonesian over the first quarter-century of their contact with it. Their naming of this intrusive lingua franca as “demon language” (where “demon” contrasts paradigmatically with “human”) is one of many practices by which Korowai emphasize that the new language is simultaneously strange and parallel to their own language. After describing the social history of Indonesian, in Papua and locally, the chapter examines speech practices in which Korowai associate Indonesian with a perspective on the world that is alien to their own geographic and cultural position, but that is a deformed counterpart to their position. The chapter discusses how bilingual Korowai increasingly use Indonesian in conversation with each other, drawing on the language's artful potential for indexing strangeness and parallelism at the same time.

This chapter begins with the claim that language ideologies stand in complex relationships to ideologies of material exchange. It argues that in Melanesia, contemporary changes in language ideology have been in important respects shaped by transformations in traditional ideologies of exchange. Among the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea, such linked changes have arisen in the wake of conversion to Christianity. Changes in linguistic and exchange ideologies have come to the fore in debates over the practice of charismatic Christian rituals of Holy Spirit possession. This chapter analyzes these rituals and the debates that surround them to show how these transformations have come about.

Losses associated with language endangerment need not be restricted to individual language systems but can also involve the disappearance of distinctive language ecologies. This chapter explores the language dynamics of the Lower Fungom region of Northwest Cameroon, which offers an extreme case of linguistic diversity, from an areal and ethnographically informed perspective. Key aspects of local language ideologies are explored in detail, and it is argued that in this area languages symbolize relatively ephemeral political formations and, hence, should not be taken as reflections of deeply rooted historical identities. This conclusion has significance both regarding how research projects in the area should be structured as well as for what it might mean to ‘preserve’ the languages of a region that historically appears to have been characterized by frequent language loss and emergence, conditioned by changes in territorial and political configurations.