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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.

Swift's Proposal is generally accepted by most scholars to represent a genuine complaint, addressed to the Earl of Oxford, about declining standards of English and the need to introduce a language academy. However, this analysis of the Proposal ignores the fact that Swift was one of the greatest satirists in the English language, and it ignores the wider sociocultural and sociopolitical framework in which the text was published. A detailed reading of the Proposal is presented to place it alongside other satirical texts. The interpretation challenges canonical readings of the Proposal and opens it up for more interesting interpretative possibilities. The chapter argues that commentators should consider this text and other texts within the complaint tradition more carefully to focus on the language myths in assessing their sociohistorical significance. The danger of not doing so is the construction of another modern myth guiding the discourse of modern sociohistorical linguistics.

The traditional account of the analytic/synthetic distinction is based on a naive folk theory of language. This chapter explains how that folk theory supported a particular version of the analytic/synthetic distinction. It then provides alternatives to the folk picture and argues that we should distinguish four different kinds of meaning: character, content, reference determiner, and referent. This more fine-grained picture allows us to reconstruct analyticity as truth in virtue of reference determiner, which is more easily defended against the old arguments against analyticity. This move also solves the worry about equating analytic sentences with those that express necessary truths, and allows us to account for the status of the contingent analytic and the necessary a posteriori.

Definitions have often thought to be crucial to the debate over the analytic/synthetic distinction. They have seemed to provide clear examples of synonymy which are well-entrenched in scientific and mathematical practice. This chapter re-examines the properties of definitions in the light of our rejection of the Language Myth. The resulting account allows us both to explain Quine's sometimes puzzling views on definition, and to defend the analytic/synthetic distinction against his doctrine of the transience of definition.

Two myths constructed in the latter half of the nineteenth century dominated the discourse archive determining the canonical “history of English” till late in the twentieth century. The first of these is the “myth of the ancient language,” and Chapter 2 represents a deconstruction of it. The idea of a “Beowulf poet” and “lost” earlier manuscripts of the text form an important part of this myth. Kiernan's work on the extant Beowulf manuscript supports his theory that the manuscript at present in the British Museum is the one and only manuscript. However, in his plausible alternative reading of the data, he still insists on talking about the “Beowulf poet”, which this chapter also attempts to deconstruct. The message here is that the attempt to establish a linguistic pedigree by tracing the “line” of the language as far back as possible is ultimately an ideological discourse supporting sociocultural and political ends.