TOPIC: LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES
Blogging / Interactive reflection (BLOG) (20%)
- In this section you will write a 300-500 word reaction segment to each week’s material. You may talk about: (1) what you found interesting in the material covered that week and why, (2) what you found challenging, (3) how it ties to your research interests, (4) whether you’ve read related material, (5) whether it reminds you of real life situations, etc.
- (Or) You may submit a ‘linguistic artifact’ or interesting piece of linguistic evidence (this may be an image, a YouTube video, a news article on a language-related issue) that you feel relates to the classroom material as part of your weekly reflection (300 – 500 words). Along with this artifact, you are expected to provide a description on why you believe that artifact ties to discussed material.
Reflection pieces are to be left in the “comment section” below, including your full name and word count. Please make one entry [no duplicates]. The deadline for each weekly assignment is Saturday at 5:00pm of that week.
Topics in Sociolinguistics 
Since a little ape in the African savannah, started making meaningful sounds and gestures, the dawn of language arrived. When the process was completed, at the moment that the best prototype began to go into mass production, humanity was born and realized that they “invented” a new tool, for good or bad. There is no doubt that the ability of language creation is the masterpiece of evolutionary biology, but as with everything human, it has that dark side called ideology: how to separate “us” from the “them”. All of us fall for this, it’s a primal instinct. Gratefully, some humans are able to recognize the demon and exorcise it. This is the great thing in studying linguistics, along with all related fields. It gives perspective in a dispassionate and disciplined way, because it gives understanding of the processes involved in acquisition, change and the beauty of infinite variety that is this world. Last week, I was reading in El Nuevo Dia an interview being offered to Esmeralda Santiago, the celebrated Puerto Rican author of “Cuando yo era puertorriqueña”. The questions were truly disgusting, I nearly threw up my breakfast. She was asked whether she fell “contaminated” culturally by living in New York, did she still considered herself a “true” Puerto Rican (whatever that means), if she felt that she was losing her identity and heritage because she is bilingual and all kinds of crappy, silly notions that I personally considered Neo-Nazi nationalism. She answered gracefully no to every question, stating that Puerto Rican is more than mere language. Lets’ not forget that Spanish is the language of the conqueror in Latin America and English in North America. What about the Native American languages that are on the verge of extinction nowadays, thanks to the “defensa del español y la puertorriqueñidad” pontificated by stupid, narrow-minded, ignorant and undesirable politicians (and “intellectuals” too. In the States is a similar argument)? Do these cultures do not count or count only as a footnote in history and as an exotic curiosity listed in WALS or APiCS? It is a sad thing that more than half of the world’s 7,000 languages are destined to disappear in the next 100 years, thanks to Spanish, English, French, Chinese, German, etc. This is not preserving heritage, this is linguistic genocide and these languages should be documented and preserved at all costs. It’s part of who we are, each and every one of us. The South African constitution recognizes ELEVEN official languages, being English the one to be used exclusively in case of a major political crisis (go ahead, look it up in the internet). If these people can arrive at such a brilliant consensus (considering that some still view them as little more than savages with bones in their hair), why we cannot build a linguistic pluralistic society and give everyone the chance to express themselves? There are realities in the world of commerce, science and diplomacy but it should not be used as an excuse to erase a language. The same applies to the tragic erasure we see in Rwanda and all in the name of language identity. (521 words)
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Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness: Raciolinguistic Ideologies across Communicative Contexts by Jonathan Daniel Rosa (https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jola.12116)
I read this journal article for my undergraduate sociolinguistics class and I decided to share it with you guys because it has to do with this week’s topic. In this journal article, Jonathan Daniel Rosa, talks about language ideologies in regards to standardization. Standardization is the process of making something conform to a standard. Rosa, looks at language standardization ideologies and ideologies of languagelesness and how these influence each other and how people see language. Often times, these ideologies contribute to the creation of what is considered correct or incorrect. Rosa also discusses language competence/incompetence and language legitimacy/illegitimacy.
Language ideologies can also creat discrimination because of these “standards” that are characterized as better than other varieties. Like mentioned in this week’s reading, “people act according to ideologically constructed representations.” These ideologies are putting labels on people and putting them into “boxes” because of their use of language. These boxes could be anywhere from socioeconomic class to geographical location. Language ideologies are constructed and later shared creating stereotypes or what the way you speak says about you.
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There are a few main points Irvine and Gal make in their paper about language ideologies. First is that no language ideology occurs on its own. This is because when language contacts occurs their respective cultures and world views engage in linguistic communication. Another point they make in their paper is about language evolutions, where it goes through three processes: iconization, erasure and fractural recursivity. In their paper they use the Nguni and Khoi languages as examples of this process of language evolution. In a more concise way is:
Iconization where click consonants were perceived as icons. Erasure took place when the complex relationship between the two languages clipped the clicking consonants were an integral part of each other. Fractural recursivity is seen in the was the distinction between two languages were used to enhance the distinction between the two modes of everyday communication.
“A more pop culture example about this phenomena is the use of accents in animated films to produce a more desirable linguistic effect. An example of an animated film would be the Lion King, how the British accent is given to the villain, Scar. This became and iconization of the accent because they associated the intelligence and sophistication to increase his image. Then you have the process of erasure, is the incompatibility between Mufasa and Scar, they are brothers yet Mufasa has an American accent but this doesn’t really matter because they are talking lions in an African savannah. Then you have the fracteral recursivity is to see the effect the accent does which is to that these characters elements are used to enhance them by using a different accent.” (Mapue, 2011)
That example is taken from an article written in https://ezinearticles.com/?Iconization,-Erasure,-and-Fractal-Recursivity&id=6578532
This article was able help me understand better the process of language evolution. I was very confused about this process and seeing someone use a more pop culture inclined example was able to visualize it better. And I hope it does the same for you too.
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The chapter on Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation by Judith Irvine and Susan Gal was very interesting. It rung quite true when they wrote that “Linguistic ideologies are held not only by the immediate participants in a local sociolinguistic system.” It is intriguing to see or try to perceive what ideologies the linguists we are reading have towards language and its evolution etc. Like Irvine and Gal mention “There is no ‘view from nowhere’, no gaze that is not positioned.” so it is always important to understand what view the writer has in order to understand what they hope to teach the reader so that you don’t misinterpret the researcher’s hard work.
Being a Puerto Rican you are quite consciously immersed in language ideologies so this is a topic close to home, which is why it interests me greatly. However, it was very fun to see examples from other countries. I had heard about different forms to show respect through language, but never one as complex as the hlonipha. The fact that as a culture they have to replace certain syllables when it pertains to people of respect is really interesting and so crazy to think about when comparing it to our own language practices. It was also very impressive to see how they appraised and appropriated the linguistic practices of another language in order to make up a new way to deal with the hlonipha. As Puerto Ricans, we don’t have the necessity they had to make following their formality practices easier, but this scenario nevertheless reminds me of how much we have borrowed and made our own from English. For me, that practice seems completely normal, and an expected consequence of colonization, but it is still a very divisive language ideology that each Puerto Rican has different feelings about. Even then, it is something that can not be stopped because language evolution is inevitable and something we should strive to see as interesting even if it is something you don’t necessarily understand. (334 words)
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In “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation” Irvine and Gal emphasize how language ideologies are held by everyone including speakers and researchers. Personally, this idea was easy to accept as we are all capable of forming morally and politically influenced opinions regarding anything, including an aspect so closely associated to culture and our conceptualization of the world such as language. In addition, the authors also discuss the act of linguistic differentiation in research throughout the years and how language ideologies influence it. They define linguistic differentiation as “the ideas with which participants and observers frame their understandings onto people, events, and activities that are significant to them” (Irvine and Gal 2000, p.35). Considering this definition, since linguistic differentiation is based on ideas, it is not surprising to see how language ideology can fuel differentiation.
I found it both interesting and, in some instances, shocking to see how ideologies impacted observation of linguistic phenomena. Just like Irvine and Gal argued, there is no neutral stance while studying anything, even language. There is truth to this statement and as it is explored in the three cases presented in the text reactions are different depending on the predominant mentality of the time and the situation being examined.
The ideologies from academics back then on the perception of click phonemes in Nguni languages made me feel strong disagreement. Languages with clicks were seen as more animalistic than human. The example brought up in the reading show that there was a hope for these communities to drop clicks in order to become more civilized. This ideology is a blatant example of the Eurocentrism of the time that dominated intellectual thought and conversation. However, the evidence of language ideology is not limited to the researchers but also the speakers of Nguni languages. These communities chose to incorporate clicks into their languages to avoid disrespecting those of higher social status. Clicks were a tool to replace words that came close to the names of important members within Nguni speaking communities. From all three cases this one particularly caught my attention because of the difference in perception between Nguni speakers and European researchers over clicks in a language.
The other two cases linked language to national and cultural identity. In the second case as the regions of Africa were being divide into nations, language played a huge factor in demarcating national divisions. However, Senegalese languages were so similar, it proved challenging to see speaker groups as members of a nation and began to be addressed as tribes. There was a difficulty in performing accurate linguistic mapping since languages spoken sometimes differed with the official language. On the other hand, in the third case, complications surged from attempting to standardize the spoken language of Macedonia. People in the region were often multilingual usually for utilitarian purposes. As efforts for standardizing languages and categorizing groups of speakers into corresponding cultures and ethnicities increased, attempts became troublesome because of this widespread multilingualism. An occurrence that would not be considered an issue nowadays was a hassle back then because of the understanding of language as an inextricable part of national identity.
-Melissa Fuentes (Word count: 518 words)
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while I was reading the material about Language Ideologies and Language differentiation by Irvine and Gal, it was inevitable to think about how these concepts are reflected in my own life experience. The concept of Language Ideology involves a series of beliefs establishes in society. For its part, Language Differentiation is about how people conceives themselves and others. I have reflected on how the processes of linguistic differentiation have occurred in my homeland, Colombia.
Colombia is a country of “regions”. Each region has its own customs, accents and particular idiosyncrasy. Some historians have explained this phenomenon in the letters of the relive. The Colombian geography is distinguished by being irregular, with high mountains and mountain ranges. This characteristic caused communities to develop in isolation, with little or no contact between them, resulting in different dialects and ways of living.
I am from the Caribbean region of Colombia, People from that region are called “costeños”. There is a process of Iconization that comes with that title. We have particular linguistic features in our speech such as, the omission of letters, particular terms and a tendency to speak quickly and loudly. We are often criticized for our particular way of speaking and I think this has contributed to build the general belief that we are not very hardworking and even lazy. On the other hand, we can see fractal Recursivity in the constant with people from the cold weather cities. People from central region are called “cachacos” and they are seen as elegant and well educated. They also have particular features in their speech, they speak slowly and they frequently use lofty words. These traits feed an idea of superiority and intellectualism.
The general social image that we have, neglects the linguistic and cultural wealth of the region. The Caribbean region has different dialects for instance, in La Guajira people use the pronoun “vos” instead of “tu”. There are also root languages, that has been ignored, such as the Wayüunaike of the Wayuu community, the Palenquero, the only Creole language derived from Spanish in the world and the Papiamento, Creole derived from English, spoken in San Andrés. There we can see the process of Erasure. All these processes and the support this particular image has contributed to the concentration of the economic and political power in just a particular region and have helped normalize discriminatory practices, which exacerbate regionalism in Colombia
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This week’s reading on Language ideologies and differentiation has been the most interesting to me because it is something that I can personally identify with. I was born in Puerto Rico but left the island at the young age of five. At age fourteen, I decided to move back with my grandparents. I was put in a bilingual school because of my deficiency in Spanish. Previous to this, I had never taken a Spanish class before. As I started to learn the Spanish language I made multiple mistakes. These mistaken were not interpreted by my peers as a learning process but rather I was labeled as bruto (dumb) for making common mistakes . Similar to the Jibaro, which omits the final /-s/ or adds /rr/ I was categorized as been less for speaking properly. Irvine and Gal (2000) provide a similar example in there paper of the click consonants of the Nguni people. Observers compared the Nguni language to those of animal sounds. Therefore, they were seen as subhuman and degraded. Although, we (Puerto Rico) do not go as far as to compare to animals for not speaking properly, we do label them as been less than others.
Can someone consciously choose to speak differently depending on who is around them? This is a question that I have always had, and wish to find that factors that influence the answers of such. Thursdays discussion on how Ricky Rossello would purposefully use the omission of the final /-s/ in order to identify with the public. As Irvine and Gal (2000) stated, language ideologies are not only for social positioning and moral or belief system but also political reasons. Rossello choose to use certain forms of language when addressing the public and probably used a more “formal” way of speaking when he was around others of higher position. I have always wondered if we consciously choose to speak a certain way because during my first semester as a Teaching Assistant (TA) I had students tell me that I spoke differently when I was outside the classroom to when I was teaching. I did not do this on purpose, however, I continued to do this even after I was informed of the way I spoke depending who was around.
(376 Words)
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Iconization, fractal recursivity, and erasure these linguistics aspects are what make of a language entirely of ideologies and believes, these constructions are presented in many social aspects. For instance, many people around the world iconize French as the language of love, it could be because of its grammar or the most probable argument is because of their pronunciation, that makes people think the idea of romanticism, it means that we iconize French because is a believes that became a symbol, in this case, of love or romance. According to Irvine and Gal, the Iconization involves a transformation of the significant relationship between linguistic features or varieties and social images with which they are linked. As the previous example that social image is the ideology of French in its intrinsic meaning to society.
On the other hand, the fractal recursivity involves the projection of an opposition, sailent at some level of relationship, onto some other levels. A very good example is in the case of Colombia, there is a community of Palenqueros that still have customs from slaves in the colonialism, that community lives in Palenque, which is the name of the town and at the same time is the name of the smalls groups of slaves in the colonial era. That group have its own culture, values, language, and religion, but is the representation of what Colombia is, a country that comes from slavery and indigenous, that culture of Palenque also identify with the rest of the country because form this culture derive the Caribbean and the Pacific region, which have their own cultures that are identified with Palenque.
The last one is the erasure that is the process in which ideologies simplify social complexity, the example of this process is the minorities that are ignored in order to fix the ideology of something, In the Colombian case, indigenous is the population forgotten in the country, they represent our culture, but they are not considered as part of the society to the point that there few indigenous in Colombia, and this minority is most of the time hiding in the mountains in order to be peaceful against cities’ pressure of eradicating their culture
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After reading “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation” by Judith Irvine and Susan Gal I could intertwine the information that was described with what we call colonization in the context of Puerto Rico. As mentioned in this article icon are all of the beliefs that society has adopted and that everyone follows but do so, other beliefs has also banished in order to comply with society’s status. One great example to describe these definitions is with the word “colonization” in the context of Puerto Rico. In order to have for the colonizer satisfy and impose their beliefs is by eradicating the colonized beliefs and for them to adopt their culture. In actuality, we do know that Puerto Ricans have adopted beliefs from the United States. But, at some point there are no registers where we can think about of the past culture that was in Puerto Rico. In this case, that past culture in a certain level was erased from the citizens making them either have an internal conflict of their identity or just accept the colonizers imposition. This made me think of past years when the Department of Education wanted to eradicate Puerto Rico’s history course but still keeping the one from the United States in which I see it in a form of indirect imposition of another culture. The goal is to have full dominance of those who are defenseless (colonized). I also see this article in terms of fractal recursivity as something that may happen in a lower or larger scale in different points of the world. An example of such language rejection from the colonizer in Puerto Rico is when Puerto Ricans leave the island in search for a better life yet they use their mother tongue in the United States as a sign of patriarchy. Then people generalize that those that left do not speak English because they do not dominate the language but in reality they do dominate their second language. They just use their target language in different contexts that is meant to be used. Furthermore, this example not necessarily happens in the states it also happens in Puerto Rico at the English course where students just use English because is a special context, otherwise, they will stick to the mother tongue. Thereby, not only this can happen in a smaller scale such as a classroom but also in a larger scale such as socializing with individuals.
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The topic of language ideologies is, in many ways, related to philosophy. The microcosm that exists within each individual, the thoughts, desires, and beliefs that make up a person, are absolutely related to language and philosophy. Language pervades every aspect of society: a functioning society needs for every one of its integrants to be able to understand each other in order to achieve common goals. Similarly, thought is influenced by language, for being exposed to a specific language might impart certain ideas or customs that might not exist in another language. If many people live in the same area, follow similar rituals and customs, share a political or religious belief, etc, then that group of people share similar language ideologies, though these are both micro and macro in regards to the individual and the group to which every person belongs. All these linguistic ideologies (or LI, for the sake of brevity), are founded from something, “There is no “view from nowhere”, no gaze that is not positioned.” (Gal and Irvine 36) which might be understood as the origin for all LI. Differentiations begin to shape and form the boundaries from which one person’s LI ends and another begins. This specific idea of differentiations reminded me of another philosophical concept: l’existence précède l’essence, by Sartre. To simplify the idea, which translates to “existence precedes essence”, first you exist and then do you discover yourself. This might be related to the concept of differentiation, because, to draw the boundaries of the self, one must recognize what constitutes you vs what does not, in other words, you must have an understanding of what makes you different than others. This concept of the other is ultimately based on one’s own perception of themselves, of their own LI, of their own essence. Regarding these boundaries, this differentiation, we must also consider fractal recursivity. Fractals are a mathematic idea related to the repetition of patterns, a topic which personally fascinates me. Fractal recursivity might be interpreted similarly to differentiation, for the boundaries which make me vs the boundaries that make others, which are composed of values, practices, and language, are equally important in both concepts. These differences need to be visible enough so as to be able to create a distinction between the two individuals. How people use language, for example, is not absolutely set in stone. Language use is as fluid as LI itself, and so are the barriers that determine who I am vs who you are.
(Word Count 413)
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This week’s text focused on the idea that “there is no ‘view from nowhere,’ no gaze that is not positioned” (2000, p. 36). In other words, each one of us has a specific ideology about language that shapes both the way we use it and the way we perceive others depending on how they use it. An important point made early in the text is that “it is always easier to detect positioning in the views of others, such as the linguists and ethnographers or an earlier era, than in one’s own” (Irvine & Gal, 2000, p. 36). A few semesters ago, I took a course called “Current Approaches to Linguistic Theory” with Dr. Mazak. During this class, I was forced to accept the negative language ideologies I was reproducing by using phrases that seemed “standard” to me. This process was difficult but necessary and is one we must all go through. We sometimes put a lot of focus on how people in power blatantly reproduce negative language ideologies without stopping the consider the ones we might be reproducing in a more subtle and standardized way.
In order to recognize our own language ideologies, it might be useful to consider the three semiotic processes mentioned: iconization, fractal recursivity, and erasure. Out of these, fractal recursivity is the one I found most challenging, and thus the one I will have to continue reading on in order to understand. The one I found most interesting was erasure. It reminded me, once again, of one of the example I had previously provided of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, where they based their instructional methods on their need to “kill the Indian in him, and save the man” (Pratt 1892, as cited in Navarro-Rivera, 2006, p. 225). Unfortunately, these types of ideas haven’t stayed that far in the past, as there are still remedial programs in the US, for example, that view students’ bilingualism negatively, and attempt to “fix” their language use by forcing them to reinforce their English proficiency, while basically ignoring their first language.
The consequences of language ideologies are not only found in the creation of detrimental educational policies, however. Ideologies such as the ones presented in one of the examples on the text, which stated: “To these observers and the European readers of their reports, such iconic comparisons suggested (before our more enlightened days, at least) that the speakers of languages with clicks were in some way subhuman or degraded” (Irvine & Gal, 2000, p. 40) or “‘As a French missionary remarked (Lamoirse 1873), ‘The marabouts [Muslin clerics] have invented this false adage: whoever speaks Sereer cannot enter heaven’” (as cited in p. 52), are still reproduced in other forms to this day. For example, take this statement regarding Puerto Rican Spanish: ““Another important fact that must not be overlooked is that a majority of the people of this island do not speak pure Spanish. Their language is a patois almost unintelligible to the natives of Barcelona and Madrid” (as cited in Osuna, 1923, p. 190) and, even more recently: “The main problem here is that you have a community that does not have good command of Spanish. If they are deficient in Spanish, how do you pretend they are going to become fluent in a second language?” (“Puerto Rico aims to become fully bilingual by 2022”, 2012). These ideologies have consequences on people’s self-image, causing them to sometimes limit their own potential. An example may be found in Briceño et al. (2018), where bilingual individuals “…questioned their ability to become bilingual teachers” (p. 215).
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Ernesto Calderon reflection:It would take an infinite amount of time to talk about Linguistic Ideologies and linguistic representations. The different language varieties and ideas or ideologies that shape the way in which we perceive the world at an individual level, ideally would be a positive thing. It could lead to so many exchanges of thoughts, culture, point of views with the potential to improve our narrow view of the world outside our own walls. However, we do not live in an ideal world and not all ideologies are seen as equal. For the sake of this blog I will stay within the frame of the consequences of using language and ideologies as a tool or weapon in the field of politics.
We are entering elections season and each political party are making their pitch to voters. After going though different sets of studies and data collection, goals get set to reach a certain number of voters and maps are drawn to represent them. But why if we are talking about people from the same country whom the majority speak the same language and live very close of each other gets drawn into different maps? Because to conserve their ideologies of power and control, a small group of people are forced to consciously enforce certain tactics and policies which will sympathize some and marginalize others. These maps become nothing more than symbols of division based solely on the language you speak, the color of your skin, your social status and so on. The represent a reality and perspective which it’s out of your control and doesn’t represent you. The sad part is that people of power, in this case politicians, are well aware of not only this practice but also the chocking and negative consequences it will follow. This could be seen in simple cases of a political party choosing wisely and selecting different politicians to deliver the same campaign message to different maps with the goal of having someone closer to their ideologies. For example; Sending an African American, a Latino, a White American and or someone with a certain religious belief to areas on the maps with similar ideologies or language. And that’s fair game, truth be told, there’s a lot diversity in the world and finding different ways and the right people to deliver a message in order to provide a service, when done correctly it could provide positive outcomes. But what when the extreme happens?
There’s a shooting in Texas and not surprisingly the victims are in their majority members of a community with a similar ideology. Suddenly this scenario happens.
1. The reality of that community is that they are being targeted for having a different ideology or using another language. They need measures such as gun control to feel safe and move on with their lives.
2. The reality of the gun’s seller companies is that, gun control regulations would mean loss of money. They need measures to keep their sells at a high level.
3. The reality of the government in charge from a specific political party is that to win and keep in power they require votes and money. To gain money, they need the support from the gun’s seller companies. To gain votes, they need the support from all the Texas gun owners. So, they shift the blame to mental health issues. This decision thought and decided based on interest.
For the selected few (government), to maintain its ideology, they side with the group of people that helps them the most. This is a process represents the use of Erasure as a tool or weapon to ignore aspects of a particular reality in order to fit the needs of another which is deemed correct and backed by a set of manufactured data. This is done consciously and aware that the decisions made put lives at risks. However, the trade is often made in favor of the people closer to the beliefs of the powerful, who share common ideologies and speak the same languages. There are multiple similar cases with different consequences such as they extinction of languages, animal species, cultures which go through the same process of Erasure due to its ideologies and linguistic representations. But again, its elections season so one only has to turn the tv and see for yourself.
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