NOTES
6.4 LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES
Pragmatics and politics 169 Whenever there is a contrast between SE and BE, the language of the lames is shifted dramatically to SE. In many cases, this leads to a close alignment between the Lames and white non-standard vernaculars.
(Labov 1972c: 98) However, as Labov points out, these ‘lames’ are quite often consultants of linguists and anthropologists, because these ‘marginal men ... are detached from their own society far enough to be interested and accessible to the language, the problems and preoccupations of the investigator’. As consultants they cannot but give ‘an inaccurate or misleading account of the vernacular culture’ (Labov 1972c: 110). It is evident that this is an important insight for anthropological, linguistic and pragmatic research:
[A]n accurate description of a language will demand some knowledge of the social structure of its users. We must be able to find our way through the various intersecting patterns of the normally heterogeneous society if we are to locate the most uniform and consistent forms of the grammar, since an understanding of variation requires a realistic assessment of the invariance that accompanies it.
(Labov 1972c: 108) This knowledge is only gained by studying the speakers’ actual use of language in social interactions.
The deficit versus difference hypothesis controversy resulted in innovative methodological tools and theoretical as well as practical insights which are extremely important for present-day research on endangered languages and efforts to revitalize them. Projects that aim to document and revitalize endangered languages require descriptive competence and sociolinguistic – or, if you like, ethnographic and pragmatic – expertise to gain insights into why a language is endangered and what effects this process has on the speakers’ attitudes towards their language. This knowledge puts linguists engaged in these endeavours into the position to decide whether there are chances to reverse language shift in progress that will otherwise lead to language loss. The attitudes of speakers of endangered language are very much shaped by their own language ideologies and by those of others (see Senft 2010c). In the next subsection of this chapter we will have a closer look at language ideologies and their implications for research in pragmatics.
170 Understanding pragmatics
and Bambi Schieffelin review ‘the full range of scholars’ notions of ideology: from seemingly neutral cultural conceptions of language to strategies for maintaining social power, from unconscious ideology read from speech practices by analysts to the most conscious native-speaker explanations of appropriate language behavior’ (Woolard and Schieffelin 1994: 58).
In his recent monograph on Ideology in Language Use Jef Verschueren elaborates on the concept of ideology as follows: He points out that ‘... ideology is associated with underlying patterns of meaning, frames of interpretation, world views, or forms of everyday thinking and explanation.’ For him a language ideology ‘is a fully integrated sociocultural-cognitive phenomenon’ that represents its speakers’ ‘general way of thinking about language’, which ‘involves a specific form of intersubjectivity or sharing ..., as well as affect and stance’ (Verschueren 2012: 7ff.). He defines the concept of ideology (in general) in four main theses (printed in bold in the original) which run as follows:
We can define as ideological any basic pattern of meaning or frame of interpretation bearing on or involved in (an) aspect(s) of social ‘reality’ (in particular in the realm of social relations in the public sphere), felt to be commonsensical, and often functioning in a normative way.
(Verschueren 2012: 10) In an additional comment to this thesis Verschueren points out that
the common-sense ... nature of ideological meaning is manifested in the fact that it is rarely questioned ... Its not being questioned means that the meaning concerned is often ... carried along implicitly rather than being formulated explicitly.
(Verschueren 2012: 12f.) The next three theses run as follows:
Ideology ... may be highly immune to experience and observation.
(Verschueren 2012: 14)
(One of) the most visible manifestation(s) of ideology is LANGUAGE USE or DISCOURSE, which may reflect, construct and/or maintain ideological patterns.
(Verschueren 2012: 17) Discursively reflected, constructed, and or supported ideological meaning may serve the purposes of framing, validating, explaining, or legitimating attitudes, states of affairs, and actions in the domain in which they are applicable.
(Verschueren 2012: 19) Verschueren illustrates his definition of ideology in language use with a corpus of history textbooks from the late nineteenth to the twentieth century. In what follows
Pragmatics and politics 171 the concept of linguistic ideology will be illustrated with examples from the Solomon Islands and from Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and with ideologies underlying honorific language use.
6.4.1 Language ideologies in two Pacific speech communities
In their anthology Consequences of Contact: Language Ideologies and Sociocultural Transformations in Pacific Societies Miki Makihara and Bambi B. Schieffelin (2007; see Senft 2010b) try to explain why the Pacific has been an area of enormous contemporary linguistic, cultural, political and social diversity. Much of this diversity can be explained by the different contact situations Pacific communities have experienced with both former and present-day colonial and postcolonial powers, governments and religious institutions, as well as by more recent influences such as globalization, urbanization, militarization and environmental change. Systematic research on the indigenous languages spoken in the Pacific did not start until the end of the nineteenth century. By now, scholars within the social and cognitive sciences have realized that language and speech practices in Pacific societies play a central role in the construction of self and for these communities’ social and political realities. Language diversity is understood as a marker of social identity. However, the fact that contact and trade languages and lingua francas (most of which have now become creoles) developed, shows the need for shared translocal languages in the area as well. The consequences of contact history for the diversity of the languages spoken in the Pacific were fundamental; unfortunately, they were also quite often fatal. Indigenous languages spoken in the Pacific area have been dying ever since earliest contacts with European languages. Missionaries and government officials introduced literacy and Western scripts with the first translations of (parts of) the Bible into a usually randomly selected variety of one of the local languages. This resulted in the marginalization, if not death, of other dialects not only of the chosen local language but more often than not also of its neighbouring languages and in the abandonment of the very few indigenous scripts, like the Rongorongo script of the Rapa Nui. Writing was suddenly taken as being more authoritative than speaking. These new notions about language also introduced new language ideologies into the various speech communities which re-shaped indigenous ways of feeling, thinking and speaking about language. The featuring of the following two representative contributions to Makihara’s and Schieffelin’s anthology illustrate the importance of language ideologies for an adequate understanding of the strong interrelationship between linguistic and cultural processes in contact situations for two speech communities in the Pacific.
6.4.1.1 Language ideologies in Honiara, Solomon Islands
In her essay on ‘Linguistic paths to urban self in postcolonial Solomon Islands’
Christine Jourdan (2007) describes and analyses the urban modalities of language use by residents of Honiara, the capital city of the Solomon Islands, with the aim of showing how contact has affected urban definitions of self and identity. In multilingual Honiara – there are more than 70 languages spoken in the Solomons – cultural and
172 Understanding pragmatics
linguistic contact, together with ideologies of change and progress, has created the need for a definition of urban identity which feeds on ideologies of tradition, custom, modernization and social roles and options, and which is revealed through language choice and verbal practice. Language choice is not only an expression of the speaker’s identity and agency. The attention speakers pay to language selection also reveals a great deal about their need constantly to redefine their sociality, as well as about the situatedness of the speakers’ social selves in situations of culture contact. Jourdan provides some background information on the effects of contact on the linguistic situation of the Solomon Islands prior to and during colonization and on postcolonial Honiara. She points out that multilingualism has always been a feature of Solomon Island societies. Although the dominant language ideology of the colonial times used to be characterized by linguistic hegemony and hierarchy, the linguistic and social parameters of this multilingual situation have changed in recent times. The colonial sociolinguistic hierarchy, with English – the official language – at the top and local vernaculars and Solomons Pijin – the lingua franca – at the bottom, has been reorganized.4 Jourdan points out that Honiarans now use different language varieties to index their position in the urban world, to indicate ethnic identities and to illustrate their social sophistication. Thus, their language choice reveals the situated and contextual construction of their social selves. In present-day Honiara, languages not only mark ethnicity, but also social class, age group, and urban identity. Honiarans have constructed a hierarchy of languages which is context-dependent:
x if they want to emphasize their ethnic selves, the vernaculars are placed at the top;
x if they want to index their gendered selves, Pijin and vernaculars come first;
x and if they want to index that they are young urban people they stress Pijin as the language for daily interaction and English as the language of social advancement.
Thus, the language ideology that was dominant in pre-colonial times characterized by reciprocal multilingualism and the language ideology that was dominant in colonial times characterized by linguistic hegemony and hierarchy have both been replaced by multiple ideologies which compete with one another. These insights are crucial for a sound analysis of language use in Honiara.
6.4.1.2 Language ideology of the Rapa Nui
Miki Makihara’s (2007) essay on ‘Linguistic purism in Rapa Nui political discourse’
examines ideologies of code choice and language revitalization embedded in forms of political discourse among the bilingual, indigenous Polynesian community of Rapa Nui (or Easter Island), which Chile annexed in 1888. Since then the Rapa Nui language has been marginalized and endangered by the spread of Spanish, the national language of Chile. However, Rapa Nui political leaders have challenged this situation first by expanding syncretic Rapa Nui-Spanish speech styles into the public and political domain. More recently, they have developed an ideology of linguistic purism and constructed purist Rapa Nui linguistic codes for political discourse in order to re-emphasize the value of their Polynesian language and to voice their ethnic identity
Pragmatics and politics 173 within the Chilean nation. After a brief summary of the historical, sociolinguistic and political contexts of these developments relating them to the island’s particular history of contact, Makihara presents and analyses two excerpts taken from a forum to debate aspects of the Rapa Nui Indigenous Law and from a meeting with a continental government official. The following example, taken from the first excerpt (Makihara 2007: 55), illustrates the use of syncretic Rapa Nui, which is ‘characterized by the simultaneous presence of multiple varieties of Rapa Nui and Spanish within and across individual utterances’ (Makihara 2007: 50). It was taken from a debate about indigenous law between the president of a self-proclaimed council of elders (C) and the Rapa Nui governor (G); parts of the utterances in which speakers switch from Rapa Nui to Spanish are underlined:
C. E tiaki ena a mãtou, ki tũ compromiso We (EXCL) are waiting for the commitment era o te gobierno pe nei ẽ he aŋa mai e by the government that they would elaborate rãua i te declaración. Ko kĩ ‘ana ho ‘i e a declaration. A (his fellow participant) told A. ko garo ‘a ‘ā e koe pe nei ē, mo tu ‘u you and you heard that when the mai o ra decracione (declaración), ki declaration arrives, and when we (excl.) see u ‘i atu e mãtou ‘ana titika he buka (busca) that it is correct, we (incl) would look for a tãtou i te manera, he aŋa te
the way to make a new
rey (ley) āpī, o que se yó, o he junta law , or what do I know, or combine ararua rey, no sé.
two laws, I don’t know.
...