AAA Call for abstracts

[Jacqueline Messing]

AAA 2002 SESSION PROPOSAL
“Approaches to the linguistic-anthropological study of multiple language
ideologies in local communities:  Irvine and Gal’s semiotic analysis of
linguistic differentiation”

Organizers:
Kathe Managan, New York University, kathemanagan at hotmail.com
Jacqueline Messing, University of Arizona, jmessing at u.arizona.edu

The papers in this panel will draw on Irvine and Gal’s (2000) semiotic
approach to analyze language ideologies involved in linguistic
differentiation.  Specifically, we will examine how multiple, contesting and
often unequal language ideologies exist in particular communities. By
identifying specific processes through which language ideologies often
operate - iconization, erasure, fractal recursivity – this framework allows
us to tease apart the various strands of thought and the multiple social
factors at play in the construction, maintenance, and contestation of
language ideologies through talk in various ethnographic settings.  This
analytic approach has been useful in examining language ideologies in
historical data, which emerged in primarily colonial encounters, but to date
few scholars have used these concepts in the exegesis of how these
ideologies are constructed in everyday language practices.  Drawing on
ethnographic material, the papers in this panel will explore, for instance,
interactions between socially dominant language ideologies, ideologies of
local peoples, ideologies of the state (and its institutions), and
ideologies of linguists.

We welcome papers based on a diverse range of ethnographic contexts that
explore iconization, erasure, and recursivity.  Studies of articulations
between the local, national and/or international spheres are especially
encouraged.