26.2879, Review: Discourse; Pragmatics; Socioling; Text/Corpus Ling: Verschueren (2013)

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Subject: 26.2879, Review: Discourse; Pragmatics; Socioling; Text/Corpus Ling: Verschueren (2013)

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Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2015 19:22:22
From: Lorena Hernandez Ramirez [lorenaherram at gmail.com]
Subject: Ideology in Language Use

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=33239561


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-4932.html

AUTHOR: Jef  Verschueren
TITLE: Ideology in Language Use
SUBTITLE: Pragmatic Guidelines for Empirical Research
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2013

REVIEWER: Lorena Hernandez Ramirez, CUNY Graduate Center

Review's Editors: Malgorzata Cavar and Sara Couture

SUMMARY

“Ideology in Language Use. Pragmatic Guidelines for Empirical Research” by Jef
Verschueren is a refreshing contribution to the study of ideology and language
by means of a pragmatics-based approach to historical data. Grounded in the
field of linguistic pragmatics, or as the author defines it, “the
interdisciplinary science of language use” (p. xii), it offers a valuable
guide for scholars and students in different fields of inquiry for whom the
“societal construction of frames of reference […] as mediated through
discourse” (p. xii) is relevant.  

Both in the preface and in the introduction, the main purpose of the book is
clearly stated: to serve as a research tool, providing a methodological frame
for the study of ideology in discourse. Among others, political scientists,
historians, sociologists, and anthropologists may benefit from this work. The
main data source for the practical section of the book consists of historical
texts, and the author uses them extensively through the chapters to illustrate
his proposed methodology. More specifically, the corpus is comprised of a
compilation of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discourses on the
colonial world and colonization in some British and French history textbooks.
The first source used dates back to 1902 (Lavisse), and then the topic is
narrowed down to episodes of the 1857 ‘Indian Mutiny’.

After the introduction, the author devotes Chapter 1, “Language use and
ideology”,  to define ideologies as sociocultural-cognitive phenomena,
combining both description and prescription, embedded in social relations in
the public sphere, and in contrast with other traditions such as the false
consciousness of Marxism. This definition, therefore, seems to fall somewhere
along the range between what Woolard (1998) considers the biggest divide in
studies of ideology: the negative conception, and the neutral one. According
to the negative notion, ideology results from an interest in a particular
social position, and is presented as a universal truth. In the neutral
conception, ideology is seen as a set of ideas aimed at acquiring or
maintaining power (p. 27). Also, the notion of ideology behind Verschueren’s
tenets is most closely connected to that presented by Eagleton (1990), who
emphasizes the intertwining of power, politics, and discourse. Throughout this
chapter, Verschueren offers four theses (with subtheses, in turn, for the
first two) in order to describe the basic features of his definition of
ideology. Given the scope of the book, theses one and three seem particularly
relevant: “Thesis 1: We can define as ideological any basic pattern of meaning
or frame or 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”
(p. 10); “Thesis 3: (One of) the most visible manifestation(s) of ideology is
language use or discourse, which may reflect, construct, and/or maintain
ideological patterns” (p. 17).

The thesis presented in the first chapter leads to the content of chapter 2,
“Pragmatic rules of engagement”, where the author lays out a series of
pragmatic-based rules for engaging with language use and ideology, in order to
support the design of research questions and the collection of data. The
importance of combining both horizontal and vertical variation is emphasized.
The former refers to variation in genres, while the latter refers to variation
in structural levels of analysis, as strategies drawn from discourse analysis.
The last part of this chapter is devoted to justifying the selection of
materials, which are compared in terms of language, temporal and geographical
perspective, size and degree of detail, coverage, and intended audience. 

Chapter 3,“Pragmatic guidelines and procedures”, is considerably more
extensive than the previous two, and it can be considered the core of the book
from the methodological point of view. It offers a series of practical
guidelines and procedures to be used in the actual exercise of research. A
number of caveats are also interspersed here, in order to warn the researcher
and guide them further in their inquiries. Given the extensive list of
guidelines, procedures, and caveats, only a few are summarized here for
illustrative purposes:

“Guideline 1: Get to know your data thoroughly [...] 
Guideline 2: Get to know the context of your data [...]
Caveat 2.1: Context is not a stable ‘outside’ reality, nor is it finite in any
sense. Hence it cannot be described exhaustively [...]
Procedure 2.1: Investigate the wider (social, political, historical,
geographical, etc.) context, to the extent that is accessible. In particular:
2.1.1: How does the context of the investigation relate to the context of the
investigated discourse?
2.1.2: How does the context of the investigated discourse relate to the
social, cultural, political, historical context which the discourse is
(presenting itself as being) ‘about’?
2.1.3: How does the investigated discourse carve out lines of vision in the
‘world’ it refers to?” (p. 201-202)

In the conclusion, Verschueren points at the fact that writing about ideology
is not a an ideology-free process. He also highlights what could probably be
the most important theoretical contribution of his work, that is, “providing
theoretically justified tools for analysis” (p. 199), by creating a
parallelism with the origins of structuralism in the humanities and social
sciences. According to Mauss and Lévi-Strauss, referring to Saussurean
structuralism, linguistics was “the most scientifically advanced field in the
social sciences” (p. 199), and it was a model extensively followed by other
fields. According to Verschueren, in a similar way linguistic pragmatics can
provide the theoretical framework, and the tools, as developed in this book,
to further contribute to the social sciences.

At the end of the book, two appendices are included. Appendix 1 gathers all
theses, subtheses, rules, guidelines, procedures, and caveats in a list form.
This provides a quick summary of the content. Finally, Appendix 2 includes all
the original sources that the author has used, which may serve as material for
other researchers to carry further studies.

EVALUATION

“Ideology in Language Use. Pragmatic Guidelines for Empirical Research” is
undoubtedly a solid step towards building a methodology for the study of
language and ideology. Grounded in a theory of pragmatic linguistics, the book
constitutes a practical tool for producing empirical research in a field that
up to date lacks of consistent guidelines for this purpose. The reader can
literally follow the guidelines presented by the author step by step, and it
will result in an empirical study of ideology and discourse in historical
data. Also, the sources for further analysis are provided in Appendix 2, and
thus, anyone who would like to engage in the topic and carry out further
analysis can use it as a corpus. The author states his goals clearly and meets
them throughout the book. 

In the introduction, the following statement is worth analyzing: “Though the
concept started its career that way, ‘ideology’ is no longer seen as the
systematic analysis of sensations and ideas which should provide the basis for
all scientific knowledge. Ideology is no longer an academic discipline, but
rather an ‘object of investigation’” (p. 7). I believe that precisely one of
the main strengths of this book is that it offers the opportunity to develop
ideology, and in particular language ideologies, as both an object of study
and as a discipline. The author seems to avoid the phrase “language
ideologies”, perhaps because of his interest in discourse analysis and the
pragmatic grounding of his work. However, I think this book could benefit from
making a clear distinction, if considered necessary, between “ideology in
language use” and “language ideologies”. There exists an effort to consolidate
the latter as an academic discipline, especially in certain circles in England
and in the United States (see, among others, Joseph and Taylor 1990, Taylor
1997, Schieffelin, Woolard, and Kroskrity 1998, Kroskrity 2000). Verschueren
actually uses some of these traditions to frame his definition of ideology,
even though he does not establish further connections between “ideology in
language use” and “language ideologies”. 

This book emphasizes the necessity for a solid methodology which will yield
consistent empirical research regarding ideology and language, and therefore
encourages researchers in a variety of fields to follow his proposed
guidelines and use them in their own research.

REFERENCES

Eagleton, Terry. 1991. Ideology: An Introduction. London: Verso.

Joseph, John E. and Talbot J. Taylor (eds.). 1990. Ideologies of language.
London/New York: Routledge.

Kroskrity, Paul V. (ed.) 2000. Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and
Identities. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1958. Anthropologie structurale. Paris: Librarie Plon.

Schieffelin, Bambi, Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity. 1998. Language
ideologies: practice and theory. New York: Oxford University Press.

Taylor, Talbot. 1997. Theorizing language: analysis, normativity, rhetoric,
history. Amsterdam/New York: Pergamon.

Woolard, Kathryn A. 1998. Introduction: Language Ideology as a Field of
Inquiry. In Language
ideologies: practice and theory, edited by Schieffelin, B., K. Woolard and P.
Kroskrity. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 3-47.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Lorena Hernandez Ramirez is a PhD candidate in the Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian
Literatures & Languages program at the Graduate Center of the City University
of New York. Her research interests revolve around language ideologies, with a
particular focus on Spanish in the US.





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