The Nine Lives of "Linguistic Deficiency"

[Harold F. Schiffman]

My take on this issue has to do with the following:

1.  Whether we like it or not, knowledge and skill with "standard"
language and orthography has "cash value", and trying to teach
teachers-to-be that it's just "all ideology" won't get far with them.
I've had such students in my classes, and just preaching to them that
ideologies have got it all wrong doesn't go very far.  I think our
pedagogy (the way we teach this) has got to be improved, or we'll continue
to have a bunch of students sitting glumly in our classes, resisting our
ideas and not adopting any of them.

2. One of the problems I have with the ideology paradigm is that it has
become the dominant paradigm in linguistic anthropology, and thus it has
become a "dominant discourse" and doesn't get challenged very often, or if
it does, the challenges are dismissed as stemming from ignorance. I would
like to see the use of the term be more nuanced:

For example:

1.  It seems to me that language ideologies that are 'state-sponsored'
such as French ideas about language, or the Marrist ideology that was part
of Soviet language policy, are much different from run-of-the-mill ideas
or folk notions about language that are not particularly coherent or well
thought-out.

2.  Similarly, religious ideologies such as those associated with Arabic
(Islam), Sanskrit (Hinduism), Hebrew (Judaism), and even the King James
version of the Bible (Christianity) are qualitatively different from other
kinds of ideas and notions.

3.  Myths about language and/or its origin are qualitatively different
from many other kinds of ideas. (According to the Tamil origin myth, the
god Murukan taught the rules of Tamil [not Tamil itself] to the sage
Agesthya, who brought them to mortals.)

Such ideology types as 1-3 are much more difficult to challenge than more
mundane ideas about language; in fact, you might be taking your life in
your hands if you were to challenge them, as happened to an Egyptian
scholar recently, who wanted to do a concordance of vocabulary in the
Koran.

I therefore try to use the term 'ideology' very sparingly, or not at all,
because for me, the term implies something large and powerful like
Communism or Fascism, not something like "standard languages are better
than non-standard ones."

I'd also like to see a way to challenge the ideology paradigm, with a
metric such as we are equipped with in Linguistics, i.e. here's a set of
criteria we can use to know whether you've got a phonemic contrast (i.e.
here's how we know we are dealing with an ideology, and not some other
kind of idea), and if it doesn't meet the criteria, then it's not an
ideology. I currently see no way to determine whether something is or
isn't an ideology about language, so in fact almost any idea (notion,
feeling, guess, folk notion...) is treated as on a par with all others. So
we get umpteen panels at every AAA meeting on ideologies about language,
and nobody ever challenges whatever is said (and hardly anybody
distinguishes between myths, religious ideologies, state-sponsored ones,
etc.) It's just "ALLLL ideology!"

(I realize that some people see such metrics or criteria as "postivist"
and positivism has also been sent to the trash heap, but doesn't this lead
to reductionism? Every idea on a par with others, except those that are
morally reprehensible?)

As for the fact that this is now what I call a dominant discourse, as we
know (I think) dominant discourses tend to discourage or squelch dissent,
and therefore the "ideology of language" and beliefs about it are taken
for granted in linguistic anthropology, and anyone who doesn't agree is
ostracized, marginalized, or just dismissed as irrelevant.

If anyone thinks these terms are too strong, I refer you to the review of
my book "Linguistic Culture and Language Policy" which appeared on-line on
this listserv--my analyses were dismissed because I failed to use the
dominant discourse, and never once used the term "ideology."

Hal Schiffman




On Fri, 9 Feb 2007, R Senghas wrote:

>
> On 9 Feb 2007, , at 1:29 AM, John McCreery wrote:
> > Given the choice between taking steps suggested by the language
> > ideologies now current among linguistic anthropologists and the future
> > welfare of my daughter, this conscientious teacher did what
> > Alexandre's father did, chose to focus on the future welfare of the
> > child for whom she felt responsible. I am grateful to her for that
> > choice.
>
> John,
>
> Likely unintentionally, I fear that this sort of response
> mischaracterizes the language ideology work I see in anthropology.
> Very few of the anthropologists who focus on language ideologies (i.e.,
> those I know or work with, which have been quite a few) deny the social
> implications involved when an individual adopts or resists prevailing
> prescriptions.  In fact, these language ideology folks (including me)
> are trying to make explicit that these are indeed (often subconscious,
> but often conscious) moral choices, or choices of social marking and
> identity.  What we are fighting is the perpetuation of false
> "scientific explanations" that one language is superior to another, is
> "more linguistic" than another, etc.  (Ron's "whack-a-mole" description
> feels all too appropriate!)  We are also fighting the stereotypes that
> usually deny the cognitive and other human qualities that linguistic
> minority speakers have, but qualities that they aren't acknowledged as
> having, because of the false stereotypes associated with those in
> subordinate social positions (for whatever reasons).
>
> By explicitly labelling language ideologies, describing them and
> developing accurate explanations of how and why they work (i.e. proper
> theorizing), language ideology folks provide a very useful service to
> society as a whole, and to those individuals who are encountering
> challenges along the way.  "Why do people keep treating me like I am
> stupid when I know I am not?" or "Why do they act as if they don't
> understand me at all when I know that they at least understand some of
> what I say?" or "Why don't they seem to care?" --these questions can be
> answered by such anthropological approaches.
>
> We don't write or speak in certain ways simply because that is the only
> way that works.  We do so for all kinds of reasons, social, cultural,
> psychological, linguistic, etc.  These are choices made by society, and
> by being more informed, we increase our options.  Having more options
> is useful for both the teachers and the learners.
>
> -RJS
>
> Richard J Senghas  (Professor of Anthropology, Sonoma State U,
> California)
> Visiting Researcher, Institutionen för nordiska språk
> Stockholms universitet
> S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
> Richard.Senghas at nordiska.su.se
> Richard.Senghas at sonoma.edu
>
>