The Role of Ideologies in Sociolinguistic Analysis: Language, Society, and Beliefs - Prof., Ejercicios de Cultura Inglesa

¡Descarga The Role of Ideologies in Sociolinguistic Analysis: Language, Society, and Beliefs - Prof. y más Ejercicios en PDF de Cultura Inglesa solo en Docsity! 1. How are ideologies relevant to sociolinguistic analysis? The aim of this essay is to investigate through sociolinguistic material, how ideologies are relevant to sociolinguistic analysis. In order to do it, first of all it would be necessary to define some important concepts: sociolinguistics, sociolinguistics analysis and ideology. According to Holmes (2012), sociolinguists explore the relationship between language and society. Their aim is to explain why we speak differently in different social contexts. They are also interested in identify the social functions of language and the ways it is used to form meanings. She also asserts that sociolinguistics is the study of how language is used by different groups in society, it studies the relationship between language and the context in which it is used. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, sociolinguistics is “the study of language and linguistic behaviour as influenced by social and cultural factors”. Therefore, the purpose of sociolinguistic analysis is to explore the effects of society customs, habits, and behaviours on language. On the other hand, according to Collins Dictionary, an ideology is ‘a set of beliefs, especially the political beliefs on which people, parties, or countries base their actions’. However, Van Dijk (2004) gives a new vision of this regarding, he claims that ideologies are systems of ideas shared with the individuals of a social group. These ideas affect the understandings of social events and control their discourse. For example, the Daily Telegraph, employs rhetorical hyperboles and metaphors to offense Labour’s immigration policies. Once made an explanation of the main concepts we are going to focus on the aim of this essay, which is to explore how relevant ideologies are to sociolinguistic analysis. In order to do it, firstly it will be necessary to know the relation between ideologies and language, and to what extent can language affect to the behaviour of society. Then, we will investigate the concept of ‘language ideologies’ and will examine its point according to several important linguists and sociolinguists. Such authors like Schieffelin, Woolard, Kroskrity and Paul (1998) view the concept of ‘ideology’ as something which has to do with subjectivity, consciousness and beliefs. They all agree that when some phenomena are labelled as ‘ideological’, we do not necessarily refer to it as something related to society or criticism, they conclude that ideology is ‘the more intellectual constituent of culture’, they claim that we could add to it, language. Wodak (2004) also defends that in sociolinguistics, the concept of ‘ideology’ has negative connotations and involves subjective knowledge. She also asserts that we cannot solely identify ideologies with dominant groups, but also and more frequently, we can identify it with social groups, classes or communities which have similar interests; she names it ‘’ideological communities’’. Regarding the relation with language, she adds that ideology can perfectly be compared with language because it is used by a group of people, ‘there are no personal ideologies’. She claims that ideologies as well as languages have implied the concept of ‘social’. This way, it could be said that this is a reason why ideologies are highly relevant to sociolinguistic analysis. In some cultures, powerful ideological institutions dominate language attitudes of speakers, because they establish a standard form of language, here is when the ‘standard language ideology’ appear. Speakers are constantly conditioned by this ideology without being aware of it. For example, in England many people say you was and also you were but just one of these forms is considered the correct one, the standard one. Therefore, standardization consists of all members of the same ‘community’ should use the same grammatical structures and vocabulary. This fact would conclude that language should not be changed. However, this fact is very improbable in practice because any language is completely invariant. (James Milroy, 2007) Having known that, it is necessary to talk about ‘language ideology’, Lesley Milroy (2001) together with Lippi-Green assert that ideologies independently from language, are constituted of beliefs and assumptions that dominant groups teach us as if they were obvious, this fact, does not let us to arise any doubt about them, just assume them. It is here where we find the struggle, because when other people is not using the standard language firstly established, are considered as inferior and therefore discriminated. She asserts that Lippi-Green (1997) believes that in the United States, important institutions like workplace and educational institutions promote the standard language ideology and at the same time they discriminate other groups of people. ‘Foreign accents’ in United States, for instance, is other aspect subjected to have a bad evaluation; and also the ‘creation’ of US English in the 1980’s to differ from English (which is talked by people in Great Britain). According to Dragojevic, Giles and Watson (2013), Irvine and Gal established three semiotic procedures thanks to whose people make representations of language change. The first one is iconization, it is when people start to view some linguistic characteristics as innate identities • https://cumoodle.coventry.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/1643960/mod_resource/ content/1/Dragojevic%2C%20Giles%20%20Watson%202013%20Language% 20ideologies%20and%20language%20attitudes.pdf (In terms of the three basic processes, iconization occurred when click consonants were perceived as icons representing the idea of foreignness. Erasure took place when the complex relationship between the Nguni and the Khoi languages were clipped of significance as an aspect of one became an integral part of the other. Lastly, fractal recursivity is reflected in the way the distinction between the Nguni and Khoi languages was used to enhance the distinction between two modes of communication- everyday and hlonipha-in the Nguni language. Similarly, accent is used in many animated films to produce a desired linguistic effect. In the Lion King, for example, the British accent ascribed to the villain Scar has become a common iconization of intelligence and sophistication and is used in the film to enhance the villain's image. In the process of erasure, its discordance with Mufasa's own American accent-they are brothers after all-is subordinated by the milieu: they are all talking animals in a fantastic iteration of an African savannah, and who cares about accents then? Finally, fractal recursivity takes effect as the more character-defining element of verbal dialogue allows the use of the accent as a differentiation mechanism for character development.Article Source: http:// EzineArticles.com/6578532)