Language Ideologies: An Overview of a Field from the Perspective of Linguistic Anthropology

In responding to the challenge of managing linguistic diversity in Spain, it has been argued that the ideological struggle for the legitimization of certain visions of the linguistic world must be explained in order to be able to have a position on the playing field. From the perspective of the study of linguistic ideologies, linguistic anthropology examines the issue of how a language is legitimized in the eyes & the ears of the members of a community. In the modern Western world, we find two linguistic ideologies that frequently sustain linguistic authority in this sense. We could call them the ideologies of authenticity & anonymity. Each of the two naturalizes a type of relationship between a specific language variety & a specific state of society. The distinction may prove useful in analyzing, on the one hand, the attempts to define Spanish as a "postnational" language, & on the other hand, the situation of the Catalan language today. This article outlines the two contrasting ideologies & briefly illustrates them with some examples from Europe & the United States. It then applies this theoretical framework to the current situation of Spanish & Catalan in Spain & Catalonia. In conclusion, it considers the possibilities of new ideological formations in the sociolinguistic field. References. Adapted from the source document