Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Language Policy and Planning 161
personal interests diverge markedly. The dynamic time-based relationship
between discourse and text needs to be taken one step further to refl ect
dynamic local language change, stratifi cations of power and infl uence,
and diverse voices within a given society. This is the third mode in which
LP occurs, performative action, which describes instances of language used
both to convey messages in regular communication and at the same time
to represent models for emulation of language forms.
Performative action
For present purposes, regular use of language, both professional and
personal, can be divided into two broad kinds: mundane (e.g. transactional)
and ideological (i.e. performativity). This simplifi cation of the broader intentions
of communication is to focus attention on those occasions, purposes
and kinds of regular use of language, which in addition to their messageconveying
function also model intended language changes, and therefore
operate as discursive LP.
Ordinary use of language, whether personal or professional, always
refl ects standards, norms and communicative rules taken for granted by
a speech community. Much of it is transactional and hence aimed at
unproblematic message sending. Some philosophers have thought of all
language in this way, as ‘telementation’, in which one mind passes messages
directly to another mind (see Harris, 1988). In the present discussion,
ideological use of language is purposive, containing a range of other
functions in addition to message transfer, and among these ideological
uses some are focused on effecting language change (others might be
ideological but not interested in language change). People whose use of
regular language is intended to display and model ideological messages
are not necessarily consistent in their usage of these intended forms. In
general, however, there are frequent instances of performativity in regular
language use, investing ordinary communication with layers of noticeable
features of intonation, lexical choice, syntax variations which model,
indicate or promote language designed to produce ideological/attitudinal
outcomes beyond message content. These performances display a
speaker’s adherence to a speech ideology community and model its use
for emulation.
In conventional sociolinguistics, mundane use of language is correlative; it
varies according to relatively stable (1) social categories (e.g. regional dialects,
social dialects, ethno-lects correlate with place of origin, or social class
or ethnic background) or (2) professional roles (e.g. medical or mana gement
jargon) or (3) communicative purposes (e.g. soothing or comfort talk, or
aggressive harangues, or dispassionate information delivery). However,
variation for performative display of LP differs from these conventional
three kinds of variation. Although (1)–(3) represent ways in which ordinary