Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

26 Part 1: Language and Ideology
(2008: 182). It thus appears that commodifi cation of language, whatever
be the language, has the dual potential to devalue local varieties even
when educators and others might want to promote them, an ironic development
similar to what Dorian (1998) has observed with respect to language
maintenance efforts for some small languages.
Leeman and Martinez’s second major conclusion is that while such
commodifi cation of language is legitimately viewed as problematic given
that the justifi cation for linguistic knowledge is almost entirely based on
presumed economic consequences, it nonetheless demonstrates the possibility
of a continuing public role for Spanish in US contexts. This in itself
might create opportunities for use that would, in turn, motivate Spanish
speakers (and others) to forge new communicative practices (as well as
products) attesting to the normality and legitimacy of its presence. Hence,
in this study, once again, we observe that ideologies related to language
respond to other ideologies of diversity and the nature of appropriate
social futures. The researchers, too, conclude that the ideologies they have
outlined contain elements that, while seemingly contradictory, may in fact
simply refl ect that language ideologies, like other beliefs, are multifaceted
and regularly refl ect and contribute to discourse in other social domains.
Achugar (2008) also found a multiplicity of positions articulated by individuals
with varied professional and personal affi liations and a variety of
ideologies conveyed in articles in the local newspaper in her descriptive
portrait of the roles of and attitudes toward Spanish in the border city of
El Paso, Texas, reminding us that neither local (Canagarajah, 2005) nor
national perspectives on languages and language uses are monolithic.
Both the textbook analysis and the account of opinion leaders in a major
bilingual city reveal the intertextuality across time and the interpenetration
of language ideologies by other social beliefs. Ideologies of language
continually interact with other ideologies in the ever-dynamic marketplace
of ideas.
The ideological content of English language lessons themselves has
also been analyzed by several investigators over the last four decades.
Typically, researchers conduct such content analyses to investigate the
social roles stated and implied by textbook activities, in addition to other
themes of possible interest for the settings and presumed users, students
and teachers, of the texts. One recent example is Taki’s (2008) comparison
of the ideological positions represented and implied by activities found in
the government-approved English textbooks required in all public secondary
schools in Iran and those depicted by a selection of widely sold
international English textbooks, often used in Iran’s private language
centers. Taki investigated the social relationships and subject positions of
textbook characters and other forms of content in the texts. Findings
showed a propensity for the local textbooks to leave participants’ social
roles in dialogues only vaguely specifi ed, often simply as ‘A’ and ‘B’, and