context for meaning), means that the discursive structure is an “indexical icon” of the social
or political model it reinforces and instantiates.
- Silverstein, “Poetics of Politics”; see also Mertz and Weissbourd, “Legal Ideology.”
- The distinction between “model of” and “model for” was introduced by anthro-
pologist Clifford Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures. - This propensity for dismissing usage and pragmatics as chaotic finds its mirror
image in a monolithic focus on decontextual and referential aspects of language as the
primary source of linguistic order. In 1979, Silverstein first traced a cross-cultural pattern
in which there is “a tendency to rationalize the pragmatic system of a language, in native
understanding, with an ideology of language that centers on reference-and-predication.”
Silverstein, “Language Structure,” 208. If this is true, we would expect native speakers (and
sometimes “expert scholars” as well) to focus more on referential units like words and on
semantic or grammatical structuring, rather than on contextual, pragmatic, or creative
structuring in language use. Mertz and Weissbourd suggest that if there is such an under-
lying tendency in our conscious reflection on language, it must be refracted differentially
through the lens of each particular social time and place. Mertz and Weissbourd, “Legal
Ideology and Linguistic Theory,” 282 n. 14. They find examples of a particular form of
this “preference for reference” in Western linguistic and jurisprudential thought, which
(like language ideology more generally) has frequently focused systematic analysis on
semantico-referential, presupposable meaning, while viewing linguistic creativity, contex-
tual aspects of language, and pragmatics as unsystematic and chaotic. Id. - See, e.g., Bauman, Story, Performance, and Event; Brenneis and Myers, Danger-
ous Words; Briggs, Competence in Performance; Duranti and Goodwin, Rethinking Context;
Gumperz, Discourse Strategies; Hill and Irvine, Responsibility and Evidence in Oral Discourse. - This difficulty exists even, or especially, with the speech act theorists. See, e.g.,
Searle,Speech Acts. For an in-depth discussion of the general division between presupposing
and creative (or entailing) aspects of language use, see Silverstein, “Language Structure.”
See also Yovel, “The Language beyond Law,” on speech act theory and legal language. - Woolard and Schieffelin, “Language Ideology,” 57 (citing Silverstein, Heath, and
Irvine). Woolard and Schieffelin provide a very useful overview of this field of study. See
also Silverstein’s pioneering 1979 article on linguistic ideology, “Language Structure and
Linguistic Ideology,” and the articles in Scheiffelin et al., Language Ideologies. - Gal and Irvine, “Boundaries of Languages.” Gal and Irvine’s concept of “iconicity”
applies when speakers perceive there to be a common “essence” that is shared by the lin-
guistic form and aspects of the social identity that this form indexes. - See Silverstein, “Metapragmatic Discourse.” In this and more recent work,
Silverstein has carefully delineated the crucial role of indexical structuring in mediating
the “real-time” unfolding of social meaning. Silverstein, “Indexical Order.” - See, e.g., Schieffelin, Give and Take of Everyday Life; Schieffelin and Ochs, Lan-
guage Socialization across Cultures; Kulick and Scheiffelin, “Language Socialization”; Foley,
Anthropological Linguistics, 345–358. See also Gergen, Cultural Psychology; Shweder and
Levine,Culture Theory; Watson-Gegeo and Nielsen, “Language Socialization in SLA.” - Ochs, Culture and Language Development, 145, 163–165.
- These linguistic routines index, or point to, the social values that they seek to
inculcate. This is the kind of connection between the external social world and the inter-
nal developing understanding of the child that Vygotskian scholars have sought, includ-
ing their search to “specif[y] the mechanisms that connect early linguistic activity that is
inextricably tied to the concrete extralinguistic environment and later linguistic activity
involving abstract definitions.” Wertsch, introduction, in Culture, Communication and
Cognition, 16.
232 Notes to Pages 19–21