Learning to Read Like a Lawyer 49written texts may also continue to rely on aspects of their previous contexts of origin
and use for the more specific, context-dependent meanings they convey in subse-
quent contexts. In reusing the phrase “all men are created equal,” for example, some
subsequent authors might intend to invoke features of the social context in which
these words were originally written. Rather than expressing a general aspiration
for the polity, they might say, perhaps this phrase should be taken as stating quite
specifically that only men (and not women) are created equal. How and whether
aspects of previous or current contexts should form part of the meaning of texts
when they are recontextualized through subsequent use is obviously a highly ideo-
logical matter, as anyone following the debates over so-called original intent and
the U.S. Constitution can attest. Thus, our analysis of the processes by which texts
are reused and reconfigured in new contexts inevitably brings us to a fuller con-
sideration of ideologies of language and text.
Ideologies of Text
Chapter 2 introduced the idea that ongoing spoken linguistic interactions are
shaped by ideologies of language (i.e., the ideas that speakers hold about how lan-
guage works). My sense that what is happening is a conversation (or an argument,
or a lecture) affects how I behave in a linguistic interaction, and this sense, in turn,
is based on ideas about what a conversation is, what it is we are doing when we
interact through language, and so forth. Subtle norms of communication, often
operating somewhat reflexively rather than consciously for speakers, are everywhere
at work when we convey meaning through spoken language, and these norms are
deeply imbricated in the sociocultural systems in which speakers live.
Linguistic ideology plays a formative role with written language as well, as we
noted in pointing to the centrality of a referentialist or textualist ideology in West-
ern society. One domain in which the importance of this kind of ideology becomes
particularly obvious is that of schooling, a setting in which children receive their
formative training in reading written texts. Studies of the initial years of socializa-
tion in U.S. educational institutions have identified a shared textualist ideology
that underlies the dominant orientation imparted to schoolchildren.^18 In U.S. class-
rooms, teachers approach the meaning of written texts as fixed and transparent, as
universally available. Furthermore, early schooling in many U.S. schools employs
a conception of literacy as technique, under which interpretation of written texts
is a skill to be publicly displayed and evaluated in a context-independent, quanti-
fiable (i.e., measurable by grades) fashion.^19 Not only the written texts that are
read, but even the performances of those texts in class come with their own
entextualization preordained, for the institutional context of the schoolroom puts
a premium on the extractability of text and performance from context. The goal
of the recontextualization of written texts in reading class performances is precisely
the decontextualization of the performance in an individual-focused assessment
of ability or skill. The key official function of the recontextualizing performance is
to demonstrate mastery of this underlying skill. This institutional framing of stu-
dents’ recontextualizing performances is an exercise of social power with profound
consequences.^20