Notes
1 The committee issued their report, To Secure These Rights, in October
- During this same period, The United Nations began to put
together the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , which
establishes that all people are entitled to basic human rights without
regard for race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other
opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. In his
study The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting,
and Intent, Morsink (2000) provides insight into the discussions that
went on behind the scenes while the declaration was being drafted.
2 The term standard language ideology was coined by James and Lesley
Milroy. Their work in this area was the first impetus for much of my
own thinking on this issue, which has been further influenced in
particular by the work of Fairclough, Silverstein, Eagleton, Bakhtin,
Bourdieu and Foucault as well as by linguists Eckert, Bucholtz,
Schieffelin, Woolard, et al. The definition I provide here has evolved
from those provided in earlier publications.
3 A classical Marxist might look at the way language ideology works and
find it an excellent example of “false consciousness,” or the process by
which the working class is manipulated into accepting a status quo
which denies their own claims while preserving the interests of those
with property and power, because it is right and good and common
sense to do so. But the Marxist ideological model has limitations; its
unidirectionality does not resemble the give-and-take process of
standardization well enough to make it useful in this discussion.
4 The more common use of hegemony is in the sense of dominance or
domination, but here I use the Gramscian definition. Gramsci provides
an interesting example of an attempt to bend linguistic facts to a
particular end. In his writings he argues strongly for teaching the lower
and working classes a standardized Italian, and equates this process
with passing on literacy, a necessary tool to fight oppression.
Gramsci’s confusion of symptom with cause (he sees friction
following from the fact of language heterogeneity) and his rejection of