Language Standardization and Langywangy - lecture

Описание: This is a linguistic anthropology talk that was delivered in the Anthropology Colloquium at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, on 1 November 2024. The comments & discussion period following the talk are not included.

Standardization, i.e. the imposition of uniformity on a class of objects, is a central feature of modernity. State bureaucracy pursues standardization to create simplified and institutionally legible representations of the world; capital pursues standardization to make all parts of (and participants in) the labor process replaceable. This talk discusses the history, mechanisms, and ideology of language standardization. Special attention is given to the quality of standardization as an ongoing process, and to the harm that it produces. The talk discusses alternatives to "standard language culture," including ethnographic examples from "unstandardized" societies as well as everyday moments where the logic of language standardization is not applied. Considering these examples, as well as an interactional and intersubjective concept of "intelligibility," a new, broadly applicable moral and intellectual paradigm is proposed as "the opposite" of language standardization.

Citations:
Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism.
Barrett, R., J. Cramer, and K. McGowan. 2023. English with an accent: language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. Third edition.
Carroll, T. 2001. Changing attitudes: dialect versus the standard language in Japan. in Language Change in East Asia, ed. McAuley, T.E.
Chumbawamba. 2008. R.I.P. RP
De Schutter, H. & D. Robichaud. 2016. Linguistic justice: Van Parijs and his critics.
Everhart, E. 2021. Encountering accented others–and selves–in provincial Japan. in Pragmatics of Accents, eds. Planchenault, G. & L. Poljak
Gellner, E. 1983. Nations and nationalism.
Goodwin, C. 2004. A competent speaker who can't speak: the social life of aphasia. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 14(2): 151-170
Grace, G. 1981. Indirect inheritance and the aberrant Melanesian languages. in Studies in Pacific languages and cultures in honor of Bruce Biggs, eds. Hollyman, J. & A. Pawley
Grace, G. 1991. How do languages change? Paper presented at the Sixth International Conference on Austronesian linguistics.
Graeber, D. 2015. The Utopia of Rules.
Graeber, D. 2018. Bullshit Jobs.
Graeber, D. & D. Wengrow. 2021. The dawn of everything: a new history of humanity.
Hill, J. 2008. The everyday language of white racism.
hooks, b. 1994. Teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom.
Kroskrity, P. 2010. Language ideologies: evolving perspectives. in Society and Language Use. eds. Jaspers, J., J. Verschueren & J. Östman
Lippi-Green, R. 1997. English with an accent: language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States.
Matsuda, M. 1991. Voices of America: accent, antidiscrimination law, and a jurisprudence for the last reconstruction. The Yale Law Journal 100(5): 1329-1407
Milroy, J. 2001. Language ideologies and the consequences of standardization. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5(4): 530-555
Nagai, J. & E. Everhart. 2022. Oral English proficiency tests, interpretive labor, and the neoliberal university. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 32(3): 543-560
Rubin, D. 1992. Nonlanguage factors affecting undergraduates' judgments of nonnative English-speaking teaching assistants. Research in Higher education 33: 511-531
Scott, J. 1998. Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed.
Smith, J. 1996. An historical study of English: function, form and change.
Van Parijs, P. 2011. Linguistic justice for Europe and for the world.
Weber, E. 1976. Peasants into Frenchmen: the modernization of rural France, 1870-1914.
Weinreich, M. 1945. Der YIVO un di problemen fun undzer tsayt. YIVO Bleter 25(1-3): 3-18
Yoshida Kenkō. 1967[1334]. Essays in idleness; the Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō. Donald Keene, trans.

R.I.P. RP (cover, as featured in Language Standardization and Langywangy) -    • Goodbye RP (RIP RP cover) - a language fre...  
R.I.P. RP (Chumbawamba) -    • RIP RP  
Langywangy Mountain -    • Langywangy Mountain - language utopia folk...