Cover not available

Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 9:3 (2010) ► pp.339–363

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Society, polity, and language community

An enlightenment trinity in anthropological perspective

 | The University of Chicago
Published online: 1 November 2010
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.9.3.01sil
How do the social institutional agglomerations we call societies interact with levels of political groupness up to and including states and beyond? In the modern First World and more widely, the post-Lockean Enlightenment has brought denotational language itself to the fore as the salient vehicle of mediation — presumed upon by theorists as well as by politicians — by which stable polities have depended upon the existence of social institutions of various sorts. Reciprocally, such mediation has underlain ideological consciousness of what a language community should normatively be like, to wit, a polity-in-potentia able to assert “language rights” in a politics of recognition in a wider social order. This political culture has shaped some of the more salient forces on language communities within the social institutional order of complex, plurilingual speech communities in which people actually live.
References (51)
References
Adams, Karen L. & Brink, Daniel T. (eds.). 1990. Perspectives on Official English; the Campaign for English as the Official Language of the USA. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Agha, Asif. 2004. Registers of language. In: Alessandro Duranti (ed.). A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology. Oxford: Blackwell, 23–45.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2007. Language and Social Relations. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict R. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barber, Charles. 1976. Early Modern English. London: Andre Deutsch.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baron, Dennis. 1990. The English-Only Question: An Official Language for Americans? New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2009. Language, asylum, and the national order. Current Anthropology 50(4), 415–441. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. & Verschueren, Jef. 1998. The role of language in European nationalist ideologies. In: Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds.). Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 189–210.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bloomfield, Leonard. 1927. Literate and illiterate speech. American Speech 2(4), 432–439.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. John B. Thompson (ed.); Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson (trans.). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bridgman, Percy W. 1927. The Logic of Modern Physics. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah & Kulick, Don. (eds.). 2006. The Language and Sexuality Reader. London & New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crawford, James. (ed.). 1992. Language Loyalties: A Source Book on the Official English Controversy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Daedalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 2009. 138(3), “On Being Human.”Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ellis, J[effrey] O. 1961. Some recent work on German grammar. Archivum Linguisticum 13(1), 33–49.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1966. On contextual meaning. In: C. E. Bazell, J. C. Catford, M. A. K. Halliday, and R. H. Robins (eds.). In Memory of J. R. Firth. London: Longmans, 79–95.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fliegelman, Jay. 1993. Declaring Independence: Jefferson, Natural Language, and the Culture of Performance. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garvin, Paul. 1964. The standard language problem — concepts and methods. In: Dell Hymes (ed.). Language in Culture and Society: A Reader in Linguistics and Anthropology. New York: Harper & Row, 521–523.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grillo, Ralph D. 1989. Dominant Languages: Language and Hierarchy in Britain and France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gustafson, Thomas. 1992. Representative Words: Politics, Literature, and the American Language, 1776–1865. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 1988. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Thomas Burger (trans.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 1999. The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haller, William. 1938. The Rise of Puritanism; or, The Way to the New Jerusalem as Set Forth in Pulpit and Press from Thomas Cartwright to John Lilburne and John Milton, 1570–1643. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. 1968. The users and uses of language. In: Joshua A. Fishman (ed.). Readings in the Sociology of Language. The Hague: Mouton & Co., 139–169. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K., McIntosh, Angus, & Strevens, Peter. 1964. The Linguistic Sciences and Language Teaching. London: Longmans.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haugen, Einar. 1966. Language Conflict and Language Planning: The Case of Modern Norwegian. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Howe, John. 2004. Language and Political Meaning in Revolutionary America. Amherst & Boston: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell H. 1964. Reference note [on language standardization]. In: Dell Hymes (ed.). Language in Culture and Society: A Reader in Linguistics and Anthropology. New York: Harper & Row, 523–526.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Inoue, Miyako. 2006. Standardization. In: Keith Brown (ed.). Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, 2nd ed. Oxford: Elsevier, vol. 121, 121–127. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jones, Richard Foster. 1953. The Triumph of the English Language; a Survey of Opinions Concerning the Vernacular from the Introduction of Printing to the Restoration. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kim, Victoria. 2009. American Justice in a Foreign Language. Los Angeles Times, February 21, electronic edition. ([URL]).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, Robin. 1973. Language and woman’s place. Language in Society 2(1), 45–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Looby, Christopher. 1996. Voicing America: Language, Literary Form, and the Origins of the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ortner, Sherry B., & Whitehead, Harriet. (eds.). 1981. Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Radkau, Joachim. 2009. Max Weber: A Biography. Patrick Camiller (trans.). Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reid, T[homas] B[ertram] W[allace]. 1956. Linguistics, structuralism and philology. Archivum Linguisticum 8(1), 28–37.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Remlinger, Kathryn. (ed.). 2009. American Speech 84(2). “Enregisterment.”Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rosaldo, Michelle Z., & Lamphere, Louise. (eds.). 1974. Woman, Culture, and Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sapir, Edward. 1932. Group. In: Edwin R. A. Seligman and Alvin Johnson (eds.). The Encyclopædia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan, vol. 71, 178–182.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shils, Edward. 1975. Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology. Selected Papers of Edward Shils, vol. 21. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1996a. Indexical order, and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. In: Risako Ide, et al., eds., SALSA 3 [= Texas Linguistic Forum, no. 36]. Austin: Department of Linguistics, University of Texas, 266–295.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1996b. Monoglot “standard” in America: standardization and metaphors of linguistic hegemony. In: Donald Brenneis and Ronald H. S. Macaulay (eds.). The Matrix of Language: Contemporary Linguistic Anthropology. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 284–306.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1998. The uses and utility of ideology: A commentary. In: Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds.). Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 123–145.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2000. Whorfianism and the linguistic imagination of nationality. In: Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.). Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities . Santa Fe, N. Mex.: School of American Research Press, 85–138.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2003. [Revision and rewrite of 1996a]. Language and Communication 23(3–4), 193–229. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Urciuoli, Bonnie. 1985. Bilingualism as code and bilingualism as practice. Anthropological Linguistics 27(4), 363–386.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1991. The political topography of Spanish and English: The view from a New York Puerto Rican neighborhood. American Ethnologist 18(2), 295–310. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1996. Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and Class. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Warner, Michael. 1990. Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn A. 1989. Sentences in the language prison: The rhetorical structuring of an American language policy debate. American Ethnologist 16(2), 268–78. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (32)

Cited by 32 other publications

Ji, Eugene Yu
2024. Performing as ways of knowing: Projects of legibility and state simplification in postcolonial Hong Kong. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 34:2 ► pp. 265 ff. DOI logo
Masquelier, Bertrand
2024. Sémiotique de la forme dialogique de la pensée. Cygne noir :12 ► pp. 11 ff. DOI logo
Babcock, Joshua
2022. Postracial Policing, “Mother Tongue” Sourcing, and Images of Singlish Standard. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 32:2 ► pp. 326 ff. DOI logo
Cox, Whitney
2022. Bhaṭṭa Jayanta on Epistemic Complexity. Journal of Indian Philosophy 50:3 ► pp. 387 ff. DOI logo
Gal, Susan
2022. Michael Silverstein (1945–2020). American Anthropologist 124:1 ► pp. 236 ff. DOI logo
Mannheim, Bruce
2022. Mother Tongue, Father Tongue, Place Tongue: Twenty-First-Century Language Transmission and Language Survival in the Andes and Western Amazonia. Journal of Anthropological Research 78:4 ► pp. 407 ff. DOI logo
Feeley-Harnik, Gillian
2021. Lewis Henry Morgan: American Beavers and Their Works. Ethnos 86:1 ► pp. 21 ff. DOI logo
Saraceni, Mario & Camille Jacob
2019. Revisiting borders: Named languages and de-colonization. Language Sciences 76 ► pp. 101170 ff. DOI logo
Crapanzano, Vincent
2017. Textual self‐authorization. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23:1 ► pp. 175 ff. DOI logo
Karrebæk, Martha Sif
2017. Thai veggies and hair removal products: space, objects and language in an urban greengrocery. Social Semiotics 27:4 ► pp. 451 ff. DOI logo
Park, Joseph Sung-Yul
2016. Language as pure potential. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37:5 ► pp. 453 ff. DOI logo
Rosa, Jonathan Daniel
2016. Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness: Raciolinguistic Ideologies across Communicative Contexts. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 26:2 ► pp. 162 ff. DOI logo
Carta, Caterina
2015. The swinging “we”. Journal of Language and Politics 14:1 ► pp. 65 ff. DOI logo
Jackson, Jennifer
2015. “Structural differentiation and the poetics of violence shaping Barack Obama's presidency: a study in personhood, literacy, and the improvisation of African–American publics”. Language Sciences 52 ► pp. 200 ff. DOI logo
Moore, Robert
2015. From revolutionary monolingualism to reactionary multilingualism: Top-down discourses of linguistic diversity in Europe, 1794-present. Language & Communication 44 ► pp. 19 ff. DOI logo
Moore, Robert
2021. Michael Silverstein (1945–2020). Language in Society 50:4 ► pp. 493 ff. DOI logo
Raymond, Chase Wesley
2015. From the field, to the Web, and back again: incorporating Internet methods into language ideology research. Language Awareness 24:2 ► pp. 138 ff. DOI logo
Silverstein, Michael
2015. How language communities intersect: Is “superdiversity” an incremental or transformative condition?. Language & Communication 44 ► pp. 7 ff. DOI logo
Kraus, Peter A. & Rūta Kazlauskaitė-Gürbüz
2014. Addressing linguistic diversity in the European Union: Strategies and dilemmas. Ethnicities 14:4 ► pp. 517 ff. DOI logo
Dunmire, Patricia L.
2012. Political Discourse Analysis: Exploring the Language of Politics and the Politics of Language. Language and Linguistics Compass 6:11 ► pp. 735 ff. DOI logo
Swinehart, Karl F. & Kathryn Graber
2012. Tongue-tied territories: Languages and publics in stateless nations. Language & Communication 32:2 ► pp. 95 ff. DOI logo
Krzyżanowski, Michał & Ruth Wodak
2011. Political strategies and language policies: the European Union Lisbon strategy and its implications for the EU’s language and multilingualism policy. Language Policy 10:2 ► pp. 115 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Subversive Comparisons. In Subversive Archaism, ► pp. 121 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Cosmologies of the Social. In Subversive Archaism, ► pp. 69 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. National Legitimacy and the Illegitimacy of National Origins. In Subversive Archaism, ► pp. 27 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. A Plurality of Polities. In Subversive Archaism, ► pp. 97 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Notes. In Subversive Archaism, ► pp. 171 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. References. In Subversive Archaism, ► pp. 205 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Belonging and Remoteness. In Subversive Archaism, ► pp. 51 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Does a Subversive Past Have a Viable Future?. In Subversive Archaism, ► pp. 157 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. The Nation-State Outraged. In Subversive Archaism, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Civility, Parody, and Invective. In Subversive Archaism, ► pp. 137 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue