Deontological issues, language ideologies and reflexivity in linguistics

Given the fact that ‘native’ speakers and linguists both can be considered as experts in language, the specificity of their knowledge(s) of language needs to be described. The reflexive discourses they respectively produce seem to indicate a difference in the perception of temporality (speakers tend to stress the loss of an ideal language throughout the ages, whereas linguists tend to see scientific findings as positively oriented towards progress) and in the capacity of acknowledging ignorance. In this respect, the present paper analyzes two kinds of data: Guidelines produced by linguists acting as experts for language analysis in asylum cases, and elicited interviews collected in the field within an anthropological framework.