Language Policy as Metapragmatic Discourse: A Focus on the Intersection of Language Policy and Social Identification

Abstract

Discursive approaches to language policy analysis have advanced our accounting of the complexity of language policy processes, actors, and activities, and in particular to the sociocultural contexts of all three. Drawing upon scholarship in linguistic anthropology, sociocultural linguistics, and sociolinguistics, this chapter focuses on the role of social identification in the appropriation of language policy. It highlights the concepts of metapragmatic discourse—or talk about recognizable kinds of people, language use, and social activity (Agha, Language and social relations. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007; Wortham, Learning identity: the joint emergence of social identity and academic learning, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006)—and speech chains, or series of communicative events along which a message travels (Agha, Language and social relations. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007), as useful ways of seeing language policy and appropriations that help to foreground the important role of social identification therein. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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