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Language Ideologies, Endangered-Language Linguistics, and Christianization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Courtney Handman
Courtney Handman*
Affiliation:
Reed College
*
Department of Anthropology, Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., Portland, OR 97212 [chandman@reed.edu]
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Extract

Language ideologies generally refer to the kinds of cultural assumptions or beliefs that speakers hold about their OWN language: its relation to the world, its relation to their sense of self, its relation to other languages, and so forth (Silverstein 1979, Woolard 1998). But in the kinds of cross-cultural contact situations that linguists, anthropologists, missionaries, or other Christian aid workers often find themselves, language ideologies about OTHER peoples' languages can be just as important. Though cultural assumptions about language may change over time and across historical and social contexts, they never disappear, not even from professional linguistics. Here I look at some of the key language ideologies at issue when considering the relationship between SIL and endangered-language linguistics.

Information

Type
SIL International and the Disciplinary Culture of Linguistics
Information
Language , Volume 85 , Issue 3 , September 2009, pp. 635 - 639
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by Linguistic Society of America

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References

* This paper is partially based on field research in Papua New Guinea supported by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship and a Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research fellowship. I would like to thank Lise Dobrin for inviting me to participate in the original 2007 LSA panel on which these papers are based, and for her patience and guidance in seeing this project through. James Slotta and Robert Moore provided valuable commentary on earlier drafts. I would also like to thank Brian Joseph and the anonymous Language referees for their astute comments in helping to clarify many points. Any errors are my own.

1 http://www.unesco.org/culture/en/endangeredlanguages; http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/, last accessed August 13, 2009.

2 The burdensome ways in which such requirements of coherence affect local populations attempting to gain political rights or recognition from the state is discussed in Povinelli 2002.