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This paper examines language ideology in the ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) 2012 speaking proficiency guidelines using the method of critical rhetoric analysis. Language ideologies, a concept borrowed from linguistic anthropology, are the ways people and organizations conceptualize and talk about language. In this paper, I explore how the ACTFL speaking proficiency guidelines discuss proficient language. Since these guidelines are widely used and highly respected, it is necessary for those who use them to understand what ideologies of proficiency they express. Therefore, this study also discusses how the language ideologies in the guidelines may impact consequential validity. The results from this analysis are a description of language ideologies found in the guidelines, including ideologies about standard language and native speakers. From these findings, I make recommendations for how knowledge about these language ideologies should inform decisions being made for users of the guidelines and the accompanying test, the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview. These recommendations include considering 1) how generalizable these ideologies are to languages other than English, 2) how what is included and excluded in the definition of proficiency could impact less prestigious speakers of the languages tested, and 3) how well these ideologies align with the decisions that will be made based on the test's results.

No description available.

<p>This thesis is concerned with three language debates that reached their most crucial peaks in Sweden at the beginning of the twenty-first century: (i) the debate on the promotion of the Swedish language, (ii) the debate on language testing for citizenship, and (iii) the debate on mother tongue instruction. The main scope of the thesis is to take a theoretically multi-pronged approach to these debates trying to shed light on the following aspects: Why did such debates emerge when they did? Which discourses were available in those specific historical moments? Who are the social actors that intervened in these debates? What is at stake for them? What do they claim? What systems of values, ideas and beliefs – i.e. ideologies – underlie such claims? What are the effects in terms of identities, objects of political intervention, commonsensical knowledge and authority that these discourses and ideologies produce?</p><p>Taking Sweden as a case in point, the thesis adds to the existing literature another example of how language debates are the manifestation of conflicts between different language ideologies that struggle for hegemony, thus attempting to impose one specific way of envisaging the management of a nation-state in a time of globalisation. In their outer and most patent facets, these struggles deal with the relationships between languages in today’s Sweden, and how the state, through legislation, should – or should not – regulate such relationships in order to (re)produce some kind of linguistic order. However, the thesis also illustrates that when social actors appeal to a linguistic order, they not only draw boundaries between different languages in a given society, but they also bring into existence a social world in which the speakers of those languages come to occupy specific social positions. These linguistic and social hierarchies, in turn, are imbricated in an often implicit moral regime of what counts as good or bad, acceptable or taboo in that society.</p>

This thesis is concerned with three language debates that reached their most crucial peaks in Sweden at the beginning of the twenty-first century: (i) the debate on the promotion of the Swedish language, (ii) the debate on language testing for citizenship, and (iii) the debate on mother tongue instruction. The main scope of the thesis is to take a theoretically multi-pronged approach to these debates trying to shed light on the following aspects: Why did such debates emerge when they did? Which discourses were available in those specific historical moments? Who are the social actors that intervened in these debates? What is at stake for them? What do they claim? What systems of values, ideas and beliefs – i.e. ideologies – underlie such claims? What are the effects in terms of identities, objects of political intervention, commonsensical knowledge and authority that these discourses and ideologies produce? Taking Sweden as a case in point, the thesis adds to the existing literature another example of how language debates are the manifestation of conflicts between different language ideologies that struggle for hegemony, thus attempting to impose one specific way of envisaging the management of a nation-state in a time of globalisation. In their outer and most patent facets, these struggles deal with the relationships between languages in today’s Sweden, and how the state, through legislation, should – or should not – regulate such relationships in order to (re)produce some kind of linguistic order. However, the thesis also illustrates that when social actors appeal to a linguistic order, they not only draw boundaries between different languages in a given society, but they also bring into existence a social world in which the speakers of those languages come to occupy specific social positions. These linguistic and social hierarchies, in turn, are imbricated in an often implicit moral regime of what counts as good or bad, acceptable or taboo in that society.

Arabic language ideology that views the colloquial as a threat to the standard language and fears a public role for the colloquial register remained prevalent throughout much of the twentieth century. Yet, in late nineteenth-century Egypt, the Nahda project of disseminating knowledge to ‘the masses’ gave rise to several journals that found a public role for Ammiyya, introducing it into the realm of written knowledge. This study analyzes the processes of introducing Ammiyya into the written realm and the subsequent attempt at reeling the register back in from the public sphere. Through a framework of the sociolinguistic analysis of style and the process of iconization, Part I analyzes Abdallah al-Nadim’s use of language variation in his journal, al-Ustaadh, and how it aided in sorting out contradiction between ideology that hailed the standard as the suitable public register and practice that conceded a role to the colloquial. This study argues that even as his journal published didactic dialogues in Ammiyya, Nadim’s language practice chipped away at the prospect of a sustained literary role for the colloquial through the use of ‘styles’ that aligned the standard with authority and a keen understanding of the modernity project and through indexing the colloquial with the backward realm of uneducated women. Through the framework of the process of ‘erasure', Part II analyzes linguistic practices aimed at reeling the colloquial back in from the realm of written knowledge. It demonstrates Nadim’s efforts - near the end of the publication of his journal - to erase the notion that an educated Egyptian would have any use for the register. Nadim removed the salient features of Ammiyya from his dialogues and scolded his interlocutors who displayed their backwardness through the continued use of the features. Late nineteenth- century works, such as Hasan Tawfiq’s Usuul al-Kalimaat al-Ammiyya, represent a continuation of the ideology-practice dialectic from Nadim’s attempted erasure of the colloquial. However, whereas Nadim erased salient features of the colloquial from his writings, these works attempted to trace Ammiyya terms back to their assumed Fusha origins, with the aim of unifying the language by erasing the register. / text

According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2012), the United States is the world's fifth most populous Spanish-speaking country, with over 35 million Spanish-speakers. In addition, Spanish is the most widely taught foreign language in the United States, with more students enrolled in Spanish at the higher-education level than in all other modern languages combined, as detailed in a 2010 report from the Modern Language Association (MLA). How are these two realities connected? Is the United States' status as a top Spanish-speaking country reflected in Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL) and Spanish as a Heritage Language (SHL) curricula at the university level? This case study of a large, Southwestern university, which is home to SFL and SHL programs among the largest in the country, explores that question using a two-tiered approach. First, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is employed to examine the ideological underpinnings of how spoken varieties of Spanish, with particular emphasis on U.S. Spanish, are presented in first-year and second-year university-level SFL and SHL textbooks used at the university. Second, focus groups of SFL and SHL instructors are conducted to gain insight into their beliefs and practices regarding language variety in the classroom. The study finds a systematic reinforcement of the ideology of a monolithic 'standard' Spanish in the SFL and SHL textbooks and curricula, with only cursory attention paid to regional varieties of Spanish and an oftentimes explicit de-legitimization of U.S. Spanish in particular.

<p>The principle aim of this thesis is to investigate all the challenges and opportunities/possibilities involved in realising the implementation of the official Western Cape Language Policy (finalised in 2002). These challenges and opportunities/possibilities were investigated within various structures of the Western Cape Province of South Africa&rsquo / s civil service environment in six major multilingual towns in the Western Cape. The historical and political context leading to the creation of this policy is provided in the following three paragraphs. Following the demise of Apartheid with South Africa&rsquo / s first democratic elections in 1994, the New South Africa brought with it amongst other things the following changes: a new Constitution / new legislation / access and freedom within a system of inclusion / the creation of new provinces / the constitutional breakdown of social, geographical and linguistic barriers / the subsequent migration to different towns and cities of people speaking different languages and their integration there / the creation of district and regional municipalities / freedom of the press. All of these introduced a whole new platform of language interaction and association and therefore general communication (Constitution of the RSA, 1996). In addition, in contrast to the Apartheid policy of only two official languages &ndash / English and Afrikaans &ndash / eleven languages were declared official languages of the state. The declaration of 11 official languages in 1996 (English, Afrikaans, isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sesotho, Sepedi, Setswana, Tshivenda, isiNdebele, siSwati and Xitsonga) was an integral part of highlighting multilingualism in the newly designated nine provinces of SA. Each of the nine provinces &ndash / the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, Gauteng, the Northwest Province, Northern Province (now called Limpopo), Mpumalanga, the Free State and Kwazulu-Natal - had to, in consultation with different provincial stakeholders, draft language policies according to the National Language Framework. In the Western Cape Province, three languages were identified as dominant, namely Afrikaans, isiXhosa and English. The Western Cape Language Policy (WCLP) was consequently drafted by the Western Cape Language Committee (WCLC), a statutory body and a sub-committee of the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB), after the Westen Cape Provincial Languages Act, Act 31 of 1998, was accepted by Parliament in 1998. This WCLP was the first provincial language policy to be completed in the New SA. The policy was accepted and the draft was ready for implementation by 2002. This thesis presents a critical overview of previous and current strategies being used by all provincial government departments in the implementation of the WCLP. This includes a sample of general public knowledge of the existence of the terms and meaning of the WCLP, different outcomes of studies and language-related projects done by the WCLC, PanSALB, DCAS and the Central Language Unit (CLU) since 2000. It also focuses on the role that different private and public language implementation agencies are playing, or not, in their communication with the multilingual civil society of the Western Cape. Projections for and challenges facing the implementation of the WCLP since its acceptance in the Western Cape Provincial Parliament (WCPP) in 2004 were also researched carefully, together with an analysis of research already conducted on behalf of the provincial government. Document analysis therefore forms a core part of this methodology, together with fieldwork research conducted in six selected major multilingual towns of the Western Cape. This was done in order to explore the challenges experienced by Afrikaans-, isiXhosa- and English-speaking people at grassroots level, since they needed to become more aware of their language rights as set out in the WCLP. Drawing on a theoretical and conceptual framework based on studies in Language and Power Relations, specifically studies on the role of Language Ideologies, Linguistic Citizenship, Agency and Voice and Language Ecology on effective Language Planning, Policy and Implementation, the thesis presents, through its document analysis, quantitative and qualitative data, an analysis of the limited or failed implementation of the WCLP in both government departments as well as the civilian populations in six selected multilingual towns of the Western Cape. This was achieved by examining actual language practices at particular language policy implementation agencies such as the post office, the police station, the high school, households, the municipal office, the day hospital and the clinic in each of these towns. The thesis gathers together all this evidence to prove that the implementation of the WCLP has been hampered by a range of factors such as wide-spread ignorance of the policy, the dominance of particular languages in the province over others, power relations within government structures and relatively inflexible language ideologies held by those charged with policy implementation at different levels. It concludes by providing a number of practical recommendations on how more effective implementation can be achieved.</p>

<p>The principle aim of this thesis is to investigate all the challenges and opportunities/possibilities involved in realising the implementation of the official Western Cape Language Policy (finalised in 2002). These challenges and opportunities/possibilities were investigated within various structures of the Western Cape Province of South Africa&rsquo / s civil service environment in six major multilingual towns in the Western Cape. The historical and political context leading to the creation of this policy is provided in the following three paragraphs. Following the demise of Apartheid with South Africa&rsquo / s first democratic elections in 1994, the New South Africa brought with it amongst other things the following changes: a new Constitution / new legislation / access and freedom within a system of inclusion / the creation of new provinces / the constitutional breakdown of social, geographical and linguistic barriers / the subsequent migration to different towns and cities of people speaking different languages and their integration there / the creation of district and regional municipalities / freedom of the press. All of these introduced a whole new platform of language interaction and association and therefore general communication (Constitution of the RSA, 1996). In addition, in contrast to the Apartheid policy of only two official languages &ndash / English and Afrikaans &ndash / eleven languages were declared official languages of the state. The declaration of 11 official languages in 1996 (English, Afrikaans, isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sesotho, Sepedi, Setswana, Tshivenda, isiNdebele, siSwati and Xitsonga) was an integral part of highlighting multilingualism in the newly designated nine provinces of SA. Each of the nine provinces &ndash / the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, Gauteng, the Northwest Province, Northern Province (now called Limpopo), Mpumalanga, the Free State and Kwazulu-Natal - had to, in consultation with different provincial stakeholders, draft language policies according to the National Language Framework. In the Western Cape Province, three languages were identified as dominant, namely Afrikaans, isiXhosa and English. The Western Cape Language Policy (WCLP) was consequently drafted by the Western Cape Language Committee (WCLC), a statutory body and a sub-committee of the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB), after the Westen Cape Provincial Languages Act, Act 31 of 1998, was accepted by Parliament in 1998. This WCLP was the first provincial language policy to be completed in the New SA. The policy was accepted and the draft was ready for implementation by 2002. This thesis presents a critical overview of previous and current strategies being used by all provincial government departments in the implementation of the WCLP. This includes a sample of general public knowledge of the existence of the terms and meaning of the WCLP, different outcomes of studies and language-related projects done by the WCLC, PanSALB, DCAS and the Central Language Unit (CLU) since 2000. It also focuses on the role that different private and public language implementation agencies are playing, or not, in their communication with the multilingual civil society of the Western Cape. Projections for and challenges facing the implementation of the WCLP since its acceptance in the Western Cape Provincial Parliament (WCPP) in 2004 were also researched carefully, together with an analysis of research already conducted on behalf of the provincial government. Document analysis therefore forms a core part of this methodology, together with fieldwork research conducted in six selected major multilingual towns of the Western Cape. This was done in order to explore the challenges experienced by Afrikaans-, isiXhosa- and English-speaking people at grassroots level, since they needed to become more aware of their language rights as set out in the WCLP. Drawing on a theoretical and conceptual framework based on studies in Language and Power Relations, specifically studies on the role of Language Ideologies, Linguistic Citizenship, Agency and Voice and Language Ecology on effective Language Planning, Policy and Implementation, the thesis presents, through its document analysis, quantitative and qualitative data, an analysis of the limited or failed implementation of the WCLP in both government departments as well as the civilian populations in six selected multilingual towns of the Western Cape. This was achieved by examining actual language practices at particular language policy implementation agencies such as the post office, the police station, the high school, households, the municipal office, the day hospital and the clinic in each of these towns. The thesis gathers together all this evidence to prove that the implementation of the WCLP has been hampered by a range of factors such as wide-spread ignorance of the policy, the dominance of particular languages in the province over others, power relations within government structures and relatively inflexible language ideologies held by those charged with policy implementation at different levels. It concludes by providing a number of practical recommendations on how more effective implementation can be achieved.</p>

<p>From Labov's (1963) finding that the centralization of the /ay/ and /aw/ diphthongs in Martha's Vineyard was emblematic of resistance to local economic and social change, to Mendoza-Denton's (2008) finding that variation in the realization of the /I/ vowel corresponds to gang affiliation among Latina girls in a Northern California high school, identity has been at the center of sociolinguistic analysis and theory for nearly a half century. Despite the centrality of this construct, sociolinguists have rarely stopped to ask about the epistemological, theoretical, and even political implications of identity. This dissertation offers a sustained, interdisciplinary critique of identity, both in linguistics and more generally in contemporary social theory. Through engagements with cultural anthropology, feminist theory, cultural studies, and linguistics, this critique calls attention to identity's epistemological baggage (e.g. collusion with neo-liberalism and Englightenment-era humanism) and theoretical tendencies (e.g. overestimation of agency) and suggests a turn to poststructuralist theory of subject formation. The dissertation is organized around three sections: historiography, theory, and empiricism, as follows.</p><p> The study begins with historiography, tracing the relationship between language and social analysis in a limited archive that includes the work of 19th and 20th Century language scholars, including William Dwight Whitney, Leonard Bloomfield, and Noam Chomsky. Focusing specifically on the relationship between Labov's variationist sociolinguistics and Chomsky's generative program, the historiography analyzes the conditions that led sociolinguistics to a form of social theory scaffolded around identity. </p><p>Poststructuralist theory of subject formation is introduced, with an emphasis on the work of Judith Butler (1990, 1997, 2004) and Michel Foucault (1975, 1976, 1981). A set of terms that animate this framework are introduced, including interpellation, subjectivization, discourse, subjectivity, subject position, subject type, power, and identity.</p><p>Two empirical studies of adolescent language are introduced and the findings are considered in light of the constellation of terms introduced in the prior section. The first is a case study focusing on the speech of one adolescent Mexican American female, "María," whose language use underwent reorganization over a three-year period coinciding with a change in community and school. Segmental and suprasegmental variables were analyzed from data collected from two time periods, T1 and T2. In order to account for modifications in "María's" vocalic production, two vowel variables were selected for acoustic analysis: pre-nasal and non-pre-nasal allophones of /æ/. These variables were selected because of their saliency in both Latino varieties of English (Thomas, Carter, & Coggshall 2006; Fought 2003; Thomas 2001). Midpoint measurements were taken for F1, F2, and F3 for a minimum of 25 tokens of each variable from T1 and T2 using PRAAT phonetics software (Boersma & Weenink 2009). Maria's production of prosodic rhythm was also analyzed using the Pairwise Variability Index (Lowe & Grabe 1995). Changes in F1 and F2 for both vocalic variables were statistically significant--both allophones of /æ/ were lowered and backed from T1 to T2. Conversely, no statistically significant difference was found in prosodic rhythm. These findings are analyzed in the context of the poststructuralist framework already set forth.</p><p>The second study is an intensive ethnographic investigation of a `majority minority' middle school in North Carolina that took place over a five-month period. Detailed ethnographic fieldnotes and unscripted interviews with 50 African American, white, and Latino speakers in social groups identified during observation constitute the data for this study. The analysis focuses on the subjectivizing effects of the institution, particularly the institutional discourses of `choice' and `value,' on the cultural and linguistic practices of its students. Using discourse analytic methods, the analysis shows that talk by students across all major social divisions (grade level, popularity status, gender, and ethnicity) is inflected by institutional discourses. </p><p>A complementary analysis considers the subjectivizing function of language ideology in the middle school context. Analysis of interview and ethnographic field data show three distinct discursive formations about language: `proper talk,' `ghetto talk,' and Spanish.</p> / Dissertation