Introduction: Language ideologies—again? New insights from a flourishing field

Abstract

Originally defined as “any sets of beliefs about language articulated by the users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use” (Silverstein 1979: 193), language ideologies now seem to be “everywhere” (Cavanaugh 2019). Indeed, while language ideological research has moved “from a marginalized topic to an issue of central concern” (Kroskrity 2004: 501), and despite the abundance and regularity of new scholarly work, both theoretically and methodologically, language ideologies are still not very well framed. The Special Issue on ‘Language Ideologies: Old Questions, New Perspectives’ aims at offering diverse insights on language ideologies with a focus on methodological and theoretical questions. In this introduction in particular, we briefly map out the field by focusing on what distinguishes language ideologies from other close phenomena such as language attitudes. We also describe the methods used to access language ideologies. Finally, we introduce the ten papers that constitute this Special Issue.