Language ideologies and social positioning: the restoration of a “much needed bridge”

Abstract

Abstract In recent years, the intersections between, or entanglements of, local action and translocal patterns gained renewed interest in sociolinguistics. Received distinctions such as micro/macro or practice/structure have been challenged and confronted with more granular concepts such as sociolinguistic scales. Consequently, established disciplinary orientations such as micro/macro or qualitative/quantitative sociolinguistics have also been questioned: rather than one of two options, sociolinguistics is now supposed to embrace “complexity”. This fundamental discussion also centrally concerns research into language ideologies. While it has always been acknowledged that language ideologies frame and shape, or manifest in, local action, they have long been construed as a translocal social order, a “macro phenomenon”. In the wake of the general discussion outlined above, however, this has been challenged. Language ideologies are now increasingly located at the intersection of structure and practice, construed as structurating practices and as dynamic, scalar phenomena that emerge from, and are subjected to, ongoing local processes of social positioning and indexical enregisterment (which they reversely frame). This special issue takes up the discussion and asks where we can get to with such a complex notion of language ideologies and/as social positioning, how far we have come already, and which obstacles lie ahead. The authors address these questions from different perspectives. This introduction sets the scene, recapitulates the discussion and state of the art, and provides an outline of the issue.