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How to talk about languages: The venues metaphor
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Jim O’Driscoll
Published/Copyright:
June 28, 2013
Abstract
This paper advocates a new perspective on languages. It begins by demonstrating that, the occasional disavowals of sociolinguists notwithstanding, the lens through which we in the 21st century, both specialists and laypeople, view languages is predominantly biological. It then suggests that this biological metaphor is conceptually unhelpful and potentially socially deleterious. The bulk of the paper presents and explores the metaphor of social venues as a more productive and empowering alternative: the presentation is through the example of language choice in multilingual settings; the exploration touches on a range of language contact and macro-sociolinguistic phenomena.
Keywords: language ideology; language choice; language contact; linguistic anthropology; conceptual metaphor
Published Online: 2013-6-28
Published in Print: 2013-6-27
© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
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Keywords for this article
language ideology;
language choice;
language contact;
linguistic anthropology;
conceptual metaphor
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Masthead
- Articles
- Bilingual voicing: A study of code-switching in the reported speech of Finnish immigrants in Estonia
- How to talk about languages: The venues metaphor
- Maya the Bee, Scooby Doo and other stories: How the public and private distinction is depicted in children’s bidialectal interactions in kindergarten
- Too much French? Not enough French?: The Vancouver Olympics and a very Canadian language ideological debate
- Children’s language input: A study of a remote multilingual Indigenous Australian community
- Book reviews
- Obituary for Shoshana Blum-Kulka
