Scaling the value of multilingualism: ‘Common-sense’ narratives of growth and inequality in an expert report to the U.S. Congress

IF 1.4 2区 文学 Q2 COMMUNICATION
Kristina Wirtz
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Abstract

I examine the powerful institutional scaling project of the 2017 American Academy of Arts & Sciences report, America’s Languages: Investing in Language Education for the 21st Century. I analyze the scalar configurations emerging in the report’s narrative argumentation with the goal of denaturalizing its scale-making narratives in the production of a ‘common-sense’ regimentation of the value of language learning and multilingualism in the United States. These configurations show how social inequalities in access to language learning are reinforced through the ideologically mapped categorizations of language to sociocultural domains and kinds of speakers. Nomically- and reportively-calibrated, future-oriented narratives present figurations of growth and progress that mix nationalist ideologies of US expansionism, neoliberal and raciolinguistic logics, and even utopian visions. By focusing on scale, and in particular on interscalar processes of comparison, the resonances across these sometimes contradictory ideological frames are brought into focus.
提升使用多种语言的价值:提交美国国会的专家报告中关于增长和不平等的 "常识性 "叙述
我研究了 2017 年美国艺术与科学学院报告《美国的语言》中强大的机构扩展项目:投资 21 世纪的语言教育》。我分析了报告叙事论证中出现的标度配置,目的是对其标度制造叙事进行去自然化,从而对美国语言学习和多语言使用的价值进行 "常识性 "规范。这些配置表明,语言学习机会方面的社会不平等是如何通过意识形态上将语言归类到社会文化领域和说话者种类中而得到强化的。名义上和报告上校准的、面向未来的叙事呈现出增长和进步的图景,混合了美国扩张主义的民族主义意识形态、新自由主义和种族语言逻辑,甚至乌托邦式的愿景。通过关注规模,特别是跨规模的比较过程,这些有时相互矛盾的意识形态框架之间的共鸣得到了关注。
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来源期刊
Discourse Studies
Discourse Studies COMMUNICATION-
CiteScore
3.30
自引率
5.60%
发文量
62
期刊介绍: Discourse Studies is a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal for the study of text and talk. Publishing outstanding work on the structures and strategies of written and spoken discourse, special attention is given to cross-disciplinary studies of text and talk in linguistics, anthropology, ethnomethodology, cognitive and social psychology, communication studies and law.
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