Language ideologies in interviews: A conversation analysis approach¹

Abstract

This study aims to combine tools from the fields of Language Ideologies and Conversation Analysis, despite their differences, in an analysis of metalinguistic discourse in research interviews. The goal is to show what Conversation Analysis can offer the study of language ideologies. To this end, the study investigates how interaction shapes and (re)constructs explicit descriptions, statements, evaluations, etc. of language. Single-case analyses of phenomena typically of interest in the field of Language Ideologies are performed to shed light on how talk about language is constructed and shaped in research interviews carried out in the Rumanian Banat. The analysis of language ideologies, such as 'language standards', is thus connected to the analysis of interactional structures, such as repair. In general, the analyses show how talk about language is produced and designed for the turn-by-turn structures of interaction. The analyses also highlight the intersubjective character of talk about language.

Facilitative effects of learner-directed codeswitching: evidence from Chinese learners of English

“…In stage two, interviews were held with the four teachers to examine their motivations and thus complement analyses of classroom discourse with the level of underlying socio-psychological forces which generate it (Laihonen, 2008). Interviews with the teachers from the control group comprised a series of questions centring on their attitudes about CS in L2 classrooms and on their reason for favouring monolingualism.…”

The Management of Diversity in Schoolscapes

“…I present how teachers describe the linguistic landscape, and through these statements, some policies of their schools. Combining the methods and main conceptions of educational narrative studies (Kalaja et al 2008;Blommaert et al 2012) and the interactional approach of language ideology studies (Laihonen 2008), I propose a complex analysis of the interactional co-constructedness of ideologies in relation to the management (regulation, arrangement, interpretation) of the linguistic landscape. The interactive routines observed in the research materials uncover institutionalized and inherited models of argumenatations and identity construction, and their reception from the viewpoint of the interviewees.…”

Interviewing: Practice, Ideology, Genre, and Intertextuality

“…These ideologies thus provide the lenses through which participants model both "what is going on" as an interaction unfolds in real time and "what went on," viewed from some other moment. Only sometimes apparent in explicit statements, language ideologies mostly emerge in the tacit ways that people manage and reflect on their own and others' participation (Laihonen 2008, Silverstein 1998). This perspective therefore indicates that interactions proceed both pragmatically and metapragmatically (Silverstein 1993).…”