“Say a Sentence”: Drawing an Interactional Link between Organizations, Language Ideologies, and Coloniality
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Previous critical work on language ideologies surrounding English in postcolonial spaces has shown how perduring colonial logics are repurposed into contemporary discourses of value and class (Reyes 2017; Tupas 2019). This article builds on this work by examining a language-policing incident in an urban Pakistani café in which the owners link modernity, wealth, and professionalism to Western English competency. I further interrogate this interaction using a lens informed by organizational studies and decolonial work on structural whiteness to show how linguistic hegemonies working at the intersections of race, class, and organizational hierarchy in so-called postcolonial spaces can still embody and promote Anglocentric ideologies. Finally, in understanding how language policing works as a scalar act, this article ends with a discussion of how actors in positions of power can appeal to conflicting notions of scale to mask their larger ideologies as part of standard organizational practices, divorced from any larger context.
Source: Signs and Society
DOI: 10.1086/722838
Author: Jacob Henry
Institution: University of Colorado Boulder
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,550
OpenAlex ID: W4323913685