Language ideologies are speakers’ ideas, values, and beliefs about language, their own and others’. They take shape both explicitly, through speakers’ statements about language (what it is and does), and implicitly, through speakers’ use of language (code choices and code switches, accents, interruptions, etc.). As such, language ideologies are enactments of collective orders, both reflecting social structures and hierarchies, but also helping to form and sustain them, as well as having the potential to disrupt and transform them. Language ideologies shape all types of language use, including in the classroom, where students and teachers may share or hold conflicting language ideologies. Dominant language ideologies (language ideologies held by and reinforcing the position of those in power), such as those that naturalize Standard Languages, may be particularly powerful in teaching contexts, and help to uphold structural inequalities and hinder equal participation.

Jillian Cavanaugh teaches linguistic and cultural anthropology at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center CUNY in New York City. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from New York University. She has done ethnographic and linguistic anthropological research in Bergamo, Italy, focusing on language shift, language ideologies, language and gender, heritage food, and social change. She is professor of anthropology.

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