Sentences in the Language Prison

The rhetorical structuring of an American language policy debate

Bibliographic Data

ID2466211
AuthorsKathryn A Woolard (University of Wisconsin–Madison, corresponding author)
Year1989
Volume16
Issue2
Pages268-278
Publication date1989-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Ethnologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-0496 • E-ISSN: 1548-1425
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/ae.1989.16.2.02a00050
OpenAlexW2083731515
LanguageEN
Citations received52
References cited10

The anti-bilingual movement in the United States is a status movement, but a simple "status politics" analysis does not fully capture its dynamics. Such movements are neither homogeneous nor merely reflective of social structure, but express internal ambivalence and organize sociopolitical change through rhetorical processes. I analyze texts produced in San Francisco's 1983 campaign against bilingual ballots in order to account for the initiative's broad appeal. Rhetorical tropes and recurring themes shift the target of the campaign to aspects of political process of which a wide spectrum of Americans are suspicious, projecting fears onto outsiders and constructing a familiarly benevolent meaning for the initiative.[American politics, language policy, status movements, discourse analysis, ideology

Ambivalence · Appeal · Epistemology · Ideology · Linguistics · Meaning (existential · Political science · Politics · Rhetorical question · Situational ethics · Social movement · Sociology · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Law · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

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