A cline of enregisterment and its erasure

Intersections of ideology and technology in minority-language news

Bibliographic Data

ID2856917
AuthorsKathryn E Graber (0000-0001-8823-6277, Indiana University Bloomington, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume51
Issue4
Pages551-576
Publication date2022-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage in Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-4045 • E-ISSN: 1469-8013
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0047404521000403
OpenAlexW3184623697
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited26

Audiences often ascribe monolithic linguistic authority to news media institutions, viewing journalists as the bearers of language standards. Yet media are in fact heteroglossic, with journalists across different media platforms negotiating competing practical demands and different understandings of the social purposes and possibilities of their work. This article examines a case of hyperideologized minority-language media to show how the interplay of deep-seated language ideologies, the local sociohistorical context of media, and the material, technological affordances of different platforms produces a cline of enregisterment. It focuses on media produced in Buryat, a Mongolic language of southeastern Siberia whose speakers are shifting to Russian. Comparing journalists' linguistic practices and audiences' interpretations across the coexisting media platforms of newspapers, radio, and television shows how media enregisterment and, in turn, the enregisterment of a standard literary language occur along a cline that is shaped by the intersections of ideology with technology. (Media, language ideology, enregisterment, standardization, purism, materiality, Russia, Russian, Buryat

Aesthetics · Affordance · Art · Context (archaeology) · Ideology · Journalism · Language ideology · Linguistics · Materiality (auditing) · Media studies · Newspaper · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Standard language · Computer Science · History · Law · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity · Multilingual Education and Policy

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