welcome back Party People Mike here with the social life of language and today we are looking at a chapter written by Irving and GAO entitled language ideology and linguistic differentiation now there are four really complex keywords in this chapter we got language ideology and then we also got three semiotic processes what the authors call iconization Erasure and fractal recursivity now look we all know that I think big words are overrated but in this case Irving and gal changed the game but I don't want you to worry because I'm going to share with you all of my Elementary School tricks that I use to remember each one of these terms so what's a language ideology let's find out this is a chapter that people tend to read several times throughout their career now let's note that this article uses research conducted mainly in Europe and an African Colonial context but since I know most of my audience lives here in the United States and because these concepts are already kind of complicated I'm gonna concentrate on examples that might be found here in an American context as usual we start one word at a time now let's talk about the word ideology by itself before we talk about language ideologies Irving and gal describe ideologies as conceptual schemas and as Folk theories which are involved in the process of meaning making or in other words how we make sense of our world and our reality they focus on the process of differentiation in the creation of difference and similarity or how we come to recognize things like people and groups as either similar to each other or different from each other but we're also thinking about differences and similarity among abstract Concepts like language but for now let's think of an ideology as a collection of interdependent beliefs as conceptual schemas or conceptual templates which can include rules ideas and folk theories that are then activated in Social contexts in a way that help people understand what is going on and to some extent guides people's behavior in those social contexts for this first example let's start on familiar territory let's talk about the ideological construction of the concept we call the public sphere because remember we are thinking of ideologies as underlying conceptual schemas or Arrangements of beliefs that we reactivate in different contexts that's how each of us have a pretty good idea about what is appropriate public behavior in for example any Walmart or any restaurant even though you haven't necessarily been to to every single Walmart and every single restaurant those ideologies those conceptual schemas are reactivated each time we arrive in different contexts so people are generally aware that even though you spend three hours a day at a gym and you got a hot bod you still gotta wear a shirt to Walmart in the United States we have strong ideological beliefs about what constitutes appropriate behavior in the public sphere but to understand what appropriate behaviors in public includes we need to understand what behaviors are excluded or deemed inappropriate meaning we need to understand the ideological beliefs about what constitutes appropriate behavior in the private sphere so in other words to construct appropriateness in the public sphere in opposition emerged or a differentiation or a differentiation emerged between the public sphere and the private sphere this brings us to our first big keyword fractal recursivity let's start with recursivity by itself now the way I remember the term recursivity which comes from the word recursion I always think about how the word kinda looks like reoccurrence which then could mean reactivation so recursivity refers to the reactivation of an ideological scheme or template for example we know that in our public sphere schema we usually wear clothes and speak in a polite voice these ideological beliefs are then reactivated in different versions of the public Sphere for example when we are at a restaurant or in a college classroom or in a Walmart we know that we gotta wear clothes and we probably shouldn't yell and scream at people so recursivity refers to recursions or reactivate stations of an ideological scheme or template now let's focus on the word fractal in fractal recursivity so like I said to understand what is deemed appropriate behavior in the public we need to understand what behaviors are excluded which means another ideological schema emerges that helps construct the private sphere as something else and something different than the public for example our home is understood as a private sphere different from the public sphere now these two ideological schemas put together are usually written out as the public private distinction and this is where the word fractal comes in so let me tell you my not so smart and kind of wrong way to remember the word fractal to me the word fractal kinda looks like the word fraction fraction like in math and the public private distinction with the slash written in to my eyes kinda reminds me of a fraction now Irving and GAO explain it way smarter than that where they talk about repeating geometrical patterns but I kind of just like my fractal sounds like fraction memory trick up until now we have talked about how we activate the public schema where we know how to behave appropriately in many different versions of the public however the public side of our ideological schema never works alone because when we try to understand what is public we end up reactivating both sides of the fractal distinction or the fractal opposition and this is where gets interesting so for the next example let's think of an American doctor's office now at a large scale when we're standing outside of the building we might consider that a public building or part of the public sphere but then within the public building we activate private spaces so the doctor's office waiting room is constructed as a public space but the individual patient rooms are constructed as private so even though the doctor's office is a public building both sides of the public private distinction are reactivated and from here more public private spaces are ideologically created but at a smaller scale that is a moment of fractal recursivity which Irving and gal Define as fractal recursivity involves the projection of an opposition Salient at some level of relationship onto some other level this means that fractal recursions or fractal reactivations can go smaller like individual patient rooms or bathrooms but they can also go bigger for example the doctor's office might be located in a public building but when dealing with for example state property laws the doctor might refer to his office as private property next let me tell you a real life example one time I was filming stuff and I walked into a McDonald's and within five seconds the security guard came up to me and said said serve this as private property and McDonald's doesn't allow filming of any kind so in that moment McDonald's became private property or the public-private distinction was activated so what does that tell us well how about that the public and private spheres don't just exist they are ideological schemas that are activated deactivated and reactivated meaning what is public and private is pretty much a moving Target constantly reinterpreted differently the public and the private is an ideological relation not a static formula that says this is always public and this is always private it's a matter of perception and a matter of power and influence and certain people and institutions have more say in what is categorized as what in that last example corporate McDonald's enforced the idea of private property when I was filming and it doesn't matter that I was kicking and screaming that it was a pub public space they had the power to remove me from the property this is kind of similar to the way that McDonald's here in New York always have signs that say no public restrooms but really they are interpreting public restrooms as a space publicly available only to their customers so for now let's just say that not all interpretations of the public-private distinction are equal meaning something like a business owner or a government has more power to enforce one interpretation over the other okay let's do one more example that appears really simple but is actually super complicated let's say you're having a house party let's think about the public private fractal distinction and where and when it is reactivated in other words let's look for examples of fractal recursivity now the whole house is technically your private space however when people start arriving at your party the public private distinction is reactivated at smaller levels so maybe the living room becomes the public space while the bathroom and bedrooms become private spaces but on a bigger level or an upward recursion let's say someone you don't like shows up at your party and knocks at your door and in that moment you decide to say this is a private party all of a sudden in that context your home is a private space again not a public space at least during the time that you're trying to get rid of that person you don't like now sticking with a party example let's say you have two people having a very quiet conversation in the middle of the room and let's imagine that they're whispering to each other in that context they are creating a private space via their private conversation in the middle of the public space or in the middle of your living room again we see that fractal opposition reactivated okay so let's review what we've done so far we defined ideology as a conceptual schema that we use to understand the world and also this schema helps guide the unfolding of social contexts we also now know that recursivity is the reactivation of that ideological schema and finally we also know that fractal recursivity is the reactivation of an ideological opposition onto bigger and smaller scales now we've been concentrating on the ideological distinction between the public and the privates and I want to give you one more important thing to remember in ideology never ever works alone meaning ideologies do not work one at a time we've been describing how the ideological construction of the public requires the ideological construction of the private so those are at the very least two ideological schemas that are dependent on each other to exist ideologies are always densely layered for example there are gender ideologies that Define appropriate behavior differently for men and women similarly we can layer Iran racial ideologies an obvious one might be called respectability politics where ideologies of gender and race are layered onto the public-private distinction okay so I think we are ready to start talking about language ideologies a language ideology is a conceptual schema or folk theory about language and language users today we've been talking about public and private Behavior and the use of language is a behavior we speak differently in public than we do in private meaning we associate Norms of appropriate language use depending on the context we might ideologically believe that profanity is okay in private space but not public space we might think that formal language is appropriate for the public sphere but not so much in the private sphere so at a basic level all of those are ideologies about language use so we can say that a language ideology is is a schema about language and language users okay so before we go any deeper let's recap all of my Elementary School memory tricks when you see recursivity or the word recursion which looks like reoccurrence or my favorite word reactivation when you see the word fractal or the phrase fractal distinction you can think of the word fraction specifically thinking about the slash between two opposing Concepts which includes distinctions between Concepts like public and private but also things like left and right East and West man and woman mixed and pure and together fractal recursivity is the reactivation or projection of an opposition onto a specific context and those contexts might be smaller or bigger and finally an ideology is a conceptual schema made up of a collection of beliefs and the language ideology is a conceptual schema made up of a collection of beliefs about language and language users okay we only have two more keywords left Erasure and iconization let's start with the word Erasure Irving and GAO characterize Erasure as tidying up in ideological field by rendering invisible some persons or activities that do not fit a given ideological understanding okay so let's stick to an American context and let's talk race relations specifically the racial understanding of DACA recipients so like the first part of the video let's start with General ideologies and then we'll talk about language ideologies now for those unfamiliar with what DACA is it stands for deferred action for childhood arrivals or the policy that temporarily puts off deporting undocumented persons that have lived in the United States for most of their life and have little or no connection to their so-called Home Country at this this point in the 2010s and the 2020s we usually conjure up a clear image of DACA recipients in our heads as having a brown body or a latinx body now remember according to Irving and gal ideological Erasure renders invisible some persons and activities that do not fit a given ideological understanding of something some examples of Erasure might include the fact that DACA recipients come from all over the world for example France or Jamaica or Canada but all of those people and all of those racial identities are generally erased from the conversation when politicians are talking about DACA There is almost an exclusive focus on being from Mexico in this sense conversations referring only to Mexico does the work of tidying up the conversational talking points that we see on the news it makes it easier to understand what is going on because we are only getting a partial vision of reality and if you're trying to convince other people that you're anti-immigrant and racist ideologies are correct or should be codified into American law it's much easier to draw upon the idea that illegal Mexicans are invading the us as opposed to talking about an invasion of illegal Canadians so very generally all the countries that are not Mexico are erased from the conversation about DACA that is an example of Erasure or the tidying up of an ideological field by rendering invisible persons or activities that do not fit a given ideological understanding now let's look for examples of Erasure when applying language ideologies to DACA recipients because DACA recipients are so deeply racialized as Mexican or latinx there is an ideological belief that DACA recipients are Spanish speakers or at minimum bilingual but remember the whole point of DACA was the idea that perhaps certain people do not speak the so-called mother tongue of their so-called Home Country because they were raised in the American education system which is almost exclusively taught in English so in this particular case we see the Erasure of DACA recipients knowledge of the English language it also erases the presence of English language monolingual DACA folks so why is this happening and what exactly is tidied up well perhaps if you're of the ideological persuasion that all immigrants should be sent home immediately erasing the existence of English language monolingual persons from the conversations makes the idea of deporting children less cruel or maybe more palatable furthermore because English is The Unofficial language of the United States and American citizens are just expected to know English framing DACA looks as primarily Spanish speakers potentially highlights or intensifies the argument that they are not really American because they supposedly speak a different mother tongue and should be sent home so to recap Erasure happens when some people or activities are ignored or not noticed or explained away or interpreted in such a way as to simplify the reality of a situation and again only some persons groups and institutions have the power to enforce these erasures okay let's do one more example of language ideologies and the process of Erasure when we're referring to something called bad grammar but specifically the use of double negatives phrases like I Can't Get No Satisfaction [Music] or we don't need no education [Music] or ain't nothing but a heartache let's focus on the ideologies under the notion of double negatives as bad grammar to start we almost always refer to the mathematical rationale that a negative times a negative equals a positive and this rationale seems to have such explanatory power to a whole lot of people but remember Erasure ignores or doesn't notice potential contradictions for example one could easily say that a negative plus a negative equals a number that is more negative but why do we only refer to the multiplication of negative numbers but not the addition of negative numbers well because it contradicts the argument that double negatives are incorrect so to tidy up the conversation the idea of adding negatives is completely erased okay so let's look for more Erasure specifically who is perceived as using double negatives excessively and who is erased from the conversation now an easy example is how rap and hip-hop artists are perceived or framed as frequently using double negatives more so than any other genre even though every other genre uses double negatives just as much but those examples are erased from the conversation but also why do we only focus on rap and hip-hop using double negatives well remember language ideologies are always layered in the case of bad grammar we have racial ideologies at play as well here is a perfect time to get into our last keyword iconization which involves the process where a linguistic feature be Becomes emblematic of an entire person or group in other words a linguistic feature appears to be representative of the nature of an entire person or group so what does that mean in the case of hip-hop lyrics throughout history black speakers have been characterized as using black English registers and because some words have historically been perceived as missing there were and are frequent accusation that this grammatical pattern was the result of laziness now looking back to the definition of iconization or a linguistic feature becomes linked to the nature of a whole group we end up with a formula that kinda looks like lazy language user equals lazy person or in a deeply racialized formula lazy language user equals lazy black people so again iconization is the process of conflating a linguistic feature with the nature of a whole person or a whole group by the way notice how the idea of laziness is recursively applied at different scales from Individual people to entire groups we see that racial ideology reactivated across social life okay and finally let's see if we can use all four keywords and key phrases together ready oh geez am I ready okay so let's use latinidad or the latinx experience as our last example so it's often imagined that an integral part of the latinx experience is bilingualism and specifically English Spanish code switching which some people describe as mixing two languages together historically the notion of mixed linguistic practices was conflated into the idea that Latinos are both a mixed race and also being mixed up because of their mixed language and mixed up in this sense meant being cognitively confused which then resulted in a massive number of brown students being tracked into special ed programs so here we see the notion of mixed linguistic practices now seems capable of explaining the mixed nature or the mixed biology of Latinos they're all mixed up racially and they're mixed up cognitively no notice the recursivity here or the reactivation of mixedness onto different scales now at a larger social scale this assumes that Latinos are automatically bilingual to at least some degree which then erases the fact that not all Latinos know Spanish or even want to learn Spanish but the process of iconization continues to help construct Latinos as perpetually mixed up and mixing their language so even when we got let's say in English monolingual latinx person it's very likely that they will be heard as mixing in Spanish or at a minimum they'll have a Spanish accent on their English which is another way of saying that this person mixes up the sounds of each language another way to say this is that sometimes the latinx Mastery of English is completely erased or another way to say this and also adding in a fractal distinction is that Latinos are unable to speak pure English and just like that we see where a fractal distinction has emerged the opposition between mixed language and pure language and of course we gotta remember that mixedness and Purity are Concepts that rely on each other to exist so every time we are talking about mixedness we are indirectly referring to Purity somewhere else okay so here we got all the words we got the language ideology that Latinos always use mixed language to get to the idea of mixed language we also need the idea of pure language in Irving and gals language they call that fractal recursivity or ideological schemas reactivated in different places over time this perceived mixed language of Latinos became emblematic of the nature of Latinos in general or what Irvin and gal call the process of iconization and one aspect that is completely erased is the fact that there are are many English language monolingual latinxes however even if they are monolingual often they would be heard as not speaking pure English because it is claimed that their English is at least somewhat influenced or mixed with Spanish but it also goes the other way too that Latinos in the US don't speak pure Spanish either because American Spanish has a lot of so-called Spanglish Words which then might be described as impure language or mixed language so again the various linguistic competencies of Latinos are erased well that's all the keywords in this chapter it's important that we understand the language ideologies we subscribe to because the way we treat language often mirrors the way we treat people and historically language has been used as an effective and efficient tool of domination okay so if you finish reading this chapter and are thinking wow so I know that was really important but I'm not totally sure I understood everything I promise you that is a totally normal feeling literally almost everyone feels that you'll very likely need to reread the chapter a few times which means you'll probably need to re-watch this video a few times but once you get these terms down the whole chapter including the European and African Colonial context that Irving and gal talk about all of that stuff becomes so much easier to understand and once you get these terms down you'll have tools at your disposal to describe and analyze certain phenomena that we think just exist when in reality they are ideologically constructed well that's all for today folks don't forget to like And subscribe and to donate to the patreon account you can find all my work and Publications at Maestro Mike mena.com once again I'm Mike with the social life of language and we're done