Mapping the language ideologies of organisational members: a Corpus Linguistic Investigation of the United Nations’ General Debates (1970-2016)
McEntee-Atalianis, Lisa and Vessey, Rachelle (2020) Mapping the language ideologies of organisational members: a Corpus Linguistic Investigation of the United Nations’ General Debates (1970-2016). Language Policy 19 , pp. 549-573. ISSN 1568-4555.
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Abstract
Supranational and international organisations have long experienced difficulties in implementing multilingual policies, and this is, in part, due to a lack of activism on language matters by their membership (Author, forthcoming; Kruse & Ammon, 2018). The aim of this paper is not only to highlight the importance of investigating language ideology within the field of organisational language policy, but also to scrutinise the language ideologies particular to an influential body of institutional members. Using the United Nations as a site of exploration, and the UN General Debates Corpus (Mikhaylov, Baturo and Dasandi, 2017) as a dataset, this paper traces if and how issues of language have preoccupied the deliberations and work of UN member states over the course of 46 years, and if these discussions align with organisational policy. Using corpus linguistics, the paper maps the ideological landscape and language policy discourses across time, identifying a paucity of discussion over almost five decades. The paper argues that attention to the absence of references to language problems/language policy in the organisation is just as important as an exploration of language problems themselves. If organisations wish to make changes to language policies, and/or prioritise policy implementation, they would do well to attend more closely to the language ideologies of their membership and/or to reasons for their apparent inattention to language issues.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | The final publication is available at Springer via the link above. |
| Keyword(s) / Subject(s): | corpus linguistics, language ideology, multilingualism, supranational/international organisations, United Nations |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication |
| Depositing User: | Rachelle Vessey |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Jan 2020 08:10 |
| Last Modified: | 09 Aug 2023 12:47 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/30554 |
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