The 'One nation, One language' Ideology
Introduction The term ideology, coined by the French philosopher Antoine Destutt de Tracy in 1796, could be said, according to Nana (2016, p. 168), to refer to: 'the very habits of mind, beliefs, assumptions, expectations, which govern the life of an individual and a group and which often are superimposed on the world in order to give it structure or meaning'. Given this description, as I see it, ideology might be viewed as a way of projecting the inner workings of the mind, whether consciously or unconsciously, to create external structure/s or realities, as well as the projection itself. In other words, ideology encompasses the thought, the action, and the outcome. Nana (2016) argues that the relationship between language and ideology is one that includes concepts related to the social and linguistic, and accompanying interests of a moral and political nature. One incarnation of language ideology is “the ‘one nation, one language’ model of language and identity that dev...
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