Journal of Language and Politics - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2002

This article investigates the role of metaphor in the production and reproduction of language ideologies. It does this by focusing on official discourses concerning the language policy of Singapore, where recurrent appeal is made to the conduit metaphor (Reddy 1993) in articulating various claims and beliefs about language and its relation to questions of identity and values.The analytic framework adopted here treats language ideologies in terms of three semiotic processes: iconization, recursion, and erasure (Gal and Irvine 1995). By tracking a single metaphor through a variety of discourses, the article illustrates how these semiotic processes come together when metaphor is used in the service of ideology. The article also suggests the introduction of a fourth semiotic process, performativity, which draws attention to the various lexical realizations of the conduit metaphor.

The closing years of the 20th century provided increasing evidence of how changes in the political and socio-economic structures influence or sometimes even determine linguistic structure and/or behaviour. For this purpose the linguistic situation in Ukraine and the position of Ukrainian and Russian are examined in the period since the independence of the country in 1991 when rapid shifts in political, economic and cultural spheres have made a significant impact on language planning.Language politics of post-Perestroika and post-Communist era in Ukraine has resulted in deliberate changes in both status and corpus planning leading to the elevation of Ukrainian as the only official (“state”) language and downgrading Russian which, however, remains functional in many regions of the country. The linguistic picture would be incomplete without analysis of a mixed Russian-Ukrainian variety Surzhyk, which is not something stable and permanent. It is undergoing significant changes in the present linguistic environment as it is becoming the oral and even written language not only of Ukrainophones but also of Russophones.

This article analyses dramatic mutations in a newly developing language, Armenian. It gives evidence of how a new language is born and that it is far from being incoherent.

Photography has a long history of (de-)legitimation of wars. In this paper we examine the visual rhetoric of two newspapers, the British Guardian and the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza in their representation of the Palestinian-Israeli war in October 2000. Although both newspapers have access to the same (agency) photographs, their images differ. Both papers show the Palestinians to be the main victims of the war. However, Gazeta Wyborcza depicts the Palestinians predominantly as “terrorists” and deflects any military responsibility from the Israelis by not including any photographs of the Israeli soldiers. The Guardian shows the Palestinians predominantly as romanticised, lone heroes against the Israeli military might, although the Israeli military force is vague and de-personalised. Furthermore, both newspapers differ in their representation of the war in political terms choosing different images of local and international politicians.

The enlargement of the European Union places it at an important threshold in its development. Fundamental questions on its nature and functions have to be discussed and agreed upon by its members. France, as one of these members, has repeatedly shown concern about the reform of the Union’s institutions. The French elite daily, Le Monde, reflects this important debate in its news coverage, and ties in its own position, particularly through its editorials. This paper examines the concept of Europe as it is presented in Le Monde’s editorial discourse from 1999 to 2001. The study is conducted in the constructivist approach and within the methodological framework of Critical Discourse Analysis. This perspective adds to other studies on European identity by strengthening the background of their argumentation, integrating their sometimes apparently contradictory conclusions, and describing the construction of identity from a national perspective in a more detailed and nuanced manner.

This essay uses a poststructural/critical race analysis, and provides a specific example of how the social practice of labeling serves to create major ideological effects, which produce and reproduce unequal race-based power relations. Certain U.S. citizens are ascribed/branded with the seemingly politically correct label, “African-American”. Many believe that the shift from “Black” to “African-American” in 1988 was the result of Blacks exercising political power and achieving a hard-won right to change their identity. Also many view the new label as the common sense preferred alternative to “Black”. This article deconstructs the term “African-American” and views it within the context of the macro and micro interactive forces of politics, economics, sociology, history and socio-cultural phenomena. Instead of the intended purpose of fostering a sense of self-esteem, the label has also served to reinforce the socially constructed binary dualisms characterizing “Blacks” as being fundamentally different from “Whites”. Moreover, the notion of Black pride, self-esteem and heritage are concepts with the power to shift culpability and blame onto the victims of a race-based system. Power appeared to have been exercised by Black/African-Americans. However, the shift to African-American was not the result of autonomous thinking. It was a “reflex without reflection” (Billig 1991:8). It “echoed” dominating ideological structures of power. The “new” label unwittingly serves to further perpetuate racist ideology inherited from a foundational institution of slavery. America can enjoy the image of having a culture of freedom, equality and egalitarianism, while maintaining justifiable race-based political, social and economic inequality gaps.