Corpus approaches to language ideology

Abstract

This paper outlines how corpus linguistics - and more specifically the corpusassisted discourse studies approach - can add useful dimensions to studies of language ideology. First, it is argued that the identification of words of high, low, and statistically significant frequency can help in the identification and exploration of language ideologies within corpora. The frequency of linguistic patterns and discursive representations may reveal trends in explicit representations of languages (i.e. metalanguage) and elisions where assumptions are made about the role of languages (i.e. implicit language ideologies). Secondly, collocation data can aid researchers in gaining greater insight into the ways in which languages are being represented (or not) within sites identified through frequency and statistical significance. Finally, the use of dispersion plots can help researchers to identify sites with high- and low-frequency items for closer analysis. The paper concludes with some of the limitations of the corpus linguistic approach in studying language ideologies. Examples are drawn from a larger comparative study of French and English language ideologies in corpora of Canadian newspapers.