‘Pure’ Farsi and political sensitivities: Language and ideologies in Farsi complementary language classrooms in Denmark

This paper presents an insight into two Farsi complementary language classrooms in Copenhagen, Denmark, characterised by political sensitivities. We illustrate a number of characteristic features of the classrooms concerning language use, pedagogical methods and cultural phenomena, which were related to key adults’ preferences, and we consider possible interpretations of them as indexical signs. In particular, we emphasise ideological interpretations (e.g. the monolingualism norm and language purism) and we relate the classroom characteristics to the contemporary state of Iran as well as to the time and place in which the classes occurred. We analyse both explicit metapragmatic messages and implicit ways of indicating ideologies, and see both types as characterised by avoidance of particular referents, that is, by unmentionables.     

Elite positionings towards Hindi: Language policies,political stances and language competence in India1

In India, Hindi is imagined and institutionalized as the national language which weds together India's pluralistic population under the banner of a shared Indian identity. Approaching language competence as embedded in and performed through language practices and ideologies, I explore how a New Delhi elite community positions themselves towards Hindi vis‐à‐vis national language policies and political movements. Contrasting with traditional unified elite portrayals, e.g. ‘elite closure’ ( Myers‐Scotton 1990 ), India has multiple sociolinguistically discordant elite groups, and these liberal elites ideologically construct their Hindi (in)competency in an alternative framework attending to the history (and failure) of Hindi‐based nationalism, their disalignment with modern right‐wing movements, and their continued affiliation with English. This perspective of some elites as negotiating and disagreeing with contemporary political movements and language policy legislature illuminates language competencies as socially constructed and locally grounded, and challenges past interpretations of postcolonial elites as unified actors controlling the dominant linguistic marketplace.     

English and discourses of commodification among tourism workers in the Himalayas

In this article, I investigate commodification discourses and ideologies of English from the perspective of Nepali tourism workers. Drawing data from interviews with porters and trekking guides in Nepal, I argue that English is not seen as merely a transactional means to convey meaning; it works in combination with the traditional form of labor and care in the local economy, establishing itself as a powerful tool to establish closer interpersonal relationships, enhance such interpersonal relationships for economic gains and commodify local identities and cultures in the tourism market. The interview and ethnographic details show that language learners are agentive and capable of making sense of their actions by positioning themselves variously in terms of ethnicity, economic class and job category. These workers think that tourists' linguistic and financial resources are the empowering tools that enable them to travel to locations that they want. They also want to empower themselves with English skills and translocal imaginaries to travel and see the world beyond their immediate reach. Repertoires in English are considered as instruments to mediate their imaginaries and the foreign worlds they want to be part of.     

Ethnic conflict,group polarization,and gender attitudes in Croatia

We examine the sources of traditional gender attitudes during a period of social conflict and change. Using survey data from Croatia (Center for the Investigation of Transition and Civil Society, 1996; N= 2,030) we explore the relationships between war‐related experiences, in‐group and out‐group polarization, and two dimensions of gender attitudes: policy attitudes (e.g., attitudes toward divorce and abortion) and gendered family roles (e.g., attitudes toward the division of household labor). We argue that ethnic conflict promotes in‐group polarization (i.e., attachment to the Croatian nation) and out‐group polarization (i.e., distrust of “others”), which lead to a resurgence of traditional values, including traditional gender attitudes. We also examine the effects of childhood socialization, individual resources, and interpersonal familial ties on gender attitudes. Results support the conflict‐group polarization model and indicate that out‐group polarization has the most powerful effect on both gendered family role attitudes and policy attitudes for men and women. In‐group polarization does not affect gender attitudes, however.     

What does it mean to be a girl with qizhi?:Refinement,gender and language ideologies in contemporary Taiwan1

This study investigates the relationship between ideologies of language and gender as manifested through sociolinguistic interviews conducted on college campuses in Taiwan. The interviews consistently and systematically revealed the use of a term, qizhi– roughly equivalent to ‘refined disposition.’ This paper examines the implications of this preoccupation. Through an examination of the contextual use of qizhi, this study shows that, first, qizhi is commonly associated with a range of social practices, among which linguistic practices play a significant role. Second, qizhi is often used to describe, evaluate, and further regulate women's ways of speaking, although its use is not gender exclusive. Third, common linguistic varieties in Taiwan, such as Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Taiwanese‐accented Mandarin, are associated with qizhi to varying degrees. This study demonstrates how talk centered on qizhi serves as a meeting ground of social evaluation, linguistic and discursive practices, gender ideologies, and language ideologies.     

Quota trouble: Talking about gender quotas in finnish local politics

This article analyses the discourse concerning gender quotas and their implementation in Finnish local politics. Among our local actor interviewees, we found four different groups: feminist-oriented, non-feminist, accepting and disapproving. Despite the successful implementation of the quotas, our analysis reveals hidden conflicts and resistance. Respondents often resorted to memory lapses, strategies of distancing or assumptions about the interim character of quotas in an ‘almost gender equal Finland’ when discussing the implementation process. The predominance of these strategies is explained by contextual factors, including the strong cultural support for gender equality and legalism in Finland. We suggest that they can be interpreted as psychologized forms of resistance to a hegemonic discourse which does not really allow for anyone to be ‘against gender equality’ or wilfully negligent of the law.     

Globalization and changing gender norms in Azerbaijan

In the Republic of Azerbaijan, the opening up of borders and the transition to a free market economy have paved the way not only for economic transformations but also for cultural intrusion from the West and the South. This has coincided with the intensification of globalizing processes across the world over the past two decades. This article examines the impact of the ensuing changes on gender norms and the position of women in public and domestic spheres in Azerbaijan. Pointing to the paradoxical gender ideology under the Soviet system and the way that it has evolved in recent years, the article examines the impact of conflicting ideologies and exogenous influences, such as the advent of the commercialization of sex, on women's economic position and public presence. It finds that, although some of the old ambiguities in gender norms and relations are being eroded, new gender asymmetries are arising along with contradictions and new tensions in gender and family relations. The diversification of perceptions of femininity and gender norms is shown to have occurred in tandem with the intensification of regional disparities, in particular the metropolitan-periphery divide, which has resulted from globalizing processes.     

‘English… it's part of our blood’: Ideologies of language and nation in United States Congressional discourse

Utilizing a combination of corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, the article describes ideologies of United States (U.S.) national identity based in civic and ethnic nationalisms. These ideologies circulated during debates and hearings in the U.S. Congress concerning the 2006 reauthorization of provisions of the Voting Rights Act requiring that multilingual voting materials be made available for language minorities in certain jurisdictions. The article argues that although those legislators supporting the use of multilingual voting materials construct an ideology of civic nationalism that promotes inclusion of language minorities, they are still greatly influenced by the dominant language ideology. Those opposing multilingual voting materials construct a U.S. national identity that places stringent requirements on newcomers to assimilate and learn English. These legislators simultaneously attempt to avoid the suspicion of ethnic nationalist ideologies by arguing that English is a neutral entity, detaching it from its dominant linguistic community. The findings suggest that despite Congressional support for multilingual voting materials, the language ideologies present in Congress are not necessarily favorable to the rights of language minorities. These findings have language policy implications in that they suggest opposition to a right to language for linguistic minorities in the U.S.     

Language attitudes and sociolinguistic behaviour: Exploring attitude-behaviour relations in language

This paper is concerned with the relationship between attitude and behaviour in language. Adolescent male and female subjects were recorded and index-scores of their linguistic behaviour compared to their assessment of ingroup members in a verbal-guise attitude experiment, and to their attitudes concerning language usage in a questionnaire. It was hypothesised that male subjects' language would be closer to the vernacular, and that they would also express more positive attitudes towards ingroup members than would female subjects. However, no significant correlation between attitude and behaviour was found in the quantitative analysis, but results from the attitude-questionnaire support our hypothesis: male subjects have more vernacular features in their language and also express more genuinely positive attitudes towards the local vernaculars than do female subjects. Finally, methodological and theoretical implications of these results are discussed, emphasising the importance of using eclectic approaches in future research on attitude-behaviour relations in language.     

Advising,gender, and performance: Evidence from a university with exogenous adviser–student gender match

This paper provides the first causal evidence on the effects of gender match in the adviser–student relationship (as opposed to the well-researched instructor–student relationship) on student outcomes along both the intensive and extensive margins. We analyze administrative data from a university with a faculty adviser assignment policy that makes gender pairing between advisers and students exogenous. We find that matching female students with female adviser has a positive and significant effect on retention and grade point average (GPA) upon graduation, particularly for students with academic challenges and non-science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students. For female students with below-median high school GPA, gender match is found to raise the odds of graduate school enrollments.     

Work that –s!: Drag queens,gender, identity,and traditional Newfoundland English

Making use of three data sets of Newfoundland English, this paper uncovers the linguistic and social motivations and strategies used by young speakers to reclaim and re‐shape a traditional, local, relic language feature (verbal –s attachment, as in I goes). While each group that we discuss (young females, drag queens, and a sample of the Newfoundland population) is differently situated with respect to the broader local culture (i.e. they each have their own social identities), similarities and parallels in the reclamation and use of verbal –s indicate important processes that occur in the enregisterment and reappropriation of a salient, traditional linguistic form. Results indicate that the local social and linguistic reconstruction of a speech feature can change a path of decline and prove fertile ground for creating a unique identity that moves toward the global while still motioning to the past of a community.     

Management gender composition and the gender pay gap: Evidence from British panel data

Women continue to earn less than their male counterparts globally. Scholars and feminist activists have suggested a partial explanation for this gender gap in earnings could be women's limited access to power structures at the workplace. Using the linked employer–employee data of the Workplace Employment Relations Study 2004–2011, this article asks what happens to the gender gap in earnings among non‐managerial employees when the share of women in management at the workplace increases. The findings, based on workplace‐fixed time‐fixed effects regression models, suggest that workplace‐level increases in the share of women in management are associated with decreases of the non‐managerial gender gap in earnings. This effect appears to be largely unrelated to changes in equality and diversity policies, family‐friendly arrangements and support for carers at the workplace.     

The evaluation of citizen participation in policymaking: Insights from Portugal

While citizen participation in policymaking is on the rise worldwide, the scholarly debate centring around its evaluation has not developed to the same extent. The article discusses the methodology and findings of the evaluation of the project “Portugal Participa: Caminhos para a Inovação Societal” which started at the end of 2014, and was implemented in 2015 and 2016, in Portugal. As the project promoted actions at both national and local levels, the evaluation accounted for both layers with a major focus on the analysis of procedures and outputs to examine its success. Through the application of a multi-method approach – data collection and analysis, cost-effectiveness assessment, interviews, pre-post surveys, and counterfactual focus groups – involving a wide array of agents – political representatives, civil servants, NGOs, citizens, national academia, and the funding sponsor – findings have helped retrieve three main insights that aim to contribute to future research on the evaluation of citizen participation in policymaking, which should shed light on: the (re)connection of multiple agents; the role within the governance systems; and the pursuit of social inclusion.     

Living Maoist gender ideology: experiences of women ex-combatants in Nepal

Studies of women’s participation in civil conflict as armed combatants have attributed diverse motivations to such participation and examined the implications of participation for women’s empowerment in the aftermath. The authors contribute to these studies through an in-depth analysis of female combatants’ struggles for equality and empowerment during and after Nepal’s decade-long Maoist conflict. Scholars have argued that the emphasis of Maoist ideology in Nepal on the emancipation of women and on ending gender discrimination attracted a large number of women to the cause. Based on narratives of Maoist female ex-combatants, the authors investigate women’s engagement with Maoist ideology during and after the conflict. These narratives reveal that despite discourses of gender equality in Nepal’s Maoist struggle, promises around gender equality remain unkept in the period after the war. A reintegration program has offered women ex-combatants few options and has pushed women back into traditional gender roles. Struggles continue in this terrain. Incorporating intersectionality, the paper highlights how women ex-combatants’ gender identities intersect with caste and other social locations to produce diverse challenges for their lives.     

Voices in discourses: Dialogism, Critical Discourse Analysis and ethnic identity

In this article we attempt to combine the Bakhtinian, dialogical philosophy of language and critical discourse analysis (CDA) with our analysis of ethnic identity. The data we discuss are an interview with a Sami journalist who works in the Sami media. We analyse the interview from the points of view of dialogism and CDA to illustrate how identity must be understood as something which is both individual and social in nature. We reject the earlier essentialist interpretations of identity which see it as purely individual and psychological in nature. At the same time, we argue that those views of identity that see it as exclusively socially constructed can be misleading as well. We aim to illustrate our individual‐cum‐social viewpoint by discussing how identity is represented through a variety of voices and a variety of discourses. We discuss ethnic identity as related both to social level discourses that our subject drew on – such as the discourses of the journalistic profession or ethnicity and to 'voices' that bear witness to his experiences as an individual and his individual life course.     

Configurations of gender inequality: the consequences of ideology and public policy1

This paper gathers a wide range of indicators into distinctive profiles to show how configurations of gender economic inequality are shaped by both welfare state strategies and gender role ideologies. When multiple aspects of gender inequality are assembled together, it becomes evident that all societies exhibit both gender‐egalitarian and inegalitarian features. These tradeoffs can best be understood through the ideological and institutional contexts in which they are embedded. Empirical illustrations are provided for fourteen advanced societies by analysing the major expressions of gender inequality; from women's economic wellbeing and financial autonomy, through labour force participation and continuity of employment, to occupational attainments and economic rewards. The analysis confirms the existence of distinctive profiles of gender inequality and their affinity to normative conceptions of the gender order and ideal types of welfare state institutions.     

Scalar politics,language ideologies,and the sociolinguistics of globalization among transnational Korean professionals in Hong Kong

This paper argues that the sociolinguistics of globalization is accompanied by a constitutive scalar politics. Based on ten interviews with Korean professionals in Hong Kong, we report that Korean migrants’ use and experience of English is characterized by competing language ideologies we identify as: Pragmatic English/Perfect English, Multilingualism/English Only, and Global Language/Local Language. Tensions within these ideologies were revealed as respondents referenced the contexts of their daily lives as intersecting sets of geographic, temporal, and social scales. We discuss how sociolinguistic relations associated with the transnational lifecourse, hybridizing identity, and racialization were imagined in ways that re‐negotiated these scales to serve the interests of the participants and provide coherence to their communicative practices. Sociolinguistic relations both reference scales and constitute them. We conclude that attending to scales and scalar politics provides a better explanatory framework for the ways the uneven linguistics markets of globalization are negotiated by transnational subjects.     

Diglossia and identity in Northeast Thailand: Linguistic,social, and political hierarchy

The paper explores diglossic relations between Central Thai and phasa isan, a variety officially known as a dialect of Thai, but linguistically close to Lao. Phasa isan is spoken by almost one‐third of Thailand's population but its speakers in the Northeast are often stigmatized as uneducated and backward. We conducted field research mainly among university students in Ubon Ratchathani, a northeastern border province, by drawing upon data from survey questionnaires, reflective essays, interviews, and field observations. The findings suggest a transitional diglossic relationship in which Central Thai is the High and phasa isan the Low variety. These relationships are discussed in terms of nationalism, social hierarchy, and language maintenance and shift.