LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES AS SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS SYSTEMS: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The notion of language ideology has become fundamental in the study of speakers’ beliefs about languages. Notwithstanding, this concept has some gray areas that have not been properly attended by its theoretical formulations. This work sees in such interstices as a valuable opportunity to build an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenon. In this way, it is proposed, from the sociology of language, to combine the notion of language ideology with social representations theory. Language ideologies are thus comprehended as social representations systems about linguistic market, speakers, and language-culture and language-identity relations, that reproduce or defy the status quo of sociolinguistic relations.