Language ideologies in the study of discourse: inclusive education and contemporary issues

Abstract

This article aims at debating the notion of language ideology in the contemporary context of superdiversity, in which different scales organize language use. Adopting a perspective of dialogue between critical sociolinguistics and critical discourse analysis, we analyze examples that include online texts (WhatsApp, Campaign “The Green Is Ours”) and offline texts (Interview with the mother of a student with disability, an anonymous letter, “Learning to be a hostess”, a suggestion to the National Constitutional Assembly), in addition to the discussion of a textual trajectory that exemplifies three different genres. These genres are the main corpus to be analyzed in the article. We chose an approach that considers multiple scales in the situated discourse production of contemporary social practices, in which one can find intolerance and social inequality (including gender inequality), but also an alignment with social change related to the population´s right to environmental well-being, against neocapitalist interests, and an attitude of political leadership by women. Our main conclusion is that language ideologies should be investigated in diverse social contexts because they can clarify social reproduction and change.