Semiotics
In Peircean semiotics, a sign that physically resembles its object, like a photograph or a map.
What is an icon?
This Irvine & Gal mechanism turns a perceived linguistic difference into an iconic representation of a group's inherent nature.
What is iconization?
The indigenous script for the Santali language, created by Pandit Raghunath Murmu.
What is Ol Chiki?
This form of nationalism, historically associated with France, defines the nation as a voluntary community of citizens sharing political will.
What is civic nationalism?
According to Michael Warner, a discursive space created by the circulation of texts, forming a community of strangers.
What is a public?
A sign that points to its object through a causal or physical connection, such as smoke indicating fire.
What is an index?
The mechanism that projects the same opposition found at one level of social structure onto other levels, creating a pattern of self-similarity.
What is fractal recursivity?
The Indian state, especially around West Bengal, where many Santali speakers live and where movements for autonomy are active.
What is West Bengal (or India)?
This nationalism, linked to German Romanticism, defines the nation primarily through common language, ethnicity, and cultural heritage.
What is ethnic nationalism (or Romantic nationalism)?
Humor often works through this technique, exaggerating or transforming features to expose or subvert stereotypes.
What is contrast and distortion?
This Swiss linguist argued that the linguistic sign is fundamentally arbitrary, based on social convention.
Who is Ferdinand de Saussure?
The process that renders certain people, activities, or linguistic forms invisible in order to simplify an ideological picture.
What is erasure?
Santali activists promote Ol Chiki over dominant scripts like Devanagari or Bengali primarily for this purpose.
What is the assertion of cultural autonomy / ethnic identity?
The ideology that elevates one variety of a language as the "correct" model and devalues all others, often enforced by state institutions.
What is standard language ideology?
A joke that hints at a social identity through linguistic style without explicitly naming it relies on this kind of indexicality.
What is indirect indexicality?
Give an example of an indexical sign in spoken language, where a feature "points to" a speaker's origin or identity.
What is a regional accent (or words like "here," "this")?
Name the three semiotic mechanisms of language ideology formation identified by Irvine and Gal.
What are iconization, fractal recursivity, and erasure?
The concept, drawn from Warner, that applies to the Santali print and script activism, creating a discursive space that stands opposed to the Bengali/Hindi-dominated public sphere.
What is a counterpublic?
In North America, this movement to make English the sole official language exemplifies standard language ideology.
What is the English-only movement?
This term describes a public that is marginalized and oppositional, challenging a dominant public sphere.
What is a counterpublic?
Unlike Saussure, Charles Sanders Peirce held that many signs are not arbitrary but this, meaning they have a natural or motivated connection to what they stand for.
What is non-arbitrary (or motivated)?
In Santali graphic politics, the choice of the Ol Chiki script over Devanagari or Bengali operates as this kind of semiotic mechanism.
What is iconization (of Santal identity)?
The tension between using Ol Chiki versus a more widely understood script like Devanagari points to this broader political struggle.
What is the politics of autonomy (or assimilation vs. self-determination)?
The Santali script debate mirrors a tension between these two contrasting types of nationalism.
What are civic and ethnic/romantic nationalism (or French vs. German)?
Give an example of how humor can use indirect indexicality to contest a hegemonic language ideology.
What is using features of a stigmatized dialect in a joke to index a resistant stance (i.e., mocking a prestige language)?