"Standard" is used as an adjective and a noun in sociolinguistics to denote a register resulting from a process of institutionalization mediated by competing ideologies. However, does the enregisterment (Agha, 2005, 2007, 2015) of a standard imply an overarching formation under which every other register becomes nonstandard?
Through a comparative empirical study of language policy processes of design and implementation in Luxembourg and the German-speaking Community of Belgium (GCB), this paper aims to problematize and, perhaps, to go beyond the reified standard vs. nonstandard continuum under regimes of commoditization (Agha, 2011). Language policy in Luxembourg and in the GCB is assumed to be a collection of script-artifacts and actions from individuals mediated by distinct ethno-metapragmatics (Silverstein, 1979; Agha, 2007), the two chosen settings being characterized by varying degrees of institutional multilingualism. By answering the question of whether Luxembourgish and 'Belgian' German are regimented and commoditized as standard registers, I seek to show how the continuum "standard" vs. "nonstandard" is, in its current state, an unfit analytic for the study of ideology in semiosis. Following Pennycook (2021) and Kroskrity (2021), I argue that the study of ideology as semiotic assemblages requires, minimally, embedding the standard vs. nonstandard analytic in text-level indexicality (i.e., the co-occurring signs in interaction) or, maximally, redefining it altogether in the face of the challenges posed by semiotic assemblages as a recent analytic.
For the outlined purpose, a diachronic analysis of the enregisterment of the standard through policy texts is complemented by a synchronic analysis of current policies and metapragmatic data in the form of interviews with teachers and policymakers. The data are defined as series of events in a semiotic chain. Cross-event linkages are analyzed following the discourse analysis of linguistic anthropology (Wortham & Reyes, 2020; Gal & Irvine, 2019).
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