Phonetic wordplay can dismantle imperial ideology by fragmenting it

Evidence

As the leading linguistic scholar Joshua Fishman has observed, a language is more likely to be accepted as a lingua franca or LWC if it is not identified with a particular ethnic group, religion, or ideology. In the past English had many of these identifications. More recently English has been “de-ethnicized (or minimally ethnicized)”as happened in the past with Akkadian, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin. “It is part of the relative good fortune of English as an additional language that neither its British nor its American fountainheads have been widely or deeply viewed in an ethnic or ideological context for the past quarter century or so” [Italics his]. The use of English for intercultural communication thus helps to maintain and, indeed, reinforces peoples’ separate cultural identities. Precisely because people want to preserve their own culture they use English to communicate with peoples of other cultures. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 166 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Beckett’s later work substituted phonetic and gestural structure for discursive meaning. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2239; Rhetorical role-reversal can weaponize an empire’s own history against it — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 456; A lingua franca succeeds by being detached from any single ethnic or ideological identity — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 166 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• A lingua franca succeeds by being detached from any single ethnic or ideological identity #complicates (0.74) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 166
• Ideological unity forms through connotative condensation and an axial interpellation #complicates (0.73)