Cover not available
Article published In:
Thematising Multilingualism in the Media
Edited by Helen Kelly-Holmes and Tommaso M. Milani
[Journal of Language and Politics 10:4] 2011
► pp. 587–614

Unity in disunity

Centripetal and centrifugal tensions on the BBC Voices website

| University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and University of Leeds
This paper takes as a point of departure the website of the “Voices” project, a large media enterprise on languages in the UK conducted by the BBC in 2003–2005. With the help of the notions of language ideology and the analytical tools of multimodal critical discourse analysis, the paper shows how representations of languages on the website are a discursive terrain on which negotiations of national identities are played out. Essentially, the argument is that there is a constant tension between centripetal (unifying) and centrifugal (particularising) forces which strive for the production of different, concomitant and often conflicting national identities. Whereas the BBC seeks to represent the UK as a happy and unified multilingual nation, the many postings on the website show how multilingualism is not always perceived by speakers as a happy and unproblematic phenomenon, but is a politically-fraught issue that creates strong disagreements about the values of different languages in British society as well as their functions as markers of different national identities.
Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis, language ideology, multimodality, national identity, new media
Published online: 5 December 2011
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.10.4.06mil
References (68)
References
Althusser, Louis. 1971. Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. In: Louis Althusser (ed.). Lenin and Philosophy. New York: Monthly Review Press, 85–126.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
BBC. 2006. Broadcasting. Copy of Royal Charter for the continuance of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Available at [URL] (Accessed 8 September 2010).
Bhabha, Homi K.. 1990. Introduction: Narrating the nation. In: Homi K. Bhabha (ed.). Nation and Narration. New York: Routledge, 1–7.Google Scholar
Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Blackledge, Adrian. 2004. Constructions of identities in political discourse in multilingual Britain. In: Aneta Pavlenko and Adrian Blackledge (eds). Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Contexts. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 68–92. DOI logo
. 2005. Discourse and Power in a Multilingual World. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. Lost in translation? Racialisation of a debate about language in a BBC news item. In: Sally Johnson and Tommaso M. Milani (eds). Language Ideologies and Media Discourse: Texts, Practices, Politics. London: Continuum, 143–161.Google Scholar
Blackledge, Adrian and Creese, Angela. 2010. Multilingualism: A Critical Perspective. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan (ed.). 1999. Language Ideological Debates. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan and Verschueren, Jeff. 1998a. Debating Diversity: Analysing the Discourse of Tolerance. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 1998b. The role of language in European nationalist ideologies. In: Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds). Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 189–210.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen C. 1987. Politeness Theory: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2003. Sociolinguistic authenticities. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(3), 417–431 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006. Review of John Aitchison and Harold Carter (eds) (2004) Spreading the Word: The Welsh Language 2001. Talybont, Ceredigion: Y Lolfa Cyf. Language in Society 35(3), 449–453.Google Scholar
. 2010. Welsh linguistic landscapes ‘from above’ and ‘from below’. In: Adam Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow (eds). Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space. London: Continuum, 77–101.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas, Bishop, Hywel and Garrett, Peter. 2003. Home truths: Globalisation and the iconising of Welsh in a Welsh-American newspaper. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 24(3), 153–177. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas and Aldridge, Michelle. 2009. Introduction: A critical approach to the revitalisation of Welsh. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 1951, 5–13.
Davies, Bethan, Milani, Tommaso M. and Turner, Will. in press. Multilingual nation online? Possibilities and constraints on the BBC Voices website. In: Sheena Gardner and Marilyn Martin-Jones (eds). Multilingualism, Discourse and Ethnography. London: Routledge.
del Valle, José. 2007. Embracing diversity for the sake of unity: Linguistic hegemony and the pursuit of total Spanish. In: Alexandre Duchêne and Monica Heller (eds). Discourses of Endangerment: Ideology and Interest in the Defence of Language. London: Continuum, 242–267.Google Scholar
Elmes, Simon. 2006. Talking for Britain: A Journey through the Nation’s Dialects. Middlesex. Penguin. (Reprinted in paperback as Talking for Britain: A Journey through the Voices of a Nation).
Elmes, Simon and Bragg, Melvyn. 2001. Routes of English. Vol. 31. London: BBC Factual and Learning.
Fenton, Steve. 2007. Indifference towards national identity: What young adults think about being English and British, Nations and Nationalism 13(2), 321–339. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gal, Susan. 2010. Language and political space. In: Peter Auer and Jürgen Erich Schmidt (eds). Language and Space: An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 33–49.
Gal, Susan and Woolard, Kathryn A. 2001. Constructing languages and publics: Authority and representation. In: Susan Gal and Kathryn A. Woolard (eds). Languages and Publics: The Making of Authority. Manchester: St. Jerome, 1–12.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1989 [1962]. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Oxford: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart. 1997. Race — The Floating Signifier, film directed by Sut Jally. Media Education Foundation.
Heller, Monica and Duchêne, Alexandre. 2007. Discourses of endangerment: Sociolinguistics, globalization and social order. In: Alexandre Duchêne and Monica Heller (eds). Discourses of Endangerment: Ideology and Interest in the Defence of Language. London: Continuum, 1–13.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence (eds). 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Horner, Kristine. 2009a. Language, citizenship and Europeanization: Unpacking the discourse of integration. In: Gabrielle Hogan-Brun, Clare Mar-Molinero and Patrick Stevenson (eds). Testing Regimes: Critical Perspectives on Language, Migration and Citizenship. Amsterdam: Johns Benjamins, 109–128.
. 2009b. Regimenting language, mobility and citizenship in Luxembourg. In: Guus Extra, Massimiliano Spotti and Piet Van Avermaet (eds). Language Testing, Migration and Citizenship: Cross-National Perspectives on Integration Regimes. London: Continuum, 148–166.Google Scholar
Iedema, Rick. 2003. Multimodality, resemiotization: Extending the analysis of discourse as multi-semiotic practice. Visual Communication 2(1), 29–57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. and Susan Gal. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In: Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.). Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 35–83.
Jaworski, Adam. 2007. Language in the media: Authenticity and othering. In: Sally Johnson and Astrid Ensslin (eds). Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies. London: Continuum, 271–280.Google Scholar
Johnson, Sally. 2007. The iconography of orthography: Representing German spelling reform in the news magazine Der Spiegel . In: Sally Johnson and Astrid Ensslin (eds). Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies. London: Continuum, 91–110.Google Scholar
Johnson, Sally and Ensslin, Astrid (eds). 2007. Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Johnson, Sally and Milani, Tommaso M. (eds). 2010. Language Ideologies and Media Discourse: Texts, Practices, Politics. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Johnson, Sally, Milani, Tommaso M. and Upton, Clive. 2010. Language ideological debates on the BBC ‘Voices’ website: Hypermodality in theory and practice. In: Sally Johnson and Tommaso M. Milani (eds). Language Ideologies and Media Discourse: Texts, Practices, Politics. London: Continuum, 223–251.Google Scholar
Knox, John. 2007. Visual-verbal communication on online newspaper home pages. Visual Communication 6(1), 19–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kok, Arthur K. C. 2004. Multisemiotic mediation in hypertext. In: Kay I. O’Halloran (ed.). Multimodal Discourse Analysis: Systemic Functional Perspectives. London: Continuum, 131–59.Google Scholar
Kress, Gunther and van Leeuwen, Theo. 2006 [1996]. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (2nd edn). London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lanza, Elizabeth and Woldemarian, Hirut. 2009. Language ideology and linguistic landscape: Language policy and globalization in a regional capital of Ethiopia. In: Elana Shohamy and Durk Gorter (eds). Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. London: Routledge, 189–205.Google Scholar
Lemke, Jay. 2002. Travels in hypermodality. Visual Communication 1(3), 299–325. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
LePage, Robert and Tabouret-Keller, Andrée. 1985. Acts of Identity: Creole-Based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Machin, David. 2007. Introduction to Multimodal Analysis. London: Hodder Arnold.Google Scholar
May, Stephen. 2000. Accommodating and resisting minority language policy: The case of Wales. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 3(2), 101–128. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McCrum, Robert, Cran, William and MacNeil, Robert. 1986. The Story of English. London/Boston: Faber and Faber/BBC Books.
Milani, Tommaso M.. 2008. Language testing and citizenship: A language ideological debate in Sweden. Language in Society 37(1), 27–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nielsen, Jacob and Tahir, Marie. 2002. Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed. Indianapolis: New Riders.Google Scholar
Ord, Mick. 2005. Project Director’s Presentation of Overview Summary — BBC Voices. Cardiff: British Broadcasting Corporation.Google Scholar
Petersoo, Pille. 2006. What do ‘we’ mean? National deixis in the media. Journal of Language and Politics 6(3), 419–436. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poulantzas, Nicos. 1980. State, Power, Socialism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Pujolar, Joan. 2007. Bilingualism and the nation-state in the post-national era. In: Monica Heller (ed.). Bilingualism: A Social Approach. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 71–95. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rose, Amanda and Mowbray, Faith. n. d. The UK Speaks (working title). BBC Nations & Regions: BBC Cymru Wales.
Rosie, Michael, MacInness, John, Petersoo, Pille, Condor, Susan and Kennedy, James. 2004. Nation speaking unto nation? Newspapers and national identity in the devolved UK. The Sociological Review 52(4), 437–458. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rosie, Michael, Petersoo, Pille, MacInness, John, Condor, Susan and Kennedy, James. 2006. Mediating which nation? Citizenship and national identities in the British press. Social Semiotics 16(2), 327–344. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spitulnik, Debra. 1998. Mediating unity and diversity: The production of language ideologies in Zambian broadcasting. In: Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds). Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 163–188.Google Scholar
Stroud, Christopher. 1999. Portuguese as ideology and politics in Mozambique: Semiotic (re) constructions of a postcolony. In: Jan Blommaert (ed.). Language Ideological Debates Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter, 343–380. DOI logo
Sunderland, Jane. 2004. Gendered Discourses. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Turner, Will. 2011. Language Ideology and the BBC Voices website: Hypermodal and Practice-Oriented Prespectives. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Leeds: University of Leeds.
UNESCO. 2009. UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. Available at: [URL] (accessed 8 September 2010).
Welsh Language Board. 2003. 2001 Census Electoral Division Level Language Data. Available at: [URL]. (Accessed 8 September 2010).
Wodak, Ruth. 2001. The discourse-historical approach. In: Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer (eds). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage, 63–94.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, de Cillia, Rudolf, Reisigl, Martin and Liebhart, Karin. 2009 [1999]. The Discursive Construction of National Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth and Wright, Scott. 2006. The European Union in cyberspace: Multilingual democratic participation in a virtual public sphere? Journal of Language and Politics 5(2), 251–275.
Woolard, Kathryn A.. 1998. Introduction: Language ideology as a field of inquiry. In: Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds). Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1–47.Google Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Tarnarutckaia, Elizaveta & Astrid Ensslin
2020. The myth of the “clarté française”: Language ideologies and metalinguistic discourse of videogame speech accents on Reddit. Discourse, Context & Media 33 ► pp. 100352 ff. DOI logo
Liang, Feng & Dong-shin Shin
2019. Uniformity or diversity: Chinese netizens' reactions to language policy through the lenses of critical discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 16:3 ► pp. 205 ff. DOI logo
Jaworska, Sylvia & Christiana Themistocleous
2018. Public discourses on multilingualism in the UK: Triangulating a corpus study with a sociolinguistic attitude survey. Language in Society 47:1 ► pp. 57 ff. DOI logo
Edwards, Catrin Wyn
2017. Language policy, in-migration and discursive debates in Wales. Language Policy 16:2 ► pp. 165 ff. DOI logo
Shaikjee, Mooniq & Tommaso Milani
2013. ‘It’s time for Afrikaans to go’ . . . or not? Language ideologies and (ir)rationality in the blogosphere. Language Matters 44:2 ► pp. 92 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.