ABSTRACT
This chapter provides how the meaning of a text is constructed by the reader or hearer. Moreover, meaning is constructed differently by different hearers/readers, on a continuum from dominant to critical readings. It introduces the reader to a theoretical and methodological approach combining ethnography and discourse analysis. The chapter discusses some key discourse models about language, which are widely held beliefs or ideologies about how language works and how it is used. The main language ideologies include the belief in a hierarchy of languages, the standard language ideology, the one nation–one language ideology, the mother tongue ideology and the ideology of linguistic purism. The standard language ideology has associated axioms, in particular the belief that languages are internally homogeneous, bounded entities. Languages that have been named and thus separated off from other named languages frequently undergo a process of standardization.
