ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the language ideological and political implications of the way the authors of the BBC Voices website represented what they described as ‘the language of the UK’. Those concerns are language ideological in that they deal with the social values and ideas that people attach to different forms of language (e.g. Schieffelin et al. 1998; Woolard 1998) and they become political at the point where those values are purposefully manipulated in the strategic interests of a particular group or organization – in this case the BBC. Specifically, the following sections will show how the Voices website promoted a particular set of values surrounding the language(s) used by its audience, and moreover, how it did so in a way that was designed to serve the institutional interests of the BBC in 2004/5.
